Chick flick

Generally, a chick flick is a film designed to have an innate appeal to women, typically young women.[2] Defining a chick flick is, as The New York Times has stated, more of a parlor game than a science.[8] These films are generally held in popular culture as having formulaic, paint-by-numbers plot lines and characters. This makes usage of the term "problematic" for implying "frivolity, artlessness, and utter commercialism", according to ReelzChannel.[1] However, several chick flicks have received high critical acclaim for their stories and performances. For example, the 1983 film Terms of Endearment received Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role.[9] More recently, the film La La Land (called a chick flick in some circles), featuring both Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, won Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Both of these actors were well known for their roles in chick flicks before jumping to the academy level.

Some frequent elements of chick flicks include having a female protagonist,[1] thematic use of the color pink (along with metaphorical allusions of the color),[2] and romance and/or dating-based storylines.[3] Longtime producer Jerry Bruckheimer has remarked about the plots, "How do you cope with money and love?"[8]

Women are typically portrayed in chick flicks as sassy, noble victims, or klutzy twentysomethings. Romantic comedies (rom-coms) are often also chick flicks. However, rom-coms are typically respected more than chick flicks because they are designed to appeal to men and women.

Female MSN.com commentator Kim Morgan has written:

[C]inema just wouldn't be the same without movies for and about women. And we don't just mean movies about pretty women, but all women and their issues – something many guys don't usually have the patience for in real life. That's what sisters are for, right? Right... sisters or movies.[10]

The term "chick flick" was not widely used until the 1980s and 1990s. It has its roots in the "women's pictures" of the early twentieth century, which portrays the woman as a victim and housewife, and later the film noir of the 1940s and early 1950s, which portrays the threat of sexualized women.[11][12][13] In the 1950s, many women who were in the workforce during World War II faced the transition back into the home. Brandon French notes that the women's films of the 1950s "shed light on a different cluster of issues and situations women faced in their transition from the forties to the sixties: romance, courtship, work, marriage, sex, motherhood, divorce, loneliness, adultery, alcoholism, widowhood, heroism, madness, and ambition."[14]

The 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, commonly known as one of the "classic" films from the golden age of cinema, is sometimes considered an early chick flick due to common elements such as dealing with loneliness, obsessive materialism, and happy endings.[1][15] Author Molly Haskell has suggested that chick flicks are very different from the women's films of the 1940s and 1950s in that they now "sing a different tune." She feels that they are "more defiant and upbeat, post-modern and post-feminist."

In the U.S. in the 1980s, a succession of teenage drama pictures also labeled as chick flicks were released, many by director John Hughes. These often had a different and more realistic tone than previous chick flicks, with dramatic elements such as abortion and personal alienation being included.[1]

Several chick flicks have been patterned after the story of Cinderella and other fairy tales (e.g. A Cinderella Story, Ever After, and Pretty Woman), or even Shakespeare in the case of She's the Man and 10 Things I Hate About You. In addition, a large number are adapted from popular novels (e.g. The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada) and literary classics (e.g. Little Women). While most films that are considered chick flicks are lighthearted, some suspense films also fall under this category, such as What Lies Beneath.

After the blockbuster success of the 2008 drama/romance film Twilight, Paul Dergarabedian of Media By Numbers remarked, "[t]he word 'chick flick' is going to have to be replaced by big box-office girl-power flick" and that "[t]he box-office clout of the female audience is just astounding, and it's been an underserved audience for way too long". He also said, "they have no trouble finding money for the things they're passionate about." According to Fandango.com, more than 75% of Twilight's opening-weekend audience was female.[3]

The term chick flick has generated several negative responses from the modern feminist community. Most criticisms of the genre concentrate on the negative consequences that arise from gendering certain interests, in this case film. Author of The Chick Flick Paradox: Derogatory? Feminist? or Both?, Natalia Thompson, states that chick flicks are "an attempt to lump together an entire gender's interests into one genre."[12]

While the tailoring of interests may seem helpful and natural, many critics argue that unnecessary gendering can have negative consequences on many different social groups.[16] There is evidence from Russian social scientist Natal'ia Rimashevskaia that gender stereotypes further perpetuated by the media can lead to discrimination against women and limit their "human and intellectual potential."[16]

More criticisms of the term arise from actual content of the films in the chick flick genre and how the content affects society's perception of women. Some say that chick flicks are micro-aggressions.[17] Micro-aggressions are actions or exchanges that degrade a person based on his or her membership in a "race, gender, age, and ability."[17]

Despite the genre's popular successes, some film critics take issue with the content most chick flicks have in common. Although the subcategories represent different plot lines, they all have several characteristics in common. Many chick flicks can have the "ironic, self-deprecating tone" which film theorist Hilary Radner associates with chick lit.[18] This tone is one of the defining characteristics of the genre, and many feel that it lacks substance compared to other genres.[19] Radner also goes on to say the genre is "incredibly heteronormative and white-washed."[19] These common characteristics of the genre can lead to criticism from minority groups and social-justice activists.[19] More issues with the genre emerge from the opinion that chick flicks play to every woman's "patriarchal unconscious".[20]

In her article Structural Integrity, Historical Reversion, and the Post-9/11 Chick Flick, Diane Negra focuses on several romantic comedies, deemed to be chick flicks, set in New York City after the attacks on September 11, 2001.[21] She claims that the films "centralize female subjectivity but more compellingly undertake political work to stabilize national identity post-9/11."[21] Political and social upheaval following the attacks led to a need for films that show the importance of protecting gender and family norms, or "ideological boundaries", as opposed to the emphasis on "survivalism" and "homeland security" used to protect national boundaries, seen in the action films at the time.[21] Juxtaposed with the "politically innocent" genre of the pre-9/11 period, the films are rife with political undertones that are meant "to stabilize national identity post-9/11".[21]

While most chick flicks center around a romantic conquest, Alison Winch ("We Can Have It All") writes about films she calls "girlfriend flicks".[22] These movies emphasize the relationships between friends instead of focusing on a love connection; examples include Bride Wars and Baby Mama.

According to Winch,

Girlfriend flicks often have savvy, "nervous," female voice-overs mirroring typical romantic comedies, but addressing female spectators in their assumption of the mutual minefield of negotiating relationships, body, work, family, depression—issues prevalent in conduct, diet, and self-help books marketed specifically to women.[22]

Winch also states that girlfriend flicks criticize "second wave feminism's superficial understanding of female solidarity" by showing "conflict, pain, and betrayal acted out between women".[22] By emphasizing the "complexities of women's relationships", the girlfriend flick breaks the mold for the usual chick flick and allows the genre to gain a bit of depth.[22]

The following films have been characterized as chick flicks by some commentators:

• Chick lit
• Feminist film theory
• Female buddy film
• "Love means never having to say you're sorry"
• Women in film
• Women's cinema
• Woman's film
• October 3

Notes

Bibliography

• Aufderheide, Patricia (2001). "Memoirs Of The Feminist Film Movement". Feminist Studies. 27 (1): 159–166. doi:10.2307/3178455. JSTOR 3178455.
• Cook, Samantha. The Rough Guide to Chick-Flicks, Rough Guides Ltd, 2006.
• Erens, Patricia. Issues In Feminist Film Criticism. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1990. Print.
• Ferriss, Suzanne, and Mallory Young. Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
• French, Brandon. On the Verge of Revolt: Women in American Films of the Fifties. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1978. Print.
• Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1983. Print.
• McIntosh, Heather. "Representation of Women." Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World. Ed. Mary Zeiss Stange, Carol K. Oyster, and Jane E. Sloan. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011. 1222–26. SAGE knowledge. Web. December 9, 2015.
• Nance, Nicoletta C. "Implicit Bias." Encyclopedia of Human Services and Diversity. Ed. Linwood H. Cousins. Vol. 5 Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014. 695–97. SAGE knowledge. Web. December 9, 2015.
• Negra, Diane (2008). "Structural Integrity, Historical Reversion, And The Post-9/11 Chick Flick". Feminist Media Studies. 8 (1): 51–68. doi:10.1080/14680770701824902. S2CID 145226983.
• Radner, Hilary. Neo-Feminist Cinema : Girly Films, Chick Flicks And Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
• Rimashevskaia, Natalia (2008). "Gender Stereotypes And The Logic Of Social Relations". Russian Social Science Review. 49 (3): 35–48. doi:10.1080/10611428.2008.11065289. S2CID 219319923.
• Thompson, Natalia M (2007). "The Chick Flick Paradox: Derogatory? Feminist? Or Both?". Off Our Backs. 37 (1): 43.
• Winch, Alison (2012). "We Can Have It All". Feminist Media Studies. 12 (1): 69–82. doi:10.1080/14680777.2011.558349. S2CID 142581206.