Gilmore Girls has male fans too!

To all male fans of Gilmore Girls: I am one of you!

In the past few weeks, the internet has had a mobgasm over the fact that Gilmore Girls is coming to Netflix. A library's worth of articles and tweets have been created to commemorate this historic event. But speaking of tweets, here is a blatantly prejudiced one:

Hey! Levels of testosterone and Gilmore Girls fandom are not an inversely proportional relationship! Just because I'm a guy doesn't mean that I can't fall in love with impossibly charming mother-daughter duos, encyclopedic carpet bombardments of cultural references, and heartwarming Carole King theme songs played over images of sepia-toned foliage.

And I'm not some bandwagon jumper. Starting way back in my early high school years, I've been telling people that I like this show. Yes, some people snickered at me. Some even outright laughed. But I just had to be true to myself. Plus, I had some covert allies around the school as word was that my 10th grade English teacher, who was an ex-football player and looked like a nose tackle, watched it religiously.

Yet I never watched the show regularly. In fact, I barely followed any shows at that age, even though I watched a fair amount of TV. Perhaps being deprived of cable for most of my childhood and thus having to live off of syndicated reruns on basic channels made me afraid of commitment when it came to TV shows.

Syndicated Simpsons reruns... Where would I be without you?

Anyway, so I would just catch Gilmore Girls reruns whenever I stumbled upon them, which meant my chronological grasp of the show was often messed up. Look at Rory making out with some guy named Dean. Now, she's in college and wondering what to do with her life. Oh wait, now she's back in prep school and fighting with Paris while her mom is going out with her English teacher. And where did this Jess guy come from all of a sudden?

But I still really liked the show, even though there were significant gaps in my understanding of the overall narrative. Why? Well, there were lots of other reasons. Okay okay, let's the obvious out of the way and say that Lorelai Gilmore is the MILF to end all MILFs. She's funny, she's irreverent, she's got an attitude that'll cut you down while she has the sweetest smile on her face, and yeah, she's really hot too.

♫ And here's to you, Ms. Gilmore... ♫

All right, requisite fanboying over. The show can also be very educational because of its mad index of references. I learned who Nikolai Gogol was because of an episode I watched! It's amazing what TV can teach you. For example, you can get a Ebertesque level of film knowledge just by learning many of the movie references in The Simpsons.

The show is also funny in way that's more subtle than a traditional sitcom but not as cynically smug as modern non-sitcom-coms. There are so many crazy people in town who would be murder-inducing in real life but are great comic relief in little morsels, like Michel and Taylor and Miss Patty. Also, in retrospect, it's really funny watching Melissa McCarthy play all nice and sweet as the adorable chef, Sookie.

The show's location was also a main factor. Stars Hollow makes small New England towns seem like the coolest place ever. And why not? The trees are colourful, the townsfolk are earthy and quirky (and not in a forced Zach Braffian kind of way), and it's so cozy that it's like living in a little Lego set full of factory-inked smiles. Okay, maybe in real life, that town would be a drab grey for 10 months out of the year, the townsfolk may be provincial and possibly racist, and the small community may get suffocatingly gossipy a la The Scarlet Letter. But it looked so good on TV!

Stage 4 bibliophilia

And then there was Rory. I thought that she was the kind of girl I would want for a girlfriend. By "kind of girl," I don't mean in terms of looks. Rather, I mean someone who was bookish and smart, but also full of heart and feelings. Rory was an academic superstar, but she also had romantic persuasions too, like when she stopped wanting to go to Chilton because she met Dean. Plus, her character was just a few years older than me, so when she was fretting about college admissions, that was something I could immediately relate to. Maybe I too would get to study in New England and meet someone like her in class...

So many other reasons too! The whole Gilmore family reconciliation saga that slowly developed throughout the series was wonderful, and I think everybody (especially young people) can relate to having to not only deal with parents' expectations but also coming to terms with their point of view. Hey, maybe mom and dad aren't that way just because they're jerks who want to sabotage you. Maybe they're human too and they're the way they are because they have had their own disappointments and unfulfilled desires to deal with.

Oh she could be so mean. Or so sweet.

Seven seasons is a daunting challenge for any TV viewer to try to tackle, and perhaps that's why I have been reluctant to go from start to finish with Gilmore Girls. But this could be the perfect opportunity to catch up on a show that I've really liked and admired but never properly watched.

So let's all of us guy fans of this show NOT sit on the sidelines on this joyous occasion. Proclaim your love too!

I want to see more female protagonists in the movies

Am I getting smarter, or are movies just getting dumber? Probably the latter, but either way, this summer has been pretty disastrous in terms of Hollywood movies. The two that I've seen recently, Man of Steel and World War Z, were damn stupid. And not in that fun Independence Day sort of way. I mean stooopid in a way that severely limits your ability to enjoy yourself.

For example, *SPOILERS*, in Man of Steel, General Zod seems like a 10-year old's idea of what a villain should be. All he needed was a "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD, MWAHAHAHAHA!" to put the cherry on top. And that female Kryptonian baddie delivered one of the most shockingly bad lines I've ever heard when she said to Superman in the middle of a fight, "Your need to empathize gives me an evolutionary advantage!"

Wow, seriously? That's the kind of stuff you'd expect from a poorly dubbed kung fu movie.

And in World War Z, the brilliant doctor whom Brad Pitt is supposed to accompany on his cure-finding mission dies in such a ridiculous way that I couldn't take the movie seriously afterwards. Actually, when we were first introduced to the doctor, who happened to be South Asian, I was thinking, 'Finally! We're gonna see a brown heroic character in a big blockbuster. This is kind of amazing.'

Silly me for forgetting the "Brown people can only be villains" rule

But of course, he dies before the mission even starts when he slips and falls on his gun, shooting himself. Time for Brad Pitt to reluctantly save the world!

It's no secret that Hollywood just sucks these days, and it's a widely accepted fact that TV has long surpassed movies in terms of artistic credibility and prestige. What's on the horizon anyway? The Wolverine? Thor 2? The Smurfs 2? Ho hum.

Hey Hollywood, since this whole schtick of yours isn't working that hot anymore, how about we switch things up? I, for one, would love to see more female-centered movies. A 2011 study found that women only made up 11% of main characters in the movies (msmagazine.com/blog/2012/05/15/hollywoods-war-on-women/). ELEVEN PERCENT? That's ridiculous.

Some of the best film storytellers today like James Cameron and Hayao Miyazaki often choose to center their works around female protagonists because they believe that girls and women make for more interesting characters.



Shizuku, the heroine of "Whisper of the Heart", one of my favourite
movies of all time



I think it's a little patronizing and exotifying to say that females in all their mystical ooh-la-la femininity are just inherently more fascinating than men. But from the sheer fact that there just aren't that many heroines in our media, a female protagonist is indeed more interesting due to scarcity.

And I am not just saying all this because I had huge crushes on Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables when I was young. Okay, maybe that has something to do with it.


My first love

I just want to see some good and interesting movies for a change. And right now, you know what's boring as hell? Watching a bunch of generic brodudes fight superhumans in "climactic" battles with incredibly low stakes since they're both practically invincible. Or watching a bunch of sensitive generic brodudes have their self-pitying lives turned around by girls who fall in love with them for some reason.

Also, this is a relevant topic for this blog because people often rationalize the dumbing down of movies by pointing to the ever-increasing international market. Korea happens to be an important international market, and it's normal now for Hollywood stars to make the long trans-Pacific journey all the way here to promote their films.

So in essence, they're saying it's Asia and Latin America's fault that Hollywood movies have become so formulaic and tired. Well, you know how those people are. All they want to do is gawk at explosions and boobs. They don't know how to appreciate cultural nuance or well-written characters.

Well, I went to see Before Midnight a few weeks ago, and the theatre was pretty packed.

It reminds me of how Hollywood also uses the international market to justify not casting minorities in lead roles. You see, it's EUROPE's fault because Europeans are so nasty and racist that they simply won't tolerate seeing a Black man or woman in a lead role. Unlike enlightened Hollywood, who's just dying to inject some diversity into its movies but can't because Europe/Asia/Latin America.


Hollywood would be so open-minded if it weren't for those damn
international movie-goers!

I understand that the film industry is in very tough times now with the collapse of the DVD market. But it pisses me off when they essentially blame the rest of the world for the sexism and racism in their movies. Because Hollywood doesn't already have a long and proud domestic history of that, right?

Some people might criticize me for being too hung up on gender and race, and that the bigot here is ME because I'm the one seeing race and gender when we should all live in a post-everything world.

All right, so if all that doesn't matter, how about we make almost every movie about women and their concerns? And most roles for men will be as one-dimensional love interests or plot devices to further the development of these female protagonists. And all of these men will be Black, Latino, or Asian. And the only time we'll ever see White men are as repugnant and negatively stereotypical comic relief.

I wonder if the same people will continue to insist to let movies just be movies, and to stop "overthinking" everything.