Did anybody else think that Colossal was incredibly misandristic?

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Because, assuming that it even exists in the first place, it is not nearly as much of a problem as toxic masculinity. As with the Bechdel test, not everything automatically requires an opposing counterpart to exist.
But it does exist. My wife was run out of her work place due to toxic femininity making her workplace unbearable. Why do you think that masculinity is so bad, but that femininity gets a pass? What is so good about femininity that masculinity does not possess?

Because men can take it.
This is the most misandristic and misogynistic statement of the year. Men can take it, but women cannot. Wow. Are the genders the same? Why can men take it, but women cannot? Why are women so weak that they cannot take criticism?


Besides, I still get the impression that it's less a trend and more the result of you having some really precise requirements for liking a film and its characters that a lot of films just don't happen to meet for whatever reason.
I just want parity. I can't stand the fact that in TV and film, men are considered expendable and evil, while women are considered the end-all be-all of existence and good. It is the double-standard that bothers me. I don't want to be considered evil and/or expendable just because I have a penis.


Based on his pre-election promises and post-election actions, he doesn't even match your Wizard of Oz standard for a good man - and that was before he made the swamp worse and came under investigation for felonies himself. It'd be one thing if it had just been an unqualified man winning, but he has repeatedly shown himself to be worse than that.
Do you really want to get into politics directly? If so, then fine. I did not vote for Trump (I voted for Johnson, the Libertarian candidate), but Trump has done a great job thus far. If his re-election were today, I would vote for him. He is trying to clean out the swamp, but it is both vast and deep.


I figure it's worth questioning why these concepts exist rather than just complaining about them existing. Maybe men get considered expendable because of the idea that only men are truly capable of doing dangerous jobs like fighting wars while the women have to stay home and raise families. This also brings into question exactly how women are treated as valuable in society, namely how much of that is dependent on what men want from them and how badly they can be treated if men do not consider them valuable (or even if they do).
Do you consider men and women as genders separate or interchangeable? Are they the absolutely the same or are they specifically different? I view them as different; XX and XY genetically. If you believe in the differences between the genders, and, thus, hopefully, gallantry, then I welcome that statement. However, if you view them as the same, then I wonder how you can defend your position above.

That may well be your perception and I can't necessarily convince you to change that, but given what you've written I wonder what your criteria for a character you can identify with would be. A character doesn't have to be unambiguously good to be relatable - sometimes seeing parts of ourselves reflected in characters who are notably flawed or villains is meant to be part of what the film is trying to communicate. The characters in Colossal are all flawed to one extent or another, but I can still find reasons to sympathise with or even relate to some of them and I've made those reasons clear in answering this thread because I try to accept what the film is doing beyond whether or not it meets an arbitrary expectation of mine.
To me, this is your strongest argument. While I have a very hard time identifying with mostly bad characters, I could possibly see where others might do as such in a limited fashion.

The Bechdel Test itself isn't a double standard, it was created in response to a double standard for reasons that I have already listed. You can't "look at it the other way" for the same reason you can't ask why there's no Straight Pride parades or no White History Month - because it would be completely and utterly redundant. As I said before, not everything needs a counterpart.
If the genders are truly equal, then yes, everything should be done both ways. Every test should have a counterpart. I don't necessarily stand behind the test (I think that it is flawed and insipid), but if it is to be given any weight, then it should be given weight both ways.

We've. Been. Over. This. Correlation does not equal causation. All the villains happening to be men is not meant to indicate that all men are bad. We are talking about a movie that's named after its male lead hero who has multiple male allies, after all. Is Star Wars prejudiced against men because its sole female character happens to be on the good guys' side? No, it is not.
And. I. Still. Disagree. With. You.

If there are 50 women shown and all of them (or almost all of them) are on the side of the good guys, then you can only come away with the impression that women are all inherently good. If every single bad guy (or nearly every single bad guy) is male, then you can only come away with the impression that evil is inherently equated with men.


P.S. We still need to break this up into smaller posts. This post very unwieldy at this point.



Welcome to the human race...
But it does exist. My wife was run out of her work place due to toxic femininity making her workplace unbearable. Why do you think that masculinity is so bad, but that femininity gets a pass? What is so good about femininity that masculinity does not possess?
You're going to have to elaborate on what exactly you mean by that, but like I said before it's not as widespread a problem so it's not considered nearly as much of a concern.

This is the most misandristic and misogynistic statement of the year. Men can take it, but women cannot. Wow. Are the genders the same? Why can men take it, but women cannot? Why are women so weak that they cannot take criticism?
I explained that in the rest of the answer that you've just so happened to leave out of the quote - because I question exactly how much of this is simply based on your own esoteric-sounding standards for male representation. The reason I can said that men can "take it" is because, contrary to your claims, they still enjoy solid and well-rounded representation in media on a higher level than women do. The genders themselves may be the same, but the ways in which they are treated are not.

I just want parity. I can't stand the fact that in TV and film, men are considered expendable and evil, while women are considered the end-all be-all of existence and good. It is the double-standard that bothers me. I don't want to be considered evil and/or expendable just because I have a penis.
Again, this just sounds like your very particular interpretation, but I think this might just be an off-shoot of the fact that the majority of characters in anything tend to be male anyway so they end up being more likely to be villains simply by default - and I repeat, it's not like men never get to play the hero anymore.

Do you really want to get into politics directly? If so, then fine. I did not vote for Trump (I voted for Johnson, the Libertarian candidate), but Trump has done a great job thus far. If his re-election were today, I would vote for him. He is trying to clean out the swamp, but it is both vast and deep.
I don't really want to get into it since that would be going off subject, but I will say that this explains a lot about this discussion.

Do you consider men and women as genders separate or interchangeable? Are they the absolutely the same or are they specifically different? I view them as different; XX and XY genetically. If you believe in the differences between the genders, and, thus, hopefully, gallantry, then I welcome that statement. However, if you view them as the same, then I wonder how you can defend your position above.
Because even though the genders are essentially the same, the regressive side of society can still mistreat them in completely different ways - men die in wars because women aren't considered fit to be soldiers while women get stuck being housewives because men don't think they should do anything else. Simple examples, perhaps, but they get the point across. In any case, I suppose it is easier to focus on the hardships that affect one's own gender more than those that affect a different gender.

To me, this is your strongest argument. While I have a very hard time identifying with mostly bad characters, I could possibly see where others might do as such in a limited fashion.
Like Ebert said, the movies are an empathy machine. Sometimes that's hard to do (if not impossible), but what's the point if we don't at least try?

If the genders are truly equal, then yes, everything should be done both ways. Every test should have a counterpart. I don't necessarily stand behind the test (I think that it is flawed and insipid), but if it is to be given any weight, then it should be given weight both ways.
The genders may be equal in real life, but the test isn't about proving their equality - it's about pointing out how a lot of media doesn't actually reflect that equality. If I ask you to name ten films that pass the Bechdel test off the top of your head and then do the same for ten films that pass the "reverse" test, which one will you find easier to do? I would say the latter, which is why I would say there is no weight to it - it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, if you think the original test is flawed and insipid, why are you arguing for the existence of one that's almost exactly like it?

And. I. Still. Disagree. With. You.

If there are 50 women shown and all of them (or almost all of them) are on the side of the good guys, then you can only come away with the impression that women are all inherently good. If every single bad guy (or nearly every single bad guy) is male, then you can only come away with the impression that evil is inherently equated with men.
So far it sounds like you're the only one to come away with this extremely simplistic impression because you're so incredibly fixated on this double standard that you're judging everything you watch by it even when it doesn't make sense. Nobody else is going to watch a movie named after its male hero being unambiguously good and come away thinking that all men are automatically bad.
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I just saw the movie and I didn't think it was misandrist necessarily. I mean the main character is the only woman in character in the movie, and you have four male characters.

Two of them I would say were bad, one not near as bad as the other, who is the obvious antagonist. The other is sort of like his sidekick who follows along, but definitely doesn't like what he is doing, but still follows along for some reason. But the other two male characters I felt were overall good.

If they had made the antagonist a woman as well, would that have been better perhaps?



I just saw the movie and I didn't think it was misandrist necessarily. I mean the main character is the only woman in character in the movie, and you have four male characters.

Two of them I would say were bad, one not near as bad as the other, who is the obvious antagonist. The other is sort of like his sidekick who follows along, but definitely doesn't like what he is doing, but still follows along for some reason. But the other two male characters I felt were overall good.

If they had made the antagonist a woman as well, would that have been better perhaps?



What was the name of the movie?



But it does exist. My wife was run out of her work place due to toxic femininity making her workplace unbearable. Why do you think that masculinity is so bad, but that femininity gets a pass? What is so good about femininity that masculinity does not possess?
I agree wholehertedly that toxic femininity exists. I once worked for a compnay that was soleley female driven. My god, it was probably the most hellish job I've ever had. NEVER AGAIN.

I believe you need both genders to make a company work. We're two halves of a whole and if you exclude the one, daaaaaamn it's unbalanced and probably the first circle of hell.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
What is this toxic femininity exactly? Do the women in the workplace hate male co-workers or what?