Being very un-movie-oriented and slow on the uptake, I watched 13 Going On 30 for the first time this weekend. My two girlfriends told me it was an absolute must-see, and that the ending was “really cute.”
Okay, I’ll give them that. It’s a cute ending. The main character ends up with the guy she has loved all along, and everything is all perfect and happy and such. But, being the cynical and analytical person I am when it comes to chick flicks, I was not satisfied. While my two friends were “Awww!”-ing their way through the movie, I still had questions that needed answers.
When the main character, Jenna, first transports herself forward in time, she wakes up to a very successful life. She’s a big time editor for her favorite magazine, she lives in New York City, she’s well known for her accomplishments. However, the people in her life are all cold and unfriendly. What kind of message is this sending? Successful women lead cold, loveless lives? Successful women are cold, heartless people who pretty much step on those less powerful than they are? According to the movie, Jenna had only become successful by pushing aside the people in her life who loved her and who should have mattered most.
Let us skip, shall we, to the very end of the movie. By now, Jenna has realized the hurt she has caused, and has gone back to live her life over and fix it. The movie ends with Jenna and her best friend Matt, who she had previously pushed aside to become successful, getting married. They walk out of the house amid a shower of rice, and are briefly shown moving into their new one. That’s it. Movie’s over. What did Jenna do career-wise? Obviously, that’s not a question you’re supposed to ask. You’re supposed to be satisfied with the fact that she ended up with her “one true love.”
Another observation: When Jenna is a magazine editor living in New York, her wardrobe includes bold colors and beautiful outfits. At the very end, when she is seen moving into her house with her new husband, she is wearing more modest, soft-toned clothing, like she has been tamed or something. Now that she’s married, individual style suddenly doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the fact that she’s married and will now proceed to live “happily ever after.”
Notice how the movie ends there. It doesn’t continue on to show the couple going about their lives after being married. From real life, we know that no marriage is flawless. However, with this supposed flawless ending, you’re not supposed to imagine their lives having any problems whatsoever.
Moral of the story? Girls, success is possible. However, you have to alienate those you love in order to reach it, and you will be absolutely miserable when you get there. Therefore, it’s better not to reach for success. Instead, find a “perfect guy,” one you can marry and live happily ever after with. If you do this, your life will always go smoothly, and nothing else will matter except your marriage to said “perfect guy.”
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I totally have not seen the movie.
But the fact is that there is a trade off between work and everything else. High stress jobs can lend themselves to prestige/respect but the affects spill over into your personal time. Most people only have so much emotional energy to spend.
And while I did not see 13 going on 30, I totally did see the same thing happen with Nicolas Cage in The Family Man, where during the Christmas season (of course) a rich and arrogant banker is shown what it would have been like if he had stayed with his sweetheart instead of sacrificing everything for his ambition.
Moral of the story? [Boys], success is possible. However, you have to alienate those you love in order to reach it, and you will be absolutely miserable when you get there. Therefore, it’s better not to reach for success. Instead, find a “perfect [woman],” one you can marry and live happily ever after with. If you do this, your life will always go smoothly, and nothing else will matter except your marriage to said “perfect [woman].”
I have not seen either movie.
But I have been coerced into watching a number of romantic comedies where a professional woman is unlucky at love at her high-influence job (often as a magazine editor or journalist). She is working to further her career, and meets this "great" guy (usually some douchebag with a heart o' gold), and just as things start to take off something happens between then, and she gets this awesome opportunity in some other city. They're pretty much broken up, so she's going to take the chance...
...but wait! Wait! She cannot do this, and sacrifices the opportunity of her career to stay and date this [douchey] alpha male guy.
I would argue that the message that men should give up high profile careers for love/family in Family Man is more of a one off... The message that women should give up high profile careers for love/family is prevalent in hoards of romantic comedy movies.
I agree that there is definitely a gendered component to these trade-offs in romantic comedies.
That being said, as someone who has a job that I worked damn hard to get and that designates me as successful among my peers, I also think there is a great deal of truth to what Stephen wrote.
I guess my response would be that it would be nice if these rom-coms showed that trade-off as one that affects both men and women and didn't so frequently require the leading woman to make the compromise.
I definitely agree with what you're saying. It's not the portrayal of people making career sacrifices for relationships that gets me in romcoms, it's more the fact that it's generally very gendered.
At the same time, I gotta say, I agree with alixana's comment about romcoms in general.
This.
You are right...many romantic comedies have the male lead as a fucking loser that needs to get his act together (see just about any romantic comedy with Seth Rogan).
I think we can all agree that romcoms aren't doing anyone any favors.
I've seen this movie several times and you're right. The image portrayed in the film that successful women are mean and cruel just demonstrates how far society has to go when it comes to gender equality.
-Nikki-
This is another of those movies I also have sort of mixed feelings about.
Setting aside gender for a moment, I agree with the message that becoming successful through unethical or nasty means - which Jenna is implied to have done - is likely to end unhappily. Haven't plenty of us here talked about wanting fair-dealing, humane workplaces? Who honestly wants to spend time around someone who is cruel?
Putting gender back in though, I see the problems. There aren't any 'healthy' successful female characters, and the ending is pretty darn silent on reformed!Jenna's career.
Perhaps a better ending would have been one where she gets her true love and has a great job where she's a positive force in the company culture.
Also, sadly, it isn't just romcoms that do this. The fact that they do is insidious inasmuch as they are marketed to women, the better to fill their pretty heads with the opiates of womanhood (romance is sooooo much better than a career). However, I've watched one too many shows where women are put down for being career-minded. My biggest disappointment in this regard was Criminal Minds, where a recent episode had a female character bulldoze everyone then get her "comeuppance" as she became the murderer's target. However, this was not the most upsetting subtext (or rather, out-there text). The worst part was when another character framed her behaviour as a gender issue and was immediately shot down with "it's not a gender thing!" - as if the producers, or perhaps the writers, had to bring that up and invalidate it immediately, lest *any* view of assertive women as bitches be seen (oh, horror of horrors) as some kind of "gender thing". This is what we get for bringing up statistical evidence showing assertive women are put down regularly in our culture and "put in their place": a sleazy female career hound character obviously created to put the lie to that scary theory (scary to the patriarchalists, of course, who want to make sure no one listens to that).
Actually, out of most romcoms I find this one to be one of the better ones. I found that the bitchy and cold life she lives later on is because she had turned into a bitchy cold person in high school (being one of the "mean girls") and not because of her job. Notice she is even better at her job when she takes back her nice image from before she joined the mean girls and manages to find a way to turn the magazine around (until the other mean girl steals her idea and sells it). It kinda had the nice girls do finish last message for me. Yeah, she was successful being mean and cold, but when she became her old self again she was still incredibly successful. So I like the message that women can be likable and still successful, which goes against the typical Devil Wears Prada stereotype.
I guess my big love for that movie was when she crashed the wedding and told her high school crush she loved him he was like, "Look, that's awesome and all but I'm getting married. So, sorry I guess." 'Cause damn does it piss me off when the romantic interest just throws his current love aside because the main character comes in and sweeps him off his feet. It was refreshing. Yeah she ends up with him in the end but only because she basically went back in time and decided to stay friends with him instead of dump him for the mean girls.
And I think you're reading WAY too much into the bright colorful wardrobe and the outfit she wears at the end. It was just one outfit at the end, lol. And I think alot of the bright colors from her wardrobe when she turned thirty were mostly because she was an 80s child. I can't imagine what sort of colors I would have been wearing had I jumped from the 80s straight into the 21st century. I think that was what they were trying to get at with the bright wardrobe, you were supposed to laugh and think "Oh man, crazy 80s kid dressing for the present. Priceless." Since I think the intended audience was intended to have lived through the 80s and gotten that kinda joke.
But then again, romcoms used to be my guilty pleasure and while most of them are pretty heinous (Failure to Launch, anyone?) I think 13 going on 30 can be counted as one of the good guys. :)
'Cause damn does it piss me off when the romantic interest just throws his current love aside because the main character comes in and sweeps him off his feet.
Oh, I hate that trope. I'm always sympathizing with the person who gets left behind.
As a childfree person, the message I usually get from these movies is that single, childless women are ball busting,self-absorbed, shallow harpies with a chip on their shoulder who only redeem themselves when faced with unexpected (and initially unwanted) motherhood.......which of course transforms them into sweet, caring nurturers who never knew how empty and meaningless their lives were before.
Raising Helen and that Baby movie with Diane Keaton come to mind.
It's really not just a gender issue as folks have pointed out, but a "matrimania" issue as well. Marriage is the end of the story, and the happiest of all possible outcomes. It shows completeness and closure.
I was quite annoyed with the epilogue to the Harry Potter series in much the same way the poster was annoyed with 13 going on 30. For seven books, the characters are basically working hard to save the world. They work hard in academics, physical fitness, politics...they have lofty career goals. But then Rowling chose to end it all with all the main characters marrying each other and popping out offspring by their mid 20s. They seemed to have the most boring lives possible. It was such a let down!