last night, while waiting for sons of anarchy to come on, my boyfriend and i watched doghouse. i was excited because it takes place in the english countryside (in west sussex, actually) and danny dyer, stephen graham, and a handful of my other favorite british actors are in it. i’ve long-revered the genre of horror comedy, and i was hoping that it wouldn’t grate on my last nerve (what with the whole “man-hating cannibals” idea).
the film is about a group of men that decide to go out into the country to cheer up their friend that is going through a divorce. upon arriving, they find out that this town is filled with biologically-altered, scantily-clad, zombiefied females. get your attention? of course, i have the mention the sexualized horror, which creeps me out (in a bad way) more than anything. the women all have D+ cups, spilling out of their corsets. they might be appealing to someone were it not for their freakish faces. one is a hairstylist– her weapons are her clinking and rattling scissors, which she snips and snaps with superhuman strength.
eventually, we find out that this whole “zombie female” thing is an experiment run by the military, and it only affects women (guess where i’m going with this?). this turns them into “man-hating cannibals”. i suppose since there are only men in the military, this is a great idea! at this point in the film, the easy-to-hate misogynistic character played by danny dyer yells something to the effect of, “what you’ve done is created freakish feminist cannibals!” i can feel my boyfriend’s eyes on me, waiting for my reaction (which is usually “turn this bullshit off!”). but surprisingly (probably because i found the movie so hilarious), i continued watching.
my main concern about this movie is the use of the f-word. when people ask what my tattoo means, the answer i give them (“the feminist symbol”) seems to leave them wide-eyed and horrified. is the belief that men and women are equal really that jaw-dropping? i’d like to blame part of it on my friend rush limbaugh, who coined the oft-used term “feminazi”. or maybe i’d blame it on the patriarchy, or maybe on the conservative movement. either way, the use of this word a single time in the movie makes the very mention of “feminism” synonymous with “feminists want to eat men”. get me here? for the less cultured, less educated viewer, i’m sure it would be easy to be convinced. after all, all of these women do eat men, and they’ve got a tour bus bringing them in by the bus load. granted, the word was said by the over-the-top, chauvinistic character that i mentioned earlier. was it meant to be a joke? i’m not sure.
also, there is a queer among them. besides being the butt of a few tongue-in-cheek gay jokes, he plays a very small part in the movie. i kept waiting for the women to go fawning after him (or completely ignore him because he has “low levels of testosterone”), as that is the stereotypical caricature of a feminist– a “fag hag”. but they don’t. i don’t know if the director and writer thought about this. it would have been a much-expected plot twist, but it didn’t happen.
more than anything, this movie worries me. with movies like this and zombie strippers are creating a huge stir AND a huge following. the writer, dan schaffer, has something to say about this. he claims that these female zombies are “personifications of male paranoia and fears of emasculation”. claiming it is “irony” makes it easy to play off as a work of art.
am i just supposed to laugh this off? if i don’t, and if i raise an issue with it, i am deemed as a humorless dyke. well, then call me a lezzie with no sense of humor. oops!
Scott Roeder has been found guilty of murdering Dr. Scott Tiller. Sarah Cliff’s blog on Newsweek’s website: What the Roeder Guilty Verdict Means for Abortion Providers. NOW (National Organization for Women) has issued a press release in response to the jury’s decision:
