“Crazy Chicks Are Hot?” 8 Messed-Up Portrayals of Women Going Insane in Film | | AlterNet

Interesting article…

I really did not like “Black Swan”, but a lot of people seemed to disagree.

Including the folks at the Academy Awards.  But I lost all respect for them when they gave Best Picture to that Lifetime TV Movie “Crash” over  “Brokeback Mountain.”

They seem to love to watch girls kiss, but not boys.  That upholds my belief that Hollywood has been stuck in the 9th grade for the past decade or so…

Everyone loves to watch a hot babe going batshit crazy. At least that’s what the astronomical success of Black Swan would have you believe, the film in which Darren Aronofsky casts his misogynist gaze upon Natalie Portman, gorgeous and coming completely undone, for what is essentially a two-hour snuff film.

Last week, Newsweek’s Ramin Setoodeh wrote a piece exploring the phenomenon of the insane woman on celluloid, and how American society not only seems to thirst for such depictions but rewards them with box office paychecks and critical accolades. His unspoken conclusion, which he craftily writes around: it’s a one-two combo of schadenfreude and titillation. “In most crazy-chick flicks,” Setoodeh writes, “the female protagonist doesn’t just lose her mind; she loses her clothes. And sometimes she loses her sexual orientation as well.”

He interviewed several actresses who’ve recently portrayed crazy women, including Black Swan’s Mila Kunis — whose own brand of insane, propped up against Portman’s paranoia, is devious manipulation — and Leighton Meester, who portrays a stalker college student in the upcoming film The Roommate. Setoodeh points out the sexism and general ookiness of audiences’ attraction to this type of character, quoting a 26-year-old videogame designer who says, “I can’t think of a crazy girl who isn’t hot.” But he never gets past the basic concepts that seem to drive the psychology behind such desire. Sexist portrayals of women as dangerous and unhinged are statistically inaccurate. Men are three times more likely to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorders, men are more likely to be stalkers, and men are up to 10 times more likely to commit violent crime. In a kind of mass-gaslighting, the crazy-chick film meme is simply untrue.

While there are feminist portrayals of women gone awry from societal pressures — Frances, Splendor in the Grass, The Yellow Wallpaper — there are far more films that erroneously glamorize the crazy chick. Notably, several of them are clear and direct influences for Aronofsky’s hateful take on Black Swan. [Spoilers.]

via “Crazy Chicks Are Hot?” 8 Messed-Up Portrayals of Women Going Insane in Film | | AlterNet.