Okay, is it me are is everyone else sick of these adultery movies. There was that foreign film whose trailer I posted earlier, there's Take this Waltz, last year Natalie Portman made The Other Woman, and now this.
I know that this is a small movie that few people will see, but I still can't believe someone paid money to make this. How will it make its money back? The movies mentioned above have been or will be bombs. It's being released on iTunes first. I can't tell if that's genius or desperation.
I have a theory that this is what Hollywood thinks of marriage. They think its just a lie held together out of desperation, ready to snap at a moment's notice. The truth is that most people don't cheat on their spouses.
Why would we find any of this compelling? I can't identify with adultery. I remember seeing the movie Welcome to the Rileys, and it starts off by showing the main character having an affair. It added nothing to the plot. It was just there. I remember getting angry watching He's Just Not That Into You (yes, I saw it! So what?), when Drew Barrymore convinces Scarlett Johansson to seduce a married man because he "could be the ONE!" How stupid is that! How could this person you are trying to get to philander ever be guaranteed to not philander on you?
Sorry, I digress.
I know that not a lot of people see these movies, but they make so many of them!
But I believe in happily ever after. My wife and I are living it every day. But the more of this dreck that comes out, the less people will believe it. So they won't believe in true love and instead settle for a shadow of the real thing.
CatholicSkywalker, I like adulatory movies. I like them for the same reason I like zombie movies. And no, I do not wish to live in a post-apocalyptic world in which I am being hunted by tireless corpses that wish to dine on my flesh, while I slowly watch all those I love around me dying of famine or being traded to rape gangs for a water bucket. I like them because they scare me and that creates a certain intrigue. Think of the upcoming Shark Week. People only really watch it because sharks scare the hell out of them, not because the want to understand how the shark's ampullae of Lorenzini works. Adultery movies are the exact same thing. I think most people are in good marriages in which the thought of their partner cheating is beyond comprehension. So adultery movies are a sort-of-relationship horror movie in which the carnage is represented by the deaths of relationships. Now most of these movies suck for many reasons whether it is a well promoted turd like Unfaithful or a Lifetime movie like the Cheaters Club. Regardless, normal married people do not allow hot, young, nubile females to live in their pool house because the consequence is obvious. That is why Nobody Walks in a way is also a Morality Play. If you do something this stupid, the consequence is the painful destruction of your family.
ReplyDelete*** Here there Be Spoilers***
ReplyDeleteI do think there is a difference between movies that have adulterers as characters versus movies that focus on the subject of adultery (or at least make it a an important theme). Some movies like the ones CatholicSkywalker mention casually have people cheating on their spouses and it is no big deal and it is not really the focus of the movie. However, I find the vast majority of American films that are actually about adultery to be usually pro-family morality tales.
Let's first look at the Michael Douglas infidelity catalog
Fatal Attraction: If you cheat Glen Close will terrorize your family, dismember your pets, and attempt to slaughter you
Disclosure: If you almost cheat, you will almost lose your job, the respect of your co workers, and your marriage
Solitary Man: If you cheat and continue to cheat in relationships you will continual destroy your relationships and any chance of a better life for yourself and your loved ones (this btw is a great movie)
Moving on from Michael Douglas. The aforementioned Lifetime movie the Cheater's Club (this one is about woman adulterers). If you cheat a serial killer will target and harass you until you lose your family and career, and then they will murder you.
The aforementioned Unfaithful: If you cheat, you will destroy your family and your spouse and the person you cheat with (who btw cares nothing about you).
Indecent Proposal: If you cheat, and this time you are only doing it because you love your spouse and want to make them happy and not because you want to be in flagrante delicto with the very wrinkled Robert Redford. Guess what, you almost destroy your previously happy marriage and ruin everybody lives.
The Firm: If you cheat, you might destroy your marriage oh and that super powerful law firm you work for, they have it all on film and are going to blackmail with it. That's right, every morning when Wilford Brimley is eating his Quaker Oatmeal, he is also looking at photos of you doing the nasty on a beach.
Presumed Innocent: If you cheat, you might lose your job, family, and oh you might also be the cause of your spouse going crazy and beating someone to death with the claw end of a hammer.
I could go on and on but I think this proves the basic idea that movies that generally have adultery as a main theme are usually not advocates for the act, but instead consider it a form a deviance that brings automatically consequences.
I agree that the majority of movie with adultery do not advocate the act.
DeleteMy concern is that there is a growing trend in movies that normalizes adultery, even if it is bad. Take the movie Closer, which had an all star cast. The whole theme of the movie is that everybody cheats and that intimacy is a lie. It shows the negative side of infidelity, but it also basically says that there is nothing we can do about it because that is who we are. Marriage is an ideal that no one can live up to.
My worry is that the message is not that infidelity is good but that it is normal; infidelity in movies is a depiction of "real life."
If that idea ever really takes hold in the culture, we are in deep trouble.