"Women feel; men think" and other wrong assumptions about women's art.

The other day i had some sort of debate with a male friend over the fact that there are chick flicks or films and TV shows for girls only and how just because of that, its devalued. I love chick flicks, i really do and i have no problem admitting that, but i get really frustrated when only because of its genre, it can't be taken seriously or your taste in movies is not as grand as you think it is. But the thing is that i can watch those films, as i can watch any movie classics or superhero movies or any kind of features that might be directed to a male audience, and i reached the conclusion that, while guys won't ever watch a chick flick or a romantic comedy because they assume won't like it, it's them that they have the problem, because i can watch pretty much anything and appreciate it for what it is without having any embarrassament over it or being afraid of people questioning my taste.

 i know for a fact that there are guys out there that watch 'Girls' and love it, or have fun with films like 'Mean Girls' – because that's the purpose of the movie, and it's totally valid that some watch them and simply don't like them because they really don't, but i really hate that general thinking of "it's a movie for women" so therefore it can't be good.

This, among other things, is one of the topics of this IndieWire article about Sofia Coppola and her critics, it's a really great post that criticises some aspects of the female filmmaker but also questions all the bad press she receives from male critics mostly, and it's really interesting to read and think about. You can read the full article at the source but here are my fave parts:

With Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring" due in theaters this weekend, the perennial debate over the distinction between the director and her characters has again reared its immaculately styled head. Although she's hardly the only filmmaker to come from wealth, Coppola has been uniquely diligent -- or, if you will, obsessive -- in making that privilege the subject of her movies. "The Bling Ring," which features Emma Watson and a cast of largely unknown young actors as pampered teens stealing baubles from the houses of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom et al., addresses the subject more directly than any film she's made. Most, though not all, of these kids are rich, but no matter how much they get, they want more. [...]

The attacks on Coppola's upper-class upbringing -- by far the rule, rather than the exception, in Hollywood -- resemble nothing so much as the cries of nepotism directed at Lena Dunham, whose success has also long since surpassed whatever leg up she may have had. It's hardly a coincidence that they're both women, or that neither has made any attempt to hide where she came from. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to take issue with Coppola's work, or Dunham's, but there's also an insidious bias at work, a tacit assumption that women's art is always about themselves while men can stand outside and objectively comment: Women feel; men think. That Coppola might be capable of both is apparently more than some critics can swallow.

sources: indiewire & theepitomeofquiet