2016-05-06

模倣子 Bad Writing? or Pandering to Gender Stereotypes?

It occurs to me that the scene in Romy & Michelle's Class Reunion where Lisa Kudrow said to three very pregnant former classmates, "Well, we're not the ones who got fat!" to which one of the expectant mothers rejoins, predictably, "We're pregnant,you idiot!" to which Kudrow returns, "Well, I hope your babies look like monkeys".

It occurs to me that women know that women who are otherwise relatively slim don't put on weight on their bellies like that, so it seems bizarre that another would should say that.

It seems like bad writing, probably written by a man, i.e., that a woman would not have written that scene.  I wonder if that's true. Robin Schiff, a woman, wrote it. Did she know what she was doing, and just wrong a joke that was actually non-factual?

Again, Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" has Carrie Fisher saying that a man being discussed was "her type". I wonder if women really think in those terms.  Men certainly do.

Then, of course is the scene in "Friends" where Ross' ex-wife, pregnant, talks about a "pot roast going to be pulled out of [your] nostril", and again, I wonder whether women think in these terms.

Of course women seem to think that men are all sexually free and going out with lots of women, not caring about break-ups, and so on, where the exact opposite time one hundred is generally true.

Even if one is of the "right" gender, as a writer one may have to pander to stereotypes in order to make jokes or get one's story accepted...maybe.

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