#but it’s not all pretentious drivel lmao

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That clip by CJ the X about pretentiousness made me think of Men (2022), which I watched recently (mostly against my will lmao, but I try to watch things I don’t think I’ll like for the challenge, and I generally enjoy Alex Garland’s other work)

I initially haaaaated it because it felt like “man explains misogyny to you but make it arthouse”

But after finishing it, I engaged in multiple conversations that changed my mind, because what I realized was that I was filtering it through my experience of being invested in feminist theory and dialogue for almost two decades now, plus living as a woman and being perceived as a woman for the majority of my life, and so it felt like it was talking down to me and ungraciously turning a common lived experience into a horror movie. This is pretentious mansplaining, basically, was my first thought. It’s a pov many viewers obviously shared based on the average 2.8 rating on Letterboxd and many extremely unhappy reviews

The way I perceive it now is that it was really intended as a message to men by an artsy film guy to try to demonstrate through art the cycle of toxic masculinity that most hetero men are raised into. The emotional abuse felt real to me because I’ve experienced it, it felt insulting and uncomfortable to watch because I’ve been that victim. What I couldn’t see at first was the genuine condemnation that was happening in the story, the acknowledgement of harm done by men and perpetuated by men from a male perspective (if you’ve seen it then you know the visual metaphor of generation after generation of abusive men raising more abusive men is uh, extremely on the nose and pretty shocking so that one came through lmao), the despair and rage of the men who have lived and died without having true connection because they themselves actively prevented it from happening and were too self-centered to examine why. Too busy trying to control to realize love requires letting go of control. And it’s also a criticism of the institutions that have also perpetuated this cycle of abuse, the religious warping of the pagan traditions that originally provided social identity (that part was a bit clumsy, I think)

In short, that movie wasn’t made for me or people like me, It was made for dudes to go, oh damn, I’ve been that person. And this is what I did to my partner when I did that. What I thought I wanted was love, but what I created was pain. And I should probably acknowledge that and stop that shit

I don’t think it was made in bad faith or as a cash grab for “woke” art bros, as some reviews I’ve seen have claimed. Alex is extremely good at developing complex characters, and I have related strongly to his female protagonists in his other work, so I find it hard to believe he’s not genuinely trying to engage in the dialogue through his art

I still didn’t particularly enjoy the experience and I have some critiques regarding the pacing and storytelling choices that were made, but willingly engaging in a dialogue about it instead of shutting that down gave me a broader and more charitable perspective towards the movie than my initial reaction of, cool thanks for telling me men are bad in the most pretentious way possible, Alex, appreciate that lmao