#misogyny in Hollywood

[daisiesonafield-blog]

For everyone who thinks Harry (or any celeb) doesn’t need PR 🥴

link

[princeescaluswords]

Is calling Allison Argent “anything with a pulse” not being used in a misogynist context? / You tell me, Pew. Is calling and reducing Allison Argent to "Scott's dead white girlfriend" not misogynist? You are the one who used those words after all

I would usually put something like this in the trash bin, but you brought up something that I want to talk about: context.

I did say the words "Scott's dead white girlfriend" because I was expressing my displeasure with the show's writing in Apotheosis (5x20). In it, for those who might not know, Scott is fighting with The Beast, Sebastien Valet, who by sheer coincidence (something else that displeased me) shoves his claws into the back of Scott's neck, thereby seeing images of Scott's memories of Allison.

I would argue that describing Allison in Apotheosis as "Scott's dead white girlfriend" is not misogynist because, at the time, she was actually dead, she has always been white, and the memories in which she was appearing were flashbacks to romantic and emotional scenes between them. So yes, I did describe Scott's dead white girlfriend as "Scott's dead white girlfriend."

But why did I do it? Why was I disappointed by Allison's appearance in Apotheosis? Well, that's something I feel is worth talking about.

Contrary to some people's opinions, I've never been shy about talking about how the writers of Teen Wolf fed into fandom and Hollywood racism by establishing repeatedly that Scott, to be a hero, can never act in behalf of his own emotions, but must overcome adversity and pain only to be in service to others. Don't get me wrong, it's a noble characteristic, and one that makes me like Scott, but it became racist when the production veered, as it so often did, into making it mandatory, in a way they never did for any other especially white character. It seemed to me that in Season 5, the writers had characters forget that Scott didn't seek to become a werewolf, he didn't seek to become an alpha, and so had his own mother give him a speech in Status Asthmaticus (5x10) in which she told him, essentially, that he had to let people abuse him in order to be a good leader. In a similar vein, The writers had Mason say that Scott had to forgive Liam in Damnatio Memoriae (5x12). Fighting to preserve the lives that would be lost to La Bête du Gévaudan isn't enough, Scott has to let people like Stiles and Malia and Liam hurt him and the Beast himself violate him to justify his own survival.

DEAD. In keeping with that injustice, the violation of Scott's memories in Apotheosis is portrayed as a triumph. It's just another thing that Scott has to sacrifice to save people, and the writers were very eager to portray this as necessary. "Allison saved him," Stiles tells Lydia, but the truth is -- Allison is dead (at that point). She didn't save shit. Scott isn't dead, but the writers hardly care. How does Scott feel about another serial killer rooting around in his head? We'll never know. The writers put the consequences of that into Things That Are Unnecessary, such as Mason's reaction to being the host for Valet.

WHITE. We all know how hard Kira got screwed as a character in Season 5B. We know that scenes elaborating on Kira's time in the desert was cut, and the way that she was written out was flaming hot garbage, to be compounded later by the "her story was finished" crap of Season 6. Contrary to the Asshole Anon's rantings, I do pay attention to the way the production treated Kira and Arden Cho, and while I also know that Jeff Davis placed special narrative importance on Scott and Allison's relationship, the execution of Kira and Scott's relationship in 5B (especially the Cheap-Ass Green Screen scene) managed to damage the relationship for the audience in a totally unnecessary way, compounded by the fact that after 5x20, Scott never mentioned Kira again.

So yes, I was critical of how they employed Allison in Apotheosis, and I said so. If they wanted to show how powerful Scott's love for others and willingness to sacrifice they could have spent more time on how that affected Scott. The dynamics of Scott saying goodbye to Kira at Shiprock and then very next scene having him wordlessly focus on Allison (instead of letting Stiles tell Lydia about it, it should have been Scott) are just terrible. I don't think that describing how the production messed up is misogynist at all.

Indeed, one of the things I loved most about the movie is that there wasn't a hint of Scott having to justify his survival in how he treats other people, especially in how he treats Allison.

[silveragelovechild]

[ellalikestoblogsstuff]

I hope this isn’t real bc listen I love Harry as much as the next person but you are telling me Florence who is playing THE lead role isn’t even getting half of what Harry is getting? That’s just fucked up.

[fran-kubelik]

Naturally the only conclusion that can be drawn from the mountains of evidence of the (often violent) misogyny in Hollywood, which deliberately minimizes women's ability to fully participate and be recognized in the film industry, is that the very same industry is fully capable of and willing to give women equal footing in awards 🤡

[anghraine]

It is very strange to me that there's this idea that open bigotry or otherwise abhorrent behavior becomes okay if the target is in some way acceptable.

Like ... bigotry towards or about people who are themselves awful, and/or powerful, and/or cringe, and/or older/younger, and/or public figures, and/or however you want to define them as acceptable targets, is still bigotry.

Your target may never hear what you say. But the people around you generally will. You're still adding to the bigotry that people witness and experience and which is just ... this miasma in the world.

I'm not saying there's no place for anger, confrontation, condemnation, harsh jokes, whatever—it's not that context never has any bearing on whether actions in general are right or wrong. But relying on bigotry to make your point is wrong without exception.

[honestlyyoungtyphoon]

It's funny how kdrama/manhwa fandom suffers from "second male lead syndrome" but never the second female lead syndrome. If a female character dares to breath next to male lead she gets the most hate. Male leads and second male leads could be rapists, mass murderers, destroy people's lives but if they say sorry or simp female lead, it's all fine and dandy. But a female character (not as a female lead) even side eyes the MC, she's treated as demon incarnate.

Unfortunately it's not just in kdrama or manhwa. I saw this phenomenon in Hollywood too. For example breaking bad. Skyler gets so much hate for not being okay with her husband being a meth maker, the guy who ruined people's lives, tried to rape his wife, abused his son. But somehow she's the most hated character in BB.

In Harry Potter, Umbride is hated so much yet Voldemort gets woobified.

There are so many examples like this.

Male characters could do absolutely vile things yet still get forgiving but if a female character is a bitch, she's the worst.

Y'all just love to hate women.

[odinsblog]

Amber Heard, on the realities of Hollywood

[hussyknee]

Opened Tumblr and Red White And Royal Blue is number 1 trending. I remember reading through some of your posts on the book, and i think you mentioned there was going to be an adaptation?? And that you were dissapointed with the casting and scared the adaptation will fall short of the substance of the book–or something like that.

I assume the reason it's trending might be because of some recent update about the series or movies production. So what are your thoughts on it?

Aha. Ahahaha. Hahahahahahaha.

Yeah there's a movie that came out last week. It was not just a royal disappointment, but so racist it was like spending two hours being repeatedly slapped in the face.

*rolls up sleeves* This is going to be a long, spoilery Rant. If you liked the movie, don't look under the cut.

The positives: Nicholas Galitzine was perfectly cast as Prince Henry and did his best with what he was given. He and Taylor Zarkar Perez as Alex had great chemistry and were quite unself-conscious in the love scenes. Some of the scenes in the first half (any time Zahra was on screen, the TV interview, the hot and hilarious Red Room scene) were worth the price of admission. Henry explaining the way he negotiated his role as a prince with his sexuality was unexpectedly moving. Amalgamating Secret Service Agents Cash and Amy into a trans woman of colour was a great choice that moved what would have been a side character into the main cast, and Aneesh Seth ate the scenes with Taylor. Rachel Hilson infused her role as Alex's best friend Nora with naturalistic warmth. Major props also to the intimacy co-ordinator. The whole thing with the hands during the sex scene was intimate and erotic.

That said.

I could have made peace with the fact that the characters were obviously much older than the just-out-of-university kids they were in the book. But I wasn't prepared for the character I know and love as Alex to not even be in the movie.

Things that defines my son and personal avatar Alex Claremont-Diaz:

short king rights

ADHD perfectionism

abandonment issues because of parents' divorce

has so much trouble letting people get close to him that his lifelong best friend is his protective, parentified older sister

chaos gremlin

repressed bisexuality

angry intensity and ambition of a burning star

cannot shut up or modulate himself to save his life, puts the offensive in charm offensive

very defensive of his worth as a person of colour in politics and an overachiever because of it

full of swagger and obsessive drive while being five inches away from crashing and burning at all times

Who Alex was in the movie: a laid-back fratty only child with nothing wrong with his life and this one uncharacteristic, inexplicable grudge against this poor white dude.

Said grudge against Henry was made out to be a non-issue that Alex only made into a big deal because he was an immature, petty asshole. Being dismissed by a privileged white person that was handed everything you have to fight for and then being compared to him for years no matter what you did is such a resonant experience for PoC and they just...shat all over it so Henry could make fun of Alex. They even changed what Henry said at their first meeting in the book so that they could make it sound even more ridiculous.

Henry himself was mangled less obviously, mostly because of his actor. But he was made this uwu soft boi out of a Victorian novel who had done nothing wrong in his life ever, instead of an inherently high-strung but hedonistic and fun-loving young guy struggling against institutionalized homophobia and lack of mental health support.

Which, you know, fine. I didn't expect this movie to capture any of the nuances in the book or even accurately portray the characters. I wanted to see two hot guys romance the fuck out of each other and have sexy times.

But producer Greg Berlanti's brand isn't just failing to meet expectations, it's creating new and exciting ways to fuck over women and minorities from wholecloth. Unlike the book, the villain of the movie is not the homophobic, abusive head of the British Royal Family. Nor is it the GOP Presidential candidate who in the book has the boys outed to sabotage Alex's mother's Presidential campaign. Instead, the villain is a queer Latino political journalist motivated by sexual jealousy. This character was created expressly for the movie to replace both Alex's gay best friend from high school as his first same sex encounter and the heroic gay Latino senator who was the key to unravelling the GOP plot in the book.

How do you amalgamate two characters of marginalized identities, one of whom is a heroic figure, and make them the villain instead of the characters that represent cis heteropatriachal white supremacy?? Because as I predicted, the King isnt even a bad guy. He's more a befuddled blustering old dude who even validates the boys' relationship although he's too concerned with appearances to consent to it.

What the fuck. What kind of racist, homophobic, white apologist, spineless CW bullshit is this????

(Also what is with Alex going on about being working class?? Latinos aren't working class by default?? The boy grew up the son of two senators and was captain of the fuckin lacrosse team??? He hasn't been working class a day in his life?? Henry even ribs him about it when he sees Alex's childhood home?? Are they going out of their way to make Alex look stupid??)

Given all of that, plus cutting out the book's principal Latina character (Alex's sister), and refusing to make Alex's mother President Claremont a divorcee with a blended family, an ugly pattern emerges in the treatment of this movie's women and minorities. In the book, Henry's mother is emotionally absent because the death of her husband precipitated a mental health spiral that she finally pulls out of when her son is outed. In the movie, she had left her kids behind after Arthur died and fucked off to Botswana for environmentalism (interesting choice) and never comes back. In the book, Henry's older sister Bea is a leather jacketed rocker rebel child as protective over her brother as a lioness over her cub– a sibling dynamic mirrored in Alex and June's relationship (this book is about parentified older sisters actually). In the movie she was made into his younger sister who had no personality other than flowery dresses and being his girlish confidante. Henry's Nigerian best friend Pez who is canonically a flamboyant, larger-than-life, billionaire genius had like three lines in the movie and might as well have been a cardboard cutout. Alex's best friend and US Second Granddaughter Nora's Jewish identity was completely erased (as was her whole personality). Worse, they cast a non-Jewish Black woman in the role and left her to handle the blowback for it, which is Berlanti's typical M.O. Oh, but the UK prime minister who was in the movie for five seconds was a Black woman! Totally not a token to shield against any accusation of racism and white liberal douchebaggery!

How the fuck do they expect props for "representation" when they erase, minimize and tokenize literally everyone who isn't a cis white guy?? Not even heterosexual rom coms with all-white casts are this hostile to women and non-white people.

On a purely technical level the movie was terrible too. The sets looked cheap and artificial, there was no crowded, high-energy feeling in any of the election scenes. One of the book's pivotal scenes sees Alex literally storming the castle by standing outside Kensington Palace getting drenched in the rain and shouting for Henry to get his ass down there until he's nearly removed by security. In the movie Alex is quietly let in by the staff and wanders into Henry's room inexplicably wet, like he'd been standing under a showerhead, and begins monologuing at Henry. The late night V&A excursion and slow dance in the book, that was a reflection of Henry's wistful, joyful inner world, is vacant, still and aimless in the movie. Alex made his historic public address to the country about their relationship without Henry, before he could even get to him (and the King wants to claim the emails are fake afterwards??). The fucking emails! Were! Missing! Except for like, one. Waterloo vase where?? Why would we even care about the emails being leaked if we never even got to see the intimacy and aching tenderness and open love in them??

They also kept shoehorning in lines from the book into the dialogue so that key lines like "History, huh?" sounded painfully clunky and awkward. Between Taylor's wooden acting, atrocious pacing and the self-conscious script, all the story's most romantic moments landed with a splat. You couldn't feel the emotional stakes in any of it. I deadass stopped watching twice because I was so bored and had to make myself sit through the last part.

(Maybe it's because I'm asexual and my love of smut, great as it, depends heavily on context, but– what was the point of Taylor's gratuitous bare-ass shot? Was that compensation for having kept the guys' crotches five feet apart at all times? What?)

Look, I was ready and willing to give director Matthew Lopez his flowers but he gave us a box of calcified shite. This is why I keep calling representation politics a white supremacist grift. It's a way of making cosmetic, token changes in exchange for retaining the core status quo with all its bigotry and bias while using our own artists and characters as a shield. It makes our talent both vulnerable to and complicit in the narratives spun by white institutions. No amount of female and queer Black and brown people at the helm will serve us justice if the ship belongs to white colonizers.

The best that can be said about the movie is that it makes the book look brilliant by comparison. And the book itself is a half-assed attempt at QPoC representation and generally middling, but draws in pathological fangirls like myself by having a compelling main couple and main cast, beautifully tender love letters, being peak white USAmerican Brand Hopium, and hitting every fanfic trope with a mallet. Being a mediocre white mess that gets a little worse when you look too closely at it is a prerequisite for me to obsess over something.

But if you want to an actual good book with the same appeal, read Alexis Hall's Boyfriend Material and Husband Material. Those are iconic. Hall's books are less "diverse" (how I hate that word) but a lot more honest and queer. (Queerness is fundamentally leftist* motherfuckers. Neoliberal queerness is just white bourgeois resentment at being marginalized).

*Well, Arden St. Ives trilogy isn't, but sometimes you just wanna get fucked by a billionaire in the fun way.

[realmermaid333]

The hatred of Rachel Zegler is purely misogyny and you cannot change my mind. She has literally never said anything wrong. She literally said she disliked the original Snow White, and suddenly everyone deeply cares for that storyline??

And the "worst" thing she did was make that comment about how this new Snow White would be independent cause she was single or something. And it seems like her comment was very taken out of context. And even if it wasn't, it isnt a crime or a cancelable offense to say romance makes a female character weaker. Is it incorrect? Yeah. Is that what I think she meant, anyway? NO! Y'all must remember that the original Snow White story was a little creepy anyway.

I'm tired of seeing people hate on her so much. Some of y'all treat her worse than you treat men in Hollywood who sexually abuse women. But women do so much as breathe wrong and everyone is down their throats, calling them ugly, telling them to die, sending them sexual assault threats.... it makes me so angry.

[hadesoftheladies]

people: “I don’t like her vibes…she just seems off. So I don’t listen to her music or watch her movies.”

the same people: *listening to domestic abuser/rapist male musician* *takes earphones out*“Yeah they suck but I just like their music that’s all. I don’t care about his personal life. You can’t deny his music is good. *puts earphones back in*

the same people again: “I heard that he groomed and raped a child and had child porn, but I just love his character in this movie. He’s a good actor and artist. Plus I’m not sure if those allegations are actually true. Did you know he and this other person are dating? They’re so cute! And he’s so funny and quirky!”

[rapeculturerealities]

How Geena Davis Continues to Tackle Gender Bias in Hollywood - The New York Times

Even when braced for it, the institute’s findings are staggering: In the 101 top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2005, just 28 percent of speaking characters were female. Even in crowd scenes — even in animated crowd scenes — male characters vastly outnumber female ones. In the 56 top grossing films of 2018, women portrayed in positions of leadership were four times more likely than men to be shown naked. (The bodies of 15 percent of them were filmed in slow motion.) Where a century ago women had been fully central to the budding film industry, they were now a quantifiable, if sexy, afterthought.

[otakusapien]

"They put Marisol in a push-up bra to emphasize Eddie's heterosexuality" I'm pretty sure they put Marisol in a push up bra because she's a woman in a tv show

[horizon-verizon]

HotD and the Golden Globes

House of the Dragon may have won the Golden Globe for "Best Drama TV Series", but it doesn't validate the characterizations, the writing, or ideas present in the writing of the show. Even if Fire and Blood didn't exist, this show is not very good once you think about it. There are too many inconsistencies of logic and the show's own internal lore to see it as a well-written story. And Ryan Condal 's "theory of accidents" is not a good or logical way to characterize or set up a character's motivations since it makes them more reactive instead of active (Seth Abramson on Substack). It also reduces both agency and accountability for characters like Alicent and Aemond, while muddling their motivation and creating doubt in their ability to reason. These are not even minor charater's, either. Both are absolutely essential to how the Dance went as it did, and the first's actions against Rhaenyra is the reason why the Dance even existed in the first place.

And then, once you do take into account that this is supposed to be an adaptation, the logic, characterizations, themes, etc actually all so different or inconsistent from those things that are unbiasedly true in the canon account of the Dance of the Dragons in Fire and Blood, it is impossible to count this as a adaptation and not a poorly written fanfiction. Especially in context of the treatment of women in Westeros after Rhaenyra's death and what Daenerys "Stormborn" Targaryen does and represents in the book series A Game of Thrones and the TV adaptation Game of Thrones. @brideoffires writes this POST and @la-pheacienne writes this ONE about ASoIaF's world's misogyny.

A show getting awards does not automatically make it a good show in of itself nor prove its excellence, since it is also clear that awards like the Globes do not necessarily hand awards because the show is well-written. The Globes is a huge culprit of dirty business or susness because the people responsible for choosing who/what wins or gets nominated for any Globe -- the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or the HFPA-- is suspect and has a real history of being bought out or "wined and dined" and excluding or snubbing much better shows and films. And some or most of those snubbed have a pattern of being PoC-written, PoC-starred, etc. Emily in Paris over I May Destroy You, anyone?

The LA Times article that I listed has this:

Over its nearly eight-decade history, the HFPA has weathered a string of embarrassing scandals, lawsuits and often blistering criticism of its membership. The group has been the butt of jokes even from the stage of its own awards show. Hosting in 2016, Ricky Gervais dismissed the Globes as “worthless,” calling the award “a bit of metal that some nice old confused journalists wanted to give you in person so they could meet you and have a selfie with you.” In a 2014 interview, actor Gary Oldman said the group was “90 nobodies having a wank” and called for a boycott of the “silly game” their awards represent.

Yet despite all this, the HFPA has managed to carve out a unique and improbable position of influence. Its members — relatively few of whom work full time for major overseas outlets — are routinely granted exclusive access to Hollywood power players, invited to junkets in exotic locales, put up in five-star hotels and, as Globes nominations near, lavished with gifts, dinners and star-studded parties. To the studios, networks and celebrities that court its favor and exploit its awards as a marketing tool, the group is at once fawned over, derided and grudgingly tolerated. (Four years after blasting the HFPA, Oldman thanked them when accepting his first-ever Globe for his turn as Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour.”)

Now, I am not talking about Emma D'Arcy's nomination for "Lead Actress" (despite them being nonbinary), because as an performer Emma is and was great in HotD. I am talking about the show and its writing.

[papirouge]

sorry but I will NEVER be over radfem saying a Hollywood celebrity being clowned online was the "purest form of misogyny" just bc she was rich, blonde and White⚰️

like.... if that narrative didn't peak radfem of color about how Whitefem will ALWAYS center themselves as the centerfold of true oppression I truly don't know what else to say to you🥴

[ladyinrainbowglasses]

"Niagara" 1953 - TW: Domestic abuse, psychological abuse, violence against women.

So, I finally watched this movie yesterday, after putting it off for years. After all, Marilyn Monroe made so few pictures and "Niagara" is a film noir - one of my favorites. The verdict on the picture as a picture is... all right. Some of the choices that were obviously meant to highlight tension or danger ended up just being kind of dull. Some of the "exciting" moments just end up looking silly, like when Polly goes sliding through a broken rail over the falls and is saved by George Loomis. No, what's interesting about this movie is the sociological snapshot inherent in the picture. Here is a movie that makes no sense unless you acknowledge the reality of male sense of ownership over women. Every tragedy in this movie could have easily been avoided in one of two ways: letting a woman who is obviously wrong for you go or listening to a woman who is trying to tell you something. We are introduced to our major players pretty early: George Loomis, an older, gloomy man with major self-esteem issues goes to feel Big Sads under the Falls. He returns to a honeymoon cabin to find his wife of two years, Rose (Marilyn Monroe), pretending to sleep despite wearing a full face of makeup. Rose does that a lot in this picture. She rolls her eyes and rolls over after listening to him whisper-complain for awhile. Another honeymooning couple, these ones married three years, Ray and Polly, are supposed to rent the cabin the Loomis's are using. Rose Loomis suggests her husband is suffering from nervous fatigue and PTSD after serving in Korea, so Ray and Polly agree to use a different cabin until the Loomis's move out. Rose says she's going to do some shopping and asks the cabin proprietor to keep an eye on her husband. Polly and Ray go take in the sights, before Polly accidentally spots Rose making out with her lover in an isolated spot near the falls. Ray and Polly giggle about this a little. During an impromptu sock hop that evening, Rose appears dressed like this:

Ray and Polly have the following exchange: Ray: *frankly staring* Somebody better get a fire hose. Polly: *turns to look, gets the same grin as her husband.* Ray: *still staring* Honey, why don't you get a dress like that? Polly: *also still staring* To wear a dress like that, you need to start doing groundwork at age 13.

At this point, it is impossible to read Polly and Ray as anything but swingers who were hoping to hook up with another couple while at a popular honeymoon spot. Rose puts on a record with a sexy tune called "Kiss". George storms out of their cabin and breaks the record in front of everyone, cutting his hand in the process. Polly volunteers to put some antiseptic on it. George then unloads on her - he was fairly well-off before he met and married Rose, a barmaid. He frittered away his money taking her to dance halls and bars, because she enjoys nightlife. He volunteers to go to Korea so she will think of him as "manly" but is then sent back with "nervous exhaustion". He freaks out and destroys the model car he has been building, convinced that Polly sees him as a failure, because clearly Rose does. He also goes on a fun little rant about how Rose is "displaying" herself, to which Polly has the very appropriate answer that a hot woman dressing to show how hot she is does not make her a "bad wife". The idea that he and Rose are fundamentally incompatible, and they would both be happier without the other, never once occurs to him. Rose is portrayed as scheming by the men in the narrative, but all we are given from her motivations is that she likes attention, she likes to party, she likes to wear sexy clothes, she likes to dance, and she feels trapped by a man who throws temper tantrums when she does the things she likes. The obvious solution is that these crazy kids just get divorced. But no, this is 1953. George owns Rose. She is his legal property. She can't leave unless he says she can leave, and he refuses to let her leave because he "loves" her. You do have to wonder if this is why Marilyn Monroe jumped at the role of the "villainess femme fatale". The whole thing is predicated upon a man's sense of ownership over her. She can't leave this man she doesn't love or like. She has no legal recourses to get rid of him beyond annoying him so badly he lets her go or killing him. Guess which one Rose Loomis chooses?

Surprise! It's BOTH! When she realizes she can't treat him badly enough to get him to let her go, she goes with scheming to get her lover to kill him. Through the entire movie, she is framed as the bad guy, but there is just no way to watch it without the fundamental understanding that because of the time and place, her only means of getting away from this man are psychological abuse or murder. You can feel pity for George Loomis as an insecure, jealous, and deeply unhappy man who is regularly taunted for inadequacy by a wife who clearly doesn't love him... but that just begs the question of WHY DON'T YOU JUST LET HER GO, YOU SCHMUCK?!? Anyway, murder plan happens. Loverboy is the one to go over the Falls. George lives and breaks into the honeymoon cabin to stab Rose to death. Whoopsie-daisy, Ray and Polly have moved in to that cabin and Polly is taking a nap.

Not what she's napping in, but hey, I'm asexual, not blind. Polly begins to scream when she sees a man with a knife looming over her. The man runs out and her husband and the cabin manager burst in. Polly is trying to hold it together and insists that she saw the presumed dead George Loomis with a knife, and she thinks he's trying to kill Rose. Ray, who up to this point has been pretty supportive, immediately assumes that Polly has lost her sense of reality from the stress and drama of their new acquaintances and tells her she was just dreaming. Every single time she insists, he complains to some other man that his poor wife's nerves are shot from meeting the overdramatic Loomis's.

Polly is not amused. Ray insists they leave that night, but then the owner of his work company wants to meet and congratulate Ray on a major advertising idea he had. After all, being close to the main company is why Ray wanted to go to Niagara Falls! Polly again sees George Loomis at the Falls, when she nearly falls through a broken rail. This looks immensely silly and I wish I knew how to make a GIF. George begs Polly to let him remain dead, because then he can just disappear and start a new life for himself. Ray still refuses to believe her and insists that a nightmare has merely frayed her nerves. Rose, in the meantime, has realized that the body found is that of her lover, which has the result of her collapsing in a nervous delirium. This strikes me as another point towards Rose not really being a villain so much as a victim of culture. She didn't want to take any money from George. She isn't running around with multiple men she doesn't care about. She is seeing one man who suits her better and she can't be with him until her husband says that she can leave. Maybe I'm a little too close to this, since I've also been in a relationship where a man refused to accept my statement that it was over. He kept demanding I try to make things work and refused to acknowledge that I wanted it over. His whining finally got me to stick around for another 5 months. By the time that 5 months was over, I no longer had even the slightest liking for him - I frankly found him an object of disgust and disdain. When someone tells you they want to leave LET THEM!!!! Anyway, George lures Rose to the Rainbow Tower Carillon by playing her favorite song. He then chases her through the building before finally strangling her to death.

He then discovers that the carillonneur has left for the night, locking the only way out. He sits with the corpse of the woman he couldn't let go for part of the evening, confessing, "I really loved you, Rose, you know?" Of course he did. But his only conception of love for a woman is that she is an object to possess. He loved her like some people love their cars. He manages to slip out in the morning, but the body is discovered soon after and a manhunt begins in Canada. Meanwhile, Ray and Polly are out on another pleasure excursion with the Boss and his wife. Polly has been telling Ray she's been feeling weird about George Loomis. She calls the local police chief without telling him, which causes Ray to pull that, "Silly little woman, can't tell a nightmare from reality! Now stop wasting the MAN'S time, little girl!" The group breaks up at a dock to get gas, beer, and sandwiches. Polly is on beer duty and gets back the fastest. Also, OOPSY-DOODLE THE LITTLE WOMAN WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE MURDEROUS MAN! George is attempting to steal their boat, so he can sneak back into America, rather than be arrested in Canada for murder. He knocks out Polly while stealing the boat. Turns out he's not great at grand theft aquatic and the boat runs out of gas in the river and is caught in the current of the Falls. Well, George does spring into action then, knocking holes in the boat in an attempt to get enough water into the boat for it to run aground on the rocks above the Falls. He manages to shove Polly onto a big rock before going over himself.

Polly is saved by a Coast Guard chopper. The movie ends with the police chief congratulating her husband on the force of his prayer, "Scuttle it!". No one apologizes to Polly for not listening to her when she said there was a man intending on murdering his wife on the loose. Because no one paid attention to her, based solely on the fact that she's a woman, two humans died horribly, and she barely survived herself. The men at the end continue to congratulate each other on what a good job they've done, even though 100% of everything could have been prevented by Ray Cutler listening to Polly Cutler and by George Loomis listening to Rose Loomis and letting her go. This movie is a tragedy of misogyny - downright Shakespearean in places. And it becomes more poignant because it stars perhaps the prime example of Woman What Men Wish to Possess and Call That Love: Marilyn Monroe. I hope she enjoyed working on this film, but I am also sure she saw the inherent tragedy wasn't that a scheming gold digger decided to kill a perfectly nice man after making his life a living hell, but that a woman with one personality had become legally enslaved to a man with a polar opposite personality and had no ways to escape besides forcing her enslaver to let her go or to kill him. These are both terrible solutions and a really, really obvious case for no-fault divorce laws.

May the New Year be full of people mutually agreeing not to pursue relationships that clearly don't work and men believing that women are just as likely as men to tell the truth.