It is a standard idea that age confers power and added dignity on men. In Hollywood’s brutal logic, women are allotted a brief period of desirability and then encouraged to disappear, a tradition satirized in Amy Schumer’s dead-on sketch “ Last F**kable Day,” featuring Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette as mid-life actors celebrating their freedom from patriarchal demands of beauty. Some classic examples include “ Sunset Boulevard” (1950), “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962) and “Death Becomes Her” (1992). The filmmaker is tapping into a whole cinematic tradition known as “ hagsploitation” that centers on attractive female characters who refuse to accept aging and seek to hold the spotlight. The filmmaker is tapping into a whole cinematic tradition known as “hagsploitation” that centers on attractive female characters who refuse to accept aging. She must be broken - in this case, literally.
Her punishment is insta-aging in a pillar of fire, shriveling down to pathetic monkey-like creature.įor Shyamalan’s Chrystal, suffering through the deaths of her daughter and mother-in-law, plus the psychotic breakdown her husband, is not enough retribution for the sin of trying to appease the male gaze. Rider Haggard’s famous Victorian adventure novel, “She.” Filmed multiple times, most famously starring Ursula Andress in 1965, the story concerns a beautiful 2,000-year-old queen who retains not only her looks, but power over men so potent she is nicknamed “She-who-must-be-obeyed.” That’s a big no-no. Her delectable body’s repulsive transformation echoes a pivotal moment in H. Her painful demise is the film’s visual piece-de-resistance. Her next scene shows her as a waterlogged corpse.Ĭhrystal’s fate is more protracted and gruesome. Gorgeous blondes don’t do well in “Old.” The first one who appears is stripping nude for a swim and saucily fluffing her hair. (For more on how thoroughly male Hollywood remains, even in the wake of #MeToo, see “ This Changes Everything,” a recent documentary that actor Geena Davis executive produced.) How do we know? Because movies have long been the place where male filmmakers get to enjoy the fantasy of torturing the hot girls who rejected them in high school. Chrystal is the “vanity, thy name is woman” character, and whatever happens, it’s not going to be pretty.
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