Romantic Comedy Movies and Their Obsession With Books

Romantic Comedy Movies and Books

What is it with Hollywood Rom Com movies and book stores?

In the movie “You Got Mail,” both main characters, played by Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, each own a book store.

In the movie “The Holiday,” ((Link): Information about The Holiday) I’m pretty sure one of the characters owned a book store – I think the male lead, the British guy who falls in love with the visiting American. One site says the male character works as a book editor. It’s book-related. There were scenes of him standing around with shelves and shelves of books behind him.

Last night, I watched a Julia Roberts movie on cable. She plays a character named Anna Scott who falls in love with a British guy (actor Hugh Grant) who owns a book store. I think the film is called Nottinghill or Nottingham or whatever.

What in the holy hell is up with Hollywood making so many characters in romantic movies book store owners, or people who work somehow and in someway with, or around, books?

Can Hollywood script writers not think of any other professions to ascribe to movie characters in rom coms? I don’t even really like rom coms. They most usually bore me or nauseate me, but I will sometimes watch one if it comes on cable TV. But I tire of seeing every other character be a book store owner.

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Related Posts:

(Link):  Rom Com Movie on Women Allowing Themselves To Be Used By Men – And A Leading Man Disappointment -(Liberal, Atheist Leading Man Actor’s Real Life Religious, Political Views are Very Condescending, Obnoxious)

(Link): Goodbye to romance: Are rom-coms worse than porn? (How Hollywood Feeds Into People’s Tendency to Idolize Marriage and Turn a Spouse Into a Deity)

Meagan Good Tells Single Women Why They Should Stop Having Sex

Meagan Good Tells Single Women Why They Should Stop Having Sex

I’ve never heard of her before – Megan Good.

At least she isn’t running around promoting use of terms or concepts that annoy me to no end, such as “born again virgin” or “spiritual virgin” (see this link for more).

I’ve not started having sex yet myself, so I find it funny that a portion of this headline reads, “why you should stop having sex”.

It’s sad how even this 30-something actress seems to assume that all unmarried women are boinking outside of marriage. Not all of us are.

There is no acknowledgement among Christians (and Non) that there are any virgins over the age of 25 or 30.

Christians continually assume all singles past a certain age are fornicating. I find this continual assumption unfair and possibly discouraging to adults who have stayed the course on biblical sexual ethics, Christians who are virgins over the age of 25 or 30 and beyond.

I’m not having an easy time following this story I am linking to below.

Based on what I’ve read before, it sounds to me (and yes, I could have this totally wrong),  is that she was NOT a virgin before she married.

It sounds as though she was fornicating (with other men), but when she got engaged, she and her honey pie (who she eventually married, or will marry) decided to stay celibate with each other until they married. Maybe I have that wrong, but that’s what it sounds like to me.

Anyway, here is the link.

(I have a few  more comments below this long excerpt):

(Link):  Meagan Good Tells Single Women Why They Should Stop Having Sex

Excerpts:

“Minority Report” actress Meagan Good is speaking out about the importance of encouraging young women to abstain from sex in a way that’s seemingly not religious.

We need more penises on our screens by O. Rickett

We need more penises on our screens by O. Rickett

I’m not keen on nudity in movies and TV, but so long as the media are going to be lop sided and only show nude women, or show nude or scantily clad women more often than they do men, I think turn about is fair play, and therefore, male nudity should be shown in equal amounts.Though most women do not find penises attractive, but that’s not the point.

(Link): We need more penises on our screens by O. Rickett 

• Russell T Davies has got it right with Cucumber. We have a puritanical reaction to male nudity that is both sexist and a denial of the lives we lead
• Sex – whether we have loads of it or none of it – is a part of all of our lives. But on the screen, its depiction is often met with shock or silliness. Female actors are often objectified, the reasons for their nudity sometimes having little to do with character, and everything to do with satisfying the male gaze.In mainstream films and television, male nudity often falls into two camps. On one hand, you have the man whose nudity is threatening. He is, to paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, a hunter and his penis is a knife.
• On the other, you have the beaten-down man, his shrivelled member hanging uselessly between his legs as the subtext screams: “This man is pathetic.” Depictions of penises, then, provoke extremely mixed emotions. They are the totem of potency but also anxiety – one man feels great power in his penis while another feels terrible passivity, and it’s these two emotions that are almost always evoked by male nudity on the screen.
• The television producer and writer Russell T Davies, whose new show Cucumber features plenty of male-frontal nudity, has said that there is not enough of it on TV. “It’s only [seen as] rude because the rest of television is rather tame – it doesn’t actually talk about sex and our bodies and how we feel about them,” he told the Telegraph. Davies is right. Television remains in the grip of a strange puritanism, an unwillingness to recognise sex and nudity as a natural, important part of the lives we lead.
• ..This is something that comes up repeatedly. Joanna Coates, director of the independent British film Hide and Seek, which won the Michael Powell award at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, told me that because the film deals with sex and nudity openly and without shame, “some people assumed we were trying to be shocking”.
• Sex is central to the film, and the character’s attitudes to sex tell us something about their attitudes to life. Erect penises abound, but not as deliberate provocation and not in a way that’s meant to provoke schoolboy titters. If we react with shock, it’s our own reaction we have to interrogate.
• ….These schoolboy titters are all too often how we greet male nudity on screen. It’s like none of us moved beyond running around the playground in a circle squealing “Willy! Willy!”
• Male nudity hasn’t been a big deal in independent cinema or in the theatre for a while, but Ben Affleck’s member shows up for one second in Gone Girl and suddenly everyone’s shouting Sodom and Gomorrah. In that scene, the two characters are sharing a moment of intimacy that would look ridiculous if they weren’t naked. They are in the shower – the nudity is vital.

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Related posts:

(Link):  Hollywood Men: It’s No Longer About Your Acting, It’s About Your Abs (article about how male actors are now valued for being eye candy)

(Link): Women Do Care About Male Looks but Don’t Go For Penis Photos

(Link):  New study: Average American man is ugly and fat – And yes, men, you should panic because American women DO judge you based on your looks contrary to what Christian propaganda tells you

(Link): Women Are Visual And Like Hot Looking Men (Part 1) Joseph in Genesis Was A Stud Muffin

(Link): Atlantic: “The case for abandoning the myth that ‘women aren’t visual.’”

(Link): Article: Scientists: Why penis size does matter [to women]

(Link): New study: Average American man is ugly and fat – And yes, men, you should panic because American women DO judge you based on your looks

(Link): Ryan Gosling and Shirtless, Buff Cowboy Photos on Social Media – Yes, Women Are Visually Stimulated and Visually Oriented (Part 2)