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Thursday, September 8, 2005

Girls Can’t Be Movie Critics

Posted by on September 8 at 11:45 AM

I’m shocked (shocked!) that this Toronto Star article exists. The headline: Geeks Are the Best Movie Critics. It starts off peppy, a film festival fluff piece with an aren’t-we-all-dorks-and-isn’t-it-cute angle. But then writer Geoff Pevere gets a little carried away with his dopey logic: “Personally, I think women make better celebrity interviewers than they do movie critics.” He’s serious. Listen to this biological determinism, which is so comically oblivious it could’ve been a parody by a women’s studies prof: “a woman […] would have a difficult time imagining two cans containing a faded 35mm print of Red River as more important than the human life biology gave her the potential to bring into the world.” (You’ll be happy to learn that Pevere makes an exception for Pauline Kael, but apparently she’s the exception that proves the rule, or something—her legions of cut-rate imitators were “nearly all men.”) Anyway, the piece is good for a laugh or a tear or, you know, whatever expression of emotion your hormones are dictating today.