What Feminist Movies & Shows Keep Getting Wrong
The entertainment industry’s depictions of motherhood remain woefully incomplete
I recently accomplished a rare feat — I watched an entire movie from beginning to end. In one sitting. It wasn’t a kids movie, either, and it was over two hours long.
OK, I was on an airplane, which I suppose makes the feat less impressive. The movie was She Said, based on the book written by New York Times journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor. It depicts their 10-month long investigation into Harvey Weinstein that broke the silence around decades of sexual harassment and assault.
I don’t write much about entertainment because I typically watch one show a day, if that, and I am usually catching up on the shows that other people have been chattering about for years already.
And movies? Well, I’m still working my way through pre-pandemic Academy Award nominees. I manage to see a handful of “new” movies in the theater each year, mostly with my kids, and if I ever work up the stamina to stream an R-rated feature film after the kids’ bedtime, it is almost always over the course of at least two nights.
That’s all to say, I’m by no means an entertainment buff or a particularly qualified critic. But much of what I have watched over…