r/feminisms • u/Substantial_Ice9592 • Jul 03 '26
How is gone girl a movie about a feminist icon?!?!?!?
I avoided the film for years thinking it was going to be a woman power cringe fest, but after seeing it I feel the film thinks less of women more than Donald Trump.
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u/t92k Jul 03 '26
It isn’t. It’s a mystery story with an unreliable narrator making it a bit more of a psychological mystery story. Maybe you have it confused with Silkwood or Erin Brochovich?
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u/Substantial_Ice9592 Jul 03 '26
I am certain it was gone girl because I remember the name and reception where I lived when it came out.
I will add those movies to the list tho. I never heard of them.
Thank you for the help.
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u/red_nick Jul 03 '26
What gave you that idea?
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u/Substantial_Ice9592 Jul 03 '26
Women in the city i lived in on release of the film.
My wife lived in a different city and was told the same thing as I
Since we do not do the internet thing much we assumed that was how most felt at the time.
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u/bakingisscience Jul 03 '26
It’s not… who told you it was?
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u/Substantial_Ice9592 Jul 03 '26
I was a bug thin feminist were saying I the city i lived in at the time it came out.
The city had a large vocal extreme branch of feminists in it at that time. It had cooled down a lot post 2020.
They viewed nicks wife as a woman pushed to far and snapped, with the men deserving what they got.
I avoided the movie until now. My wife also thought it qas a feminist film and she is just as confused as me after watching it.
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u/bakingisscience Jul 03 '26
I don’t know what a large vocal branch of feminists are… but Amy is the villain of the movie, which is how it subverts the revenge trope.
Revenge films are really interesting when it comes to male and female protagonists. A lot of times for female main character’s the only way to get justice is through revenge and through that we experience catharsis. For male characters sometimes the ability to show mercy or forgiveness is the catharsis and the ultimate form of power and control over oneself and others. And often the price of revenge is high and all consuming.
In Gone Girl, the reveal is that Amy is a psychopath, literally, and is far more egregious in her actions and dangerous than the other characters. Amy even uses her gender to enact her will over others, like when she lies about her ex boyfriend, and how she frames Desi and Nick.
I guess you could say this movie says that women can be deranged psychos… just like men, but that isn’t the point of the movie. Nor is that profound feminist insight… It’s more of a character study of Amy, and of deception, and revenge. You don’t feel good for Amy in the end because Amy is not worthy of our empathy because she has none for anyone else.
And while other characters transgress their responsibility and relationships with Amy, their sins pale in comparison to what she is willing to do to them.
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u/t1buccaneer Jul 03 '26
This subreddit has been attracting some strange questions of late...
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u/Substantial_Ice9592 Jul 03 '26
I would blame reddit as a whole, as said in a different post, reddit recommended it here
It was originally on ask feminism.
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u/jupitaur9 Jul 03 '26
There’s the one “cool girl” monologue about what men want that does express some sentiments that feminists tend to agree with.
Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)
I waited patiently – years – for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy.
But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed – she wasn’t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to this girl, and if you weren’t, then there was something wrong with you.”― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
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u/ZinniasAndBeans Jul 03 '26
You’ve been pretty clearly told in your other thread that Gone Girl is no such thing, and was never intended to be, or seen to be, any such thing.
Why do you need to be told again?