Misogyny is bad?

“Wussy-wushy scenes just bore the hell out of me. I just want them to get on and start bashing people up.” (Guy Ritchie in interview with the Daily Telegraph in, February 1999)

The more I get into my undergrad dissertation on the British crime film, the more often I find myself re-assessing my opinion of Guy Ritchie. Initially, he annoyed the hell out of me. I found his visual style amazing. He has such an eye for shots and exciting editing patterns. But, what always stood out was his cliched dialogue and 2-D characters. I began to loathe him (enough to rate him as bad as Nick Love). However, the more I read about him, and the more I watch his films, the more I like him.

I hated him so much that I bet Mike Glass (on his radio show Your Opinion Is Worthless – film reviews on a Monday from 3-5pm) that if the new Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes movie got 3 stars or more in a broadsheet that I would give him £100. But now, I love him. He’s misogynistic. He glamourises violence. I love that.

In the world of “New Men”, it’s refreshing that blokes can be blokes. That the sensitive men (the strong and silent type women like) and the emotionally intelligent man are actually NOT MEN! Men play football, fuck birds and drink beer. Fact. Blokes are no longer allowed to be blokes. So thank god Ritchie provides an escape to a nostalgic world of 1960s men. Men who shat on feminism. Men who could be vulgar and disgusting, but at least had some backbone.

I’m not trying to be contrary and get a reaction from the progressive and liberal among you. I just want to say that if we can have namby-pamby, indie films about emotions and feelings then why can’t we have “Guns ‘N’ Geezers”? If women can escape in fantasies about some Vampire kid, then why can’t men dream of a time when women were silent and men used violence to solve all their problems?

Paz