Since the dawn of time marketers have been very keen to sort products into various categories from which they can then be successfully advertised to whichever demographic is deemed to purchase them the most. And no greater divide in the free market exists than Men and Women. Apparently two entirely separate life forms with few overlapping interests.
This perverse partition is particularly notable in film, where women are deemed to enjoy romance, cartoons about princesses and 'based on a true story' movies of the week where women learn the hard way that all men are bastards. Men meanwhile enjoy EVERYTHING else film has to offer and really, if a woman enjoys those too it goes to show how broad minded she is in her interests.
This week we debate "Women's Films" and, to show how even handed we are, a full third of our panel is women. We challenge this cruel division of tastes, brought on mostly by male advertising executives failing to figure out why women watch films, and set about blurring the cultural gender front lines.
Instead we learn Sue likes shopping for shoes and Sex in the City ... perhaps undermining EVERYTHING we set out to do ... so Ian bravely admits to liking one or two 'girl' things himself ... for which Leo calls him queer. With everyone suitably embarrassed for challenging social conventions be assured the usual male dominated hetero-normative perspective will reassert itself next week.
