Return to trevor

Prom Night

Brittany Snow, Jonathon Schaech, Jessica Stroup, Kellan Lutz

Feminists don't have a sense of humor. Feminists just want to be alone (boo-hoo). Feminists spread vicious lies and rumor. They have a tumor on their funny bone. They say child molestation isn't funny. Rape and degradation's just a crime (lighten up, ladies). Rampant prostitution, sex for money (what's wrong with that). Can't these chicks do anything but whine. Dance break. Woo-hoo. – Nellie McKay, “Mother of Pearl”

There is the old joke regarding the Lone Ranger and Tonto. It seems one day they were riding together on the plains when they spotted a cloud of dust ahead of them to the north. They quickly realized it was a war party of Indians heading right at them. Turning their horses around, they were about to go south when they spied another band coming from that direction. Heading west they were confronted by another party of Native Americans with blood in their eyes. Hightailing it to the east, their sole escape route quickly closed up when a fourth group came at them from that direction. As the four parties drew closer and closer the masked man and his faithful sidekick got off their horse, stood back to back, and drew their revolvers. The Lone Ranger said, “It is an ambush, old friend. This looks like the end for the two of us.” At that moment, the Ranger felt Tonto’s revolver against the back of his head, as Tonto spoke, “What do you mean us, white man?” The feminists of the 1960s and 70s, the women who fought so hard for women’s civil rights, fought for equal pay for equal work, fought to make the work place safe from pawing males, fought for laws like Title IX, helped the next generation believe that they could be anything they wanted to be, let them know that they did not have to be second-class citizens, and deserved their place at the table, these women turned around to find the next generation of women pointing a revolver right at their temples, saying, “What do you mean us, you old crow?”

According to a 2005 CBS News poll, only 24 percent of young women consider themselves feminists. Much of this can be blamed on ignorance. Most high school and college aged chicks have never felt the boorish behavior - the backside grabbing - that was once common in the work place. They don’t realize that it was not that long ago that society expected a husband to give moral guidance to his spouse with a rod that was to be no bigger than his thumb. Eighty percent have no clue who Gloria Steinem is, the woman whose name is synonymous with feminism. Do not even expect a spark of recognition in their eyes if you say the names Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, or Andrea Dworkin. They are especially ignorant of all the pain and problems that await them because they were born with two X chromosomes in this society. A conservative backlash has sought to smear the term, feminism. Blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and others have taken isolated cases of women’s writings and then painted the whole movement with it. Male religious leaders, who even though their churches, synagogues, and other organizations would close down if women stopped working, have worked hard to maintain their power by reminding the women that their god has divine daddy parts and the ladies are getting on the back of the bus in heaven. There are also the women in their gilded cages who are afraid of losing what power patriarchy has given them. Femi-Nazi, Birkenstock wearing, Lilth Fair going, crew-cut, angry pear-shaped lesbians with no sense of humor, who hate men, because no man wanted them in the first place is the stereotype. What young woman still figuring out who she is wants to wear that mantel, especially when you notice that a majority of men are intimidated by strong women. The girl in her dress that makes her body look like dough spilling out of a tube, has the tramp stamp engraved on her backside and pretends she does not have a clue, has more boys flocking around her than the women who stands up for herself and demands respect. Feminism has never been against a woman dressing up for a night on the town, they just ask women to think about why they are dressing that way. Dressing up for Halloween as the whore witch, the whore milk maid, or any of the whore costumes can be self-empowering and fun, but feminism just asks you to answer why that is the case. Feminism encompasses a wide diversity of opinions and attitudes.

I know what you are asking. What does all this talk about feminism have to do with the movie Prom Night? Our society goes out of its way on a subconscious level to push women down. After 9/11 “soccer moms” became “security moms” who needed the manly George Bush and Dick Cheney to protect them from the terrorists out there. The Rev. Jerry Falwell reminded Americans that God allowed the towers to fall because of feminists and liberals. Hillary Clinton is a “bitch,” who might be a “lesbian,” who has “men’s testicles in a lockbox,” and has a witch-like “cackle.” Then there is that other iron maiden that somehow made it in a man’s world, Nancy Pelosi, with her “San Francisco values” and too much plastic surgery. Unlike the “mommies” that surround George W Bush, women like Condi Rice that sit on the President’s feet while he does his sit-ups and wipes his brow, a truly strong woman terrifies these manly men who proclaim they are unafraid of Muslim terrorists. The covers of our glossy magazines present wastes of skin like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Jessica Simpson who show their worth by wearing almost nothing. If you still don’t believe me, do me a favor, keep a notebook over the course of the next year and ask what message is being presented on the silver screen in regards to the female sex. What you are going to find is authentic womanhood is extremely rare. There are the leather clad action flicks where the women, who seemingly bend over an awful lot, are basically men with boobs. There are the love stories where a woman’s life is not complete, an emotional wasteland, until she finds the right man. Let us not forget, the terrified mother that every Oscar winner plays in her next film. Yet, the films I hate the most are the slasher, knife-kill flicks in which some masked villain slices and dices women and girly guys in very creative manners. They are basically like the old exploitation tales that were extremely popular in literature for generations, stories in which the writer spends most of the novel detailing the moral depravity of the central character in vivid detail. The whole purpose of the story is to tantalize. In order to justify the story as more than the smut it really is, in the last chapter the character is punished. The homosexual, the sexually liberated woman, or the dope fiend dies penniless in the snow. The whole purpose of blood bath cinema is to make women victims, to express male’s hatred towards the female sex. They end with the virginal, Republican voting, heroine dispatching the whack-a-mole killer who is bound to pop back up just in time for the sequel. Recently, they have become gateway films for clean cut teenage television starlets to dirty up their images so they can make the leap to movies. It is Brittany Snow’s turn to make that jump in this remake of this 1980s Jamie Lee Curtis flick. What is one of the greatest days of a girl’s life? Graduation? The day she becomes boss at work? No. Prom, you silly goose. Girls get to look all pretty in their dress, giggle, drink fruity drinks, and dance, just dance, at least until her boyfriend passes out drunk on top of her in the motel room afterwards. This is Donna’s (Snow) big night, the night of her life. You can almost feel the glitter on her boobs and that strange smell of sweat, gym socks, vodka and vomit that made my prom night so special. But Donna is not going to be allowed to dance away the best night of her life because there is a maniac on the loose and he is going through women like a defrocked Mormon on Spring Break. There is only one man who can be responsible for this blood orgy, a man from her past that she thought was gone forever. Can Donna and her friends survive the night or will they end up in a pool of blood, like the pool of Mountain Dew and Peach flavored liquor I woke up in after my senior prom. Wiping the remains of my former meal off my chest, I looked at the girl I was about to do the dance of love with and said, “Are we ready to go to the motel?” She looked at me and said as she stormed away, “What do you mean we, white man?” I suggest you start saying the same thing to these kinds of movies.

Verdict: I Hate Ugly, Uncreative Slasher Films