Slut Be a Lady Tonight: Trainwreck

Posted on July 22, 2015 Updated on July 22, 2015

I think what makes Trainwreck interesting is that it’s perhaps socio-politically confused, which is fine. But it feels confused about its gender politics in a way that seems like it would come out of the 2000s, or the ‘90s, even. It lacks a surefootedness about what it may or may not want to say about women, or what it may or may not want to say about this woman. I watched Sidney Pollack’s Tootsie last night, and I rewatched the entire series run of 30 Rock, and what both have in common is that they’re less inclined to make these kinds of concrete decisions about what femininity has to be in their respective cultural climates and instead acknowledge the mixed messages that are presented to the general populous. Both certainly play with the ambivalence of what their end games could be – domesticity or work – and, furthermore, with the idea of “having it all” (“Murphy Brown lied to us!”).   Read the rest of this entry »