posted
I don't think we've had a thread yet on the movie I just saw.
Has anyone else seen it? Enjoyed it? Have criticisms?
I really appreciated it. Not only was the moral "you should behave like a responsible adult," but I think there was a lot of really relevant commentary on racial relations and ethnic/economic ties.
It made me ask myself some really serious questions. I've harbored a bit of hatred for domestic service for quite some time, but I'm a bit ambivalent, when it comes to providing jobs for people who need them.
I don't know... what does everyone else think?
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:I've harbored a bit of hatred for domestic service for quite some time, but I'm a bit ambivalent, when it comes to providing jobs for people who need them.
posted
Well, I suppose I mean that the idea of domestic service as a career just really rubs me the wrong way. Who on earth are we to make others clean up after us? Regardless of whether or not they're paid, it smacks of slavery and the racial factor usually involved makes me cringe.
On the other hand, the protagonist in this movie is a Mexican immigrant who wants to be able to quit her night job to spend more time with her daughter, and so takes a position as a housekeeper. It made me realize that there are a lot of jobs created this way, even if those jobs are demeaning.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I've never thought about it. I've also never had enough money for it.
If I were wealthy, I could not see myself having a live-in, but I could see myself having somebody come out every couple of weeks or so, just to do the parts I never do a good job with. (Would this be less objectionable because it is a service as opposed to a personal servant?)
Thinking about it in that light, it seems like just another situation where we pay people to perform a service for us. Do you pay someone to fix your car? I fix my own. Are people who pay for this demeaning those they pay, or are those who do their own cleaning by pay for auto repair morally superior to those who do their own auto repair but pay somebody to do some of their cleaning?
What about painting your house/carpentry/plumbing/etc?
quote:If I were wealthy, I could not see myself having a live-in, but I could see myself having somebody come out every couple of weeks or so, just to do the parts I never do a good job with. (Would this be less objectionably because it is a service as opposed to a personal servant?)
You don't have to be wealthy to afford the every couple of weeks cleaning. mid- to upper- middle class is enough in many areas.
posted
Yeah, I guess I could afford it now, but I almost feel like I'd have to clean before the cleaner came to not be embarrassed. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
You get over that reeeeeal quick. Our service is actually owned by an immigrant, which is good. I like supporting entrepreneurs.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
With my service, I just do a quick pick-up before they come so that the place isn't a complete mess. Plus, they are not there to pick up after me. On the subject of it being demeaning work, it could be looked at that way or it could be looked at as a way to provide for a family and be self supporting. My service is also owned by immigrants and they come once every two weeks.
Annie, if the racial factor makes you cringe, do you have any ideas to change the situation? any other jobs they could do? Does it also make you cringe to see only/mostly Asians in nail shops? And immigrant men on construction sites?
Edit: Other than that, I liked the movie. A bit different from what I was expecting. The previews seemed to make it out to be a comedy with a little bit of drama, but it was more of an even mix.
posted
I really, really liked the movie. However, more than the ideas about working immigrants (which hit fairly close to home, since my dad used to be one), I was interested in the character of Sandler's wife, who is basically the embodiment of everything I'm scared of becoming.
I really appreciated the humor, which seemed to have an undercurrent of morality and character to it, rather than the more common "comedies" I've seen lately, which consist mostly of finding clever ways for the characters to insult each other.
I was also quite glad that the lead characters *didn't* have an affair. I was holding my breath waiting for the movie to devolve into the standard romantic view of adultery, but was pleasantly surprised when it didn't.
I think that's what I liked most about the movie, really; that there were characters who were trying to be adult and Do The Right Thing, which I haven't seen for awhile (perhaps I'm watching the wrong movies, neh?).
And the actress who played Sandler's daughter was *great*.
Edit: Icarus, I too used to be wary of anything Adam Sandler-related, as I thought his earlier comedies were *terrible* (kinda reminded me of Jim Carrey's too-desperate-to-be-funny-to-actually-be-funny-ness). However, with "Punch Drunk Love" and "Spanglish", I've really come to respect Sandler as an actor, because he seems to have stopped being so needy for a laugh. I thought he fit this role really well, so ya never know, you might like this one.
posted
I just realized reading this thread that Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler are different people. I'd never heard them talked about together before, so in my brain I just sort of think of them as the same people. They look alike and they star in the same kinds of movies, after all. Now I'm going to have to think and figure out which movies which guy was in.
*wanders off contemplating this relevation*
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
You bring up good points, Aphrodite. That's why I'm ambivalent on this issue.
One scene in the movie shows what can happen all too often in cases like this - the wife of the family rents a summer home and just assumes the maid will come live in since the commute is too far. She doesn't tell her this until they're actually there, and of course the woman, who has a daughter, says there is no way she can be a live-in all summer. (they're doing all of this through a translator, and the wife keeps saying "she really needs to learn English") The wife then gets manipulative and says "That's really too bad.... I don't want to lose you..."
I suppose this irritates me so much because I've been that kind of employee before. I was a nanny for a wealthy family where the woman held my job over my head when I told her I might not have a car since my family needed me to return the one I had been borrowing. I got around just fine on my bike or by walking, but she just couldn't risk someone watching the children without a car and would really hate to lose me.
It's the attitude that bugs me. I see this far too often working for an elite group of summer-home folks here. When it happens to me, a poor white girl but a white girl nonetheless, I can chalk it up to someone being snobbish, but when it happens to a group of people of one race, it becomes an issue of race no matter who is involved. The latino community forms an opinions of whites based on the ones like the wife in this movie, and the well-off white kids form an opinion of latinos as their own personal little people.
This issue is huge and difficult, isn't it?
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Yes. Tea Leoni was incredibly difficult to watch. My fingernails dug gouges into my armrests, I wanted to slap her so much.
But I went with a guy friend to see this because I thought it would be a lot like As Good As It Gets (made by the same people), a movie we both liked a lot. However, I decided at the end that, had I known what this was really about, I would have never taken a friend of the same sex with me.
Not that it was a chick flick. But there was a noticeable lack of people being struck violently with pies along with explosions.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I agreed with OSC on 50 First Dates. It was a fabulous movie with random scenes from an awful, raunchy movie spliced in.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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