Movies for men versus movies for women
How sex differences impact taste in movies, and why “gendered” movies are a good thing
Movies & TV-series targeting a predominantly male audience typically have men as protagonists and have themes / tropes that mostly appeal to men. “Action movies” & “scifi movies” would the the most obvious examples of movies usually targeting men. And the “hero’s journey” is probably the most common theme / trope in movies targeting men.
Movies & TV-series targeting a predominantly female audience typically have women as protagonists and have themes / tropes that mostly appeal to women. The most obvious example would be the “romcom”, with “the quest for true love” being the most common theme / trope in movies targeting women.
Thing is, men typically enjoy when women are protagonists in movies targeting them, regardless if these women are sexualized or not (note that sexualization can both decrease or increase the appeal of a female protagonist to a male audience, depending on context & the individual man)… But gen-Z women somehow seem to have so incapable of relating to men at all that they now want “representation” everywhere and expect both protagonists & themes to be female-oriented, pretty much robbing men of their entertainment while continuing to insist our culture is “misogynist”.
When was the last time you ever saw a “romcom” targeting a predominantly male audience? Personally, I know exactly one: “Cashback”… Well, and maybe you can add a few Michael Gondry movies to that list, like “Human Nature” or “Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind”… and maybe “Mr Nobody”… but such movies are still extremely rare, pretty niche and usually have a rather “arthouse” vibe to them. They also commonly transcend the “romcom” genre by adding concepts from eg. scifi or philosophy, and the humor is either deemphasized (yet still present) or very distinct from that of the usual female-oriented “romcom”. Because typical men and women typically like different kinds of movies, and even a “romcom” has a distinctly masculine touch when its target audience is mostly masculine…
Note that I try to use words like “typically” & “predominantly” a lot, here, because it’s all a matter of averages and majorities. Obviously, there’s nerdy women out there who loathe “romcoms” and love “fantasy” or “sci fi” as much as any male nerd out there. Rare is the audience that exists exclusively of either men or women, if they even exist at all. But there ARE obvious patterns and trends here, probably going back in some way to since time immemorial, with Hollywood having a long history of capitalizing on these patterns & trends by tweaking their productions to appeal most to very specific audiences, defined by not just sex, but also ethnicity, age, class, hobby, etc. And that’s a good thing. Because trying to appeal to everyone typically leads to boring, drab, mediocre productions that actually appeal to nobody.
