{"id":2368,"date":"2012-05-20T11:09:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-20T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/?p=2368"},"modified":"2015-07-15T12:03:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T16:03:47","slug":"shes-passive-aggressive-and-hes-clueless-perfect-match-sexism-in-the-muppets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2012\/05\/20\/shes-passive-aggressive-and-hes-clueless-perfect-match-sexism-in-the-muppets\/","title":{"rendered":"She&#8217;s passive-aggressive and he&#8217;s clueless! Perfect match!: sexism in The Muppets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We watched <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1204342\/\">The Muppets<\/a> last night. It was a pretty cute movie, with most of the humor at no one&#39;s expense, but I was continually bothered by the rampant sexism on display in the plot between the 2 human leads, Gary [Jason Segel] and Mary [Amy Adams].<\/p>\n<p>Gary and Mary have been dating for 10 years, but they don&#39;t even live together. They&#39;re not engaged either. Mary wishes that Gary would propose to her, but he does not. In fact, their 10th anniversary trip to Los Angeles ends up including Gary&#39;s Muppet &quot;brother,&quot; Walter, in spite of Mary&#39;s obvious displeasure. Gary constantly privileges adventures with Walter over adventures with Mary, who acquiesces by trying to put on a brave face. When Gary forgets his 10th anniversary dinner with Mary, Mary goes back home, leaving a note that addresses the source of her upset only obliquely: &quot;Are you a man or a Muppet?&quot; Gary follows Mary back home and proposes to her. She says yes, blah blah blah, whoop de doo.<\/p>\n<p>This entire plot could have been avoided if Gary and Mary had just had one single solitary stinkin&#39; conversation about their expectations and desires. On a deeper level, it also would have been a much shorter movie if Mary hadn&#39;t been trapped by expectations about feminine passivity. If she loved Gary so much and wanted to marry him, why didn&#39;t <i>she<\/i> propose to <i>him<\/i> years ago? Why does she suffer Gary&#39;s callous, clueless behavior in silence, without speaking up for herself? Why is Mary such a spineless, retrograde drip? Why is Gary such an inattentive, uncommunicative clod? Does anyone really think this relationship is going to work out?<\/p>\n<p>My favorite character was &#39;80&#39;s Robot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We watched The Muppets last night. It was a pretty cute movie, with most of the humor at no one&#39;s expense, but I was continually bothered by the rampant sexism on display in the plot between the 2 human leads, Gary [Jason Segel] and Mary [Amy Adams]. Gary and Mary have been dating for 10&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2012\/05\/20\/shes-passive-aggressive-and-hes-clueless-perfect-match-sexism-in-the-muppets\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">She&#8217;s passive-aggressive and he&#8217;s clueless! Perfect match!: sexism in The Muppets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[664,662],"class_list":["post-2368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-misogyny","tag-sexist-stereotypes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5341,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions\/5341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}