The sequel has become a quick way for the movie industry to draw in viewers. With the cost of production studios are reluctant to take chances and instead fall back on cookie cutter plots that seldom offer any real challenge. “Bridget Jones” has become the latest serial girl flick movie. Who doesn’t want to get drunk, sing all by myself and watch Bridget’s antics as she tries to negotiate the life of a single woman?
In the first two parts we followed Bridget as she struggled to choose between her two suitors. When Bridget finally became engaged to Mark in the 2006 sequel “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” viewers were meant to see this as the culmination every woman’s struggle to snag a man. Heaven forbid the media portray a single woman who is content to be so. No matter how much we accomplish in our professional lives or the quality of the friendships that we have amassed, each woman is understood to secretly be pining for a juicy blood diamond engagement ring to signify being owned by a man. Nothing exemplifies success like the ability to engage in a patriarchal relationship.
Studio owners have decided that Bridget’s “happy ending” is not yet complete. Bridget Jones 3 is in pre-production and no name has been selected for the new film as yet. After finally getting Bridget into a stable relationship, one may well wonder what is left to make her life complete. Let’s pause for a moment and think, shall we?… Hmmm, ah yes, a baby. Everyone knows that every woman wants a baby. How could she ever think her life is complete unless she is walking the floor at 4 AM covered in spit up, so tired that jumping out the window and running away seems like a good idea. For some, motherhood is a joyful experience, yet for many it is a choice that they are thankful to be able to opt out of.
The studio could not allow Bridget to ride into the sunset with a lasso tied firmly around her conquest, Mark, while they were still stereotypes to be exploited. If a woman in her forties isn’t anxious about her ticking biological clock, how can she possibly be on track for the mental breakdown that occurs during menopause? I can picture the jokes around basal temperature already. There are approximately ninety minutes to fill and one can be certain that every single anxiety faced by women who are attempting to become pregnant will played out until we all just want throw adoption papers at her to make the lunacy stop.
Clichés are the heart of the Bridget Jones phenomenon. Women are meant to identify with her because she supposedly represents the universal experience of womanhood. Conservatives have been telling us for decades now that feminism has lied, and that the true nature of women is to obsess over having a little nest to nurture. The Jones films use comedy to enforce the message of domesticity through insipid humour; enormous panties anyone?
Because the producers have decided to rely on tried and true struggles of “authentic” womanhood, this series need never end. Perhaps, for a fourth series we will get to watch Bridget burn cookies for her first official bake sale, or maybe even becoming a misfit amongst the mommies at the school. There is always a little time to throw in some discipline regarding traditional female roles in a film about universalizing the experiences of career women. Why spend millions of dollars creating a monolithic woman without ensuring that not only is she suitably docile but ready and willing to adhere to patriarchal standards as well?
Maybe we will get super lucky and the music industry will chip in and create a soundtrack filled with “girly songs” that we will be compelled to download in our efforts to identify. It will be fun all the way around. Everyone will make money and only the women who are single and happy will be left out of the laugh, but since they’re understood to be freaks of nature anyway, I suppose no one will really notice. Okay ladies on that note, let’s grab our aprons, spit-shine our slave symbols (read: wedding bands) and set about fulfilling all of the constructed aspirations our heads were filled with when we were handed our first dolls. Don’t try and fight it; if it appears in the media it must be true.
The reality of the situation is, some women want to be married! That’s not the movie producers’ fault, that’s art immitating life. If you want to know why some single women aren’t happy beinng single, ask those women. Don’t expect a moive to be the end-all-be-all to that question.
I don’t think its awful to want children or that this movie depicts the life of every single woman out there.
If this is what the movie will be about, then she represents the middle ground. THere are women who are baby-crazed from the moment their first cycle and then there are women who always hoped they’d NEVER get their cycle because they don’t need it because they never want to be a mom or be pregnant.
Thanks Renee, great post. I am so sick of seeing movies in which female characters want marriage and babies as if there were no alternatives.
ok what now, marriage counselling, not ready to be a mother, baby shower. sigh! i’m looking forward to it though. We all do the exact same thing over and over again.
So what some of you are saying is that a truer picture of female life is an endless need for singleness, partying, sleeping with different partners, no man, just plent of girlfriends or sex buddies? ok then…..well i have news for you most women i come across, would love a man in their lives, ove a family home and kids, their friends around them, and although its a hard balance a good career to boot, and as for domestic duties, well tha just comes with having a home and family, man or woman.
also Renne you seem to put a ‘great profesional life ahead of personal happiness?’ maybe climbing up the ladder of your company and getting the fattest pay cheque possible is what your life amounts to, but for some women having a loving relationship, friends, having a home ( not just a asset as you would probably call it) and a good job is what they value more than just your female utopian world.
It’s a movie. It doesn’t mean you have to go out and get pregnant! Instead, you can live in negativity, mocking and laughing at everyone else. That’s probably the best thing for you. Let the ones who want to be mothers be mothers. MORE POWER TO THEM! Leave this movie to be what it is: a movie. Bridget is a fictional character. I don’t think you or I have ever been arrested in Thailand.
I cant wait until the new bridget jones comes out. But I am very upset with hugh grant. About doing the third bridget jones movie. I also mad about what he said about the second movie.I feel that both movies was very movies. That he shouldnt said that about those movies. The other two stars are coming back to the rolls.It would be the same without hugh grant. Atleast he should do the third and it the last one. Aleast finish the movie. I hope that the movie will be a smash hit and that it will be a box office hit.That will showed mr. grant not to shoot off his big mouth. I use to love and admire hugh grant and he use to be my cary grant, not anymore if he doesnt do the third bridget jones diary.
I think it would be funny if Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy get married all was going well, but the desire to have a child. So the decide to have a baby and they go the the “Sperm Bank”. Later find out it was Daniel Clever who donated, since you already know he is addicted to “having a go” sexual stimulation kind of thing, and he wanted some extra cash because of bad economical times. You can imagine the emotions finding out who is the father of your child is your “Arch Rival.”