The film I saw with my designated cinema going buddy was (500) Days of Summer which was pretty much as good as everyone has said it is and worthy of the thousands of starts that adorn the advert for it. Do bear in mind that nothing blows up and there’re very few car chases, if that’s what you like in a film. When the DVD comes out it is very unlikely that there’ll be any fire on the cover, which will put off a lot of people. I’m not going to turn this blog into a forum for film reviews as there’s many, many of them already littering the internet, in the form of people it’s worth listening to, and people who don’t have much of a life beyond the monitor of their computer and the films they’ve cleverly downloaded. What I want to talk about is girls on bikes again, as it’s a particular favourite of mine.
Bikes appeared in the film twice. Both times they supported a stereotype, and were clearly lazy film-shorthand. Both bikes were ridden by girls were designed to show how carefree and independent the girl was. Perhaps she was also a bit individual and quirky, but definitely she was someone who stepped outside the norm and wanted to ride rather than walk or drive anywhere. The film was set in Los Angeles, so the idea of not driving was even more kooky than it would have been in almost any other city. This seems to happen a lot in cinema, time and again bikes are used to emphasise a part of a female character which is cute, attractive and different, we’re encouraged to like the character for all her nonconformity and interestingness, and see her as a full person, in whom we might find cute flaws, but who we’ll still like and forgive. Just off the top of my head we’ve seen this in films such as Happy Go Lucky and The Notebook.
In many ways I like this and it encourages a friendly and cool image of cycling. What seems odd is that male characters in the same kind of film often use bikes as a prop for their awkwardness and social inadequacy, as you can see in Napoleon Dynamite, Eagle Vs Shark and others. In a macho car driving world men on bicycles are either honed and obsessive athletes or outsiders unable to handle the world.
Obviously there are films trying to rebalance the image, but the less said about hardcore courier films the better!
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I like girls on bikes too. Or just girls. Or girls on bikes in films. I can't claim to be a honed, obsessive athlete but 'outsider unable to handle the world' sounds familiar!
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