In my first year, I had to take a class called Fundamentals of Information Systems. On the last day of this class, my professor decided that we should have a fun class. He handed us all index cards with a variety of prompts and we played presentation karaoke, where we basically had to answer the prompt and tie in the images on a presentation into our answer. As my luck would have it, my prompt was, “What is the worst type of movie or show?” I’ll be honest; I had no idea how to answer this. Luckily, my friend suggested stereotypical Hallmark movies, and I ran with them. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, the first slide in the presentation deck was an image of a jellyfish. Therefore, in front of a whole class of around 60 people, I stated, “I would rather be a jellyfish than to ever watch a Hallmark movie.”
Now, why did I tell you that little anecdote? It’s because I thought it would be a fun segway onto today’s topic: the over-the-top Hallmark-style movies that tend to pop up around the holiday season. I’m all for love and joy and a good holiday-themed rom-com, but my issue with Hallmark movies is that they are so stereotypically bad, especially with regard to the way they portray women. From the many(yes, many) of these types of movies I have seen on Netflix, it almost always starts like this: the female lead is a career woman in a big city and has dedicated her life to her career; however, life keeps reminding her that she’s not all that as a result we as the viewers know she is struggling but she tries to push through and comes off as very grumpy and bitter. Then, by chance, she ends up in a new place: a vacation, her hometown where everyone knows everyone and each other’s business, or a castle in a small but wealthy European country. Here, she somehow meets “the one.” Obviously, it doesn’t happen without some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication, but it all works out because they are soulmates. She leaves her old life behind and suddenly is married or engaged or to-be engaged to “the one.” and she is no longer a resentful corporate woman.
While movies with this kind of plot are acceptable for one or two movies, not every movie about the holidays has to be like this. My personal take is that it portrays women in a bad way. The female lead almost always has to make a choice between her career and her love life. That is not an accurate portrayal of women because why can’t they have both? In most cases, the female character is very passionate about her career. She wants to excel in it, but her environment continuously puts her down. Compared to her male coworkers, she faces a lot of additional hurdles, and it is very outwardly shown that the reason for her not being able to move to where she wants to be is that she is a woman. While it is true that women do face a lot of systematic challenges, the portrayal is done in a way that comes off as demeaning to the female lead. The message almost seems to be that she shouldn’t aspire to want or do those things because her finding “love” is way more important and that everything she wanted career-wise is no longer relevant because she found “the one.”
I personally believe that this is a terrible message to send, especially given the target audience of these films is women. I personally love a good rom-com, and the holidays could definitely serve as a good backdrop or trope, but finding love shouldn’t come at the expense of any woman’s identity and things that are important to her. All seriousness aside, though, if you’re having a bad day and want a good laugh or just want to critique a movie for fun please do consider watching all the new holiday-themed romance movies. (The latter is definitely not why I’ve watched so many of these movies).
