Traditional Weddings are Stupid, Part 37 (Thousand)

From The New York Times' Blog Well, Tara Parker-Pope reports that Bridezilla is on the crash diet for her fairy-tale wedding dress. Ho-hum, same old, same old, right? Brides always wig about their weight.

What's more interesting, though, is the comments section, wherein whiny little (undoubtedly bleached blond) bride wannabes kvetch that "Bridezilla" is bandied about superfluously and with malice:

I take issue with your title though. Why did you have to use the term bridezilla? I am a newlywed and, frankly, I’m sick of hearing it tossed around. - Comment #3 from Poster "Kate" -

Parker-Pope defends herself well enough:

A normal weight woman who obsesses about weight loss and buys a too-small dress and starves herself to fit into it qualifies as a bridezilla in my opinion. - TPP

Here's my issue though: Parker-Pope says "Bridezilla" is a light-hearted term. Maybe to her, but I'm a veteran of the overdone wedding, and the term Bridezilla has entered the cultural lexicon for a reason: women drive themselves (and everyone around them) absolutely up the wall with these ridiculously lavish weddings. They are too expensive, overplanned, excessively "fancy" and tarfetta'd and flowered up. "Bridezilla" exists, she is real and she is terrifying. She wants her Special Day to be All Things to All People, and Galt help us all if it's a "society" wedding. That just ratchets the Bridezilla-factor to an 11.

Look, ladies, it's time for some self-esteem: the defining moments in your life are not going to be these scripted and extravagant events where most of the gentlemen in the audience just want to know where the beer is and the ladies are gossiping about you or dressing you down. uh-uh. You're a person with a life, career (hopefully you haven't resigned yourself to the alcoholic dullery that is housewifery), a past, a present and a future. You need to take back the wedding from the Clutching Grasp of Societal Expectations and make it about you, and what you want, not what Mom & Dad and the second-cousins expect.

One clueless commenter nails it, though she's too dumb to realize it:

I just fail to see how “bridezilla” is in fact a lighthearted term. While I know the taffeta beast lurks out there, and have known one in my lifetime, it’s not a term I like to see thrown around at will - especially when describing presumably normal young women thrown into a morass of unliveable expectations and increasing debt. - Comment #13 from Poster

Who was it that sanctioned and accepted that debt and those unlivable expectations again? Yes, it's these things that turn brides into Bridezilla, but that's the whole point: it's the bride's own damn fault if she places the expectations of others on herself!

A classy, modern society (with a 40-60% divorce rate) would frown on someone spending 10-50Gs to fulfill the expectations of others. Of course, grooms need to quit listening to the brainless advice of "just go along for the ride" and help the women they love stop acting like faux Society Girls with a bad case of the "gimmes".

Creative? Au Contraire, Monsieur.

While perusing Google News today for the latest on John Edwards dropping out of the 2008 Presidential campaign, I come across this little gem from the United Kingdom's The Guardian:

The wildly creative souls at New Line Cinema are bringing back the hit Nightmare On Elm Street story...

I would argue that "bringing back" a series that should have died with the first movie is enough evidence to show that New Line lacks creativity, especially given that said series has something like 13 sequels, to include cross-overs with the equally dreadful Jason series.

"That's just one example, AR! New Line does good stuff!" Of course, I never said it did not, but the success of New Line Cinemas is dependent on pimping sequels and poaching books and television scripts. There isn't a more uncreative and boring motion picture studio on the market. Just look at the partial list of movies that are in pre-production from New Line:

• Harold and Kumar 2
• The Sex and the City movie
• Austin Powers 4
• Not one, not two, but three Freddy-themed movies:
• A remake of the original
• A prequel to the original
• Freddy vs. Jason 2 (gag!)
• Final Destination 4
• Two The Lord of the Rings prequels (yes, two movies from The Hobbit...as if the actual book and the aforementioned Peter Jackson train wreck weren't boring and overwrought enough.)

There are about a thousand more examples that highlight that this production house just doesn't know when to let a decent film lie. New Line tries to squeeze every bit of blood from the dried-up turnipy carcass of films that are only moderately successful or were, for all intensive purposes, artisticand financial failures.

New Line writers are the "wildly creative geniuses" who brought us Son of the Mask (flopped sequel with awful production values and unknown actors), TMNT III (TMNT II would have been a good stopping point, guys), Mortal Kombat II (see what I mean about robbing alternative sources of entertainment?).

Those are just the sequels, prequels and unnecessary remakes. New Line also specializes in making crappy movies from so-so novels and from
"they're only-famous-because-of-nostalgic-hipsters" cartoons and comic books (see: The Golden Compass and its inevitable sequels, the upcoming Voltron movie, the Inkworld trilogy, Shazam [pre-production])

When we institute the "Crimes against Art" Tribunal, New Line Cinemas will be first in the dock. Granted, they use by-the-numbers movies to bankroll decent films like Pan's Labyrinth and Shoot 'em-Up, but "wildly creative souls"? Hardly.