• Mon, Nov 19 - 12:47 pm ET

Chauvinistic Editor Told Movie Critic: ‘Stop Reviewing Films with Strong Female Leads!’

Roger Ebert gave this story two thumbs down. In a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert featured a disgusting, yet true account, of a Buffalo film critic named Michael Calleri who was asked by  former pig of an editor at the Niagara Falls Reporter, to stop reviewing movies with strong leading ladies, specifically Snow White and the Huntsman.

Here is the email that Calleri claims to have not altered, including spelling and grammar. He received it while in Paris after realizing that his reviews were no longer appearing in the Reporter‘s print version. After asking the editor/publisher repeatedly why some reviews were making it onto the web and not others, the new editor-publisher responded with this:

Michael; I know you are committed to writing your reviews, and put a lot of effort into them. it is important for you to have the right publisher. i may not be it. i have a deep moral objection to publishing reviews of films that offend me. snow white and the huntsman is such a film. when my boys were young i would never have allowed them to go to such a film for i believe it would injure their developing manhood. if i would not let my own sons see it, why would i want to publish anything about it?

It gets way better. A full-on women-haters tantrum ensues:

snow white and the huntsman is trash. moral garbage. a lot of fuzzy feminist thinking and pandering to creepy hollywood mores produced by metrosexual imbeciles.

I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.
where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.

i believe in manliness.

 

not even on the web would i want to attach my name to snow white and the huntsman except to deconstruct its moral rot and its appeal to unmanly perfidious creeps.

i’m not sure what headhunter has to offer either but of what I read about it it sounds kind of creepy and morally repugnant.

 

with all the publications in the world who glorify what i find offensive, it should not be hard for you to publish your reviews with any number of these.

 

they seem to like critiques from an artistic standpoint without a word about the moral turpitude seeping into the consciousness of young people who go to watch such things as snow white and get indoctrinated to the hollywood agenda of glorifying degenerate power women and promoting as natural the weakling, hyena -like men, cum eunuchs.

 

the male as lesser in courage strength and power than the female.

 

it may be ok for some but it is not my kind of manliness.

If you care to write reviews where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character (if there are such movies being made) i will be glad to publish these.

 

i am not interested in supporting the reversing of traditional gender roles.

 

i don’t want to associate the Niagara Falls Reporter with the trash of Hollywood and their ilk.

 

it is my opinion that hollywood has robbed america of its manliness and made us a nation of eunuchs who lacking all manliness welcome in the coming police state.

 

now i realize that you have a relationship with the studios etc. and i would have been glad to have discussed this in person with you to help you segue into another relationship with a publication but inasmuch as we spent 50 minutes on the phone from paris i did not want to take up more of your time.

 

In short i don’t care to publish reviews of films that offend me.

 

if you care to condemn the filmmakers as the pandering weasels that they are…. true hyenas.
i would be interested in that….
Frank

 

I think the best way to teach this idiot a lesson is to make a movie acting out this ridiculous monologue in Snow White and the Hunstman costumes, casting KStew or Lohan as his character in a new Lifetime Movie special. Hey, I’d watch it.

Photo: codenametash.com

H/t Jezebel

Share This Post:
Related Topics: Office Politics • • • •
  • Lastango

    You refer to what the editor wrote as “woman-hating”. To my ear, it sounds more like he is against man-hating.

    Also, I can’t help but notice that you aren’t offering any rebuttals of the editor’s take on “Snow White and the Huntsman”, which gives me the impression you haven’t seen the movie.

    If that’s true, how do you know the editor doesn’t have a point? I haven’t seen the movie, but the many people of both genders recognize — and deplore — the phenomenon the editor seems to be describing. We see it prominently in sit-coms and commercials… a sort of you-go-girl, triumphal high-fiving over men who are portrayed as hapless, inferior, and childlike.

    Did that happen in this movie? I don’t know — I haven’t seen it. But it might have, and speaking for myself I wouldn’t be publicly slamming the editor until I knew. I certainly wouldn’t be calling him a “pig”.

    • Lo

      The hapless-man stereotype makes me sick. If this film makes all the weak characters male and all the strong ones female, I wouldn’t want to see it. Frank, though, seems to be against man-hating by way of woman-hating. Nowhere does he say that he wants to question or abolish ‘traditional’ gender roles, only that he doesn’t want them reversed.

      Perhaps it’s the case that he’s just as strongly against male-dominated films (although he is in favour of publishing reviews featuring male heroes, and doesn’t argue for the inclusion of any assertive female character). Until I see that, though, I’ll continue to back slowly away before he starts talking about our precious bodily fluids.

    • Whitney

      I don’t think anyone needs to see this movie to know how this Frank person feels about the types of characters that women should play in films. I understand that he could have a problem with a man-hating film, but that’s not what his rant is about. Not only does he have a problem with men being portrayed as weak in this film, but he also makes it very clear that he takes issue with a women playing a heroic role. Instead of being in support of a more fair gender portrayal, he is only interested in reviews “where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character.”

      Right, because only male heroes can inspire young people. Boring.

    • Lastango

      Well, I see three references by the editor to the characters women play in films, and all three are in the context of the film portraying men as inferior to women. It seems clear he wants roles for men that portray them as strong, not inferior. His stance sounds exaclty like what a feminist would say when objecting to roles that show women as second-best compared to men.

      I can not find a statement or even a suggestion that he thinks the women should be inferior to men, or that a strong role for a man requires that the women be lesser. He is not specific about that, but I wouldn’t expect him to be because that isn’t his subject. Nothing he has said rules out the possibility that he is against marginalizing any identifiable group of people.
      I think we need to be careful we don’t slam the guy for what he didn’t say. We don’t know what he thinks about strong roles for women.