My husband is a carpenter, and when I showed him Overboard he HATED it. Because she threw his tools overboard. "What sort of a monster IS SHE? Doesn't she know how expensive they are?"
The first time I watched this with my Mom and the girls said 'mine' about the baby, she just laughed and said 'if they'd taken any of their mothers with them they'd have been able to tell the dads that none of those girls had been there long enough to give birth yet - that's what you get for leaving women out of things'.
@@sandyr-w6906 with nobody with any medical training, no medical equipment, no proper sanitation, no incubators etc... there's no way a premie would survive. Not all full term babies did.
@@mortisrat i understand what your saying, but you forget the "movie magic" people are over analyzing the baby and all that. I enjoy the movie and Im not overanalyzing it.
@@sandyr-w6906 I thought it was a funny statement. You're the one who decided to try to disprove it, and now that I mentioned you made a rather silly point, suddenly the whole issue is irrelevant?? It was just a joke my Mom once made. It's funny, but also has a little truth history/society wise. Why try to pick holes in it in the first place?
Nobody's going to talk about Gideon giving his oldest brother, the guy who raised him, a straight up roasting over how badly Adam messed up as a husband? Because that's a high point of the story for me.
I'm a militant feminist and Grease is one of my all time favorite movies. I'm aware that the movie is pretty misogynistic and am very critical of it, but I'm not gonna pretend that I don't have fun every time I watch it
I think 'misogynistic' is a bit of a stretch... I mean yeah it shows a woman changing herself to please a man, but it's worth noting the cultural implications of her transformation; it's also her becoming liberated and taking control of her sexuality, rejecting old fashioned feminine norms. That still doesn't hold up to today's standards of feminism, but we must consider these films in the context they were made. it would be a far more sexist film if the transformation was in reverse, and the greaser girl turns herself into conservative repressed Sandy D to please her boyfriend. Also, consider the character of Rizzo. She's a girl who is obviously sexually active, and almost falls pregnant as a teenager, but the film gives her empathy and understanding, not judgement.
I love You've Got Mail and I am hyperaware of all the manipulation and lies from Tom Hanks and the fact that both characters cheat. I still love it. It's a film, not a moral treatise. lol
@Ryan Scates I think both ways of looking at it are valid-I think _why_ someone likes or dislikes a movie or a book, is far far more important than *which* one they do or don't like or dislike(And I think that's kind of the point of this whole entire video too). ^^ But, perhaps, the movie creators intended it to be more of a story about her figuring out what she herself did or didn't actually WANT to be..even in the face of everyone else all telling her to be multiple differing things..or something like that(Whether that's what actually came through the clearest or not)? I have no way of knowing - because, I'm not in their minds, I'm only ever in my own mind. And, beyond a certain point, it doesn't always even entirely matter what the creator of it intended to do with it or not..at least, not so much as it really just matters what each individual does or doesn't choose to do with it themself, when consuming it afterward. It doesn't always mean that either person is a bad person, just because they feel completely different ways about the same thing. Nor does it mean so simply because each person saw, or got, something totally different than each other did . . even in, or out of, the otherwise same thing. Just because some person _could_ use a food allergen to intentionally poison someone, doesn't necessarily mean that literally every person in the world should cease using that allergen for other people who won't be poisoned by it at all.
@Ryan Scates Unless that joke is specifically the thing you like about something? Or unless the reason why you like something which utilizes that particular trope is because that's how you see all relationships other than one very specific kind? It's not a big deal if anyone sometimes likes or appreciates things that are not totally perfect. Some people's inability to recognize a thing's imperfection or negatives themself, is not the same thing as those imperfections or negatives in fact being the thing that everyone who likes it does actually like about that said-thing.
It makes an immense difference that Seven Brides captures some of the best dancing and choreography committed to film, and Howard Keel and Jane Powell at the peak of their talents.
I was hoping someone was going to mention this! The dancing and choreography is one of my favorite things about the movie, especially the barn-raising scene and the wood-chopping scene.
One of the reasons I think I overlooked the kidnapping/sexism of 7 Brides when I was younger is because of the way women function differently in each setting. Millie has much more autonomy in the mountains than she does as a barmaid. In both the town setting and the rural setting, the girls are commodified by the men around them, but they are depicted as having so much more efficacy and self-determination in that rural setting. Their behaviors are sort of less confined (snow balls with rocks in them, deservedly so). During the kidnapping scene most of the women are needle pointing. The seem like decorative people with a decorative function. Out on the homestead, they are homesteading. The decisions the women make drive so much of the movie. Millie changes the trajectory of the brothers lives. The other women secure the brothers' lives and arrange their own marriages by outsmarting their own fathers. I feel like I intuitively understood this as a kid but then as I got older and more...detail oriented, I started missing the forest for the trees.
I agree. Society set some pretty severe limitations on them because of their gender, but ultimately they were able to empower themselves. I also think that movies focus too much on traditionally masculine ways of exerting power (ie beating the crap out of people for a zero sum solution), I think it’s nice to see power shifts in a more traditionally feminine way, with compromise and relationship building. Also, the dancing is awesome.
Completely agree. I watched this movie all the time growing up, and looking back on it I definitely see the parts that are problematic, but just like you said, Milly handled her situation with grace, forgiveness, and determination. She greatly effected the brothers' lives for the better and has way more autonomy and agency than she did in the bar. And we know that the girls did prefer the brothers to the guys they were "promised" to, which is already a disgusting thing to think about. Kidnapping shouldn't have been the answer but, they clearly like their lives when they have more agency and control. Kidnapping is still fucked up, but they could've gone back home when the snow thawed if they hated it so much
@@MsDiving1 Jacques d'Ambois, who played the 5th brother Ephraim Pontipee, was actually a professional dancer with the New York City Ballet. He was cast in Seven Brides because he was a professional dancer
Sorry, I know this comment is old but I was rewatching this video and I think you nailed why I like this movie- it’s from a time (the filming and the time period of the film) when women had basically no other option but marriage and homemaking, and in the mountains the girls have a lot of autonomy within that sphere- Milly forbids seven men twice her size from entering the house, and they all listen. She makes them into civilized men and she’s clearly the ‘head of the household’ in a lot of ways, which within the context of the film… I don’t want to call it empowering but she’s not weak. The women are, at least, allowed to make some choice and have some amount of power.
I think the difference is: Had Overboard had the guy kidnap the rich woman because he had a crush on her and wanted to marry her, it would have been seen as creepy and uncomfortable as Seven Brides. As movie goers we know the story will likely end up there, but the story pretends it is about revenge with a romantic ending. We also spend time watching them fall for each other which justifies many misgiving we might have had. We spend time with the couple. As for Seven Brides, why some people love it, you need to watch it from a fairytail child perspective and cut out any adult understanding of reality. All the brothers and brides are attractive, all of them decent, the authors and viewers know this, it is rose-tinted, false and idyllic, because it comes from the storypoint that the kindappers and the kidnapped are already written as compatible in the writers/readers mind and they only need to walk the short path to romance to have a blissful happily ever after.
Exactly. The whole point to the barn-raising dance number is to give you this impression that the women from the town and the brothers take a fancy to each other despite the women already having suitors. This is exactly why the girls pay attention to the brothers even while the girls are dancing with their own suitors, and why they end the dance by leaving their suitors to jump into the arms of the brothers. It's meant to convey the impression that during the course of the afternoon, the girls had a nearly "love at first sight" moment with the boys. Just as Milly did the first time she looked at Adam (which is why she so distractedly ladled food into that guys lap instead of his bowl). Naturally, things go awry when the townsmen push the boys into having a brawl, mostly out of jealousy that "their girls" are suddenly making eyes at other men. Given the fact that boys don't get to go anywhere near the girls after the kidnapping, and that we know they are there for several months, the implication is that as the girls came to know the brothers better, they fell back on that initial attraction to the boys. Compare that to Overboard where a man gaslights and emotionally tortures a woman--who admittedly was a bitch, that's true, but at this particular moment is in a weakened mental state and has no idea who she is or what friends and family, if any, she can turn to--and does it all out of revenge. Getting her to do the chores around his house and deal with the kids because he's fed up and doesn't want to (and seemingly never had to when his wife was alive) doesn't help him recoup any financial loss from the job she stiffed him on. It's just for kicks. And yeah, he *does* have sex with her, after he's gaslighted her into believing she is his wife. Granted, not right away, it's at least a few weeks later, but still...she has developed these feelings for him under false pretenses. My mom loves both these movies, and on a recent rewatch of Overboard, I saw a lot about Overboard that made me uncomfortable and not liking Russell's character very much. And the whole thing was so "macho revenge fantasy" in the beginning that I never could find much to laugh at. At least with Seven Brides, there is a touch of unreality to it.
@@Skye_Writer Well, to be fair to Russell's character, he had to work and couldn't afford someone to watch his kids while he was out. Hawn's character had stiffed him out of the money to feed his family and care for them. The revenge aspect was there, but it was also a solution and a way for him to earn money to take care of his family, while leaving them to be cared for by someone who considered themselves their mom. She'd behaved in a completely inhuman manner, so it's understandable that he doesn't consider her humanity at first. The fact that he does try to tell her the truth and make up for what he did, but is stymied by his kids, is his own redemption arc there.
I did not come expecting to hear that sweet mother-son conversation at the end, but I am here for it. When you can talk to your mom about movies like that, you know you share a good relationship. Warms my heart.
Honestly, the fact that this guy liked some of Ayn Rand's books because he thought they were satire is further proof of his point that, maybe, people can like problematic media without necessarily holding the problematic beliefs
I’ve never seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers but I do think there’s an aesthetic to these kind of movies. Even if they’re patriarchal and sorta problematic, they’re fun and campy and expresses this romanticism in femininity. Modern cinema has been lacking in it in our attempt to be more progressive (which just props up masculinity as more “respectable”). Not that I want movies to bring back treating predatory and abusive behaviours as romantic but movies where girls can just dress cute or fall in love or whatever without it having to mean anything.
I just saw Seven Brides by Seven Brothers. The video left out that the girls did actually liked the brothers in the dance, before the other suitors started a fight witch made them unable to visit the girls anymore. They didn’t go get some random girls but ones they already had crushes on. Not that it changes much, but I do think it changes the dynamics a little.
@@sarasamaletdin4574 at least one of the girls is shown hoping the guy will "call on her" the night of the kidnapping and being dissapointed when he doesn't but I think it's important to point out you can kidnap a consensual partner and it doesn't make the kidnapping consensual. Taking the girls "ruins" them that's why when they do want to marry the boys they claim the baby as theirs. The implication is if they had been raped they would still be getting married and that's pretty icky. It's my favorite musical but it's not okay at all in its framing of consent.
@@sarasamaletdin4574 To be fair, he does point out that he noticed that scene you mentioned on rewatch and he talks about it with his mother in their conversation at the end of the video. 😉
Here's the thing though... what exactly _IS_ "femininity" or "dressing cute" anyway? For some people, it's something very very specific. For other people, it's a lot broader and more general-like femininity is basically just anything female, and what style of dressing is or isn't "cute" can differ quite a lot from one individual person's own personal taste to another's. The problem is that these very different ways of thinking, also, rarely seem to ever agree....not even just to peaceably & respectfully disagree.
I’m not done with this video but I grew up in a theater family. I was exposed to this seven brides as a little girl and really loved it as a kid somehow. Looking back as an adult with my adult life shaped by sexism and sexually abusive relationships with men my relationship to this movie is so weird and I can only look back on it in weird horror. It makes me feel oddly indoctrinated. Idk how to explain it.
I was wondering the same thing, because I loved that story when I was in school. I am thinking that the issue is the difference between liking the story and liking the ideology. When we were younger, we didn't understand the values embedded in the story and just saw the women falling in love with the men. The story is cute if the reality is love. The problem is stories like this are created (and with unhealthy messages), which perpetuate unhealthy assumptions about women's roles and worth. Now that we understand the ideology, we are very disturbed.
@@beejls I agree, I don't think anyone was trying to suppress women with a movie like this, it's just how people used to think and unfortunately these types of tropes in movies help to continue these ideas.
Hi! I just came back to this video and just wanted to say I loved your section on morality in media as well. Although seven brides for seven brothers still disturbs me and I think it’s not really material to show to your children without proper talks about consent and love (which I didn’t get as a kid). There is NOTHING wrong with loving this movie at all. I find women who like this kind of media especially get really shit all over by people thinking it’s somehow feminist to dunk women’s opinions all day and it isn’t healthy at all. I’ve been on the side of liking very similar problematic content and getting shit on in online groups that claim to stand up for me, it’s horrible. Put something that is often on my mind into words well. Don’t want someone to use my comment to fuel horrible media takes like that.
It occurs to me that members of the oppressed class (in this case, women) may see Milly as the strong, independent, willful woman struggling against her oppression within the confines of an existing social order she can't escape but *can * change, even if just a little in her own personal sphere. Their focus is on the actions of the women. Those who are not members of that oppressed class, even if they are feminists, are more likely to watch the movie with a focus on the actions of the men, and rightly conclude that those actions are terrifyingly horrible.
This! I completely understand how horrifying the "reality" of this movie is, but when I was younger my favorite part was always Milly kicking the men into shape and all the girls throwing them out when they messed up. I loved that she existed in a world where she could do something like that and "get away with it." (Context: complicated personal history that involved a lot of emotional suppression.) To me, as a woman, it was great to imagine that I could be direct and take such big actions if the men in my life messed up. And it wouldn't mean I break or destroy my relationships or that they would take revenge, just that they would take time to reflect and earnestly work at making up for their wrongs towards me. THAT was the fantasy: men who didn't suppress you emotionally and accepted the consequences of their actions. (Adam? Different story. He ran off during a time his family would need him and threw a hissy fit so I didn't much have sympathy for him.)
It’s funny you mentioned class because I was thinking Swept Away was the 1974 movie Swept Away, not the Kurt and Goldie movie , where the oppressor is the rich boat owner who treats the hired help like trash until they get swept away to a desert island where the help quickly turns the tables and makes his former employer his subservient lesser until she falls for him after much abuse.
Your first point, I agree with. The idea oppressors who benefitted from the misogynist worldview of the movie, or are more likely to be privileged, if they object to the premise of the movie is absolutely ridiculous. I don't see how you could possibly think men are more likely to dislike the misogyny in the movie than women are.
@@theMoporter Way to #StrawMan everything I said, wow. That is *NOT* *anything* I wrote down and I have no clue what mess of jumbled thoughts gave you that idea. What I *did* say was that women are more likely to identify with the lead female protagonist and her indomitable fight against her oppression, and to like the movie because of her. Those who are not members of the oppressed class won't have that perspective; they see *only* the oppression. And if *all* you see is the oppression, you're not going to enjoy the movie at all. *Of course* women are going to notice the oppression and object to it. But it's an oppression they live with every day. The novelty in the movie is Milly's resistance. That's the wish-fulfillment fantasy that afab women in the audience enjoy that amab men in the audience aren't going to appreciate until it's pointed out to them. You're quick to misunderstand, quick to take offense, quick to attack, and slow to temperance. I don't think the internet is a good fit for your personality. You might try finding other hobbies.
I distinctly remember the day I asked my best friend if she had seen the movie Cruel Intentions. And she replied, "What, that degenerate fucked up smut garbage?" and my heart dropped like wow this is how I lose my best friend "Yes..." And thankfully she said "Yeah I fucking love that movie!" And I'm so glad we can still enjoy fucked up movies like that and also conclude that incest in a real world context is fucking awful because we are not defined by our favorite film plots or characters.
Same with Twilight and everyone spending so much time and venom against teen girls like they are morons who can’t know that real relationships don’t function like interactions with vampires.
@@sarasamaletdin4574 problematic elements of twilight aside for a second, the movie is a great example of how society has a special kind of of vitriol for media that's made for teenage girls
@@Gloomdrake yep, while much as been said about Transformers and Michael Bay, that mostly came from certain people and was much quieter than the hate that Twilight got and everyone suddenly thinking girls would go out with predators more than however much they do or don't already. Yet Transforms contains WAY worse things.
What makes me laugh is I know someone who hates "Cruel Intentions" but loves "Dangerous Liaisons"--they are the same movie. Seriously...the only difference is one is a period piece (based on the classic novel "Les Liaisons Dangereux") starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich...and the other is the "teen drama" version. Other than that, it's basically copy-paste then find-replace in film format. Also, it's not a bad movie. It's got a few VERY poorly done parts and there are casting issues (not on Sarah Michelle Gellar's part--she rocks it going against her type-casting), but the premise of the idle rich and their idle hands irrevocably damaging and destroying others is something that needs to be seen. Because it was, is, and will still be true. The only difference is that it's not played for comedy like in "Trading Places"--both movies show the horrible human cost of those games.
I absolutely agree that we need to stop treating people's media preferences as a way to scry into their deepest souls and moral beliefs. One of my very favorite books is The Bone People by Keri Hulme, and I'm always a little afraid to say so. It makes you empathize with a child abuser, the child he beats, and the community that looks the other way. But it also immerses you in the perspective of the Maori people and those who are caught uncomfortably between Maori and colonizer ancestry, and it does it in breathtaking language, and I wish more people were willing to give it a chance instead of just writing it off because good and evil are not clearly marked out for them.
I've never told anyone I know how impressed I was with Kevin Bacon's film _The Woodman,_ and how I could see what his character was going through. Why? Because he plays a convicted pedophile. The story is told from his point of view, and it's about what happens after he's released on parole. It's a brilliant film with a great plot and great acting, but of course it disappeared after its theatrical run, and nobody EVER talks about it. But it's so worth watching if you want to understand something about how these guys' minds work. (The point of the story is that he ends up redeeming himself in a surprising way.)
I think it's because is a musical and people assume it is a light tale, before listening to the plot. Also the aesthetics and the way Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is presented, it all seems so dreamy and removed from reality with it's cutsy music from western times (also not a feminine era at all, so even more removed from life) and with it's pretty technicolor sets and monochromatic costumes. All in my opinion makes the movie more "romcom" like, and very "feminine presenting" (but again this movie is my guilty pleasure😅)
@@fefe_naomif My reply from that went on too long, so I had to make it a separate comment. 😂 Hope you see it too. (No pressure 😅) Was Frank your fav too? 😆😆😆
Yeah it being a musical does a lot to declaw the movie considering it makes it so much more absurd than something grounded which could be taken seriously. It is textually terrifying, but it's delivered in such a way that it's hard to take seriously.
I loved this movie when I was a little girl for similar reasons. Millie is awesome. She is a fully formed character and is always standing up for herself. The film is a series of her telling off Adam for being entitled and terrible towards others. She also takes over the family. One of the central conflicts is the power struggle between her and Adam over influencing the other brothers. I named my favorite doll after her. The kidnapping went mostly over my head as a child, and I got more disturbed by that aspect of the film when I got older. But I still love Millie. ...also the songs are surprisingly catchy and the dancing is amazing. I have such conflicted feelings toward this movie now I'm older.
What's really funny is that my mum openly explained the reference to us back when we watched it as children and still happily watched it and let us watch it!? It wasn't till years later that I found out the Sabine women story and that it was all about rape 🤯
Seven brides is the 1950s romantisizing the 1850s romantisizing the Good Ol' Days. No wonder it's fucked up all the way. But the barn dance scene is still absolute fire
I wanna talk about the cultural context and reactionary politics of movies like these for a moment because it's a point of fascination for me. I think a lot of people look back on movies like Seven Brides like they were from a simpler time when people didn't see anything wrong with this stuff, but they absolutely weren't and that was the point. At the time, the volume was being turned up on the women's movement and a lot of people were insecure and anxious about things changing. So westerns -- movies that had previously been mostly a reaction to rapid progress and alienation -- became more about gender and race and age. They created an imagined version of the past where white men were gods and if only modern men would go back to their masterful ways of old, everyone would be happier in their rightful place. The fantasy here was that women were only unhappy with men in the 60s because men weren't being tough and manly enough and that all it would take was a firm hand to fix that. But in real life, many people were most definitely appalled by some of these backward movies and said so. (One infamously misogynistic John Wayne movie, McClintock, even had one of the movie's strawmen call Wayne a reactionary to mock this.) That leaves some cultural context: there was, for a very long time, a prevalent assumption that every woman FIERCELY wanted to be married and to take care of a strong manly man (whether she'd admit to it or not) far more than she wanted to find true love. For the Brides, their desire to marry the Brothers would've been seen not just as a result of them being attracted right off and falling in love over time, but as an extension of their natural female desire for marriage. (Hence them singing about marriage instead of love.) ((and let's not forget that, at the time, marrying for love hadn't been common for all that long.)) So the truly toxic assumption a lot of people were taking comfort in here, was that you can't force something on a person if it's in their "nature" to want it. And wouldn't everything be simpler if no one had a choice? (That last one is a weird staple of romcoms: couples being forced together by something beyond their control.) The concept of the conflict between romantic leads is just, I think, a reaction to typecasting and cliched endings. Everyone knows the couple(s) will get together in the end, so what do we do till then? Where does the conflict come from?
7 wives for 7 brothers was released in 1954 though, while a few more women were entering the workforce, my understanding of that this time period is pretty much that it was the height of that conservative nuclear family model. This film was about 10 years before The Feminine Mystique was released (I'm not a fan of Betty Friedman but it's often thought of as a kind of breaking point for the second wave feminism). Getting married as soon as you can and having kids was still the norm at this point. I thought that only really started to change with the pill and many more women entering the workforce in the 60s? I'm not an expert though, it would really be interesting to know what kinds of things might have been happening leading up to the 60s if it's a topic you know more about. Your point about cowboy movies and the role of nostalgia during times of societal change and division is really important though, and it's a really core appeal of conservatism. I haven't thought about it as relating to film before, that's a really interesting thing to think about and it makes a lot of sense.
For me, Goldie & Kurt being a well-known couple helps my brain react more "Aw, it's funny cuz they're together in real life," so it's easier to suspend my disbelief & look past the plot's questionable circumstances. But more importantly, THAT FALSETTO CHILD SHIRT?!?! 🤣
There’s that couple factor but I also think it gets a pass because of how funny the barbs are…Goldie especially just gets some really great ones in. They’re matched tit for tat.
I watched Seven Brides when I was a child, as someone who loved musicals. As an adult, it’s still a very regular comfort movie for me. My thing is: sexism permeates basically every aspect of media. If I refused to enjoy things because of sexist messaging or undertones, I would be permanently miserable. For me, and many other women, it’s sort of a case by case basis on what we find acceptable or unacceptable. For me, this movie is an “acceptable”, or at least lighthearted amount of sexism, as opposed to something like Shallow Hal. The songs are fun, the dancing is great, and half the brothers are super hot. And I’m okay with that position, because I have enough media literacy to interact with it from a healthy distance. (Also I just pretend that Gideon beat the shit out of Adam and that he never came back. It’s fuck Adam every day in this household.)
My conservative grandparents were fine with me watching “the classics,” but not evil stuff like Pokémon. Going back, and realizing that, oh, yeah, Holiday Inn has classic songs alongside a musical number in black face, or The Ten Commandments has a woman sell herself into sexual slavery to save the man she loves from being executed, etc, etc, is always fun.
OMG. I love Holiday Inn so much more than White Christmas. But the "Abraham" song was terrible simplistic history, and terribly racist even for the time. Like black people were supposed to praise him as a Messiah figure. And then to do it in blackface, (which obviously was a plot point to hide the girl from Ted), the waitresses & waiters etc dressed up in pikaninny clothes and hair. Jesus wept 😭. I watch it every Christmas because I love it. But I have to tell my kids how utterly tasteless & wrong that scene is and why.
I love your conversation about your partner. Because as someone who was wildly independent, in her 30s, for 10 yrs until I fell ridiculously in love with my partner, love absolutely does not solve things. I know who I am, my partner knows themself, and now we've got to move our lives around eachother. Its complicated as hell. I was happy on my own and doing what I wanted whenever I wanted, but now... damn. Its good seeing other 30 somethings, discussing all the things I feel. Especially the Dont Look Up parts.
It’s especially interesting coming upon these conversations because I wound up meeting and dating my current partner as a result of Pandemic isolation. Because of that, our relationship moved at very weird and inconsistent speeds. So far it’s going pretty good and we’re happy, but I’m honestly not sure how removed I feel from my independent, single, self because the last time I was in that state, I was mentally on the verge of falling apart like everyone else June 2020. To be clear, I did not start the relationship as a coping mechanism. It was just being locked in an apartment all day by myself gave me a lot more time to casually browse apps and we didn’t even go on an actual date until a month and a half of messaging each other. Of course we have the things about each other that drive us crazy and we both value our alone time and who we are outside of each other but I do wonder whether or not him or that independent self prior to knowing him would make me happier.
Welp…about a year or so later, we have decided to split up come July. We care about each other, but there are just things about each other that we can’t really reconcile with and we can’t keep pretending we can give each other what we want anymore. We’ve both known this on our own for a few months but finally admitted it to each other a month ago.
I'm just happy to see interesting Seven Brides for Seven Brothers analysis in 2022! Literally my favorite movie as a seven year old. It was like watching a live-action version of the kind of insanity I would play out with my barbie dolls.
omg I'm commenting before I even watch the video. I'm so glad you're covering Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I love that movie even if the actual plot is creepy af. There's just something about the music and choreography that's so amazing. Can't wait to listen to your take on it.
SBFSB is one of my favorite movies simply because it feels like a fever dream whenever I recount the plot to someone. (And also the barn raising scene.) Thanks for this, Sarge!
This is EXACTLY how I wanted to spend Valentine's Day: a Cold Crash critical analysis of two movies I've never seen in my life. Love the segment about how we treat media preferences as a window into a person's morals, and how sometimes simple validation is reason enough to enjoy a film's politics.
You're absolutely right about the moralising of films people like - it's the inevitable outcome of treating politics like a fandom - people treat fandoms like politics
So a weird thing is that cedar actually is better for clothes storage. The common person doesn't typically use it, because cost. Also you can get some of the same effect by using cedar chips like potpourri.
What a wonderful conclusion to the video: mother and son discussing a movie. On the subject of Seven Brides, I'm more on your mom's side, at least partly due to an affection for musicals that dates back to my earliest childhood. I imprinted on Milly. I loved the songs. Yet even so, I always found myself feeling ill at ease during the scene in which the brothers are taking the kidnapped women back to their home, and they use the women's CRIES FOR HELP to cause an avalanche to stop the pursuit, weaponizing their distress against them. Even though I love the film as a whole, that moment has always felt wrong to me. One character who deserves a mention, I think, is Adam's youngest brother Gideon, played by Russ Tamblyn. In a scene not far from the end of the film, he confronts Adam about the latter's treatment of Milly. "You've lived with Milly as man and wife and you don't know nothing about her! She's proud and spunky. She'd never bring herself to ask you back." Gideon, at least, has learned something of value. Adam's a bit later to the party.
Haven't finished the video yet, but thanks for doing this. I've tried to figure out what Overboard does right more than once, and I think you explain it better than I could. Great video! "They might as well have paired off based on favorite colors." I remember Paw's review of Seven Brides, where he pointed out the crime of pairing Julie Newmar, one of the best dancers and singers in the entire cast, with some former baseball player who could NEITHER SING NOR DANCE. Compatibility isn't even an afterthought indeed.
I am 26 and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in one of my favorite movies of all time. Mostly for the same reasons your mom has, but also because of the amazing dancing. All the brothers except from Adam were hired from a ballet troupe, and it shows. It's beautiful.
This was such a great video, I definitely think media criticism has a tendency to criticize people who enjoy a piece of media rather than (or in addition to) the media itself. I had the same reaction with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers- I thought, what an awful, misogynistic piece of media. And by extension, assumed everyone who enjoyed it partially agreed with the idea that women belong in the household, cleaning up after juvenile men. But I really enjoyed hearing your mother's perspective and I think you've really made me question how many of my opinions on movies/tv shows are also a judgement on people who I've never even interacted with.
My first dance instructor was one of the Brides, and holy hell did she never ever let anyone forget it. It was this big deal where we were, and it was actually really difficult to get into her classes. Which were like friggin boot camp...and the outfits we performed in. Good gracious. Lots of older men came alone to watch our performances, if you catch my meaning. As with many gays, I was a hard-core musical theatre fiend (still am) and ended up going to a fairly prestigious theatre school and worked as a costumer for many years. I have a deep and abiding love for musicals and movies and all forms of theatre. But looking back on all of the media I ingested as a youngin can kinda make my skin crawl now. (It also explains a LOT about the horrible relationship choices I made in my 20s.) I was largely raised by my grandparents, so my knowledge of and exposure to pre-1970s film is much greater than almost anyone else I know. It serves as a stark reminder that as awful as much of our media still remains, we have made SOME progress. Ish. I have a daughter now, she is nine going on twenty-nine. She is FAR too mature for my own good; there are some films which were very formative to me that I don't want to share with her. Which is sad in a way, even though they can spark amazing discussions I miss the purity of just enjoying some of them the way I did at her age. She is whip smart, and often points crap out I hadn't noticed or mentioned (not ten minutes ago she told me she was annoyed that the last three shows she watched cast POC as the antagonists). I have hope for her future. But I do miss watching these old movies with the wide, shining eyes I had at her age. Ann Miller in Kiss Me Kate is entirely exempt--dont even bother saying a single word, I will not hear it. Ann can and will forever be my problematic fav. Watch her face. She knew what she was singing, 1953 or no. "I'm a girl who would marry and would take with no qualms..." 🍆
@@lukanxo5353 What I take issue with is Ann throwing that same magenta scarf into the camera lens 3 times. Even seeing it in 3D doesn't justify that scarf!
On the other hand, she never has to experience the bitterness or regret of coming back to those older movies and seeing how repugnant they are under the surface. Having no nostalgia for them can make it easier to appreciate.
Honestly, man, you've got a unique enough perspective in all your video essays and make such cogent, well researched and argued interpretations of any given piece of media you come across, I look forward to all your videos! I think it's great you're just examining your own tastes, you don't need to examine the most topical or highly talked about movies- a million people are already doing that, I guarantee you nobody else is going to be discussing gender and class division through comparing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to Overboard, that's an interesting video!
The collective "MINE!" has always been one of my favorite moments in the film. This is a setting where women have limited rights, and limited agency outside the home, but they manipulate that regressive system to get what they want.
One could argue Dean did compensate her for her labor since he was only going to “keep her” long enough to pay back the work he did. Her work to economically equal his. Admittedly one of my favorite movies growing up
Yes, I was thinking this as he was talking too. I don't think he felt that housework shouldn't be compensated for. Even tho he gets her to work that role because he cons her into thinking she's his wife HE thinks of her as a MAID who is paying off the debt she owes him. He even calculates it out roughly when he tells his friend how long he intends to keep her. If he'd included sex in his plan that would've been creepy! As this guy says, when love and sex got thrown into the mix that's when it got TRULY messy and heartbreak became inevitable
Carousel is my mother's favourite musical and we both watched it again in recent years and were fairly horrified by the attitude towards domestic abuse. Even though carousel has literal fantasy elements there is a gritty realism to it that seven brides lacks - for me seven brides is pure escapism it's a fantasy version of the past where there are no bad endings and no bad guys - the kidnappers only kidnapped because they are silly and believe this is the way to the women's hearts and not for nefarious reasons. No harm comes to them and I agree with other commenters that the women and especially Millie have a strange sort of autonomy and set the rules up in the mountains - like Millie was going to refuse to let Adam into their bedroom on their wedding night, definitely something that women of that time (and I'm sure some still today) wouldn't be given the option of doing. I think that if seven brides was any less campy and fun and ridiculous that it would be full on creep but it's not supposed to be taken seriously at all imo.
seven brides is fuuuucked up, but i watched it probably a hundred times as a very small child, so i have a strong bond with it. (this seems to be the case for many people.) i called it "dancin' boys" cos the title was just too long for a 3-4 year old. i still love it to this day, but i'd never recommend it to anyone without a serious caveat. i'm looking forward to what you have to say about it.
Your stance towards love - and being a-ok alone - aligns fully with my own. And the way you put it was a bit of an eye-opener to me, in that I've not yet met anyone whom I loved enough to deal with the complications love comes with. So that was interesting! You know, along with, how cool and interesting this comparison is. xD I friggin' love Overboard.
I legitimately fought with a friend in high school because I found this film so offensive and it was one of their favorites, and you have given me a fascinating new perspective; thank you!
I first watched Seven Brides in elementary school when our music teacher taught a unit on the history of musicals. It was a point of transition from the era when the plot would stop so each character could have a solo to state their feelings, or a dance number to show off, and the more modern format where the songs and dances could help push the plot forward as well. Learning to identify the difference between a song there for character expression, plot progression, or sheer spectacle like the barn dance sequence was probably my first introduction to film analysis now that I think about it. But because the lesson prioritized history and structure, I didn’t stop to think about how creepy the plot is on paper until I was a teenager. And even then, I wrote it off as “of another time” and didn’t think about it much further. Maybe I’ll give it a rewatch and see how I feel now.
My mom also liked SBFSB enough that we grew up watching it a dozen times a year, and after the conversation at the end I put together that she ALSO grew up in a home where there was one brother, the oldest, and several sisters.
Oh, man. As an acespec woman raised by evangelicals, I have SO MANY feelings about romcoms in general and forced romance tropes in particular. I'm demisexual, so literally everyone I've ever been attracted to has been a longtime friend first--and it's never been reciprocated. (The list is short, and the odds were never very good on numbers that small.) More importantly, I've never been attracted to anyone who expressed attraction to me. That means the idea of being trapped in an inescapable situation where I'm expected to be in love with my captor by the end of the story is my actual nightmare--as in, I have had nightmares like this, and because my sleeping brain is unsubtle, I'm usually also dying in them and no one else cares as long as I get married. It's gotten to the point that I can't watch romcoms anymore because the expectation that the leads will kiss by the end makes me anxious and miserable. It doesn't help that there's often no chemistry between the main characters, which makes the plot seem even more forced. SBFSB horrifies me so much in concept that I can't watch it. I only clicked on this video after telling myself that your analysis would be worth the stress. I'm still sorting out how I feel about this video. But it did give me an idea: I think I'd be interested in hearing whether you think there are movies that do a good job of UNforced romance. Not just characters defying societal expectations--any Romeo and Juliet retelling does that--but defying the audience's expectations too. Maybe a May-December romance where the December is a woman or something. 🙄 Thank you for making this. It's given me a lot to think about. Hope your Valentine's with your partner is special.
If you want to see a May-December romance movie where the December is a woman, I thought Ali: Fear Eats The Soul was a pretty good one. It deals with the romantic leads not only defying societal expectations in terms of age, but also of race and class, because it's about an older white lady dating a poor middle-aged Arab immigrant in post-WWII West Germany. Fair warning though, it *does* get pretty heavy, for reasons you can probably guess based on the premise.
@@nightfall3605 I've never watched that movie and I don't know what demisexual means but the first thing that came to mind was 'They should watch Harry and Maude!'
Thank you for giving this a fair take. I think, particularly when you and your mom talked about coming from a family with mostly girls vs. mostly boys, something that tends to get missed in the discussion on SBFSB is the male vs. the female gaze. I would argue part of the reason SBFSB is so popular is it caters to the female gaze (and focuses on an empowered female). Lonely Pole Cat and the barn dance are the best examples I have of this - those scenes seem particularly crafted to appeal to the female audience and pretty blatantly objectifies the men in a way that’s meant for the female gaze, not the male gaze. I think men initially find this story so creepy because they don’t pick up on these underlying subversions and commentary as quickly. I’m also glad y’all touched on the fact that the women clearly liked the men before they were kidnapped. I would even elaborate to say that they clearly had a preference, but the society around them was pressuring them to marry the men in town. Even Millie got a lot of flack for marrying Adam and people kept trying to convince her to leave. While the kidnapping isn’t great, it’s also oddly the vehicle that allows the women to be able to make their own choice in who they wanted to marry instead of having to conform to the societal expectations around them. So while the superficial plot devices may come across extremely misogynistic, it’s actually an incredibly empowering story with a lot of agency in its female characters. Even the ways Millie handles finding out she’s basically been married to be a housemaid are fantastic. She could easily have resigned herself to just doing the cooking and cleaning and adapting to how they do things - but instead she immediately sets boundaries and expectations on how she expects to be treated and how the household will operate, completely taking charge of the situation she’s been put in. So I think there’s a difference between something being set in a misogynistic time period or setting, and the film itself being misogynistic. To say women can’t be empowered because they wouldn’t act the way women would act *now* in a society that looked completely different discounts the ways women empowered themselves at the time and almost delegitimizes it, further disenfranchising them retroactively, IMO.
I watched overboard as a kid but could never remember the name or who was in it, only the unsettling, half-forgotten memory of a woman falling off a boat and then being told she's a wife and a mother and not knowing any better. It has freaked me out for years, the same way people talk about watching watership down as a kid.
I didn't read McKay's tweet as "If you don't like my movie you don't care about climate change" but the reverse, "If you don't care about the climate change you won't like my movie" hence the following tweet to the likes of "robots would find romances weird"
Also, a lot of aromantic people do enjoy romances so robots probably would too? I think it's kind off like how people enjoy movies about serial killers even though they themselves aren't serial killers. They just use their imaginations
Honestly, a movie with the same premise as 7 brides that actually got into the nuances of the relationships instead of taking those marriages for granted would be incredible. So many different relationship dynamics playing out against and with each other, the father and step mother acting as counter weights, all developing the theme of relationships developing out of pure convenience. And in a world with so many people burned out by the search for the perfect partner on dating apps, the idea that love can blossom with whoever is around given enough time is darkly comforting.
Wow. This is definitely the future of online discourse! Thanks for this and just... wow. I'm creating a capstone concert for my theatre major right now that revolves around reclaiming Golden Age musical theatre that I grew up on, with feminist and queer twists. A lot of the shows and movies from that period permanently defined my sense of self-worth as less than the men around me, and as a queer, often masculine woman, I never felt that those stories had a place for me. My dad is a musical theatre performer and he & all of his peers maintain that really old school, objectifying misogyny. It means a lot to see men analyze these stories and examine their own biases in relation to them, because unfortunately that's one of the only ways to make space for others down the line. (Also, this was just a really entertaining one, so thanks for that lol.)
Ok but when your mom described experiencing something differently in a group to alone, my mind immediately jumped to my experience viewing Event Horizon. The first time I watched it, I was alone, in the dark, and hooked, disturbed, tense all the way through. But then I rewatched it with a group of friends at my university film club, and found that I could not take it seriously, and nor could anyone else in the room- we had a fun time with it, definitely, but the goofiness of the film was more prevalent on a second viewing with a group of people. And honestly? I'm so glad I got to experience that film in that way, for my first viewing to be such a terrifying, nerve wracking, and yet thrilling experience, and then for my second to be just sitting back and enjoying a goofy movie with my friends, it's a unique experience that I hope to treasure for a long time.
Watching an analysis of two films that I have never seen before making me really want to watch them now. Typical Sunday night, supposed to work on course work, now hunting down these films online.
this was such a cool video!!! I love seeing how your opinion of a work can change when you apply different lenses or perspectives on it and I loved that you got to hear from your mom about her take on it! Really cool, I hope you do more of these kinds of introspective media analysis essays
The conversation with your mum was so wholesome and really made me rethink the judgements I've had of people who like films, that I considered problematic. Films I liked once and felt I had to distance myself from, rather than consider what I liked about it wasn't because I agreed with certain themes therein. Thank you both, this was an eye opener for me.
1. Your mother is adorable! I'm so happy you shared your discussion! 2. I was so happy to see you upload! I was just thing it had been a while since I had seen your work! You are appreciated! (Clicked the bell for notifications so I won't be 8 days late) Thank you for all you do! I was a preteen when Overboard was current. It was a sleepover staple... I appreciate looking at the tropes & how it is similar/different to other movies based on the times they came out.
I like seven brides and I think its messed up. I actually really like Milly better than any other character in that movie. She doesn't let the brothers or her husband get away with anything. Ever since I was a child though I always thought the women (girls?) falling in love with the boys was weird however I like how they turned the tables on them and forced the brothers to marry them. A poetic twist I guess. I always focused on the feminine power in the movie.
Honestly, when looking at when the girls say the baby is theirs, it's almost like they're proposing to the men, which I thought was a really fun twist. Even at the start where Milly is dealing with the guys, I thought it was an empowering moment of her showing that she wasn't going to put up with whatever just for her husband, she demanded she be respected, which was really powerful to my mom and myself after having to deal with my dad who wouldn't respect the opinions of women (or really anyone for that matter) for a long time.
Great video! I knew I grew up with 7 Brides for 7 Brothers and loved it. Now as an adult I can see that is definitely weird, but still like it regardless. I especially love your conversation about media criticism and how it should be talked about. Every year I get more and more tired of how we talk about media and politicize and simplify it to this and that. This was just a refreshing take so great job.
I can't imagine that anyone loves Seven Brides for Seven Brothers because they're, like, really invested in the love story of Benjamin & Dorcas or whatever. I and everyone I know about love it because it's got vibrant characters, amazing songs, killer choreography, gorgeous backdrops, and delightful comedy. Just exceptional filmmaking. And I totally agree that we can enjoy things that we're critical of and be critical of things we enjoy.
One of the things I took away from Seven Brides was Adam Pontipee's journey from a kind of callous carelessness to a greater empathy. At the beginning of the film, he has only the smallest glimmer of guilt about quickly marrying Milly and pressing her to drudge for his entire family. He hasn't learned much when he encourages his brothers to go kidnap themselves some brides, and he's bullheaded enough to take off and live in a cabin on his own when Milly demands that all the boys stay in the barn. It takes news of his own daughter's birth to start changing his mind, and it doesn't happen right away. He needs some more time on his own to think about what it would be like if someone were to come along and steal his own baby away from her family. By the end of the movie he still has a long way to go, but he's developed a greater understanding for the damage he's done and what he needs to do to make things right, or at least better.
I have not seen either of these movies but from what this video shows me I feel like I have the reverse reaction you did. 7 brides has that old Hollywood whimsy to it that makes me take it a lot less seriously than overboard because that movie feels more grounded to me due to it taking place in more contemporary times.
I like seven brides for seven brothers because it is sort of revolutionary in its choreography. Basically the story makes me so uncomfortable that I laugh at loud but I watch for fancy dancing 🤷♀️
YES! I love when people talk with their parents about the films they like, the whys and how of their enjoyment. Very interested in hearing your mother's thoughts about 7 Brides for 7 Brothers. Perspectives can change over time, and finding out what certain films do for specific audiences is fascinating.
When I hear someone say they love a, well, problematic property, I always follow up with why before I judge. If someone loves Fight Club because they themselves feel disillusioned with capitalism or love the filmmaking, fine. If they love Fight Club because Tyler Durden is the coolest guy ever and they want to join Project Mayhem, that’s a yikes from me.
Wow, you brought in Fight Club? The notoriously complex movie that you could watch on SO MANY levels and analyse 3 ways to sundown and still barely scratch the surface?
I have definitely been guilty of judging people based on their taste in media while having what would be called problematic faves. Thank you for this video, it is going to change the way I interact with people for sure.
Thoroughly enjoyed this exploration. I came here in disbelief that the gem that is Overboard had anything in common with Seven Stockholm Syndrome Brides! Love that extra "t", love your shirts and love that my favorite line from Overboard made the cut. It certainly is "a hell of a day at sea, Sir!" Your description of why you stay with the one you love is so true, it melted my heart!
Stellar vid as always, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was one of my high school English teachers favourite movies, and I remember her showing it to us and having the same gut reaction you did, so it was great to see an in depth commentary. Also I was interested that for the Age of Adaline you pegged Harrison Ford's character and Adaline as the central love interests - I definitely agree, they had the most time and development, but I found that movie frustrating because instead of committing to that interesting plotline and characters they pushed Harrison Ford's son as the love interest that she ended up with, with whom she had no chemistry and no development.
I think it’s absolutely adorable that you made a video comparing these two just so you can feel better about liking one of them ♥️♥️ As a fan of both (they each fall into my top ten of rom coms) I enjoyed this very much 😊
I will fully admit to finding Seven Brides a fun musical, even with all that it is deeply problematic about it. But, if you want to talk about crazy musicals, have you seen Paint your Wagon?
I only ever seen Paint Your Wagon in bits and pieces. I'll have to see it in one sitting, someday it was one of my dad's favorite musicals. Literally the first scene I remember watching was the one where the two friends decide its fine if they both marry the love interest arguing something the lines of "if a man can have two wives there shouldn't be anything saying a woman can't have two husbands." NGL, resolving a love triangle like that had never crossed my mind before seeing that movie, lol.
paint your wagon is godawful just from a filmmaking standpoint. director joshua logan may have been a fine stage director, but he never made a good film. it's always surprising to see what prestige projects were entrusted to him, but the list of his botched efforts is epic: south paciific, camelot, bus stop, picnic, etc.
Great video! I will admit, I'm with your mom. Looking at it now, I know the show is super problematic, but Millie is a strong woman who still manages to take charge of the situation she's in. It's not like she demurely shuffles off to do what she's told; she constantly rebukes Adam and the boys. And I found that really empowering as a child. Plus, the songs and dancing are just amazing
I know this isn’t your point but I actually found it so relatable the way you described your view on relationships and love and that is extremely satisfying.
I had something said to me once, I don't remember about what movie, "if that movie is one of your favourites, that says x about you" My reaction was "it's entertainment? The movie is interesting and well made? It's not teaching me how to live, it's taking me into other worlds and other lives? Huh?!" It's the reaction I have to people saying they hate Ross Geller from Friends or Love Actually. Liking the movie or characters isn't condoning their behaviour or flaws. Bad behaviour and flaws give depths to characters. It's entertaining.
This is somewhat beside the point, but as a person that is sometimes self reliant to a fault, grew up thinking they'd definitely never get married and just go it alone, but has been lucky enough to find a person I want to spend the rest of my life with, listening to you talk about love being complicated while also saying you can't go back, that how you want your partner's perspective on all the things made me all kinds of misty. It just hit home in a very, very relatable way that I've struggled to pin down or explain
As a child, of a parent and grandparent who both loved musicals, I enjoyed 7 Brides for the vivid colours and the songs. When I watched it again as an adult I was shocked by the story 🤣 It is a horrible premise. It always fascinates me how our perception of things changes, as our experiences broaden and we age. Still love Overboard though. The chemistry between the leads is no joke. I also enjoy how the children gain confidence through "Annie" having their backs. She disciplines them when they need it, finds ways to engage them at their own level for learning and she is 100% there for them when needed. Oh and her apology to the butler is great. Thanks for this video, it was entertaining and straight out of left field 🥰
My husband is a carpenter, and when I showed him Overboard he HATED it.
Because she threw his tools overboard.
"What sort of a monster IS SHE? Doesn't she know how expensive they are?"
Yikes. 🚩🚩🚩
Exactly!! Weird lady for doing that :o
@@ThatWeirdFinn Carpenters can't work without their tools! He refused to continue to watch the movie afterwards 🤣
I thought the same. I know what it's like to lose a bunch of really nice tools. I was not fond of that movie, and that was only one reason.
Haha! That's sort of the point, isn't it? She's so awful that you have a hard time feeling bad for her in the beginning of the movie
The first time I watched this with my Mom and the girls said 'mine' about the baby, she just laughed and said 'if they'd taken any of their mothers with them they'd have been able to tell the dads that none of those girls had been there long enough to give birth yet - that's what you get for leaving women out of things'.
That’s actually quite funny
But tgen again, the baby could have been born early. My son came 3 months early.
@@sandyr-w6906 with nobody with any medical training, no medical equipment, no proper sanitation, no incubators etc... there's no way a premie would survive. Not all full term babies did.
@@mortisrat i understand what your saying, but you forget the "movie magic" people are over analyzing the baby and all that. I enjoy the movie and Im not overanalyzing it.
@@sandyr-w6906 I thought it was a funny statement. You're the one who decided to try to disprove it, and now that I mentioned you made a rather silly point, suddenly the whole issue is irrelevant??
It was just a joke my Mom once made. It's funny, but also has a little truth history/society wise. Why try to pick holes in it in the first place?
Nobody's going to talk about Gideon giving his oldest brother, the guy who raised him, a straight up roasting over how badly Adam messed up as a husband? Because that's a high point of the story for me.
Gideon is easily the best of them. He’s always been my favorite brother.
I'm a militant feminist and Grease is one of my all time favorite movies. I'm aware that the movie is pretty misogynistic and am very critical of it, but I'm not gonna pretend that I don't have fun every time I watch it
It's electrifying!
I think 'misogynistic' is a bit of a stretch... I mean yeah it shows a woman changing herself to please a man, but it's worth noting the cultural implications of her transformation; it's also her becoming liberated and taking control of her sexuality, rejecting old fashioned feminine norms. That still doesn't hold up to today's standards of feminism, but we must consider these films in the context they were made. it would be a far more sexist film if the transformation was in reverse, and the greaser girl turns herself into conservative repressed Sandy D to please her boyfriend. Also, consider the character of Rizzo. She's a girl who is obviously sexually active, and almost falls pregnant as a teenager, but the film gives her empathy and understanding, not judgement.
I love You've Got Mail and I am hyperaware of all the manipulation and lies from Tom Hanks and the fact that both characters cheat. I still love it. It's a film, not a moral treatise. lol
@Ryan Scates I think both ways of looking at it are valid-I think _why_ someone likes or dislikes a movie or a book, is far far more important than *which* one they do or don't like or dislike(And I think that's kind of the point of this whole entire video too). ^^
But, perhaps, the movie creators intended it to be more of a story about her figuring out what she herself did or didn't actually WANT to be..even in the face of everyone else all telling her to be multiple differing things..or something like that(Whether that's what actually came through the clearest or not)? I have no way of knowing - because, I'm not in their minds, I'm only ever in my own mind. And, beyond a certain point, it doesn't always even entirely matter what the creator of it intended to do with it or not..at least, not so much as it really just matters what each individual does or doesn't choose to do with it themself, when consuming it afterward.
It doesn't always mean that either person is a bad person, just because they feel completely different ways about the same thing. Nor does it mean so simply because each person saw, or got, something totally different than each other did . . even in, or out of, the otherwise same thing.
Just because some person _could_ use a food allergen to intentionally poison someone, doesn't necessarily mean that literally every person in the world should cease using that allergen for other people who won't be poisoned by it at all.
@Ryan Scates Unless that joke is specifically the thing you like about something? Or unless the reason why you like something which utilizes that particular trope is because that's how you see all relationships other than one very specific kind? It's not a big deal if anyone sometimes likes or appreciates things that are not totally perfect.
Some people's inability to recognize a thing's imperfection or negatives themself, is not the same thing as those imperfections or negatives in fact being the thing that everyone who likes it does actually like about that said-thing.
It makes an immense difference that Seven Brides captures some of the best dancing and choreography committed to film, and Howard Keel and Jane Powell at the peak of their talents.
I was hoping someone was going to mention this! The dancing and choreography is one of my favorite things about the movie, especially the barn-raising scene and the wood-chopping scene.
And with Jacques d'Amboise being a professional dancer with the New York City Ballet, as well, ...
One of the reasons I think I overlooked the kidnapping/sexism of 7 Brides when I was younger is because of the way women function differently in each setting. Millie has much more autonomy in the mountains than she does as a barmaid. In both the town setting and the rural setting, the girls are commodified by the men around them, but they are depicted as having so much more efficacy and self-determination in that rural setting. Their behaviors are sort of less confined (snow balls with rocks in them, deservedly so). During the kidnapping scene most of the women are needle pointing. The seem like decorative people with a decorative function. Out on the homestead, they are homesteading.
The decisions the women make drive so much of the movie. Millie changes the trajectory of the brothers lives. The other women secure the brothers' lives and arrange their own marriages by outsmarting their own fathers. I feel like I intuitively understood this as a kid but then as I got older and more...detail oriented, I started missing the forest for the trees.
I agree. Society set some pretty severe limitations on them because of their gender, but ultimately they were able to empower themselves.
I also think that movies focus too much on traditionally masculine ways of exerting power (ie beating the crap out of people for a zero sum solution), I think it’s nice to see power shifts in a more traditionally feminine way, with compromise and relationship building.
Also, the dancing is awesome.
Completely agree. I watched this movie all the time growing up, and looking back on it I definitely see the parts that are problematic, but just like you said, Milly handled her situation with grace, forgiveness, and determination. She greatly effected the brothers' lives for the better and has way more autonomy and agency than she did in the bar. And we know that the girls did prefer the brothers to the guys they were "promised" to, which is already a disgusting thing to think about. Kidnapping shouldn't have been the answer but, they clearly like their lives when they have more agency and control.
Kidnapping is still fucked up, but they could've gone back home when the snow thawed if they hated it so much
@@MsDiving1 Jacques d'Ambois, who played the 5th brother Ephraim Pontipee, was actually a professional dancer with the New York City Ballet. He was cast in Seven Brides because he was a professional dancer
Sorry, I know this comment is old but I was rewatching this video and I think you nailed why I like this movie- it’s from a time (the filming and the time period of the film) when women had basically no other option but marriage and homemaking, and in the mountains the girls have a lot of autonomy within that sphere- Milly forbids seven men twice her size from entering the house, and they all listen. She makes them into civilized men and she’s clearly the ‘head of the household’ in a lot of ways, which within the context of the film… I don’t want to call it empowering but she’s not weak. The women are, at least, allowed to make some choice and have some amount of power.
I agree! When she forces them to wash their clothes and shave their faces, she is not being submissive at all. She has forward force ✨️✨️
I think the difference is:
Had Overboard had the guy kidnap the rich woman because he had a crush on her and wanted to marry her, it would have been seen as creepy and uncomfortable as Seven Brides. As movie goers we know the story will likely end up there, but the story pretends it is about revenge with a romantic ending. We also spend time watching them fall for each other which justifies many misgiving we might have had. We spend time with the couple.
As for Seven Brides, why some people love it, you need to watch it from a fairytail child perspective and cut out any adult understanding of reality. All the brothers and brides are attractive, all of them decent, the authors and viewers know this, it is rose-tinted, false and idyllic, because it comes from the storypoint that the kindappers and the kidnapped are already written as compatible in the writers/readers mind and they only need to walk the short path to romance to have a blissful happily ever after.
Exactly. The whole point to the barn-raising dance number is to give you this impression that the women from the town and the brothers take a fancy to each other despite the women already having suitors. This is exactly why the girls pay attention to the brothers even while the girls are dancing with their own suitors, and why they end the dance by leaving their suitors to jump into the arms of the brothers. It's meant to convey the impression that during the course of the afternoon, the girls had a nearly "love at first sight" moment with the boys. Just as Milly did the first time she looked at Adam (which is why she so distractedly ladled food into that guys lap instead of his bowl). Naturally, things go awry when the townsmen push the boys into having a brawl, mostly out of jealousy that "their girls" are suddenly making eyes at other men. Given the fact that boys don't get to go anywhere near the girls after the kidnapping, and that we know they are there for several months, the implication is that as the girls came to know the brothers better, they fell back on that initial attraction to the boys.
Compare that to Overboard where a man gaslights and emotionally tortures a woman--who admittedly was a bitch, that's true, but at this particular moment is in a weakened mental state and has no idea who she is or what friends and family, if any, she can turn to--and does it all out of revenge. Getting her to do the chores around his house and deal with the kids because he's fed up and doesn't want to (and seemingly never had to when his wife was alive) doesn't help him recoup any financial loss from the job she stiffed him on. It's just for kicks. And yeah, he *does* have sex with her, after he's gaslighted her into believing she is his wife. Granted, not right away, it's at least a few weeks later, but still...she has developed these feelings for him under false pretenses.
My mom loves both these movies, and on a recent rewatch of Overboard, I saw a lot about Overboard that made me uncomfortable and not liking Russell's character very much. And the whole thing was so "macho revenge fantasy" in the beginning that I never could find much to laugh at. At least with Seven Brides, there is a touch of unreality to it.
Another thing is the amnesia thing and her husband abandoning her.
She was confused and not in terror like in ‘Seven Brides’
@@Skye_Writer Well, to be fair to Russell's character, he had to work and couldn't afford someone to watch his kids while he was out. Hawn's character had stiffed him out of the money to feed his family and care for them. The revenge aspect was there, but it was also a solution and a way for him to earn money to take care of his family, while leaving them to be cared for by someone who considered themselves their mom. She'd behaved in a completely inhuman manner, so it's understandable that he doesn't consider her humanity at first. The fact that he does try to tell her the truth and make up for what he did, but is stymied by his kids, is his own redemption arc there.
This. This is a fantastic viewpoint to take that explains so much.
I was 11 (1996) when we watched this in music class, and even then my class was pretty disgusted with the premise
I did not come expecting to hear that sweet mother-son conversation at the end, but I am here for it. When you can talk to your mom about movies like that, you know you share a good relationship. Warms my heart.
Honestly, the fact that this guy liked some of Ayn Rand's books because he thought they were satire is further proof of his point that, maybe, people can like problematic media without necessarily holding the problematic beliefs
I agree. I like "King Kong (1933)" and I never noticed the racial undertones until I started watching TH-cam.
I’ve never seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers but I do think there’s an aesthetic to these kind of movies. Even if they’re patriarchal and sorta problematic, they’re fun and campy and expresses this romanticism in femininity. Modern cinema has been lacking in it in our attempt to be more progressive (which just props up masculinity as more “respectable”). Not that I want movies to bring back treating predatory and abusive behaviours as romantic but movies where girls can just dress cute or fall in love or whatever without it having to mean anything.
This!!!
I just saw Seven Brides by Seven Brothers. The video left out that the girls did actually liked the brothers in the dance, before the other suitors started a fight witch made them unable to visit the girls anymore. They didn’t go get some random girls but ones they already had crushes on. Not that it changes much, but I do think it changes the dynamics a little.
@@sarasamaletdin4574 at least one of the girls is shown hoping the guy will "call on her" the night of the kidnapping and being dissapointed when he doesn't but I think it's important to point out you can kidnap a consensual partner and it doesn't make the kidnapping consensual. Taking the girls "ruins" them that's why when they do want to marry the boys they claim the baby as theirs. The implication is if they had been raped they would still be getting married and that's pretty icky. It's my favorite musical but it's not okay at all in its framing of consent.
@@sarasamaletdin4574 To be fair, he does point out that he noticed that scene you mentioned on rewatch and he talks about it with his mother in their conversation at the end of the video. 😉
Here's the thing though... what exactly _IS_ "femininity" or "dressing cute" anyway?
For some people, it's something very very specific.
For other people, it's a lot broader and more general-like femininity is basically just anything female, and what style of dressing is or isn't "cute" can differ quite a lot from one individual person's own personal taste to another's.
The problem is that these very different ways of thinking, also, rarely seem to ever agree....not even just to peaceably & respectfully disagree.
I wasn't expecting a video on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers alongside Overboard today, but I'm 100% here for it!!
I’m not done with this video but I grew up in a theater family. I was exposed to this seven brides as a little girl and really loved it as a kid somehow. Looking back as an adult with my adult life shaped by sexism and sexually abusive relationships with men my relationship to this movie is so weird and I can only look back on it in weird horror. It makes me feel oddly indoctrinated. Idk how to explain it.
I was wondering the same thing, because I loved that story when I was in school. I am thinking that the issue is the difference between liking the story and liking the ideology. When we were younger, we didn't understand the values embedded in the story and just saw the women falling in love with the men. The story is cute if the reality is love. The problem is stories like this are created (and with unhealthy messages), which perpetuate unhealthy assumptions about women's roles and worth. Now that we understand the ideology, we are very disturbed.
Indoctrination it was. I'm not saying that the playwright, composer, etc., were thinking about indoctrination, but it was the Zeitgeist of the 50s.
@@beejls I agree, I don't think anyone was trying to suppress women with a movie like this, it's just how people used to think and unfortunately these types of tropes in movies help to continue these ideas.
Hi! I just came back to this video and just wanted to say I loved your section on morality in media as well. Although seven brides for seven brothers still disturbs me and I think it’s not really material to show to your children without proper talks about consent and love (which I didn’t get as a kid). There is NOTHING wrong with loving this movie at all. I find women who like this kind of media especially get really shit all over by people thinking it’s somehow feminist to dunk women’s opinions all day and it isn’t healthy at all. I’ve been on the side of liking very similar problematic content and getting shit on in online groups that claim to stand up for me, it’s horrible. Put something that is often on my mind into words well. Don’t want someone to use my comment to fuel horrible media takes like that.
It occurs to me that members of the oppressed class (in this case, women) may see Milly as the strong, independent, willful woman struggling against her oppression within the confines of an existing social order she can't escape but *can * change, even if just a little in her own personal sphere. Their focus is on the actions of the women. Those who are not members of that oppressed class, even if they are feminists, are more likely to watch the movie with a focus on the actions of the men, and rightly conclude that those actions are terrifyingly horrible.
This! I completely understand how horrifying the "reality" of this movie is, but when I was younger my favorite part was always Milly kicking the men into shape and all the girls throwing them out when they messed up. I loved that she existed in a world where she could do something like that and "get away with it." (Context: complicated personal history that involved a lot of emotional suppression.)
To me, as a woman, it was great to imagine that I could be direct and take such big actions if the men in my life messed up. And it wouldn't mean I break or destroy my relationships or that they would take revenge, just that they would take time to reflect and earnestly work at making up for their wrongs towards me. THAT was the fantasy: men who didn't suppress you emotionally and accepted the consequences of their actions. (Adam? Different story. He ran off during a time his family would need him and threw a hissy fit so I didn't much have sympathy for him.)
It’s funny you mentioned class because I was thinking Swept Away was the 1974 movie Swept Away, not the Kurt and Goldie movie , where the oppressor is the rich boat owner who treats the hired help like trash until they get swept away to a desert island where the help quickly turns the tables and makes his former employer his subservient lesser until she falls for him after much abuse.
Yep. When I was a kid I loved this movie because of Milly. I wanted her ability to grasp power in a space that doesn't offer you any.
Your first point, I agree with. The idea oppressors who benefitted from the misogynist worldview of the movie, or are more likely to be privileged, if they object to the premise of the movie is absolutely ridiculous. I don't see how you could possibly think men are more likely to dislike the misogyny in the movie than women are.
@@theMoporter Way to #StrawMan everything I said, wow. That is *NOT* *anything* I wrote down and I have no clue what mess of jumbled thoughts gave you that idea. What I *did* say was that women are more likely to identify with the lead female protagonist and her indomitable fight against her oppression, and to like the movie because of her. Those who are not members of the oppressed class won't have that perspective; they see *only* the oppression. And if *all* you see is the oppression, you're not going to enjoy the movie at all.
*Of course* women are going to notice the oppression and object to it. But it's an oppression they live with every day. The novelty in the movie is Milly's resistance. That's the wish-fulfillment fantasy that afab women in the audience enjoy that amab men in the audience aren't going to appreciate until it's pointed out to them.
You're quick to misunderstand, quick to take offense, quick to attack, and slow to temperance. I don't think the internet is a good fit for your personality. You might try finding other hobbies.
I distinctly remember the day I asked my best friend if she had seen the movie Cruel Intentions. And she replied, "What, that degenerate fucked up smut garbage?" and my heart dropped like wow this is how I lose my best friend "Yes..." And thankfully she said "Yeah I fucking love that movie!" And I'm so glad we can still enjoy fucked up movies like that and also conclude that incest in a real world context is fucking awful because we are not defined by our favorite film plots or characters.
Same with Twilight and everyone spending so much time and venom against teen girls like they are morons who can’t know that real relationships don’t function like interactions with vampires.
@@sarasamaletdin4574 problematic elements of twilight aside for a second, the movie is a great example of how society has a special kind of of vitriol for media that's made for teenage girls
@@Gloomdrake yep, while much as been said about Transformers and Michael Bay, that mostly came from certain people and was much quieter than the hate that Twilight got and everyone suddenly thinking girls would go out with predators more than however much they do or don't already.
Yet Transforms contains WAY worse things.
What makes me laugh is I know someone who hates "Cruel Intentions" but loves "Dangerous Liaisons"--they are the same movie. Seriously...the only difference is one is a period piece (based on the classic novel "Les Liaisons Dangereux") starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich...and the other is the "teen drama" version. Other than that, it's basically copy-paste then find-replace in film format. Also, it's not a bad movie. It's got a few VERY poorly done parts and there are casting issues (not on Sarah Michelle Gellar's part--she rocks it going against her type-casting), but the premise of the idle rich and their idle hands irrevocably damaging and destroying others is something that needs to be seen. Because it was, is, and will still be true. The only difference is that it's not played for comedy like in "Trading Places"--both movies show the horrible human cost of those games.
Lmao Cruel Intentions was my jam as a tween in the 00s.
I absolutely agree that we need to stop treating people's media preferences as a way to scry into their deepest souls and moral beliefs. One of my very favorite books is The Bone People by Keri Hulme, and I'm always a little afraid to say so. It makes you empathize with a child abuser, the child he beats, and the community that looks the other way. But it also immerses you in the perspective of the Maori people and those who are caught uncomfortably between Maori and colonizer ancestry, and it does it in breathtaking language, and I wish more people were willing to give it a chance instead of just writing it off because good and evil are not clearly marked out for them.
Same one of my favorite books is Lolita and I always have to follow it up with an entire explanation of the book so they don't think I'm evil lol
I note that this logic is never applied to murder mysteries.
I've never told anyone I know how impressed I was with Kevin Bacon's film _The Woodman,_ and how I could see what his character was going through. Why? Because he plays a convicted pedophile. The story is told from his point of view, and it's about what happens after he's released on parole. It's a brilliant film with a great plot and great acting, but of course it disappeared after its theatrical run, and nobody EVER talks about it. But it's so worth watching if you want to understand something about how these guys' minds work. (The point of the story is that he ends up redeeming himself in a surprising way.)
@@maristiller4033 omg same! The reputation that Lolita has is the complete opposite of what the book is actually about
@@zoe_astra yeah it's why I hate all the adaptations. Complete opposite of what Nabokov was going for....
I think it's because is a musical and people assume it is a light tale, before listening to the plot. Also the aesthetics and the way Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is presented, it all seems so dreamy and removed from reality with it's cutsy music from western times (also not a feminine era at all, so even more removed from life) and with it's pretty technicolor sets and monochromatic costumes. All in my opinion makes the movie more "romcom" like, and very "feminine presenting" (but again this movie is my guilty pleasure😅)
I feel similarly.
I feel it's more of a satire in my eyes then anything. (Also a favourite musical from my childhood 😆 always had a thing for Frank 😂)
@@cheeseanpickle9832 omg yess😭😍
@@fefe_naomif My reply from that went on too long, so I had to make it a separate comment. 😂 Hope you see it too. (No pressure 😅)
Was Frank your fav too? 😆😆😆
@@cheeseanpickle9832 Yes! I guess I have a thing for ballet dancers🥴😂🥴😂😂
Yeah it being a musical does a lot to declaw the movie considering it makes it so much more absurd than something grounded which could be taken seriously. It is textually terrifying, but it's delivered in such a way that it's hard to take seriously.
I loved this movie when I was a little girl for similar reasons. Millie is awesome. She is a fully formed character and is always standing up for herself. The film is a series of her telling off Adam for being entitled and terrible towards others. She also takes over the family. One of the central conflicts is the power struggle between her and Adam over influencing the other brothers. I named my favorite doll after her. The kidnapping went mostly over my head as a child, and I got more disturbed by that aspect of the film when I got older. But I still love Millie. ...also the songs are surprisingly catchy and the dancing is amazing. I have such conflicted feelings toward this movie now I'm older.
Dude, if you're going to make videos about your personal taste, well, as long as the quality is like this, I'm all for it.
I just realised that the song "Sobbin Women" is a word play on "Sabine Women," the story the movie's supposedly based on.
What's really funny is that my mum openly explained the reference to us back when we watched it as children and still happily watched it and let us watch it!?
It wasn't till years later that I found out the Sabine women story and that it was all about rape
🤯
Seven brides is the 1950s romantisizing the 1850s romantisizing the Good Ol' Days. No wonder it's fucked up all the way. But the barn dance scene is still absolute fire
I wanna talk about the cultural context and reactionary politics of movies like these for a moment because it's a point of fascination for me. I think a lot of people look back on movies like Seven Brides like they were from a simpler time when people didn't see anything wrong with this stuff, but they absolutely weren't and that was the point.
At the time, the volume was being turned up on the women's movement and a lot of people were insecure and anxious about things changing. So westerns -- movies that had previously been mostly a reaction to rapid progress and alienation -- became more about gender and race and age. They created an imagined version of the past where white men were gods and if only modern men would go back to their masterful ways of old, everyone would be happier in their rightful place.
The fantasy here was that women were only unhappy with men in the 60s because men weren't being tough and manly enough and that all it would take was a firm hand to fix that. But in real life, many people were most definitely appalled by some of these backward movies and said so. (One infamously misogynistic John Wayne movie, McClintock, even had one of the movie's strawmen call Wayne a reactionary to mock this.)
That leaves some cultural context: there was, for a very long time, a prevalent assumption that every woman FIERCELY wanted to be married and to take care of a strong manly man (whether she'd admit to it or not) far more than she wanted to find true love. For the Brides, their desire to marry the Brothers would've been seen not just as a result of them being attracted right off and falling in love over time, but as an extension of their natural female desire for marriage. (Hence them singing about marriage instead of love.) ((and let's not forget that, at the time, marrying for love hadn't been common for all that long.))
So the truly toxic assumption a lot of people were taking comfort in here, was that you can't force something on a person if it's in their "nature" to want it. And wouldn't everything be simpler if no one had a choice? (That last one is a weird staple of romcoms: couples being forced together by something beyond their control.)
The concept of the conflict between romantic leads is just, I think, a reaction to typecasting and cliched endings. Everyone knows the couple(s) will get together in the end, so what do we do till then? Where does the conflict come from?
Oh....oh wow...
great comment
thankyou, you said it very well
Chef's kiss for this
7 wives for 7 brothers was released in 1954 though, while a few more women were entering the workforce, my understanding of that this time period is pretty much that it was the height of that conservative nuclear family model. This film was about 10 years before The Feminine Mystique was released (I'm not a fan of Betty Friedman but it's often thought of as a kind of breaking point for the second wave feminism). Getting married as soon as you can and having kids was still the norm at this point. I thought that only really started to change with the pill and many more women entering the workforce in the 60s? I'm not an expert though, it would really be interesting to know what kinds of things might have been happening leading up to the 60s if it's a topic you know more about.
Your point about cowboy movies and the role of nostalgia during times of societal change and division is really important though, and it's a really core appeal of conservatism. I haven't thought about it as relating to film before, that's a really interesting thing to think about and it makes a lot of sense.
For me, Goldie & Kurt being a well-known couple helps my brain react more "Aw, it's funny cuz they're together in real life," so it's easier to suspend my disbelief & look past the plot's questionable circumstances. But more importantly, THAT FALSETTO CHILD SHIRT?!?! 🤣
There’s that couple factor but I also think it gets a pass because of how funny the barbs are…Goldie especially just gets some really great ones in. They’re matched tit for tat.
👏👏👏 plz make the shirt 🤣
I love the talk you had with your mom at the end, truly the epitome of someone who will approach the discussion with you in good faith
I watched Seven Brides when I was a child, as someone who loved musicals. As an adult, it’s still a very regular comfort movie for me. My thing is: sexism permeates basically every aspect of media. If I refused to enjoy things because of sexist messaging or undertones, I would be permanently miserable. For me, and many other women, it’s sort of a case by case basis on what we find acceptable or unacceptable. For me, this movie is an “acceptable”, or at least lighthearted amount of sexism, as opposed to something like Shallow Hal. The songs are fun, the dancing is great, and half the brothers are super hot. And I’m okay with that position, because I have enough media literacy to interact with it from a healthy distance.
(Also I just pretend that Gideon beat the shit out of Adam and that he never came back. It’s fuck Adam every day in this household.)
My nightmare blunt rotation is just Adam pontipee
Adam is the literal worst!
My conservative grandparents were fine with me watching “the classics,” but not evil stuff like Pokémon. Going back, and realizing that, oh, yeah, Holiday Inn has classic songs alongside a musical number in black face, or The Ten Commandments has a woman sell herself into sexual slavery to save the man she loves from being executed, etc, etc, is always fun.
Did you grandparents ever change in the end?
Same here, no Pokémon but The Ten Commandments terrified me as a kid
That part in the 10 Commandments was not *approving* of that; it was highlighting just HOW evil Dathan was, & how much "Lilia" loved Joshua.
I hear ya. My folks had the same ridiculous ideas - anything B&W was approved. Looking back, some of the total RUBBISH I watched...
OMG. I love Holiday Inn so much more than White Christmas. But the "Abraham" song was terrible simplistic history, and terribly racist even for the time. Like black people were supposed to praise him as a Messiah figure. And then to do it in blackface, (which obviously was a plot point to hide the girl from Ted), the waitresses & waiters etc dressed up in pikaninny clothes and hair. Jesus wept 😭. I watch it every Christmas because I love it. But I have to tell my kids how utterly tasteless & wrong that scene is and why.
I love your conversation about your partner. Because as someone who was wildly independent, in her 30s, for 10 yrs until I fell ridiculously in love with my partner, love absolutely does not solve things. I know who I am, my partner knows themself, and now we've got to move our lives around eachother. Its complicated as hell. I was happy on my own and doing what I wanted whenever I wanted, but now... damn.
Its good seeing other 30 somethings, discussing all the things I feel. Especially the Dont Look Up parts.
It’s especially interesting coming upon these conversations because I wound up meeting and dating my current partner as a result of Pandemic isolation. Because of that, our relationship moved at very weird and inconsistent speeds. So far it’s going pretty good and we’re happy, but I’m honestly not sure how removed I feel from my independent, single, self because the last time I was in that state, I was mentally on the verge of falling apart like everyone else June 2020. To be clear, I did not start the relationship as a coping mechanism. It was just being locked in an apartment all day by myself gave me a lot more time to casually browse apps and we didn’t even go on an actual date until a month and a half of messaging each other. Of course we have the things about each other that drive us crazy and we both value our alone time and who we are outside of each other but I do wonder whether or not him or that independent self prior to knowing him would make me happier.
Welp…about a year or so later, we have decided to split up come July. We care about each other, but there are just things about each other that we can’t really reconcile with and we can’t keep pretending we can give each other what we want anymore. We’ve both known this on our own for a few months but finally admitted it to each other a month ago.
"This is so wholesome for being such a fucked-up movie" my hubby's reaction to seeing Overboard for the 1st time last year
I'm just happy to see interesting Seven Brides for Seven Brothers analysis in 2022! Literally my favorite movie as a seven year old. It was like watching a live-action version of the kind of insanity I would play out with my barbie dolls.
The discussion with your mom was so healthy and wholesome that it made my heart melt.
omg I'm commenting before I even watch the video. I'm so glad you're covering Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I love that movie even if the actual plot is creepy af. There's just something about the music and choreography that's so amazing. Can't wait to listen to your take on it.
okay I've made it 4 minutes in, and this is also literally my mom's favorite movie too!
SBFSB is one of my favorite movies simply because it feels like a fever dream whenever I recount the plot to someone. (And also the barn raising scene.)
Thanks for this, Sarge!
I love this movie. I appreciate the choreography and the song composition. I don't overthink it. Life's too short for that.
Love that you called your mom to get her take, she made many points I would've never considered. Another great video!
This is EXACTLY how I wanted to spend Valentine's Day: a Cold Crash critical analysis of two movies I've never seen in my life.
Love the segment about how we treat media preferences as a window into a person's morals, and how sometimes simple validation is reason enough to enjoy a film's politics.
You're absolutely right about the moralising of films people like - it's the inevitable outcome of treating politics like a fandom - people treat fandoms like politics
So a weird thing is that cedar actually is better for clothes storage. The common person doesn't typically use it, because cost. Also you can get some of the same effect by using cedar chips like potpourri.
As an aromantic I relate very much to your previous comfort with solitude. But I do still enjoy these kinds of films, morality aside.
What a wonderful conclusion to the video: mother and son discussing a movie.
On the subject of Seven Brides, I'm more on your mom's side, at least partly due to an affection for musicals that dates back to my earliest childhood. I imprinted on Milly. I loved the songs. Yet even so, I always found myself feeling ill at ease during the scene in which the brothers are taking the kidnapped women back to their home, and they use the women's CRIES FOR HELP to cause an avalanche to stop the pursuit, weaponizing their distress against them. Even though I love the film as a whole, that moment has always felt wrong to me.
One character who deserves a mention, I think, is Adam's youngest brother Gideon, played by Russ Tamblyn. In a scene not far from the end of the film, he confronts Adam about the latter's treatment of Milly. "You've lived with Milly as man and wife and you don't know nothing about her! She's proud and spunky. She'd never bring herself to ask you back." Gideon, at least, has learned something of value. Adam's a bit later to the party.
I was singing right along with the clips of 7 brides for 7 brothers. Good memories
Haven't finished the video yet, but thanks for doing this. I've tried to figure out what Overboard does right more than once, and I think you explain it better than I could. Great video!
"They might as well have paired off based on favorite colors." I remember Paw's review of Seven Brides, where he pointed out the crime of pairing Julie Newmar, one of the best dancers and singers in the entire cast, with some former baseball player who could NEITHER SING NOR DANCE. Compatibility isn't even an afterthought indeed.
I am 26 and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in one of my favorite movies of all time. Mostly for the same reasons your mom has, but also because of the amazing dancing. All the brothers except from Adam were hired from a ballet troupe, and it shows. It's beautiful.
This was such a great video, I definitely think media criticism has a tendency to criticize people who enjoy a piece of media rather than (or in addition to) the media itself. I had the same reaction with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers- I thought, what an awful, misogynistic piece of media. And by extension, assumed everyone who enjoyed it partially agreed with the idea that women belong in the household, cleaning up after juvenile men. But I really enjoyed hearing your mother's perspective and I think you've really made me question how many of my opinions on movies/tv shows are also a judgement on people who I've never even interacted with.
My first dance instructor was one of the Brides, and holy hell did she never ever let anyone forget it. It was this big deal where we were, and it was actually really difficult to get into her classes. Which were like friggin boot camp...and the outfits we performed in. Good gracious. Lots of older men came alone to watch our performances, if you catch my meaning.
As with many gays, I was a hard-core musical theatre fiend (still am) and ended up going to a fairly prestigious theatre school and worked as a costumer for many years. I have a deep and abiding love for musicals and movies and all forms of theatre. But looking back on all of the media I ingested as a youngin can kinda make my skin crawl now. (It also explains a LOT about the horrible relationship choices I made in my 20s.) I was largely raised by my grandparents, so my knowledge of and exposure to pre-1970s film is much greater than almost anyone else I know. It serves as a stark reminder that as awful as much of our media still remains, we have made SOME progress. Ish.
I have a daughter now, she is nine going on twenty-nine. She is FAR too mature for my own good; there are some films which were very formative to me that I don't want to share with her. Which is sad in a way, even though they can spark amazing discussions I miss the purity of just enjoying some of them the way I did at her age. She is whip smart, and often points crap out I hadn't noticed or mentioned (not ten minutes ago she told me she was annoyed that the last three shows she watched cast POC as the antagonists). I have hope for her future. But I do miss watching these old movies with the wide, shining eyes I had at her age.
Ann Miller in Kiss Me Kate is entirely exempt--dont even bother saying a single word, I will not hear it. Ann can and will forever be my problematic fav. Watch her face. She knew what she was singing, 1953 or no.
"I'm a girl who would marry and would take with no qualms..." 🍆
Straight cringe. I feel sorry for her
@@lukanxo5353 What I take issue with is Ann throwing that same magenta scarf into the camera lens 3 times.
Even seeing it in 3D doesn't justify that scarf!
@@auldthymer I just guffawed so loudly my cat jumped in the air. 😆 Good one. Brava.
On the other hand, she never has to experience the bitterness or regret of coming back to those older movies and seeing how repugnant they are under the surface. Having no nostalgia for them can make it easier to appreciate.
Honestly, man, you've got a unique enough perspective in all your video essays and make such cogent, well researched and argued interpretations of any given piece of media you come across, I look forward to all your videos! I think it's great you're just examining your own tastes, you don't need to examine the most topical or highly talked about movies- a million people are already doing that, I guarantee you nobody else is going to be discussing gender and class division through comparing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to Overboard, that's an interesting video!
I adore Overboard. Goldie Hawn's comedic timing is absolutely impeccable.
The collective "MINE!" has always been one of my favorite moments in the film. This is a setting where women have limited rights, and limited agency outside the home, but they manipulate that regressive system to get what they want.
I’d speak to you about any topic, any day, anytime. I think you’re one of the most articulate people creating content on the internet today.
One could argue Dean did compensate her for her labor since he was only going to “keep her” long enough to pay back the work he did. Her work to economically equal his. Admittedly one of my favorite movies growing up
Yes, I was thinking this as he was talking too.
I don't think he felt that housework shouldn't be compensated for. Even tho he gets her to work that role because he cons her into thinking she's his wife HE thinks of her as a MAID who is paying off the debt she owes him. He even calculates it out roughly when he tells his friend how long he intends to keep her.
If he'd included sex in his plan that would've been creepy!
As this guy says, when love and sex got thrown into the mix that's when it got TRULY messy and heartbreak became inevitable
I want 7 Samurai For The Magnificent Seven, but producers keep throwing my script overboard their yachts.
I LOVED this movie so much (seven brides). Every single scene. It’s so stupidly funny.
Carousel is my mother's favourite musical and we both watched it again in recent years and were fairly horrified by the attitude towards domestic abuse. Even though carousel has literal fantasy elements there is a gritty realism to it that seven brides lacks - for me seven brides is pure escapism it's a fantasy version of the past where there are no bad endings and no bad guys - the kidnappers only kidnapped because they are silly and believe this is the way to the women's hearts and not for nefarious reasons. No harm comes to them and I agree with other commenters that the women and especially Millie have a strange sort of autonomy and set the rules up in the mountains - like Millie was going to refuse to let Adam into their bedroom on their wedding night, definitely something that women of that time (and I'm sure some still today) wouldn't be given the option of doing. I think that if seven brides was any less campy and fun and ridiculous that it would be full on creep but it's not supposed to be taken seriously at all imo.
seven brides is fuuuucked up, but i watched it probably a hundred times as a very small child, so i have a strong bond with it. (this seems to be the case for many people.) i called it "dancin' boys" cos the title was just too long for a 3-4 year old. i still love it to this day, but i'd never recommend it to anyone without a serious caveat. i'm looking forward to what you have to say about it.
Girl me to. Literately the exact same experience, and the exact same relationship with the movie.
Your stance towards love - and being a-ok alone - aligns fully with my own. And the way you put it was a bit of an eye-opener to me, in that I've not yet met anyone whom I loved enough to deal with the complications love comes with. So that was interesting! You know, along with, how cool and interesting this comparison is. xD I friggin' love Overboard.
I legitimately fought with a friend in high school because I found this film so offensive and it was one of their favorites, and you have given me a fascinating new perspective; thank you!
I first watched Seven Brides in elementary school when our music teacher taught a unit on the history of musicals. It was a point of transition from the era when the plot would stop so each character could have a solo to state their feelings, or a dance number to show off, and the more modern format where the songs and dances could help push the plot forward as well. Learning to identify the difference between a song there for character expression, plot progression, or sheer spectacle like the barn dance sequence was probably my first introduction to film analysis now that I think about it. But because the lesson prioritized history and structure, I didn’t stop to think about how creepy the plot is on paper until I was a teenager. And even then, I wrote it off as “of another time” and didn’t think about it much further. Maybe I’ll give it a rewatch and see how I feel now.
My mom also liked SBFSB enough that we grew up watching it a dozen times a year, and after the conversation at the end I put together that she ALSO grew up in a home where there was one brother, the oldest, and several sisters.
Oh, man. As an acespec woman raised by evangelicals, I have SO MANY feelings about romcoms in general and forced romance tropes in particular. I'm demisexual, so literally everyone I've ever been attracted to has been a longtime friend first--and it's never been reciprocated. (The list is short, and the odds were never very good on numbers that small.) More importantly, I've never been attracted to anyone who expressed attraction to me. That means the idea of being trapped in an inescapable situation where I'm expected to be in love with my captor by the end of the story is my actual nightmare--as in, I have had nightmares like this, and because my sleeping brain is unsubtle, I'm usually also dying in them and no one else cares as long as I get married. It's gotten to the point that I can't watch romcoms anymore because the expectation that the leads will kiss by the end makes me anxious and miserable. It doesn't help that there's often no chemistry between the main characters, which makes the plot seem even more forced. SBFSB horrifies me so much in concept that I can't watch it. I only clicked on this video after telling myself that your analysis would be worth the stress.
I'm still sorting out how I feel about this video. But it did give me an idea: I think I'd be interested in hearing whether you think there are movies that do a good job of UNforced romance. Not just characters defying societal expectations--any Romeo and Juliet retelling does that--but defying the audience's expectations too. Maybe a May-December romance where the December is a woman or something. 🙄
Thank you for making this. It's given me a lot to think about. Hope your Valentine's with your partner is special.
If you want to see a May-December romance movie where the December is a woman, I thought Ali: Fear Eats The Soul was a pretty good one. It deals with the romantic leads not only defying societal expectations in terms of age, but also of race and class, because it's about an older white lady dating a poor middle-aged Arab immigrant in post-WWII West Germany. Fair warning though, it *does* get pretty heavy, for reasons you can probably guess based on the premise.
Maybe Sleeping with other people with Jason sudeikis and Alison Brie? It is kind of silly though but they are friends first and foremost
He has one in his list: Harry and Maude.
Highly recommend both Big Eden and Cloudburst!
@@nightfall3605 I've never watched that movie and I don't know what demisexual means but the first thing that came to mind was 'They should watch Harry and Maude!'
Yo the sound was so clear i could hear you swallow the water. You did not lie you were perfecting the craft, amazing work.
Thank you for giving this a fair take. I think, particularly when you and your mom talked about coming from a family with mostly girls vs. mostly boys, something that tends to get missed in the discussion on SBFSB is the male vs. the female gaze. I would argue part of the reason SBFSB is so popular is it caters to the female gaze (and focuses on an empowered female). Lonely Pole Cat and the barn dance are the best examples I have of this - those scenes seem particularly crafted to appeal to the female audience and pretty blatantly objectifies the men in a way that’s meant for the female gaze, not the male gaze. I think men initially find this story so creepy because they don’t pick up on these underlying subversions and commentary as quickly.
I’m also glad y’all touched on the fact that the women clearly liked the men before they were kidnapped. I would even elaborate to say that they clearly had a preference, but the society around them was pressuring them to marry the men in town. Even Millie got a lot of flack for marrying Adam and people kept trying to convince her to leave. While the kidnapping isn’t great, it’s also oddly the vehicle that allows the women to be able to make their own choice in who they wanted to marry instead of having to conform to the societal expectations around them. So while the superficial plot devices may come across extremely misogynistic, it’s actually an incredibly empowering story with a lot of agency in its female characters.
Even the ways Millie handles finding out she’s basically been married to be a housemaid are fantastic. She could easily have resigned herself to just doing the cooking and cleaning and adapting to how they do things - but instead she immediately sets boundaries and expectations on how she expects to be treated and how the household will operate, completely taking charge of the situation she’s been put in. So I think there’s a difference between something being set in a misogynistic time period or setting, and the film itself being misogynistic. To say women can’t be empowered because they wouldn’t act the way women would act *now* in a society that looked completely different discounts the ways women empowered themselves at the time and almost delegitimizes it, further disenfranchising them retroactively, IMO.
Ah, but, but....ballet with axes, that's gotta count for something.
Last thing I expected to see today was a video about Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
I watched overboard as a kid but could never remember the name or who was in it, only the unsettling, half-forgotten memory of a woman falling off a boat and then being told she's a wife and a mother and not knowing any better. It has freaked me out for years, the same way people talk about watching watership down as a kid.
I didn't read McKay's tweet as "If you don't like my movie you don't care about climate change" but the reverse, "If you don't care about the climate change you won't like my movie" hence the following tweet to the likes of "robots would find romances weird"
The problem is that a lot of people that care about climate change also didn't care for his movie and he insinuated that wasn't a reality.
Also, a lot of aromantic people do enjoy romances so robots probably would too? I think it's kind off like how people enjoy movies about serial killers even though they themselves aren't serial killers. They just use their imaginations
Honestly, a movie with the same premise as 7 brides that actually got into the nuances of the relationships instead of taking those marriages for granted would be incredible. So many different relationship dynamics playing out against and with each other, the father and step mother acting as counter weights, all developing the theme of relationships developing out of pure convenience.
And in a world with so many people burned out by the search for the perfect partner on dating apps, the idea that love can blossom with
whoever is around given enough time is darkly comforting.
Wow. This is definitely the future of online discourse! Thanks for this and just... wow. I'm creating a capstone concert for my theatre major right now that revolves around reclaiming Golden Age musical theatre that I grew up on, with feminist and queer twists. A lot of the shows and movies from that period permanently defined my sense of self-worth as less than the men around me, and as a queer, often masculine woman, I never felt that those stories had a place for me. My dad is a musical theatre performer and he & all of his peers maintain that really old school, objectifying misogyny. It means a lot to see men analyze these stories and examine their own biases in relation to them, because unfortunately that's one of the only ways to make space for others down the line. (Also, this was just a really entertaining one, so thanks for that lol.)
Ok but when your mom described experiencing something differently in a group to alone, my mind immediately jumped to my experience viewing Event Horizon. The first time I watched it, I was alone, in the dark, and hooked, disturbed, tense all the way through. But then I rewatched it with a group of friends at my university film club, and found that I could not take it seriously, and nor could anyone else in the room- we had a fun time with it, definitely, but the goofiness of the film was more prevalent on a second viewing with a group of people. And honestly? I'm so glad I got to experience that film in that way, for my first viewing to be such a terrifying, nerve wracking, and yet thrilling experience, and then for my second to be just sitting back and enjoying a goofy movie with my friends, it's a unique experience that I hope to treasure for a long time.
Watching an analysis of two films that I have never seen before making me really want to watch them now. Typical Sunday night, supposed to work on course work, now hunting down these films online.
You are in for a treat!
I mean the dancing is just SOO GOOD ,especially the barn part that I can get over the disturbing story
this was such a cool video!!! I love seeing how your opinion of a work can change when you apply different lenses or perspectives on it and I loved that you got to hear from your mom about her take on it! Really cool, I hope you do more of these kinds of introspective media analysis essays
The conversation with your mum was so wholesome and really made me rethink the judgements I've had of people who like films, that I considered problematic. Films I liked once and felt I had to distance myself from, rather than consider what I liked about it wasn't because I agreed with certain themes therein. Thank you both, this was an eye opener for me.
I love how you incorporated your mom into this!
1. Your mother is adorable! I'm so happy you shared your discussion!
2. I was so happy to see you upload! I was just thing it had been a while since I had seen your work! You are appreciated! (Clicked the bell for notifications so I won't be 8 days late)
Thank you for all you do! I was a preteen when Overboard was current. It was a sleepover staple... I appreciate looking at the tropes & how it is similar/different to other movies based on the times they came out.
I like seven brides and I think its messed up. I actually really like Milly better than any other character in that movie. She doesn't let the brothers or her husband get away with anything. Ever since I was a child though I always thought the women (girls?) falling in love with the boys was weird however I like how they turned the tables on them and forced the brothers to marry them. A poetic twist I guess. I always focused on the feminine power in the movie.
Honestly, when looking at when the girls say the baby is theirs, it's almost like they're proposing to the men, which I thought was a really fun twist. Even at the start where Milly is dealing with the guys, I thought it was an empowering moment of her showing that she wasn't going to put up with whatever just for her husband, she demanded she be respected, which was really powerful to my mom and myself after having to deal with my dad who wouldn't respect the opinions of women (or really anyone for that matter) for a long time.
"It wasn't realistic, but it makes me happy" made me cry a little and i'm still teary because HIS MOM IS SO NICE AND CUTE AND WHOLESOME
Great video! I knew I grew up with 7 Brides for 7 Brothers and loved it. Now as an adult I can see that is definitely weird, but still like it regardless. I especially love your conversation about media criticism and how it should be talked about. Every year I get more and more tired of how we talk about media and politicize and simplify it to this and that. This was just a refreshing take so great job.
I can't imagine that anyone loves Seven Brides for Seven Brothers because they're, like, really invested in the love story of Benjamin & Dorcas or whatever. I and everyone I know about love it because it's got vibrant characters, amazing songs, killer choreography, gorgeous backdrops, and delightful comedy. Just exceptional filmmaking. And I totally agree that we can enjoy things that we're critical of and be critical of things we enjoy.
I missed these videos so much. Thank you 😭😭😭
"You can't make any vows to a bunch of cows." I laughed for 10 minutes!
One of the things I took away from Seven Brides was Adam Pontipee's journey from a kind of callous carelessness to a greater empathy. At the beginning of the film, he has only the smallest glimmer of guilt about quickly marrying Milly and pressing her to drudge for his entire family. He hasn't learned much when he encourages his brothers to go kidnap themselves some brides, and he's bullheaded enough to take off and live in a cabin on his own when Milly demands that all the boys stay in the barn. It takes news of his own daughter's birth to start changing his mind, and it doesn't happen right away. He needs some more time on his own to think about what it would be like if someone were to come along and steal his own baby away from her family. By the end of the movie he still has a long way to go, but he's developed a greater understanding for the damage he's done and what he needs to do to make things right, or at least better.
I have not seen either of these movies but from what this video shows me I feel like I have the reverse reaction you did. 7 brides has that old Hollywood whimsy to it that makes me take it a lot less seriously than overboard because that movie feels more grounded to me due to it taking place in more contemporary times.
I like seven brides for seven brothers because it is sort of revolutionary in its choreography. Basically the story makes me so uncomfortable that I laugh at loud but I watch for fancy dancing 🤷♀️
YES! I love when people talk with their parents about the films they like, the whys and how of their enjoyment. Very interested in hearing your mother's thoughts about 7 Brides for 7 Brothers. Perspectives can change over time, and finding out what certain films do for specific audiences is fascinating.
When I hear someone say they love a, well, problematic property, I always follow up with why before I judge. If someone loves Fight Club because they themselves feel disillusioned with capitalism or love the filmmaking, fine. If they love Fight Club because Tyler Durden is the coolest guy ever and they want to join Project Mayhem, that’s a yikes from me.
Wow, you brought in Fight Club? The notoriously complex movie that you could watch on SO MANY levels and analyse 3 ways to sundown and still barely scratch the surface?
The chat with his mom was one of the cutest, most wholesome things I've ever seen on TH-cam
Anecdotally, I’ve never heard of a man say that waitress or Age of Adelaide is their favourite - so nice to hear!
I have definitely been guilty of judging people based on their taste in media while having what would be called problematic faves. Thank you for this video, it is going to change the way I interact with people for sure.
Sorry not to do with your comment, just love your pfp, I just don’t think I’ve seen a Johanna Constantine pfp out in the wild. xD
Haven't finished or even started watching yet but was so excited when I saw a new video essay!! Thanks!!!
Thoroughly enjoyed this exploration. I came here in disbelief that the gem that is Overboard had anything in common with Seven Stockholm Syndrome Brides! Love that extra "t", love your shirts and love that my favorite line from Overboard made the cut. It certainly is "a hell of a day at sea, Sir!" Your description of why you stay with the one you love is so true, it melted my heart!
Stellar vid as always, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was one of my high school English teachers favourite movies, and I remember her showing it to us and having the same gut reaction you did, so it was great to see an in depth commentary.
Also I was interested that for the Age of Adaline you pegged Harrison Ford's character and Adaline as the central love interests - I definitely agree, they had the most time and development, but I found that movie frustrating because instead of committing to that interesting plotline and characters they pushed Harrison Ford's son as the love interest that she ended up with, with whom she had no chemistry and no development.
You singlehandedly convinced me to give Overboard a watch! Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting video, as always :)
My mother loved that movie Overboard. And to be honest with you it isn't a bad movie. It's just not the kinds of movies I usually watch.
I think it’s absolutely adorable that you made a video comparing these two just so you can feel better about liking one of them ♥️♥️ As a fan of both (they each fall into my top ten of rom coms) I enjoyed this very much 😊
I will fully admit to finding Seven Brides a fun musical, even with all that it is deeply problematic about it. But, if you want to talk about crazy musicals, have you seen Paint your Wagon?
I had someone accuse me of making paint your wagon up when I explained the cast and plot to them because it sounds so nuts
I only ever seen Paint Your Wagon in bits and pieces. I'll have to see it in one sitting, someday it was one of my dad's favorite musicals. Literally the first scene I remember watching was the one where the two friends decide its fine if they both marry the love interest arguing something the lines of "if a man can have two wives there shouldn't be anything saying a woman can't have two husbands." NGL, resolving a love triangle like that had never crossed my mind before seeing that movie, lol.
“That one was my favorite!”
Or
“Preacher, welcome to Hell.” 🤝
Always entertaining to watch Lee Marvin burp out "Wand'rin' Star," no lie
paint your wagon is godawful just from a filmmaking standpoint. director joshua logan may have been a fine stage director, but he never made a good film. it's always surprising to see what prestige projects were entrusted to him, but the list of his botched efforts is epic: south paciific, camelot, bus stop, picnic, etc.
Wow this is one of your best videos yet. And the part with your mom! I love it. That was such a lovely talk between you two. Really warmed my heart.
Great video! I will admit, I'm with your mom. Looking at it now, I know the show is super problematic, but Millie is a strong woman who still manages to take charge of the situation she's in. It's not like she demurely shuffles off to do what she's told; she constantly rebukes Adam and the boys. And I found that really empowering as a child. Plus, the songs and dancing are just amazing
I know this isn’t your point but I actually found it so relatable the way you described your view on relationships and love and that is extremely satisfying.
I had something said to me once, I don't remember about what movie, "if that movie is one of your favourites, that says x about you"
My reaction was "it's entertainment? The movie is interesting and well made? It's not teaching me how to live, it's taking me into other worlds and other lives? Huh?!"
It's the reaction I have to people saying they hate Ross Geller from Friends or Love Actually. Liking the movie or characters isn't condoning their behaviour or flaws. Bad behaviour and flaws give depths to characters. It's entertaining.
I like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for the music, put music in most anything and I'll like it.
This is somewhat beside the point, but as a person that is sometimes self reliant to a fault, grew up thinking they'd definitely never get married and just go it alone, but has been lucky enough to find a person I want to spend the rest of my life with, listening to you talk about love being complicated while also saying you can't go back, that how you want your partner's perspective on all the things made me all kinds of misty. It just hit home in a very, very relatable way that I've struggled to pin down or explain
As a child, of a parent and grandparent who both loved musicals, I enjoyed 7 Brides for the vivid colours and the songs. When I watched it again as an adult I was shocked by the story 🤣 It is a horrible premise. It always fascinates me how our perception of things changes, as our experiences broaden and we age. Still love Overboard though. The chemistry between the leads is no joke. I also enjoy how the children gain confidence through "Annie" having their backs. She disciplines them when they need it, finds ways to engage them at their own level for learning and she is 100% there for them when needed. Oh and her apology to the butler is great. Thanks for this video, it was entertaining and straight out of left field 🥰