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America the Beautiful
R (2007)
Sensory Overload Productions
Director: Darryl Roberts
Creative Consultant: Kurt Engfehr
Cast: Gerren Taylor, Darryl Roberts
In August, we attended a prescreening of America the Beautiful, a rambling,
documentary-style work that shows how corporate interests shape our ideas about
ourselves. Gravitating around the career of black modeling sensation Gerren Taylor,
Director Darryl Roberts, who is also black, uses her rise to stardom as a window
into the industry that serves and distorts a natural inclination toward beauty.
Roberts' forays into liposuction, makeup, bulimia, and workplace rights provide us
with a limited, made-for-Oprah commercial for Gloria Steinem's 1980's bra-burning
ideals. Likewise, while making good points about the influences of the fashion
media, Beautiful focuses on women as victims, while pointlessly demeaning men.
As such it comes off as a transparent bid to sell tickets to victims of the Feminist
media machine to a movie about victims of the Beauty media machine.
Beautiful was edited with help from Kurt Engfeher (Bowling for Columbine,
Fahrenheit 911) using a Mac and final cut pro. The result is a film with an indie
documentary look and sound. Roberts has alternately given the amount of raw
footage as 500 and 3000 hours.
Fatherhood
We only noticed one father in this film, a man who mostly stands next to his wife
while she talks about the influences that may have contributed to their bulimic
daughter’s death.
An Abusive Lens
Roberts uses his camera to pointlessly and repeatedly demean men, representing
them as drunks or bipolar fools by taping their views in situations where their
judgement may have been impaired. Most reporters would consider this unethical
and it is unuseful toward making any legitimate point.
When making the case for women as media victims, Roberts interviews experts:
doctors, sociologists, exploitive media voices. He sets appointments. But when it
comes to getting the male view on beauty, he becomes that same exploitive Media,
picking up rude, stupid drunks on a dock and playing on their vanities to feed his
feminist audience. Their qualifications? "The were going off on women" said
Roberts, who said he wanted to show they were victims, too.
Really? In his one sided attraction to beauty, Roberts does not show how men and
boys destroy themselves to be attractive: steroids or performance enhancing drugs,
risk-taking behaviors, or injurious but high-paying jobs that most women won't take,
for instance. But this isn't fashionable, and like his movie says, beauty sells.
Coming to a Classroom Near You
This is not the kind of film that most kids are going to want to see, which would
ordinarily mean it would find its own level. Unfortunately, there are plans to force-
feed it to our children through the schools, where men are vastly underrepresented
and outvoiced, and boys will be forced to attend.
At the screening event, Roberts told us that Beautiful has an R rating, because he
felt it was important to keep the statement "Get a bigger cock." in the film. The
statement comes from Eve Ensler, angry author of The Vagina Monologues, as she
decries women who opt for voluntary vaginal surgery. (Apparently Ensler is not in
favor of all choice.) By removing her language, the film will gain a PG-13 rating,
Roberts said. The surrounding offensiveness will remain.
As a wake-up call to a few young women, Beautiful may help, with equal chances of
teaching them that boys are stupid. As a documentary it lowers the bar. As a one-
sided shot at men, it's an insulting, feminist dream. And if you're a woman who
became a teacher so that you could intimidate and berate young boys, your moment
has arrived.
Final Review
Male negative, aggressively so. Don't feed this guy.
Reviews Back to top
R (2007)
Sensory Overload Productions
Director: Darryl Roberts
Creative Consultant: Kurt Engfehr
Cast: Gerren Taylor, Darryl Roberts
In August, we attended a prescreening of America the Beautiful, a rambling,
documentary-style work that shows how corporate interests shape our ideas about
ourselves. Gravitating around the career of black modeling sensation Gerren Taylor,
Director Darryl Roberts, who is also black, uses her rise to stardom as a window
into the industry that serves and distorts a natural inclination toward beauty.
Roberts' forays into liposuction, makeup, bulimia, and workplace rights provide us
with a limited, made-for-Oprah commercial for Gloria Steinem's 1980's bra-burning
ideals. Likewise, while making good points about the influences of the fashion
media, Beautiful focuses on women as victims, while pointlessly demeaning men.
As such it comes off as a transparent bid to sell tickets to victims of the Feminist
media machine to a movie about victims of the Beauty media machine.
Beautiful was edited with help from Kurt Engfeher (Bowling for Columbine,
Fahrenheit 911) using a Mac and final cut pro. The result is a film with an indie
documentary look and sound. Roberts has alternately given the amount of raw
footage as 500 and 3000 hours.
Fatherhood
We only noticed one father in this film, a man who mostly stands next to his wife
while she talks about the influences that may have contributed to their bulimic
daughter’s death.
An Abusive Lens
Roberts uses his camera to pointlessly and repeatedly demean men, representing
them as drunks or bipolar fools by taping their views in situations where their
judgement may have been impaired. Most reporters would consider this unethical
and it is unuseful toward making any legitimate point.
When making the case for women as media victims, Roberts interviews experts:
doctors, sociologists, exploitive media voices. He sets appointments. But when it
comes to getting the male view on beauty, he becomes that same exploitive Media,
picking up rude, stupid drunks on a dock and playing on their vanities to feed his
feminist audience. Their qualifications? "The were going off on women" said
Roberts, who said he wanted to show they were victims, too.
Really? In his one sided attraction to beauty, Roberts does not show how men and
boys destroy themselves to be attractive: steroids or performance enhancing drugs,
risk-taking behaviors, or injurious but high-paying jobs that most women won't take,
for instance. But this isn't fashionable, and like his movie says, beauty sells.
Coming to a Classroom Near You
This is not the kind of film that most kids are going to want to see, which would
ordinarily mean it would find its own level. Unfortunately, there are plans to force-
feed it to our children through the schools, where men are vastly underrepresented
and outvoiced, and boys will be forced to attend.
At the screening event, Roberts told us that Beautiful has an R rating, because he
felt it was important to keep the statement "Get a bigger cock." in the film. The
statement comes from Eve Ensler, angry author of The Vagina Monologues, as she
decries women who opt for voluntary vaginal surgery. (Apparently Ensler is not in
favor of all choice.) By removing her language, the film will gain a PG-13 rating,
Roberts said. The surrounding offensiveness will remain.
As a wake-up call to a few young women, Beautiful may help, with equal chances of
teaching them that boys are stupid. As a documentary it lowers the bar. As a one-
sided shot at men, it's an insulting, feminist dream. And if you're a woman who
became a teacher so that you could intimidate and berate young boys, your moment
has arrived.
Final Review
Male negative, aggressively so. Don't feed this guy.
Reviews Back to top
