This book searches for the origin of Hollywood's pathetic anti-femininity. It studies the self-humiliation of female characters, alongside which male comic characters (think of Mr. Bean) vanish. That is to say, women own the full market for non-comic, gender-specific self-humiliation, a phenomenon unknown among Hollywood male characters. The author introduces the subject by discussing recent characters impersonated by three famous actresses: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sandra Bullock, and Angelina Jolie. An equally famous, fourth actress, Meg Ryan, is treated in the first chapter. The second chapter treats a then very promising actress, Gal Gadot, who sadly had to withdraw from acting for reasons that become clear in the two final chapters. The third one discusses MollyHaskell's intuition of "The Big Lie" being "the idea of women's inferiority." According to Haskell, the Big Lie started when American movies developed into a big business, and this very business perpetuated the Big Lie. Strangely, instead of simply calling sexism by its name, ManohlaDargis' foreword merely theorizes the issue. Apparently, she has not the least idea of what causes Hollywood's misogyny, either: however much these two ladies know about movie journalism. The fourth chapter discusses the strong preference of Hollywood for one specific religion above all others. Not too surprising, the history of that religion is a schoolbook example of misogyny .The first appendix summarizes the Rotten-Tomatoes criticism on number one elected movies by the highly reputed and senior French publication Cahiers du Cinéma. The second appendix contains, based on all four chapters' material, the answer to the central question of this book, to wit, the roots of Hollywood's stone-harsh misogyny.
