You can't win for losing in this town

You all know how I feel about Diablo Cody - and I am (clearly) not alone. The girl won an Academy Award for crying out loud. But now there seems to be backlash, and backlash to the backlash, which would be... frontlash? Eyelash? Whatever. Anyway... I was rather leaving the whole thing alone, but the stuff I've been reading the past few days is just too stupid to leave alone.

First the backlash. She's getting flack (flak?) for being outre (sorry, can't find the e with the accent in my blogging software), for her tat, for her past, for her look, for her voice (hello? for her voice? her, ahem, Oscar-winning voice? Right. That really makes sense.) It's as though while she was a "hopeful" all of that was charming, quirky, smart, authentic, different. And now that she's won, it's affected, arrogant, tawdry, rebellious (okay, well she is, but she always was), and somehow fake. Like now that she's won the Oscar, she shouldn't be an ex-stripper anymore. Puh-lease.

And that's just about her. Then there's the idiocy, and I do mean idiocy, about the movie itself. (That would be the backlash to the backlash.) There's plenty of it, but my two favorite objections are 1) that it champions teen pregnancy and b) that 16 year-olds don't really sound like that. Okay, I have a lot, and I mean a lot I could say about all of that, but I'm going to limit it (sort of).

Regarding the first point, it's a MOVIE. Can we talk about movies glamorizing killing people? How many boys (and girls, for that matter) want to be John McClane? Dirty Harry? Martin Riggs? Huh? Don't like that analogy? What about the spate of 'Prince Charming's going to come to my high school and solve all my problems' movies that have come out recently? Is that a good lesson to be teaching the little ones? Do we object? No? Why? Maybe because they're, I don't know, movies?

Which leads nicely into the second objection - that 16 year-olds don't talk like that.

Really. You don't say.

Can I point out that most people "Breaking Up" don't look like Jennifer Aniston? That most presidents don't talk like Andrew Shepherd? Or look like Michael Douglas? That few nuns look like Susan Sarandon? How many teachers in Harlem look like Michelle Pfeiffer? Hillary Swank? Denzel Washington? Sidney Poitier? (and yes, geographical liberties taken, but you get my point) How many wives are as funny as Debbie in Knocked Up? How many sports agents are as madly eloquent as Jerry Maguire? For that matter, how many girls are as romantically succinct as Dorothy Boyd? How many outlaws are as carefree and witty as Butch Cassidy and Sundance? And, really, how many people on the face of the planet look like that? How many attorneys speak or behave like Atticus Finch? Or look like Gregory Peck? (I think I'll rest my case right there.) Isn't the point of movies to be more than, to be better than? Of good movies?

Here's my question (and we all know the $130 million answer) - wasn't Juno fun to listen to? And don't you wish some 16 year-olds did talk like that? Crikey, don't you wish you talked like that? I know I do.