By Manasi Nene
There has been enough controversy about women’s-only screening – most of it was men demanding their own place. There no dearth of weird insensitivities around naari-shakti today – an Uber director had to resign because he was being sexist at a meeting about sexism, and Delhi University seems to think that its students emails should be as long as their skirts.
But in a move that makes us question the end of irony as we know it, the Kinepolis theatre in Belgium invited women for a screening of Wonder Woman – the only big-budget superhero film directed by a woman, and featuring a woman – and proceeded to give its audience gift-bags that included diet pill pamphlets, sponges and cleaning supplies.
https://twitter.com/LDelbar/status/872572740959645700
I mean, they also gave out chocolate, noodles and chips, so I guess the gift-bags weren’t made with the worst of intentions. But to be given cleaning supplies at a women’s-only screening of a film that has been called a “masterpiece of subversive feminism” – excuse me if we don’t appreciate the irony here.
The Kinepolis told De Redactie, Belgium, that the faux pas was an honest mistake, and they hadn’t intended to be misogynistic – the goodie bags were filled with gifts from sponsors, and passing out squeegees, supplies and ads for slimming pills was apparently completely random.
We really, really hope it was as random as they claim.