Remember the moment in “The Notebook” when Allie runs out on the beach and asks Noah to say she is a bird? It’s the sweetest of lines. But translate that to the narrative Netflix Film tweeted last week, and it would read something like: If you say chick flick, I say you’re gendered and trivial.
Netflix issued a “public service announcement” over the span of six tweets attempting to make a case against the use of the ubiquitous term “chick flick” because it …
- Implies only women like romantic comedies
- Cheapens the work behind the film
- Trivializes watching the movie
- Genders a romantic comedy
As a bonus point, Netflix added the lack of a male-gendered equivalent: the “man movie.”
Netflix isn’t the first to make this kind of argument. Dare I say it, an iconic chick flick itself issued a similar PSA back in 2001.
In the Harvard Law School party scene in “Legally Blonde,” Elle walks into the party and finds Warner engrossed in a conversation with Enid making a case to change the term “winter semester” to “winter ovester.” According to Enid, “the English language is all about subliminal domination.”
You may chuckle at the series of tweets, or my ability to remember chick flicks in great detail, but there is a larger issue here: a push from certain groups to restrict or compel speech so that it aligns with what they agree with.
And while no one is saying that we can’t have a discussion about the use of the term “chick flick,” as that is as much a protected free-speech discussion as any other, pushing the idea that everyone must conform to a certain politically correct lexicon is deeply troubling and, if done through government force, unconstitutional. Probably to no one’s surprise, one of the places where this sort of thing is most frequently seen is on America’s public university campuses.
Professor Nicholas Meriwether of Shawnee State University in Ohio, for example, was punished for declining a male student’s demand to be referred to as a woman. The university administration rejected his offer to use only the student’s first or last name.
Ellie Wittman at Miami University in Ohio was told that she could only put up her pro-life display if she also put up signs of warning given the “harmful” nature of what she wanted to say.
Two years ago, Young Americans for Liberty supporters at Kellogg Community College were arrested for handing out copies of the Constitution because it was an “obstruction” of education.
So, a desire to restrict free speech based on disagreement of opinion extends beyond Netflix saying we shouldn’t use terms it thinks are offensive, like “chick flicks.” The root of the issue is more squarely aimed at compelling speech so that it aligns with what one group (and sometimes the government itself) wants, and that sort of coercion is rightfully contrary to the free-speech protections of the Constitution.
The First Amendment guarantees a right to free speech for all, and it is a freedom that encourages disagreement as well as agreement.
When we disagree, we should seek out a conversation that emulates civil discourse and try to understand one another. The answer is not demanding a shutdown of certain speech, but insisting on more speech.
Certain groups of people cannot compel other groups to use a lexicon with which they disagree. The basic tenet of the First Amendment is a guarantee of free speech across all platforms.
Netflix can engage in a discussion about the term “chick flick,” but it cannot create and enforce a speech code around movie categories everywhere for everyone. That would take Gretchen Wieners’ classic “you can’t sit with us” line in “Mean Girls” a little too far.
Pooja Bachani is social media manager for Alliance Defending Freedom. Follow ADF on Twitter @AllianceDefends, Facebook @AllianceDefendingFreedom, and Instagram @AllianceDefendingFreedom.
