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A Case For Feminism Found Within Hallmark Holiday Films
Tressie McMillan Cottom critiques the ‘Hallmark Movie Universe’
There’s something about the Christmas holidays that make me want to watch television and movies about snowmen, fairy god mothers, and love found by an accidental kiss under the mistletoe or at the coffeeshop. Enter Hallmark (and Lifetime) Christmas events. Like most films, when watching Hallmark projects, it’s important to suspend belief. That’s the only way to thoroughly enjoy, say, your 55th viewing of old school, highly contentious Christmas classic Die Hard and all of its franchise children. The same holds true for the traditional storylines found in Hallmark’s “Countdown To Christmas” films. Tressie McMillan Cottom agrees with me, in part, because she writes that enjoying Hallmark films is possible when you agree to simply watch them without too much criticism.
In fact, Cottom says this: “There are only three things that turn off my critical survival lens and Hallmark movies are one of the three.”
That said, having seen scads of such films, she also argues that Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas” is not feminist but is due for a feminist reading.
She writes:
Women in the Hallmark Movie Universe may give it all up to marry a plumber in Evergreen, Oregon because he buys her a Christmas tree. But on a few important measures like women who speak and women who put words in people’s mouths, HMU behind-the-scenes scores ‘feminist’ points.
