Taking Sides: Rob Fleming-Gordon vs. Bridget Jones

I agree though, both characters are as worthless as each other, and both books are perfectly entertaining.

Plus, it doesn't seem like female music fans exist in the High Fidelity world, so it sucks for that reason, too.

Plus Rob was a total idiot for not buying all those collectible records that that lady offered to him for 50 pounds! That offends my thrift score loving soul.

(Rosemary: you're right about the girls-educating trope, hence the joke about journalist-girl in the film -- she basically does the cutesy-dimbat hair-twirl when she asks about Stereloab. The only geek-equality moment is with the singer, where part of their extemp bonding thing includes her making reference to splitting up record collections.)

(I just want to note for future reference that no, I do not have the film committed to memory or anything, I just happened to watch it yesterday.)

"while Hornby ostensibly admits and accepts the emotional inadequacies of his sex, his real intention is to glorify them. The message of the novel is, as far as I can make out: 'we're men, we're pathetic, but hey, now I've admitted it I'm self-aware and therefore less pathetic, and women still fall in love with us losers anyway, so who comes out looking most pathetic in the end?'"

I still stand by this.

I don't hate Cusack but I like Zellweger (sp?).

"Particularly dubious is its adoption of Ally McBeal Syndrome - a twisted version of feminism whereby the heroine is shown, not just warts and all, but whopping neuroses, hopeless absent-mindedness, emotional incontinence, general dappiness and all. And yet still holds down a high-powered job and gets the guy. All this does is reinforce the idea that the only good woman is a vulnerable woman."

I can hate them both, right?

On that level I'm not sure I can agree with what you've written, because -- poorly demonstrated as it may be -- the end point to Rob is at least meant to be more like "I can stop being pathetic and only then will things turn out right." (In this sense maybe I choose Rob, simply because Hornby hasn't made the anti-redemptive mistake of writing a sequel!)

Obviously the best treatment of this whole thing = Xander, cause he goes back and forth (cf episode with the two Xanders)!

Okay, for me that was the least plausible part of the book. It's obviously an adaptation of the urban legend of the wronged wife selling hubby's sports car for a deliberately low sum.

Any fool with money can buy a snazzy car, but record collecting, whether or not you have money, requires a certain mind set. It takes certain personality traits to be willing to spend time rummaging through crates and bins and piles of even the most unpromising records, in the hope of turning up a diamond among all that dross. It takes at least a little research to know what to look for, and to recognize an original versus a reissue or forgery when you've found something. I cannot imagine a collector on the scale implied by the book turning his back on such a collection and running off with some woman. Taking some or all of it and running away, or taking the collection's gems and running off with a sympathetic female record collector, perhaps, but not taking off and leaving the collection in the hands of someone who doesn't care about such things, never.

I assume that Hornby included the incident to show that Rob 1) is a moral person, and 2) not a shrewd businessman, even if he does make his living by buying and selling records.

Makes like Donald Sutherland in the last scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I heart JC

Treating them almost as actual humans: I think it's because that's how they are sold to us. Or at least as Everyman/woman with whom we're supposed to identify/feel complicit.

Possibly when she realizes that Daniel is a compulsive male slut, decisively turns her back on him (a la Smart Women Stupid Choices or other self-help books of that sort), and starts reorganizing her life. However, Bridget's big problem throughout most of the book is taking self-help books and articles too seriously -- practicing virtue so intensely that it becomes a vice. When the mother's problems become so overwhelming, Bridget stops focusing on what she "ought" to do, and this opens the door for her to appreciate Mark on his own terms.

I am a single female.
I lives in the city both books where both books are set
I just spent the afternoon re-organising my CDs and vinyl ( sadly true. And how and why do I own two Jamiroquai singles?).

I'm not bloody either of them. On girl-wine-drinking nights no-one will order Chardonay (even my friend Sally who really likes it) because of Bridget, yet Rob-style admissions are still seen as some badge of geek-pride. Whilst being just as emotionaly stunted as Bridget, Rob, at least, can just about run a business. Bridget by contrast doesn't just fuck up her love life, but her career too. Her career is just as ruled by the men in her life as her heart. (Sleeps with boss, leaves. Saves TV career by swinging an exclusive interview because Mark Darcy is the lawyer involved.)

Rob Fleming = thinly disguised "comic" version of Nick Hornby whose life problems are solved by improbable happy ending.

Fleming/Hornby wins because Jones/Fielding thinks she's unexpectedly getting what she deserves whereas F/H knows he's flukily getting what he doesn't.

You are all too hard on BJ.

Ugh. Someone so needy and so unable to function independently and can't validate her existence without men.

The film version was shite too. Her friends made my blood boil. Apart from the pathetic swearing (ie, swearing was done badly), they were such home counties public schoolkid cockfarmers. Made me wish for an Uzi.

My therapist says I am getting better.

Yeah. I'm really am over that 'hating fictional characters' fallacy (well, apart from the odd rant at the telly when I think no one's around...) I think my problem has *always* been with the bad writing and the disingenuous (and maybe even damaging) portrayal of characters with whom we're encouraged to identify.

So many "young working women" in media today, such as Bridget Jones and Ally McBeal are made to be completely ineffectual basket cases who can only achieve through use of their sexuality. It's fucking sick.

Rob Gordon on the other hand, starts out an asshole, slowly realizes that its his own damn fault he's not enjoying life, and begins to appreciate those around him.

How can Bridget be prefered?

i haven't read either of these books but it was either revive this thread or start a new one about what a dimwitted waste of air ghomeshi is, and i'm aiming for positivity today!!

I quite like Bridget Jones these days, if I don't think too hard. Rob/Nick Hornby can still fuck off though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fastshow/characters/images/bob_fleming.jpg

Um anyway – the bad writing and the disingenuous (and maybe even damaging) portrayal of characters with whom we're encouraged to identify – I can cope with this in fiction for some reason but when it's in advertising it really winds me up. I think that's because I can forgive an author for flaws in character invention (as distinct from inventing characters with flaws) but when it comes to advertising, some ad exec is trying to understand me with a view to taking my money almost by deception – and it's when I am perceived as two dimensional or unreal or a cypher that I get wound up. (Though I might be all of those things, who knows.)