The Fabian Lesbian Strategy

BREAKING DEJA VU: So Ashley Greene is in Lucky Magazine this month and the article should probably sound familiar to you, because it's essentially the same one that various magazines have been publishing for the last three years. It's an American tradition at this point: Every February 1st, we finally throw away the wreath on our front door (which we kept after ditching the tree because even fully dead it looked cool and dry and Januarian) and then walk down to the news stand, wondering absentmindedly if the groundhog will see his shadow tomorrow (and then trying to remember if seeing the shadow is a bad thing or not and then actually even fearing for a second that the whole thing is maybe REAL, and then dismissing that and feeling terrible about your gullible self for a second). Once we arrive at our destination we see Ashley Greene smiling coyly at us from a few magazine covers, and we flip the pages and read her familiar promises that Butter and The Apparition will be released this year. Sure. Like Greene herself, these movies have been threatening to come out for so long that I'm almost certain they never will. Fool me once, etc.

Butter is an interesting case though, because it seemed for a second there like they had an OK movie on their hands. But they've delayed and delayed for various strategic reasons for so long that they've missed all possible boats. My understanding is that it was originally conceived such that Jennifer Garner's character would evoke Hillary Clinton. Either before or after the movie was even finished, they'd already started saying Sarah Palin instead. Last fall we heard stirrings that Butter would be out for award season--there was even a premiere, right?--and the watchword was suddenly Michele Bachmann. It's a little troubling that one character could apparently be read as a parody of all three of those women ("Well, she wants to do a job that doesn't directly involve her boobs or vagina!"-Writers) but it doesn't matter now anyway. The backers of this film have missed about five moments in time (one for Hillary, two each for Palin and Bachmann) to release this film in a zeitgeisty way, but the political landscape is going to be Romney/Obama and nothing else for a long while now. (Plus Game Change will be upon us soon, and the only thing it will change about movies is that it will be so Uncanny Valleyan and terrifying that no one will want to make political movies for a few years.)

And they even missed their chance to be Ashley Greene's first same-sex kiss (on camera)! Yeah, some of us knew a while ago that AG's character in Butter ALSO turns out to be a surprise lesbian, but I'd only cryptically hinted at it because I considered it a spoiler. But they mention it in Lucky, and also this movie will never be released, so whatever, there you are. She makes out with Olivia Wilde. Two surprise lesbian kisses!? (The angels are smiling down on this blog, I guess.) It's not really a pattern when you realize that Butter was filmed in like, 1996, but now it's (allegedly) to be released within weeks of Pan Am. Is that the zeitgeisty moment they're trying to capture now? Trying to cement Ashley Greene as "America's Favorite Lesbian"*?

(*If you count Alice Cullen, and why wouldn't you, this is AG's THIRD gay character. GAY HAT TRICK!)

Of corse I'm fine with that, if that really IS the plan.