Nora Ephron and "chick flicks"

Writer and filmaker Nora Ephron died earlier this week at the age of 71 from complications from leukemia.



She's most known for movies like When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and most recently, Julie and Julia, single-handedly popularizing the mocked, and reductively titled,"chick flick" genre. The Atlantic's Eleanor Barkhorn says :

"Though Ephron was a prolific essayist and wrote several best-selling books, she's best known for making films that appealed to women. And they did: Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Julie & Julia, and, most especially, When Harry Met Sally are romantic-comedy classics, movies women watch over and over, either alone or together, because they say something familiar and true: The Empire State Building is romantic; long email chains about books and music are thrilling; tackling—and conquering—a new recipe is satisfying; and, yes, it is very, very difficult for men and women to be just friends."

What Ephron really had the gall to do was create three-dimensional, and often flawed, female characters on for a mainstream audience. She was a master at putting women's narratives front and center. Not that her films were completely free from problematic elements: her characters were more often than not white, middle-class, educated, and attractive (though a lot of that can be attributed to the Hollywood machine itself). Because of that, I hate to use words like universal, but in an industry where female characters are hyper-sexualized, lacking agency, or just plain non-existent, I'm glad Nora Ephron's films existed. R.I.P.