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Diablo Cody’s “Binge Thinking” is just what we need

As a young aspiring female filmmaker, it’s hard not to be just a little bit jealous of Diablo Cody. She’s got it all, including an Oscar and she’s barely 30 years old. Then I look at the flack Cody gets anytime she opens her mouth by putting something out into print and I’m no longer envious of her, I’m just annoyed by all the haters.

OK look, Cody writes a regular back page column for Entertainment Weekly. Does anyone even really read Entertainment Weekly anymore? The last one I can remember buying had Ellen Page on the cover. My point exactly. (Actually, not my point since I just bought it because Ellen Page looked really cute.)

Anyway, back to Cody. Why do so many people keep trashing her musings on pop culture?

Perhaps because it’s so rare in this day and age that women get to show their enjoyment for mass media, much less be funny about it. And judging by snarky write-ups from the pages of Variety to various bloggers and those always pleasant sexist anonymous comments left on the World Wide Web, it seems practically illegal for Cody to have an opinion on anything. It’s like women aren’t supposed to have a sense of humor, take enjoyment out of anything and they definitely are not allowed to get paid for it.

How many times do you turn on the radio, flip through television channels, open any sort of publication and hear what men think about things? Any things, all things, everything. Raise your hand if you would rather see Sarah Silverman host some late night TV instead of her, ex, Jimmy Kimmel. That’s what I thought.

While I’ll probably always be conflicted about the moral messages in Juno (and how in the heck it was just a “coincidence” there was another film years before about a pregnant teenager also named Juno), friends and readers (reader-friends I will call you) I am not conflicted about Cody’s presence on the web and in print. I absolutely adore it. While sad her blog is no longer called “Pussy Ranch” and is now a regular old MySpace blog, she also has a Twitter mini-blog. And since December 2007, she has written a regular column for Entertainment Weekly called “Binge Thinking.” She shares the column-writing duties on a rotating basis with a guy you may have heard of named, oh I don’t know, Stephen King (who BTW, I hear no one complaining about his credibility when he writes about his favorite movie snacks).

And seriously, Cody has already collaborated with Stephen Spielberg upon his request. Did I mention she wasn’t even 30 when this happened? I hardly think Cody needs anyone’s approval regarding what she thinks of 90210 or an upcoming Will Ferrell flick. I’m just so darn glad Cody has found a job getting paid to write how she feels. What’s so wrong about hearing a funny woman geek out over things that she loves? Haven’t men been doing it for years? And women have too; they just haven’t always gotten paid for it. (Riot grrrls didn’t invent fanzines, but we sure did make a lot of them.)

I look forward to reading more of Cody’s columns and seeing her next few projects: A horror film named after a Hole song directed by the filmmaker who made Girlfight!; a cable television show that is Weeds-meets-Sybil-meets-Three-Faces-of-Eve!. Cody knows how to push my buttons and for the sake of female pop culture geeks everywhere, I hope as her first EW column said, Cody’s column for the mag “ain’t no one-off.”

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