Talk:Fatal Attraction

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Andhenne, Hannah.pittman95, Elizabeth.allen.. Peer reviewers: Iriszhao0619, Jgomeskuehner.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:12, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Inaccurate Description of Narrative

In the section "Mental Health and Gender", the following is currently stated: "...and pretending to be pregnant are manipulative techniques"

But in the film, Alex is not "pretending" to be pregnant. Her pregnancy is confirmed by Dan when he calls the doctor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lnaf (talk • contribs) 23:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

That whole section doesn't seem like NPOV - or rather, it seems to talk in absolutes - "this is what female stalkers do" as opposed to "these are common behaviours of female stalkers". Should leave describing stalking behaviour to the article on stalking generally - how much of this could be replaced by something like "film scholars/psychologists have said..." with refs, whether that's "praised the film for its strikingly realistic portrayal of a female stalker" or saying that it's way OTT. A link to the relevant wiki article would make sense too. The bits on how Glenn Close felt about the role seem appropriate. Dichohecho (talk) 15:00, 13 November 2019 (UTC) The source "A Study of Women Who Stalk" seems like a reasonable source for the stalking article but I think what we need here is a specific source on stalking *in* Fatal Attraction. Dichohecho (talk) 15:04, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Genre

We need to come to a consensus on the genre for this film. I suggest thriller since it does "emphasize nervous tension and anxiety." I disagree with it being considered a slasher film given it doesn't satisfy any of the general characteristics listed in that description: "The slasher film is a sub-genre of the horror film genre. Typically, a masked, psychotic person stalks and graphically kills teenagers or young adults who are away from adult supervision...". mtz206 03:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, and I removed the slasher reference. Nightscream 09:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

March 10 edit by 70.30.127.52

Reverted the recent edit by 70.30.127.52. It needs citations, and seems a little like original research. If properly reinserted, should be in its own section (perhaps "Critical reaction"?), not in the Awards section. --mtz206 23:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Remake?

"Osbessed" follows a strikingly similar plot and is at least inspired by the movie. Should there be any mention of this in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.247.244.120 (talk) 03:35, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess you mean Obsessed (2009 film). Jim Michael (talk) 20:16, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Gelder?

Who is the Gelder referenced in the Psychiatric Diagnosis section? I ask because I'm currently attempting to figure out the truth behind Alex's illness. Erotomonaia, as defined on Wikipedia, sounds like an even further shot from BPD. If anyone could direct me towards more information on Gelder and interviews re: the planning of Alex's character, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.146.124.141 (talk) 00:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Based on how the sentence is referenced, I'm assuming he's a psychiatrist used in the source, which amazon has here. I hope that helps you on your mission. But your question brings up a point about this article; we aren't exactly very clear about that bit are we? I'm poking around in the article history to see if I can find where a bit of text adding clarity there might have been removed. But if anyone has read the book in question and can edit the sentence to make it more clear who Gelder is, that would be great. Millahnna (talk) 01:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I found the addition of the Gelder quote but the text was added in, essentially, its current form. Unfortunately, it looks like the editor has not been active since the same day they added it. Some quick google searching is showing me nothing beyond other pages copying the text here but I'll keep looking to see if I can't clarify this Gelder person. Millahnna (talk) 01:25, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Aha! It looks like it was Peter van Gelder who was not a psychiatrist (I don't think). Apparently, the commentary from Gelder in the source we use came from Gelder's book about Hollywood behind the scenes stuff. His book doesn't have a preview on Google books so I could use a little help figuring out how to fix our current text. Millahnna (talk) 01:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Inadequate article

No discussion of production history (took seven years to get produced), the original story from whence the ultimate script was adopted, the changing directors, the difficult choice of male and female leads, how Glenn Close was initially turned down for the role, how Brian de Palma refused direct it if Michael Douglas played the lead, etc. Total neglect of the production values/challenges.

Mostly all plot. AlbertBowes (talk) 16:15, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Merge of Bunny boiler

I've just proposed Bunny boiler be merged into this article. I don't think that term—having little more than a stub after I cleaned it up—is sufficiently notable in its own right to deserve its own article; I do think it's notable enough to deserve a brief mention in this article of its appearance in everyday language, however. —me_and 00:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

• Merge as a subsection under Fatal Attraction#Psychiatric diagnosis. Sottolacqua (talk) 17:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
• Keep as separate article. The term has a life of its own beyond its origin (three years after Fatal Attraction was released), and while the action (bunnyboiling) was in the film the term was created independently.
  :edit: Your edit is hardly a "clean up" - reducing the article to a stub and then suggesting it is too weak to stand on its own looks like you're setting up this article to fail, and your proposal to succeed. FanN | talk 11:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The only severe edit I see is the removal of a Pop Culture section which, predictably, consisted of items with no third-party sourcing establishing that they were in any way significant (and the section had been tagged for such for at least three months). Most or perhaps all of those items also appeared to relate directly to Fatal Attraction in any case, though of course without sourcing it was all original research in any case. Given that the list had been tagged long-term with no apparent signs of improvement, removal appears to have been the proper course of action. Perhaps you could improve the article to include and substantiate the claims you made? Doniago (talk) 14:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• Merge. Having never heard of the term, and the fact that it was coined in this film, I concur that it is not notable enough and should be merged with the Fatal Attraction article. Rlholden (talk) 20:32, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
• Keep Notable term. Further examples of usage not highlighted so far include in the very popular United Kingdom TV show Balls of Steel, where a major feature of the show features a character called "the Bunny Boiler". The same concept was also used in the later Australian editions of the show.--Shakehandsman (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Have any third-party sources taken note of the term as used in BoS, particularly without tracking it back to Fatal Attraction? Doniago (talk) 13:19, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

• Merge. Contents are entirely a subset of this article—the term is used as a reference to Fatal Attraction, not to a real-life practice of boiling bunnies— and without the list of in pop culture spottings, it fits nicely. It would improve this article; as a plus, anyone directly searching on bunny boiler would be redirected to the full context for the term. / edg ☺ ☭ 13:37, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

• Keep as separate article. The term 'Bunny Bolier' shoud not be merged as the term has entered into general parlance.

• Merge - this is a brief enough article that there's no need to keep it separate, and the term is taken directly from the film so it makes sense to cover it in that context. Robofish (talk) 02:12, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Section was removed due to lack of reliable sources. I'm not sure if dictionaries such as Oxford or Collins are good enough sources either but they'd certainly be better than IMDB and Urbandictionary. -- 93.107.152.57 (talk) 11:52, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Similar Films?

I think a determination needs to be made as to whether this section constitutes little more than fancruft, and if not, what criteria we should be using to define a film as being "similar". Thanks for your feedback; if I don't hear from anyone I'll likely remove this at some point, as it doesn't strike me as being especially encyclopedic. Doniago (talk) 14:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Need for Home Media?

For the home media section, the information is not adding anything substantial on the main topics surrounding the film. The section only discusses the two dvd re-releases. Even with mentions of the Special Collector's Edition and Blu-Ray edition, the special features mentioned are not significant enough for one point out in the article. The information is cited with sources from Amazon. For a section like this to have significance, I believe that there should be sources found that show how the DVD re-releases are distinct from other DVD re-releases. Scvalde (talk) 17:45, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

andhenne responses

Blog posts and press releases are considered poor sources of reliable information. Why? They are often biased and not factual. Anyone can write a blog post and a press release is incredibly skewed one way or another.

What are some reasons you might not want to use a company's website as the main source of information about that company? Being that the website is for the company itself, the information will only reflect the best image of the topic, so it is not coming from a reputable or unbiased source.

What is the difference between a copyright violation and plagiarism? Copyright violation would be when I take a photo and use it in a posting without the permission of the author/original poster. The issue with plagiarism is taking someone's work without giving them credit or citing their hard work.

What are some good techniques to avoid close paraphrasing and plagiarism? We learned that the best thing to do is take the information, close the source for a little while, and summarize or analyze the information in a separate document so that we aren't tempted to use too much information from the source in our own work.

Andhenne (talk) 14:43, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Reception

The psychological and academic analysis could use more work, we could add some information on the implications of Glenn Close's character and the psychological dissent she incurs. Also, the correlation between her being a strong career woman and her psychopathic tendencies and the reception that that has been given by feminists could use more content and citations.

Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction has psychopathic characteristics that are problematic, as they are ascribed to a successful and career-oriented woman, subsequently causing them to associate psychopathy to a woman's success.

How can we include more that gives us an idea of the implications this movie pushes towards powerful women? Elizabeth.allen. (talk) 03:18, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Play Misty For Me (1971)

The themes are remarkably similar in all respects to Fatal Attraction, including the film's climax. Just wondering if anyone's on record as having cited Misty as the inspiration for this. Hanoi Road (talk) 13:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Not Going Out

The Not Going Out episode Rachel is a parody of Fatal Attraction. Maybe that could be mentioned somewhere in the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 51.9.144.192 (talk • contribs)

You could add it yourself, but you'll need a reliable source that discusses the episode being a parody of the film. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 15:39, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Bunny boiler again

Bunny boiler redirects here, but after many edits there is now no reference to the concept in the article, either in the context of the film or more generally. The redirect may as well be deleted. Personally I think the merge a decade ago was a mistake. Ef80 (talk) 22:25, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd have no issues with deleting the redirect. I don't think I've ever heard the term anywhere other than the discussions here. That said, there's no reason that discussion of the term couldn't be added here or at its own article...as previously discussed, the primary issues are sourcing and evidence that the term is in use aside from in reference to this film. DonIago (talk) 14:14, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

It's a widely used term to refer to ex wives or girlfriends who are behaving disproportionately or obsessively, but it may not deserve its own article even with RS. --Ef80 (talk) 11:22, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Do you have sources to back up your assertion that the term is widely used? I'll repeat that I've never heard the term used except in reference to the film/this article. DonIago (talk) 14:12, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

No, just personal experience. It's slang and arguably misogynist, so good RS are thin on the ground. That's why I haven't edited the article. --Ef80 (talk) 18:41, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Full quote request

In reference 23, a critic's opening words are replaced by "The film brings". Why is this? I don't want to buy a back issue of Time or Time.com subscription, even if they are reasonably priced. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)