On Black Widow and Marvel’s Gaps (or, Why We Need a Black Widow Movie)
On the recent Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show, I argued that part of what bothered me about the Black Widow scene wherein she reveals having been sterilized in the Red Room is that it clarified what was an obvious gap in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. We need a Black Widow movie, I said — more so now than ever. This is a somewhat complicated position, and I’d like to explore that in-depth here. For those that don’t know, I’ll spoil the bit everyone is talking about:
On Agency: Strong Female Characters, the Myth of Non-Action, and Jupiter Ascending
By now you’ll have heard the “Jupiter Jones doesn’t have agency” criticism of Jupiter Ascending (dirs. the Wachowskis; 2015).[1] The gist of the argument, as far as I can tell, is that Jupiter doesn’t have agency (or enough agency) because she does not become a “strong female character” until the last possible second. Andrew O’Hehir, for example, wrote in his Salon.com review that Jupiter has less female agency than any character ever played by Doris Day. Compared to this movie, the Disneyfied feminism of “Frozen” and “Brave” and “Maleficent” feels like Valerie Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto.” Peter Debruge wrote in Variety that [although] clearly conceived as an empowered female heroine, poor Jupiter spends most of the movie being kidnapped and shuffled from one unpleasant situation to another, whether that’s being nearly assassinated during an egg-donating operation or pushed into a marriage with a two-faced Abraxas prince. Sam Maggs wrote in The Mary Sue: When I hear “Mila Kunis black leather space princess,” I want to see her bulked the hell up, Emily Blunt style, kicking ass and taking names. We don’t get to see Kunis looking really cool until the very end of the film, at which point I wanted way more of that. Which, I guess, means I would pay for a sequel. The most damning claim about Jupiter’s agency, however, comes from Tim Martain’s review for The Mercury: There’s a little test I like to apply, where you try to describe a character without reference to their physical appearance or occupation. If you can come up with three clear character traits, then you may have a well-crafted character. If not, well, you have a cardboard cutout. Jupiter is a big ol’ flat piece of nothing. She is a name and a device, nothing more. Her character is not developed in any way beyond “special girl who everyone is fighting over”. She is Cinderella with even less motivation or personality. In other words, Jupiter isn’t even a person. She’s a thing. Because she is passive. Because she doesn’t fight (until the very end). Because she is manipulated by others. Because she is a toilet cleaner. Because she is everything other than a “strong female character.” One must ask: why does Jupiter need to take names? Why can’t she just be a space princess? Why can’t she simply get sucked into a world where space princesses are real and people like her (like us) have to learn to navigate the absurd bureaucracy of space royalty? Why can’t she be a confused, naive person like, well, a real person might be? Why isn’t that enough for her to have agency or for her to escape the charge that her agency is nearly absent? Why can’t this also be a story about someone discovering or developing a different kind of agency? Isn’t that enough? Frankly, I’m not sure these individuals understand what “agency” means. At its most basic, “agency” refers to one’s ability to take action to affect their own lives; as such, agency exists on a continuum that is affected by social status, culture, upbringing, economics, and so on and so forth. The degree to which we all have agency, in other words, depends on how well equipped we are to affect our daily lives. Agency can be individual, collective, immersed within or isolated from a specific dominant culture, and so on. In other words: agency is pretty damn complicated, as is clear when you start to look into the sociological, psychological, and feminist struggles to adequately define the concept in a way that incorporates the full range of social interactions. For women, agency has been a key component of the feminist fight for equality. Since the world has historically (and still is to a large degree) favored men in nearly every avenue, women’s access to “choice” in its broadest conception has always been curtailed. Worldbank notes that “across all countries women and men differ in their ability to make effective choices in a range of spheres, with women typically at a disadvantage” in the avenues of control over resources, free movement, decisions about family formation, freedom from violence, and freedom to have a voice in society and politics. Oppression does not necessarily mean that one loses all agency, though. Indeed, how one exerts influence can take myriad forms, including subversive actions within an oppressive situation. Women in violent, patriarchal societies do not lose agency simply by being oppressed; their abilities to affect their own lives, however, do change, limiting the degree of agency they might have, or, in some cases, simply changing how agency is perceived. Lest you think only overt oppression can steal one’s agency, remember that we are all to varying degrees limited by social, economic, and other factors. Some of us, such as myself, just have more advantages — in my case because I am white, male, American, and educated.[2] But in a world where pop criticism often stands in for professional criticism, the buzzword definitions are replicated ad naseum. Women who punch bad guys or take direct action against oppression or in some way “act” in a manner that makes them visibly opposed to a system or individual or in a position to “make things happen” are women who have “agency.” Every other woman? Well, she might have “agency,” but not enough that her agency is worth talking about, except to note that she doesn’t have any (or very little). If she subverts the system, her agency is only valued if her subversion is aggressive. Passive subversion won’t make her “strong.” If anything, “passive” is just another word for “worthless” or “oppressed.” These limitations on “agency” are so pervasive that they affect how we even talk about female characters, particularly when the term “strong female character” crops up. Sophia McDougall’s essay in the New Statesman (“I Hate Strong Female Characters”) points out that the phenomenon of the “strong female character” seems particular to women: No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s
On Ridley Scott’s Exodus and Bannings
The Washington Post reports that Egypt has banned Ridley Scott’s controversial Bible film, Exodus (starring Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, and Ben Kingsley), due to “alleged historical inaccuracies and a ‘Zionist’ agenda.” You can read the article for more detail, though I would suggest extra care here given the region under discussion and the inevitable spin that will come out of U.S. news sources. For the record: the BBC has reported the same thing, more or less. I should also note that I’m not going to defend Exodus from the charges that it is inaccurate in any direct sense. Honestly, I don’t think the movie should have been made. Its white-washing of history and clear manipulation of Biblical narrative for “sensationalist imagery” — not to mention Ridley Scott’s absurd defense of the former — have not endeared the film to me. In fact, I’m perfectly content with never seeing Exodus, and I sincerely hope it does so poorly that Hollywood thinks again before letting Ridley Scott ruin anything else. But none of this is a reason to ban the film. They made it, and if theaters want to play it, then so be it. Now, to my thoughts: As a general rule, I am against censorship, allowing for exceptions that might arise in which censorship might be necessary (no, I haven’t a clue what those exceptions might look like). Of course, when I say “censorship,” I mean “from the government or its subsidiaries.” While I might be bothered by a theater refusing to play a film, my objections would be personal, not ethical or legal. Censorship from the government, however, moves beyond a personal level. One business entity making a quality judgement has little bearing on the public’s perception of a work of art. After all, there are theaters devoted entirely to independent films, and so they intentionally leave out all sorts of films that do not fit their criteria, in part because so many of those theaters are small and cannot play every indie film that gets released. The Hippodrome Theater in Gainesville (where I live) does this. They probably play 10% of the “significant” independent films released in a year because they do not have the space — nor the funds — of a company like Regal Cinemas, which receives, I imagine, 100 times the attendance of the Hipp. And so the Hipp must make judgments on what it wants to play and for how long. Those judgments might involve content, the assessment of the local audience, money, and so on and so forth. All fair in the economics game. But the government doesn’t have the luxury of reflecting the voice of one entity, let alone a small collection of people working within that entity. It is meant to reflect the voice of a nation. In the case of the U.S., that voice is a protected voice, not just by our Constitution, but also by the individual laws we have put in place to protect artistic and everyday expression. We have a history of that protection lapsing, and we still struggle with a culture of book banning. Ever more the reason to discuss these rights and to continue fighting for them. Egypt, however, is not the U.S. and is not bound by our rules and legal structures (as should be obvious). Here, I think the principle of expression is paramount, and that’s something that I find difficult to support beyond the confines of the U.S. After all, it’s not every day that I am asked to defend my perspective of human rights with someone who does not share my nation’s history. How do I justify a position which says that Egypt’s banning of Exodus is wrong — even somewhat fascistic — when that position arrives from a growing up in a nation where such values are mostly upheld? Even if I suggest that expression is a fundamental right, can I defend that without resorting to a Western view? As it turns out, I can. Sorta. Egypt has been part of the United Nations since 1945 (Oct. 24). In 1948, they adopted the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, which contains a handy little section on expression: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. In short, Egypt agreed to the same principles which protect artistic and everyday expression in the U.S. (though, I must admit that the U.N.’s language is a tad clearer on the implementation). Egypt’s decision to ban Exodus, in other words, is a clear violation of this right/principle. We could certainly get into arguments about whether the U.N. has any authority or whether its Declaration is anything other than symbolic. Regardless, that Egypt adopted the Declaration suggests that they agreed with the principles written within it — or, rather, that a previous government did and no government afterwards saw fit to contradict that adoption. A banning, in short, is fundamentally unethical, and it sets a precedent that allows for other moralistic decisions about art. After all, that’s what Egypt’s banning is. Exodus was not banned because it is obscene or can be shown to have any real impact on Egypt’s population; it was banned because it does not represent history as Egypt’s government would want it. While it is probably true that Exodus is disgustingly wrong about its history (it certainly failed on the racial front), there is a suspiciously religious-moralistic flavor to this particular banning. If it were not so marked, then one could look back through Egypt’s history and find instances of other blatantly inaccurate films being banned. But Egypt released Gladiator, 300, 300: Rise of an Empire, The Patriot, and 10,000 B.C. One might argue that some of these simply take creative license with historical periods, but you can’t say that they are accurate films; given that at least two of these intended to be accurate, they
Movie Review Rant: Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
I’ve only recently decided to watch the new iterations of the (in)famous web-crawler. Originally, I had no intention of ever doing so, in part because of a misplaced loyalty to the Raimi renditions (2002, 2004, and 2007). The real kicker, for me, was the fact that these films came hot off the heels of a preceding adaptation, and they were not a continuation of the original story, but a reboot. Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. But then I broke down and watched Amazing Spider-Man (2012; I’ll talk about this movie another time) and liked it well enough that I wanted to see how the character would progress. And so here I am — reviewing Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)(ASM2 from now on). (There will be some spoilers in this review. I have, however, refrained from spoiling major plot elements that you wouldn’t have learned about from the trailers. I will discuss some of these elements in the footnotes, though, as they need to be discussed in the context of my rant.) ASM2 is about a lot of things. Peter Parker’s relationship with Gwen Stacy and his conflict with her now-dead father’s last request (stay away from her). The truth behind Peter’s parents’ deaths — what they were doing when they disappeared, etc. Harry Osborn’s desperation to live. Spider-Man. Angst. Honestly, the more I think about this movie, the less coherent its plot seems. There are so many things going on here that it is actually hard to determine what actually matters for the overarching narrative. Is this about Peter Parker and his parents? The film wants us to think so…for a while. Is it about Peter and Gwen? Ditto. Is it about Harry and his daddy issues? Apparently. Max Dillon (a.k.a. Electro)? Yup. There are at least two new origin stories in this film, most of which draw attention away from the more interesting personal elements — Peter’s parents and Gwen. In fact, if this had been a film about one villain, one parental issue, and one romance, with each tied together into a cohesive whole, this might have been on par with Captain American: the Winter Soldier (2014). Alas, it was not to be. If it’s not clear, I’m going to tear this film a new one. But to make you feel better, I’ll start with some things that I liked about the film. First, though I know there are some problematic gender-related issues with regards to Peter and Gwen’s relationship, I can’t help but admire the dedication to the complexity of their relationship. There’s a sense here that their relationship is real, based on a mutual interest in what one another is feeling or desires (in life or a relationship). This contrast with the Spider-Man elements is needed to humanize the character and remind us that, yes, Peter Parker really is just a young dude. One of the things I loved about ASM2 was its brief focus on Gwen’s career and the decisions she makes (a reminder that Gwen is actually a young professional on her way to bigger things than just “graduating high school” — this film, in a way, is as much about her as it is Spider-Man, or at least feels that way). This is not a movie where the woman is asked to give everything up for the guy; instead, Gwen and Peter both understand that Gwen’s opportunities abroad are one-of-a-kind, and that it would be unfair for him to ask her to stay simply for a high school romance. In the end, it’s Peter who offers a solution that involves neither of them giving anything up at all: he’ll move with her. I don’t know how often we see compromise of this sort in film; regardless, it was an element that gave the film a bit of life. There’s a lot more I could say about Gwen, too. For a film that essentially sidelines the female characters for the male hero (it’s Spider-Man, after all), it does at least give Gwen something to do other than play the damsel in distress. True, she’s rather limited in that she’s got the brains to out-think Spider-Man’s superpowered opponents but not the physical prowess. But she does help Spider-Man by giving him information for his tech and by participating as an active agent in the climactic fight scene. In fact, probably the strongest bit of characterization in the entire movie takes place in that fight scene. This scene condenses the overarching narrative that defines Peter and Gwen’s relationship into two important thematic components. First, Peter’s attempts to stop Gwen from participating — to control her — when he webs her to a car so she won’t follow him on his way to face Electro. Second, Gwen’s assertion of her own agency, and Peter’s relinquishment to the reality that his powers do not give him the right to control her decisions. This is shown when Gwen frees herself and reappears on the scene (I won’t ruin this whole scene; just know that her involvement is important), accusing Peter of being “a caveman,” to which Peter responds: “You can’t be here right now. I’m not messing around.” Gwen’s response puts Peter’s perhaps unintentional patriarchal paternalism in its place: “OK, guess what. Nobody makes my decisions for me. OK? Nobody. This is my choice. K? My choice. This is mine.” The contrast is almost beautiful. If there’s something to be said about the character development here, it’s that Peter is actually pushed into becoming more feminist by the conclusion — a man who listens to his significant other, who takes her choices seriously and respects them. This is, unfortunately, undercut by the concluding moments of the film.[1] Visually, the film is quite beautiful. I particularly liked the look of Electro and the incorporation of sounds (like a giant, walking tesla coil) into his lightning-style powers.[2] His final fight with Spider-Man perfectly captures the flexibility and dexterity of Spider-Man and the raw, emotional fury of Electro. This is obviously
Film Remakes and the Necessity for Critical Distance
Hollywood is hopelessly obsessed with remakes. We all know this. And if we don’t, it’s really not that difficult to figure out how obsessed Hollywood really is. But I’ll make it easy for you here: here’s a list of 57 remakes which were marked as “in development“ as of July 2013. Some of those may have been dropped, but the fact of the matter is that there were 57 remakes in various stages of development last year. There’s nothing inherently wrong with remakes, of course. After all, many remakes tackles films that are now 30+ years old, which means the primary viewing audience — let’s say 15 to 40 — probably hasn’t seen them anyway. Some remakes are attempts to update concepts which haven’t aged well, or which really are pretty darn cool and would benefit from newer film technologies and bigger budgets (technically, this year’s Robocop fits into this category, but that film is terrible). It makes sense, too, why Hollywood studios would choose to remake a film: it’s safer to reboot something that was already a success — or which has a following or concept that would work well in today’s market — since the discussion surrounding the remake will naturally include buzz about the previous version; obviously, this can sometimes backfire, as in the case of Total Recall or Robocop (or perhaps it’s more often than not), as it’s difficult to find remakes which are absolutely better than their predecessors. There’s almost always something “missing.” I tend to think of remakes in two ways: They are indicative of Hollywood’s inability to imagine new things and, in a sense, its refusal to take chances; and They are only a good idea if there is sufficient critical distance from the original source material. It’s the latter of these two modes that I want to discuss here. Part of the problem with remakes and reboots, as I see it, is the obsession with doing so before the original material has time to breathe. Amazing Spider-Man may be a decent superhero film, but it comes on the heels of an existing “canon” of Spider-Man films — the Sam Raimi lot. Setting aside what we think about Raimi’s take on Spidey, the films were financially successful and were generally well-received. The latest batch is half a decade removed from the original; rather than continue the story with a new cast, this new Spidey flick completely re-tells Spidey’s origins. If the intended audience for remakes are a “new” batch of viewers, which is, admittedly, my argument, then it makes little sense to re-tell an existing narrative when the audience is hardly “new.” One can point to many other examples of this, such as the Battlestar Galactica movie-reboot-remake-monstrosity that will hit theaters at some point in the next year or so. Would it not make more sense to continue an existing narrative? What I want to suggest about all this is a kind of “too soon”-ness. It’s not that these reboots and remakes of 30-years-or-less-old flicks are bad in and of themselves; in fact, many of them might be perfectly fine movies on their own or improvements over their predecessors (given the absence of emo-hipster jazz dances in the new Spidey films, I suspect this is a point most of you will understand). Rather, the problem these films pose is two-fold: Their “too soon”-ness courts comparison, largely unfavorable, and creates the conditions for viewer fatigue, and They remind us that Hollywood is largely a business, and so any means by which they can procure profit from licensed properties will be taken, including rebooting and remaking things well before they’ve fallen away from public consciousness, perhaps under the false assumption that doing so will naturally draw new and old fans alike. To the first, I think comparison is both beneficial and detrimental. If a film succeeds in remaking something that wasn’t all that great to begin with, but is fondly remembered in a kind of “cult” sense (i.e., Red Dawn), then the comparison to the original is largely positive. If Red Dawn (the remake) were actually better than Red Dawn (the 1980s cult classic), our conversation surrounding it would be about what it does right, how it succeeds where its predecessor did not and where it succeeds on its own merits. But Red Dawn did not have that reception. It is right for us to compare it to the original and laugh at the fact that the remake is an obviously lesser film, suffering from poor pacing, bad acting, and so on. It is also right for us to recognize the absurdity of its altered premise. The original Red Dawn took place right at the tail end of the Cold War, nestling itself right into pre-existing American fears and cultural narratives. In 1984, the Soviet Union was a real threat in America’s public discourse. But North Korea, the primary villain of the remake, is only a threat in the most limited sense. While the U.S. currently considers NK a dangerous nation, it is not one which we actively discuss as having the capacity to invade the United States — if anything, we should recognize that North Korea’s only staying power is a nuclear deterrent. The remake’s politics, as such, are conspicuously nonsensical in comparison to its predecessor and remind us of the specificity of the cultural context in which the original Red Dawn arose: it is simply untranslatable to the cultural context of 2012.[1] Much of the problem with Red Dawn rests in the fact that its conceptual origins are a) not detached from the present era due to chronological proximity, and b) coupled with a narrative which always reminds us that this is a remake. In other words, it is difficult for the studios, let alone the public at large — except, perhaps, a limited portion of the present viewership (teens) — to disentangle the narrative of Red Dawn (2012) from the history and narrative of Red Dawn (1984). And that disentanglement is necessary, I would argue, to avoid the
Movie Review Rant : Catching Fire (2013)
As I write this sentence, Catching Fire (2013), the sequel to The Hunger Games (2012), is encroaching upon the $700mil box office mark. It’s a huge film, and there are a lot of things to love about it. Before I get to my rant/review, here are a couple quick notes: I hadn’t read the book when I saw the movie, so the reactions below will jump back and forth between placing the film in relation to the book and treating the film on its own terms. There are spoilers. Nothing is in any sort of order here. Like my post on Riddick (2013), I’ll cover everything I feel like talking about as they come to me. I’ve discussed some of these things in the Shoot the WISB episode on Catching Fire over at The Skiffy and Fanty Show. The World and POV Shifts In the first film, there were a handful of cuts away from the central action to the characters involved behind the scenes: the gamekeepers, the president, Haymitch, the folks at home, etc. These served to give us a sense of the world in which these games are a centerpiece. The problem with The Hunger Games was its inability to rationalize the system of oppression that made the games possible. There were certainly attempts, but in the end you either had to accept the status quo or give up any possibility of immersion. Catching Fire does a decent job rectifying this problem. For one, it centralizes President Snow as the actual and real villain. In the first film, the Capitol and the other players in the game were all potential villains, but here, Snow is never anything but. From his first interactions with Katniss to the cut scenes showing him planning her torture and eventual defeat, Snow is the adversary the film has always needed: he’s the face of all that is wrong with the Capitol. For me, Snow provided the rationalization for the world that I needed. His interest in oppression is partly about power, but it is also about his own myths about what revolution entails, such that preserving those myths and power structures becomes more important than considering the implications of one’s actions. Snow, as such, continues to exert his authority — a largely dictatorial and malignant one — to preserve the system and to make sure nobody has the means or the will to challenge it. The Hunger Games are simply a means to an end: they’re a reminder of the past and a reminder of the power Snow/the Capitol wields. A lot of the scenes that best express Snow’s justifications for his brutality are in his interactions with his granddaughter, who appears to become entranced by the symbolic rebellion of Katniss. Presumably, she doesn’t understand what is happening in Panem, but the threat is there for Snow nonetheless: if his own family can be turned against him, his ability to maintain order will be permanently compromised. It’s a nice touch, as it would be too easy just to make Snow a vile, disgusting bag of skin, as he appears to be in the books. Here, there are little hints of humanity in play, and so he becomes even more horrifying as a villain the more we realize how human he really is. Likewise, the POV shifts are generally a good thing. They give us an impression of the world, its logic, etc. They also show us things we otherwise don’t get to see in the book, which helps the film avoid the problem of having no viable method to display Katniss’ internal struggles. The problem with these shifts, however, is in their unnecessary ability to trick us as viewers, which I’ll get into in the next section. WANTED: Clues That Logically Lead to X There are two main issues with the structure of the film. The second of these I’ll discuss in the section below on endings; the first I’ll cover here. One of the new central characters is gamekeeper Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman). At the end of Catching Fire, it is revealed to us that he, Haymitch, and several of the tributes have been conspiring to extricate Katniss from the games so she can remain the symbol for the upcoming revolution. But unlike the book, which leaves a great number of clues as to Plutarch’s true allegiances, the film simply discards most of those clues for a shocking reveal. This works in the book for one reason: we’re in Katniss’ head the whole time. But the book gives us plenty of clues. It makes it clear that there’s something fishy going on, even if Katniss hasn’t quite figured it out yet. The shock in the book, as such, is measured by revelation: so that’s what all those clues are about. In the film, most of those clues are gone. For all intents and purposes, we’re supposed to believe Plutarch is just like everyone else in the Capitol, albeit perhaps more macabre than the average flashy Capitol-ite. But almost every scene involving Plutarch doesn’t give us the impression that he’s actually one of the good guys, as he spends most of his time trying to convince President Snow that X method is the best way to destroy Katniss as person and revolutionary image. His ideas are, in retrospect, not terribly good, but they are, in the moment, convincing in their brutality. The shocking reveal, however, doesn’t have the benefit of proper foreshadowing or retrospective revelation, despite a good chunk of the film taking place outside of Katniss’ perspective. And without that benefit, Plutarch’s apparent heroism is incomprehensible as a consequence of the plot, and, thus, neutered. Were we supposed to hate Plutarch in the end as Katniss does, or find something redeemable in him? Thankfully, this issue doesn’t affect the allied tributes. There are enough moments where Finnick and Johanna hint that something else is going on, giving Katniss and the audience a moment to consider what that something might be. If only the