Black Widow (The Avengers): Late Thoughts on Feminism
I realize that a lot of people have already talked about Joss Whedon’s portrayal of Black Widow in the smash hit The Avengers (and that I’m coming to this quite late). Jim Hines has an interesting response here that is worth reading. Much of the discussion has dealt with Loki’s insult (“mewling quim,” which more or less translates to “whining c-word”) and the fact that much of Black Widow’s screen time involves being subject to the authority of men. Most don’t seem to have a problem with the fact that Black Widow is under the jurisdiction of Nick Fury (a man); neither do I. They do have a problem with the way in which power is distributed when Black Widow is on screen, and particularly when she’s doing her “spy” thing: namely, that it appears as if men mostly have power in all situations, leaving Black Widow to navigate the patriarchal power dynamic that structures her society (and, in other words, ours). On the one hand, I do not have a problem with this portrayal. For me, The Avengers takes place in an alternate reality whose only difference from our own is that super powers and aliens exist and directly impact the lives of average people. Comics always reflect our present in some way, whether through allegory/metaphor (think the parallel between anti-mutant movements and anti-black movements) or literal representation (the recent announcement that Canadian superhero Northstar will have a gay wedding is a good example). In that sense, I think we need to take a quick look around us, particularly in the United States, where pretty much all Marvel comics are written and where the focus is almost always put (even when the characters are not Americans). If we look at Black Widow, we realize that what we’re seeing is a reflection of the reality we’ve presented women, whether we like it or not (this from the perspective of the film and not the comics). She does not exist in an equal world anymore than she is part of a military or similar organization which reflects equality in its members. In other words: Black Widow’s actions, unfortunately, must work within this system. That means using what others perceive as her weaknesses to achieve her goals (even if those goals are S.H.I.E.L.D.’s and not her own). It also means being subject to the patronizing gaze of her “male superiors” (in scare quotes for a good reason). On the other hand, arguments for a more subversive feminist movement in The Avengers are ones for which I have sympathy. On some level, Black Widow really should be treated more equally by her fellow “heroes,” regardless of gender. She is an accomplished spy, strong (emotionally, intellectually, and physically), and obviously completely capable of matching up with men, except where super powers give them the edge (let’s be fair: she’s not going to overpower Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, or Iron Man, but only, I suspect, because they have things she does not — powers or wicked technology). With all that in mind, why would Whedon choose to portray her as less-than-equal? Is it because men still have not moved well enough ahead, even in the fairly “progressive” realm of Hollywood, to see women as figures who subvert patriarchy? To be honest, I do not have an answer for this question. Personally, I do not have a problem with her portrayal, at least insofar as I can reflect upon my own reality. My hope is that perhaps discussions like these will make us think about how our society is structured, because to change representations, we have to change the the society it reflects. Anyone have thoughts on all this? The comments are yours. —————————————————- P.S.: On some level, we should also acknowledge that some of the superheroes and leaders who are men in this movie also come from an older era. In particular, Captain America spent the generations after WW2 as a Capsicle, which means he did not have the benefit of time to change with, well, time. I don’t know how much we can attribute this to the sexism of the film, but it’s something to consider.
Semi Movie Review: Ironclad (Historical Revisionism of the Worst Sort)
Have you seen Ironclad? It stars Paul Giamatti as King John of England and James Purefoy as Thomas Marshall, a Templar Knight (Purefoy, by the way, seems to have had a role in at least 3/4ths of the medieval-era-ish film productions released in the last 6 or so years, which is impressive). If you haven’t, you’re probably not missing anything you didn’t see in Braveheart. It’s not a bad movie by itself, mind you. A little on the long side at two hours, sure. But as a film, it has a lot going for it. Decent acting, a plot that makes internal sense, and a narrative that balances between all out war (there will be blood!) and the rigors of attrition. If this were set in the mythical kingdom of Genland, with the plot centered on King Hojn’s use of Adnish mercenaries to reclaim his throne from the wicked barons who forced him to sign the Namga Artac, then it would be an interesting movie with lots of parallels to England’s medieval history. But that’s not what this film is about. You see, in this version of history, King John doesn’t successfully take Rochester Castle from an entrenched baronial force. Rather, the French magically show up and he’s forced to trudge out into the marshes of England trailing his treasure (which is mysteriously lost), after which he dies of dysentery. Thus the heroes are saved! Oh merciful heavens our surviving heroes can go on to live their lives in sin! Yes, sin. You know why? Because Thomas Marshall violates his religious codes of conduct as a Knight Templar by not only sleeping with a woman (abstinence!), but with a woman married to another man. This results in said woman explaining how important it is for Thomas to live life. Oh! He must live it by committing a cardinal sin! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying sex out of wedlock or adultery is evil or even sinful in my mind. But we’re not talking about the world I live in. We’re talking about 13th century England. Now, I don’t want to suggest here that nobody was breaking religious law back then. I’m sure the Knights Templar were quite good and putting their willies where they shouldn’t (according to their religious rules). But we’re told in this story that these vows are supremely important to Thomas. Not just important, but so damned important that he spends the entire movie resisting temptation of one form or another, claiming the moral high ground alongside others with less strict religious rules. And all this is destroyed by a single woman. If any story could make it more clear to us that the serpent of the Bible lives in the loins of the female human, this is the one. But I suppose that’s me reading a lot into a movie within a film tradition in which religious “rules” really only mean a lot when it comes to who you marry and who you behead. The real problem with this movie is that it gets its history so terribly wrong as to be dangerous. Let’s toss aside the fact that somehow our hero has resisted wicked temptation his whole life, the criminal use of modern phrases, and the strange logical gap between the importance of Rochester Castle (it controls everything in London and is ever so crucial to King John’s campaign — this is actually true) and the suspicious absence of anything resembling a defensive force in the castle itself (you can count the number of soldiers/archers/defenders on your hands and feet and still have digits left over). Let’s just talk about the utter failure on the part of Jonathan English (ha!), Erick Kastel, and Stephen McDool to write a story that resembles the actual event. Let’s take, for a moment, the glorious inadequacy of these writers, shall we? The BBC website says the following of the battle Ironclad attempts to depict: King John lay siege to the castle in 1215 and took it after two long months. He finally undermined the south east tower and burned the props with the “fat of forty pigs” causing the tower to collapse. The city was well placed for raids on London and it also enabled them to devastate the lands of Kent, particularly those belonging to Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had crowned Rufus and was therefore Odo’s and the rebels’ enemy. Short, but sweet. The English Heritage website adds a few more details: In 1215, garrisoned by rebel barons, the castle endured an epic siege by King John. Having first undermined the outer wall, John used the fat of 40 pigs to fire a mine under the keep, bringing its southern corner crashing down. Even then the defenders held on, until they were eventually starved out after resisting for two months. What’s that? The French didn’t show up and send King John packing at Rochester Castle? Really? You mean our heroes lost by starvation, thus surrendering after an understandably brave months-long fight? The only thing Ironclad gets correct in the above description is that King John used the fat of forty pigs (sappers!) to cause the tower to collapse. But most everything else — the order of events, the players, etc. — falls apart when under simple scrutiny. There’s no city. No cathedral. No indication that anyone actually lives near Rochester Castle, which is unusual when you think about the film’s logic: this is such a strategic point for taking the country, and yet nobody seems to live in the bizarre wasteland around the castle (there’s no farmland either). Not for miles! And we’re given some beautiful shots of England countryside to prove this! Even Wiki-frakking-pedia points out where Ironclad fails miserably: William d’Aubigny commanded the garrison but contemporary chroniclers do not agree on how many men that was. Estimates range from 95 to 140 knights supported by crossbowmen, sergeants, and others.[9] John did take the castle, most of the higher nobles being imprisoned or banished; and the French
The Anime/Manga Adaptation Invasion: Why We Love It and Why It’s Here to Stay
The anime/manga-invasion has been building for the last twenty years. With live-action films for Death Note, Dragonball, Speed Racer, Transformers (not anime; Jordan Lapp has destroyed my childhood), and over forty other adaptations behind us, and at least a dozen others (U.S. and Japan based) on the way, it seems like anime and manga have a stranglehold on the film and television market. Of course, both have been hot commodities in the U.S. for several decades. There has been significant growth in the last ten to fifteen years alone with the syndication and dubbing of dozens of anime franchises, many crossed over directly from popular manga in Japan. One might even suggest that the last ten years have been the Japanese equivalent of a film renaissance. One of the best adaptations, despite the silly special effects. The best thing about the invasion is that it’s just getting started. The next two years are looking to be some of the biggest for anime/manga live-action adaptations. What’s coming? How about half of the top ten most influential and/or popular anime productions ever made (for U.S. audiences, at least): Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Akira. Plus, you can’t forget the recent release in Japan of the live-action adaptation of Space Battleship Yamato (known as Star Blazers to U.S. viewers), which–we can only hope–will get a decent release in the U.S. so we don’t have to wait for bootlegs to hit the torrent sites or $30 DVD sets with poor subtitle production to hit shelves. Yamato looks like the kind of film you need to see on a massive screen with decent theater audio–one might say that it has “epic” written all over it. The best live action adaptation ever? Let’s hope! But what it is about anime–specifically, live-action adaptations–that has America in a furor for more properties to push out into the market (I won’t speak for Japan, since I have very little personal connection with Japanese culture)? Even if most of us have never intentionally watched an anime program, or have never become interested enough in anime to step beyond the traditional fair that appears on cable and regular network television, we still support anime programs and anime productions. The two Transformers movies, regardless of their critical reception, were massively successful in the U.S. (again, not anime…)…Original anime productions–most of them by Hayao Miyazaki–have and will continue to capture audiences for years to come. While it’s true that other franchises, such as Speed Racer, have not faired well among U.S. viewers, many of those franchises didn’t have much of a shot in the first place. Speed Racer, while based on a classic, suffered from a number of problems, the most important being that its target demographic (young people) simply didn’t match up to who the show originally appealed to (folks who used to be young in the 60s)–not to mention that the original television show hasn’t been updated since it originally aired, unlike other franchises that have received movie adaptations. You can’t expect to connect with the largest demographic with a program that young folks largely identify as “that old crap my parents used to watch.” Oh silly people and their cars… Speed Racer, however, is likely a fluke, since most of the upcoming adaptations are of franchises that will translate well to live-action even if the source material has never been viewed by the target audience. Ghost in the Shell will be, we can hope, a deeply psychological look into identity in a drastically posthuman world; Akira will have a similar psychological framework, but focused on the conflicts of power and the people who want to control it. And there are others: Cowboy Bebop, Voltron, Full Metal Panic, Bubblegum Crisis, Gatchaman, Battle Angel, Gantz, and so on. What most of these share–and what makes anime a great medium to adapt into live action feature films–are a collection of counter-inhibitions–features that make anime a love it or hate it medium in its pure form, but also seem to make live-action anime adaptations work well for U.S. audiences. An Unrelenting Orientation Towards Action. Anime and manga often don’t pull punches on the action, letting high-powered weaponry or magic control the scene. This is in stark contrast to U.S. films, which, while over-the-top at times, are often focused on the effects of combat, rather than the combat itself (i.e. explosions). In anime, however, power is visible. Dragonball Z often went a little overboard with its action, dragging out battles for five or six episodes, but it also showed us action at its most flamboyant. Uninhibited Ideas American audiences might be surprised to know that a lot of the anime that makes it to our TV screens has actually been watered down for our audiences. That might not be so true for the stuff that shows up on late night cable, but the popular shows on Saturday morning or in the afternoon have often had their questionable content removed. Anime, thus, tends to go places where traditional western television is unwilling (except in indie stuff and late night British TV). Sociology would suggest that this has to do with the absence of western-style theology in the Japanese sphere, since a great deal of Japanese people are not “religious” in a traditional sense. In any case, so many great anime are not afraid to go into the darkest, dirtiest, and awful places of human potential. But they also dig deep into the human mind, sometimes in the most beautiful ways (like in Gasaraki, which is both dark and beautiful at the same time). Romantic Tension and Emotional Hypersensitity This may be a strictly Japanese thing, but one of the aspects I most appreciate about anime is how they often create an extraordinary amount of romantic tension that, often times, doesn’t get fully resolved, or, if it does, it’s expected, but still an enormous relief (like in Saikano). Great anime, however, do this by presenting enormously complex and flawed characters torn by conflicting emotions. Romances in science fiction anime
Brief Thoughts on Space Battleship Yamato
The live-action adaptation of Space Battleship Yamato hit theaters in Japan on Dec. 1st, and if the video below is any indication, the film is all kinds of awesome. Hopefully U.S. theaters will be smart and bring this one to us before the end of January, but I highly doubt that will happen. Before I talk about my more sophisticated thoughts about SBY, I think you all should watch the trailer and the brief clip from the film: First: Apparently the budget for this film was roughly $20 million. How they managed to produce such a visually impressive film for that amount is beyond me. Even films in the U.S. with awful CG often cost more than SBY. Maybe IMDB has it wrong. Second: Based on the two clips above, the one thing that I am most impressed about SBY is how much effort has gone into maintaining the feel of the anime it’s based on. The battle scenes are all high-octane action, with an extraordinary amount of detail; they actually seem to overload the senses, which real war has a tendency to do, and films often downplay. Likewise, the bridge scenes follow a very traditional anime structure–a kind of very personable back-and-forth style that highlights both the emotional hypersensitivity and the hyper-authoritarianism found in anime representations of the Japanese military. They remind me of scenes from Crest of the Stars and Banner of the Stars, though these connected series came some thirty years later than the original SBY and likely took a few pages from the 1970s classic. The creators of the adaptation of SBY seem to be going about this rather intelligently. They’ve acknowledge the source material, updated it, and amplified the emotional output from the characters. SBY simply looks beautiful and anime-lover-friendly. It’s the kind of film that tries to reach a wider audience while always remembering where it came from. Granted, in Japan, live-action anime adaptations really don’t have to appeal to a non-anime audience. Japanese anime is, well, huge in Japan, which is in contrast to America, where animated programs are largely the domain of children. Exceptions exist, but they are dwarfed by the number of programs designed for younger generations. Third: Am I the only one looking forward to this film? I know it’s in Japanese and dubbing it will be awful, thus forcing most of us to watch the film with subtitles, but it just looks so tasty. Do you agree? I want to know what you think about SBY, so let me know in the comments!