Film – Shoshana Kessock

The Feminism of Black Panther vs. Wonder Woman

February 27, 2018 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Criticism, Film, Uncategorized

First, I’ll start off this article by stating a simple fact: I saw Black Panther on opening night, and since then, I’ve wanted to write this post. I walked out of that film with so many ideas to talk about, I was nigh bursting. However, I waited this long to post anything about Black Panther for a simple reason – there are other voices than mine which should take precedent in a conversation about a film so strongly impacting people of color right now. There are so many writers of color putting out thoughtful, insightful articles about Black Panther that I felt it was important for me, as a white woman, to sit back and listen without stepping in and having my say.

Then, I saw this image pop up online asking why more white women weren’t speaking up about the feminism in Black Panther when so many are touting Wonder Woman as such a feminist film. So I figured it was time to write this then, to do my speaking up.

Because folks, I’m going to agree: Black Panther is a more feminist film than Wonder Woman. And I’m going to show you how.

[[Note: Major spoilers for Black Panther below.]]

Feminism As An Integrated Force

Previously, I’ve written extensively about the incredible job the creators of the recent Wonder Woman film did translate Themyscira and the Amazons onto film. Sure there were some issues along the way, but overall I believe director Patty Jenkins did a phenomenal job telling Diana’s story on the big screen. However, there has always been a part of the Wonder Woman story that rubbed me the wrong way.

As a little girl, when I saw misogyny growing up in the world around me, I longed for a place where I could escape, a society of women who were not only strong but intelligent, thoughtful, creative, and loving. Themyscira truly was Paradise Island, where a woman could be everything she ever imagined, without the influence of patriarchy on her growth.

Yet now, as a grown woman, I can see a fundamental flaw in this idea. Though the thought of a world without men is seductive when faced with the dangers of toxic masculinity on all society, I’ve come to believe removing one’s self from “man’s world” to only focus on a woman-based culture devoid of men is to ignore a larger part of society. Toxic masculinity, in fact, effects men in a “man’s world” just as bad as it does women, if only in other ways. I believe that to ignore those effects and abandon the rest of the world to its own devices is to truly ignore the promise of feminism’s positive impact on the world. By separating themselves away from men, the Amazon’s evolved into a utopian society to the detriment of the rest of the world. Their influence could have changed the world if only they’d emerged from their hiding sooner.

By contrast, we have Wakanda. Though Wakanda is an isolationist society much like Themyscira in regards to the rest of the world (a subject for much debate elsewhere and addressed directly in the Black Panther film), it is also a well-balanced, nearly utopian society, growing technologically and societally with every passing generation while still holding onto its ancient traditions. Yet unlike other societies, Wakanda does not focus on patriarchal ideology, despite its male-dominated leadership (Wakanda has a history of only kings on the throne until, spoiler alert, Shuri becomes the first woman leader in the comics). Instead, Wakanda has fully integrated the idea of women as equals, creating a society where women are not only respected but accepted without surprise when in positions of power.

There are powerful examples of this integration all across the film. Shuri is the princess of Wakanda and yet, as a super genius serves as the driving force behind Wakanda’s technological evolution. Okoye is the leader of the Dora Milaje, a fighting force of women drawn from every tribe of Wakanda to be its most dangerous protectors. As the bodyguards of the royal family, the Dora Milaje are never questioned as warriors but instead accepted not only as equals but as superiors in combat. Even King T’Challa knows he is meant to be deferential in many ways to Okoye, who has more experience as a warrior and general than he does. Let me say that a little louder: never once does the king of the sovereign, advanced nation of Wakanda speak down to or diminish the power of the women warriors and creators all around him. He humbly recognizes women as equals, worthy of respect as a matter of commonplace course.

[A brief note: The film makes an interesting adjustment to the story of the Dora Milaje that sets it apart from the comic book version. In the comics, the Dora Milaje are indeed chosen to become elite warriors to protect T’Challa and the royal family. However, they are also meant to be taken from every tribe so eventually T’Challa will choose a bride from one of their ranks. This idea was stripped from the film, a choice that mirrors a more progressive ideology being embraced by the film’s creators. The Dora Milaje were always badasses, but they’ve now become more than just badass prospective consorts as they were originally written.]

Never is T’Challa’s acceptance of the influence of women more apparent than in his relationship with his ultimate spy, Nakia. Nakia left Wakanda to embed herself in other societies for the purpose of saving people (especially women) endangered in the turbulent outside world, flying directly in the face of Wakandan tradition and T’Challa’s own interests. T’Challa sought out Nakia as a love interest and yet respected her choice to leave, even when he disagreed. When he finds her once again at the beginning of the film, he is struck nearly dumb at the sight of her, a king lost for a moment in the sight of the woman he obviously still cares about, much to Okoye’s snarky delight. Yet with every interaction between Nakia and T’Challa, we see a man not only besotted with the spymistress, but a man who does not treat her as a sexual or romantic object. Instead, he values her experience, her opinion, and her power, accepting her choices without real complaint and listening to her advice so much she influences his entire foreign policy.

10145959_web1_film-black-panther-women_3747697 — Queen Ramonda (played by Angela Bassett)

From Queen Ramonda (played by the unbelievable Angela Bassett) to every one of the Dora Milaje, from Okoye and Nakia and Shuri and the councilwomen who serve as representatives of their tribes, the powerful leading women of the Black Panther film are not presented to the audience as exceptions to the rule in Wakanda. Instead, they stand as examples of how Wakanda has evolved as a society which allows women to flourish to their full potential equal to men in all ways, with no question or compromise. In Wakanda, women and men live lives of nearly unvarying potential with no need to withdraw or hide.But beyond their own integration and acceptance in society, the women of Wakanda seem to have brought a very important influence as well on the men around them.

The Divestiture of Toxic Masculinity In Black Panther

When watching Wonder Woman, the message of Diana’s journey into “man’s world” is hammered home over and over. As representative and in fact the idealization of all the Amazon’s believes, Diana is acting as an ambassador from her world of women’s idyllic perfection to the patriarchal outside world. She is, as she states, becoming “a bridge to the world of men” so as to bring the Amazon’s message of peace and understanding to a world ripped apart by strife. She wants to present the idea of feminine equality to the rest of the world, where it has been so long repressed, suppressed or destroyed in so many cultures. She is the exceptional woman, out to influence the men around her with her clarion call of justice, truth, and love. And while this is a beautiful idea, a truly feminist ideology in many ways, it rings a little hollow when you look at Diana as the exceptional outsider.

Diana enters the world outside an innocent, ready to bring her ideas to someone else’s culture without any idea of their real history, their issues, or the ingrained ideas she’ll be facing. She believes she can change men’s minds just by bringing them a better way from the outside of their society, from a clearly “superior” place. In a strange way, she is a cultural tourist, if a well-meaning one, presenting her feminism into a world which is in many ways unprepared for a radical cultural shift and unwilling to change so quickly just because they’re told about “superior” feminist ideology from an outsider. It’s for that reason Diana struggles so hard to influence “man’s world” – she is not a part of it, but an alien influence presenting a new form of thinking to a world with thousands of years of ingrained thinking to undo.

It’s no wonder then that the men around Diana remain, in large part, still entrenched in their toxic masculine ideas. Though Wonder Woman earns the respect of many of her male colleagues both in the comics and in the recent film, her ideas are still considered foreign to most men around her. In fact, most do not divest themselves of their ideology to embrace a way of living outside the influence of toxic masculinity. They instead bend to Diana’s ideas only when they are the most needed, flexing back to their ingrained patriarchal thinking often right after she’s not around. Steve Trevor is an example, as in the film he spends the entire time attempting to influence Diana to his way of thinking instead of the other way around, using his patriarchal thinking to drag her halfway across Europe and blocking her action with what is clearly his male privilege. A male privilege which is obviously lacking in Wakanda.

From the very beginning of the Black Panther film, I felt something odd when watching Chadwick Boseman in his portrayal of King T’Challa. While T’Challa is the royal leader of his country and therefore, presumably, the representation of the pinnacle of its masculine representation in the narrative, he doesn’t exude many of the typical traits you’d see of a film’s leading male character. T’Challa is both powerful and sensitive, thoughtful and respectful. He is from the beginning willing to not only express his emotions in front of others but especially to and in front of women, who surround him as his closest family and advisors. T’Challa never disrespects or tries to strong-arm the women around him, even when he disagrees with their choices, but praises and welcomes their input, agreeing to disagree and offering support where he can.

T’Challa also has powerful emotional connections to the men around him, including Zuri the priest and especially his father, the late King T’Chaka. When he is put into the trance during his test to assume the throne, he speaks to his father and falls crying against his side, showing a level of emotion often considered anathema to a male protagonist. He doesn’t brood but instead shows his inner conflicts over his right to be king with quiet consideration and a willingness to take criticism and advice without anger or retaliation. He, to be plain, showcases all the hallmarks of a male protagonist stripped of the signposts of toxic masculinity influence, as do the other male characters in Wakanda.

With T’Challa as the pinnacle example of Wakanda and the other male characters expressing similar emotional signs during the film, we can then surmise T’Challa is not the exception to the rule but instead a typical example of how Wakanda has evolved as a more emotionally open society, stripped of toxic masculine influences. And that, matched with the equal treatment of women, leads me to surmise the cultural acceptance of those women have helped Wakanda evolve as a place where patriarchal influences did not rise up to quash men’s emotional expression and their chances to grow outside of what we’d see as “normal” masculine archetypes.

Wakandan men are not bound by the western idea of what it is to be a “man” but have grown instead with the comfortable acceptance of what western culture might see as “feminine” behavior. It is the influence of Wakandan women as equals that have brought a truly feminist idea forward: the defeat of toxic masculinity not only for the damage it does to women but the damage it brings to men as well.

Never is the Wakandan ideal of the sensitive, more “feminized” man so contrasted as when looking at the villain Killmonger. Left out in the outside world to grow up in a dangerous life, Killmonger does not have the influence of Wakanda’s more sensitive society to smooth down his rough edges. He does not live in a place where his rage over his father’s death might have been cooled or at least channeled in a different way. Instead, Killmonger represents the harsh, toxic masculinity of the outside world, where his somewhat thoughtful (and even partially correct) ideas about the unfairness of Wakanda’s isolationist policies are twisted into hateful, angry actions.

Killmonger shows all the brash hallmarks of a man trapping his pain away in rage, using violence to solve his problems rather than embracing his emotions to give way to catharsis and resolution. His disconnection to women is also apparent in the film, as he is followed by a woman of color who barely has any speaking lines or so much as a name (I had to look it up, it’s Linda). In every scene, this woman is treated as the token girlfriend/henchwoman, and then killed by Killmonger when Ulysses Klaw uses her as a hostage. She is the ultimate expression of Killmonger’s embroilment in the toxic masculine culture. Even Killmonger’s influence on others brings patriarchal influence and damage to Wakandan culture, as he twists Okoye’s beloved W’Kabi away from his loyalty to T’Challa and turns his entire tribe against the throne with promises of revenge and violence.

Yet even in Killmonger’s scenes, we see a spark of that Wakandan emotional connection, when he goes into the trance and speaks once more to his father. Killmonger’s father clearly expresses the same emotional complexity and sensitivity showcased by other Wakandan men when he tries to connect to his son, but despairs at the rage and closed off pain he sees in the man his son has become. It’s only through T’Challa’s attempts to reconcile with Killmonger that we see a little of the emotional sensitivity of Wakanda rubbing off on the furious villain. But still, the outside world has trapped Killmonger so badly into the patriarchal cycle that, even in his end when T’Challa offers him peace and solace in his final moments, he is unable to be anything but angry in his own sorrow.

If we step away from speaking about men again for a minute, we can look at the women of Wakanda in the Black Panther film for what they are: exceptional without being exceptional at all.

The Non-Exceptional Exceptional Woman

As stated above, Wonder Woman is the exceptional woman in a world of men, the ambassador and outsider who shirks her own society’s xenophobic tendencies to save the outside world from itself. She is the one in a thousand, one in a million, the beautiful and infinitely powerful immortal goddess on earth who brings her special brand of love and ass-kicking to both the battlefield and her personal relationships. When you read her comics and watch the film, the narrative makes one thing clear: there is no one truly like Diana, and she is the ultimate of her kind. And when we look at her sister Amazons, they all are expressed with similar, if less powerful, expressions of the same archetype of idealized feminism and utopian female ideology. Together, they are an often uniform face of the Exceptional Feminist, set apart and ready to impress with their evolved ideas.

By contrast, the powerful women of Wakanda are not only exceptional in their power but nuanced in their presentation in the narrative. Their equality and power are not packed into a single package of ass-kicking and peace and love, but instead, each woman is her own nuanced expression of a fully realized woman.

Where Shuri is brash and feisty and in many ways a typical teenager, her mother is regal and loving, the complicated mother figure transitioning from a queen into the queen mother she has become. And though Okoye and Nakia are both ass-kicking women who take to the streets at T’Challa’s side, both are very different women with their own thoughts, ideals, skill sets, and struggles. Okoye spends the film trying to decide where her loyalties lie, to the throne or to what is right, while Nakia follows her heart no matter the danger to her position in Wakandan society. Each lives their own stories as complex as any male protagonist, weaving their narratives around that of T’Challa and his conflict with Killmonger.

In Black Panther, the women of Wakanda are complicated and different from one another, telling the story of the different archetypes women can represent, while in fact evolving those archetypes beyond to represent the complexity of real women. They are not the tropes we so usually accept from the Girlfriend, the Woman Warrior, the Mother, or the Sister. They are women all their own, and they are brilliant.

In Conclusion

I could continue to break down the narrative even further by speaking about the power of all these women and their representation as women of color, but as I said there are POC out there far better equipped to handling that conversation. In the matter of that topic, I step back and want to speak less and listen more. But in contrasting Wonder Woman and its feminist ideology alongside that of Black Panther, I can only conclude that while Wonder Woman brings us a kind of exceptionalist feminism, Black Panther brings us a vision of what a truly gender-equal society can accomplish, breaking down the barriers of gender stereotypes to present opportunity for anyone to be anything they wish in their full complexity and freedom of choice.

Thankfully, the world of comics and films has room for both kinds of feminist representation. In fact, it’d be amazing to see multiple complex versions of feminist representation flood media so we can have more women-empowering films and television and books so we can have countless conversations and essays to foster more discussion.

Yet in the meanwhile, when contrasting these two films as our present examples, I conclude Black Panther presents us with a more hopeful vision of feminism, a world where men and women can embrace what they wish without persecution or protestation. And maybe we could use a little more of that kind of feminist representation in our lives.

Disability Erasure And The Apocalyptic Narrative

August 28, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Criticism, Film, On Writing, Television, Writings

This week hasn’t exactly been a fantastic time for me. Losing a parent can really make you get stuck in a maudlin, even slightly dark frame of mind. So it’s no secret that seeing photos coming out of Hurricane Harvey of elder folks near drowning in a nursing home due to lack of evacuation and inability to move well put me in a foul mood. It also got me thinking of conversations I’ve heard over the years about disability and the end of society.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. You and your friends are sitting around and having some beers, and the conversation turns to the apocalypse. Maybe you’re watching The Walking Dead, or reading Divergent, or even going to your favorite post-apocalypse live action roleplaying game. But in between talking about what happens if Daryl dies on the show and exchanging larp armor suggestions, someone inevitably brings up what they would do in the event of the apocalypse. Doesn’t matter what the apocalypse cause: zombies, an outbreak, Donald Trump. Everyone gets to play the “what would I do in the case of society’s end” game.

I used to indulge in this game myself with my friends. But these days, when the subject comes up, I get very quiet. Because there’s only one answer:

I die.

I’ve read a lot of apocalyptic fiction in my life. From The Stand to Alas, Babylon, I’ve gone through the gamut. It’s a fascinating genre, really, considering what the fall of our civilization would do and what would happen to our plucky band of intrepid protagonists. How would they struggle? Who would survive? I used to identify with the hard-working protagonists, enjoying their constant battles and sacrifices. I, like so many others, put myself into the perspective of the struggling hero. I never thought I’d be one of the people left behind. The reality is, however, I’d be one of those who probably perished in the first few days/weeks/months, the footnotes in the Roland Emmerich movie who isn’t even in the credits with a name, who stares at the incoming giant wave or alien attack with the defeated, accepted resolution that this is the inevitable end.

As a disabled woman, disaster epics, apocalypse fiction, and post-apoc tales aren’t a vicarious thrill for me anymore. Theoretical zombie apocalypse escape plan BS sessions with friends aren’t amusing anymore. They’re an exercise in facing my mortality.

I grew up thinking I could handle anything. I was a young woman who largely lived out of my backpack, ready to grab it and go on a regular basis. When I read about characters in end of the world stories, like The Passage, The Road, Swan Song, or any of the countless others en vogue for the last thirty years, I always put myself into the head of the protagonist. I thought in their situation, I’d strap on my best sneakers, grab supplies, make sure I had my friends and cat food, and survive, me and my cat and my friends/family, together.

The reality of this vicarious thought exercise changed dramatically as I developed serious health problems. Chronic health issues like mine require continuous medical care, including a regiment of medication three times a day. Prescriptions, of course, run out, and when the corner pharmacy has been annihilated by a horde of zombies, there’s no more medication to keep me alive. Within days of running out of pills, I’d end up in some serious trouble. A lack of my painkillers would send me into serious, dangerous detox, while the lack of my endocrine medication would lead to a complete collapse of body systems. Within days, I’d be suffering. Within a week, I’d probably be dead.

And that, dear readers, is without considering the difficulties of locomotion for me in a wheelchair during a societal breakdown. I have difficulty navigating the crowds at New York Comic Con, or walking through New York City due to potholes and breaks in the sidewalk. Imagine off-roading in my wheelchair during a hectic evacuation, either pushed by one of my friends/family/a stranger or riding in the electric wheelchair until the battery runs out. I think about the protest I went to after the Eric Garner shooting, where we marched up the middle of 6th avenue. Two buses blocked our way, and three people had to stop to lift my wheelchair over the tiny gap between vehicles. Such a small thing, but in an emergency so deadly.

This personal look into how reliant I am on society to stay alive has been an eye-opener for me. In a world were destabilization is so much closer than we ever thought possible, I look for solace to literature to relax, and realize how many of the narratives I enjoyed before leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I reread The Stand and came to Stephen King’s chapter where he outlined all the people who died in the collapse of society post- Captain Tripps. And after so many of them, he wrote: “No great loss.” It always gave me the shivers. I’d be one of those people, probably, slowly dying in the face of the end. No adventure to go meet Mother Abigail. Just toodles, and hoping my life didn’t earn me the “no great loss” title in the end.

And so it brought me back to the inherent problem about post-apocalyptic narratives: they are, by nature and design, ableist in the extreme. Apocalyptic fiction doesn’t just embrace the erasure of the disabled and medically compromised, it normalizes their obliteration. It presents stories where we’ve re-embraced survival of the fittest as the only moniker and lionizes those who overcome hardship through leaving behind the injured and ill.

Worse, these stories accept the death of those who are disabled as not only the norm, but as a heroic sacrifice to the survival of the healthy, a gift the disabled and ill can bestow on their fellows. Most of these stories have at least one or two examples of people who commit suicide to keep the disabled or ill person from becoming a drain on resources, or to keep them from suffering too long. While people battle furiously over things like doctor assisted suicide in the real world, they’re willing to accept disabled folks taking themselves out of the equation as an inevitable, even noble, deed in society collapse fiction. And it says something very eerie about how people look at the disabled in these stories:

In a stable society, the disabled are tolerated, if not welcomed. In the face of disaster, they are a liability, and one to be excised for ease of the able-bodied.

There are exceptions to that narrative, stories that stand out for the characters willing to stand up for those less able. One of my favorite scenes from the first season of The Walking Dead comes when Rick and his band of friends encounter what they first believe to be a group of thugs in Atlanta. The scene is uncomfortable in that Rick and his (mostly) white friends immediately size up the other group, made up of mostly people of color, as a threat, with the narrative implying they believe they’re gang-bangers and criminals. (They’re known as the Vatos gang).

nursing-home2_480x270 — Addressing casual racism AND ableism. Why I fell in love with The Walking Dead.

However, the story flips the whole thing on its head when we discover the ‘thugs’ are actually protecting a building full of the elderly and infirm. The Vatos are cooks, janitors, and family members of the elderly who refused to abandon the patients when the able-bodied staff fled. They are willing to face the hordes of the undead to protect the elderly who cannot flee easily, even in the heart of besieged Atlanta.

Logan 2 — Logan cares for Professor Xavier despite both physical and mental health issues.

This caregiver narrative is often absent from apocalyptic fiction, as the notion of care of those less able is relegated to characters deemed salvageable or valuable to society. Protagonists will focus on the rescue of children over those who are disabled, seeing them as the future of society, while those who are injured or disabled might be a drain. Only those disabled characters who are seen as highly valuable are fought for and preserved, such as in the case of Mother Abigail in The Stand, wheelchair-bound Vriess in Aliens 4, Professor Xavier in Logan, or even Bran in Game of Thrones (which can be considered an apocalyptic tale considering the White Walkers invasion). These characters require effort to be expended to keep them alive but are almost always preserved only because their abilities are deemed too highly valuable to lose. Otherwise, care is often withheld or deemed a drain.

furiousa-602x366 — Furiosa: the heroine we need and deserve

What’s often frustrating in these narratives is the way adaptive or assistive devices are treated, as if they are equally burdensome and do not allow characters to navigate the world with greater ease. Characters who could continue to be included in narratives are often set aside or sacrificed because other characters don’t even bother to seek out assistive devices like braces, crutches, or wheelchairs. This makes characters who utilize such devices so important in fiction. A prime example of a character whose assistive device is included but never overly emphasized is Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, whose missing arm is replaced by a metal one. She is a prime example of a disabled heroine who is not only not marginalized, but who thrives as the movie’s protagonist.

hershel — Hershel took over Dale’s amputation storyline on the TV series after Dale was killed the previous season.

I particularly appreciated Dale in The Walking Dead comics for this reason. Originally able-bodied when he joined Rick’s group at the beginning, Dale (spoiler alert) loses a leg during the course of the flight from the zombies, and though it gives him trouble, he remains a part of the group. (In the television series, the storyline is transplanted onto Hershel). Seeing someone with mobility issues still included as part of the group as opposed to being discarded was a major sticking point for me in loving Kirkman’s comic and eventually the TV series.

The-100-season-2-episode-4-camp-Raven — Raven in the Arcadia camp post-injury.

Another fantastic example is Raven from The 100. The former space-dwelling engineer becomes badly injured during the course of the show, her leg and back permanently damaged. Though she can walk with the help of a leg brace, she is slowed down and in constant pain. Raven struggles with her new challenges, considers ending her own life, and ultimately faces her new disability status with a grim finality, realizing that at any moment she could lose her life due to her limitations. Still, she survives each season with determination, supported and bolstered by her friends, who do not let her give into depression. In fact, few characters in the show are as resourceful or vital as Raven, who is supported by others in her role in the community. Raven is a wonderful example of a narrative that embraces the disabled, rather than obliterates them.

Yet there are more stories which sweep away the disabled than embracing them. And what’s worse, the idea of the disabled being abandoned is lionized, given a sort of solemn acceptance. It’s known the disabled need to be forgotten, left behind. The able-bodied in the stories often embrace how painful and awful it is to lose someone because of their medical situation or disability, but largely move on with a sense of acceptance. It’s accepted, of course, that the fittest move on, and don’t try to waste resources on their differently abled friend. There are countless scenes where someone must be sacrificed to help the rest of the group survive, and more often than not it is the cruel “I tell it like it is” character who points out the disabled/ill person as a drain on resources who should be chosen. And though the others moralize, in the end, they often agree. The message becomes clear: the differently abled are expendable.

More often than not, these scenes include some kind of noble sacrifice moment, where the disabled/injured/ill person looks deep into the heroes eyes and asks to be left behind so they can help the group. They stop fighting, stop trying to survive, ending the drain they put on resources with solemn acceptance, the last heroic gesture they can make. This is often mirrored in zombie stories when a single person is bitten and they calmly pick up a weapon to end their lives, the generous actions of a person trying not to inflict their sickness on others. Yet while some stories have heroes fighting to save the zombie-infected person, few have heroes fighting to keep their diabetic friend alive.

Go-on-without-me — “Leave me, Master Luke!” Even C-3P0 in *Star Wars* has that disabled martyr complex.

An example of a scene that faces down this issue comes from The Stand. King introduces Stu Redman as our everyday hero, a caring soul who becomes the heart of the survivors on their way across the country to meet the magical Mother Abigail. In the first scene of Part 3 of the TV series, Stu is elbow deep in a man’s guts, trying to remove a burst appendix on a cold concrete floor. Stu is no doctor but does his best without anesthetic and with nothing but a medical textbook to guide him. And though his patient dies, Stu at least attempts the operation rather than let the ill man die without a fight.

redman1 — Stu attempts an appendectomy in The Stand Part 3.

This instance, however, just like the zombie bite, is an example of an onset illness, meant in the narrative to convey the fragility of human health when there are no hospitals, no safety nets for the often changeable human condition. But more chronic, ongoing illnesses are treated much differently in these stories, often signaling an accepted death sentence with no attempt at treatment.

Physical disabilities might be badly treated in apocalyptic fiction, but equally marginalized in these stories are those with mental illness. Already often badly used in fiction, the mentally ill are often portrayed as not only a drain on society but a danger to those around them. Those with mental illness or neuro-atypical status become an outlying wildcard in the apocalyptic survivor stories, playing the role of simple sidekicks, quirky but unstable comedic relief, or else hampering burdens to the survival of the group. While these stories highlight the heroes often suffering from things like PTSD and depression, rarely are conditions like these treated as illnesses to be addressed. Instead, they are dangerous shifts in personality to be treated with “tough love” scenes as other survivors cajole the character to get over it, get stronger, move on. Those that don’t are often killed off, a victim of their own emotional instability.

Those portrayed with chronic, less environmentally-contributed mental illnesses are usually treated far worse in the stories. Apocalypse stories often include someone with mental illness to throw in the magical crazy prophet trope or the unstable person who will endanger the group. Rarely is their mental illness addressed as treatable, or even manageable, and the ‘crazy’ character often becomes a casualty of the story, perishing due to losing control of themselves to their ‘madness.’

Defiance - Season 2 — Pilar McCawley as played by Linda Hamilton

A well-explored version of this story happened in the TV show Defiance. Set in a post-alien invasion Earth, new frontiersman Rafe McCawley tells his children their mother Pilar died rather than admit he left her behind due to her mental illness. After society fell apart, Pilar could no longer get treatment for her bipolar disorder and became erratic. Rather than face handling an unstable Pilar, Rafe takes his children and leaves. Pilar survives, however, and later comes back to reunite with her family. She becomes a villain of the show, however, as her bipolar disorder makes her do inappropriate things like, oh, kidnap her daughter’s half-alien baby. But while the show attempts to show characters empathizing with Pilar’s situation, it also showcased the show’s protagonists turning on Pilar, calling her crazy and eventually killing her while she was in the throes of her mania.

Her death in the show too closely mirrored the violence so often perpetrated on the mentally ill in our world when they act out inappropriately. And this is one of the good examples of well-explored mental illness characters. Many others are far, far worse.

It’s no secret that fiction of any kind reflects the anxieties of the times. In the 50’s it was the body snatchers, mirroring the fear of invasion and infiltration by the Russians. In the 70’s and 80’s, it was concerns over rampant consumerism and wanton behavior that bred our slasher film fascination, and the 2000’s are all about fears of society collapsing in the face of global terror and societal instability. Yet what does it say about our society as a whole when our fiction is not only about people trying to survive such collapses but embraces survival of the fittest as the rubric for that fiction’s heroic journey?

Too often the disabled are set aside in our society, considered burdens and drains on resources. Yet while most at least show basic discomfort with the marginalization of the disabled, our apocalypse fiction envisions futures where the disabled not only don’t exist but go heroically to their deaths so as not to be a bother in times of trouble. The concept smacks of an insidious undercurrent of near eugenics-level categorization of the disabled and chronically ill most would find distasteful when called out in the open. No one wants to admit they accept the disabled as a burden. Yet there it is, in the stories about our most difficult times. In those stories, the disabled are deprioritized and erased from existence, sacrificed at the feet of the able.

I’ve stopped indulging as much in apocalyptic fiction lately. My own medical status has made it difficult to enjoy stories in which I would be annihilated pretty quickly, or else considered selfish for trying to survive. Instead, I look for stories like The 100 when people with disabilities are equally valued and fought for, and not just treated with pity but embraced as integral to the continued survival for their skills, experience, and contributions to society.

I envision if there was a zombie apocalypse, I’d be there, whacking zombies in the head with something and then zooming along in my wheelchair until my medicine runs out. There’d be no noble “save yourself!” from me unless necessary due to circumstance, and not because I would be a ‘burden.’ Instead, I’d strive to be a comfort and an ally to my friends and those around me, contributing to the whole as I do in my everyday life, right up until the end. Would that the fiction I consume had the same confidence in me as I try to have in myself.

Your Progressive Media Needs Criticism

August 4, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture, Politics, Speaking Out, Television

I unfriended someone on Facebook the other day. That might not sound like such a big deal to some, but to others you might be going “oooooooooh” right now, because it takes a lot to get defriended from my Facebook. Something fairly monumental. And this wasn’t a stealth defriending either, a “I knew you in grade school but now you’ve become a Trump supporter so bye Felicia” kind of defriending. This was a digital face-to-face over a thread, telling the other person “It’s been fun, but goodbye.”

And it was over, of all things, Twin Peaks.

170203_10_093_RGB(2).JPG — “I’ll see you again in 25 years.”

Folks might not know, but I’m a huge fan of Twin Peaks. Been watching for years. I must have seen the original show three or four times over, plus read the books, and absorbed so much of the lore around the show I’ve got theories that have already proven true. I’m such a big fan, I’m planning a tattoo for the next time I get the chance saying “Fire Walk With Me.” I’m THAT big a fan.

But that doesn’t mean I’m immune to the criticisms I’ve got of the show, particularly about women characters on Twin Peaks. And while the show is meant in many ways as a parody of both itself and melodramatic television and 1950’s small town culture, therefore offering it a strange and unique space for characters to be archetypes rather than entirely characters all their own, there are issues with the treatment of women in my eyes and always have been. And I’m not the only one. Reviews and articles coming in about the new Twin Peaks have echoed a lot of my feelings, from The Wrap, Refinery29, Bustle and, of all places, Haaretz. They all say what I’ve been saying too: David Lynch has a woman problem in his work, and in Twin Peaks it is glaringly obvious and very, very sad.

So after one particularly egregious episode in Twin Peaks: The Return (Episode 10), I put up a single line text about how much I love the show, but how it had a serious sexism problem. And within a few minutes, I was under attack. Not a “I disagree with you” friendly debate. I love those. But a full knock-down gaslighting, insulting, mansplaining, nightmare, complete with “you just don’t understand the series” and “do you even watch the show?” nerd checking. The person in question was clearly agitated, posting rapidly and pointing out how Twin Peaks was full of archetypes (yes, it is), how it is part parody (yes, it is), and if you think that David Lynch is sexist, he can’t be, because he included one of the first trans characters (thank you, yes, not the point) and is asexual himself (um, okay, sure… what?).

It turned out over the course of this bizarre conversation that the truth came out: this show had deep sentimental value to this person, who felt because of that it needed defending. And when I pointed out that their attachment didn’t make it immune from criticism, the comments got nasty. So I said goodnight to a person I’d known for seven years, and unfriended them. Simply put, I don’t need that negativity in my life.

But it brought up an interesting series of thoughts from me, which culminated last night after seeing The Dark Tower. Because boy, do I have a lot of feelings about that movie.

(And here is where I post about a new film in a spoiler-free way. If you don’t want to read about The Dark Tower movie at all and want to see it cold, you might want to stop reading.)

There are few things I’m a bigger fan of than Twin Peaks. X-Men. American Gods. Buffy. The Dresden Files. And then, there’s The Dark Tower. I’ve read the entire book series three times, along with nearly every Stephen King book out there. I’ve seen almost every Stephen King TV show and movie, even the bad ones, multiple times. I’ve tracked the connections between King’s other works and The Dark Tower series and waxed on for HOURS about theories and possible other connections. I’m planning another tattoo, and yes, it’s of the Dark Tower and the words “There are Other Worlds Than These.” Every time someone would talk online about rumors that The Dark Tower was becoming a movie, I’d flip out and wait. And wait. It took years to get the series to film, so when they announced it, I bought tickets the day they went on sale. I was ready.

I watched everyone flip about Idris Elba being cast as Roland because of the color of his skin and rolled my eyes. They made a great choice there, I thought, choosing a man of color for such a traditionally Clint Eastwood, square jaw white guy role. He would rip a hole in the scenery with Matthew McConaughey as The Man In Black. He would be the iconic man on his way to the Tower. He had the perfect gravitas. I would recite the Gunslinger Creed over my popcorn bucket and watch him do the reloading trick and be so happy. I got my friends together, those who were big fans and who weren’t, and I made a day of it. As I said to my friends, to a fan like me, it was like going to church.

And then. I went to the movie. And I walked out so mad. So. So mad.

The Dark Tower movie is bad, y’all. It’s really, really is.

I won’t go into specifics, but other than a few pieces of nerd-dom tossed in that made me satisfied, the film was a run of the mill, fun urban scifi-fantasy film that could have been original if it was anything but named The Dark Tower. It harkened back to the comic book adaptations of the 80’s and 90’s in its surface-level-only understanding of the material, a slick transmogrification of a complicated, gritty, compelling series into a shiny action film full of hackneyed dialogue and atonal characters. Idris Elba, the man who brought you such nuanced, intense performances as Luther was wasted on this movie, and scenes where he and the powerful McConaughey, seemingly ready to flex his muscles but tragically held back by the weak writing, fall positively flat. The two, along with the rest of the cast, are given no room to move in the too-quick, badly edited rush to cram a huge amount of material into a tragically short hour and a half film. An hour and a half for a seven book series ‘sequel’ which reads like a comic book spin-off one shot gone horribly wrong.

I walked out of the film, furious. I sat down with friends afterwards and listed the myriad ways the movie had failed not only Dark Tower fans, but folks in general. My friends who didn’t know the books said it came in as a solid ‘okay’ action movie without the context of the original material, which I suppose gives it some salvation. But for a fan like me, it was like watching someone piss away the opportunity to make a new Lord of the Rings. Give me a Peter Jackson three movie trilogy, each three hours long, where you have to race to the bathroom in between scenes because you’re sitting so long watching it. Give me the depth of Mid-World, the Tet Corporation, the Gunslingers of Eld. Give me the epic battle between titanic forces I’d been waiting for. Instead, I got a cartoon.

deadpool-2-domino-zazie-beetz-twitter-01-480x520 — She looks awesome and people were complaining about her hair. That’s some coded racist BS there folks.

I went online to put up a single lined comment on my Facebook: “This movie has forgotten the face of its father.” A lament to what could have been. And I got the most curious response to a friend in private messenger. It said I shouldn’t complain, because at least the movie cast a man of color as the lead. That made it important. To which I agreed yes, it did make it important. Actually, in the age of white washing roles, just days after the internet flipped its collective trolling shit over the awesome Zazie Beetz, a woman of color, being cast as the traditionally comic book pasty Domino in the upcoming Deadpool 2, seeing a man of color playing this iconically white as heck role was powerful. I mean, Roland Dechain is meant effectively to be the descendent of Arthur Eld, the King Arthur of his land. He carries guns made of Excalibur. He is THE iconic hero. Choosing a man of color for the role was a great, progressive move.

It didn’t save the film, however, from a) just being bad and b) from sucking in other ways regarding progressive representation. For example, towards women. It’s not like the original material was super amazing towards women to begin with. I’ll tell you there’s some shit about fridging women in it that could make your hair stand on end, and some sexual violence that’s way, way unnecessary in my eyes. The film flinches away from a lot of the worse stuff because of its shiny, not-too-violent-but-cartoon-violence veneer, but it fails the Bechdel Test and the Fridging Tests like a kid who didn’t study for finals. It found its way to progressiveness in one way, and flunked it so epically in others.

And you know what? That’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay that it failed. It’s not okay that the movie overall was a colossal disappointment.

It’s okay to look at a film like The Dark Tower and point out that while it was progressive in one way, it failed epically in others in terms of representation.

Because just because a piece of media is progressive does not make it immune to criticism. Even, and especially, if it’s your favorite.

I had my own run-in with what I call Favorite Bias when reviews for Wonder Woman came in. On the list of things I’m more of a fan of than Twin Peaks is Wonder Woman. I’ve read almost every Wonder Woman comic up until the New 52 run (which I forgoed because I felt it betrayed the character on pretty much every level). I was planning, you guessed it, a Wonder Woman tattoo (you see a pattern here). I have Wonder Woman t-shirts. I have every graphic novel I could get my hands on. I think I remember more about Wonder Woman comics than pieces of my childhood because, hey, that’s how the human mind works. So when the movie was announced, I was ready to be disappointed. I was nervous, ya’ll, that we’d have another Catwoman on our hands, another Elektra, and that movie execs would use its flop as an excuse to say “Women led comic book movies will fail!” even when women-led movies with kickass protagonists were doing work at the box office (say hey, Furiosa and Katniss).

And then Wonder Woman came out. And it was a joy.

Sure, it had its problems. Heck, I went over its problems in a long, long article. I laid out all the issues it had and why, in many ways, it had come short of true greatness. But all in all, I sat in the dark opening night with tons of my friends and bounced with joy when I saw Themyscira. Once again, take me to church, silver screen. I was home.

593ff1b91d00002900cc2ac9 — They couldn’t give Artemis any lines? Really?

And then I got home, and started talking to other folks, looking at Facebook, reading reviews. And the one thing I noticed over and over were comments about the representation of people of color in the film. Specifically, how nearly all of the non-white Amazons had non-speaking or servile roles. The film, it seemed, had managed to pass the Bechdel test with some flying-ass colors while leaving its representation of POC way, way in the dirt. (And for more on this, check out Harper’s Bazaar’s piece as an example of the conversation out there). A lot of people were lauding the film while commentators, especially POC, were citing the problems the film had. And they were getting a lot of responses saying what I said about The Dark Tower: while the film achieved progressive aims in some ways by being a hella strong representation of a powerful woman on the big screen (and at the box office), it was a massive problem for its intersectional representation.

When I first heard those criticisms, something kicked in my stomach. A nagging rationalization crawled up out of me, saying, “But look! It’s Wonder Woman! It’s a hell of a progressive film! Look at Themyscira! Look at it! That’s woman paradise! The warriors, the culture, just look!” And then I did look. Harder. And I saw the way women of color were being represented. I listened to what people were saying, what women of color were saying. It wasn’t a woman’s paradise. Not for all women. Pretty much just for the white ones.

I shut up. I listened. And (I think) I got it.

These experiences echoed an old fight I had with a friend over Star Wars years ago on my birthday. Star Wars, to him, is his Take Me To Church, a deep abiding nerdy kind of love that nigh transcends understanding. So when I made the mistake of pointing out the shortage of women in the original Star Wars universe during my birthday party one year, I nearly ended a friendship. Because that was his Sacred Bunny, just like Twin Peaks had been my ex-friend’s Sacred Bunny, and Wonder Woman was mine. And though each one of these pieces of media expounded on some serious progressive ideals, it didn’t make it less regressive in other ways.

Plato's_Stepchildren_kiss — We forget this was mind-controlled, y’all.

Did the original Star Trek‘s progressive moments, such as the famous interracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk, erase the fact that it happened on an episode where they were basically mind controlled into having the kiss, making it a product of unwanted sexual attention? Nope. Did the great trajectory of Mako Mori in the plot of Pacific Rim take away from the stereotyping she received as both a woman of Asian descent and as a woman in general? Nope. Did the great representation of queer characters on The 100 let us ignore the tragedy that was the destruction of its most stable queer relationship in the tradition of the Killing Queers trope, ala Buffy‘s Tara? Nope. Did the unbelievable awesomeness of the John Wick series ignore that the protagonist’s wife is (spoiler alert) Fridged for his story to have emotional trajectory (and y’all, it’s not all about the dog)? Nope. And don’t get me started on the Orthodox Jewish banker stereotype from John Wick 2, just don’t.

It is okay to like something and find it problematic. But moreover, it’s okay to recognize that a piece of media can be progressive in some ways and deeply problematic in others.

In fact, I’ll go one further. Progressive media should not and cannot be immune to criticism. By allowing ourselves to be caught up in a piece of media’s progressive moves in some areas, while blatantly ignoring or downplaying the places where it fails in intersectional representation, we let ourselves be lulled into the false ideology that progression can only occur slowly and that representation is a battle fought for in drips and drabs, as individual causes whose battlefronts often cannot intersect for fear of scaring the conservative whole.

We look at a film which supports a single minority group or underserved population and laud its achievements and sweep under the rug its failures, afraid to rip apart a one-step-forward kind of progression that has clawed our media representations to where they are now. “What, you want it to be everything?” we say, not realizing it echoes the snide comments by alt-right conservatives, who sneer about how the next big movie will replace their tried and true white male protagonist with a queer disabled woman of color just so it can be politically correct. (And yes, that’s some of the bullshit the conserva-trolls online say). We say things like, “We’ve got this far, what else do you want?”

I guess the answer is: more. I want more.

I don’t see why we can’t shoot for the moon, for a movie that not only excels in a single area but serves a better view of the world by being progressive in all intersectional ways. I want movies that have people of color in positions of power, forget just speaking rolls. I want queer representation presented as normalized, for trans characters to have visibility and recognition as part of the world as it is without qualifiers. I want women to have power and agency and representation and for disabled characters to comfortably exist. I want religious diversity and body diversity. Yeah, I want it all. Maybe that makes me a greedy liberal media nerd, but that’s what I want.

But when a piece of media fails us in those ways, when it only comes in second or third in its representation, when it soars to the moon and only lands among the stars, giving us one or two of those representations and lacks the others, I want us to be able to look at it and recognize that fact. I want us to say, “yes, but” rather than “yes, and let’s take what we can get.” It might be infuriating, and to conservatives outside it might look like liberals being divisive within their own camp. But if progressive action in media is not intersectional, just like in other forms of progressive action, then it has not truly achieved its aims. And we can only learn how to improve by recognizing those places where pieces of media, and indeed those places where we creators have failed in our own media, have fallen short of a better, more ideal form of representation.

Despite all this, I’m still going to be a giant nerd for Wonder Woman. I’ve come to embrace Star Wars as a huge part of my geek life thanks to better representation in the new era of films, books, and toys. I watch John Wick with my friends, and love the shit out of The Dark Tower books. I’ve lauded the movements of comic books and comic book films and television to be forward thinking on its representation, loving on my Kamala Khan and Captain Marvel and new, better Wonder Woman storylines while still criticizing the places where things fall through the cracks. I put forward my own work to others and take criticism too, because if I don’t practice what I preach as a creator of media, I’m just a hypocrite. I like my problematic favorites, like Game of Thrones and Walking Dead. I still turn on Twin Peaks every Sunday night, even though I groan into a pillow over some of the choices David Lynch makes.

I’m still a fan. But these days, I expect more. And I’ll keep saying so, until it’s not necessary anymore.

Gal Gadot And The Hope Of Jewish Representation

June 8, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Criticism, Film, Geek Culture, Not Ready To Make Nice, Politics, Speaking Out

Candles hold a special place in my heart. In my mind, they’re a symbol of serenity, peace, focus, and prayer. They’ve stood as a testament to the flame one holds in their heart for a connection to the divine since I was a little girl. For as far back as I can remember, my mother would stand before the candles on Friday night, her hair covered and face solemn, as she covered her eyes and recited the blessing to invite the Shabbat into our home. I remember standing with her, or in the home of a friend on Friday night, all the women standing before the candles, covering their eyes to say the prayer.

‘Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha‑olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.’

‘Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light Shabbat candle[s].’

The blessing of the Shabbat candles has stood out to me as one of the most humble, beautiful, and soulful practices of the Jewish faith. It ties Jewish women to a tradition meant for us alone, a task meant to usher in the twenty-six hours from Friday to Saturday evening when the family dedicates themselves to take time and rest, just as God supposedly did after the six days of creation. I grew up knowing that Jewish women for generations, going back into time immemorial, have been standing before similar candles the world over on Friday nights, putting their hands over their eyes to welcome in the Shabbat every week. I remember standing with my mother to learn how to say the prayer, covering my hair just like her, knowing I was a part of a long chain of tradition, held by the light of the candles and my faith.

It’s been years since I was what you’d consider very religious, but the ceremony of lighting Shabbat candles has stayed with me. It’s so important in fact that I chose to write a Larp about it for my contribution to the War Birds anthology by Unruly Games. Keeping the Candles Lit tried to capture not only the importance of traditions like the Shabbat candles, but the relationship of passing those traditions down from one generation of Jewish women to another. I tried to capture that importance, that beauty, when explaining it to non-Jewish players, or even my non-Jewish friends.

And every time, I wasn’t sure I could. The practice couldn’t have the same meaning, and most of my friends had no cultural context, no experience with the practices I grew up with. And that was normally okay: I love the diversity of the people I know, how we come from such disparate backgrounds. But every once in a while, I wished my closest friends could understand that feeling the candles inspired in me, and understand my culture with the same familiarity I’ve been forced to understand Christian culture.

Living Jewish In A Christian World

By virtue of living in a predominantly Christian oriented society, I’ve become intimately familiar with the trappings of the religion. It dominates popular culture, the iconography of everything from our holidays to stores in which I shop. I know the story of Christmas and all the songs as they’re blasted over the airwaves every year, every year getting earlier and earlier. I know the story of Jesus, of the Apostles. I know about some of the saints, how they go marching in, and the difference between different Christian groups. I hear conservatives scream about wars on Christmas and how Christian values in America are being challenged every day. And I snort, because I was at least raised to believe America was a land for all, not one with an official religion.

I also grew up being told to keep my head down when I tried to voice those ideas. My grandmother once told me one Shabbat, “Non-Jews won’t want to hear that from you. They’ll put up with it, with you, but don’t forget – they don’t understand.”

I remembered that lesson as I grew up, and watched every game, every TV show, every movie, and its implicit western Christian bias. Its morals baked into every piece of art, every bit of our society. I remember wishing I could share my favorite music growing up with my non-Jewish friends, and realizing they wouldn’t understand a lick of it. I remember realizing when I heard music and it talked about faith, or God, or losing their religion, they weren’t talking about my faith. The icons were always of a man with his arms spread out, a lonely look on his face.

I remember being confused and a little heartbroken when I was told The Chronicles of Narnia was a Christian story and Aslan, one of my favorite characters, was really Jesus. I remember the Jewish holiday of Purim being called “the Jewish Halloween,” as if that represented the beautiful tradition at all. I remember being told The Ten Commandments was an Easter story, even it was literally the story of Passover being shown over that very holiday.

ten_commandments-moses — Literally where the holiday comes from, folks. Moses did this, and we walked through some water, ate some really dry matzah and got away from that pesky Pharaoh.

Most of all, I remember the Shabbat and lighting the candles, and realizing so few people even understood what the Shabbat really was. And this was among those people I knew, forget about in the media.

And then, there were the exceptions. The beautiful, beautiful exceptions.

Finding Your Heroes

Claudia Christian playing Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5, who lit the Channukah candles and sat shiva for her father, all while being a commander on a 23rd century space station.

Felicity Smoak on Arrow answering her friends asking what she was doing on Christmas with, “Celebrating Channukah” and sharing cultural understanding with Ragman, a gay Jewish boy wearing an ancient, nigh sentient Egyptian burial shroud.

Rufus on Supernatural telling Bobby Singer he couldn’t dig up a dead body yet, because it was still the Shabbat. (Okay, and maybe taking advantage just so he wouldn’t have to dig).

Jews — **Chanukah shared by many of Marvel Comics’ most famous Jewish characters including The Thing, Shadowcat, Sasquatch, Songbird, Wiccan, and Moon Knight.**

Kitty Pryde in the X-Men wearing a Star of David and proudly declaring herself Jewish, comparing the discrimination against mutants with the discrimination faced by Jews.

Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, standing tall and villainous against the bigotry that ended his family’s lives so long ago.

Willow Rosenberg on Buffy straddling the line between growing up Jewish and embracing the Wiccan inside to become one of the most powerful magic users in the Buffyverse.

And yet these were characters on TV shows and in comics, amazing and affirming as they were. I was looking for real life media figures who could tell me that Hollywood wasn’t just full of stereotypes of Jews. We weren’t all Woody Allen or Barbara Streisand. We weren’t comedians and nerdy people, known for lack of athleticism and a cynical, dry wit. We weren’t The Nanny and Annie Hall. I kept looking for more Ivanovas, more Felicitys, more Willows. I found Natalie Portman and discovered Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan were both Jewish. With some Googling, I found a list of Hollywood actresses who were Jewish.

And yet, in their interviews, in press junkets, I didn’t hear anything about their identities. While other celebrities thanked Jesus non-stop, I didn’t hear anything so outward about these women. In the age of social media and celebrity openness to the world, these women’s media image was so devoid of anything indicating they were Jewish I had to go Googling to find notable Jewish women in Hollywood. And that was okay, because their choices were their right, and their right to privacy was absolutely valid. But still, in a world saturated by the Christian identity, I yearned for something I could identify with.

And then, I saw an Instagram photo of Gal Gadot.

Representation Matters

In the photo, she stood in front of a pair of candles along with her little girl. Both of their hair was covered as they prayed before a pair of Shabbat candles.

Gal Gadot, who would be Wonder Woman.

They say representation matters in media. They say it’s important for people to be able to see those who look like them in the media. For a Jew, that issue can be a complex one, as many Jews of Eastern European descent largely blend into the overall white population. And though Jews were not considered as white until very late in the US and world history (we’re talking somewhere between the 1940’s and the 1970’s), we receive the same advantages in many ways as those who are perceived as white by the population at large.

Instead, Jews face different oppression based on our religious backgrounds, called anti-semitism, which has remained a constant and insidious form of discrimination throughout history. But at the end of the day, those Jews of largely Ashkenazi descent (meaning those whose ancestors migrated during the Jewish diaspora to Europe and got way, way pastier than our brethren who settled elsewhere) are perceived as and grouped into being white, with all the baggage and privilege and advantage that comes with it.

Still. Representation matters. And we all want to see someone in our media who is like us. As a little Jewish girl, I wanted to see characters in things who were Jewish. I cheered when I found out there was an Israeli-Jewish super hero in Marvel Comics called Sabra, a kickass woman super-soldier who defended Israel against her enemies. I worshiped the character of Susan Ivanova as a model for a strong Jewish woman on television. And I looked for actresses who showed me you could be Jewish and be a media star and still have a proud, public relationship with your culture.

And then that photo. Gal Gadot, in front of the candles, with her daughter.

Gadot’s Jewish Identity And Controversy

I remember my eyes filling with tears as I read a quote from Gadot, stating:

“I was brought up in a very Jewish, Israeli family environment, so of course my heritage is very important to me,” she said in an interview with Totally Jewish. “I want people to have a good impression of Israel. I don’t feel like I’m an ambassador for my country, but I do talk about Israel a lot — I enjoy telling people about where I come from and my religion.”

Here was an Israeli-born woman of Ashkenazi descent (her family was from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria), who was proud of her heritage. She spoke openly about her religion, her culture, her home. And yes, that included speaking up about Israel and her feelings about the politics there. That has drawn heat from many pro-Palestinian groups, including BDS, who have called her out for supporting the military actions of her home country and for serving in the Israeli military.

(I would point out that military service in Israel is mandatory at the age of eighteen for everyone who is able. Gal served her two years as a fitness instructor, teaching gymnastics and calisthenics).

Many have called for boycotts of the Wonder Woman movie because of her pride in her homeland. Many have pointed to the Wonder Woman movie as being fairly white washed and lacking in diverse representation. And while those issues are very, very valid (I’ll point to this article expressing some very serious issues about the lack of or poor representation of women of color throughout the film), I’ll point out there is one minority who did get to be represented in Wonder Woman in a real and fantastic way.

Shattering Records and Expectations

You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed it, but Wonder Woman has defied the Hollywood trend of bad women-led comic book films. It has come away with critical acclaim and a massive fan response. And it has catapulted Gal Gadot from little known actress into a household name all in the span of a few weeks. This insta-fame has brought much of the aforementioned controversy into the limelight. And though I’m all for discussing political questions and issues of representation, I’ve had a foul taste in my mouth when looking at the way Gal Gadot’s actions and media presence has been scrutinized. In the end, the only thing people have been able to find to diss her portrayal is that she served her country as a soldier in mandatory service, that she looked like a model, and that she is part of a film which has sadly stereotyped people of color and other nationalities.

And while I acknowledge all those issues as valid to discuss, I also acknowledge that a film can have problematic issues and still have a supremely important contribution to the representation of another group. In this case, Jewish women. And that contribution is profound and important and cannot be ignored.

Because somewhere, there are little Jewish girls able to point to Gal Gadot in her tiara and silver bracelets, holding her sword and shield and lasso, and say there, there is our Jewish warrior, there is the ashet chayil (in Hebrew a “woman of valor”) we sing about every Shabbat. There is a powerful feminist actress who is proud of her heritage, passing down our traditions to her own daughter, who trained to fight and did her own stunts in both Wonder Woman and the Fast and the Furious franchise. Here was a woman who is proud of her heritage and who is representing our people, an often forgotten minority group, as one of the world’s most recognizable and lauded super heroines in a film that has shattered movie release records in its opening week.

Wonder Woman is a hit, and Wonder Woman’s actress is Jewish. My inner little girl is so proud I can barely express it. Because when I point to the screen during Wonder Woman, I can say now: see, see there, we aren’t all the yente and the nag, the funny girl and the nerdy weakling, the shady lawyer and money grubbing business person, the Jewish American princess and homely intellectual. We aren’t the hidden, overlooked group, our celebrities laughed at when they go to a Kabbalah Center or talk about their kosher cooking in public. See, in that woman, an ashet chayil at last, a proud, powerful woman, standing tall on the screen.

And somewhere, little girls can see that and believe they can be proud Jews, standing tall to be whatever they want to be while still being part of the traditions of our people. Representation matters to Jews too, and Gal Gadot has given us that representation, complicated as it might be in terms of politics and other problems with the film. And from everything we have seen in the media she is a positive role model both as Princess Diana and in her own life, a true ashet chayil in so many ways.

I am proud to be around to see my comic book idol played by such a woman of valor. Because I’ve finally seen representation that gives me hope that we Jewish women can be seen, really seen, in all our facets and strengths and traditions at last.

And all it took was one Instragram photo to instill that hope, that pride in me too.

The Impossibly High Standard of Wonder Woman (A Review)

June 2, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Film

The lights hadn’t even come up in the theater, and already I had stuff to say.

My friends were sitting near me and waiting to see if there would be an after credits scene for the very first showing of Wonder Woman at our theater (spoilers: there isn’t). I hadn’t moved since the names started to flash across the screen, however. I was caught in a paradox of amazed glee and critical thought. Somewhere, the little girl inside me that bade me buy a Wonder Woman jacket and wear it to the theater even when it was way too warm was jumping up and down inside with joy. We’d just watched the first live action Wonder Woman movie and it positively soared. It reminded me deep down what a woman-led superhero film could and should do in all the right ways. I was jazzed, I was elated.

I had already pinged several things that pissed me off.

Welcome to the impossible standard that is Wonder Woman. Where nothing can be good enough, and Hollywood can’t help but make some blunders. This is our review.

[Note: This article is part analysis of the film, part discussion about Wonder Woman and her fan phenomenon. Absolutely will be spoilers ahead for the film.]

3053c298adadab555778402c288b56b3 — One of my most prized possessions.

A Girl’s First Amazon

I have been a Wonder Woman fan since I was a little girl. I remember clearly being very ill one day and my father coming home with some comic books. He didn’t know much about comics, but he thought they would make me feel better. Little did he know of course he was setting off a lifelong love that would change my life forever. Among those comics, along with a Justice Society story about the creepy Solomon Grundy and an old X-Men comic where the team goes to Japan and deals with Fing Fang Foom, there was a gorgeous comic with a gorgeous cover of a woman in a star-spangled bathing suit holding up her arms under a giant logo that said: WONDER WOMAN. My father had snagged me the now immortal Wonder Woman Vol 2 #1 issue. And I read that book cover to cover, my eyes wide, my tiny mind blown. I was a fan ever since.

Years later, I was able to walk up to George Perez at a comic convention and present him with a mint copy of the very same issue. My original copy had long ago fallen apart from love and use. I got to tell George Perez how much I’d loved the run, and how it was truly the first comic my father ever gave me. He signed it to me, and that comic hangs on my wall to this day.

With a story like that, you can imagine Wonder Woman has had an incredible impact on my life. I’ve collected first perhaps hundreds of her single issue comics, then went on to buy every graphic novel I could get my hands on, and then some collections too. I watched the DC animated series and the films. If it had Wonder Woman in it, if the story had to do with the Amazons and Paradise Island, I was there. I knew the names of most of the Amazons who helped raise Diana, followed all the storylines up until the New 52. My love of Wonder Woman followed me into my thirties.

But as I grew older, I also developed a critical eye for the media I consumed. I would pick up issues of Wonder Woman and frown, finding moments when the stories felt… off. I would have favorite writers with what in my eyes were better runs on the book. I’d cringe when Wonder Woman appeared in crossovers with writers who would write her as wooden, or else fall into a lot of patriarchal or patronizing tones. I would scour DC comics for good portrayals that matched my experience with Wonder Woman. I embraced the Gail Simone Wonder Woman, I ditched the Azarello. I knew what I liked, because in my head, I knew Wonder Woman.

Built inside my head was the composite image of Wonder Woman, a complex, almost unknowable character, built out of a woman’s infinite capacity for power, grace, compassion, humor, will, and hope. She was as much of a known commodity as she was a cypher, a character of infinite facets, dedicated to an ideal so much higher than what anyone in the imperfect world of men could achieve. In the comics, Diana of Themyscira was a pinnacle to be modeled after, even as she was also approachable and human. She was every woman, and the best of us. She was vulnerable and imperfect and fantastic. She was Wonder Woman.

wonder-woman-scissors — That’s how you end up with shit like this.

And when I heard they were making a movie about her, I was very, very worried. Because how could you achieve a film that captures the deeper parts of such a complicated character so many people take for granted. Go to any tween shop or nerd convention and you’ll see Diana’s smiling face slapped on lunchboxes, wallets, even underwear. Wonder Woman had become a brand, her symbol a merchandise logo ready to greet you wherever you went. But I’d often wonder how much people actually got what Wonder Woman stood for. “Feminism!” people would say. “She kicks butt!” Yes, but what else? Did they really get the depth of the character? And then, point of fact, would the film studios trying to make the movie?

Greg Rucka spoke at New York Comic Con last year about his time writing Wonder Woman on the eve of her 75th anniversary. He talked about how she was so much more than most people gave her credit for. He spoke about being honored to get a chance to explore Diana’s multiple sides and give her the best work he could do. I trusted Greg Rucka’s writing since I read his stand-alone graphic novel called the Hiketeia. His was perhaps one of the penumbral Wonder Woman stories, truly capturing Diana in all her complexity. I could trust Greg Rucka. I trusted George Perez, or Gail Simone. But a big budget movie? Did I trust it to handle Wonder Woman, the media icon I adored, with the proper understanding and respect?

Having come out of the movie, the votes are in, and its this: Wonder Woman is a film that understands Princess Diana of Themiscira and Wonder Woman. And it also exhibits how much Hollywood tropes and the real man’s world can absolutely suck.

The Review

From the beginning, Wonder Woman truly does its job capturing the origin story of Diana before she picks up the lasso and becomes the warrior who will kick ass in the Justice League. There is nothing more endearing than watching a tiny terror Diana galavanting without fear across the unbearably gorgeous Paradise Island, riding horses and watching the training of the no-holds-barred, thank-you-for-making-them-amazing Amazons. The warriors of Themyscira stride with dignity and grace across the screen, saved from being sexualized and exploited for the male gaze. Instead, the cameras spend time giving them the CGI badass treatment befitting films like 300, as the Amazons show just why they’re exactly the female force to be reckoned with.

By the time tiny Diana morphs into the incredible Gal Gadot, we’re already invested in loving this complicated group of women, tasked with preparing for a time when Ares, the God of War, will try to start the war to end all wars. The film especially takes time to highlight the difficult but loving relationship between Diana and Queen Hippolyta, her mother, as well as her strong attachment to her aunt Antiope. I could have watched an entire film set on Paradise Island thanks to their engaging interplay and the lushness of the scenery and the supporting Amazon cast. I was almost disappointed when Steve Trevor’s plane appeared, nose-diving into the ocean, even if it marked the beginning of Diana’s true adventure.

It’s also the moments when the cracks in the perfection of the story start to show.

For the most part, director Patty Jenkins weaves an incredible heroine’s journey for Princess Diana. Diana and the Amazons discovers war with the arrival of German soldiers on their shores, and with the help of Steve Trevor learn about World War I and the millions dying all across the world. Diana disobeys her mother, steals the lasso of truth and the God Killer sword (one of the most powerful weapons in the DC Universe!) and leaves with Steve to go save the world. She’s naive in thinking she can make everything better just by smiting Ares, who must be behind everything. Here, Gal Gadot plays Diana as the innocent princess, passionately dedicated to her ideals and ready to face down any foe to put her warrior skills to the test. She will save the world no matter what, because she represents the forces of good and right. And of course, she gets a rude awakening.

From the moment Diana sets foot on European soil, she spends a good deal of the film being pulled around by Steve Trevor in a constant state of agitation at the awfulness of man’s world. She’s confounded by the way in which women are treated, clothed, and disregarded. She speaks up to Etta Candy about her employment being akin to slavery. She pushes back against British generals who are willing to sacrifice their men to create an armistice with the Germans. She is Diana, indignant, proud, feminist, a true warrior.

And yet, I kept thinking, and yet.

wonderwoman-1280-9amembargo-1488818748850_400w — When she goes over that trench line? Cheer. Go on. It’s okay. I know I did.

Gal Gadot shines as Diana. She radiates the confidence, strength, compassion, and power I would expect from someone playing Wonder Woman. And when the action starts and she starts to move, she is a truly intense presence, radiating ferocity and capability. One long action sequence set along a trench line outside the town of Veldt had me positively cheering as Diana lets loose in one of the most awe-inspiring action sequences of the film. I would rate that scene as one of the best action sequences I’ve seen in a film altogether, forget about just with a woman protagonist.

From Veldt, Diana heads off to find a German general who, along with his pet scientist, a woman named Doctor Poison, are out to get the Germans back in the war by creating the deadliest mustard gas ever made. The film rockets to a climactic ending with Diana hunting down the German general, who she believes to be the god Ares incarnate. It all comes down to a major battle behind enemy lines with Steve and a ragtag band of their diverse crew of friends in tow. And yet, as the film came around to the climactic ending and its slow wind down to the credits, I found myself seeing the chinks in the armor, the cracks in the candy-covered coating the last half of the film tried to feed me. I felt both exhilarated and dissatisfied.

I went into this film with high expectations. It would be impossible not to, considering the kind of fan I am of Wonder Woman. I wanted to walk into a film that managed to encompass Diana in all her complexity, all the facets that make her one of the richest characters in all the DC Universe. And, to my amazement, I did. I found Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Diana to be witty and sweet, heartfelt and vulnerable, fiery and aggressive, unapologetic and brave. I don’t believe they could have found anyone willing to tackle the role with such conviction and dedication as Gadot, and I believe director Patti Jenkins understood Diana when she made the movie.

And yet it isn’t Diana that fails this penultimate Wonder Woman film. It’s the rest of the film that fails Wonder Woman.

gal_gadot_wonder_woman_movie_2017-wide — Diana with the God Killer sword

Lost Opportunities

From the get-go, the movie is fabulous at juxtaposing the safe, vivid confines of Themyscira for the uncertain, drained-palate wide open man’s world. Yet from the moment Diana walks into Europe, it’s as if the film is sapping away what made the first half special by introducing her to the banalities of patriarchal early 20th century life. Diana is criticized, boxed in, mansplained, and rejected. And while all of those moments would have been perfect examples of the failures of man’s world, the film does not give Diana enough opportunities to press her agency in those situations. While she does speak up against the authorities of male-oriented society around her, the protestations are given too little space around the often redundant and overly mouthy Chris Pine. The camera spent entirely too much time focused on his soulful blue eyes for my taste, driving Diana out of scenes where she could have been the agent of action in her own film. Instead, Diana is led, sometimes literally by the arm, from gun battle to gun battle, left with enough time in between to impress some guys in a bar over her strength and be horrified by the horrors of war.

For the next half an hour at least, Wonder Woman is effectively led through her own movie by Chris Pine’s Trevor, who does a fantastic job of portraying a likable and fun movie hero. But that in and of itself is half the problem. Pine is written as an equal hero alongside Diana, and once the film gives him the reins, it often forgets to let Diana take them back.

Diana finally wrestles back some agency during the fantastic trench-battle scene, where she seemingly remembers she doesn’t have to listen to this guy she fished out of the ocean. Instead, she almost single-handedly saves the day after pushing back against the men around her denying she can do what she knows she’s clearly capable of doing. And once Diana starts to move, it’s a joy to watch. Her action sequences are pure poetry, her joy at rescuing innocents in harms way infectious. This is the Diana I came to see, one deciding on her own how to go about saving man’s world from itself.

And just like that, the film comes back to a screeching halt by veering off into a love plot.

wonder_woman_steve_trevor_-_h_-_2015 — Oy vey.

Yes, that’s right, Steve Trevor and Princess Diana. Team Steve, right everyone? Not only are we treated to an all-too saccharine scene of Trevor and Diana dancing in the newly falling snow among the people they saved, but the film makes the almost unforgivable sin of deciding to have an implied sexual encounter between the two.

Now before you jump up and shout, “But Steve and Diana were a thing in the comics!” I’ll ask you to slow your roll for a second and look that shit up. In fact for the most part, though Steve and Diana had many years of intense attraction to one another, they did not in fact end up together in many continuities. Diana and Steve were the couple that never were, with Steve ending up with Etta Candy in the original continuity before the reset, and Diana going on to be attached to different romantic partners including Superman (New 52), Batman (er, almost, in the Justice League cartoon), the mercenary Nemesis, and more. Steve and Diana’s story was the implied deep feelings of two people tied together by love, friendship, and destiny. It does not, however, involve a hasty hookup in a half-bombed out Bulgarian apartment building. Because, you know, they don’t have anything better to do and what would the movie be like without a love story, right?

From here, the movie starts to hit more fits and starts. Diana spends too many scenes being bossed around by Steve, who undermines her at every turn, probably because of his burgeoning feelings for her and need to be overprotective. Diana ignores him for the most part, which is refreshing, but his constant interfering only provides the plot devices necessary to get from one scene to another while undercutting Diana’s agency at every turn. By the time we get to the now famous from the trailer blue dress party scene, Diana has basically had to end-run around Steve just to get anything done. And while once more that could stand as a perfect expression of Steve’s position as an arm of the controlling patriarchy, expressing itself in inappropriate post-coital possessiveness, it’s played off instead as the knowing actions of the experienced soldier restraining the hot-headed princess.

from-page-to-screen-is-gal-gadot-s-wonder-woman-bisexual-in-the-2017-movie-you-tell-him-1153165 — If only the script let that be true…

Even when Diana proves Steve’s choices have cost lives, there is no repercussions to him literally laying a hand on her to stop her from doing the right thing. Steve Trevor is wrong, gets in Diana’s way, constantly undercuts her agency, chides her for doing what she was trained to do all her life, and gaslights her, and is lionized for it.

These errors are compounded by other issues of representation and missed opportunities in the film. An awkward early scene between Diana and Steve skims almost coyly around the question of Amazonian sexuality (“aww shucks, don’t you know about marriage and sexual pleasure and stuff?”) while ignoring the fact that during the death of a beloved Amazon early in the film, one of her fellow warriors clearly races over in what looks like the grief over her dying lover. That lost moment and odd perhaps erasure of queer inclusion in the film is coupled by some stunning backseating of Doctor Poison as a villain in the film. Touted as a terrifying figure, a murderous chemical genius out to kill for the love of it, Doctor Poison is instead relegated to the German general’s frail sidekick. Her sole moment to shine is in a scene during the castle party when she, wait for it, nearly falls for the undercover charms of Steve Trevor.

The film also manages to get some wonderful racial and ethnic stereotyping into the movie with Steve’s three buddies in intrigue, Sameer, Charlie, and Chief. Sameer is played as a lying grifter whose heart really lies in the theater. His “very sorry, master!” acting to Pine’s pretend German general as they try to sneak into the castle is almost painful to watch in its stereotypical awfulness. Meanwhile, Charlie (played by the phenomenal Ewen Bremner) has the chance to be a poignant character as a crack sniper dealing with issues of PTSD. He might have gotten there however if he wasn’t buried in the trope of the Drunken Scotsman so hard its almost shocking. And then there’s Chief, the Native American smuggler who manages to magically show Diana where the bad guy is going by sending up smoke signals. No joke there. For serious.

The end of the film has its moments of fantastic action and cheering triumph as Gadot’s brilliant portrayal of Wonder Woman carries us through the somewhat overdone CGI final battle. However by that point, the holes in the third act have led to so many and yet moments. Even when the film pulls a reverse fridging to kill of Trevor in an act of sacrifice to get Diana mad enough to succeed, it is couched in such typical patriarchal language its hard to get through it all. Diana sees her lover get blown out of the sky and loses her cool, screaming and fighting her way through the Germans while being goaded into her rage, emotionally out of control (of course, because how like a woman). She only manages to take control of herself when confronted by a woman she is about to kill, the very Doctor Poison who had slaughtered so many on the battlefield. And of course the film flashes back to Trevor’s last declaration of love to her, and his words of wisdom earlier in the film as he mansplains the way to have compassion for those unworthy of protection. Only then, remembering her lovers words, does Diana find the strength to stop her enemies. The answer all along, she says, “is love.”

And that’s when I just about fell out of my chair.

Look, I was worried from the jump that Wonder Woman would fall into the love story trope. I prayed up and down on a stack of Gail Simone issues that we’d end up with a Mako Mori/Raleigh relationship instead, with two deeply connected people out to end a terrible threat together, rather than indulging in the traditional boy-meets-girl nonsense. When I heard the leaked songs from the soundtrack leading with the gushy song by Sia featuring a chorus with lyrics like “To be human is to love,” I knew there was a chance we were in trouble. But when Wonder Woman rose into the air crackling with lightning, empowered by the knowledge that love triumphs over all, I knew we’d tumbled right into some magical girl anime territory. I knew that somehow, somewhere, some studio executive saw a cut of the film and said, “You know what this needs? It needs a handsome love interest to be an equal hero, to give the little lady some support, because she can’t carry this all herself. Oh yeah, and this needs more CGI. All super hero movies need more CGI.”

Look, here’s the real truth of it: yes, Wonder Woman is powered in large part by love. Love for mankind, for her fellow Amazons, for the world around her, pretty much for everyone. She is a being made of love, really, and fueled by it in a world where things go horribly wrong all the damn time and she faces terrible, unrelenting darkness. And that’s what the movie is desperately trying to get at in its own hackneyed way. But by undercutting Diana with that awful “I love you” tripe with Trevor, it turned the benevolent complexity of a woman with boundless caring for the whole world into what sounds like a greeting card answer. The complexity, the depth, was lost.

By the end of the film, I was on a wild see-saw ride inside. The credits rolled and I was unsure how to feel. On the one hand, Gal Gadot had captured everything I wanted to see in Diana. She had found that spot that Greg Rucka talked about, that place where the complexity of the character could be found. She was the physical presence, the beauty, the grace, the wit, everything. I could not have been happier with Wonder Woman. She was perfect.

And yet she was too perfect for the movie she was in. She was too perfect for a movie that wouldn’t trust her to just be herself, to stand strong and make her own decisions without being led by the nose by a male counterpart. Though the character might be young and on the beginning of her journey, there was a great difference between showing inexperience in the character of Diana and providing the movie with tons of moments of bad patriarchal behavior that are barely ever addressed or confronted. By the end it was quite clear the movie had lost the complexity of Diana in favor of tropes better recognizable to a general movie audience: the star-crossed wartime lovers, the lost and enraged hero saved by the power of love. And while it might be revolutionary for some that the genders of these tropes have been flipped so the hero has become the Wonder heroine, as a fan of the character for two and a half decades, I am not that easily impressed. I expect more.

And that’s where this movie fell short. Perhaps there was no way it could have met my expectations, as high as they were. No film could probably come close to the image I have in my head of Wonder Woman, built up from a little girl’s adoration through twenty five years of appreciation. Yet I could only hold the film up to that internal yard stick and see where it fell. The result was exciting and sad all at once. Because perhaps if the movie had just trusted in its own Wonder Woman and the power of her character to be who she could and should have been, the movie would have achieved that place of perfection. As it is, it stands as the best of all the DC films so far and perhaps one of the best superhero films out there yet. A solid 8.5/10.

And yet, what could have been. And yet.

The Black Widow Controversy, Criticism, And How We Are Failing Our Creators

May 6, 2015 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Film, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

It’s getting harder every day to be a creator in the age of the internet.

It’s never been an easy thing to put your work out in public, at least not for most people I know. Sure, maybe there’s some folks out there, funny humans with indomitable wills and stomachs of iron, who aren’t petrified by the notion of getting their work in front of an audience. Maybe there are some folks who don’t publish a piece of work, or a blog post, and get that tightness in their tummies, that shortness of breath, that little flop sweat that says, “Please, this is my work, don’t judge it too harshly.” Most people I’ve ever spoken to have some degree of anxiety sharing what they’ve created though, and never has it been harder than in the age of the internet.

Over the last few years, however, it seems like more than ever sharing your work with the world has become a minefield. Put something out for public consumption and be prepared for a tidal wave of backlash, ranging from cutting comments and blog posts to threats of violence and rape. Take a moment to process that. A person creating something today needs to be worried about threats of violence ranging from beatings to home invasion, rape to swatting. They can be doxxed and have bomb threats sent against them. We’re a hell of a distance away from someone throwing a rotten tomato.

Take this week’s latest controversy. Avengers: Age of Ultron debuted this past weekend to stellar numbers in the box office. The movie was a huge success financially, but received some critical responses regarding its pacing and the coherence of some parts of the plot. Overwhelmingly, however, the biggest noise about the film has been regarding the treatment of its heroine, Black Widow.

Critics and fans of the film were vocal about the way the MCU’s biggest heroine at the moment was relegated to the role of love interest opposite Bruce Banner in the film as part of her personal subplot. While other members of the Avengers explored complex issues of guilt and past mistakes through flashbacks and interactions with one another, Natasha was given the love plot as her major character development throughout the film and issues with mommyhood instead. When she was also kidnapped by the villain halfway through the film and turned into a damsel in distress (albeit briefly), this raised the eyebrow of some fans. Those criticisms, along with Marvel’s unwillingness to support the women of Marvel with any action figures or merchandise of the women characters in the film, build a solid backbone for a conversation about Marvel’s difficulty understanding or serving its women characters and therefore their fans.

evansrenner — Correct face, Chris Evans. Not funny.

All of these, in my opinion, are valid criticisms. A discussion in my eyes ought to be had about the necessity of these plot points included in the film, and the inherent issue that comes from every film pigeon-holing their main woman character as a love interest or sex object. I think there’s validity to fans getting angry over casual comments by actor Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans when, during an interview about the film, they called Black Widow a “slut” and a “whore.” (Renner later doubled down on the mess after Evans apologized, which was even worse). I think its all indicative of a way that women characters are seen in Hollywood and within comic book films, and that there is a real discussion to be had about how to tackle diversification of roles for women in the action film genre. All of these are thoughts I’ve had, that I support, and I’d love to explore further.

What I do not support is threats. Which is not something I should have to say, it’s kind of obvious.

Joss Whedon, director of Age of Ultron, faced a firestorm on Twitter that included threats of beatings and murder for the way he portrayed Black Widow in the film. Though the fact is the film went through revisions based on input from Hollywood execs and worked around Black Widow’s pregnancy, despite the fact that Whedon doesn’t control all the aspects of the film, Whedon became the face of the anger many fans felt over Black Widow’s portrayal, and they got aggressive. Articles published streams of Tweets (many since deleted) aimed at Whedon threatening to “beat his ass” for the direction of the film.

It’s not like this is anything new. We live in a world today when creators can be the targets of the worst kind of hate when consumers disagree with their work. This has become especially true when issues of social justice are involved, or when those creators or speakers are people from marginalized backgrounds. Anita Sarkeesian has received years now of the worst kind of hatred because of her work on Feminist Frequency and her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games web series. Women game developers like Brianna Wu have been targeted by this kind of harassment for the inclusion of more diverse content in their material at the hands of the Gamergate movement. This hate movement has spread to other parts of the geek media world where fiction authors, comic creators, and television creators have received harassment for their work as well.

The list of those affected include those on both sides of issues, from progressives to conservatives. The stances may be different but the tactics are the same. And while I do not believe in the equivalency of ideas (meaning, I do believe that in some arguments one side is more right than the other), I believe that the kind of harassment and bullying creators now face online has got to stop.

Why should it stop? We can start from the top by saying because it’s just wrong!

There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. Harassment of another person, on the internet or otherwise, is just wrong. You can have differences of opinions all you like, but the moment you threaten another person with violence, the moment that you step over the line into belligerent bullying behavior, you are now at best a vulgar nuisance and at worst a criminal. You become part of the screaming mass of people on the internet who believe that anonymity behind a keyboard makes them powerful and drives them to say anything they wish, believing there are no repercussions. Let me say it one more time: Harassment on the internet for any reason is wrong. End of line, no further discussion needed, period.

But okay, maybe there’s one more reason why this needs to stop. And that’s because of the state of criticism itself in the world.

The arts and criticism have always had a tense, contentious relationship to begin with. Artists would live in mortal fear of waking up to read bad reviews of their plays or art shows or books. People would sniff and make snide comments about how “those who can’t create become critics.” As someone who is both an artist and a critic, I’ll tell you that’s bullshit. Sure, anyone can sit down behind a computer screen and type out a screed about how they hated a piece of television. But there are people who actively study media, the history and execution and presentation and social context, and who are capable of presenting valid media criticism from a place of education and experience.

I went to school and got my degree in film studies so that I could produce not only better works of art in the future based on knowledge I gleaned from studying film as a medium, but also so I would have context for criticism I provided. True criticism isn’t about simply emotional response but contextual understanding of an art form, of the society in which it is created and the manner by which it is executed. It takes understanding and in depth consideration. It does not, however, require high-brow consumption and snooty reviews. And it certainly doesn’t require threats.

The era of mass threats to creators, however, has begun to drown out real criticism in the field. Creators can’t hear legitimate conversation when inundated with a barrage of hate-filled noise, and that kind of ratio of good critical content to nightmarish abuse can make a person shut down to any input. Criticism serves a purpose, folks: to respond to media, discuss ideas put forward, and help creators learn from their work and perhaps improve or choose differently in the future. It is not meant as an opportunity to abuse those who have put their hearts into their work, no matter how much you dislike or disagree with them. Hate filled terrorizing of creators is counterproductive and shows no respect for them as a producer of content or as human beings. It also defeats the purpose of trying to get yourself heard, because you won’t be. And neither will anyone else.

What suffers alongside our creators at the hands of these hate mobs is our ability to have discourse about anything relevant. Issues of representation, content, or execution are pushed to the wayside, drowned out by the threats of beatings, the instances of doxxings and swattings, and the bomb and death threats. You have creators afraid to put their work forward, for fear of what might happen to them or their loved ones. Their creative cycles are eaten up by the stress of dealing with such hate-filled sound, and their inability to engage with their fans is damaged. And our world becomes just a little less capable of learning from one another in an age when we are so much more capable of reaching one another then ever before.

We are not bystanders in this issue. Everyone who is a fan, who reads or posts commentary online, who engages in social media, is complicit in this ecology of hatefulness, if not as contributors then as witnesses. We say “don’t feed the trolls” or “don’t read the comments,” telling us to keep our heads down, don’t encourage them, and maybe they’ll go away. But the fact is, they don’t, and the silence only encourages a lack of repercussions and an allowance for bad behavior to continue. By staying silent when we see such behavior, we are allowing ourselves to stay safe while our creators twist in the wind and endure these hate-filled tidal waves alone. We don’t want to attract the attention of the mob, so we hope if we ignore it, it’ll go away. It won’t. They won’t.

You may not have the bandwidth in your life to always engage. I’m not saying you should all the time. That’s how burnout occurs, how you get consumed by the hatefulness and negativity that surges around the internet these days. What I’m suggesting is that we must all take little steps, as we see fit, to combat this environment of hatred. We may not agree with the ideas or creations we fight over, but we can at least agree that threats of violence and hate-mobs against someone are wrong. Right folks? Right? I sincerely hope so.

Gamora May Be The Strongest Woman In the (Marvel Movie) Galaxy

August 6, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Film

I’m about to make a claim here that I will attempt to support with a look at the woman of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This post may have spoilers to any number of the Marvel movies that have come out so far, especially Guardians of the Galaxy. You have been warned.

I have a theory, ladies and gentlemen: Gamora may be the best independent woman of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’m laying it out there on the line and saying it. And now, I’m going to try to explain why.

There’s no doubt that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (hereafter referred to as the MCU) has represented some kickass women characters, with large roles or small ones. Yet when looking at each of the women in the context of their own films, we might see some seriously problematic relationships that these women have with their own power and agency within the narrative. No matter how each character strives to escape from the stereotypical tropes that have plagued women characters in cinema, in one way or another they fall into those very pitfalls. These top pitfalls are:

Are introduced as love interests or sex objects,
Kept passive for most of their role or only given agency to act when commanded by a man to do so,
Are given such a minute role as to be two-dimensional or incidental.

Let me say one thing before we continue too: Just because a woman character has problematic issues in regards to their agency in the narrative or their being created as relationship fodder does not make them inherently uninteresting or valueless. Narratives have problematic characters that we can still like, and women characters that we can look at critically within the narrative structure. This is not an aim to knock ‘weaker’ women or ‘traditionally feminine’ characters. This is talking how these women stand up to the rubric of being women characters that operate with their own agency and have their own character arch outside of being a love interest.

With that said, the women that we’ll look at in this article that will stand up beside Gamora are everyone from Nova Prime to Jane Foster, Black Widow to Peggy Carter. And each time, the characters come away with something problematic. Let’s start from the top.

Women Introduced As Love Interests / Sex Objects

“It would have all been FINE, except for Iron Man 2. Sigh. Some more Whedon should fix this.”

In most male-driven films, women have been alternately introduced as associates or most often both a love interest and a sexual object to be stared at (the object of the sexualized gaze). When a woman character is introduced into the narrative this way, it is often with the intent of making them reactive to the needs of the man in the plot, or to provide emotional sway over the male characters by the woman being put in danger. This is the case for such potentially interesting characters as Jane Foster, Pepper Pots, and (unfortunately) even Peggy Carter. All of these women have varying degrees of their own character arcs, but are inevitably turned into the emotional crux upon which the man’s narrative turns. Jane Foster, the brilliant physicist, is turned into an appendage to Thor or a damsel in distress. This is true of Pepper Pots, who despite developing her own narrative for three films remains under the power of Tony Stark. Peggy Carter and Black Widow stand out as two women who nearly escape this problem, but Peggy is the developed love interest and emotional crux of Steve Rogers’ entire storyline, and Black Widow was first introduced as a sex object for Tony Stark in Iron Man 2. Though she has developed out of that original interpretation, the focus on Widow’s sexuality in the first film mars her more nuanced representation in Avengers and Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Women Without Agency

“I’ll have a TV show soon and all will be well.”

One of the points cried by many about the women of the MCU is that they represent a step forward in being ‘strong female characters.’ However much I happen to love this term, I only love it when it means what it actually says it means. This wonderful article talks more about what’s called ‘Trinity Syndrome’, or the way in which a female character will initially come across as a badass, independent, thoughtfully designed woman character with agency, when in fact they are just the same passive characters rewritten with a shiny ‘tough girl’ wrapper. I unfortunately must place one of my personal favorites, Lady Sif, into this category. She is coded to be the tough woman, a woman warrior among men, when in fact she is a completely reactive character who makes no impact on the story that isn’t in support of her unrequited love interest, Thor. The villainess Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy is in the same situation, as she acts only upon the orders of her father or, later, the deadly Ronan the Accuser. Peggy Carter in the Captain America: The First Avenger film is very much coded this way. Though she is presented as an intelligent, brave, outspoken woman, she remains passive throughout most of the film and reactive only when spurred by the needs of the men around her. (Her television series will hopefully break her of this issue). Black Widow’s character arch is all about her attempt to find independence from the machinations around her in many ways, and the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier has her finally acting instead of reacting to everything. Yet we have yet to see Natasha really reach that point.

Women As Background

“It’s friggin’ sad when I’ve got more agency than the lead woman in the movie.”

Then we have the background characters that are simply too underdeveloped to give us a clear picture of what they are. Maria Hill in the Avengers, Nova Prime in Guardians of the Galaxy, and Frig from Thor 2 are like this. (Frig has the double issue of not only being a background character, she is also killed to induce emotional impact on her son’s Thor and Loki, invoking the often-used Women in Refrigerators trope).

There is one background/sidekick character given agency and movement, and that is Darcy, Jane Foster’s assistant. However she is such a background character that her impact on the story is nominal. Yet she perhaps is one of the closest to defying these pitfalls, and would be a great representation if not for the fact that she was a background character.

So who does break these patterns?

Enter Gamora

Gamora as written in Guardians of the Galaxy operates within the confines of what is expected of an action movie heroine and then defies those expectations. She has a character evolution over the story, acts as the catalyst for the action by acting with her own agency, emotes without being forced into the role of the emotional crux of a love interest storyline, and is not overly sexualized in the film. Instead, she exists in a place in the narrative as a woman who is respected (even feared), is competent at what she does and is never belittled for it, and who shows emotional depth and vulnerability as well as unbelievable strength and will.

“I’ve got a universe to save. Try to keep up.”

Gamora is the adopted ‘daughter’ of Thanos, who kidnapped her as a child and turned her into a killer for him. Seems he does this a lot, because he has other children who do his bidding. Yet Gamora, despite her position as a killer for her ‘father’, retains some ethical lines that she will not cross. When she discovers that Thanos has promised he will destroy a planet for Ronan the Accuser, she turns against her father to save millions of lives. She operates with her own set of moral and ethical boundaries and intercepts Peter Quill with the orb and ends up tossed in prison when she, Peter, Rocket, and Groot are caught fighting by the Nova Corp. Despite the fact that she is in prison with people who want to murder her for her former allegiance to Thanos, she remains composed and focused on her mission. She never backs down from her ethical choice: to help stop Ronan from destroying that planet. Unlike Drax, whose mission to stop Ronan comes from his own personal vendetta, and unlike Quill and Rocket (and Groot?), she isn’t in it for a payday. She genuinely is fighting to stop a genocide from happening, one woman condemned by those she is trying to protect. Each time she is put in a position to make a choice regarding continuing with this deadly course of actions, she remains steadfast in trying to stop Ronan’s plan, and in fact sways Star Lord towards a more altruistic choice by her own continuous conviction.

“Ahem. You know you’re not getting any of this, right?”

Gamora also stands as a woman who defies the stereotype of a female love interest in an MCU film. There is no doubt that GotG codes the ongoing relationship between Star Lord and Gamora as a flirtatious one. Yet from the minute she meets Peter, Gamora is inured to his charms. Every time he flirts with her, including the scene where he introduces her to music through his headphones and tries to get her to dance, Gamora revolts against Star Lord’s moves. She calls him out for basically thinking that space girls are easy, a fact that Star Lord has proven early in the film with his randy escapades. And she does it with flare too. I mean, come on, pulling a knife and saying she won’t fall for his ‘pelvic sorcery’? Throughout the movie, Gamora might start finding Star Lord a little more attractive, yet never does she become ancillary to the plot in order to simply be his love interest. Far from it: Star Lord is the reactive one, who cedes the power in decision making to Gamora’s drive to save the universe. Gamora explores her feelings as an equal, capable of remaining active and in charge of her emotions and even physical wants (if those exist) without losing her agency, identity, and integrity.

Gamora also defies the stereotype of the hyper-sexualized comic book heroine. Sure, she’s dressed in tight leather in the film, but so is the frickin’ raccoon. The camera does not linger any longer on her body than it does on the equally attractive Star Lord. While there may be one shot that could be considered questionable (it lingers on her ass for a moment), its intent seems more to focus on the weapons on her hip than on her rear. Gamora is not created in this space as a piece of flesh to be stared at, but a woman who carries her beauty as just another part of her, and certainly not as a part of that is coded specifically to be stared at as a sexual object.

(And yes, at the very end she wears a little dress. Women wear those without being sexual objects on screen, and the manner by which she is cinematically presented in that scene indicates that the dress is not meant to showcase her sexually but present her as simply… wearing a dress. Which is something women do. To indicate that she can’t like a dress or wear as skirt is prescribing what a strong, independent woman should and should not wear outside of concerns of how they are being presented for viewing. And that, friends, is sexist in its own way).

“We were all just looking for each other.”

There are some that say that Gamora’s plotline is contrived, that she turns too quickly towards the heroic path. And indeed, another article about Gamora points out that so does the entire cast for the sake of the speed of the film. I will push it one point further. I will say that Gamora, like all the other Guardians, is at a crossroads in their lives. They are each searching for some place to belong, or something to believe in, and are at a turning point where the events of the movie produce a profound change in them and bonds them to one another. I believe Gamora, of all the characters, transforms the most gracefully. She had already made the choice to betray Thanos and Ronan before meeting the other soon-to-be-Guardians. She had made her own choice to go it alone against some of the most powerful men in the galaxy because of her ethics. Yet when offered aid, she respects the growing trust between herself and the other characters and has the emotional acuity to transform from loner to reluctant ally and eventually friend through the course of the film.

Guardians-Of-The-Galaxy-Zoe-Saldana-gamora — The Most Dangerous Woman In The Galaxy.

Its that emotionality that also sets Gamora apart, as she is given the room as a character to show a full range of emotion. She can show vulnerability, rage, indignance, confusion, and even heartbreak. Her relationship with her sister Nebula is a tumultuous one that, if it can receive any criticism, perhaps could have used more screen time. Yet Gamora shows how much she cares for her sister, even when she has to fight her to protect the universe. This is not a woman pigeon-holed into one emotional mode, but given range to be complicated. You know, just like any great male character.

In the crucible by fire that is the events of Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora emerges a graceful, nuanced, fleshed out character that drives the plot and exists outside the stereotype of sex object in leather. Gamora escapes being pigeon-holed as a fake ‘strong female character’ by actually BEING a strong female character. And in that way, Gamora sets herself apart from the lip service paid to strength in other MCU characters who all fail to escape being pigeon-holed into traditional women-in-film tropes in various ways. The success of Guardians, driven by Gamora, will hopefully signal to not only Marvel but to other filmmakers that a woman with such a well-developed role outside of stereotype can and should drive films in equal measure to male counterparts. Meanwhile, Gamora stands not only as the most dangerous woman in the universe, as she’s known in the comics, but as the most dangerous woman to sexist portrayals in film in quite some time.

The New Maleficent, or How I Want My Dragon Back

June 9, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Film

(Warning: Spoilers. Oh ALL the spoilers.)

Growing up, my mom always called me Briar Rose whenever I’d watch Sleeping Beauty. My name, Shoshana, means Rose and so she’d always say I was her little Briar Rose. But even at a young age, I didn’t associate with the frolicking, soft-spoken blond in the woods. (Except in that singing voice, I always wanted to be able to sing like her). No, when I watched Sleeping Beauty – and it was one of my favorites – I watched it because I adored the villainess.

That’s right, I was a Maleficent girl.

While lots of little girls liked the princesses, I rooted for Maleficent. Why? Because even at a young age, after reading loads on medieval society, I knew that in the movie King Stephan and his ‘fair queen’ were kind of dicks to Maleficent on Aurora’s christening day. Anyone who has read up on medieval folklore knows that not inviting someone who is considered a peer of the realm to the crown princess’s coronation is tantamount to the gravest insult. (And the Queen identifies Maleficent as a peer when she calls her ‘Your Excellency’). So imagine being the only one in town not invited, showing up to face down the King and Queen for their grievous oversight, getting insulted by three tiny fairies, and then losing your temper. You know, I can see it. It’s understandable. Does Maleficent go overboard in cursing a child to die for the whole thing? Okay, sure. But her anger made sense. She had been left out, cast aside, insulted, and insulted again.

I think I responded so much to Maleficent because she was allowed her rage. In a world that often tells women to be silent in their anger, I saw Maleficent as a powerful, vengeful woman who made a choice and followed it through to the end. And she did it with poise, grace, power, fury, eloquence, and intelligence. She didn’t rant and rave. Maleficent commanded. Sure, she could have used a better brand of henchmen, but she was regal without a crown. Like the Morgan La Fey of Arthurian Myth, she was a power unto herself. She made her choice and she followed it through, faced the hero and died in the course of her actions.

And you know, I think I like that far more than Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent.

the_evil_queen_from_once_upon_a_time_by_sprsprsdigitalart-d5oe0tp — Being Evil and looking fabulous WITHOUT being toothless.

Recently, Disney has been on a kick of trying to humanize it’s villains. From Regina and Gold on Once Upon A Time to the rockstar status of Frozen, Disney is trying to show that villains, while doing bad things, are people too. They are creatures with their own inner worlds, and more often than not lately the villain is redeemed through the course of the story. Love triumphs over vengeance and pain, and the villain is healed to become good at the end. This is the new story of what it is to be evil. Evil is a choice. It is the acts you take and not the person you are. You can turn back and join with the good side of society again and have what you have done wiped away. This is true redemption and you know what? I love this idea.

Just… not the way it’s presented in Maleficent.

The live action Maleficent is not so much a retelling so much as a complete rewrite. Maleficent goes from a sorceress to a fairy girl, whose happy-go-lucky world turns to pain when the human boy she trusts turns against her in a bid to get the crown for himself. In a scene that was painfully reminiscent to me of being roofied, Maleficent is drugged and her precious and beautiful wings are cut off for the boy Stephen to present to the king who wanted her dead. Stephen then becomes king, goes and knocks up the old king’s beautiful daughter, and out comes baby Aurora. Maleficent, meanwhile, wakes up in a field with her wings cut off, betrayed and physically violated by the boy she thought loved her, and turns a little angry. Okay, very angry. And so she goes to the christening, and the scene plays out pretty much the same as it did in the animated classic.

Except with one major difference. In the animated classic, Maleficent confronts the royals over not receiving an invitation and this is the exchange:

Maleficent: “I admit to being quite distressed at not receiving an invitation.”

Merriweather the Fairy: “You weren’t wanted.”

Maleficent: “Not want- Oh dear. And here I had thought it must have been some oversight. In that case, I should just be on my way.”

The Queen: “Then you aren’t offended, Your Excellency?”

Maleficent: “Why no, your Majesty. And to show that I bear no ill will, I too shall bestow a gift on the child.”

In this version, it is Merriweather the fairy that exacerbates the situation. King Stephen and his Queen had no relationship of direct aggression on Maleficent that we know about, just their obvious dislike and the snub they gave her. It’s the fairy that makes things harder. The Queen in fact tries to back things down, tries to check to see if Maleficent is angry. And she is. Oh most definitely.

Still, in the live action version, it is King Stephen, Maleficent’s former childhood sweetheart and betrayer who now looks her in the face and says instead, “You aren’t welcome here.”

Let’s back up for a second. King Stephen is the former orphan boy, saved by Maleficent when he tried to steal from the faeries as a child. She then befriends him, gives him her heart, shows him the beauty of the faery world. And he then comes to her under the pretext of ‘saving her from the King’ and cuts off her wings to gain the throne. And when she, in her anger, shows herself in the kingdom, he looks her right in the face and says that she isn’t welcome. I don’t know about you, but watching that scene I thought he was LUCKY all she did was curse his child. Maleficent throughout the film is shown as having power over nature itself on a basic level. Yet she’s presented as cursing this child to go into a death-like sleep after sixteen years on this earth. She doesn’t bring down the castle. She doesn’t kill the King for his betrayal. She gives him a puzzle with an out. She is the one who says that true love’s kiss can break the spell, not one of the other faeries.

Because in this version, no matter what she’s doing, Maleficent is kind.

This rewritten Maleficent is kind, deep beneath her betrayed anger. She loves woodland creatures, trees, and magical things. She saves little boys and protects her homeland from invaders. And, as we see, she can’t kill. This isn’t the same Maleficent that landed in all her glory in a ball of fire in front of Prince Phillip and declared: “Now you must deal with me, oh Prince, and all the powers of HELL!” This is a kinder, gentler Maleficent, who spends the rest of the film spying on the baby Aurora growing up and, gradually, comes to love the little princess as her own.

That’s right. There is no sixteen year search for the princess by goblin soldiers and one very overworked raven. Maleficent knows from day one where Aurora is and watches over her. Then, gradually, the baby Aurora wins her over. Maleficent even picks her up at one point and holds her while the tiny infant grabs adorably at her horns. “I don’t like children!” the sorceress complains, all the while giving the baby goo goo eyes. It’s obvious from moment one that the true love of this film will not be between Aurora and Prince Phillip as is so classically expected, but much like Frozen, the love that will save Aurora will also redeem and save our villainess from herself. In the end, Aurora is Maleficent’s surrogate daughter, and Maleficent the ‘fairy godmother’ that teaches her to be good to the magical creatures, unlike her selfish father. And, because it’s Disney, they even rewrite the ending so that they all live happily ever after.

(Though they did leave in the dragon part. At least a little).

This is a wonderful story of vengeance healed through love, of a woman finding her way back from grief and betrayal to heal.

Jolie looks the part. But cannot walk the dragon walk.

The problem is: this is not Maleficent.

This character, rewritten as she is, is a shadow of her former glory. Angelina Jolie shows beautiful poise and gives much to the savage beauty and grace of Maleficent, but her performance is so sunk in the tragic vulnerability and pain of Maleficent that her rage is gone. Instead, she spends so much time trying to make Maleficent seem redeemable that she defangs perhaps Disney’s greatest villainess.

The worst part of the sanitization of Maleficent is the ways in which she is brought into this vengeance/healing storyline and the way she is ‘saved’. No longer is Maleficent just insulted by the royalty and decides to act on that insult. No, the story had to change so that Maleficent has been betrayed and mutilated by the man she loved to justify her rage at the little baby Aurora. Ahem, I have a question: why does everything have to have a damn love story? And to be fair, this wasn’t even a very GOOD love story. This was a rushed, half-narrated, shlock of a love story to justify Maleficent’s anger. Because a woman cannot be angry or insulted if she’s not being betrayed by a man she loved.

"Go away. I hate children! Well, except for you. And not just because you're being played by my daughter." — “Go away. I hate children! Well, except for you. And not just because you’re being played by my daughter.”

And finally, there is Maleficent’s journey to healing, also known as the bond she creates with Princess Aurora. This storyline, while precious and beautiful in a nurturing, female bonding kind of way, left a bad taste in my mouth. Where once Maleficent was an independent woman, operating on her own agenda and feelings, here Jolie’s Maleficent is sublimated back into the traditional mother-nurturer archetype. It follows the typical fairy tale trope. Now that Maleficent isn’t the villainess, per say, her happy ending must come through finding true love. Since we’ve already sat through one annoying false love story in this, are we presented with another for Maleficent? No, there’s no he-dragon to win her hand. Is it love for herself, or even for her adorable and fabulous hench-bird (who was my favorite part of this whole movie) that saves her, then? No. Maleficent must become a surrogate mother, for only in the power of nurturing a child can she truly reclaim her heart. Because, as we know, the only way to find fulfillment as a woman if you aren’t the transgressive villainess is as a lover, a wife, or a mother. That is fairy tale archetypes 101.

This is not Maleficent. This is not the dragon who chained Prince Phillip in a dungeon and cackled as a spell overtook the castle with thorns. This is the transgressive woman neutered back into a typical, well-understood form. The mysterious sorceress is now just a girl whose boyfriend betrayed her, hurt her, and she, the jilted lover, comes to wreck his happy new home. We feel for her, of course, and applaud and love her for her journey to reclaim her heart by embracing the innocent child of her insane ex. In the end, her goodness makes her powerful again as she battles for Aurora, her own freedom, and that of her people. Stephen is rightfully vanquished, and Maleficent regains her glory to become again the fairy that she once was, beautiful and good. All she had to do was become a recognizable trope to get there.

The new Maleficent film is a beautiful fairy tale about the healing power of one woman nurturing another into adulthood. And I can get behind that, one hundred percept. But don’t slap the name Maleficent on there and expect that there won’t be some not-so-flattering side by side comparison. Jolie’s Maleficent strains against few gender stereotypes, and in fact reenforces many of them, all the while parading as a modern retelling of an old classic. In fact, it is a demystifying of the villainess, the transgressive woman archetype, to force her into a more palatable box. And it’s a square peg-round hole situation that does nobody any favors.

Next time, Disney, if you want to make a happy, ‘mommyhood can save you from your anguish’ story, go ahead and do that. But let’s not call it Maleficent.

Slut Hulk: David Goyer and Craig Mazin Set A New Low For Discussing Comics

May 21, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’d be writing a post on my blog defending She-Hulk. Or the right for comic book characters to not be called sluts and sex objects by Hollywood screenwriters. But hey, it’s a Wednesday, the sun is shining, and The Mary Sue put out an article about David Goyer and his comments on a podcast called Scriptnotes. And that changed what I did with my afternoon.

The short version is that David Goyer, a writer for DC Comics who is going to be working on the upcoming Superman / Batman movie, went on a podcast called Scriptnotes hosted by a John August and Craig Mazin. He and other panelists talked about other characters in comics that would be translated into film and how, and things went straight to pretty awful sexism the moment Goyer was asked to talk about She-Hulk. Here’s the transcript (thanks to The Mary Sue):

Craig Mazin: The real name for She-Hulk was Slut-Hulk. That was the whole point. Let’s just make this green chick with enormous boobs. And she’s Hulk strong but not Hulk massive, right? … She’s real lean, stringy…

David S. Goyer: She’s still pretty chunky. She was like Chyna from the WWE.

Mazin: The whole point of She-Hulk was just to appeal sexistly to ten-year-old boys. Worked on me.

Goyer: I have a theory about She-Hulk. Which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So the Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It’s like, most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids getting the shit kicked out of them every day… And so then they created She-Huk, right? Who was still smart… I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk, you know what I’m saying? … She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it’s like if I’m going to be this geek who becomes the Hulk then let’s create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck.

I really have no idea where to start.

First off. David Goyer. I could go into explaining how She-Hulk was created as cousin to the Hulk in the comics. So them sleeping together would only work if this was Marvel’s Game of Thrones. But I’m going to sidestep that. I’m going to instead look at the logic behind your statement and the disturbing context that you’re applying to women comic book characters. And hang on, Craig Mazin, because you’re not escaping culpability for this sexist bro-fest. We’ll get to you in a second.

2051136-she_hulk — Because having big boobs and being in comics makes She-Hulk a slut, according to Goyer and Mazin.

If David Goyer is to be believed here, then since most comic book writers were men, the characters they were creating were to fulfill a need in male readership. Since, you know, men were the only people reading those comics. (Never the case, since I owned a She-Hulk #1 as a little girl). The writers therefore were trying to build a character that men, who use the Hulk as a power fantasy, could then focus on as a sex fantasy when they emote into the Hulk. They couldn’t possibly be trying to create a full-rich character with her own story that might appeal to men in other ways besides her sexuality. Because, as we know, the only way for a character in comics to be received by comic book fans is through their need for escapist narratives about giant muscles or through sex fantasies about ‘overly sexualized women’.

Heck, Craig Mazin seems to agree with him as he said: “The whole point of She-Hulk was just to appeal sexistly to ten-year-old boys. Worked on me.”

If that’s to be believed, than the comic book industry spends all it’s time aiming their writing not at their audience’s minds and hearts, but at their insecurities and need for escapism or at their testicles. And if you’re a woman, then not at all.

From here, I’ll separate my comments regarding Goyer and Mazin. Because Mazin spent a good deal of today trying to backtrack away from his comments on Twitter, claiming not only that he can’t be sexist because he has a daughter and wife, but that his comments were about the sexist aims of comic book writers at the time. But in his attempt to point out sexist tropes, apparently, he had no problem calling a character in the comics a slut because of her representation in the art as having large breasts. You know, like every other female character in comics ever. So is it then that every woman in comics was written as appealing to the male libido only and therefore that they’re ‘sluts’?

That’s a loaded word, Mr. Mazin. It means sexually promiscuous and is generally aimed to cast a female character in a negative light, generally to create shame about the character’s sexual conquests or activities. That’s why it’s called ‘slut shaming’. It is a derogatory term. There were a million ways you could have said ‘I believe that She Hulk as a character was created in an overly sexualized way.’ Instead, you went straight to calling her a slut. What’s slutty about her character? Her work as a lawyer, or being an Avenger? Maybe it’s the fact that by comparison she actually usually wears more clothing than the Hulk? I’m curious why that was the name you chose, Mr. Mazin, if you did not mean to be derogatory about the character’s sexuality. If slut your go-to word on the subject, that says something about the way you think about the character. And about women being portrayed as sexual in general. Backtrack all you want, but the word choice is telling and repugnant.

Now we can move on to David Goyer. Because on the day when DC unveiled the new title of their Superman/Batman movie, David Goyer decided to go ahead and show just how little he thinks of not only comic book fans but of the female characters in comic books in general. He started with his view of female characters as sexual fantasies, created only to entice male libido, but he also then went on to insult comic book fans in general. Quoted from the Mary Sue article:

Goyer was asked how he would translate the J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter to film. As Goyer is one of the people in charge of bringing the DC Universe to live action, this was definitely a topic where his ideas carried weight. In response to being asked about the hero, Goyer asked, “How many people in the audience have heard of Martian Manhunter?” After hearing some light applause and cheers, he added, “How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”

First, a powerful female character like She Hulk is just there for sexual titilation. Then, Goyer falls back on the stereotype of comic book fans as unable to get laid.

David Goyer, can I ask you a question: why do you work in comics?

By the way you spoke in this interview about not only the material you work with (example: comments on how ‘goofy’ Martian Manhunter is) and then your clear insults at comic book fans, I don’t understand why you’d work in comics. Your clear disdain for the subject material and the fans comes through in the whole interview. On top of that, it’s obvious how incredibly out of touch you are with the industry in general. And with these comments, you’ve made it abundantly clear that one of the people entrusted with bringing the next big DC movie to the world has little regard for female characters in comics or the audience of your film. Is this the person who should be working on the first big screen introduction of Wonder Woman?

Oh yes, and Mr. Goyer? I didn’t miss the bit of body shaming you put out there too. She Hulk in the comics is exceptionally fit and athletic, a muscular match for her cousin the Hulk. (COUSIN, Mr. Goyer. Not someone for the Hulk to sleep with. COUSIN.) But do I hear you referencing Hulk as anything but a male power fantasy? Nope. For She Hulk however you went ahead and called her ‘chunky’.

(Though I did notice you mentioned Chyna there in reference. Maybe because she played She Hulk in the porno? Could that be your ONLY point of reference for the character, Mr. Goyer?)

Let’s recap: Body shaming, slut shaming, fan shaming.

This is what commentary on comics and comic book films comes down to these days? Two guys bringing their sexist (‘But I’m not REALLY sexist!’) ideas to the table? We’ve heard these voices for years now, perpetuating the same garbage and framing the view of female characters through the lens of male lasciviousness. Heaven forbid that we could divorce ourselves of the male assumption that everything in comics is for them long enough to consider female characters as entities unto themselves. Goyer and Mazin are just echoes of the same old song and dance, just caught out in the open being blatant about it. Slut Hulk. Just something to bang. It’s all been said before. Now it’s just caught on podcast.

What amazes me is in his comments, there’s indications that Goyer felt like one of those stereotyped nerds growing up. He says ‘those people like me’ who were getting beaten up. So now, as a screenwriter and someone in the driver’s seat of providing creative content to the comic book world, seems Goyer might be suffering from a little self hating nerd syndrome.

DC Comics, do yourself a favor. Hire someone to work on your movies and your comics that doesn’t clearly hate on your own fan base quite so much.

Knights of Badassdom: Why We Deserve Better LARP Movies

February 10, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture, LARP, Uncategorized

Warning: The following article involves spoilers for Knights of Badassdom.

The minute I heard about Knights of Badassdom, I was excited. Forget for a moment that this was going to be a movie about LARP. This movie had Peter Dinklege in it, in armor, fighting at a LARP! It had Ryan Kwanden of True Blood fame, one of the only reasons I still WATCH that show, as our hero. And Summer Glau, fresh off of being badass in fandoms everywhere, was going to play the female lead. Plus there was going to be LARP! (Okay, now we’re back to that point) This was going to be a movie that not only spoke to my interests but had a great cast! How could things go wrong?

Easily. Oh so very easily.

It’s no secret that Knights of Badassdom, directed by Joe Lynch, went through production hell. The film was shot and then disappeared for a long while. The creator lost control of it to someone else, a producer who supposedly recut the entire thing before it was finally released into the wild through limited engagement showings across the country. The movie cashed in on a new system of ‘sponsored’ movie screenings, hosted locally in communities to drum up attendance. KoB was marketed to LARP communities to come out and support, to make showings available so that this movie could come to their area with it’s awesomeness. I was one of those people who applied to host a showing. As someone who loves seeing LARPers come together at events, I thought this would be a perfect community event – we’d all get together and watch some big stars pretend to do what we do! But before I would do it, I went to see an earlier screening, just to see what I was getting.

I’m so very glad I did. The moment the movie was over, I walked out and emailed Tugg, the service that was hosting the events. I told my liaison at Tugg that, “Frankly, I attended this film this week just to see what I would be hosting, and it is so bad that I don’t think I want my name associated. Kindly cancel my application.”

Knights of Badassdom is everything that bothers me about LARP films.

The Review

Let’s not start with talking about Knights of Badassdom as a LARP film. Instead, how does it rank as a film? Well, in the land of comedies, it ranks just above Sharkanedo in making sense plot-wise. There is no coherence in the flow of the movie after the characters GET to the LARP, when it devolves into a messy pastiche of horror film tropes banged together to create some kind of narrative. Once you’re halfway into the movie, you wonder why the director bothered to get such impressive actors as Dinklage, Jimmi Simpson and Kevin Zahn when they’re going to underuse them or, in Dinklage’s case, murder them off before they can do anything cool. The dialogue is some of the worst I’d ever heard in a movie, and as the film went on, more jokes fell flat than actually landed. By the time the movie went into ‘save the day’ mode, I was scratching my head at he mess of silly horror movie references tossed in, the ridiculously out of place hill-billy cops plot line that was jammed onto the rest of the film, and the plan the heroes supposedly put together to rescue the game from the horrible demon.

And once you get to the ending and the climactic showdown, I was so busy shaking my head at the lack of cohesion of ideas and the obvious plot holes that I’d forgotten I was watching a movie set at a LARP. It seemed more like a badly staged theater production entitled “How Not To Save The Day By Make Ryan Kwanten Pretend To Sing Fake Metal At A Bad CG Demon.” By the time the credits rolled, I was looking for as many synonyms for ‘disappointing’ as I could come up with.

Not Just Disappointing…

I sat after the film and thought about what I’d heard about the film. About how it had been hacked up in editing by the producer that got their hands on the film. Surely that was what made this film so bad? Anyone watching could have seen however that the movie would probably have sucked no matter the editing (there is only so much editing can do to awful dialogue). Still, I realized something about this movie was making me aggravated, and it wasn’t just being poorly done.

And that’s when I finally got it- expectation. This movie had not been what I expected. The movie in its treatment of the characters was saying something about LARP that wasn’t what was advertised. This wasn’t a movie about a LARP where horrible supernatural things happened. This was a movie about a normal guy getting shanghaied to a land of weird folks who bring down something terrible on themselves and pay the price. In this case, they get killed for the transgression of being LARPers.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Horror movie villains from the big budget murder spree films always have underlying themes they feed into in society. The movie Scream went through them in great detail: don’t drink, don’t have sex, don’t do drugs, don’t go off on your own and be different. Those things will get you killed in a horror movie faster than you can say ‘I’ll be right back.’ And why? Because they reenforce the stereotypes of society. Teens having sex is bad, and bad things happen to kids who go off and get high and drink and wander outside of the safe zones. That’s Horror Movie 101, the basics of the social messages behind all those massacres in the Freddy or Jason movies. Horror movies are all about the dangers of the unknown, and how it’s safer to be normal.

All of those tropes exist within Knights of Badassdom. Except they slapped the label on that ‘it’s just a joke’ that comedy gets away with as an excuse. The fact is, real comedy also uses its power to reflect a message back at the audience. Even Sharkanedo was saying ‘guys, your fear of sharks is so ridiculous because YOU ARE ON LAND MOST OF THE TIME SO CHILL.’ It makes a person look at their own assumptions and fears and laugh because they see a reflection of the absurd in themselves. Real comedy, like horror, tells you a lot about the community and people it’s talking to with the movie.

Who Is The Audience Of This Film?

So who is Knights of Badassdom talking to? It promised to be a movie for LARPers in it’s promotion. But after watching it, my conclusion is that it really isn’t. This movie wasn’t for LARPers, the way that Big Bang Theory isn’t for nerds. Knights of Badassdom is written for folks on the outside of a community looking in to point their finger and laugh.

They made a serious Lightning Bolt reference. Seriously, guys? Really?

You can tell who the audience is aimed at by looking at how the movie is set up. KoB is full of same tired tropes about LARPers trotted out to represent LARP as a strange hobby full of maladjusted people. The main character is the Everyday Joe (that’s literally his name, Joe), an under-employed metal musician with girlfriend problems, who regards what his friends do as weird and usual. He only attends the LARP because he is kidnapped by his roommates, who represent the stereotypes of LARPers: the rich kid with too much time on his hands and a need to escape reality, and the druggy who is otherwise kind of cool but way into the nerdy stuff. (The second being Peter Dinklege’s character, who might have had a chance to shine if he hadn’t been wasted on bad writing). Then let’s not forget about the game master, the horribly overdramatic and snotty guy who abuses his power and treats everyone like something you scrape off your shoe. That is, when he’s not hitting on the hottest girl there to ‘be his assistant storyteller.’

"I don't even want to be here!" — “I don’t even want to be here!”

Ah yes, Summer Glau’s character, Gwen. Gwen is beautiful, sweet, and a good fighter, a character we should be able to root for. When described by other characters, who get descriptions like ‘wily’ and ‘great fighter’, she is described as possessing a “+3 ass of awesome” or some such nonsense. She’s presented as the beautiful object of everyone’s attention (cue the closeup on her fishnet covered legs), including the game organizer, who skeeves on her in her very first scene. But fear not! She’s protected by her hulking cousin, who never breaks character – even in real life! Gwen is designated as her cousin’s babysitter at the LARP because he’s a danger to others due to his inability to separate fantasy from reality (ahem, LARPer trope ahoy!) Ah, now it all becomes clear! The beautiful female lead doesn’t even really want to be there, but she’s got to be there for family. Because why would a beautiful girl want to come to a LARP without an excuse? Heaven forbid she should actually want to participate in the game herself. In the LARP community I came up in, there was a derogatory term for girls who were brought by relatives/significant others who didn’t want to be there but just ‘played along’: a backpack. The movie backpacked Summer Glau and did it without so much as a cringe at their gender stereotyping.

"We kidnapped our friend to a game - yay!" — “We kidnapped our friend to a game – yay!”

But why should it cringe? Because that’s all this movie is – a load of stereotypes dumped on top of some not very funny jokes. LARPers watching might look at the absurdity of the over-the-top performance and say ‘Look, they’re making jokes with us about the silliness of parts of our community.’ But if that was the case, the framing of the film is all wrong. The movie isn’t about a LARPer poking fun at his own community – it’s about a man on the outside coming in, judging everything he sees as absurd, and then saving the day before wandering off to go be cool again away from all the weirdoes.

It was that ending that got me, the epilogue, that convinced me that the film wasn’t really for LARPers at all. The ‘this is what happened to the characters post-massacre’ that is the tried and true show of an amateur filmmaker who doesn’t know how to end their film. Ryan Kwanten’s character Joe and his new main squeeze Gwen ride off into the sunset together to form a metal band. And they never LARP again. Why would they? After all, they survived the night of terror in a place they never wanted to go to in the first place! They were the ‘normal ones’ who would go off to jam on guitars and be cool and happy together. And all those LARPers and hillbillies died in that field, weird and odd and killed off by a demon, paid for the transgression of being different, while the cool lead characters survive because, well, they just weren’t into the weirdness to begin with.

We Need Better LARP Movies

"I signed on to be drugged out and then dead. What is this crap?" — “I signed on to be drugged out and then dead. What is this crap?”

It’s then that I realized why this movie not only was awful, but it was insidious in its offering. It wasn’t presenting the movie as a collection of in-jokes told from a place of fun. It was holding up a mirror as comedy often does and saying, through Ryan Kwanten’s Normal Everyday Joe, “See what your weirdness brings? You and those hillbillies who died are just the same – backwards and weird and disconnected from reality.” He as much as says so in dialogue when they discover Peter Dinklage’s body. At the screening I attended, there was a notable hiss from the audience when Ryan Kwanten’s character goes off on a mini-tirade about how the murders must have been committed by someone who had taken LARP authenticity too far and used a real weapon in game. Because, of course, that is what LARPers are from the outside- people too wrapped up in their fantasy NOT to commit actual homicide. This is an idea carried in the earnest horror film The Wild Hunt too and perpetuates the same tropes – LARPers are escapists with a potentially unhinged connection to reality – that has dogged every media representation of LARP from big screen to small.

It’s that perception of LARP that has been a self-perpetuating cycle for years. The more LARP has been presented to those who don’t participate as an odd and weird hobby, the more the stereotype is called up again for movies like these. That then perpetuates the stereotypes further and the cycle goes on. Where Knights of Badassdom had a chance to break that trend, it doesn’t break so much as take that trend underground in a sly, backhanded, unsaid way. And for that, it seems like just ‘good ol’ fun.’

After seeing the movie, I pulled my support from the showing I was going to host for a number of reasons. One, I just didn’t want to have to sit through that mess one more time, nor was I going to work to bring a piece of bad filmmaking to other folks who would pay their money to see it. More than that however, I have this dream that there might be movies that represent LARPing in a positive light and not in that snide, backhanded, finger-pointing kind of way. Maybe that’s asking for a lot from Hollywood, a place that survives off the stereotyping shortcuts that populate many scripts. But it’s my choice not to support something that I feel represents a hobby I love poorly, especially a hobby that is much maligned already.

I won’t embrace a movie just because it shows SOME representation of LARP, even if it’s bad. I won’t forgive badly done movies about the hobby just because hey look, that looks like something I love on screen! I won’t default support a movie for having LARP in it if it just feeds the stereotype machine. Because folks, we in the LARP community deserve a better class of representation. And this movie just doesn’t do it.