The Children of Generation X, Part 1: The Marvel Cinematic Universe Ten Years Later

I think one of the worst aspects of our New Digital Lives is that the Internet tends to speed up and also shorten lengths of time between Intellectual Property discussions. You don’t have the luxury of processing and mentally digesting genre film and TV anymore; the same day that a movie debuts, there’s a dozen articles on the Easter Eggs you missed. No need to see the movie a second time, or really even pay that close attention in the first place. Stupid Internet.

The thing is, I need time to think about this stuff. Always have. I get some brilliant insights, usually during the first viewing, but I need to let them percolate and cook for a while. Sometimes, I figure out that my insights aren’t that insightful. Other times, I have a working theory that takes years to develop.

Case in point: Iron Man, when it first debuted, ten years ago, was just another super hero movie, in a fairly unbroken stream of Marvel Comics movies that ranged from Soup to Nuts. For every X-Men, there was an X-Men: The Last Stand. For Every Spider-Man, there was a Spider-Man 3. For every Daredevil, there was an Elektra. They weren’t all great, but they were nowhere near the awfulness of the failed Marvel TV and movie efforts that came before them.

But Iron Man had this different vibe for me. It just felt different, never mind the assurances from the studio that it was going to be “unlike anything that’s come before.” Yeah, right, pull the other one, Charlie. This ain’t my first rodeo. But it really was true in the case of Iron Man.

That super cool landing became Iron Man's signature move. 

There was an internal metric that made the world seem not closed off, as opposed to the X-Men universe, which made it clear that there wasn’t anything else in the world except mutants, so please don’t ask. Granted, some of this seeming spaciousness was implied. The mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the appearance of Nick Fury at the end (looking exactly like the Nick Fury from Marvel’s Ultimates comic, no less) were the only hints at what was to come; namely, Rhodes glancing at the armor and muttering, “Next time.” Okay, we get it. You want to do more movies.

It wasn’t until The Incredible Hulk came out the same year that we saw, imbedded in the movie, more clues in the form of Easter eggs. The very idea that the Hulk was a failed experiment to re-create the Super Soldier serum that made Captain America was, well, the first real clue that we were going to get a Captain America movie set in World War II. No way of knowing if it would be any good, really...except for that one scene with a pre-Abomination Emil Blonsky running in to engage the Hulk. Watch it again, if you don’t remember, and see if his moves don’t look exactly like the moves Cap used in comics all the time. I remember watching that scene and saying to myself, “We’re going to get Cap! And this is what he’s going to look like in action!”

I remember back in the late 1980s and early- to mid-1990s when I was working in comic shops, and as was frequently the case, a crowd would gather and let me hold court about comics, movies, and what-not. We came to the mutual conclusion back then that a JLA movie could never work, because it took them two whole hours to make us care about Batman, and there was no way you could introduce the concept of Flash, Hawkman, and Green Lantern into a normal-length film and expect it to not be weird and rushed and ultimately, very cheesy. We saw the Cheese-Creep happen at the end of Superman 2, and then it blossomed like a flower in Superman 3 and Superman 4. We were surprised by it in Batman Returns (remember the penguins with rocket launchers?) and it only got worse as the 90s progressed.

No, we reasoned, the only way to do it right would be to make a separate movie for each character and then you could make a Justice League movie and clean up because all of the fans would come together no matter which character they liked, see? It was genius...but it would never work, because what movie studio wants to make five movies, just so they could make a sixth one?

Fast forward to the 21^st century. Super Hero movies are now not only probable, and even possible, but a going concern. Special effects were finally able to duplicate (with an army of programmers and months of time) on the screen what Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko could do with a pencil and ink on Bristol board in a single afternoon. We’ve seen Spider-Man. We’ve seen Wolverine. We got Nightcrawler, and Colossus, and even Daredevil.  It wasn’t a far stretch to get Iron Man, or a better Hulk (don’t get me started on Ang Lee’s movie. It’s terrible. And I love the Hulk, a whole lot). And even Thor and Captain America were great—really satisfying to watch in their own way. Each one getting it more right than wrong. Highlighting the strengths of each character and story.

They were wise to put this shot in the trailer. It's still cool.

But when I saw The Avengers for the first time, it cut deeply into my chewy geeky center. That movie, probably more than any of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to date (as they were now called), actually felt like a Marvel comic book. Everything from the snappy banter to the heroes’ first meeting where they end up fighting each other until they realize they are after the same thing, from the quiet, interpersonal moments, to the sweep of the epic scale battle...this was what comics looked like in my head; George Perez Avengers comics, written by Roger Stern.

During the epic final battle, there’s a scene wherein Cap vaults into a bank where the Chitauri had a gaggle of civilians held hostage, and he does his shield-slinging thing, of course, and gets the people out of harm’s way. But the bad guys throw a grenade down, and Cap sees it and in a split-second, he leaps into mid-air, tucking and crouching behind his shield (which absorbs kinetic energy, remember), protecting himself from the blast, which knocks him backward out the window. I turned to my wife and said, “That was a Jack Kirby move, right there.”

That was the real start of it, looking back. That’s when we got Thanos for the first time. All of the building blocks were there. It was clear that Marvel (and soon, Disney) were playing a very long game. But the success of even the early movies turned on something else. Something that people have incorrectly mis-attributed to “the same plot, over and over again.” It ends up being the beating heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the family unit.

Everything important in the MCU hinges on family, both nuclear and extended, and the heroes (and villains) relationships with primarily their father and occasionally, their mother. These movies are resonating with members of Generation X because they are in part written by members of Generation X, who grew up reading Bronze Age Marvel and DC comics in the 1970s and well into their teenage years in the 1980s. The latchkey kid generation grew up and these movies are an ongoing conversation with absent and/or inadequate parents.

In Iron Man, Tony Stark is living in his father’s shadow. His substitute father, Obie Stane, ends up betraying him and Iron Man dispatches him handily. In Iron Man 2, Nick Fury steps in as Tony’s substitute father because Tony has no emotional rudder and he actually grounds Tony, confining him to his house (hardly a punishment). Despite a scene where an aged Howard Stark tells Tony how much he loves him, Tony doesn’t seem to quite believe it. Or maybe the barn door has been open for too long. Either way. Tony starts to take a little responsibility for his actions. A bit.

Later, Tony creates Ultron, a child of high intelligence and zero empathy and wisdom. He decides the best way to protect the world is to kill every human. Like his creator, he makes the Vision in his new image of himself, but his “child” is stolen from him and the Avengers give the Vision life, creating an ideal Dad who can actually wield Thor’s hammer. He’s the only other one who can.

All of this guilt drives Tony into a kind of self-therapy. He’s out of control and he knows it. The only way to course correct is to swing his emotional pendulum the other way. This causes problems, of course. He’s not ready for responsibility and those bad choices come back to haunt him in Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War.

The Hulk is the living embodiment of men behaving badly. Driven by his unmanageable anger—a creature of the Id, he is opposed by his girlfriend’s father, who doesn’t like Betty hanging around Bruce Banner. It’s a classic “That Boy is No Good For You” situation, only General "Thunderbolt" Ross is actually spot-on in his assessment. Later, when Mark Rufalo takes the role, Joss Whedon puts these words into his mouth: “That's my secret, Captain: I'm always angry.” The Hulk eventually gives into his anger completely, shutting himself off from the people who care about him, like Natasha Romanov, and running away from his problems. It's unfortunate that Ang Lee's movie really muddied the pond from which the Hulk's current origin is derived--namely, that because he was under the thumb of an abusive parent, his manifestation from the gamma exposure is that of a wounded child, flailing out in anger. We don't see that so much in the MCU, but it doesn't take a giant leap to see the subtext.

Thor and Loki are constantly in competition for their father’s love. Thor is delightfully immature because he wants for nothing, privileged and entitled. Loki has to keep proving his worth, to stunning indifference. Odin favors Thor over Loki and this bit of bad parenting decision sets the whole movie in motion. Loki plays father against son in a perfect imitation of the Shakespearean melodrama that fueled the Thor comics for decades. And that theme runs through all three Thor movies and right into The Avengers, as well.

Captain America has no father. He’s trying to become a man, literally and figuratively. He calls people “son.” He’s a member of The Greatest Generation, something that actor Chris Evans brilliantly alludes to in subsequent portrayals, but never over-plays. Cap becomes the heart of the Avengers, the symbolic patriarch, which cuts right across Iron Man’s bow, since—and this almost comes out in Captain America: Civil War verbatim—“Dad always liked you best!” Cap becomes Iron Man’s target for all of his displacement and unresolved feelings about his father by treating him like the older brother he never had, and moreover, Cap never was.

Cap, on the other hand, has set to rebuilding a semblance of a family for himself. Black Widow, Falcon, and eventually, Bucky, the brother he chose to have, all factor heavily into his personal and professional choices. This includes extending his fatherly protection to Scarlet Witch, who lost her parents and her brother. Black Widow he treats as a sibling. She’s a product of Soviet Spy Programs, and it’s her mother-figure who does the betraying. Father Russia holds no sway for her, since it forced her to become sterile. No wonder she went elsewhere.

War Machine, The Falcon, and Hawkeye are all versions of the career soldier, the person who placed the mission before themselves. Only Hawkeye has the holdout secret family—who he abandons to go save the world—and this weirdly is the most normal familial relationship than anyone else’s on the team; a wife and two kids, with one on the way, in an out of the way farmhouse. He’s gone for weeks at a time, but the family knows he’s being a super hero, so it’s presumably okay. What would be untenable in the real world is a comforting normalcy is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, the whole movie resonates with conflicts relating to broken homes. Gamora and Nebula, daughters of Thanos rebel after the years of abuse they suffered by his side. Star-Lord has no mother, an absent father, and a terrible step-father who turns him into a criminal. Drax lost his wife and child because of Thanos. Rocket Raccoon has no family, nor, presumably, does Groot. Later, Star-Lord meets his father and realizes he’s a monster, and his step-father, Yondu, tells him he loves him. Gamora and Nebula work through their sibling rivalry. And Star-Lord realizes his created family fills the emotional needs, even as he’s honoring his step-father’s death.

Ant-Man is trying to be a good father to his daughter, and he is hamstrung by the decisions he made in his youth. Hank Pym is trying to protect his daughter from the dangers that using the shrinking tech presents, as he feels responsible for his wife’s death. Hope Van Dyne, meanwhile, is eternally pissed at her father for not letting her spread her wings. And later, about lying to her regarding her mother’s death. Together the three of them team up to stop the adopted son who betrayed the family trust—and he’s also mad at Pym for not sharing his legacy with him.

Doctor Strange would seem to be an exception, but his narcissism and infantile behavior, which seems to echo Tony Stark’s initial character arc to a lesser degree, is more akin to the man-children of Generation X who have grown up but are not completely mature. Strange’s Journey into Mystery (ahem) represents his fledgling attempt at becoming a functional adult with emotional maturity, something he’d previously lacked. Once his hands are mangled, he has no identity, or so he thinks. The Ancient One teaches him that the world does not, in fact, revolve around his hands, and Strange begins to re-engage with the world just in time to save it.

Out of respect for my readers, I’ll not rehash Spider-Man’s origin, nor should I have to point out what the death of Peter Parker’s parents and also his Uncle Ben do to him. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Spider-Man’s story is about learning how to be an adult when you are still just a kid. Classic Generation X. And Peter, looking for a male role-model, finds one (not a good one) in Tony Stark. Meanwhile, the Vulture is looking to provide for his family the best way he knows how. He’s being a good father and husband and also trying to protect his daughter from Peter. Lots of teenage angst, especially since the film intentionally mimics John Hughes movies from the 1980s in structure and content.

Black Panther has stepped into his father’s shoes and onto his throrn after his untimely death. In the most pointed and not-even-allegorical scene, he confronts his father’s living ghost-spirit and tells him his decisions, made twenty years ago, were wrong. Killmonger is created following the death of his father at the hands of Zuri by way of King T’Chakka. Black Panther has to contend with the sins of his father revisited upon him.

Even the TV shows follow this pattern. Iron Fist? Dead parents, abusive and manipulative father figure and ersatz siblings. Daredevil? Living in his father’s shadow. Abusive foster father figure in Stick. Kingpin? Abusive father. He passed his rage onto his son, who is a giant-sized manipulative sociopath. Luke Cage? Has a half-brother he didn’t know about. His half-brother did know all about him, though, and he’s the villain, enraged by what he thinks Luke Cage got that he didn’t; namely, an acknowledged father. Jessica Jones’ parents died, and she grew up with a foster mother who treated her like a second-class citizen and lavished her attention on her foster sister instead.

Not a scrap of Spandex in sight. And we're cool with that.

The Runaways. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the God-Awful and not-worth-watching The Inhumans. It’s all there. All over these stories featuring characters trying to get their shit straight, to figure it all out, to be better versions of themselves. I think it’s partially why the women in these movies are more capable and also seem to have more agency and less emotional encumbrance. They simply don’t have the baggage that the men have. Shuri is certainly unaffected by her father’s decisions. Only T’Challa internalizes them in his self-struggle. As angry as Hope Van Dyne is, she’s twice as capable as Scott Lang in or out of the Ant-Man rig. Black Widow establishes her bad-ass-ness in Iron Man 2 and only gets better through her five subsequent movie appearances. She’s now one of the strongest characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of utility and agency. Scarlet Witch comes of age at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Gamora has assumed the matriarchal role for the team in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, which only highlights Star-Lord’s arrested development. When Hela (now Thor’s sister in the MCU) shows back up in Thor: Raganrok, she takes over the family business by blowing up the household. Firstborn and daddy’s favorite, until she outstripped him, she’s as angry as Loki is, but for different reasons. And she wins the movie and sends Thor packing.

Jessica Jones is a work in progress, even if her decisions for dealing with her issues aren’t particularly healthy. Apart from the explosive anger, she doesn’t read as masculine at all. Her agency comes from her surviving the abuse at the hands of the Purple Man. Contrast this with any of the male heroes in The Defenders, whose personal damage informs all of their choices.

This notion of surviving broken families is the engine that has driven the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first three phases. These 19 (and counting) movies have become their own genre, pushing away from the more generic “super hero” movie formula that DC and Warner Brothers is still struggling to update some thirty years after they created it. By keeping the characters more or less intact and recognizable in terms of personality and presence, the filmmakers have latitude with costume and appearance, something that didn’t used to be the case. All that remains is plot and story, and in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, these “heroes with problems” look a lot like our own problems. Thus, they are relatable and more easily personally identifiable to a mainstream audience. Only in the final acts of their movies do their true comic book origins come to the fore, where they can blast, swing, fly, and punch their way free of the conflict. 

But it’s always a temporary fix, because violence never really solves the problem. Howard Stark still never hugged Tony. Star-Lord’s dad is still a colossal asshole. T’Challa will always be compared to his father. These things can’t be punched away. And that leads the characters to those quiet moments, the conversations and introspective sharing that shows us that these heroes have feet of clay. They are as flawed as the rest of us. We couldn’t do any better in the armor, or with that shield. And that is as much of a comfort, knowing we’re doing the best that we can, as it is knowing that the Avengers are always going to protect us from the bad guys.

Part 2 coming tomorrow. 

Joss Whedon, The Black Widow and Why You Shouldn't Care

SPOILERS AHOY! I will ruin the movie for you if you haven't seen it yet. You have been warned.

Sure, it's big and loud and crowded.
Did you see the other one? Why
even bring something like that up?
Just look at the poster.

I was too busy this weekend hosting the Avengers: Age of Ultron premiere at my movie theater to get online. It was more fun to hand out Thor’s hammer, Cap’s shield, and my vintage Hulk hands for people to pose and play with as we snapped pictures in supplicated offering to the Great God Social Media. Everyone at my theater had a grand old time, as the pictures attest to, and everyone loved seeing their children and friends on Facebook.

  

Now, I’ve got this sour ball of ire in the pit of my stomach. It started on Monday when I learned that Joss Whedon deactivated his Twitter account. Then I read the messages he was getting, and I understood why. If you don’t know what this is about, you’re very lucky, and I’m probably going to ruin your day. Here’s the list of some of the tweets Whedon got all weekend. Feel free to scroll quickly lest some of the bile spew onto you. 

Whedon has since come back on to say that the rumors he was forced offline by the barrage of hatred and threats was, and I quote, “horseshit.” Okay, Joss, whatever you say. But he did get a few licks in on his detractors before he resumed media silence. You can read those shots here, and he’s one hundred percent correct:  The crack about the snake eating its own tail is very prescient.

With the Interwebs in flames, I had to know myself what was going on. So I checked it out, and not only ran afoul of this poisonous group of outraged people, I ran into a second group of poisonous people: the Geek Critics who are now throwing super hero movies under the bus.  The whole thing has turned into “The Black Widow Controversy” and it has mired me in dark thoughts and anti-internet screeds for two days. 

I’m going to try and parse this out as succinctly as I can. Bear with me. There’s three levels of problems that need to be addressed, here. There’s the real world level of problems—the world you and me are walking around in right now. Then there’s the fictional world level of problems. This is stuff in the movie that may or may not make your collective tumors throb. Finally, we have the meta-fictional level—the commentary about the thing that we’re talking about. I’ll start with that level, first, as it’s the easiest one to understand.

We’re eleven movies into the Marvel Franchise, and fifteen years down the road from the invention of the modern super hero film. What’s now a part of the “tentpole” strategy to prop up the summer, these movies cost ridiculous amounts to make and generate ridiculous amounts of revenue. It’s not a fad, anymore. It’s a thing. It’s a given. And being that it’s a given, super heroes (and even comic books) have lost a lot of their outsider status in the wake of millions of new fans who never had to justify their reading habits from inside a high school gym locker. For some, that’s unacceptable. For others, it’s perfect time to employ the Contrarian Flip, the signature finishing move of the modern Urban Hipster. Now that everyone else likes it, I have to pick it apart to keep my Indy cred. 

This article by Slate Magazine writer Andrew O’Hehir is the encapsulation of that attitude. And while this piece is steeped in a puddle of self-loathing and smug, squinty asides designed to show just how Above-It-All he really is, he’s not alone. Most of the actual film critics are calling the movie problematic but still entertaining. Meanwhile the rest of the critics who eschew violence in movies, who don’t like anything with a car chase or an explosion, are dog piling on the film’s perceived problems.  

What else is new? Go pick any big movie from the last ten years—no, last twenty years. Go look at Titanic, if you must. Read the reviews. There’s always that guy, writing for the East Haverbrook Free Weekly, who has to point out historical inaccuracies and claim that if Cameron can’t bother to do his homework, then the movie deserves to fail. Nowadays, there’s literally hundreds of the East Haverbrook Free Weekly Movie Snob. And they all have very specific axes to grind when it comes to action/adventure movies, horror films, science fiction movies, super hero films, martial arts movies, or any other sub-genre of the Blockbuster Movie category. 

Who listens to them, anyway? It’s all static. It’s white noise. It’s Star Trek Enterprise Conduits—GNDN. Goes nowhere, does nothing. But, you know, by pointing out the absurdities of modern cinema excess, they’ve done their part, fighting the machine, and blah blah blah blah blah… Yeah, whatever.

So, what’s the fix? If you’re a critic, do us all a favor and just stop reviewing the thing you hate, especially when what you hate is popular and you aren’t part of the crowd. 

If you’re a consumer, just stop reading and watching reviews for the big blockbusters. Cut them all out. You know your mind already. You’re smart. You’ve seen the trailers, maybe read some news online. You already know if you’re going to see any given blockbuster movie, and whether or not you’ll be inclined to like it. You probably know within thirty seconds of seeing the trailer for the first time. Why listen to intentionally negative criticism? The world moves too fast to collect boat anchors.

Now, about these…well, I’m going to call them feminists, I suppose, but I’m not entirely convinced they are who they say they are. I think they THINK they may be feminists, but I’m very leery of hashtag activism because it’s way too easy to just jump in without thinking and get caught up in the swirl of the digital mob. It’s the online equivalent of a feeding frenzy, and I never want to be in the middle of one of those, either. Anyway. Let’s see if I can correctly summarize their concerns about Age of Ultron and Joss Whedon’s portrayal of Black Widow in the writing and directing of this movie.

I admit it, I had my doubts about
Scarlet Johansson. But she won me
over and is now one of my favorite
characters in the franchise.

1. Black Widow should never be kidnapped, because that’s misogynist, lazy writing.

2. Black Widow referring to herself as a monster and implying that she can’t have kids undercuts the entire basis of the character. By implying she’s not human because she can’t reproduce, that’s misogynist, lazy writing.

3. Black Widow is now the mother of the group, tending to Hawkeye’s wounds, calming the Hulk down, and picking up Cap’s shield, with a comment to match. By forcing her into the traditional role of caregiver, that’s lazy misogynist writing.

4. Black Widow would never be attracted to Bruce. Not with Hawkeye and Cap around! Come on, that came from left field. It’s not lazy, misogynist writing, but it’s just dumb because I wanted her to be with (fill in the blank), not that she needs that to define herself as a woman, or anything. Um, yeah. So.

5. Tony Stark’s rape joke. Whedon put a rape joke in the movie. By writing a rape joke into a movie, that’s misogynist, lazy writing. And you’re an asshole, Joss Whedon.

Okay, that’s about the size of it, I think. There were also a few comments about him being a racist, too, but mostly, it's about Black Widow. Those are the big complaints. Starting with number five, and working backward, let me confess something: I’ve seen the movie twice, and I missed the line they are talkingabout completely. It zipped right by me. Then, when I saw the term, I had to go look it up. I know a lot of weird, useless information, but that archaic term was new to me. And I’m a smart, well-educated person.

Let me assure you, if I had to go look up the term, then no one in my audience got the term or even understood its meaning. And so I say it across this great big stupid country of ours. In the Buzzfeed article above, there’s a snippet of the scene with a different line, and does it work better? Yeah, sure, but let me make this clear, here: that’s all in-character banter that is completely in context with the scene and the characters. No one, not the imaginary characters, nor the real actors and director, are advocating for the return of the monarchy. To suggest otherwise is naive at the very least, and willfully cognitively dissonant at the most. 

You didn’t like the way Black Widow and the Hulk nearly got together? I don’t have an answer to that, except maybe that’s what fanfic is for these days; redressing those supreme wrongs and claiming some kind of ownership of the characters for yourself. I thought it made good sense, since she’s obviously the one who did the Manchurian Candidate-style programming to calm the Hulk down to the point that it triggers the change. Of COURSE she’d be the one to administer it, just as she’d be the one to program Banner. That’s what she does as the super spy and master manipulator. Whedon has her explain her attraction to him and it works just fine—maybe a little bit rushed, but we are three to six months past the first Avengers movie at the start of the film. And really—WHO CARES? It doesn’t come to pass, anyway. Talk about a non-issue.

Black Widow isn’t the mother of the group. I think she’s decidedly a Jill of all Trades. Performing field triage on her best friend isn’t mothering. It’s good soldiering. Recovering Cap’s shield to help him regain the tactical advantage is good teamwork. And let’s be clear, here: she wasn’t “kidnapped.” She was captured after making the sacrifice play that allowed the Avengers to pry the Vision away from Ultron. As soon as she got to where she was going, she sent a message to Hawkeye telling the Avengers where she was. You know, master spycraft stuff. 

That crack about being a monster? Please. Her jacket is red, she says in the first movie. She was a Russian assassin for years. The fact that she was sterilized meant she didn’t have any distractions, like kids. If anything, it was an attempt to rob her of her basic empathy, her humanity. Killing without any remorse is what makes her a monster. 

At least, that’s how I see it. Then again, I have a blog, where I can type a complete thought using more than 140 characters. One of the huge problems I have with hashtag activism is that a great many of these subjects require a more complete thought in order to be discussed in a meaningful fashion. 

But some of these reductive, black and white statements about the movie ignore the other ten Marvel films that came before this one, and also especially the other movies in which Black Widow is featured. There’s no audience goodwill, no context regarding the character’s arc. No mention of the new Avengers at the end of the film, where Cap is suddenly the minority player on a team that includes two women and two black men. None of that is even alluded to. There’s only this weird, vicious pile-on because you didn’t like something—wait, scratch that—because you CHOSE to interpret something in the most narrowly-defined, reductive, and insulting way and that offense has spilled out across the Internet in the form of hate-speech and threats. Talk about seriously undercutting your own intentions. 

He's probably thinking about how he can most effectively
piss off a huge swath of his own fans in one fell swoop.

Oh, and I’ve said this before, though I never thought in a million, billion, trillion years I’d need to say it about the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: putting a sexist remark in your work does not make you a sexist. Writing misogynistic dialogue in a scene doesn’t make you a misogynist. And showing violence done to women onscreen is not an endorsement for rape. In what high school or university are young people being taught that plot, characterization and dialogue all speak to authorial intent? It’s so weird how people miss the subtext inherent to a scene and simply invent their own, based on a literal reading of the dialogue. Who does that? Please, tell me how that is now a thing. Regardless, if you go through life expecting only to consume fiction and popular culture in all of its various forms that only conforms to your internal barometer for what you consider to be good and right and fair and just, let me tell you, you're in for decades of rage and disappointment. Sooner or later, you're going to have to learn how to deal with something you don't agree with.

We used to play this game in the 1980s—during the time when the ultra-right-wing of the church was actively campaigning against heavy metal music, Dungeons & Dragons, and Warner Brothers Cartoons. There was this dictum that Pat Robertson used to employ that boiled down to, “if it’s not For God, then it’s against God.” We got pretty good at taking anything commonplace and by the transitive or associative properties of language and numbers, proving that it was, in fact, satanic. Jello? The most popular color is red. Red is the color of the devil. It jiggles when you shake it. Much like how the body shakes while committing sin. But the real proof? How many letters are in Jello? Five. How many letters are in Satan? Five. That can’t possibly be a coincidence. Thus, if you like Jello, that’s Satanic. 

It’s a fun game. You should try it. Maybe some of you already have. Instead of Satan, look for misogyny. Or racism. Trust me, if you want to find it, you can. 

 Avengers: Age of Ultron does have its share of problems. Of everything on the list above, I think the Stark line of dialogue about being a firm but fair ruler is better than his line about Prima-Whatever and will likely be changed for the DVD. It’s problematic. And yeah, I agree, there should be room for a Black Widow movie of her own. It’s conspicuous by its absence. The romance certainly felt a little rushed. And yes, Jeremy Renner’s apology for calling Black Widow a slut was douchey and not at all helpful and it was obvious he wasn't sincere. All valid points of criticism and certainly worthy of rational discussion.

So what’s the fix? I think it’s imperative to redirect the conversation onto firmer ground. I also think it’s probably a good idea to assume people aren’t trying to put you in manacles with their movie project. I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and a step back. We’ve lost some things in this politicized, polemic world. We’ve lost context, and weirdly, also nuance. I don’t know if this comes from living and consuming pop culture both ironically and also sarcastically, but it’s an epidemic. 

Reducing everything to 140 characters isn’t better speech. It overlooks gobs of information. This need to slap a label, to pigeonhole, and worse, to damage with terms like racist and misogynist, is a trend borne from anonymous cowards and we need to seriously consider why we’re online—to what purpose—and if Twitter is taking up that much time in your life, I’d look at that as something to work on.

 

Catwoman and the minion approve of Natasha's Heel Toe Technique.

Finally, we get to the real world problem. This is a picture of my Black Widow action figure. I have it displayed in the big case in my theater. It’s a cool figure. Here, you can see she’s stomping the hell out of some Hydra goon. And it looks like Scarlett Johansson, too. This was a figure that came out last year, with very little fanfare, as part of another toy line. Thankfully, I got it from a retail store, instead of on the collector’s market, where female action figures fetch a higher price because there is always only one per case. That makes the figures harder to acquire, naturally.

The stores are full of Avengers toys, again, and some of them are pretty cool. In addition to the action figures and Legos, there’s the clutch of “role playing toys.” Cap’s shield, Hulk fists, Iron Man gloves and helmets, even Hawkeye’s bow and arrows. These kids today are pretty lucky. If there had been an Iron Man helmet I could wear as a kid, I would never have taken it off.  But you know what they don’t have on toy store shelves? 

 

You guessed it: No Black Widow wrist rockets, no Black Widow light-up Electro-Sticks, no Black Widow on motorcycle toys, no Black Widow anything. It sucks. It’s stupid and short-sighted. And do you know why (oh, you’re going to love this one). It’s all because of Disney.

Yep. They really don’t think that girls want to play with boy’s toys. I’ll let that statement sink in so those of you who are angry can shift focus. Disney did this with Gamora during the Guardians of the Galaxy merch-blitz last year. Now they are doing it with Age of Ultron. There’s a token figure of the Scarlet Witch, but of course, all of the collectors are pouncing on them and so you won’t find them if you have kids who are fans. Not without paying that collector’s premium. 

The reason why is the part that makes me legitimately angry, and if there was ever a need to rally the troops for a concerted campaign, it’s this: Disney bought Marvel because they wanted to sell product to boys. They consider Marvel a “boy’s line” and the “girl’s line” of characters is, of course, the Disney Princesses. That’s the danger. That’s the great Satan at work, right there. 

This article is a great call to action that succinctly explains what’s going on in retail right now.  I think it’s incredibly important that these characters, these stories, this fandom—which is an American art form and should be treated as such—deserve to be all access. We need to be okay if boys like Wonder Woman. We need to be okay with girls liking The Hulk. They are characters. Stories. Fantasy. American Myth. And now those myths, those ‘intellectual properties,’ are in the hands of lawyers who consider them to be dollar-generating concepts that they control. Where’s your Internet outrage now, Twitter? There’s the fight. There’s the opponent. Let’s go get them! Let’s start talking action and activism! Let’s change the landscape! 

Of course, in order to do that, you’d have to stop texting “Fuck You, Joss Whedon” and complaining about the Hulk/Black Widow relationship. That may be asking too much of some people. I heard the term Manufactured Outrage and while I don’t think it’s always the case, BOY do I think that about this particular instance. Someone put a little blood in the water, and everyone’s nictitating membranes slid right down over the eyes so that they could feed without getting blood in their eyes.  

Maybe Whedon made some choices you don’t agree with. Okay, fine. But remember this: that film was made by committee, and you have no idea what forces were in play during all of it. The fact that Whedon is taking a break because he’s physically exhausted should say something about the process of dealing with Disney. Anyone who chooses to take a line of dialogue so seriously that they flip out like a ninja on social media needs better priorities in their life. 

But the threats? The Name-Calling? That's not acceptable. It wasn't acceptable during GamerGate, and it's sure not acceptable now.  You're doing it wrong.

There, now that everything is all sorted, here’s another article on another website about movie criticism. It’s a cogent, well-articulated call to action. For those of you wanting things to change on the meta level, this is a very good place to start.