SPOILERS AHOY! I will ruin the movie for you if you haven't seen it yet. You have been warned.
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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.
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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, a
nd 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.
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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.
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| Catwoman and the minion approve of Natasha's Heel Toe Technique. |
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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.
