Catwoman #1: A Defense, a Klusterfluffle

Catwoman and Red Hood caused a good deal of hullabaloo the previous week. We've seen many readers and critics react very strongly against these two comics. The fuss lead to discussions about how women are represented not just in comics but in all media. Men and women alike are disappointed that we are still in a culture that objectifies women as a matter of course.

These conversations are great. I'm thrilled that we are reconsidering what we will accept as the representation of women in comics and further that we have expectations at all for this reboot to change things. Our expectation that comics will consciously consider how they depict women, and that this new DCnU is an effort to make changes for the better should push publishers to meet those expectations.

Really though, I'm really surprised that the disappointment and outrage happened this week in particular, and that everyone is so pissed off at Catwoman.

I'll start off by saying that I haven't read Red Hood, but I have seen the pictures of Starfire in a bikini. These pictures alone seems like the fucking definition of damning evidence. I haven't read the book myself, but from what I've heard it really isn't worth my time. I may still pick it up though, just to see the context of what appears to be a pretty disgusting case of objectification.

What I want to do in this post is discuss Catwoman and why people are upset about it, but then explain why this comic, while complicated in terms of its representation of a woman, is still a strong comic with a strong female character.

Women in Video Game News: Not a Hot Month

UPDATE: So BioWare has gone ahead and they are releasing that figure of Liara. You can pre-order it here, and then possibly reconsider your life decisions.

A few days ago I posted on Super Whatnot about my intentions to start reading comics because of the DC Universe re-launch. I made a passing comment about how women are underrepresented in the industry and that there are some complications with how they are represented in the medium itself on too many occasions.

Video games are no different.

Typically I wouldn't go out of my way to post about simple gaming news, but there have been a pair of stories that have really irked me in the last few weeks and that I feel like I would like to address here.

1. BioWare's Liara (Mass Effect) figure reveal
2. Dead Island's code place holder for a player character

Sadness rant after the jump.

Scott Pilgrim: Good, also: Not Sexist

I'm late, because of the new job, but still!, I got something to get off my chest. I'm not angry, just not so sure what all the fuss is about with Scott Pilgrim.

I saw the movie a week or two ago, at a non-franchise theatre because it was no longer playing in any major theatre in my city for whatever reason. I went in with some serious trepidation. SP had been getting some mediocre reviews, and many critics had taken issue with the whole women as objects to be won thing. First the vote, then they want to be treated like people in cinema. Which actually strikes me as funny because this issue doesn't come up when almost every other film centers on a male character fighting for a woman whom improves his life/solves all his personal issues. But whatever.

I watched the lil' fucker though and I came out damn impressed. My favourite movie of the year impressed. I saw multiple articles on the possible reasons for its failure, and I can see the whole, a movie for hipsters thing issue. The movie is for people that are nostalgic for 8-bit, and who are also twenty something. I'm sorry, but that is not a real demographic outside of nerds and hipsters.

I saw some people posting on boards that the movie isn't about hipsters because it makes fun of hipsters. You know what is the favourite past times of hipsters? Making fun of other hipsters. ESPECIALLY scene kids. This movie is for and about hipsters.

Okay, so I get that this is a small audience, and so this probably didn't help the movie's numbers at all. I mean, when I was watching the trailers for this movie, it looked like it was going to be fantastic and I couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to see this film. I guess that's because it was made for me. Too bad I don't have more friends. Who cares though, this movie will get lots of love on DVD and its not like Edgar Wright is going to stop making movies.

Another issue is the backlash against Cera. I can't speak to this issue because I'm an ardent defender of the boy and I only wish he was in better films. Yes, he often plays similar characters, as does Bill Murray, George Clooney, and for heaven's sake Robert Fucking DeNiro. But I digress. I think he plays a different character in SP. A teenager who is over-confident, weak, and a bit of a prick, instead of just the nervous, shy, and all around nice boy around the corner who has a crush on his cousin, maybe. But that doesn't matter, ppls is haters. But check out Youth in Revolt if you want to see some funny non-Michael-Cera-ish Michael Cera.

But, onto the women thing. Some critics took issue with how the film sets up Scott Pilgrim as the boy that finds a girl that fixes his world and that he has to fight to obtain. From the appearance of the film, that would seem to be the structure of the plot, and indeed a fear that I went to the theatre with, but one however that is severely complicated by the actual film. Both Romana and Knives are strong female characters, with Romana in particular with a complicated past that makes her getting together with Pilgrim more complex than a forever-after (in the rom-com sense) ending. They have complicated pasts and those interfere with the relationship.

Indeed, the film is, in some sense, in some slight spoilery sense, a movie about the problems of past relationships on new ones, and the troubles of becoming a person outside of those, in this case, past mistakes, and really about entering into relationships that are automatically complicated by the unavoidable baggage that everyone comes burdened with. SP just handles these complex issues in terms of videogame fight sequences. Metaphors people! Metaphors.

Screw it all though. SP is a movie made for me, and I enjoyed the shit out of it. I think if you like Wright's previous films, or if you have a fond spot in your heart for classic games but you still consider yourself a younger member of your society, you'll probably like this movie as well. And if you don't, then this movie wasn't for you.

I'm trying to actually place the reference for that reference. This movie wasn't for you. I think someone said something douchey like that once to excuse his or her shitty artistry. Hmm.

Truck, truck, truck!

The Switch, Funniest Rape-Com of the Year

At least I suspect it is, I haven't done much research into the area *pulls collar away from neck and makes comedy noise*, but let's go ahead and say it's a valid claim.

So, Meg and I were waiting for a movie with a friend, bitching about whatever us MA lit-students bitch about (Mexicans), casually glancing at the multitude of TVs scattered throughout the lobby playing the same cycle of seven trailers interspersed with Skittles commercials ("blue is back!"), when our friend asks Meg, "do you think this is rape?" gesturing at the screen. We watched:

Did you catch the rape? Neither did I at first, but Meg thinks about it for a second and says "yes.". The issue is essentially: Anniston plans to get pregnant and Bateman spills the sample from the man she had actually selected and then, just as a quick and easy solution because what's it really matter, fills the thinger with his own *ahem* sample. He essentially inseminates her without her knowledge/consent."

At first I didn't buy it. Rape is violent and physical. The dude may be a dumb douche for doing what he does, but that doesn't mean he rapes her... does it? This is just some neo-feminist poppycock construing this bad thing as the extreme worst as a necessity of its politics-ideology... right?

But it is rape. He impregnates her without consent. While it may not be the violent form of rape we all know and abhor, it certainly falls under the same category. And what's strange, is that this movie uses this sort of thing casually, as a madcap rom-com premise. It's like if the setup was Bateman killing Aniston's mother, and through the investigation their initial antagonistic relationship blossoms into Hollywood love. I just don't get it.

I haven't seen the movie, and I probably won't, so maybe I'm wrong and the film deals with the severity of the issue, but from the trailer it looks like a typical rom-com. My projected plot is the initial "switch", then flash forward to when the kid's older and Bateman meets the kid and feels like he wants to be a part of his life. Then, when the Anniston finally finds out, she's pissed but eventually gets over it because she loves her son so much and wouldn't want him to be any different. This would and be how she falls in love with Bateman, she would recognize the qualities she sees in her son in Bateman (like the apparent ability to think quick on his feet).

I seriously don't know why either Bateman or Goldbloom are in this stupid movie. I do expect better of both of them. I mean there are paydays and then there are bad movie concepts, and this is the exemplar of the latter.

I just hope my titular prediction is correct and that I'm not forced to swallow my words when Sam Worthington and Katherine Heigl star in Once Upon a Time in a Dark Alley.

Co-starring Zach Galifianakis and Queen Latifah.

Hot Tub Time Machine v. Casual Sexism

So, Hot Tub Time Machine. I first heard about this movie on /Film, when all that was knew about the film was the name of the film (and subsequently a little about what the film was about) and who was in it. The title alone had my interest, the shear absurdity of the main conceit tickled me, and the pedigree in terms of casting helped a lot. High Fidelity is a favourite for me, so I knew John Cusack could do comedy, Rob Corddry was always decent, if not charismatic, on the Daily Show, Craig Robinson gets some of the best jokes in The Daily Show, and Clarke Duke was great in the relatively unknown (web?) series Clark and Michael. Long sentence though it may be, I was pretty stoked for the movie.

Is stoked, a word, out of vogue? Is it just a stoner thing now? Sometimes I worry my vocabulary is full on lexical hipster-anachronisms. Full review/rant after the jump.

And I liked the trailer a lot. Well, sort of. I mean, it wasn't hysterical, but there was certainly some quality jokes, and the whole hot tub time machine gimmick looked to be just as ridiculous as the name would suggest. The eighties thing too seemed like a fun way to mine some comedy. I especially liked the red band trailer, like when Robinson declares that it must "be some kinda ... hot tub time machine! *musical cue*", and that he's not crying, it's "just water splashin his face from all the fuckin."

When the movie hit theatres I never really got around to see it because a) I just never got around to it, b) I was reluctant to spend the cash on it, especially since c) it didn't do very well with critics. I basically chalked it up to something to see on DVD.

Then I saw it on DVD. My verdict is that it's a serviceable comedy that flirts with mediocrity. There are funny moments (like the aforementioned bath-sex scene, the way the protagonists discover they are indeed in the '80s, the discussion of time paradoxes, and the one armed man shtick), enjoyable moments (Robinson's musical performance), and some decent comedic performances from the actors (Robinson and Duke particularly shine in contrast to the inoffensive Cusack and Corddry). I was also amused how if you take away the Hot Tub Time Travelin', Cusack's bit in the movie is essentially an obligatory Cusack role (see Serendipity, I guess). What did piss me off about Hot Tub, was the unnecessary and ignorant sexism that exists in the film.

I'm not even talking about the almost eventual sexism that occurs in most comedies that star a bunch of men, or even a bromance. I've come to accept this issue in some sense as a result of many male comedy writer's inability to write real female characters, or the tendency for these films to cater to their audience's (other males) or even their character's gaze on the female as a sexual object. By accept, in no way do I condone. It's shitty, but it's sadly the usual.

Yeah, so near the beginning of Hot Tub, where our troop first arrives at their weekend resort, Robinson asks the manager about reservations and tries to hide that he has a shared last name with his wife, in that he is Nick Webber-Agnew. Corddry upon hearing his shared name mocks him, and continues to do so throughout the film since hyphenizing his name has emasculated XX. This alone is fairly insulting, since although it is the most obnoxious character is that voices this mockery, Robinson himself never owns the hyphenization, indeed seems to admit that it wasn't his choice, or wouldn't have done so given the opportunity (i.e. balls), to take her name into his.

For more on this I'm going into spoiler territory. Here after, there be monsters.

So, later in the film we realize that Robinson's wife has actually cheated on him and that he knows she has but she doesn't know he knows (it's okay if you need to read that a few times, I'm not the most clear writer at times). And this tears him up inside, because he loves her and doesn't want to leave her but she's emasculated him. No wait! she's cuckolded him. Heh, don't get to use that word too often.

Further, thematically the whole movie basically provides the three adult characters (XX wasn't alive in the 80's) an opportunity to fix the mistakes they made this particular weekend in the '80's that apparently sent all their lives into the shittier (although it seems like their lives went into the shitter because they were essentially shitheads or losers, not because they all made some simple blunder this particular weekend, but whatever) and so Robinson gets an opportunity to kick off, rather than end, his musical career during his performance that weekend. Then, when we see him return to the present day, or rather the fixed present, i.e. the better life, he has a record label as a successful producer, a record label that proudly displays his surname, and only his surname. And when he speaks to his wife, who no longer has cheated on him, we discover that he has not hyphenized his name. He is just Nick Webber, a real man. In this ideal world, Robinson hasn't had none of that pussy taking your wife's surname faggotry.

Seriously? So, Robinson's character arc shows him regaining his masculinity from his wife, as symbolized in the hyphenization of his last name. Our lesson apparently: taking your wife's name is to be a cuckold. Awesome.

I'm sorry, but it's actually fairly forward-thinking to take part of your partner's name into yours. I mean, I think we've gotten passed the point where marriage means a woman belongs to a man, the whole legalized prostitution thing. Fuck, some people even make new names together, like they are two equal parts to a marriage. Call them crazy, I know.

SPOILERS END!!!

While, I don't think the writers (or I wouldn't accuse them of such just out of giving the benefit of the doubt) meant to admonish the hypenizing of a males name, the way they have used it as a symbol of Robinson's emasculation is touch of bigotry I don't think serves the flick well.

In Summation: Hot Tub Time Machine is decent enough. It is like The Hangover in that it is underwhelming despite some good comedic performances, and scrapes by in the three out of five gulf of a little better than bad. However, it is pretty damn sexist. But a lot of its audience won't really see it as such, which really irks me. People will laugh at the jokes and buy the hyphenizing as a symbol of emasculation, without recognizing how insulting this is to women, to equality. So in this way, Hot Tub propagates a backwards idea of gender politics, which isn't cool, and makes it far worse than a 3/5 really, since in the act of reviewing I shouldn't have to set aside issues of sexism to assign an objective grade.

Bah.

I've written Stargate Fan Fiction.