I was recognizing the sort of inherent contradiction in things. Found a survey that reveals that almost half of comics readers are females, and I can't help but connect this with the rise in female characters suddenly, and it makes me twitch, because, well, it smacks of pandering/ghettoizing/tokenism. This idea that girls need female protagonists. Uh, you have 50% of us, you know, without that. We don't have a problem relating to male protagonists.
But on the other hand, and here's my internal conflict, of course I WANT female characters! I want women with stories as complex and interesting and valuable and real as male characters! I want competent women, smart women, interestingly flawed women of all shapes and colors and religions etc, represented and I want them to not be simply distaff males or existing as plot devices for the males. You know, their own subjectivity and agency and their own story. (Yeah, I don't ask for much, do I? Only what...western lit has given to men for the last two millennia!)
So why do I feel so uncomfortable? Because I fear that there will be a 'that's for GIIIIIIRLS' push. The way Toys R Us has become so sex-segregated: the blue side, the pink side. There was already a guy on the IDW site raging about having My Little Pony advertised on the back of his Transformers comics, as though that somehow assaulted his gender. That is FOR GIRLS, and by implication, Transformers is FOR BOYS and never the twain shall meet.
I don't want that. I don't want to go there. It's what historically has almost always happened once binary gender becomes a thing: we have two, therefore one must be above the other. Good/evil, white/black, rich/poor fat/thin. As soon as we have binaries, we set up a better/worse structure. And it's probably not news that in Western culture, when we have man/woman, woman ends up on the losing end of that.
You know, that presumption that guys write for everyone: girls write chick stuff., for other girls. The fact that IDW is screeching so loudly that WINDBLADE WILL BE WRITTEN AND DRAWN BY WOMEN is at one level self congratulatory and at another, a step down that segregationist slope.
So all this yay let's make more female characters and let's give female characters their own comics and such, part of me celebrates, but past history, especially of the comics industry which appears rife with misogyny, makes me hesitate, makes me afraid that they will become 'comics 4 gurls' instead of 'really good comics that just happen to have female protagonists'. That they will continue to promote things like heteronormativity and obedience to a certain body type (gracile, curvy, 'made up', conventionally pretty, predominantly white in appearance (I refer not just to skin color but to things like nose shape, forehead angle, etc--most women in comics of all races are drawn with very supermodel Anglo features).) And I'm not saying that I object to kick ass smart women who also happen to be hot and maybe, just maybe, in control of their emotions and sexuality (I'm looking at you Joss Whedon). But I wonder about that second wave 'have it all' perfection, which third wave feminists have at least realized is sort of an impossibility for most women.
And I realize I seem like the 'never going to be pleased' raging feminazi that Furman takes down in his stunningly misogynistic Prime's Rib!, but all I can say is, well, at least I am aware of the contradictory impulses.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Pretty Ladybots
In what really smacks of a really cynical attempt to acknowledge that Transformers comics has a *gasp* female readership, there's a sudden influx of female characters in the ongoing Transformers comics series.
I know that makes me sound jaded as hell. Guilty as charged. Because I grew up in the1980s, the Dawn of the Smurfette Principle, founded on the patronizing notion that girls can only relate to female characters (despite mountains of evidence that seems to indicate that it is boys who have a problem relating with differently-gendered protagonists in stories), and the concomitant appearance of those female characters in very narrow portrayals: curvy, made up, gracile, small, and above all, OTHER.
The message was clear, from Smurfette to Arcee: appearance. It didn't matter if you ALSO kicked ass, you had to be pretty. And you had to be a love object to males, of course. Even if it wasn't your central goal, it was a thing that would be part of your existence.
This was good, in a way, in that it demonstrates what is part of a lived reality for women in American culture: they are perceived as Other and they must also always be highly marked as female, and be aware of their size/shape/look/differences from men. They are never 'one of the guys' even on a team like GI Joe--they still have to be pretty, with long, impractical hair and body revealing clothing.
Of course, it doesn't cover the other even darker parts of lived reality for women: predation, abuse, stalking and all the petty diminishments of being seen as the 'weaker' sex (mind you, this was preBuffy). It was Objectification 101, and the isolation of the female characters really underscored their alienation, their differentness. It wasn't just a matter of often being a distaff version of a male character (though that was often implied in the pairings), it was the fact that female was solitary (as the Bechdel Test, for all its flaws and limitations, is immensely useful in illustrating). Female friendship was almost invisible.
So that's where I come from. And of course I'm aware of Whedon and Buffy and Firefly and how some things have changed (I'll leave aside for now my sideeye at Whedon's 'fascination with the female = badass who is emotionally crippled and seeks approbation from men' because at least his female characters had agency!)
And now, Transformers is hopping on the bandwagon. And we have females, who appear to be friends. STOP THE PRESSES. But, no, don't stop them yet, because despite three female characters and two issues, they still haven't managed to pass the Bechdel Test. This is somehow even sadder than when we just had Arcee, the nonconsenual transgender character, where there was no Bechdel possibility ever (and boy does she do that classic 80s style Isolated Female thing with a side of misogynistic humor about female rage).
And also, I know you're shocked. All three of the females have hourglass shapes, 'lipstick', and curvy armor and limbs. In a lineup, they stand out on body type alone. Looking for represenatation that doesn't look like a swimsuit model? You're not going to find it here. The message is still women look different, women are different, women are this puzzling question. Windblade even has heels.
So I find myself in a real conundrum. Honestly the imposition of binary gender AT ALL here is something I could have done without, but the impulse to male/female everything is kind of worth a question, isn't it? Why do we have to have binary gender in robots where it's not about reproduction? Because that's how our minds work, and conceptualizing anything different would be...hard? Weird? unrelatable? I don't know.
I see people asking 'lol what the hell is a female robot' and I am asking the same question, too, but now I'm also asking...what drives that impulse in us, to force things into gender, and then binary gender? One person I saw is glad that they glossed over the answer to 'what is a female robot' because there was, in her mind 'more important stuff to talk about'. Yes, more important than what female is, what gender is. Oooookay. But honestly, the question is unanswerable, isn't it? As a Butlerian, I see humans have binary gender to perform or not perform or half perform: you can argue that gender is really a social construct, especially since there exist places that do not fall into binary gender. (So in a sense the imposition of binary gender is also an imperialist move, an Occidentalizing and attempt at nativizing/essentializing their notion of gender). Which is all well and good in humans, because we HAVE a culture that has a discourse and a code of gender to inhabit.
Robots...though....?
But we have female characters and I love the idea of *gasp* competent female characters, and *double gasp* non-isolated female characters (we saw this in G1, though in the movie and the females quickly split up and paired off so...not sure if I should get my hopes up), there's the tetchy never-be-satisfied part that wants them to break that 'pretty' rule. Where's a female who looks like Strika?
Then again, it's wrong of me to expect so much of my robot comics, to expect inclusion, complex characters who happen to be female, and to have a range of visual representation, when let's face it, Hollywood in all its movies can't do this, either.
I know that makes me sound jaded as hell. Guilty as charged. Because I grew up in the1980s, the Dawn of the Smurfette Principle, founded on the patronizing notion that girls can only relate to female characters (despite mountains of evidence that seems to indicate that it is boys who have a problem relating with differently-gendered protagonists in stories), and the concomitant appearance of those female characters in very narrow portrayals: curvy, made up, gracile, small, and above all, OTHER.
The message was clear, from Smurfette to Arcee: appearance. It didn't matter if you ALSO kicked ass, you had to be pretty. And you had to be a love object to males, of course. Even if it wasn't your central goal, it was a thing that would be part of your existence.
This was good, in a way, in that it demonstrates what is part of a lived reality for women in American culture: they are perceived as Other and they must also always be highly marked as female, and be aware of their size/shape/look/differences from men. They are never 'one of the guys' even on a team like GI Joe--they still have to be pretty, with long, impractical hair and body revealing clothing.
Of course, it doesn't cover the other even darker parts of lived reality for women: predation, abuse, stalking and all the petty diminishments of being seen as the 'weaker' sex (mind you, this was preBuffy). It was Objectification 101, and the isolation of the female characters really underscored their alienation, their differentness. It wasn't just a matter of often being a distaff version of a male character (though that was often implied in the pairings), it was the fact that female was solitary (as the Bechdel Test, for all its flaws and limitations, is immensely useful in illustrating). Female friendship was almost invisible.
So that's where I come from. And of course I'm aware of Whedon and Buffy and Firefly and how some things have changed (I'll leave aside for now my sideeye at Whedon's 'fascination with the female = badass who is emotionally crippled and seeks approbation from men' because at least his female characters had agency!)
And now, Transformers is hopping on the bandwagon. And we have females, who appear to be friends. STOP THE PRESSES. But, no, don't stop them yet, because despite three female characters and two issues, they still haven't managed to pass the Bechdel Test. This is somehow even sadder than when we just had Arcee, the nonconsenual transgender character, where there was no Bechdel possibility ever (and boy does she do that classic 80s style Isolated Female thing with a side of misogynistic humor about female rage).
And also, I know you're shocked. All three of the females have hourglass shapes, 'lipstick', and curvy armor and limbs. In a lineup, they stand out on body type alone. Looking for represenatation that doesn't look like a swimsuit model? You're not going to find it here. The message is still women look different, women are different, women are this puzzling question. Windblade even has heels.
So I find myself in a real conundrum. Honestly the imposition of binary gender AT ALL here is something I could have done without, but the impulse to male/female everything is kind of worth a question, isn't it? Why do we have to have binary gender in robots where it's not about reproduction? Because that's how our minds work, and conceptualizing anything different would be...hard? Weird? unrelatable? I don't know.
I see people asking 'lol what the hell is a female robot' and I am asking the same question, too, but now I'm also asking...what drives that impulse in us, to force things into gender, and then binary gender? One person I saw is glad that they glossed over the answer to 'what is a female robot' because there was, in her mind 'more important stuff to talk about'. Yes, more important than what female is, what gender is. Oooookay. But honestly, the question is unanswerable, isn't it? As a Butlerian, I see humans have binary gender to perform or not perform or half perform: you can argue that gender is really a social construct, especially since there exist places that do not fall into binary gender. (So in a sense the imposition of binary gender is also an imperialist move, an Occidentalizing and attempt at nativizing/essentializing their notion of gender). Which is all well and good in humans, because we HAVE a culture that has a discourse and a code of gender to inhabit.
Robots...though....?
But we have female characters and I love the idea of *gasp* competent female characters, and *double gasp* non-isolated female characters (we saw this in G1, though in the movie and the females quickly split up and paired off so...not sure if I should get my hopes up), there's the tetchy never-be-satisfied part that wants them to break that 'pretty' rule. Where's a female who looks like Strika?
Then again, it's wrong of me to expect so much of my robot comics, to expect inclusion, complex characters who happen to be female, and to have a range of visual representation, when let's face it, Hollywood in all its movies can't do this, either.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Lowering the Bar = Not Okay
Yeah, okay, I get it, people like Pacific Rim and are entirely incapable of acknowledging anything possibly problematic about it.
And every movie I've seen this summer fails, soundly, the Bechdel Test. Which, in case you don't know, asks if there are a) two female characters who b) talk to each other c) about something other than a man. As this is something I do EVERY DAMN DAY, it is a wonder to me that we seem to never see it on film.
But here's a thing. Making up a new test so that you can call Mako Mori a feminist is just....eurgh.
Here's what I'm talking about. In case you're too lazy to click, as I often am, here's WORD FOR WORD from the Tumblr post: "The Mako Mori test is passed if the movie has: a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man’s story."
Wow, it's like NCLB has come to mass media. Test too hard? MAKE AN EASIER TEST. Halve the number of females required, and make her something other than stage dressing.
The irony is, of course, that Mako Mori fails the Mako Mori test.
Because I'm too lazy to scroll down, let me recap Mako Mori's 'narrative arc'.
She has no agency other than what men (Pentecost, Becket) allow her. She doesn't put herself on the candidate list because Stacker wouldn't like it. She fights in the trials anyway, when Becket calls her out, but only when Stacker agrees. Even then, she doesn't suit up until...Stacker gives her permission. Even in the climax of the film, she meekly does what Raleigh wants, leaving him alone to face the danger of arming the reactor, not even putting up a word of protest.
She's the Damsel in Distress for both Stacker (when she's a child) and Raleigh (in the drift when she needs to be rescued from her own memory of...being rescued by a man...it's like damselception). Her 'honor' 'needs' to be defended (sorry about all the airquotes) fistfight style between Raleigh and Chuck Hansen. And she even delivers the Damsel Kiss reward to Raleigh.
So, looking at the Mako Mori test, her narrative arc is...what? I could maybe, in a very generous mood, see her move from scared little girl to fighter...if she had any real fight in her. Compared to Sasha Kaidanovsky, though, she's a silent partner to Raleigh's control of Gipsy Danger. If she'd resisted being sent away at the end, I'd buy it a lot more. But let's just say, cranky old feminist is cranky and old and let's give her an arc.
Which brings us to the third requirement: that her story isn't about propping up a man's story.
This is a solid, resounding, sonic-boom of a fail. She exists to give Stacker an angsty/tender side, she exists as the Love Interest for Raleigh. She exists to show us how dangerous drifting can be, and how Nice a Guy Raleigh is. Everything she does in the movie is to prop up the emotional depth of a male character. EVERYTHING.
I'll take a step back to look at Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero for a moment, because we have several female characters....who also fail the Mako Mori test.
Caitlin Lightcap, the scientist who invents PONS (drifting) has a clear, identifiable, hands-down narrative arc, going from shy science hottie to confident fighter. But...her story is only told to give Schoenfield depth--he's telling her story to the reporter to highlight his own epiphany. Tamsin Sevier and Luna exist to give depth to Stacker. And Naomi? Oh god. Naomi. The perky, driven Lois Lane style reporter who gathers these stories. She has minimal narrative arc, but serves the (pointless) function of creating drama in the Becket Brothers by being, well, a bit promiscuous. She comes off as a bit of a groupie, just wanting to fuck a jaeger pilot, contrasted with Raleigh's (pure?) interest.
W-wow. Okay, so even when we lower the bar, we can't pass it.
Sidenote: I've become a little obsessed recently with Elysium and so just to be fair, let's poke at that as we wrap up: Elysium: fails the Bechdel test. HOWEVER, believe it or not, Delacourt passes. She has a narrative arc, that doesn't exist to give emotional oomph to a man's story. Yes, she activates Kruger. Yes, she sends him after Max. But it's not personal. A man would have complicated Max's life the same way. Frey fails, but even then, she has agency. The problem is, of course, Delacourt is a stone cold bitch and not a pretty, Asian moe stereotype (yeah, guess who's NEVER going to forgive Del Toro his idea that she can stand in rotorwash and not have that umbrella torn out of her hands.)
What's really funny (or depressing, depending on how you look at it) is that passing these tests didn't USED to be a problem. Star Trek: The Next Generation NAILED both the Bechdel test and this Mako Mori test. Even characters like Seven of Nine (who is the first time I heard the word 'fanservice') had agency, they had their own stories to tell, and their stories WEREN'T subsumed to showing the emotional growth of a 'more important' male character.
My question is...what happened? And why are we lowering the bar instead of insisting we go back to what we used to do so well?
And every movie I've seen this summer fails, soundly, the Bechdel Test. Which, in case you don't know, asks if there are a) two female characters who b) talk to each other c) about something other than a man. As this is something I do EVERY DAMN DAY, it is a wonder to me that we seem to never see it on film.
But here's a thing. Making up a new test so that you can call Mako Mori a feminist is just....eurgh.
Here's what I'm talking about. In case you're too lazy to click, as I often am, here's WORD FOR WORD from the Tumblr post: "The Mako Mori test is passed if the movie has: a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man’s story."
Wow, it's like NCLB has come to mass media. Test too hard? MAKE AN EASIER TEST. Halve the number of females required, and make her something other than stage dressing.
The irony is, of course, that Mako Mori fails the Mako Mori test.
Because I'm too lazy to scroll down, let me recap Mako Mori's 'narrative arc'.
She has no agency other than what men (Pentecost, Becket) allow her. She doesn't put herself on the candidate list because Stacker wouldn't like it. She fights in the trials anyway, when Becket calls her out, but only when Stacker agrees. Even then, she doesn't suit up until...Stacker gives her permission. Even in the climax of the film, she meekly does what Raleigh wants, leaving him alone to face the danger of arming the reactor, not even putting up a word of protest.
She's the Damsel in Distress for both Stacker (when she's a child) and Raleigh (in the drift when she needs to be rescued from her own memory of...being rescued by a man...it's like damselception). Her 'honor' 'needs' to be defended (sorry about all the airquotes) fistfight style between Raleigh and Chuck Hansen. And she even delivers the Damsel Kiss reward to Raleigh.
So, looking at the Mako Mori test, her narrative arc is...what? I could maybe, in a very generous mood, see her move from scared little girl to fighter...if she had any real fight in her. Compared to Sasha Kaidanovsky, though, she's a silent partner to Raleigh's control of Gipsy Danger. If she'd resisted being sent away at the end, I'd buy it a lot more. But let's just say, cranky old feminist is cranky and old and let's give her an arc.
Which brings us to the third requirement: that her story isn't about propping up a man's story.
This is a solid, resounding, sonic-boom of a fail. She exists to give Stacker an angsty/tender side, she exists as the Love Interest for Raleigh. She exists to show us how dangerous drifting can be, and how Nice a Guy Raleigh is. Everything she does in the movie is to prop up the emotional depth of a male character. EVERYTHING.
I'll take a step back to look at Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero for a moment, because we have several female characters....who also fail the Mako Mori test.
Caitlin Lightcap, the scientist who invents PONS (drifting) has a clear, identifiable, hands-down narrative arc, going from shy science hottie to confident fighter. But...her story is only told to give Schoenfield depth--he's telling her story to the reporter to highlight his own epiphany. Tamsin Sevier and Luna exist to give depth to Stacker. And Naomi? Oh god. Naomi. The perky, driven Lois Lane style reporter who gathers these stories. She has minimal narrative arc, but serves the (pointless) function of creating drama in the Becket Brothers by being, well, a bit promiscuous. She comes off as a bit of a groupie, just wanting to fuck a jaeger pilot, contrasted with Raleigh's (pure?) interest.
W-wow. Okay, so even when we lower the bar, we can't pass it.
Sidenote: I've become a little obsessed recently with Elysium and so just to be fair, let's poke at that as we wrap up: Elysium: fails the Bechdel test. HOWEVER, believe it or not, Delacourt passes. She has a narrative arc, that doesn't exist to give emotional oomph to a man's story. Yes, she activates Kruger. Yes, she sends him after Max. But it's not personal. A man would have complicated Max's life the same way. Frey fails, but even then, she has agency. The problem is, of course, Delacourt is a stone cold bitch and not a pretty, Asian moe stereotype (yeah, guess who's NEVER going to forgive Del Toro his idea that she can stand in rotorwash and not have that umbrella torn out of her hands.)
What's really funny (or depressing, depending on how you look at it) is that passing these tests didn't USED to be a problem. Star Trek: The Next Generation NAILED both the Bechdel test and this Mako Mori test. Even characters like Seven of Nine (who is the first time I heard the word 'fanservice') had agency, they had their own stories to tell, and their stories WEREN'T subsumed to showing the emotional growth of a 'more important' male character.
My question is...what happened? And why are we lowering the bar instead of insisting we go back to what we used to do so well?
Friday, August 16, 2013
Elysium, Politics and of course liminal humanity
The predictable: Straight White American Guy saves the world. If
you've
seen the trailer, you've figured that part out. It also, predictably,
failed the Bechdel test. Again, it has a
LOT of company there: I haven't seen a movie this summer that passed.
So bashing it for either of those? Kind of pointless unless you also
plan to froth about Pacific Rim, Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3,
World War Z......
However, it was also the best movie I've seen this summer. It's not the best movie ever made, and it certainly has its flaws (some below but just one--how the hell does Max wear that rig with a t-shirt UNDER it when he was bareskinned when they drilled it into him?) but it passed my personal test of "I didn't know 75% of the details of the ending after the first ten minutes". Unlike Pacific Rim, I wasn't writhing in my seat at the gender and race stereotypes.
NOT that there aren't stereotypes. Julio, Max's best friend, is your typical Latino gangbanger, as is most of Spider's crew. Oh boy, Hispanic gang types, covered in weird facial tattoos and wifebeaters and bandanas. I have never seen this before. :|
And there's Frey, Max's love interest. Single mom in a caretaking job who would do anything to save her daughter, who plays nurturer, helper, love interest, and damsel in distress, and the Girl Back Home (the female character for whom the male exposes himself to danger and sacrifice so that she can be safe and happy).
But there's also Max himself, an Anglo guy who is bilingual, an orphan raised by nuns, criminal and tattooed, the working class stiff who gets stiffed by his uncaring corporate job and is compelled, in desperation, to allow himself to be fitted with the exo-suit (truth: I could watch him walk in that thing all day for prurient reasons hnnnnngh). Max straddles the line, then, of criminality/legality, Anglo/Hispanic (Max De Costa isn't the WASPiest name ever and even his name 'from the coast' implies a liminal status, not land or ocean, but the line between), and human/machine.
So there are stereotypes, but even the two above are complicated in interesting ways, similarly, by straddling boundaries: the thug gangbangers are in a sense the techno-elite of Earth--Spider is the one with the real power in Max's life. They have computer and surgical knowledge, as well as combat skills. And Frey? Well...she walks away in the beginning, from Max. He's bad news from her past and she wants no part of it. And there's wonderful UST between them but it is entirely chaste: Max is actually pretty upset to find out she has a daughter. She's too damn good for him, and he knows it, and it's really a nice change. (Looking at you, Pacific Rim, Iron Man, etc etc).
It's obvious that Earth is brown and Elysium is white, except for their token 'President' Patel, who accomplishes very little and is handily hamstrung by Delacourt, who is the 'ice queen' bitch stereotype (which Jodie Foster can pull off in spades).
Which leads us to the political stuff. The Right Wing has launched a virtual campaign against this movie, saying it's pro illegal immigration propaganda, and pro Obamacare propaganda, to which I say....whaaaaaaah? Yes there are themes of citizenship and exclusion and access to health care, but though the access to the medical pods is a central goal in the narrative, it's a maguffin, really, symbolizing healed humanity, instead of some sort of documentary for health care.
Yes it's certainly a metaphor: the rich white elite hogging the best for themselves and destroying anyone trying to climb the ladder to get their share. I think any American knows that--it's nothing new to see on film: we see it every damn day all around us, with the Washington plutocrats. Have some relevant reality: you guys HAVE heard that those politicians who were so gung ho about Obamacare recently passed legislation that exempts THEM and their staffs from having to abide by it themselves? Yup. There's your Two Americas right there. There's your Elysium and Earth. What's good enough for you and I, 'universal healthcare', the Washington types think is not even close to good enough for them, right now, today, 2013.
In other words, what they have on Earth in the movie IS Obamacare! Max has free healthcare, and the overcrowded waiting rooms and almost robotic by-the-book care that is substandard while the wealthy elites get 'Cadillac' health care: no waiting, perfect care, clean and fast. That's what Congress just passed before their August recess. H-how can a movie be pro-Obamacare then?
That scene where Max is talking to his 'Parole Officer' and the robot offered him a pill got an uncomfortable laugh in the theater I was in, because we have all been there: where they'd rather throw medicine at you than actually, you know, deal with you at a human level.
Elysium, with its token dark president who is shunted aside as ineffectual, could just as easily be read as a critique of President Obama and his ineffectual policies and lavish life (isn't he on vacation right now, in fact? ). So for all the Righties wailing it's evil Left Wing Hollywood Propaganda, just saying, the government of Elysium is a real critique of our own. Mind you, for the record I don't think it's the main point of the film to push either to the right or to the left, I'm just debunking the whole 'Left Wing propaganda' hysterics by pointing out it's JUST as easy to read it as Right Wing ideology.
It's also an extension of the cyberpunk tradition. Your standard cyberpunk adventure pits one guy against a dispassionate corporation, which dehumanizes its workers, viewing, really, only other executives as 'real' and caring more about profit and safety of profit than justice or fairness or compassion or...(swap in any human virtue). Cyberpunk heros are male, who straddle boundaries between the human and the technological. And they work to bring down the system from within, even though they are outsiders, working with jerryrigged equipment, triumphing by sheer will and gumption and wits in the face of vast technological superiority.
Sounds like Max, right? Except with less 'cyberspace' and more 'punching'.
There's something to be said for the fact that Max's job is making the droids, the same kind that run elite society, act as police and enforcers. The droids do work, but they don't do the really 'dirty' work (except for the orange robot who pinch and drag pulls Max out of the bay after contamination). Dirty work is for humans, while they get the clean jobs like basic enforcement (again the dirty enforcement jobs go to a human, Kruger, and boy is he unsavory), body guards, serving drinks. He makes them, he becomes half-robot and then, well, let's just say that the point of the movie is that the human part of him is what's really important. It's hard for me to admit, but I cried, honestly watching this movie. Which is something I never thought I'd say about a Matt Damon movie.
However, it was also the best movie I've seen this summer. It's not the best movie ever made, and it certainly has its flaws (some below but just one--how the hell does Max wear that rig with a t-shirt UNDER it when he was bareskinned when they drilled it into him?) but it passed my personal test of "I didn't know 75% of the details of the ending after the first ten minutes". Unlike Pacific Rim, I wasn't writhing in my seat at the gender and race stereotypes.
NOT that there aren't stereotypes. Julio, Max's best friend, is your typical Latino gangbanger, as is most of Spider's crew. Oh boy, Hispanic gang types, covered in weird facial tattoos and wifebeaters and bandanas. I have never seen this before. :|
And there's Frey, Max's love interest. Single mom in a caretaking job who would do anything to save her daughter, who plays nurturer, helper, love interest, and damsel in distress, and the Girl Back Home (the female character for whom the male exposes himself to danger and sacrifice so that she can be safe and happy).
But there's also Max himself, an Anglo guy who is bilingual, an orphan raised by nuns, criminal and tattooed, the working class stiff who gets stiffed by his uncaring corporate job and is compelled, in desperation, to allow himself to be fitted with the exo-suit (truth: I could watch him walk in that thing all day for prurient reasons hnnnnngh). Max straddles the line, then, of criminality/legality, Anglo/Hispanic (Max De Costa isn't the WASPiest name ever and even his name 'from the coast' implies a liminal status, not land or ocean, but the line between), and human/machine.
So there are stereotypes, but even the two above are complicated in interesting ways, similarly, by straddling boundaries: the thug gangbangers are in a sense the techno-elite of Earth--Spider is the one with the real power in Max's life. They have computer and surgical knowledge, as well as combat skills. And Frey? Well...she walks away in the beginning, from Max. He's bad news from her past and she wants no part of it. And there's wonderful UST between them but it is entirely chaste: Max is actually pretty upset to find out she has a daughter. She's too damn good for him, and he knows it, and it's really a nice change. (Looking at you, Pacific Rim, Iron Man, etc etc).
It's obvious that Earth is brown and Elysium is white, except for their token 'President' Patel, who accomplishes very little and is handily hamstrung by Delacourt, who is the 'ice queen' bitch stereotype (which Jodie Foster can pull off in spades).
Which leads us to the political stuff. The Right Wing has launched a virtual campaign against this movie, saying it's pro illegal immigration propaganda, and pro Obamacare propaganda, to which I say....whaaaaaaah? Yes there are themes of citizenship and exclusion and access to health care, but though the access to the medical pods is a central goal in the narrative, it's a maguffin, really, symbolizing healed humanity, instead of some sort of documentary for health care.
Yes it's certainly a metaphor: the rich white elite hogging the best for themselves and destroying anyone trying to climb the ladder to get their share. I think any American knows that--it's nothing new to see on film: we see it every damn day all around us, with the Washington plutocrats. Have some relevant reality: you guys HAVE heard that those politicians who were so gung ho about Obamacare recently passed legislation that exempts THEM and their staffs from having to abide by it themselves? Yup. There's your Two Americas right there. There's your Elysium and Earth. What's good enough for you and I, 'universal healthcare', the Washington types think is not even close to good enough for them, right now, today, 2013.
In other words, what they have on Earth in the movie IS Obamacare! Max has free healthcare, and the overcrowded waiting rooms and almost robotic by-the-book care that is substandard while the wealthy elites get 'Cadillac' health care: no waiting, perfect care, clean and fast. That's what Congress just passed before their August recess. H-how can a movie be pro-Obamacare then?
That scene where Max is talking to his 'Parole Officer' and the robot offered him a pill got an uncomfortable laugh in the theater I was in, because we have all been there: where they'd rather throw medicine at you than actually, you know, deal with you at a human level.
Elysium, with its token dark president who is shunted aside as ineffectual, could just as easily be read as a critique of President Obama and his ineffectual policies and lavish life (isn't he on vacation right now, in fact? ). So for all the Righties wailing it's evil Left Wing Hollywood Propaganda, just saying, the government of Elysium is a real critique of our own. Mind you, for the record I don't think it's the main point of the film to push either to the right or to the left, I'm just debunking the whole 'Left Wing propaganda' hysterics by pointing out it's JUST as easy to read it as Right Wing ideology.
It's also an extension of the cyberpunk tradition. Your standard cyberpunk adventure pits one guy against a dispassionate corporation, which dehumanizes its workers, viewing, really, only other executives as 'real' and caring more about profit and safety of profit than justice or fairness or compassion or...(swap in any human virtue). Cyberpunk heros are male, who straddle boundaries between the human and the technological. And they work to bring down the system from within, even though they are outsiders, working with jerryrigged equipment, triumphing by sheer will and gumption and wits in the face of vast technological superiority.
Sounds like Max, right? Except with less 'cyberspace' and more 'punching'.
There's something to be said for the fact that Max's job is making the droids, the same kind that run elite society, act as police and enforcers. The droids do work, but they don't do the really 'dirty' work (except for the orange robot who pinch and drag pulls Max out of the bay after contamination). Dirty work is for humans, while they get the clean jobs like basic enforcement (again the dirty enforcement jobs go to a human, Kruger, and boy is he unsavory), body guards, serving drinks. He makes them, he becomes half-robot and then, well, let's just say that the point of the movie is that the human part of him is what's really important. It's hard for me to admit, but I cried, honestly watching this movie. Which is something I never thought I'd say about a Matt Damon movie.
Friday, July 26, 2013
So here's a First World Pain for ya
That moment when everyone you know is flailing about a movie, and you go see it, and so badly want to love it and....wow ahahaa hell no.
I'd really love to see a movie and not spend half of it eyerolling at the incredibly dense borderline insulting ethnic and gender stereotypes that make up the entire main cast.
Also I'd like to see a movie that gets basic physics right. Oh no, I'm not talking about combat physics here, those I can suspend quite a bit of disbelief for. But when, ten minutes in, we throw basic aerodynamics in the shitter because we simply MUST without doubt have the Sad Asian Girl Under Umbrella trope (uh, I dunno if any of y'all ever spend time around helicopters but an open umbrella and a close range landing copter...don't mix.
(In B4 'it's the fyooture they have magic wind resisting umbrellas).
I'd like to see a movie where I don't know the end after the first twenty minutes of the film.
I'm disappointed. I really really wanted to like this movie, and all my fandom friends are flailing about it, the ones whose opinions matter to me, and so I see it and I'm just...I think I didn't see the same movie? Because I saw something with offensive stereotypes of Germans, nerds, and Asians, where Russians are Bleached Bitches, and Crimson Typhoon is run by three Chinese triplets.... because, ya know, they all look alike. *headdesk*.
. I saw a movie where MEN win the war, and the one woman who actually gets some rounding is still called a 'girl' not a 'woman'. I saw a movie where once again White American Man saves the universe, with everyone else being supporting players. I saw a movie with a mess of a political message (we caused this with Global Warming, I say, in the middle of July about to put on a sweater), but that in the end entirely supports Western cultural imperialism and appropriation. And of course heterosexual romance. If a female exists and has a personality, she must be romance fodder.
I'm just...I'm tired of it? I'm tired of 'strong female characters' meaning 'female character overcoming some past trauma who is emotionally, therefore, made of spun sugar.'.
And what was with Del Toro giving the definitions and pronunciation of kaiju and jaeger in the opening seconds of the film? What the hell was that about? Does he trust his audience so little he thinks we can't handle foreign words? Is it another signifiier of the cooptation of the alien?
I FEEL A CONFERENCE PAPER COMING ON....
I'd really love to see a movie and not spend half of it eyerolling at the incredibly dense borderline insulting ethnic and gender stereotypes that make up the entire main cast.
Also I'd like to see a movie that gets basic physics right. Oh no, I'm not talking about combat physics here, those I can suspend quite a bit of disbelief for. But when, ten minutes in, we throw basic aerodynamics in the shitter because we simply MUST without doubt have the Sad Asian Girl Under Umbrella trope (uh, I dunno if any of y'all ever spend time around helicopters but an open umbrella and a close range landing copter...don't mix.
(In B4 'it's the fyooture they have magic wind resisting umbrellas).
I'd like to see a movie where I don't know the end after the first twenty minutes of the film.
I'm disappointed. I really really wanted to like this movie, and all my fandom friends are flailing about it, the ones whose opinions matter to me, and so I see it and I'm just...I think I didn't see the same movie? Because I saw something with offensive stereotypes of Germans, nerds, and Asians, where Russians are Bleached Bitches, and Crimson Typhoon is run by three Chinese triplets.... because, ya know, they all look alike. *headdesk*.
. I saw a movie where MEN win the war, and the one woman who actually gets some rounding is still called a 'girl' not a 'woman'. I saw a movie where once again White American Man saves the universe, with everyone else being supporting players. I saw a movie with a mess of a political message (we caused this with Global Warming, I say, in the middle of July about to put on a sweater), but that in the end entirely supports Western cultural imperialism and appropriation. And of course heterosexual romance. If a female exists and has a personality, she must be romance fodder.
I'm just...I'm tired of it? I'm tired of 'strong female characters' meaning 'female character overcoming some past trauma who is emotionally, therefore, made of spun sugar.'.
And what was with Del Toro giving the definitions and pronunciation of kaiju and jaeger in the opening seconds of the film? What the hell was that about? Does he trust his audience so little he thinks we can't handle foreign words? Is it another signifiier of the cooptation of the alien?
I FEEL A CONFERENCE PAPER COMING ON....
Friday, July 19, 2013
collective pitchforks
I'm
sort of struggling with this developing meme in internet culture. This
idea, I don't know how to put it, that if someone has some belief you
find distasteful or if you dislike them as a person, then you should
chuck out all they've done as worthless. This motif has cropped up at
least 4 times in the last two weeks and it keeps making me more and more
uncomfortable. Most recently, the revelation that one of the developers of a game called Flight Rising is sort of a transphobic dick. (Though can I be blunt? Being surprised that a developer of a game whose premise requires the erasure of any sexuality other than heterosexual pair bonding for reproduction is sort of heterosexist is...a bit like being STUNNED to find that a developer of Call of Duty is into guns).
Let's do a thought experiment, okay? Let's take a look at the Western Literary Canon, and let's NOPE anyone who is a misogynist, imperialist, capitalist, racist, anti-Semite or homophobic. OR, just generally an asshole.
NO Greek lit: those Athenians didn't grant women full status, and they kept slaves.
No Roman lit: imperialists, the very model of a culture co-opting the cultures it colonizes.
No Medieval lit: homophobic, misogynistic, viewed any racial other as sub human.
No Shakespeare: no, no oh my no. Racist (Caliban, Othello), Imperialist, capitalist extraordinaire, trivializes rape
No Chaucer, of course: imperialist, sexist.
No Margery Kempe: internalized misogyny, homophobic.
No Dryden: imperialist, racist
No Pope: trivializes rape
No Swift: racist, also an asshole.
No Austen: classist, imperialist, heterosexist
No Bronte: racist (oh god Bertha), heterosexist
No Lawrence: misogynist, major asshole, his depiction of Mexico in the Plumed Serpent's pretty racist, too.
No Woolf: okay I just put here here because she thought birds spoke Greek.
No Joyce: trivializes mental illness, racist, anti-Semite
No Wharton: anti-Semite
I'm assuming you know that no early American lit would make the cut for racism (Jefferson kept slaves, Melville's Queequeg makes Tonto look good, The Last of the Mohicans is just....argh.)
Okay, I think maybe you get the general trend here? Now, in most cases, I can point to places in their works where these beliefs are expressed. In some cases, no. Wharton never discusses religion in her novels, so her anti-Semitism is never 'on the page' as it were. And I've....kind of gutted the entire Western Canon.
Maybe it's, you know, the bias of my job, but I don't think that's quite a good idea? . I find a wonderful coziness in Austen, I adore Wharton, and Pope? Well, he won my heart by his life story (as a Catholic, he was marginalized, not allowed to own property, and was the first writer to earn his entire living from his pen. His friend had to sign for his house. He was also crippled. Also Essay on Man is amazing.) Is there NOTHING good in Shakespeare? Is there nothing good in any American lit? Is there nothing wonderful in Plato or Socrates?
It's the whole 'baby out with the bathwater' thing that distresses me. Because I can look at these people and say whoa, problem, son, but I can still find worth and value and beauty in their works. Maybe I look at my bookshelf and feel like I'm somehow a rotten person for loving these people despite their beliefs that I don't agree with. I feel guilty, like I'm somehow complicit in their worldview. But I know I'm not. I think that no one's perfect.
At first I was going to say, well, you know, they're products of their time. Singling out Wharton or Jefferson or The Bard when the majority of the culture they lived in believed the same thing is kind of unfair.
But then I thought, well, that's true. They were products of their time. And guess what else was a product of their time? Their wit, the beautiful words they created, those fantastic characters that have become, as Shakespeare gives us 'household names'. The time that created the good in them was the same time that created the 'bad' in them.
More than that, I worry about where this leads. Not just the idea that now we throw out the Western Canon and I guess we twiddle our thumbs in lit classes, unable to read anything, but this newfangled censorship. People WILL disagree with you in life. People WILL have opinions maybe you don't like. (My grammy was racist: am I supposed to not love my own grandmother?) I find as I get older I want to look for the good even in the bad. Because someone believes something I don't care for doesn't mean they are worthless. I mean, didn't it make like WORLD NEWS the other week that the Dalai Lama said he'd be okay with a female successor? It was news because, guess what? The Tibetan Buddhists are....oh boy howdy, pretty sexist. Does that mean there's no value in ANY of their teachings?
Good lord, I hope not.
And I worry where this goes, because this strikes me as the thought police, as a form of rage-based censorship, that can only lead to burning books. I mean, they're already wishing this Thrage man dead.
Let's do a thought experiment, okay? Let's take a look at the Western Literary Canon, and let's NOPE anyone who is a misogynist, imperialist, capitalist, racist, anti-Semite or homophobic. OR, just generally an asshole.
NO Greek lit: those Athenians didn't grant women full status, and they kept slaves.
No Roman lit: imperialists, the very model of a culture co-opting the cultures it colonizes.
No Medieval lit: homophobic, misogynistic, viewed any racial other as sub human.
No Shakespeare: no, no oh my no. Racist (Caliban, Othello), Imperialist, capitalist extraordinaire, trivializes rape
No Chaucer, of course: imperialist, sexist.
No Margery Kempe: internalized misogyny, homophobic.
No Dryden: imperialist, racist
No Pope: trivializes rape
No Swift: racist, also an asshole.
No Austen: classist, imperialist, heterosexist
No Bronte: racist (oh god Bertha), heterosexist
No Lawrence: misogynist, major asshole, his depiction of Mexico in the Plumed Serpent's pretty racist, too.
No Woolf: okay I just put here here because she thought birds spoke Greek.
No Joyce: trivializes mental illness, racist, anti-Semite
No Wharton: anti-Semite
I'm assuming you know that no early American lit would make the cut for racism (Jefferson kept slaves, Melville's Queequeg makes Tonto look good, The Last of the Mohicans is just....argh.)
Okay, I think maybe you get the general trend here? Now, in most cases, I can point to places in their works where these beliefs are expressed. In some cases, no. Wharton never discusses religion in her novels, so her anti-Semitism is never 'on the page' as it were. And I've....kind of gutted the entire Western Canon.
Maybe it's, you know, the bias of my job, but I don't think that's quite a good idea? . I find a wonderful coziness in Austen, I adore Wharton, and Pope? Well, he won my heart by his life story (as a Catholic, he was marginalized, not allowed to own property, and was the first writer to earn his entire living from his pen. His friend had to sign for his house. He was also crippled. Also Essay on Man is amazing.) Is there NOTHING good in Shakespeare? Is there nothing good in any American lit? Is there nothing wonderful in Plato or Socrates?
It's the whole 'baby out with the bathwater' thing that distresses me. Because I can look at these people and say whoa, problem, son, but I can still find worth and value and beauty in their works. Maybe I look at my bookshelf and feel like I'm somehow a rotten person for loving these people despite their beliefs that I don't agree with. I feel guilty, like I'm somehow complicit in their worldview. But I know I'm not. I think that no one's perfect.
At first I was going to say, well, you know, they're products of their time. Singling out Wharton or Jefferson or The Bard when the majority of the culture they lived in believed the same thing is kind of unfair.
But then I thought, well, that's true. They were products of their time. And guess what else was a product of their time? Their wit, the beautiful words they created, those fantastic characters that have become, as Shakespeare gives us 'household names'. The time that created the good in them was the same time that created the 'bad' in them.
More than that, I worry about where this leads. Not just the idea that now we throw out the Western Canon and I guess we twiddle our thumbs in lit classes, unable to read anything, but this newfangled censorship. People WILL disagree with you in life. People WILL have opinions maybe you don't like. (My grammy was racist: am I supposed to not love my own grandmother?) I find as I get older I want to look for the good even in the bad. Because someone believes something I don't care for doesn't mean they are worthless. I mean, didn't it make like WORLD NEWS the other week that the Dalai Lama said he'd be okay with a female successor? It was news because, guess what? The Tibetan Buddhists are....oh boy howdy, pretty sexist. Does that mean there's no value in ANY of their teachings?
Good lord, I hope not.
And I worry where this goes, because this strikes me as the thought police, as a form of rage-based censorship, that can only lead to burning books. I mean, they're already wishing this Thrage man dead.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Charivari of Things
So, for PCA this past spring, I wrote a paper about shadow, empurata and
identity in robots. And it was one of those conference papers that are
like 'hey, it's a thing! look at this thing! it sure is a thing!' where
you know there's something interesting under there, but you can't quite
figure out what it is. Especially not in a 15 minute paper.
Well, so I was thinking more about it. I realize it could so very easily work to explain post-humanism. Our idea of the fractured self, the non-centered subject, is actually pretty clearly exploded in the test. Because it goes like this, very basically: posthuman theory indicates that we are, in a sense, not 'us'. There is no coherent you or me, there is no 'inner self'. This kind of goes against all the Western society's vision of a coherent self, and a coherent self that creates a coherent narrative, a 'life story'. I've often sort of joked that when you're ready to die, you'll look back and see how dots lined up and What It All Meant, that you'll then, and only then, know the 'whole story', the narrative arc, the main plot/theme/conflict of your life.
That kind of structure has kept Western literature alive for two thousand years. The idea that IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Every novel has its denouement, where all the pieces finally rattle into place. Everything happens for a reason. I could pile on the cliches, but you get the idea. The notion of narrative coherence controls Western literature. (If you've ever read any World Lit, especially Asian, you might notice it's...different
Post Humanism chucks all that out the window. There's no coherent self.
In a very basic form, we get this. You have a facebook page, a tumblr, a twitter, maybe a pinterest, etc etc. And you know, you've seen it at least at one point, where someone knows you only from one site, where you're only available in small bits, that the you they know isn't the whole picture. Or you've had something you've wanted to post, an article you found, a joke and you have to stop and say, OKAY, which one do I post it to? Is this something I tweet, or do I save it for my livejournal or on tumblr or, or, or.... That's a tiny internal recognition that the persona you develop for each site is slightly different. It is nearly impossible to be the same throughout all sites--if nothing else because you'd spend half your day crossposting across every site.
Well, there you go, right? There is no coherent you, only a bunch of micro-yous, each of them IS you, but none of them is the totality, each is a fragment, like a hologram, of you. And each of these holograms, curiously, exists in pixels. Each of these yous: twitter you, tumblr you, blog you, facebook you--they exist simply in cyberspace.
Haraway spent pages squeeing that the internet, the computer, the dawning digital age, the age of information would allow us free rein over information, over ourselves, and like the heroes in cyberpunk novels, the self, the 'meat' is the thing left behind. She envisioned that the internet would set us free of the meat (her ideas really cling to that mind/body dichotomy in ways that discomfit me more and more), so that racism, sexism, any sort of prejudice that relates to the body would either simply fall away, or we'd be free to open other doors, try on other identities, embrace this new freedom.
Maybe that is happening, but it's sure NOT happening on Reddit or fandom.
Anyway, back to center: the whole idea of changing out parts of the body, or removing parts of the personality or identity, really say some interesting things about post human identity. What I'd struggled with in the paper was that I was trying to make it all *mean* something, connect it to the Western tradition where it all makes narrative sense. Taking the three--torture (which plants one solidly in the body and turns it into an enemy); empurata, which makes the body alien, othered; and shadowplay, which disrupts/assaults the integrity of the mind--they all call into question the very notion of the coherent, stable self.
Well, so I was thinking more about it. I realize it could so very easily work to explain post-humanism. Our idea of the fractured self, the non-centered subject, is actually pretty clearly exploded in the test. Because it goes like this, very basically: posthuman theory indicates that we are, in a sense, not 'us'. There is no coherent you or me, there is no 'inner self'. This kind of goes against all the Western society's vision of a coherent self, and a coherent self that creates a coherent narrative, a 'life story'. I've often sort of joked that when you're ready to die, you'll look back and see how dots lined up and What It All Meant, that you'll then, and only then, know the 'whole story', the narrative arc, the main plot/theme/conflict of your life.
That kind of structure has kept Western literature alive for two thousand years. The idea that IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Every novel has its denouement, where all the pieces finally rattle into place. Everything happens for a reason. I could pile on the cliches, but you get the idea. The notion of narrative coherence controls Western literature. (If you've ever read any World Lit, especially Asian, you might notice it's...different
Post Humanism chucks all that out the window. There's no coherent self.
In a very basic form, we get this. You have a facebook page, a tumblr, a twitter, maybe a pinterest, etc etc. And you know, you've seen it at least at one point, where someone knows you only from one site, where you're only available in small bits, that the you they know isn't the whole picture. Or you've had something you've wanted to post, an article you found, a joke and you have to stop and say, OKAY, which one do I post it to? Is this something I tweet, or do I save it for my livejournal or on tumblr or, or, or.... That's a tiny internal recognition that the persona you develop for each site is slightly different. It is nearly impossible to be the same throughout all sites--if nothing else because you'd spend half your day crossposting across every site.
Well, there you go, right? There is no coherent you, only a bunch of micro-yous, each of them IS you, but none of them is the totality, each is a fragment, like a hologram, of you. And each of these holograms, curiously, exists in pixels. Each of these yous: twitter you, tumblr you, blog you, facebook you--they exist simply in cyberspace.
Haraway spent pages squeeing that the internet, the computer, the dawning digital age, the age of information would allow us free rein over information, over ourselves, and like the heroes in cyberpunk novels, the self, the 'meat' is the thing left behind. She envisioned that the internet would set us free of the meat (her ideas really cling to that mind/body dichotomy in ways that discomfit me more and more), so that racism, sexism, any sort of prejudice that relates to the body would either simply fall away, or we'd be free to open other doors, try on other identities, embrace this new freedom.
Maybe that is happening, but it's sure NOT happening on Reddit or fandom.
Anyway, back to center: the whole idea of changing out parts of the body, or removing parts of the personality or identity, really say some interesting things about post human identity. What I'd struggled with in the paper was that I was trying to make it all *mean* something, connect it to the Western tradition where it all makes narrative sense. Taking the three--torture (which plants one solidly in the body and turns it into an enemy); empurata, which makes the body alien, othered; and shadowplay, which disrupts/assaults the integrity of the mind--they all call into question the very notion of the coherent, stable self.
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