‘The Mortal Instruments’: City of Mansplaining

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
Written by Erin Tatum. 
It looks like I’ll be taking the hipster side of things in Women in Sports Week with The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Shadow hunting may not be considered a mainstream sport yet, but then again, most people said that it would be impossible to turn Quidditch into a sport. Those naysayers severely underestimated the number of college kids that would be willing to run around with a broomstick chafing their crotch. I eagerly anticipate the inevitable hordes of geeky/drunk college kids lighting their shadows on fire and stamping them out. Anyway, it’s not like athleticism or any other hobbies are required in City of Bones. If you’re a girl, you barely need to have a functioning brain! Any man within a 50 mile radius will come running to dictate everything you ever wanted to know about life.
Clary and Simon.
Before I get too deep into sarcasm, let’s back up and set the stage for the impending testosterone-saturated wasteland. Full disclaimer that I haven’t read the books, so don’t expect any comparisons. Clary (which sounds suspiciously close to Cassandra Clare, the author) is just a Normal Teenage Girl who has recently been doodling strange symbols everywhere. Her mother Jocelyn (Lena Headey) notices and nervously tries to stop her from going out alone, but Clary (Lily Collins) blows her off to hang out with Simon (Robert Sheehan). Judging by the glasses and khaki jacket, Simon is going to be the geeky friendzoned sidekick. He follows her around like a hopelessly lost puppy, and I’m preemptively gagging at the Anguished Declaration of Love that seems to already be ebbing at the surface. Man, if I could take a second to be shallow, Robert Sheehan is consistently gorgeous, and they have to try really hard to make him frumpy. His career confuses me because he either plays hedonistic pricks or overly romantic saps. Either way, his characters always have lady issues in that he either objectifies them as a Casanova or demonizes them as a nice guy. In case you haven’t guessed, this is clearly going to be a case of the latter.
Jace is 2 pretty 4 u.
Clary drags a reluctant Simon into a club because she recognizes the symbol on the sign as the one she can’t get out of her head, even though no one else can see what she’s talking about. A stranger overhears her and convinces the bouncer to let them through. Inside, Clary sees some odd looking patrons. She watches a mysterious blonde boy kill the stranger and releases a bloodcurdling scream, causing the rest of the club to stare at her in alarm because they once again don’t see what she’s looking at. Clary is rattled, but goes to a coffee shop with Simon the next day. Meanwhile, thugs break into her house and corner her mom, demanding to see an unspecified cup. Jocelyn beats them over the head with a frying pan and barricades herself in the bathroom. She frantically calls the kids. Clary is having a very intense conversation with the blonde boy, Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower). Neither Simon nor Clary picks up her call, which is quite a heavy-handed commentary on how teenagers aren’t emotionally attentive enough to their parents and yada yada. “Kids, pick up calls from your parents on the first ring! You never know if they’re having a near-death experience!” Clary finally answers and Jocelyn tells her she loves her before presumably committing suicide by drinking poison. Kiss that last sweet drop of estrogen goodbye, because it’s more or less a sausage fest from here on out.
“I wonder how soon we can start fighting over her after she wakes up.”
After racing home to save her mom, Clary finds the house abandoned with Jocelyn nowhere in sight. Jace saves her from the last of the demons, brushing off her bewilderment and describing as much of their supernatural world as he can. He and Jocelyn are shadow hunters. This is where the mansplaining starts and it only goes downhill from here. Jace and Clary try and rescue Clary’s family friend Luke from torture, but Clary feels betrayed when Luke tells his captors that he was only cozying up to her family for the cup. Jace tells Clary that they need to go to The Institute, which seems like a poor man’s holographic Hogwarts with more ghosts and less British people. Simon winds up getting dragged along too by coincidence. We can’t have that awkward teen love triangle angst unless all three spokes are shoehorned into the same contrived spectacular battle! Shoving a girl between her socially constipated best friend and a hotter, usually supernatural/sociopathic lust object (or two) has never been done before! Putting a girl in the middle of a heterosexual love triangle may feel progressive in giving the illusion of female agency, but really it just sets her up for failure. Masculine entitlement remains intact; it’s just a question of who she’ll end up with. It’s property ping pong. Clary tearfully collapses on the way to The Institute, reacting quite normally to her life disintegrating in the past 36 hours. Luckily, Jace is there to deliver a rousing monologue about why she needs to do what he tells her, complete with pseudo-eskimo kissing in the pouring rain. They make it to The Institute, where Clary immediately passes out from a demon-inflicted wound. She dramatically faints onto Simon, and then both boys watch in concern as she loses consciousness. Gee, I sure am excited to deal with their circle jerk dynamic for the next 90 minutes!
Alec threatens Clary to keep his secret safe.
Clary’s survival confirms that she’s supernatural. She meets Jace’s tutor, Hodge (Jarred Harris, nearly unrecognizable), who fills her in on the shadow hunters. Everyone seems to like her except Alec (Kevin Zegers). Alec is very possessive of Jace and doesn’t want Clary at The Institute. At this point I joked to my mom that Alec probably had a crush on Jace. What can I say, I try to find homoeroticism in everything when I’m bored or frustrated with a plot. Alec’s sister Isabelle confirms the crush to Clary in the next scene. As excited as I was that one of my crackpot queer angst ideas came true, not even a bisexual love triangle could shake up this hetero snooze fest. It’s a sad day when I type that sentence. For the most part, Alec is portrayed as deeply ashamed of both his orientation and his attraction to Jace, who is oblivious. This might be more sympathetic if they interacted enough to support the original best friend premise. Alec just sort of follows Jace around and tells people to stay away from him but is always belligerent about his motives. Using assumed incompatible orientation as a means for setting up your Alpha couple and fueling Clary’s entitlement complex is lazy and vaguely homophobic in that it establishes Clary as a doe-eyed beacon of femininity wrongfully pitted against the delusional, predatory gay.
Looking hot while defeated is a complicated art form.
The gang has to go to a party at Magnus Bane’s to get answers about why Clary’s memory is blocked. This conveniently involves dressing very provocatively. As the only other remaining female cast member, Isabelle gives Clary tips on how to sex it up. Clary proves her identity as a Good Girl by complaining incessantly that she looks like a prostitute, an opinion immediately confirmed by the men as soon as they leave Isabelle’s room. Nonetheless, Jace compliments her and Simon stares at her dry mouthed. Simon cements his emasculation by being roofied at the party and kidnapped by vampires. Of course, Jace engineers a dramatic rescue because Clary is too distraught to think clearly. Those silly women and their emotions! The vampires attack Jace and company on their way out, leading to some elaborate sword fighting while a weakened Simon pathetically stumbles around in the background, his weight supported by Clary. As soon as Simon loses his claim to masculinity, he also loses his humanity. The worst thing you can be in this movie is feminine or effeminate, unless you’re Clary, and even then you have to have a truck load of special powers to compensate for it. I choose to ignore the gendered fuckery of this scene and focus on the fact that Robert Sheehan is shirtless.
“This is not the sleeping arrangement I imagined.”
While Simon recovers, Clary and Jace take the opportunity to celebrate Clary’s recent birthday because they’re both vapid, self-absorbed people. Jace takes her to some sort of garden room with incredibly crappy CGI effects. They have an Almost Kiss, but Jace cuts it off, which seems anticlimactic until Clary trips and falls into him, leading to a gratuitous make out session. A fantastic drinking game for City of Bones would be to take a shot every time Clary gasps. Girl has an excellent and/or terrible set of lungs. Simon predictably opens his door just as Jace and Clary are leaning in for the farewell kiss. An epic stereo geyser of friendzoned tantrums ensues. Jace is offended by Clary’s attempts to downplay their relationship to Simon, storming off and shouting, “the kiss wasn’t that special to me either!!1!1” Oh, just shut up and kiss Alec already. Simon piles on by giving Clary the profession of love she’s been avoiding the entire movie. As annoyed as I am with the romanticization of male entitlement, my biggest issue lies with what makes people like Jace and Clary worthy of such tortured admirers in the first place. They’re both just pretty faces with zero substance and a bunch of informed attributes. There is no there there. Simon and Alec should hook up instead.
“I’ll never drink from a red solo cup again!”

Every guy continues to tell Clary how she should act and how she should feel and about her past and what she can and can’t handle until some plot has to happen. The implications of deliberately denying a young woman knowledge about her own abilities through memory suppression out of mercy has startling echoes of rape culture and is therefore glossed over by the excitement of the romantic tension in Jace and Clary’s mentor–student dynamic. Alec is gravely wounded by the only prominent woman of color in the film who turns out to be an evil witch because I guess they’re just going for a stereotype smorgasbord at this point. Magnus Bane arrives to heal him, but it will take the rest of the movie, freeing up Jace to go be a hero and avoid any serious discussion of Alec’s feelings. Jace also barely interacts with Alec after his injury, in contrast to Clary, who the narrative would like you to believe almost single-handedly nursed Simon back to health. Some best friend. Also, Clary stole the Mortal Cup back from the witch, and some dude named Valentino comes back, which the audience knows is bad because the whole reason Jocelyn drank the poison was to avoid him.

“Halt! I will smite you with my inexplicable appeal!”

I apologize that my summary of the finale will be somewhat brief and scattered. My estrogen-addled brain must not have been complex enough to understand it and I didn’t have a man with me to explain what was happening. The final climax goes on for what feels like years and it just refuses to die. We get some backstory diarrhea in a last-ditch effort to turn Jace and Clary into compelling characters. Basically, Valentino pulls a Darth Vader on Clary and says that he is her father. Hodge is apparently evil and in cahoots with Valentino to get the cup. There is a Seaworld-esque water portal of great significance, which Clary manages to dive into without issue despite the fact that you supposedly need years of training to do so. She’s just that special. Her mom is in suspended animation a la Hercules on the other side. Valentino tells Jace that he’s his father as well, making Jace and Clary brother and sister. This is probably a lie because Hodge pulled the suggestion of said truth bomb out of his ass when he didn’t want Valentino yelling at him, but it might be true, and there’s some flashback evidence to support it. Either way, Jace and Clary’s near sexytimes just became very awkward. Simon and Isabelle have been hanging out a lot and fighting together, so I’m sure he will be settling for her in the future. Clary saves the day when she carves another unknown symbol into her hand to stop the shadow monsters because she realizes she can manipulate anything she points the symbol at. This is both a weird glorification of self harm and a cringe-inducing level of Mary Sueness. No one has ever seen her power before! She patches up things with Luke and rouses her mom from her coma with an apologetic monologue of love. Yawn.

“My head says incest, but my heart says yes!”

All seems well as Jocelyn recovers from the hospital with Luke by her side. Simon says (ha!) sorry for being a pouty douche and delivers the death knoll for his own relevance by voluntarily opting out of the love triangle, at least for now. Clary returns home and uses the same power that she just saved an entire building of people with to tidy the house. Supernatural abilities – good for salvaging humanity and preparing to be a housewife! Jace appears to compliment her domestic skills and calls her an angel. That’s likely foreshadowing, but I threw up in my mouth regardless. The problem with female exceptionalism is it really loses its luster of empowerment if it’s only affirmed by the approval of the male gaze. Jace admits that he doesn’t think the sibling allegations are true and Clary hesitantly wraps her arms around his waist as they ride off on a motorcycle to contemplate their potentially incestuous future.

13 thoughts on “‘The Mortal Instruments’: City of Mansplaining”

  1. I’m usually the first to say that “the problem is not that I see sexism everywhere but that you don’t” but this time I don’t really see it. I like Walt and dislike Skylar and Marie because the show was written that way. (Jesse is actually my favorite character but not because he is a great guy) Walt is the guy that we are supposed to relate to. It has nothing to do with who is right or wrong, who is female or male … it is all about the story and how it is written.

    When I watch Nurse Jackie I am in Jackie’s corner even though she is wrong much of the time and I dislike her husband even though he is really the victim and hasn’t really done anything wrong. It’s the way the story is written.

    So, although real life might equate to strong women being characterized in negative ways I don’t agree that it has anything to do with what character the majority of people like on Breaking Bad.

    Plus in my opinion I don’t always look at these women on Breaking Bad and think “they are strong”. I love the way the actors play the characters. I think they play them great and believable. But imo they are characters who are just as flawed as the guys on the show. There is no one on this show that I would want to emulate irl. I don’t admire any of them.

    But I LOVE THE SHOW!!

  2. I read the books a while back so I can’t remember when Alec actually came out as gay. Did they explicitly make it clear that he was gay in this film? Because if not, then people who have never read the books might think he’s bisexual, or something. At first he’s very ashamed of his sexuality and doesn’t truly come out as gay and accept himself until later on. He is an interesting character none the less.

    Anyway, fantastic review of the film! Yes, even the books have problems and I’m glad this is being addressed. :-)

  3. Thanks for calling attention to that! I apologize that it kind of came off like I was assuming Alec was gay. Honestly, the movie was such an overstuffed mess that I can’t remember if he explicitly confirmed his orientation. I will admit that I liked that the other characters just referencing it as him being in love with Jace rather than him being gay. Maybe my presumption is just a reflection of my low expectations, since bisexuality and especially male bisexuality doesn’t tend to fly in mainstream cinema.

  5. It must be the Twilight effect. Apparently the most swoon-worthy fantasy is having guys constantly assume you’re stupid and frail, as long as they also paradoxically see you as Aphrodite and will do anything to get into your nondescript pants. But it’s totes PROGRESSIVE because you’re the PROTAGONIST! Take that, patriarchy!

  8. Really? I mean REALLY? Neurotic, scared-of-her own-shadow Lydia is calling the shots? You must live in a very warped version of reality. Skylar made a SUGGESTION to Walt and suddenly she’s in charge of him somehow, I guess. Marie whining and complaining that Hank needs to take care of Walt really shows her leadership skills by the way, real keen comprehension skills you have there.

  9. Hm…actually mary sue is a sexist term. If the character is badly written, then just call it badly written. You know who else is mary sue?

    “So, there’s this girl. She’s tragically orphaned and richer than anyone on the planet. Every guy she meets falls in love with her, but in between torrid romances she rejects them all because she dedicated to what is Pure and Good. She has genius level intellect, Olympic-athelete level athletic ability and incredible good looks. She is consumed by terrible angst, but this only makes guys want her more. She has no superhuman abilities, yet she is more competent than her superhuman friends and defeats superhumans with ease. She has unshakably loyal friends and allies, despite the fact she treats them pretty badly. They fear and respect her, and defer to her orders. Everyone is obsessed with her, even her enemies are attracted to her. She can plan ahead for anything and she’s generally right with any conclusion she makes. People who defy her are inevitably wrong.

    God, what a Mary Sue.

    I just described Batman.”

    “The idea that woman has to “earn” any power, praise, love, or plot prominence is central to Mary Sue. Men do not have to do this, they are naturally assumed to be powerful, central and loveable. That’s why it’s the first thing thrown at a female character- what has she done to be given the same consideration as a male character? Why is she suddenly usurping a male role? “Mary Sue” is the easiest way to dismiss a character. It sounds bad to say “I don’t like this female character. I don’t like that this woman is powerful. I don’t like it when the plot focuses on her. I don’t like that a character I like has affections for her.” But “Mary Sue” is a way to say these things without really saying them. It gives you legitimacy.”

    You can read the rest here: http://adventuresofcomicbookgirl.tumblr.com/post/13913540194/mary-sue-what-are-you-or-why-the-concept-of-sue-is

  10. Yeah, bullshit because when a guy is a Mary Sue, they’re called a Gary Stu and Batman is considered one of them. Guys can also be that. Whenever people try and say that Mary Sue’s are sexist, all I see are people trying to justify writing horrible one dimensional characters who get everything they want.

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