Search Results for: mad max

‘Supergirl,’ “Fight or Flight”: No One Puts Kara in a Refrigerator

Its blend of superpowered silliness and reflexive cultural commentary with a sincere emotional core is nearly Whedon-esque. And no, that’s not a bad thing at all.

Children: The Great Qualifier of Female Violence

True, the rape revenge trope has been put at bay, but there is still a gender issue behind the remaining motivation. It focuses around the assumption of maternity being the all-encompassing passion. Until female characters can be violent for reasons that have nothing to do with their womanhood, there still isn’t complete equality in media.

‘Hard Candy’: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

‘Stonewall’ Under Fire

The director missed an important opportunity to bring visibility to a highly marginalized and forgotten about group of people with ‘Stonewall,’ but instead he made a film that was more easily digestible for a mainstream audience. It comes as no surprise then that members of the queer community have had such strong negative reactions to the film.

‘The Tribe’: Navigating the Beauty and Horror of Silent Children

The film moves through arcs of pity, empathy, and then downright horror. Violence is abrupt and can come from anyone. I was blessed to watch the film with an audience that was one third deaf, and the experience of witnessing visceral scenes with the sounds of hands pounding, slapping, moving around me with frantic finger blurs of American Sign Language made the viewing electric.

Unity Through Differentiation: The Radical Sex Positivity of ‘Sense8’

The net effect, woven throughout the series, is a sex positivity that both embraces differentiation and recognizes the universal experiences that can work to close gaps of gender, orientation, and race that routinely stymie the discourse.

In Which I Attempt to Convince the World to Watch All Things Tig Notaro

I had never heard anything like this sketch; I was enthralled. The timing. The repetition. The silence. Such gorgeous pauses. In a world where it feels like we need to fill every space with some yammering, to hear someone on stage using silence–to be brave enough to use it–made me take notice of this person Tig. And not just me. ‘The New York Times’ ran a piece about her 13-minute paean to Taylor Dane.

The Male Gaze, LOL: How Comedies Are Changing the Way We Look

The body is no longer a Lacanian reflected ideal, it is a biological mess that often exists beyond anyone’s control. The effect of this convention is two-fold–a bait and switch of expectations but also the creation of a sense of biological sameness: man or woman, everybody poops. By placing the body in a biological space instead of a symbolic one, physical comedy is questioning the visual tendencies of subconscious desire.

‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’ and Scares Us

Amirpour’s camera (the magnificent cinematography is by Lyle Vincent) lingers over Arash’s beauty–his high cheekbones and large, long-lashed eyes under a dark, curly version of James Dean’s pompadour–in a way few male filmmakers would.

Shishihokodan: The Destructive Female Gaze of YA Supernatural Action Romantic Comedy

Recognizing the function of Ice Prince/Wolf in YA SARCom implies the continual defeat of the Whore as structural necessity in male writings also – as a pursuing character she must be resisted to generate sexual tension, regardless of whether the male author is Team Madonna or Team Whore. The destructive impact on the self-image of female viewers is pure collateral damage, just as our SARCom is poisonously emasculating for male viewers.

The Veil of Diversity in ‘Sleepy Hollow’

The realm of sci-fi and fantasy offers many possibilities to challenge the status quo. It’s the ultimate platform to show diversity and portray a more nuanced characterization of people. Let’s hope that ‘Sleepy Hollow’ can pull of what it has planned and there will be no need to dust off the #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter hashtag.