Gun Control – Bitch Flicks

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!

The audience knows so much more than the characters that at a certain point, it doesn’t work as dramatic irony anymore; it’s just frustrating.

I know I called Fear the Walking Dead reactionary two weeks ago (they took last week off for Labor Day), but I want to retract that. The show is not really conservative, in the same way that the current crop of Republican presidential candidates isn’t really conservative. It’s more radical and disturbing than a simple longing for a bygone fantasy era of law and order when everyone knew their place.

This week, tough, smart widow Madison (Kim Dickens, still doing better than the material deserves), heroin-addicted Nick (Frank Dillane, whose perpetually wild-eyed countenance and exaggerated limp are certain to get him mistaken for a zombie and shot some day), and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) are stuck at home waiting for Travis (Cliff Curtis) as the neighbors begin eating each other. Travis is stuck in an L.A. barbershop with his ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and their petulant teen son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie).

The barber, an El Salvadoran immigrant named Daniel (the great Ruben Blades) doesn’t seem to like Travis much, and it’s not clear why. He takes offense when Travis reassures Chris, who’s worried about the rioting and looting outside, that they won’t break into the barbershop because they wouldn’t be interested in stealing a bunch of combs. “There’s more than just combs in here,” Daniel indignantly tells Travis, thankfully out of earshot of Chris, who would probably be terrified to learn that the shop also has scissors, shaving cream, hair gel, and other loot-worthy items. In any case, the writers clearly struggled with how to introduce Daniel’s mistrust/dislike of the generally likeable-enough Travis, and ultimately failed to come up with anything compelling. So, the combs thing.

Eventually, rioters burn down the building next door, forcing Travis, Chris, Liza, and Daniel to run, along with Daniel’s wife Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola) and their adult daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason). It’s mayhem on the streets, as protesters, rioters, and looters dissolve into a violent mass, including some who have turned and are eating each other. Kind of the way the mainstream media depicted Occupy Wall Street. Cops are eating each other, too, though, adding to the madness. While Daniel wants to split away from Travis and his people (you remember, because of the whole combs thing), Griselda is injured when cops using firehoses on the protesters knock down a scaffolding. Travis offers to drive them to a hospital, but hospitals are pretty much zombie central, so Daniel convinces Travis to take them to Madison’s home.

Meanwhile, Madison and the kids are staying up late playing Monopoly. Hey, they don’t know it’s the apocalypse yet. It’s a reasonable way for a mom to keep her kids from thinking about what’s going on outside while they wait for Travis to come home. It doesn’t make sense for Madison not to tell Alicia what’s going on out there, but it’s for the girl’s own good, right, and I’m sure she won’t do anything stupid and reckless because she doesn’t understand the threat. Later, after a dog startles them, they decide to go to the neighbor’s house, because they have a shotgun, but for some reason they leave the back door wide open, which is unwise in L.A., even if you don’t know there are zombies everywhere. After they find the gun, they hear the dog barking, and look back at their house to see the zombie neighbor go in. Do zombies eat dogs? Why yes, they do. Then Madison sees Travis pulling up to the house.

In a recurring motif, Madison is too slow, or doesn’t yell loudly enough to keep someone from entering a dangerous situation. Travis goes inside, followed by Daniel and them. He finds the neighbor munching on the dead dog, and surmises, “He’s sick.” While Travis struggles to keep the “sick” neighbor from biting him, Daniel comes up with the shotgun and fires. The first shot just gives us the best gore effect so far (and that’s what this is all about, for a lot of viewers), but the second one goes straight into the brain. It’s almost like Daniel has seen those George Romero movies that don’t exist in this universe.

Travis’ compassion is clearly meant to be seen as a liability. When he finds Daniel showing Chris how to use a shotgun, he gets angry. “You know how I feel about guns,” he chastises Madison. Yes, because gun control is not a reasonable response to the insane level of gun violence in our society, but something that weak-ass people will still be worrying about in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

And then there’s the neighbor, Susan. Susan was apparently Madison’s rock after her husband died. She tries to eat Alicia, so Madison considers braining her, but Travis has a hard time accepting that she’s not just “sick.” He convinces Madison not to end Susan, while Daniel looks on from a distance and pronounces Travis “weak.” When Ofelia tries to convince him they should leave with Travis and Madison because they’re good people, Daniel says flatly, “Good people are the first ones to die.” Well, on this show, after Black people, apparently.

The next morning, Travis, Madison and their families are set to leave town, but as they’re driving off, Madison spots Susan’s husband returning home. I didn’t catch the name of this actor, but his obliviously cheerful calling out to his wife as though he was in a soap commercial (“Honey, the airport was closed because of the zombie apocalypse! What’s for breakfast?”) was another welcome dose of unintended comedy. Anyway, Madison tries to warn him, but again, she’s too late. She needs to take yelling lessons, or something. Just as Susan is about to bite the poor guy, the army moves in and takes her out. It should be a poignant moment, after all the hand-wringing over Susan. Instead, it’s just more ridiculousness. Travis thinks the cavalry’s arrived, and they’re saved. Daniel, who probably came to this country fleeing death squads in El Salvador, knows better, yet again.

It would help if the show was more coherent and focused in its direction, and sure, if the writing were stronger, but the aesthetic problems already seem like they’re inherent to the premise. The audience knows so much more than the characters that at a certain point, it doesn’t work as dramatic irony anymore; it’s just frustrating.

Beyond that, the show’s themes are troubling. After killing off every Black character, and depicting police brutality protesters as ignorant buffoons and lowlifes last week, this week, the show slams gun control and suggests a dystopian future where the government stepping in during a crisis is the worst possible thing that could happen. Fear the Walking Dead is falling more and more in line with radical right-wing politics every week. It can only end with Donald Trump vanquishing the zombie curse while calling Travis a “loser” and selling his new book, The Art of Zombie-Killing.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”

Tribeca Reviews: Lost Children in ‘Meadowland’ and ‘The Armor of Light’

In a close-up Sarah takes a piece of a (year-old) cookie that is trapped deep in the car seat and puts it in her mouth, like a communion wafer: she closes her eyes and, for the first time since before her son went missing, we see her face smooth, for a moment, into bliss. The only other time we see her free from tension and sorrow, is when, in another stunning shot, this one on a rooftop, she states with great confidence, “My son is alive.”

Written by Ren Jender.

Meadowland, part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival (playing this Friday, April 24) has a great first scene–a husband and wife in the front seat of a car with their young son chattering and eating cookies in the back. What we know (from every synopsis of this film) is: the son will soon go missing. So the short car ride and trip to the gas station convenience store becomes a thriller in which we wonder: will it happen now? How about now? At the terrible moment when both parents realize their son is lost the camera lingers separately on their anguished faces, then we’re immediately transported to a year later: the mother, Sarah (Olivia Wilde) drunk at their friends’ apartment while the husband, Phil (Luke Wilson) sits on the couch wearing a tight smile. Wilson turns in another solid performance as a working class guy: after a similar role in The Skeleton Twins, whose cinematographer, Reed Morano, is Meadowland’s director (her first time directing).

The couple, we see in a cab ride home, are still stung with grief, especially since they’ve never found out what happened to their son. A detective visits with vague leads about what might have happened to the boy (the worst scenario possible, perhaps caught and eventually killed by a serial pedophile), but Sarah refuses to even glance at the photos of the suspect.

Morano acts as the film’s cinematographer as well as the director (a more unusual combo than one would expect) and, as in her work in Kill Your Darlings, The Skeleton Twins, and the first season of the recently cancelled Looking, she has a stunning visual sense: impressionistic shots of sky and clouds, and one scene with the camera looking an animal directly in the eye. She also shows a gift for working with actors. In a close-up Sarah takes a piece of a (year-old) cookie that is trapped deep in the car seat and puts it in her mouth, like a communion wafer: she closes her eyes and, for the first time since before her son went missing, we see her face smooth, for a moment, into bliss. The only other time we see her free from tension and sorrow is when, in another stunning shot, this one on a rooftop, she states with great confidence, “My son is alive.”

Olivia Wilde, as Sarah, Director Reed Morano shooting behind her — Olivia Wilde, as Sarah, director Reed Morano shooting behind her

Throughout much of the rest of the action, Wilde as Sarah, with dark circles under her large pale eyes and hollows under her cheeks, resembles the figure in the Munch painting The Scream, especially when she wears a yellow hoodie to wander the city by herself, sometimes imagining she catches a glimpse of her son on the crowded sidewalk, another time teetering too close to the edge of the subway platform.

Phil is a New York city cop, and the film’s script operates under what–considering recent headlines–seems like the naive assumption that he mainly acts as a kindly social worker, as when he comes in for a repeat noise complaint from a young couple who aren’t getting along. Also in the mix is Phil’s brother, Tim (Giovanni Ribisi) who comes to stay with the couple “temporarily.” It’s the sort of role in which the screenwriter (Chris Rossi) asked himself, “How can I convey this character is a self-medicating, self-loathing fuck-up,” so gives him a line early in the film in which the character says… he’s a self-medicating asshole. Ribisi’s performance is equally unsubtle.

Sarah works as a teacher and starts to identify with an autistic student who gets in trouble for stealing school library books about his favorite obsession, elephants. She finds out he is also a foster kid. Rossi can’t seem to stop himself from piling terrible circumstances onto this kid: when Sarah follows his surly, neglectful foster mother (Elisabeth Moss, at first shot from the back and at a distance so we don’t recognize her from Mad Men) after she drops his lunch off at school, Sarah sees her disappear into a gas station bathroom to turn a trick, and when Sarah later engages her in conversation, the woman denies she has any children. She wears sweatpants with “Juicy” across the ass and bright, heavy, blue eye shadow just in case we didn’t get the point that she’s supposed to be tacky as well as a “bad” Mom.

Rossi’s penchant for overkill ruins the film in the last third, in which Sarah becomes increasingly desperate and unhinged. Meadowland is one of those movies in which to show how full of self-loathing a previously level-headed character played by a beautiful actress is, she fucks a really gross (in every sense) guy after we in the audience have repeated to ourselves, ”Please don’t fuck the gross guy. Please don’t!” Sarah also cuts into her arm, has a breakdown in front of her students, tries a highly addictive drug, and takes actions creepily parallel to those the police suspect someone did to her own son.

Pauline Kael once wrote that critics often cry “art” when they should be saying “ouch” and though Kael has been dead for years, this film shows that trend, which she wrote about a half-century ago, is still going strong. Everything that is terrible in Sarah’s life (and Sarah, not Phil, is the film’s central character) just gets worse (with a tiny sliver of redemption at the end that is too little, too late): an adolescent’s idea of “realism.” Better films show us grief over the loss of a child in a more nuanced context. In The Accidental Tourist, William Hurt’s character, Macon, meets a slightly older boy who resembles his dead son (and is the age he would have been had he lived) and the encounter gives Macon some closure. In The Orphanage the mother’s last interaction with her son happens while he is having an incredibly violent tantrum. We sense that part of her effort to reunite with him is to make sure this memory isn’t the last one the two have of each other.

An additional note I mention often in my reviews: maybe I’m a dreamer, but I’m hoping Meadowland will be one of the last films set in New York in which every main character is white. John Leguizamo plays a member of Phil’s grief support group, and Sarah has Black colleagues and students, but otherwise the film might as well take place in Oslo. When I think of a teacher married to a cop in today’s New York City, I don’t picture two white people–or even two straight people. The current mayor of New York is a white guy married to a queer Black woman, but film directors and producers still can’t imagine anyone would be interested in seeing a movie about a similar family onscreen.

Lucy McBath (right) in 'The Armor of Light' — Lucy McBath (right) in *The Armor of Light*

Another film at Tribeca about a mother’s grief for her son is the excellent and multi-layered documentary The Armor of Light (playing this Saturday, April 25) the first film directed by Abigail Disney who has had a prolific career as the producer of films including She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, Pray The Devil Back to Hell, and Vessel. Much of the film’s promotional materials emphasize the trajectory of Rob Schenck, a white Evangelical minister and fixture of the far right, who comes to see his “pro-life” views must include a stand against the National Rifle Association (NRA). But the more interesting person in the film (who gets about equal screen time) is Lucy McBath, the mother of a Black teenager, Jordan Davis, shot inside a car at a gas station. Davis’s killer invoked Florida’s “stand your ground” laws in his defense, which state that anyone who “feels” as if his life is in danger is free to shoot and kill the person he thinks is a threat. McBath, whose dentist father was part of the NAACP in 1960s Illinois, immediately understands the racial aspect of this killing and others like it, but Schenck doesn’t bring up race until the film is more than half over. We in the audience see a marked difference in how a white congregation and a Black congregation react to his new rhetoric against guns and the NRA.

What goes unsaid in the conversations of right-wing, white men and the repeated montage of white guys at gun shows is the connection between gun violence and masculinity: the popular fantasy articulated by many of the men to be “a good guy with a gun” who stops “a bad guy with a gun” by shooting him, something which even many police officers rarely, if ever, do. While the men talk about “protecting their families” I thought about all the women who are threatened or killed by guns their own husbands, boyfriends, and acquaintances point at them, a concern to which these men seem oblivious. Instead, they talk about the government taking away their guns with the same vehemence they would about government taking away their balls.

Also fascinating is McBath’s meeting with Schenck in which both cite Bible passages to make their points, but which concludes with McBath in tears telling him, “It’s vitally important that you help. They will listen to you.” McBath states later, when she is alone on camera that although she doesn’t “condone” abortion, she would never interfere with another woman’s reproductive choice, but feels like she and Schenck have some common goals around guns, saying, “This is what this is all about: fighting for life.” We see her testifying in front of Congress, and she eventually quits her job to devote her time to being the spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

I couldn’t help being a little cynical about Schenck’s intentions. He keeps citing the Bible and Jesus for his newfound, anti-gun mindset but with his long support of right-wing politicians (including members of the Tea Party) I wondered if he had read any of the many Bible passages in which Jesus ministers to the poor, the people those same politicians build their careers disparaging while defunding public programs meant to benefit them.

We see the slow, frustrating course McBath and Schenck have ahead when Schenck meets with three other anti-choice stalwarts (all white men, of course) across a table and tries to persuade them the NRA is antithetical to Christian values, asking, “Is that a pro-life ethic?” Two of the men yell at him in response, but he seems to sway the third, a triumph we can’t help hoping will repeat itself at other tables across the country.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSP0Soy8ACk” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘A Girl and A Gun’: A Look at Women and Firearms in America

A Girl and A Gun movie poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Trigger Warning

Cathryne Czubek’s A Girl and A Gun is a powerful documentary that broadly surveys the incendiary topic of women and firearms in America. The film shows us the many sides of women and gun ownership, including safety and self-protection, competitive sport, family and culture, anti-violence and gun control activism, and women who are the victims of gun violence as well as those suffering the consequences of having used a gun to kill another person. Not only that, but Czubek gives us an overview of women and guns throughout American history, including the commercialization and sexualization of the issue. Most importantly, though, this documentary tells the very real and very human stories of women.

First we’ve got writer and blogger Violet Blue who feels guns are empowering and sexy. Violet finds that being open about her status as a capable gun owner (a traditionally-coded masculine tool) shifts threatening online conversations to a more level field. This makes me wonder how many productive dialogues could be had on and off-line if so many women weren’t silenced by intimidation and bullying tactics due to a perceived helplessness that is exploited in order to win an argument (and reinforce patriarchal hegemony, of course).

“You move through the world as a target when you are female.” – Blue Violet

Robin Natanel is a tai-chi instructor whose house was broken into by an unstable ex-boyfriend. We also meet Sarah McKinley, a widow and mother of an infant, who shot and killed a home invader. Though she abhors violence, Robin purchased a gun because she realized she was the only one who could keep her safe. Both of these women find that the police and the law could not protect them during an attack, even in her their own homes, supposedly the safest and most private of spaces.

“People ask me how I came to own a handgun. I tell them because I have felt the fear.” – Robin Natanel

On the other side of the issue is Stephanie Alexander, a victims’ rights activist, whose daughter, Aieshia Johnson was injured as an innocent bystander in a shooting. Aieshia is paraplegic as a result of the shooting, and the mother and daughter differ on their feelings towards guns. Stephanie sees firearms and violence as the cause of her daughter’s life and mobility being irrevocably altered. Aieshia, feels particularly vulnerable as a woman in a wheelchair and the survivor of a violent crime, so she carries a gun. We also meet Karen Copeland, an inmate, who is serving time because she killed her girlfriend. Karen weeps as she describes the terrible act that she believes would have been prevented had she not owned a gun. The consequences of guns along with their power to destroy are palpable in these three interviews.

A Girl and A Gun also underscores the gun industry as well as Hollywood’s propensity for the commercialization, exploitation, and sexualization of women with guns. The gun companies goad and exploit women’s fears.

Scotsdale Gun Club ad playing upon and, perhaps, exacerbating the female fear of attack in the public sphere.

These companies discovered in women an untapped market, so they whip up the fear frenzy while producing pink guns and designer concealed-carry handbags.

As a woman, this fear of the violation of your person is not unfounded, nor are the gun companies the only ones playing upon it. In fact, it’s hard not to see mainstream media as perpetuating that cycle of violence by dehumanizing and objectifying women at every turn.

I find this ad (for gang-rape) offensive, and it certainly triggers me.

However, Hollywood would have us believe that the now prevalent imagery of women with guns is empowering to women. Sometimes, of course, it may be. Strong female characters who step into the masculine-tagged realm of guns, violence, and action can be fun and inspiring (think Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor or Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley). More often than not, though, these images are empty, showing us woman as sex and gun as dick.

Don’t tell me that’s not a phallus.

Though she focuses most on the women who own guns, Czubek doesn’t tell us what we should believe, nor does she give us an answer. Instead, she unfolds the complicated and very individual motivations of women with regards to their choices and firearms. Czubek shows us, too, that we have a history and culture that are at play in all of our decisions and rationalizations. In the end, Czubek allows women to tell their own stories, the stories of the ways in which they navigate a world fraught with impossible rules, threats, and expectations.

Conservative Political Cartoons II: The Jerkassening

Conservative Political Cartoons II: The Jerkassening
By Myrna Waldron

I had an absolute ball skewering misogynistic political cartoons last year, so I’ve decided to make this, er, “showcase” a semi-regular feature. It gets a little dull doing feminist analyses of only film and television – feminism is both a political position and a philosophy, so you can apply it to anything. And one thing I have always had an interest in is political cartoons. Particularly, I like ranting about the shitty ones. It’s probably intellectual masochism.

My thanks goes once again to the Something Awful Political Cartoon Thread, whose contributors scour the many political cartoon syndicates and godawful blogs to find these polished turds…mostly so people can yell at them. They have saved me a lot of time and possible loss of sanity. (Not that I had much in the first place)

Last time I limited the focus to the most misogynistic cartoons I could find – this time, it’s just recent cartoons that pissed me off. Variety is the spice of life, donchaknow. Plug your noses, kiddies, cause we’re diving into the dung heap.

A.F. Branco:

Liberal Media Goliath vs. Poor tiny little FOX News David

Why won’t someone think of poor little FOX News! Why, it’s just a plucky lil’ guy standing up to the big bad liberal media! The…liberal media almost exclusively owned by giant conglomerates. The liberal media whose ratings can’t even begin to match FOX News’. The liberal media that is only considered liberal in comparison to FOX News, which is so far right wing they’ve shot off into the goddamn stratosphere. Also, check out the reagan.com e-mail address. I love it when they’re unabashed stereotypes.

Bob Gorrell:

A “child’s” letter to Obama is spelled bad and therefore they are wrong.

Aww, look at the stupid little kid. They can’t spell, therefore they are stupid, and the real letters children sent to Obama pleading for gun control are also stupid. How dare those kids become frightened of being murdered when only 20 or so of them were shot to death recently! Guns are far more important than stupid children with pathetically exaggerated spelling errors. Look at that stupid kid equating guns to broccoli. Stupid kid.

Chuck Asay:

A teenager decides against a mass killing because assault rifles are banned. Good?

Well, he sure got us there! You’re right, Mr. Asay. We should instead ban guns altogether, because simply banning the massively overpowered assault rifles isn’t enough. And while we’re at it, let’s pour some more funding into mental health services so we can help kids like this! Wait, was that what you were arguing? I’m not sure anymore.

It used to be idyllic 1950s bullshit! Now women are all divorced and working and stuff.

Hoo boy look at those gender roles. “Mommy is cooking and wears a skirt! Daddy is fixing a car and wears a hat! And we live in beautiful idealized suburbia that is not at all a figment of an old man mixing his own memories with Leave It To Beaver! …Oh no! Mommy and Daddy got divorced! How awful! Divorce should never happen ever! And Mommy’s working instead of cooking! She’s supposed to be in the kitchen! Waaaa! Okay give me welfare check now please no that isn’t a non-sequitur what are you talking about.”

Pinocchio has a dilemma. He wants to deny his employees contraceptive coverage because he’s an idiot.

Isn’t it cute that Asay has completely misunderstood how Plan B/Emergency Contraception works, calling it an Abortion Pill when all it does is prevent a conception that hasn’t happened yet? How appropriate that he has used Pinocchio as his mouthpiece for saying something that is a lie.

Conservative Brony:

Women are now allowed to serve in combat! Now let’s be misogynistic pricks!

I don’t remember what this guy’s name is. He’s printed in a bunch of college newspapers, but actually published THIS, so he’s Conservative Brony to me forever. The comic strip is called Ralph and Chuck if you care. So, check out this tired and cliched Men’s Rights argument. The draft hasn’t been used in the US since the Vietnam War – a generation ago – and I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that an almost exclusively left-wing/liberal political movement like feminism is against the draft. And that the main reason why women were exempted from the draft is because of the patriarchal belief that we should be home taking care of the children, and that we’re physically weak or something. And looky here, one of the female characters says “I can’t even kill a spider.” Proving that this concept of weak women is pretty pervasive. Go back to watching ponies, Conservative Brony. You suck at arguments.

Day By Day:

Lance Armstrong is a “pussy,” therefore he is a cheater. Or…something.

A daily webcomic written by Chris Muir. I talked about this comic a bit in the last Political Cartoon rant, but I’ll summarize it again. The grey haired dude is Muir’s self-insert. The redhead is Sam, who is half-Irish, half-Japanese and all T&A. He uses this fictional woman as a mouthpiece for MRA bullshit. He also has a black male character named Damon who he also uses as a mouthpiece on racial issues. It’s about as pathetic and offensive as you can imagine. So check this shit out. Male values are honour, truth and logic. Female values are feelings-over-fact, group-think and consumerism. He says this crap to his wife. And she somehow gets a “Lance Armstrong has been emasculated and that’s why he cheated” inference from this, and uses a misogynistic insult? Is this also making fun of his testicular cancer? I…don’t get it…what?…okay, moving on.

HILLARY CLINTON IS UGLY AND I DON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES!

HILLARY CLINTON IS 65 YEAR OLD WOMAN WHO NEEDS GLASSES MUST INSULT LOOKS FIRST HELL YEAH I GOT ONE OVER ON THAT BITCH. I’m not going to even read the rest of this shit. His arguments and talking points are unreadable and his metaphors make no sense. (You don’t put your hands up marionettes you moron) Also, fun fact, Muir’s single. I wonder why.

Eric Allie:

Liberals are dumb and they don’t know how guns work.

Allie is one of the great tragedies of political cartooning. Such a good artist with a distinctive style, and occasionally very funny…but manages to take the worst possible position about everything. But I suppose I’m just as partisan in my left-wing views as he is in his right-wing ones. I included this cartoon not because it’s particularly offensive (it’s mostly vacuous) but because the labels on that gun are actually pretty funny. Mourn that we have lost this talent to the “enemy.”

Gary Varvel:

You should feel bad about abortion because of Dead Baby Heaven!

It’s depressing how little pro-lifers actually understand about the abortion process. Varvel either thinks that all aborted babies are practically full-term, or that they magically stop being blobs of cells once they go to heaven. I have to wonder if miscarriages, stillbirths, etc are also included in this charming Dead Baby Heaven. So tell me, Mr. Varvel, if all 55 million of those babies were born, would you have been willing to give up more taxes so that the mothers could receive prenatal care and compensation for missed work, and so that these kids could be housed, clothed, and fed? Would you endorse comprehensive sex-ed that discussed contraception? Judging from your pro-life peers, I wouldn’t think so. (Also thanks for drawing the Asian babies with slanted slit eyes. Very inclusive of you.)

Glenn McCoy:

HOLLYWOOD IS TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING GOD BLESS AMERICA

What a tired, boring, flawed and cliched argument. It astounds me how many people will point their fingers at violent media and claim it is the cause of gun violence. Canada gets the exact same media that the US does. A lot of people don’t seem to get just how similar our countries are when it comes to our culture. Want proof? I’m a Canadian ranting about American politics. Now, I’m going to throw a few statistics at you guys. In 2011, there were a total of 598 homicides in Canada, 27% of which were firearm related. Now get ready for this one. In the US, there were 12,664 homicides in 2011, and 8,583 of those were firearm related. The US has approximately 10 times the population of Canada, but I’m pretty sure those statistics aren’t proportional with that. There is a systematic problem with violence in the United States. You guys are absolutely infatuated with firearms and militaristic jingoism. Canada has the same media. Canada has a large hunting population. But we don’t have the gun violence problems that you do. The cause of gun deaths is not Hollywood violence, which is merely a symptom of gun culture, it’s YOU, America. And it’s time to admit it.

Soldiers who died in combat are equivalent to aborted fetuses. Okay then.

Is it 55 million abortions or 54 million? Come on guys, if you’re going to make this a talking point at least be consistent about it. What happened to the extra million fetuses? Did Obama eat them? Also, that must be an enormous dumpster if it can hold all those fetuses. I don’t even have a real argument or any sarcasm for this one. It’s just exasperating.

Lisa Benson:

Women in the military don’t want to be on the front lines, don’t be silly!

Isn’t it nice of Ms. Benson to speak for all women? She personally does not want to go on the front lines, therefore no women will, I guess? Even though they’ve basically been in combat (or at least very dangerous) situations all along? And since she’s wearing the same football uniform, she volunteered for this? And hey, notice how tiny she drew the woman in comparison to the big hulking man on the bench there. Teeny tiny women have to be protected from big bad Muslims!

Me And Folly:

WOMAN = BABY. DEAD BABY BAD. NO BABY IN COMBAT. WHO CARES ABOUT WOMAN.

I think this is just some small time blogger rather than a published cartoonist. But, uh, wow. Let’s dissect this one. The caption literally associates women solely with babies. The captured woman is drawn with a cute little blonde ponytail and ribbon, needlessly re-identifying her as female (we can see the pregnant stomach, buddy) while infantilizing her at the same time. Her being blonde is also subtextually significant – blonde women are usually white, and in the media, it is almost always white women in peril who make the news, not anyone else. This cartoon colludes with the media’s implication that white women are of more value than women of colour. So how about that baby? The baby is apparently very close to full-term. And I guess it’s making a lame draft joke? So…is the argument seriously that the US Military would be sending heavily pregnant women to the front lines, and that women are basically assumed to be constantly pregnant? Also, once again, teeny tiny white woman captured by the big bad Muslim.

Mike Ramirez:

Hillary Clinton desecrates the Benghazi victims’ graves because she is a Democrat.

Fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. The first time I saw this cartoon, I had a verbal nuclear explosion on Twitter. If you’re unfamiliar with the names on those tombstones, they were the victims of the attack which took place at the Libyan embassy in Benghazi. This incident will always be a very sensitive issue for Something Awful forum members, as Sean Smith, aka Vilerat, was a well-respected moderator of the Debate & Discussion subforum where the Political Cartoons thread is located. Regardless of my personal feelings, there are two BIG problems with this cartoon.

First, laying the blame for these attacks at Hillary Clinton’s feet is both unfair and pointless. He has also used her “What difference does it make?” quotation out of context in a pathetic attempt to discredit her. She was not shrugging off the Benghazi deaths – she was arguing that wasting time trying to place blame for the deaths is pointless and counterproductive. Regardless of how this could have been prevented, 4 Americans are still dead, the past cannot be changed, and what is more important now is to find their killers, bring them to justice, and prevent this from happening again. His answer, “The difference between life and death,” makes no sense in reference to the context of her rhetorical question – proving that he’s just regurgitating talking points without actually researching them.

The second major problem is Ramirez’s use of the Benghazi victims as political mouthpieces. These men were murdered while doing their jobs. It’s a terrible tragedy, and whether it could have been prevented or not is irrelevant now. These men are dead. They cannot speak for themselves anymore. But Ramirez is using murdered men to speak for him. He’s depicting Hillary Clinton desecrating their graves, while hypocritically desecrating their memory by using them to promote complete bullshit. Using those who cannot speak to speak for you is the utmost of cowardice. Ramirez is a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite. I hope his God forgives him, cause I sure as hell won’t.

Obama is a far-left liberal because American conservatives have no goddamn idea what “far-left” means.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

Randy Bish:

Mental Health in America will kill stupid monkey Obama because he’s making stupid gun laws.

I was initially annoyed and insulted at the insensitive depiction of mental health problems as a giant murderous gorilla, but I’m going to instead digress a little and talk about that Obama caricature. Lots of Obama caricatures are terrible (Ramirez’s being one of the worst ones) and a lot of them are subtly racist. But none can match the sheer racism of Bish’s Obama. Here’s a second example of his Obama caricature from last year. Giant flappy ears, giant eyebrows, giant lips. He has not drawn an African-American human being. He’s drawn a monkey.

Terry Wise:

Parents should beat their kids to discipline them and then something about abortion?

So what’s your point, Wise? People say stupid things? You haven’t somehow discredited the entire liberal/progressive movement by depicting a conversation in which a dumbass blurted out a poorly reasoned non-sequitur. Also, stop trying to justify beating your kids you psycho. Jesus.

NOOOOOO MY ROSE-COLOURED 1950S CHILDHOOD IS DEAD BECAUSE A MAN IS GAY

You heard it here first, folks. A loving same-sex couple trying to open an orphanage is exactly as evil and offensive as a meth addict and a murdered prostitute. If this was inspired by Jim Nabors’ coming out (and it probably was), Wise is an astoundingly hateful old man. Nabors married the man he’s been with for almost 40 years. What is so wrong with an elderly man finally getting to legalize his relationship with the love of his life? What prompted these ridiculous comparisons? What harm has Nabors done? Why won’t Baby Boomers give up their fucking delusional idyllic memories of the 1950s?

Mallard Fillmore:

Her name is Purge Daley. Bulimia. Ha ha.

Purge Daley is a rich snob. Ha ha.

Purge Daley hates fat people. Ha ha.

Everyone in Hollywood is liberal including Purge Daley. Ha ha.

Purge Daley doesn’t get how guns work. Ha ha.

Purge Daley watches films not made in America, the traitor. Ha ha.

Finally, I present a series of strips from the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, drawn by Bruce Tinsley. It’s billed as the conservative Doonesbury, but it isn’t even 1/8th as clever. The premise is just…a talking duck that is a conservative news reporter. He’s also an incredibly petty asshole – every Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he goes out of his way to not acknowledge it, and instead depicts a strawman telling him off for not acknowledging “Squirrel Appreciation Day.” So what we’ve got here is basically the same joke repeated 6 times. El oh el, the supermodel’s name is Purge Daley. Bulimia, geddit? Eating disorders are high-larious! And this is the strawmanniest strawman that ever strawed. I don’t even know where to begin with this. He criticizes fat-shaming, and yet hypocritically insults people with eating disorders at the same time. I don’t think I should have to bother engaging with deliberately nonsensical arguments. But I will say that people who refuse to watch movies with subtitles DO suck, so go to hell Tinsley, you xenophobic sexist fuck.

…I think I need a stiff drink.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.