Tag: Myrna Waldron

Miyazaki Month: Princess Mononoke

Written by Myrna Waldron.

You will find few well-known directors as overtly feminist as Hayao Miyazaki. Of the 10 films he has directed, only two, The Castle of Cagliostro & Porco Rosso, have male protagonists. The others have dual male and female protagonists (Castle In The Sky, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo) or female protagonists (Nausicaa, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away). And not only are many of the main characters in his films female, they are also well rounded, realistically flawed, and given a great deal of agency in their stories. When I think of the Strong Female Character feminist media critics are always hoping for, I think of Miyazaki’s characters first.

For the month of May, I will be writing about 4 films directed by Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The first three are my personal favourites of his work, and it will be my first time watching Nausicaa. It is my plan not only to discuss feminist aspects of the films, but also to discuss other themes/messages present in Miyazaki’s work (environmentalism and pacifism most commonly) and to compare the Disney/Miramax English dubs of the films to the original Japanese dialogue.

The Deer God gives life and takes life away

Princess Mononoke was the first Hayao Miyazaki film I watched. It came out a couple of years after Sailor Moon had introduced me to anime, and all of my nerdy peers were excited about the film because it was by this great, talented animator, and in Japan the film was even more popular than Titanic. It was refreshing for me to watch an animated film with complex themes, moral ambiguities and some decidedly un-kid friendly violence. I was already fascinated by animation, and Princess Mononoke showed me just how broad a medium it could be.

This is why I found the comparisons of Hayao Miyazaki to American films & filmmakers particularly frustrating. He’s been called “The Walt Disney of Japan,” which, frankly, reeks of a statement by someone who doesn’t really understand or respect animation that much. About all the two have in common is that they directed critically acclaimed animated films. Miyazaki’s films are steeped in Japanese culture and mythology, Disney’s films are distinctly American (even when they’re adapting other cultures’ stories). One particularly annoying thing is on the original Princess Mononoke DVD release, they’ve got the usual banal blurbs from film reviewers that marketers insist on ruining their DVD art with. But the quote they chose baffles me. “The Star Wars of animated features!” says The New York Post. I know the Post is a goddamn travesty of a newspaper, but what does that even mean? What does a film about Japanese mythology, environmentalism and industrial progress have to do with giant spaceships and lightsabers? (Best that I can come up with is that they’re both films popular with nerds.)

Sigh. Anyway, here are my observations about Princess Mononoke:

The first glimpse of San
  • I was able to simultaneously compare the English dub script (written by Neil Gaiman, a name that should be familiar to any fantasy literature fan) with the Japanese script by having the audio be in English and the subtitles be a literal translation of the Japanese script. For the most part, Gaiman’s adaptation was very accurate (which is what Disney promised Studio Ghibli upon offering to distribute their work in North America), and he was able to convey the general meaning of most of the dialogue. There were some parts I was disappointed with, however. There was a lot more exposition in the English dialogue, especially in the opening narration, which makes me feel like the people in charge of the English adaptation didn’t trust their audience. Ashitaka’s dialogue kind of had a Captain Obvious element to it, as well. In one scene, he wakes up, sees his demon scar is still on his hand, and says “The scar’s still there,” as if we can’t tell. In the Japanese script, he said nothing, just sighed. The biggest loss in this adaptation was that a great deal of Japanese culture – geography, history and mythology – was removed from the English script (especially from Jiko’s dialogue). I imagine this was done to help localize the setting for a Western audience, but it seemed a bit disrespectful, considering how distinctly Japanese Miyazaki’s films are. Gaiman also made the inexplicable choice of changing the Deer God’s name to “Forest Spirit.” I suppose Forest Spirit sounds a bit more poetic and more-or-less describes the Deer God’s role, but considering the other large animals are referred to as Gods, and the Deer God is a DEER, why the change?
  • The marketing for the initial DVD release sucks. I have mentioned the bizarre “Star Wars of animated features!” reviewer blurb. Another problem is that they gave the film the world’s most cliched and inaccurate tagline. “The fate of the world rests on the courage of one warrior.” First off, it’s not the world, it’s just that particular area of Japan. Second, the fate of the “world” doesn’t just rest on Ashitaka’s shoulders, it is equally San’s burden too, AND the people of both the forest and Irontown. Don’t give Ashitaka all the credit. The DVD artwork is pretty boring too – a picture of Ashitaka in a sword fight, which paints the film as more action-oriented than it actually is. And note that the title character, Princess Mononoke/San, doesn’t even appear on the cover. She’s just given a small section of the back cover that she shares with Eboshi, and her mouth is wide open in it! She does appear on the cover artwork for DVD releases for other markets, which, unfortunately, yet again shows how little female characters matter to North American marketers.
  • Ashitaka as a protagonist isn’t nearly as interesting as the other characters. I get that he’s meant to be both the audience surrogate and a neutral party between the endless war between the beings of the forest and the residents of Irontown. But he doesn’t seem to have any of the fascinating flaws that the other characters have. His mission is to see the truth with eyes unclouded by hatred, which he tries to stick to, but his cursed scar has other ideas. The scar’s super strength forcing him to dismember his attackers seems to be the only flaw Ashitaka has, and it’s not even a natural flaw. He seems to exist mostly as a mouthpiece for pacifism – he continually asks the forest dwellers and the people why they can’t live in peace, and refuses to accept their cynical answers. His complete goodness in a story full of moral ambiguities makes him seem like he doesn’t even belong in his own tale.
  • San, on the other hand, fascinates me. As the adopted human child of a Wolf God mother, she is both human and animal, and neither human nor animal at the same time. She has grown up hating humans, as her mother Moro has witnessed them acting as selfish and disrespectful beings that continuously defile her forest. The first time Ashitaka sees her, she is sucking the blood out of a wound Moro has suffered in an attempt to get at the iron bullet within her. She is wild, defiant, and free. She continually tries to reject her own humanity – her war mask is grotesque, and when she is at war, she considers herself an animal. A female protagonist with complete agency, she makes several difficult moral choices throughout the film and drives her own story forward. Like many of the other characters, her morals are in shades of grey. We can sympathize with her fervent desire to save the forest which has been the only home she has ever known. Less sympathetic is her tendency to blame all humans for the actions of a few, and her obsession with executing Lady Eboshi.
  • Unlike how other films present love stories, San and Ashitaka’s relationship subverts all the cliches. Notably, he does not get the girl, because she is a being in control of her own life, and not a prize to be won. They agree to part as friends, because she cannot forgive humans for what they have done to her forest. He accepts this, and tells her that he will help the people rebuild Irontown, and also promises to visit her whenever he can. This is the best possible outcome for their relationship, for if San were to be with him, she would be rejecting the animal side of her, and it is so ingrained in her, body and soul, that she would be giving up a part of herself. Another important aspect of their bittersweet love story is that, rather than San’s actions being influenced by her relationship with Ashitaka, it is HIS actions that are influenced by his knowing her. That reversal of gender roles is itself remarkable.
San vs. Lady Eboshi
  • Lady Eboshi is another well-rounded female character who is just as fascinating as San. On the positive side, she is a genius tactician, a revered leader to the people of Irontown, and a compassionate and generous benefactor to those most vulnerable. And yet she is also realistically flawed, as she is greedy, overconfident, and sometimes smug. To have won the respect and deference of everyone in Irontown, men included, already makes her unusual, and she is an interesting example of a capable woman in a position of leadership. It is initially implied that Eboshi is an antagonist, for it was she who killed the God Nago, and it was because Nago became a demon that Ashitaka was cursed in the first place. Yet as we meet her, she very quickly becomes just as sympathetic and just as morally ambiguous as San. As the men in the village tell Ashitaka, she has bought up the contract of every brothel girl she can find, which has incredible feminist implications. Whatever your personal opinions are of sex workers, Eboshi has saved these women from a very hard life, and granted them more agency than they ever would have had normally. She was also the only person to treat lepers with kindness and compassion, as she washed them, cleaned their wounds, and gave them employment and a purpose for living. And yet, on the other hand, she ambitiously wants to clear the entire forest so that she can transform it into one of the richest lands in Japan. She also knows full well of the destructive capabilities of the guns and flares that the lepers design for her, and uses them ruthlessly against both the forest animals and invading samurai warriors.
  • Irontown seems to have developed an almost matriarchal society as a result of Lady Eboshi’s influence. Not only is she the undisputed leader of the people, it is the women of the town that drive the economy. The men do the trading, mining and warring, and the women pump the bellows of the ironworks and defend the village from attackers. Together, they have made Irontown incredibly prosperous. Eboshi fears humans (particularly men) far more than she fears Gods, so she specifically requests that the lepers design guns light enough for the women to wield. Eboshi has more than enough reason to fear men in this case, as Lord Asano’s samurai continuously attack the village, and she specifically rescues brothel girls to prevent them from having to submit to the worst kind of men. She has given these former brothel girls a tremendous amount of freedom and agency. They have a great purpose and pride in their work, choose their own husbands, do not have to conceal their sexualities, and have as much input on how Irontown is run as anyone else does. Here, under Lady Eboshi, the women are equal.
  • The most important theme in the film, by far, is its message of environmentalism. Because the film takes place hundreds of years in the past, we feel the modern tragedy that what the Gods feared most did come to pass – the forests and their spirits have all but disappeared because of the onslaught of consumerism, industrialism, and capitalism. It emphasizes that there must be a balance – each side has to be willing to give something to survive, and that living together in peace is the best solution for everyone.
  • There are a lot of fascinating dichotomies at play in this story – animal vs. human, nature vs. industry, spiritual vs. secular, life vs. death, war vs. peace, men vs. women, etc. Most interestingly, we are not meant to pick a “side” in any of these dichotomies, but are meant to understand that there are reasons for everything in the world. Morality is not black and white. Even the most pressing dichotomy, nature vs. industry, doesn’t have a clear “side” expressed in the film. Letting the forest thrive and not destroying it is preferable, but the people of Irontown have to eat, and have to sustain their economy somehow. It’s a difficult choice, and the film respects its audience enough not to make it for them.
Princess Mononoke is a fascinating film with many layers of dichotomies, moral ambiguities, and complex themes. In the eternal battle of men vs. women, this film posits a strong message of equality, and of both men and women working together. Notably, in the climax of the film, it is both San and Ashitaka who return the Deer God’s head – they are equals working together, and without each other, they could not have saved everyone. And out of the death that the headless Night Stalker caused, it granted life instead. Life and death are as natural as everything else. The film also explicitly argues that there should be a balance between economic industry and preservation of nature. Human beings have to survive, but animal beings must survive as well. Princess Mononoke is a masterpiece of animation, and an overtly feminist themed media. Its strong female characters are given agency, dignity, independence from men, and realistic flaws. Everything that a feminist media critic hopes for.

———-

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.

How To Recognize The Signs Of Feminist Burnout

Written by Myrna Waldron.

Sufferers of Feminist Burnout are advised that laptops don’t taste very good. (Source: SoftwareSourcery.Com)
Feminist Burnout, or ohmyfuckinggodwhyisthissohardforpeopletounderstanditis, is a common ailment afflicting individuals also suffering from the insane notion that women are people. Approach with caution. Feminist Burnout is extremely contagious.

Signs and symptoms of Feminist Burnout include:

  • Explosive exasperation at Hugo Schwyzer
  • Twitter arguments that end after 3 tweet exchanges and a blocking because you just cannot put up with this shit anymore
  • Mass unfriending of Facebook friends sharing pictures trying to make you feel bad that people are apparently regularly aborting full-term fetuses
  • Severe frown lines caused by awareness of advertising tactics
  • Blog entries created by repeatedly slamming your head on your keyboard in frustration
  • Complete lack of surprise that Katy Perry and Taylor Swift do not consider themselves feminists because of course they fucking don’t
  • Nightmares over the possibility of confronting certain gamers on their sexism and their likely responses
  • Paranoia that “misandry” might actually be added to the dictionary someday
  • Eyestrain from trying to comprehend female anatomy depicted in video games and comic books
  • Nausea over racist topless protesters being allowed to define the movement in the media
  • Compulsive side-eye at pretty much everyone in Hollywood
  • Excessive fantasies of punching the crap out of anyone who spouts “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ?!”
  • Unrestrained masochism that includes, but is not limited to: Challenging powerful individuals in the media on their bullshit, reading the comments, clicking on links that contain “FOX” in the URL, going on reddit, opening a Tumblr account
If left untreated, Feminist Burnout can result in exhaustion, emotional overload, lack of inspiration, and even utter defeat. There is no cure for Feminist Burnout. But there are several therapeutic treatments recently discovered:   
  • Turn off the fucking computer and mobile phone.
  • Eat some ice cream.
  • Have a nap.
  • Hug someone who “gets it.”
  • Look at pictures of puppies and/or kittens. (if unable to pry self from internet)
  • Write a satirical blog entry.
Feminist Burnout is a serious issue affecting approximately 99% of feminists, who are amazed at the 1% who are able to press on without experiencing any symptoms. If someone you love is affected by Feminist Burnout, do not exacerbate the symptoms by asking them to explain concepts that should be obvious to anyone who has actually questioned the world around them. Privilege Blindness is considered a mental condition that has been known to worsen the symptoms of Feminist Burnout. Individuals who argue that feminism does not truly seek equality because it is primarily focused on women are advised to shut the fuck up. Women who deliberately choose not to define themselves as feminists as it might scare men away are pieces of shit. MRAs who pick fights with sufferers of Feminist Burnout to prove some sort of warped point are advised to stab themselves in the genitals repeatedly.

If you suffer from Feminist Burnout, You Are Not Alone! Sufferers are advised to remember that although there is no cure for Feminist Burnout, there will eventually be a cure for societal inequality.
 
Now go have a cup of tea.

———-

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.

The Legacy of Roger Ebert

By Myrna Waldron

Roger Ebert: 1942-2013
I have been unable to write for a while now. I have several health problems that make me exhausted and achy 24/7 (and have left me permanently disabled), and it’s been very difficult for me to keep up with the demands of blogging on a regular basis. And yet, here was a man who loved to write, and continued to write through three kinds of cancer – cancer that took away his ability to speak and to eat, but not to think and to write. And if he could find the inspiration and drive to write through all of that, then the least I can do is to write about what he meant to me.

When I was young, I had trouble deciding between several careers I wanted to pursue, but most revolved around my natural ability to write. Most of all, I wanted to be a movie critic. I’m so grateful to Bitch Flicks for giving me the opportunity to actually achieve one of my childhood dreams, and I’m also grateful that they’ve been so understanding about my disability. Since I was a kid, there were no Laura Mulveys or Francois Truffauts to influence my thinking yet. There was, instead, Siskel & Ebert. I wanted to write in a newspaper, and go on TV, and talk about movies and how they made me feel. And while Siskel was arguably the more academic of the pair, it was Ebert’s emotionally-based reviews that really touched me.

I loved it when he loved a movie. I loved it when he hated a movie. He was the master of the zinger, and had an incredible sarcastic wit that I have tried hard to emulate in my own movie reviews. I loved how he could analyze films – I have seen Casablanca a thousand times, but his DVD commentary made the film even better for me. I even loved his sheepish appreciation of well-endowed women – he was just a charming man in general.

He was born the exact same day as one of my other idols, Paul McCartney. And his passing today has made me realize how few of my idols I have gotten a chance to meet. Two years ago he was in Toronto and was doing a book signing for his recently published memoir. I wanted to go, but decided not to because I was physically incapable of standing in line for too long. You cannot imagine how I regret that now. He, like so many of my other idols, Jane Austen, Diana Norman, Fred Rogers, Chuck Jones, and Jim Henson, have all passed away before I had a chance to meet them and tell them what they meant to me. If I get a chance to meet another of my idols, I won’t pass it up next time.

I have a very dog-eared copy of his 2nd collection of scathing movie reviews, “Your Movie Sucks.” It has been well-loved, because even his utter scorn for a movie gave me a sorely needed emotional lift. I really should get around to buying his collections of other books. I even loved reading his Glossary of Movie Terms, which was kind of a proto-TV Tropes in that it affectionately documented and poked fun at all the cliches and archetypes we see in the movies way too many times.

I didn’t always agree with Roger Ebert’s reviews. It would be impossible to always agree with them. But they were almost always well-reasoned. I wish I knew if he ever revised his opinion of Dirty Dancing (which he gave a negative review to when it first came out). Hell, I wish I knew if he ever revised his opinion of Crash. His ability to reason out his opinions, even when I disagreed with them, has been a major influence on my approach to media analysis. If you can back up what you’re saying with evidence and reasoning, then any argument you can make is legitimate.

So, for you, Mr. Ebert, I will try to write again. I can’t let my fibromyalgia defeat me, when you didn’t let your cancers defeat you. Even to the very end, you were still writing, still planning, still hoping, still looking to the future. I hope you won’t mind this mostly emotionally-based tribute, as I am sobbing a bit too much to be able to look up relevant quotes right now. I suppose it’s silly that I’m crying over a man I never got a chance to meet. But because he showed us his incredible mind through his writing, I feel that I got to know him. So thank you for your reviews and analysis, Mr. Ebert. You have been an enduring influence on me, and you have left the greatest legacy on movie criticism possible. As you said in the final sentence of your final article: See you at the movies.

———-

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.

 
 
 

It’s Our 5-Year Blogiversary!

BF co-founders Steph and Amber at the 2010 Athena Film Festival

We can’t believe it, but today marks five years since we started Bitch Flicks.
In March 2008, we started a blog with the wink-and-a-nudge name, Bitch Flicks. In that first year, we wrote a whopping seventeen posts, eight of which were actual film reviews.
In 2012 we published 557 posts–and “we” consisted of a dozen people, not to mention numerous guest writers.
We want to thank our Editor and Staff Writer Megan Kearns.
We want to thank our staff writers: Erin Fenner, Robin Hitchcock, Leigh Kolb, Carrie Nelson, Rachel Redfern, Amanda Rodriguez, Lady T, Max Thornton, and Myrna Waldron.
We want to thank everyone who has ever contributed to Bitch Flicks, whether by writing a post, designing a logo, donating, commenting, or sharing a piece you read with someone else.
Everyone mentioned here has been a part of what has made this project continue. 
Finally, we want to thank every one of you reading this–and we hope you’ll stay with us in years to come. 
–Steph and Amber

Women of Color In Film and TV: Conflicting Thoughts On ‘Sita Sings The Blues’

By Myrna Waldron

image
In the film’s opening sequence, Sita rubs Rama’s leg.

So before I start, let’s address the elephant in the room. This film is about The Ramayana, an important text in Hindu mythology, and primarily focuses on Sita, an avatar of the goddess Lakshmi, who is married to Rama, an avatar of Vishnu. But the film was written and directed by a white animator, Nina Paley. There is some effort to represent the story and Indian culture faithfully (and the only non-Indian members of the cast play white characters), but the sense of humour and deliberate contrasting between ancient tragedy and modern comedy leaves an undeniably western perspective on this legend. So, yes, this film counts as cultural appropriation. That is not exactly what I’m going to be talking about today, since I am frankly unqualified to do so. I have read objections to the film by Indians, and they naturally are far more knowledgable about the Ramayana and Hinduism in general. I’m just a white atheist who went to Catholic school, and my only previous knowledge of the Ramayana is from a very shortened version I read in a fairy tale collection as a child. 
But even considering the cultural appropriation problem, I still like this film. There is no media which is not problematic in some fashion. You can still like problematic things provided you recognize and understand what the problematic elements of the film are. Sita Sings the Blues is beautifully animated, quite funny, entertaining, and introduced me to the music of Annette Hanshaw. But the concerns that Indians have brought up about the film’s depiction of the Ramayana are valid. Therefore I am going to try to approach this film in the most balanced way I can – I want to focus on the things that are great about it, but also criticize the parts that are problematic. If you are unfamiliar with the film, or have not seen it in a while, it has been released under a Creative Commons licence and is available to watch for free on the film’s official website, YouTube, and Hulu.

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“Big, round, firm, juicy…LOTUSES!”

The Good:

  • I love that this is a successful indie film written, directed, edited and produced by a single woman, Nina Paley, and the film is about a woman of colour. You can really tell this was a labour of love for her, and it’s an incredible achievement that one animator was able to do a feature length film on her own. The film is also explicitly meant to be feminist – in a long summary of the film that she released to the press, she described Sita Sings the Blues as “a tale of truth, justice, and a woman’s cry for equal treatment.” I hope to see more films helmed by women, and not just independent ones. I know that women of colour have an even harder time getting recognized as filmmakers, and I would like to see this same story retold from someone who grew up in Hindu culture, as opposed to a westerner. WOC filmmakers often do not get given a chance to succeed, as they are never given funding nor marketing, and naturally blamed for their films’ financial failure. Quite a vicious cycle. I would love to see more ways for feminist film lovers to discover films made by women and women of colour.
  • One of my favourite things in the world is animation, so this film’s widely varying animation styles (and narrative styles that change with the visuals) was such eye candy for me. If I’m counting correctly, there are 6 styles of animation used in this film. The film starts with a stylized Sita rubbing Rama’s leg (depicted in the animated gif at the top), led by stylized and symbolic depictions of the gods. It then rotates into other animation styles. Nina Paley’s autobiographical portions are done in a scribbly, loose style. The 3 Indians who narrate the story are represented as shadow puppets. The Ramayana characters’ dialogue is shown through two different forms of Indian-style artwork – one with lots of detail and bright colours, one with wide, expressive eyes and simple use of colour. The bulk of the film is devoted to Annette Hanshaw jazz songs as “performed” by Sita to complement the narrative. The sequences are presented in a modern vector graphic style, with lots of circles used in the character designs, and is even more stylized in presentation than the introductory sequence. Finally, one scene depicts an Indian woman drawn in white stencil dancing in flames and singing to Rama (it’s kind of hard to describe). Because the visual and narrative styles rotate so quickly (no portion is over 5 minutes) the story keeps you interested and you never stay in one style long enough to get bored.
  • I love the Annette Hanshaw sequences, but I have to say, my favourite parts of the film are when three English-speaking Indians from various parts of the country, Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally, and Manish Acharya, narrate the story of The Ramayana and are represented as shadow puppets. I love listening to the very subtle differences in their accents, and how the oral tradition of the story has subtle variations depending on cultural location. I’m just sorry they weren’t identified by name (I had to use the Wiki to credit them) so I could tell them apart beyond “Two males, one female.” Because their discussions are unscripted and they are reciting the story from memory, they make lighthearted jokes about the story, modernize some of the language (one describes Sita telling her kidnapper Ravana that his “ass is grass.”), argue mildly about details and names, and point out some of the plot holes. I laughed out loud when the three agreed that Sita left a trail of jewelry for Rama to follow, then one wondered how much jewelry Sita was wearing to be able to drop jewels for that long a distance. In response, another one says, “Don’t challenge these stories!” I also found it interesting that as they told the story, they questioned some of its details. Ravana is supposedly unquestionably the villain, yet had a past of being learned and a noble warrior. They wondered why he would be so out of character as to kidnap another man’s wife. One also marvelled that the supposed villain did not do the cliche thing and force himself upon Sita. I think questioning and analysis of one’s own culture is a good thing, so I really ate up the shadow puppets’ discourse on The Ramayana.
  • Probably the most popular sequences of the film are the stylized vector graphics of an impossibly curvy (she’s all boobs and hips and almost no waist) Sita “singing” jazz and blues songs performed by 1920s singer Annette Hanshaw. Hanshaw has this incredible ability to filter deep emotion through her voice, and having Sita perform these songs gives her a necessary amount of emotional depth. All we know of Sita via the narration is that she is absolutely devoted to her husband, no matter what. The Hanshaw songs thus have Sita expressing joy, adoration, heartbreak, hope, and acceptance, while still maintaining that necessary devotion to Rama. This is important since, no matter how you approach the story, Sita has a very tough time and is treated unfairly – we know that Ravana never touched her and Sita has only ever been with Rama, but she is still punished for even the possibility that another man touched her. The woman whose agency was taken from her should be given a way to express herself, so the blues sequences are a nice compromise.
  • Finally, the gif above depicts another one of the better points of the film, which is its sense of humour. In this scene, Ravana’s sister is trying to tempt him to kidnap Sita by describing her beauty. She says, “Her skin is fair like the lotus blossom. Her eyes are like lotus pools. Her hands are like, um, lotuses. Her breasts are like big, round, firm, juicy…LOTUSES!” Sita’s story is unquestionably a tragedy, so the little sprinklings of humour here and there keep the movie from being emotionally draining. I like the use of deliberate anachronisms to emphasize the differences between the ancient Indian setting, and the modern culture of today. Annette Hanshaw’s songs reference technologies that naturally wouldn’t have existed in ancient times, so Paley instead has Sita humorously hold a banana next to her ear when Annette sings about using a phone. And as I mentioned before, the little jokes that the shadow puppet narrators make (and their disagreements on plot details and names) help to make the narrative as lighthearted as possible. I admit I really dislike films that depress me, so this narrative decision appealed to me.
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Sita sings “Mean To Me” while going through her trial by fire

The Problematic:

  • Okay, now for the flaws. The autobiographical bits retelling the end of Nina Paley’s marriage are terrible. They drag the story to a screeching halt, the loose, drab and scribbly animation style contrasts far too much with the sumptuous and colourful styles used in the other animation sequences, and the story seems far too biased towards Nina’s perspective. I naturally don’t know the details of what really happened, but I have trouble believing that Nina’s former husband Dave is as selfish, heartless, sexless and aloof as she depicts him as being. There had to have been a reason he suddenly lost interest in her beyond their being separated by his job for some months. And I feel so uncomfortable discussing a woman’s personal life, and yet she put this stuff right in her movie, so I can’t help but talk about it! I really think that the autobiographical portions should not have been in the film. It might have been cathartic for her, but it’s awkward for everyone else.
  • Another big problem with the autobiographical portions is that I think it’s going too far for Ms. Paley to directly identify herself and the end of her marriage with Sita and her marital problems. Sita and Rama are more-or-less Hindu gods, so for a mortal white woman to compare herself with them has to come off as kind of blasphemous and egotistical. I’m glad she found comfort and inspiration in reading The Ramayana, but I would have left that revelation as perhaps a footnote or just a single scene. The autobiographical bits are interspersed throughout the film to contrast/compare directly to the chapters of Sita’s story, so you’re quite obviously supposed to identify the two women together. There are lots of western films where a character is meant to be a Jesus analogue or is Messianic in some way, but it is almost always a symbolic comparison, not an overt one. There’s no attempt at symbolism here, and I have to wonder if it would still be acceptable even if it was purely symbolic.
  • Ms. Paley is also unfortunately channelling her grief and anger over the end of her marriage through her depiction of Rama. This is supposed to be the most virtuous and wise man living, and yet the film depicts him as cruel, cold, weak-willed and stubborn. I, too, would question his supposed perfection after he continued to doubt Sita after she already passed his trial by fire (depicted in the gif above). But I think his character has to have been exaggerated somewhat in this film. Some of the people writing objections have argued that in The Ramayana, Rama was extremely broken-hearted and reluctant to banish Sita, but she loved him so much she persuaded him to send her away so that he could be an effective ruler for his people. That’s some extraordinarily self-sacrificing behaviour on Sita’s part, but it seems much more plausible considering the first half of the story is emphasizing how much they absolutely love each other.
  • This negative depiction of Rama goes as far as to basically make him the real villain of the story instead of Ravana. He is even shown kicking, pushing and walking over Sita while she is heavily pregnant. WHOA. It’s really going way too far to depict a man of being a domestic abuser if there isn’t any evidence for it. Again, this is an avatar of a god, and even though he has made a mistake in doubting Sita and sending her away (putting his own reputation amongst his people above the love of his wife), this exaggeration of his character is offensive. When Sita bears Rama’s twin sons and they are raised to praise him, they even sing a sarcastic song about how great and wonderful Rama is and that his word should never be questioned. I get the feminist attempt to question why the man’s judgement is always accepted above the rights of the woman, but the questioning should be directed at their own culture, not someone else’s. Just like we don’t like it when other cultures judge us by their standards, we don’t have the right to judge them by ours either.
  • The film’s biggest problem is that it is judging ancient Hindu mythology and custom by modern western feminist standards. If a modern western story came out where a wife is kidnapped, her kidnapper demands to marry her but does not rape her, she is rescued, her husband fears that she has been “tainted,” she proves she hasn’t, and yet is still suspected by others, and is ultimately banished while pregnant with her husband’s sons, and the husband is still depicted as the hero of the story, I would understand the virulent criticism. But because this is the story of the Ramayana, it’s not fair for a white feminist to start complaining about it, and then create a film which reflects mostly her views without making it clear she’s taking liberties with the story. Yes, it’s obvious that Sita never sang jazz songs, but it’s not so obvious that Rama wasn’t actually as cold and cruel to her as he is depicted in this film.
  • This unfortunately reeks of the cliche where white feminists go to women of colour and start telling them that they are oppressed by their culture and condescendingly try to “free” them from it. Women of colour can speak for themselves and make up their own minds. That’s what intersectionality is all about – we do not tell people of other cultures (and gender identities, and sexualities, etc etc) how they’re supposed to act and think. The first time I saw this film a few years ago, I was just as angry at Rama as Ms. Paley wants me to be, because I was completely ignorant of the story. It wasn’t until I started researching for this review that I found out that, wait a sec, she’s not depicting him accurately or fairly. When you have the influence to present another religion’s story to an audience that is likely going to be unfamiliar with it, the responsible thing to do is to either depict it accurately, or make it clear that it is an exaggeration. Sita Sings the Blues’ messages have unfortunately been diluted because of this strongly problematic element.

So while my feelings on Sita Sings the Blues are conflicted, I still think that it is a well made film despite its flaws. I encourage people to make up their own minds about it. If nothing else, the film gets us to consider differences in cultures and religions, and white women’s feminism vs the feminism/womanism of women of colour. 
I don’t think Nina Paley is intentionally racist, she’s just fallen victim to one of the big problems of western culture where the white person forgets that their perspective and opinion is not the only valid one. The vast majority of people won’t think about this sort of thing unless they immerse themselves into social justice culture, and even then it’s quite difficult to adjust your way of looking at the world. As one poignant Tumblr post said (and I’m paraphrasing), in social justice spaces we try to explore deep intersectional concepts like the erasure of trans* people of colour. In the “real” world we struggle to explain to people that ‘feminism’ is not a bad word. 
I also do not think that the film should be banned or censored like some right-wing groups have demanded, but I do think Paley should have made it more clear that she was taking some really strong liberties with the story. I have struggled for weeks trying to figure out how I was going to approach this film, so I hope I have been as fair as possible in my review. If nothing else, I have gained yet another new perspective and understanding of this film via my research on it, and that’s the best I can hope for.

P.S. I am trying a new experiment where I decorate the review with custom-made animated gifs of the film/show I’m reviewing, rather than just grabbing stuff off of Google Images. Please let me know if you like this new format, or whether you’d prefer static screenshots instead.


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.

Sexual Assault Subtext in Sailor Moon

By Myrna Waldron

I know I tend to gush about this series a lot, but today I’m going to talk about its dark side. I rewatch the episodes on a regular basis, but now approach them from an entirely new viewpoint. When I was a teen, I didn’t really understand feminism that much (beyond disliking Barbies and feeling uncomfortable about sexualisation) so a lot of the stuff I notice now went over my head. In particular, there are four Sailor Moon villains whose behaviour, well…creeps me the hell out. Prince Demando in Sailor Moon R and the Amazon Trio (Hawk’s Eye, Tiger’s Eye, Fisheye) in Sailor Moon SuperS have one thing in common besides being the bad guys – their modus operandi seems to have a distinct tendency towards subtextual sexual assault and attempting physical control of their targets. It’s never overt, and the victims never have any lasting physical damage (emotional/mental damage is never touched upon) but Oh my GOD is it hard to watch. General trigger warning in effect. You can figure out the subject matter from the title, and I’m not going to hold back.

Demando trying to kiss Usagi

In Sailor Moon R, Prince Demando’s story is largely centred around his leadership of the Black Moon Clan, and his obsession with Neo-Queen Serenity. In both the anime and manga, he becomes fascinated with her eyes after she glares at him in defiance. In the manga, he retaliates against her rejection by encasing her in a crystal coffin where she now lies in a coma. In the anime, the coffin is instead created by the four Guardian/Inner Soldiers to protect Neo-Queen Serenity from an attack – but she also falls into a coma. As the second season’s plot is themed around time travel, he instead directs his attention to Neo-Queen Serenity’s younger self – Usagi/Sailor Moon.

Now, first off, Usagi is still 14 years old. Prince Demando is clearly an adult. This is an issue that the anime dances around (seeing as Mamoru was aged up to college aged instead of starting the story at 17) but there’s already some consent problems going on right there. Demando takes it one step further. In both the anime and manga, Demando kidnaps Sailor Moon and then overwhelms her with the power of the Black Crystal, which makes her fall unconscious and undoes her transformation. Usagi wakes up later, on a bed, in an elaborate dress she does not recognize. We do not know how long she was unconscious, and disturbingly, we do not know how Demando changed her clothes. The anime shows that the Black Moon Clan has the ability to magically change their attire, so that is a possible “solution,” but as far as I can remember, this isn’t something that is a demonstrated power in the manga. Regardless, Usagi is temporarily nude when she loses her transformation powers, and the ambiguity of her waking up in unfamiliar clothing has some disturbing implications.

Usagi crying from fright

In both the anime and manga, Demando possesses a magic third eye that can hypnotize its target. He uses this ability to try to force Usagi to declare “love” and “allegiance” to him, as well as to kiss him. In both versions, Usagi is more frightened than she has ever shown to be before, and is ashamed that someone besides Mamoru would be kissing her. In the manga, Demando does kiss her, and she is so upset by this she breaks the hypnosis and slaps him. In the anime, Demando is interrupted before he can kiss her, but his attempt to physically force affection out of her goes on for so much longer, and is somehow even more disturbing. In the manga, Demando temporarily releases Usagi from the hypnosis and allows her to wander around the Nemesis Castle, thinking that the Black Crystal’s influence would overwhelm her powers. He underestimates her resolve, however, and she manages to transform, rescuing herself and the kidnapped Inners. In the anime we instead get a Damsel in Distress situation. Tuxedo Mask is the one who interrupts Demando, and boy howdy do we get some Freudian symbolism going on in this scene. When the hypnosis breaks, Usagi falls backwards onto the bed. Tuxedo Mask extends his cane down to the bed, which she grabs onto. Phallic as hell. And don’t forget that Demando’s name is based on “Diamond”…which is a gem known for its *hardness.*

Demando takes a hit for Sailor Moon

The anime fairly closely follows the manga for the first hypnosis attempt, but deviates once it gets closer to the climax of the story. The Sailor Soldiers enter into the Black Crystal to stop the enemy, and Demando exploits its powers to separate Sailor Moon from her friends once again. He arrogantly repeats the exact same hypnosis attacks. This time, he physically forces her down on her knees (unfortunately making me think of a certain sexual act) and tries to make her kiss his hand in allegiance. She repeatedly breaks out of his spells, and counters his demands for her to “love” him by saying he does not understand the concept. She also manages to convince him that Wiseman has been lying to and manipulating him the entire time. Aaaand then the anime deviates even further in a way that…doesn’t please me.

One of the major themes in the anime is Usagi’s forgiveness, and saintlike willingness to let any villain redeem themselves, no matter what they’ve done. This…is not really a thing in the manga. Sure, there are some villains who become good, but the majority of them get a quick and brutal execution. And they don’t just get a bullet wound or anything like that…they get disintegrated. And that’s what happens to Prince Demando in the manga – after he’s stopped from combining the two Silver Crystals to destroy the space-time continuum, Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask combine their powers to blow him the fuck up. Unfortunately, in the anime, he instead takes an attack from Wiseman that was meant for Sailor Moon, and he gets a long, drawn out death scene. Anime Usagi is apparently so goddamn forgiving that because he did this one act of kindness, she apparently forgets what he’s done, and cries for him. And his last words are “I love you, Sailor Moon.” Give me a BREAK. Yeah, I know he was evil and probably didn’t understand the concept of love yaddayaddayadda, but you know what? If you love someone you don’t try to physically force them to kiss you! His attraction to Usagi was an obsession at best. Not love. I think the worst part about this scene is that it’s encouraged shippers to get off on the idea of Usagi and Demando being together. I’ve already had Tumblr arguments about that (I even got called a feminazi!) but I’m still standing by my opinion of that ship: EUGH.

The Amazon Trio perusing photos of their targets

Moving on to the fourth season, the anime SuperS doesn’t really have much in common with the Dream Arc of the manga. As the anime series went on, it deviated so much from the manga that in the end they told an almost completely different story with the same characters. The villains in the first half of the series are the Amazon Trio; Hawk’s Eye likes older women, Tiger’s Eye likes young women, and Fisheye likes men. Their task is to look in the Dream Mirrors of the people of Tokyo to find where a magical being called Pegasus is hiding. And their methods are even closer to full-on sexual assault than even Prince Demando’s shenanigans.

First, they seem to take pride in trying to seduce their intended victims. All three disguise themselves (Fisheye, who is feminine, crossdresses as a woman) and try to strike up relationships with their targets. Hawk’s Eye tries to appeal to the older women’s kindness, Tiger’s Eye is basically a Pick Up Artist, and Fisheye tends to pick men who are artists or romantics. Yup, the “sexual assault” targets are occasionally men. Tiger’s Eye appears the most often, as most of the cast is comprised of young women. He’s tremendously egotistical, and flies into a rage if his target doesn’t immediately fall head over heels with him. In the episode where he targets Ami, he even calls her a bitch for politely refusing his offer to take her to a private beach. He reminds me a lot of a Nice Guy – it’s always the woman’s fault if she doesn’t love him/want to screw him, and they turn on their romantic targets pretty quickly.

Hawk’s Eye and a restrained Ikuko (Usagi’s mother)

The Amazon Trio’s attempts to gain their victims’ trust before attacking them is bad enough. But the attacks themselves are so goddamn hard to watch. First, the victim is propped against a coffin-shaped board. Then they are physically restrained by their wrists and ankles. And then the Dream Mirrors are magically forced out of the victim’s chest, with them screaming in pain. The Trio then bend over and stick themselves RIGHT IN THE MIRROR, laughing in excitement and enjoying their view of the victims’ privacy while the victim screams in horror and pain. Inevitably Pegasus is not in the Dreams, and the Trio is instructed to kill their victims to prevent Pegasus from hiding in those Mirrors later. Yup, once they’re done assaulting them, it’s time to kill their victims! Such nice guys. It’s usually at this point that the Sailor Soldiers interrupt and go through their stock footage to defeat the monster of the day. Rinse and repeat for about 20 episodes.

In the manga, none of the “looking into Dream Mirror” stuff happens. The Amazon Trio appear once in each act, and are obliterated pretty quickly. They are basically the pawns of the Amazones Quartet, who try to manipulate the Guardian Soldiers into giving up their dreams. Ami and Rei are forced to see nightmarish hallucinations in mirrors, and both Fisheye and Tiger’s Eye try to seduce the girls to make them give up being Sailor Soldiers (This suggests that Fisheye is not gay in this version). Makoto is given an Amazon Ring by Hawk’s Eye (who is the crossdresser this time rather than Fisheye) which makes her blurt out all of her insecurities and ambivalence over her dreams and responsibilities. In each case, the three girls overcome the hallucinations/manipulations, and each Amazon Trio member is killed off quickly. In the anime, the redemption stuff is instead used once again. It’s arguably a little more understandable since it is revealed that the Trio are not humanoid but magically transformed animals, so their understanding of human kindness and, uh, not stalking and assaulting people you’re attracted to, would not have developed.

The Trio get Dream Mirrors

Fisheye’s final target is Mamoru, and he goes out of his way to try to entice Mamoru away from Usagi. He has a bit of an identity crisis after finding out the truth about himself and that he lacks a Dream Mirror, and sadly sits on a bench in the rain. Usagi comes across him and recognizes him as the “girl” who tried to hit on Mamoru. Normally she’s a tremendously jealous girl, but for whatever reason, Usagi the Saint offers kindness to Fisheye and invites him home to warm up. Thus Fisheye naturally learns about the kindness of humans. He even discovers that Chibi-Usa is the true harborer of Pegasus, but decides not to tell Zirconia about this. When Hawk’s Eye attacks Usagi, Fisheye defends her, and convinces his “brothers” to defect. They are then assassinated by the Amazones Quartet, but are given Dream Mirrors by Pegasus, and he brings their spirits to Elysion to rest.

So…once again Usagi has saintlike forgiveness and borderline sexual assaulters get redemption. Maybe I’m too hard, but I think there’s a limit to how much someone should get away with if they do the “Oh, I see the error of my ways now” bit. I should be a good progressive and always support rehabilitation rather than eternal incarceration, but I’m dubious about how effective therapy and education actually is for abusers and rapists. This is a major issue that psychologists and feminists need to work on. Regardless, I think I prefer how the manga handles this situation. For whatever reason, and it might be because the manga is written by a woman and the anime is usually written/directed by men, the sexual assault subtext is far less disturbing and drawn out than it is in the manga. And for me, it’s far more satisfying to see a villain that manipulative and creepy to get blown away than to see them become good guys. But that’s a matter of preference.

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.

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:


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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:


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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:


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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.

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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.”
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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:


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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:
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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.

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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:


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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:


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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:


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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.
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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:


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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:


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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:


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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.
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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:


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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:


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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.
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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:


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Her name is Purge Daley. Bulimia. Ha ha.

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Purge Daley is a rich snob. Ha ha.
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Purge Daley hates fat people. Ha ha.
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Everyone in Hollywood is liberal including Purge Daley. Ha ha.
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Purge Daley doesn’t get how guns work. Ha ha.
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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.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: How BBC’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Illustrates Why The Regency Period Sucked For Women

How BBC’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Illustrates Why The Regency Period Sucked For Women

By Myrna Waldron

Pride & Prejudice DVD Cover (Source: Wikipedia)

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that those in pursuit of an English degree must be familiar with the works of Jane Austen. Fortunately for me, she is one of my favourite authors, and Pride & Prejudice is one of my favourite books. (And that’s saying something, as I read a lot.) It is one of the great novels of English Literature that can be utterly boring with the wrong teacher. Many times people fail to pick up on the social satire woven throughout the novel, especially since the language and culture is so different now that it’s 200 years later. Once you understand the social context in which the novel was written/published, and get used to Austen’s subtle brand of sarcasm, one can understand why Pride & Prejudice has endured so long. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Darcy is one of the quintessential Byronic heroes too.
The 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation is by far the most popular, and the reason why can be summed up in two words: Colin. Firth. I first watched the miniseries when I was 10, and read the novel for the first time at 15. I can say quite confidently that the miniseries strongly helped me to understand the novel better, but…that’s not the only reason why it was memorable for me. Puberty already had its iron grip on me at that time, and when I saw Mr. Firth as Mr. Darcy for the first time…let’s just say I realized I liked boys. Colin Firth has had a wonderful sense of humour about his signature role, more-or-less reprising it in the Bridget Jones series (Side note: Colin Firth is an actual character in the 2nd novel.) and in an interview with a French magazine that asked him who the women in his life were, he answered, “My mother, my wife, and Jane Austen.” Unusually for a western media production, the makers knew their audience, and presented the miniseries for the female gaze. Firth is shown bathing, fencing, and, most famously, swimming in the pond near Pemberley and emerging from it with a wet white shirt.
Regretfully leaving Mr. Firth’s impact aside, he is not the only reason why the BBC adaptation is culturally important. The 6 episodes of the miniseries grant far more lenience in terms of time constraints, and thus one of the most important themes of Austen’s novel is retained: Her feminism. The protagonists in her novels were all women, and she wrote them for a mostly female audience. Her primary goal was to create sympathy for the status of women and the little rights they retained. Reminder: This is an era where women could not vote, had no bodily autonomy, could not freely marry whomever they chose, were restricted to domestic spheres, and, in some cases, could not even inherit their father’s estate.  Pride & Prejudice, and the BBC adaptation, touch on several of these issues, subtly and sometimes directly condemning them from a feminist outlook. In addition to this feminist subtext, part of Austen’s social satire is pointing out the ridiculous class restraints in which the characters had to endure.
The Bennet Sisters, From Left To Right: Lydia, Jane, Mary, Kitty, Lizzy (Source: http://ladylavinia1932.wordpress.com/)
The protagonist of Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, usually called Lizzy, is the 2nd of 5 sisters and the favourite of her father because she is witty, intelligent, and well-read. Her older sister Jane is sweet natured and the most beautiful, middle sister Mary is plain, sanctimonious and withdrawn, and youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are boy crazy and impulsive. Lydia most closely resembles her mother in personality and is thus her favourite. Mrs. Bennet is absolutely obsessed with the idea of marrying off her 5 daughters as soon as possible, and to rich men if they can manage it. The girls must endure their mother’s constant conspiring to marry them off – the elder sisters are resigned to their mother’s obsession, but the teenage youngest sisters are thoroughly swept up in their mother’s enthusiasm.
The major issue the Bennets face is that none of the daughters can inherit their father’s estate. They are confined to an entailment, which is a legal inheritance document stipulating that a hereditary estate can only be passed on to a certain person, usually the eldest living male relative. Unfortunately, the closest male relative to Mr. Bennet is Mr. Collins, a minister who is insufferably smug while pretending to be caring. When he suddenly descends on them for a visit, he is met with a certain degree of resentment, for when Mr. Bennet dies, Mr. Collins is fully within his rights to immediately throw out the grieving widow and daughters onto the streets. Thus, there is a practicality to Mrs. Bennet’s obsession – if her girls do not marry, they will be helpless and homeless.
Mr. Collins in this adaptation is utterly revolting. Greasy and simpering, he constantly brags about his rich patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, (who is also Mr. Darcy’s maternal aunt) fawning about her even while miles away. He has visited with a mission – Lady Catherine thinks he should marry, so he figures he might as well choose from one of the Bennet sisters. Vainly, he sets his sights on Jane first as she is the most beautiful, but after being persuaded that Jane has another suitor (more on him later) he instead moves on to Lizzy, the next prettiest daughter. His attempts to woo Lizzy are incredibly repulsive and shortsighted, for he has chosen the worst possible match for him out of the 5 sisters. A bootlicking and hypocritical minister could not possibly be happy with a headstrong and brutally honest intellectual. It’s kind of sad he never noticed Mary and tried to court the sisters solely based on their looks, for although she’s plain she would have been a far better match for him.
Pemberley (Source: austenprose.wordpress.com)
Lizzy rejects his proposal with disgust, and he quickly moves on to proposing to the next closest target – her best friend Charlotte Lucas. She accepts, not out of even remote attraction, but because she felt she had no better option. At 27, she is already considered an old maid. She is not wealthy, she has no wealthy relatives, and she is not considered beautiful. So Charlotte explains to Lizzy, with a heartbreaking look of resignation, that she took all that she could get, and that she’d at least live in relative comfort. Later, when Lizzy visits her, she admits that she encourages her husband to spend as little time as possible with her. The social commentary exhibited here is staggering – I could not help but feel desperately hopeless and sympathetic for Charlotte’s situation. How awful to have to agree to marry such a repulsive man in order to prevent a future of poverty.
Jane and Lizzy fortunately have other potential suitors. Jane falls in love with Mr. Bingley, a relatively wealthy young man who has bought a manor nearby to their home. He is charming and amiable, contrasting sharply with his best friend, the brooding and proud (and even wealthier) Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. They meet the Bennets at a ball, where Mr. Darcy offends the others by refusing to dance with anyone. He later reveals that he was feeling more socially awkward than disdainful, but he has already done the damage of appearing arrogant and snobbish, and Lizzy immediately develops a bad opinion of him (she is the “Prejudice” to his “Pride”). Jane and Bingley are very well matched, but their presumed engagement is for a time derailed due to societal restraints. At a ball held at Bingley’s manor, Mrs. Bennet brags loudly about Jane’s not yet confirmed engagement, Mary monopolizes the piano and performs poorly, Mr. Bennet publicly admonishes her for it, and Kitty and Lydia loudly and childishly flirt with the visiting soldiers. Jane is also shy and emotionally reserved, and so Mr. Darcy concludes that she is not especially interested in Bingley. He thus uses these excuses to convince Bingley not to propose to her, which is the first of many plot points where an individual is unfairly judged by the actions of her family.
Although at first Mr. Darcy is not particularly impressed with Lizzy, he quickly grows an attraction to her. At subsequent balls he asks to dance with her, compliments her to others, and will not hear any criticisms against her. Bingley’s younger sister Caroline hopes to gain Mr. Darcy’s affections by putting Lizzy down, and thus tries to find as many physical faults with her as possible. This is a commentary on how there is societal pressure for women to compete with each other, and to only value their physical attractiveness – not much has changed in 200 years. Nevertheless, Darcy proposes to Lizzy, and it is an infamous disaster. He begins by expressing his ardent love for her, but then starts ranting about how his love goes against his character, upbringing, and will. He also states that his social status is likely to take a hit since she is neither wealthy nor well-connected. Unsurprisingly, Lizzy rejects his proposal with anger and disgust. She criticizes his arrogance and pride, and condemns him for what she believes is a particularly heartless act – the cold treatment and cutting off of his childhood friend Mr. Wickham.
Mr. Darcy and Lizzy (Source: bbc.co.uk)
Mr. Wickham is one of the local soldiers, and catches Lizzy’s attention because he is of similar intellect to her and is charming. She already has a poor opinion of Mr. Darcy, so she readily believes Wickham’s sob story about how Mr. Darcy stopped his ambitions of becoming a minister, denied the small inheritance that Darcy Sr. had promised for him  (Wickham’s father was Darcy’s father’s steward), and forced him to live in poverty, despite them having grown up together. Although Darcy cannot deny that he has acted arrogantly, he defends his actions regarding Wickham in a letter to her. In a flashback, we see Mr. Darcy at Cambridge walking in on Wickham fooling around with a young woman. Mr. Darcy explains that Wickham then left university, and requested a lump sum of 3000 pounds rather than an annual stipend. He thought they had then parted ways for good, but then found out the depths of which Wickham could descend.
Wickham likes to prey on teenage girls. He locates Darcy’s much younger sister Georgiana and seduces her, promising to elope with her. Darcy was never sure if Wickham’s aim was to get at Georgiana’s fortune, or to get revenge on Darcy. Fortunately, Darcy discovers the elopement in time to prevent it (and prevent Georgiana’s being sexually exploited) but both siblings would remain traumatized by the memory of how close she came to ruin. Lizzy is forced to believe Darcy’s story since it involves his younger sister, but she and Jane resolve to keep the truth of Wickham’s behaviour quiet since they have not been authorized to reveal the details, nor do they want to damage Georgiana’s reputation. Yes, Georgiana would be the one who would suffer from this, not the grown man who preyed on a teenage girl. This decision to keep quiet would come back to haunt the Bennets in the worst of ways, for it was not just Lizzy whose attention was caught by Wickham…but Lydia’s as well.
Lydia is given permission to follow the soldiers’ regiment to Brighton and stay with a friend of hers (much to Lizzy’s reluctance). She is not supervised at all, and Wickham convinces her to run away with him one night. She believes he is going to marry her, and is excited and anticipates how jealous her elder sisters will be that she has married first. (There’s that competing between women for male affections again.) We get short vignettes of her exile with Wickham – they are staying in a small room in a disreputable part of London. Lydia is shown wearing her dressing gown, but it is never directly implied nor stated whether she had premarital sex with him. Most likely she has, as since she is not wealthy there was only one thing about her Wickham would be interested in. Notably, none of the characters even dare to directly mention the worst-case scenario of Lydia’s behaviour, but Mary sanctimoniously summarizes the inequality of gender dynamics of the time: “The loss of virtue in a woman is irretrievable … A woman’s reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, and therefore we cannot be too guarded in our behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.”
 

 

We interrupt this essay to bring you some fanservice. (Source: telegraph.co.uk)
The other sisters believe their chances of making a good marriage are now nonexistent, as the news of Lydia’s “loss of virtue” have tainted her family by association. The best that they can hope for is that Lydia and Wickham have at least married, preferably before his bedding her. Mr. Collins even smugly states that it would have been preferable if Lydia had died. It is very damning that a family has to hope that a possibly sexually exploited teenager has married her seducer. Nowadays there would at least be an attempt to arrest Wickham for statutory rape, but society has not changed so much that there wouldn’t still be shaming of Lydia for being a sexually active teenage girl. We can look to the recent tragic case of Amanda Todd, a very young teen enticed by an adult into posing topless on a webcam, blackmailed, and driven to suicide by the public shaming of her actions.
Mr. Darcy, humbled by Lizzy’s dismissal of him as arrogant and feeling responsible for not exposing Wickham’s character, decides to intervene. He locates the pair (Lydia is foolishly amused by this, Wickham angered), and makes Wickham agree to marry Lydia by offering to pay off his many debts. They are married with only Mr. Darcy and Lydia’s maternal aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, in attendance. Mr. Darcy insists on letting the Gardiners take the credit, and swears them to secrecy. They return home and are enthusiastically welcomed by Mrs. Bennet (whose opinion of people tends to revert back and forth to opposite extremes depending on whether they are useful to her regarding marrying off her daughters). Lydia brags about her marriage to her sisters, and never learns just how close she came to permanently ruining her reputation and her family’s as well. But she lets it slip that Darcy was involved in arranging her marriage.
These altruistic actions, and a visit to Mr. Darcy’s manor Pemberley, where he is adored and praised by his servants, gradually change Lizzy’s opinion of him. Eventually, a rumour spreads to Lady Catherine de Bourgh that Lizzy and Mr. Darcy, her nephew, are engaged. In a fury she comes to the Bennets’ home and verbally abuses Lizzy, adamant in her belief in her social superiority. She vehemently objects to the engagement as Lizzy is far beneath her nephew in both social status, familial connections and wealth, not to mention that she believes that her daughter Anne and Mr. Darcy have been betrothed since childhood. Lizzy is headstrong and defiant, however, and counters all of Lady Catherine’s insults. In reference to their social status she she states, “He is a gentleman. I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.” Not only has Lizzie skewered the ridiculous standards of class distinction in her era, she has made a subtle feminist statement as well. She also refuses to promise not to become engaged to Mr. Darcy, which is a solid social commentary on not letting the upper classes use their status to bully others.
The Double Wedding (Source: blogspot.com)
In the meantime, Mr. Darcy has told Mr. Bingley that he was mistaken in thinking that Jane Bennet did not return Bingley’s affections, and gives his blessing to their engagement. Bingley then takes the earliest opportunity he can to propose to Jane, which makes the normally reserved girl deliriously happy. When Mr. Darcy and Lizzy next meet, she reveals she knows who saved Lydia’s and her family’s reputations, and thanks him profusely. He tells her that he was only thinking of her happiness, and restates his love for her, promising never to bring it up again if she still feels the same way she did before. She has since realized that she has gradually fallen in love with him ever since visiting Pemberley, and accepts his proposal this time. There are many interpretations of the implications of this famous ending, but this time I’m going to do a feminist one: We know that Lizzy is progressive and headstrong, and likely as feminist as her creator. She could then possibly see Mr. Darcy’s actions as feminist ones, as he has directly prevented the fallout of a misogynistic society’s double standards. He has also demonstrated generosity and a willingness to help the most vulnerable. So she and Jane have a double wedding with Bingley and Darcy – all pairs as inseparable as they have always been.
As a whole, Pride & Prejudice and its miniseries adaptation strongly posit some feminist criticisms and subtly satirize the social standards of the time. Most notably, the story condemns entailments/inheritances that favour only male relatives instead of more direct (and equally rightful) female relatives, viewing relatively young women as old maids, forcing women into unwanted marriages to avoid homelessness and poverty, judging entire families on the basis of an individual’s actions (or judging an individual on the basis of their family’s actions), encouraging women to compete with each other for the affection of men, putting a woman’s entire worth on her virginity, allowing grown men to prey on teenage girls, and condemning a young woman for having premarital sex instead of her exploiter. Whew. It really sucked to be a woman during the Regency Period. For a 200-year-old book…that’s a whole lot of feminism. Bless you, Jane Austen. (And bless you, Colin Firth.)
Full disclosure: I recognize that this is more of a literature essay than a television review. My only excuse is that throughout high school and university I have written more essays about Pride & Prejudice than I can remember. Good habits are hard to break.
 
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.

 

The Oz Series & The Power of Women

Oz: The Great and Powerful Poster (Source: firstshowing.net)

Today, I’m going to rant about a film that hasn’t even come out yet. Most of you are probably aware that a prequel to The Wizard of Oz entitled Oz The Great and Powerful will be coming out this spring. James Franco has reunited with the original Spider-Man trilogy’s director Sam Raimi to play Oscar Diggs, the future Wizard of Oz. Those who have seen the 1939 film (and I’d wager just about everyone has) know that The Wizard is a fraud who has been flim-flamming the residents of Oz with illusions, pyrotechnics and some serious fast-talking.
Now, the trailer is beautiful. I thought it was really clever how the journey from Kansas to Oz gradually transitioned from black & white fullscreen to full colour widescreen. (Though if this is a prequel to the 1939 canon that’s a continuity error – The Wizard is from Nebraska, not Kansas) Danny Elfman is likely to deliver a good score. The cast is excellent too – the three Witches are played by Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams, and James Franco amuses me. It’s nice to see him playing something besides the stoner James Dean bit he’s been doing since his Freaks & Geeks days (not counting 127 Hours). The film’s visuals are beautiful, and quite obviously inspired by Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, which looked great…but was a shitty film.
I’m probably going to see Oz The Great and Powerful since I love fantasy movies and have loved the Oz series all my life…but I’m pissed. And all it took was one line in the trailer:
“Are you the great man we’ve been waiting for?” 
Glinda of Oz Novel Cover (Source: Wikipedia)
The Oz series, at least while still written by L. Frank Baum, has always been partly about the power and strength of women. Most significantly, Dorothy Gale, Princess Ozma and the four Witches of the cardinal directions (Glinda especially) are the ones who solve all the problems (obviously not counting the evil ones) and wield all the power. Baum still balances the gender dynamics by having well-written male characters as well. There have been dozens of unofficial sequels (Baum himself wrote 14 Oz books altogether before he died), not even counting revisionist/alternate universe media like Wicked. This film appears to be based on an original story (not one of the novels) and inspired by the 1939 film, and I can tell. The Wicked Witch of the West’s green skin is a dead giveaway, as well as Glinda being blonde and the Witch of the North. In the original novels, the Witch of the West did not have green skin, and Glinda was the redheaded Witch of the South. The 1939 film combined the Witch of the North (who ultimately wasn’t a significant character in the books anyway) and Glinda into one character. Actually, Glinda’s being blonde in this adaptation is telling me that they’re borrowing more than a little bit from Wicked.
Dorothy, Ozma and Glinda serve significant leadership positions in Oz. Princess Ozma is the true hereditary ruler of Oz – her position having been usurped by The Wizard. Glinda is by far the most powerful sorceress in Oz, and both Dorothy and Ozma often defer to her wisdom. Dorothy, of course, is the plucky orphan outsider who combines resourcefulness and bravery. She and Ozma are extremely close best friends – so close, in fact, that many people have done a queer reading of their relationship. It is not just my interpretation of the series that makes it subtextually feminist, L. Frank Baum deliberately wrote it as such. He is the son-in-law of Matilda Gage, a prominent 19th century suffragette. Although the biographic adaptation of Baum’s life, The Dreamer of Oz, painted their relationship as strained and antagonistic (and even implied she was the inspiration for the Witch of the West), he actually deeply admired her for her feminist political beliefs and was directly involved in the women’s suffrage movement as an advocate. Nice attempt at trying to make Gage a Straw Feminist, huh? Dorothy also serves as a memorial to his niece who died in infancy; his wife Maud was so distraught at Dorothy’s death (as she’d always wanted a daughter) Baum named his book’s heroine after her – and it is quite easy to interpret Oz as a symbolic heaven.
Princess Ozma (Source: Wikipedia)
Despite Princess Ozma being one of the most important characters in the entire Oz series, I can only recall two adaptations that even acknowledge she exists (and I’ve seen so many Oz adaptations I can’t remember them all) – cult classic Return To Oz and the 80s anime TV series The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Return To Oz makes her a kind of damsel in distress imprisoned by Princess Mombi, but at least makes the strong friendship between Ozma and Dorothy very clear. The anime TV series has one of the more unusual interpretations of Ozma. As in the original novels, Ozma had been transformed by Mombi (who is a minor witch, not a princess) into a boy named Tip so that no one could ever recognize her. After Glinda reveals who she really is and transforms her back, Ozma remains distinctly tomboyish – suggesting that Ozma’s life as a boy was a lot more absolute than just a physical transformation.
Since Oz The Great and Powerful is a prequel, I doubt they’ll even mention Ozma (never mind Dorothy), especially since they’re apparently going to make Diggs a heroic protagonist. I can’t even put The Wizard’s narrative role into words – he’s not a hero as he’s a fraud and an usurper, but he’s not a villain as he is mostly benevolent. Anti-Villain? I dunno. I don’t want to start talking like a TV Tropes page. What the trailer has implied, however, is that the Witches are going to defer to his authority and apparently prophesied power. What kind of bullshit is that?
Kristen Chenoweth & Idina Menzel in Wicked (Source: last.fm)

If we had to get an Oz prequel adaptation, why did we get this instead of Wicked? Wicked has its flaws, but the musical version echoes the main themes of the original books by making it about a strong friendship between girls/women. What we’ve seemingly got here is a story where three incredibly powerful sorceresses are unable to solve Oz’s problems on their own, and are waiting for a man to save them. A man who is a fraud. Two of the Witches inevitably will become part of the problem – the brunettes in the dark clothing, of course, not the pretty blonde in the pastels. The trailer also suggests that at least one of the Witches (it looks like Mila Kunis) will have a romance with Diggs, cause of course we can’t have women in a story without at least one of them wanting to bang the hero.
I hope the trailer is just being deceptive for marketing purposes. I hope the story isn’t really about powerful women waiting for a man to save them. But I’m not optimistic. The 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz remains one of my favourite movies of all time, and it retains one of Baum’s feminist themes – the women had the power all along. But it’s really distressing me how much this upcoming film relies on the canon of the 1939 adaptation, and doesn’t seem to have considered L. Frank Baum’s novels at all. With fourteen Oz books written by him and dozens of other adaptations/sequels/whatevers out there taking advantage of the Oz series being public domain, why did we need yet another original Oz story? And why, why, why did we need one that heavily implies that three powerful sorceresses need an ordinary man to rescue them? As an Oz series fan…that’s a load of humbug.

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.

The Women of ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’

Written by Myrna Waldron.


Spoiler warning.
People have been asking me for a long time to cover this series, and it’s easy to tell why. A genre-blending young adult animated series, it is by far one of the most inclusive and feminist television series I have ever encountered. Unusually for an American television series, the cast is entirely populated by people of colour; the Four Nations are fantasy versions of Asian (mostly Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan) and Inuit cultures. The male and female characters are given equal attention and developed realistically, and, most miraculously, disabled characters are depicted with tact, understanding and dignity. 
As a feminist, it gave me particular pleasure to see a cast full of women with diverse personalities, as well as both emotional and physical strength. The show even directly addresses issues of sexism by allowing its female characters to confront it head-on, and convince their detractors that women are just as capable as men, particularly in reference to physical strength and Bending skill. The series has a lot going for it, but this particular review will focus on the main female characters of A:TLA, Katara, Toph, Azula, Suki, Mai and Ty Lee, and how each character explicitly demonstrates the feminist ideals of skilled abilities, emotional depth, diverse and realistic characterizations, and, as appropriate for a series combining fantasy and martial arts, sheer physical power.

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Katara
  • Katara is introduced at the beginning of the series as the Southern Water Tribe’s last remaining Waterbender, the others having been murdered, kidnapped, or gone off to war. She starts off quite unskilled, as there was no one left to instruct her, but this changes very quickly once she joins Aang on his quest to master the four elements. Like the dual nature of water’s abilities to heal and to harm, Katara is a multifaceted person who in one instance can be motherly and kind, and in another to have a formidably steely determination. She is the most traditionally feminine of the female characters in this series, which often led to her male opponents to underestimate her abilities. Notably, she directly confronts her brother Sokka (who as the eldest male remaining in their village, had a bit of a macho He Man complex) and the Northern Water Tribe’s Waterbending Master’s sexism. Sokka gradually learns for himself to appreciate the skill and determination of women (more on that later) but she must directly prove to Master Pakku her considerable skill. The Northern Water Tribe is a paternalistic society, where only the males are taught to Bend in combat; the women are only allowed to receive instruction in healing. Katara appreciates healing Waterbending (especially since it is a rare gift) but she wishes to master all the possibilities of Waterbending, tradition be damned. After Master Pakku discovers that Katara is the granddaughter of his first love and wears the necklace he gave her, he agrees to teach Katara, and later tells her that she has mastered Waterbending faster than any other pupil he’s ever taught.
  • As mentioned earlier, Katara is an example of how a person’s being traditionally feminine does not equal weakness. For the first third of the series, she is very much the Team Mom to her immature companions, as Sokka can be very lazy and Aang very impulsive. One of her biggest flaws is that she holds on to anger for long periods and finds it difficult to forgive; it is not until Zuko accompanies her on her search for her mother’s murderer that she learns that compassion and forgiveness require tremendous strength, as she makes the difficult decision not to take revenge on the murderer, and learns to forgive Zuko for his betrayal in a moment of weakness. As the main female protagonist, it was a foregone conclusion from the first episode that she would be Aang’s love interest, though his initial attraction to her beauty grows into a deep love and respect for her abilities over time. If Aang is the soul of the group, Toph the muscle, and Sokka the brains, then Katara is the heart…and there’s nothing wrong with that.
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Toph
  • Toph is the second female protagonist introduced in the series, and for a while serves as a counterpoint/foil to Katara and offers a sense of gender balance to Aang’s group. Where Katara is feminine and motherly, Toph is tomboyish, cocky and often lazy. The character was originally intended to be male (the Earthbender in the series’ opening sequence is the character’s original design), but her gender role thwarting characterization is a far more interesting result. Of course, the most important aspect of her characterization is that she is blind, a great example of a character with a disability who is treated with tact, dignity, and even a sense of humour. As the only daughter of the Bei Fongs, a wealthy and prominent Earth Kingdom family, they have coddled and shielded her from the world as they think people would take advantage of her due to her disability. Their efforts are unnecessary, because Toph is arguably the most powerful Earthbender in the world. She has the unique ability to sense the vibrations in the earth, and this not only serves her well as a Bender, but also grants her a certain degree of “sight.” She is not without her limitations, however, as she feels extremely uncomfortable while flying on Appa, and has some difficulty with sand (as it is fluid rather than solid like regular earth) for a while. She becomes truly blind when Zuko accidentally burns the soles of her feet, but even this setback does not hinder her for long. Her unique abilities are what make her a particularly effective teacher for Aang; since Earth is the opposite of his natural ability, it would take a special Earthbending Master to teach him a special understanding of the element. Of the three elements Aang must learn to master, it is notable that two out of his three teachers are female. Like Katara, Toph is a primarily self-taught Bender, who before going off with Aang used to sneak off to participate in Earthbending tournaments (that amusingly parody pro-wrestling) and remained undefeated in them. She is arguably the strongest Earthbender because along with her formidable bending skill, she invents the metalbending technique by sensing impurities within iron; only King Bumi could possibly match her skills.
  • In the first batch of episodes after her introduction, Toph clashes with Katara because they are opposites of each other. Katara has a need to order people around and keep things efficient and organized (as she was basically forced into that role after her mother’s death), but Toph is laid back and messy (to put it mildly). It seems to be a deliberate rejection of the rigid and opulent lifestyle which she was raised in. Toph can be refined and does know the ideal moments to exploit her social rank, but her true personality is as earthy as her element. As the series goes on, Katara and Toph gradually become more comfortable around each other, and grow to understand each others’ idiosyncrasies. They also learn how to combine their bending abilities to create mud, which is both a useful tool as well as a weapon. Toph’s inclusion in the group offers an important balance to the character relationships, as Katara can be overbearing, and I am of the biased belief that the more strong female characters are included in a show, the better the show becomes. Toph also shares the comedy relief role with Sokka, though while Sokka prefers wordplay and sarcasm, she jokes about her own disability. She is so capable and confident that her traveling companions repeatedly forget that she’s blind, and she isn’t afraid to poke fun at that. She is an unusual and very welcomed depiction of a disabled character; many times characters with disabilities are involved in cloying and condescending ‘inspirational’ stories about ‘overcoming’ their disability, as if the whole reason for a disability to exist is for it to make able-bodied people feel guilty. Toph understands that her blindness does limit her in many ways, and although she has a particularly effective way of compensating for her blindness, she accepts her limitations.
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Azula
  • Azula is an example of a female antagonist that is just as multifaceted and well-developed as a protagonist should be. The third Bender of the three main female characters, Azula is a prodigy Firebender, which is particularly notable as she is the Princess of the Fire Nation, and the Fire Lord’s family is infamous for their prodigious Bending skills. Like the other two female Benders, Azula has a special ability that sets her apart from other Benders of her element; her fire blazes so hot it is blue. Since Firebending derives some of its power from the passionate emotions of the Bender, her blue fire is a visual clue to a great depth of her rage and fury. She is also one of the few people with the ability to Bend lightning. But she is not only formidable as a Bender, but in hand-to-hand combat as well, making her an arguably even more deadly foe than her father. Of all the antagonists in A:TLA, she is the only character who even came close to defeating Aang, having mortally wounded him with lightning while he was trying to enter into the Avatar State. Though Katara was able to save his life with special healing water, he would have the scars of Azula’s attack on his back and foot for the rest of his life.
  • As an antagonist, Azula is both a tragic and frightening character. Having internalized the imperalistic propaganda that the Fire Nation concentrates on in their war effort, she is a Machiavellian perfectionist obsessed with furthering her father’s agenda, and rooting out any threats to the Fire Nation, whether they be her brother Zuko’s wavering loyalty, or Aang’s mission to stop the war at all costs. While Zuko bears an enormous facial scar as physical proof of their father’s abusive parenting, Azula’s scars are mental. As the series goes on, she becomes so obsessed with the Fire Nation’s cause, and pleasing her unpleasable father, that she becomes unhinged, paranoiac, and with an almost unstoppable rage. However, her mother Ursa also shares some blame for the deterioration of Azula’s mental state; it is revealed at the end of the series that Azula deeply resents her mother for seeing her as a monster and rejecting her while blatantly favouring Zuko. Although it is unfortunate that the show’s depiction of mental illness is that of an antagonist’s (furthering the stigma against the condition), it is important that Azula’s tragic fate shows the damage that parental abuse and neglect can sometimes cause.
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Suki
  • Suki is a secondary character introduced near the beginning of the series who returns later and becomes a part of Aang’s travelling group. A non-Bender, Suki is a leader of the Kyoshi Island Warriors, a group of female martial artists established by and named for Avatar Kyoshi, the most recent Earth Kingdom Avatar. The Kyoshi Warriors have a specific green uniform, fight with metal bladed fans, and all wear a Kabuki-like face paint that was favoured by Kyoshi. Her duties as a Kyoshi Warrior make her a kind of guardian – when she is reintroduced in the series she is performing a security guard-like function at an Earth Kingdom customs office. Even without her weapon, Suki is an exceptional martial artist and tactical planner. Azula recognizes her talents, and after defeating the Kyoshi Warriors separates Suki from her group and places her in a maximum security Fire Nation prison. She organizes a prison break-out with Zuko, Sokka, and his father Hakoda. Her absolute skill with martial arts, and sheer bravery, impresses Hakoda enough to comment on it to Sokka, who similarly reacts with pride, adoration and admiration. “That’s some girl.” “Tell me about it.”
  • Suki’s relationship with Sokka is one of the more naturally progressing romantic relationships in the series. When they first meet, she is one of the first people besides Katara to directly confront Sokka’s tendency towards a sexist dismissal of women’s abilities. By teaching him the ways of the Kyoshi Warriors, Sokka learns a new appreciation for the talents of women. She is also naturally confident, and makes her attraction to him clear by kissing him on the cheek. When they reunite, Sokka has matured, and has even experienced heartbreak after losing Princess Yue so quickly after their relationship began. Suki is understanding of his natural hesitation towards her, but it’s not long before teenage hormones take over and they decide to start a relationship. After he releases her from the Fire Nation prison, she remains at his side, and is his intellectual and physical equal as the two highly skilled non-Benders of Aang’s group.
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Mai
  • Mai is another non-Bending supporting character, who along with Ty Lee starts off as an antagonist after being recruited by their friend Azula, but gradually becomes a protagonist as she becomes disillusioned by Azula’s hatred and rage. The closest thing the series has to a “Goth,” she is a quiet and seemingly emotionless teenager who has sadly accepted her parents’ preference for her much younger brother. A member of an aristocratic Fire Nation family, she was Zuko’s girlfriend before his banishment, and quickly reunites with him after he is welcomed back to the Fire Nation. She compliments him well, as she keeps her emotions very guarded, and Zuko longs to be able to have the emotional control that she does. While they are stiff and formal around friends and family members, when they are alone together they are able to relax. People around Mai tend to make the mistaken assumption that she has no emotions at all, when in fact her true emotions run as deeply and passionately as any other Fire Nation native. Rather than letting her emotions quickly burn, they instead smoulder. Her defining moment is when she turns on Azula and helps Zuko to escape the Fire Nation prison despite his betrayal of her country. She tells Azula, “I love Zuko…more than I fear you.” As a warrior, her knife-throwing abilities are as steely as her emotional resolve. She possesses an almost supernatural skill with the knives, so it is easy to see why Azula recruited her to her cause (besides the pretense of childhood friendship). Like Sokka when it comes to Suki, Zuko also possesses a deep admiration for Mai’s skills, confidently praising her to others such as the prison guard needlessly assigned for her protection.
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Ty Lee
  • Lastly, Ty Lee is another non-Bender who serves as a contrast and foil to Mai. Where Mai is quiet and stoic, Ty Lee is exuberant and cheerful. Azula comes across Ty Lee after she has joined a traveling circus, and, knowing Ty Lee’s particularly formidable skills, invites her to leave the circus and join her on her travels. Ty Lee is a traditional martial artist who has the ability to quickly strike the vital pressure points that temporarily disable Bending. As many of the people traveling with Aang do not have non-Bending combat skills, her attacks neutralize her opponents entirely and leave them vulnerable. In terms of her personality, Ty Lee is unlike any other Fire Nation native, especially those in the upper classes. Where the Fire Lord’s family is full of rage, and Mai is sad and withdrawn, she is energetic and almost always has a smile, even in combat. She eventually reveals that her cheerful exterior is a facade she puts on, and that her impulsively joining the circus was a desperate attempt at differentiating herself from her six identical sisters. Ty Lee exhibits a deep-set motivation towards individuality, which in her case is successful since Aang is the only other A:TLA character with a comparably cheerful personality. She also shares the deep moral beliefs that Mai has, and betrays Azula at the same time Mai does. She is also unusually sexually confident, as she is both comfortable with her body and with the boys that approach her. Ty Lee’s approach to sexuality is notable in that it is a positive depiction of a female character who is popular with the opposite sex (particularly for a teenage character); she is not ridiculed, shamed, or jealously made a rival for it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a triumph in almost every aspect. As an action/adventure epic, it has a compelling and exciting story that grips you and leaves you dying to know what happens next, even after the story has ended. The animation, voice acting and music are excellent. There is a great deal of care and research given to the series, particularly in its representation of Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan and Inuit cultures and of various martial arts techniques. It is about as inclusive and diverse as a North American series can get, as the cast is entirely people of colour, and individuals with disabilities are fairly represented as well – the only group missing in representation are LGBTQ individuals, but perhaps sequel series The Legend of Korra can rectify that. Most importantly for this review, A:TLA has some of the most well written female characters I have ever seen. Its female cast not only shows the diverse amount of personalities women can have, but also how neither adherence nor thwarting of gender roles has anything to do with strength and ability. Each female character is an incredible warrior with a special ability that sets her apart from others, and even demonstrates to the males in their lives about the capability and strength of women. A:TLA is already almost the perfect television series, but it is also refreshingly feminist.

All images taken from the Avatar Wiki, and edited by me.

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.

Popular Posts of 2012

Last year, we published the Top 10 of 2011, with the only criteria being the number of page views each post received. This year, we’re publishing the most viewed post in each month of 2012. The list, of course, would be entirely different if we published the 10 most viewed posts in all of 2012, but those posts usually occur earlier in the year, and we want to make sure some of the posts written within the past few months also get a shout out. So, enjoy the list, and be sure to click on the post title in order to read the entire piece!
We’d also like to thank the lovely people at Shakesville, Women and Hollywood, Bitch Media, Ms. Magazine, and Feministing for driving so much traffic to our site in 2012, and thank you to ALL our readers for sharing the work we do at Bitch Flicks.

December: “Pregnancy Brain” in Sitcoms by Lady T

Two sitcom episodes, less than a year apart from each other, both dealing with forgetful pregnant women who don’t know how to manage their lives without help, but the message of each episode is very different. The How I Met Your Mother episode is sexist and cliched, while the Modern Family episode attempts to treat the pregnant character with humanity, and mostly succeeds.

November: The Last Unicorn Is the Anti-Disney Fairy Tale by Myrna Waldron

I was probably 6 or 7 years old the first time I saw The Last Unicorn. And while I thought it was pretty, I found it incredibly boring. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I rewatched it and understood why it was so boring to Little Girl Me – this is not a film for children, and never should have been marketed as such. Such is the major pitfall of an animated film – unless it explicitly says it’s pornography (and sometimes not even then – people are stupid), people assume it’s for children. What makes The Last Unicorn so special is it might be one of the most bittersweet and poignant fantasy movies ever made. It is the Anti-Disney film – everything that Disney fairy tales are not.

October: Pitch Perfect and Third-Wave Feminism by Leigh Kolb

As the two matriarchs of the group–Chloe (Brittany Snow) and Aubrey (Anna Camp)–recruit young women to audition at the back-to-school activities fair, Aubrey makes it clear that they are looking for women with “bikini-perfect bodies.” Chloe responds quietly with “How about we just get good singers?” Thus begins the Bellas’ journey into a new world filled with women of color, overweight women, “alternative” brunettes with lots of eyeliner and lesbians.

September: Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Little Mermaid by Ana Mardoll

I like The Little Mermaid. I like a lot of things that are problematic, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with liking problematic things as long as a certain awareness is maintained that Problems Abound Therein. Art is complicated like that. But I like The Little Mermaid and I think it’s compatible with valuable feminist messages. Certainly, it was my first introduction into a feminist narrative and I have always considered the problematic romance storyline to be camouflage for the real story. But we’ll see whether or not you agree.

August: “Yo Bitch”: The Complicated Feminism of Breaking Bad by Leigh Kolb

These passing comments and the clear symbolism of female repression and underlying power make it clear that Breaking Bad isn’t simply a tour de force of masculinity. The negative reactions to the female characters reveal misogyny in the audience, not in the series. The fact that we are exhilarated by men plotting and killing, and are nervous or annoyed when the female characters attempt to navigate their lives tells us more about ourselves than the characters.

July: The Feminism of Sailor Moon by Myrna Waldron

This has been a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. I’m an absolutely die-hard fan of Sailor Moon, and part of that is because it served as my childhood introduction to feminism. That might be a little bit hard to believe, considering the superheroines of the show are known for outfits not much more revealing than Wonder Woman’s. Silly outfits aside (you get used to them), this show was absolutely groundbreaking. Its protagonists are 10 realistically flawed, individual and talented teenage girls (and women) who, oh, you know. Save the world.

June: Lola Versus Not Your Average Romantic Comedy: Bad Love Life Decisions, Finding Happiness … and One of the Best Film Endings Ever by Megan Kearns

But isn’t that life? Isn’t that what people do when they’re dumped? They obsess over their exes, retracing the steps of their relationship, trying to deciper the clues that led to the relationship’s unraveling. They pine for them. They strategize ways to accidentally run into them (or avoid them like the plague). Either way, there’s a lot of strategizing involved. I wanted Lola to be empowered. To stop obsessing over nice but douchey guys who didn’t appreciate her or who weren’t right for her. I wanted her to hang out with her female friends. But the way the plot unfolded rang more realistic and way more uncomfortable.

May: The Avengers: Are We Exporting Media Sexism or Importing It? by Soraya Chemaly

Where does this global growth leave characters like Black Widow and movies with female centric stories or leads? What happens when Hollywood produces movies to meet the needs of the world’s fastest growing and most populated countries – which also happen to be those with the most skewed gendercide-based birth ratios? Cultures that habitually accept the elimination of females aren’t going to be that interested in stories about women and girls, especially those that feature powerful, culture-threatening, transgressive characters.

April: The Hunger Games Review in Conversation: Part 1 on Jennifer Lawrence, Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food by Amber Leab and Megan Kearns

I didn’t really have a problem with Lawrence being older than Katniss. Although I totally agree about the concern for girls “conflating girlhood with womanhood.” But I suppose it didn’t bother me so much because Katniss is never sexualized. She cares about archery, not what she’s wearing. While Katniss receives a pageant-style makeover, so do the male tributes. While it hints at it, I just wish the movie had conveyed the book’s satire of toxic beauty standards.

March: Biopic and Documentary Week: The Blind Side: The Most Insulting Movie Ever Made by Nine Deuce

I’m sure that the Tuohy family are lovely people and that they deserve some kind of medal for their good deeds, but if I were a judge, I wouldn’t toss them out of my courtroom should they arrive there bringing a libel suit against whoever wrote, produced, and directed The Blind Side, because it’s handily the dumbest, most racist, most intellectually and politically insulting movie I’ve ever seen, and it makes the Tuohy family — especially their young son S.J. — look like unfathomable assholes. Well, really, it makes all of the white people in the South look like unfathomable assholes. Like these people need any more bad publicity.

February: Indie Spirit Best Supporting Female Nominee: Shailene Woodley in The Descendants by Martyna Przybysz

I have no clue how Shailene Woodley managed to stay in the shadows until now (because let’s face it, The Secret Life can hardly be counted), but it’s been said that she’d given “one of the toughest, smartest, most credible adolescent performances in recent memory” as Alexandra. Rawness and realness of her talent are visible throughout the film, and she definitely sets the bar high, both for herself, and other young actresses. If Alex King could say something to this, it would probably be ‘Fuck, yeah!’.

January: Top 10 of 2011: Rom-Coms Don’t Suck by Amanda Krauss

And “guy” comedies (e.g. Knocked Up, Superbad, I Love You, Man) are exactly the same, predictable genre. I’ll even grant you that they’re technically funnier, mostly because the quantity and transgressiveness of the jokes is greater. There’s a complicated set of reasons for this, involving gender, comedy, and socialization. But suffice to say that gendering rom-coms as “chick” entertainment is a relatively recent phenomena and that we’re all socialized to think women are less funny, so I’d really appreciate it if critics would take a little step back when they did their sexist stuff.

Mrs. Claus Gets Shit Done: Thoughts On ‘The Year Without A Santa Claus’

By Myrna Waldron
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The Year Without A Santa Claus DVD Art (Source: IMDB)
It might be the defining characteristic of modern Christmas celebrations that we consider the televised Christmas special/movie as one of our most beloved traditions. For many people, it doesn’t feel like Christmas without the Grinch, a lamp that looks like a leg, a suicidal Jimmy Stewart, and the animated specials released during the 60s and 70s by Rankin-Bass. My personal favourite is “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town,” but a friend of mine suggested I take a look at this one because unlike almost all of the other Christmas specials, it’s Mrs. Claus that is the real hero.
I always found the characterization and concept of Mrs. Claus interesting. First off, it’s kind of funny that “Claus” is used as a last name, when “Santa Claus” literally just means “Saint Nicholas.” If anything, she should be Mrs. Kringle. Another interesting thing is that, although there is a strong consensus that Santa Claus is indeed married (the historical Saint Nicholas, being a priest, wasn’t), we know nothing about her, and she seems content to step back and let her more famous husband get all the attention. Even in the Toronto Santa Claus Parade, which is over 100 years old and originated the practice (take THAT, Macy’s) didn’t feature Mrs. Claus in the parade until only last year. Doesn’t really make sense, does it?
So “The Year Without A Santa Claus” is an interesting Christmas special just because Mrs. Claus is basically the main character in it. The only other Christmas special I know of where Mrs. Claus is a significant character is “A Chipmunk Christmas” from 1981. (She was played by June Foray there, and may that woman live forever) It’s one of the few Rankin-Bass specials I didn’t grow up with, so I have the unusual ability to look at this without wearing the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. It’s by no means feminist, but it just comes so close to getting there that it’s worth discussing.
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Mrs. Claus, Iggy, Jingle & Jangle (Source: Celebrations.com)
  • Santa Claus seems to be a ridiculous bumbler in this special, compared to his highly capable wife. It’s kind of a variation on the “dumb husband, smart wife” stereotype that is constantly used in commercials and sitcoms.  I found it kind of ridiculous that Santa immediately bought into the cynical rants of one grouchy doctor when he, more than anyone else who has ever lived, would know whether people have the Christmas spirit and goodwill or not.
  • I have to wonder what Mrs. Claus spends her time doing. We see her doing domestic chores like laundry (inexplicably hanging it outside in, you know, the North Pole), ironing, and caring for her husband. Does she assist the elves in toy making? Does she care for the reindeer? Assuming she shares her husband’s magical immortality, she probably has other magic abilities too. And if this is a semi-sequel to “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” (as Mickey Rooney plays Santa in both), Mrs. Claus was a former teacher, and thus wouldn’t be entirely happy just devoting herself to domestic tasks.
  • When Santa decides that he’s going to skip giving out the presents this year, Mrs. Claus sings a song about her plans to fill in for him. She then immediately gives up these plans when the elves Jingle and Jangle recognize her. This makes absolutely zero sense. #1, she wasn’t wearing a beard or anything, just the suit, so of COURSE she was recognized, #2, Jingle and Jangle already know her, but nobody outside of the North Pole does, and #3, nobody sees Santa while he’s doing his work anyway (or at least they’re not supposed to – this film has Santa appearing to practically everyone) so what does it matter whether she looks like Santa or not? This was throwing away a perfectly good idea. Why can’t Mrs. Claus fill in for him? Why must it be Santa or no one? Can we say…patriarchy, boys and girls?
  • While Santa gripes about his illness and revels in disappointing the children (what the hell, Santa) Mrs. Claus is the one who comes up with all the ideas to change his mind.  Sending Jingle and Jangle (riding on Vixen) out into the world to find evidence of goodwill and Christmas spirit, she shows that she understands the people better than Santa does. And that Santa is more likely to believe a grumpy doctor than his own wife. Once again, what the hell, Santa.
  • When Jingle and Jangle run into a problem (the mayor of Southtown, where they have landed, promises to encourage the world to show Christmas spirit if they can make the  area snowy) it’s not Santa they turn to, it’s Mrs. Claus. And boy, does she come through. Jingle and Jangle aren’t terribly smart apparently. They have physically met the Snow Miser, but don’t think that maaaaybe the Snow Miser can, I don’t know, make things SNOW? Fortunately, Mrs. Claus seems to be the only person in the North Pole who isn’t a colossal idiot.
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Snow Miser, Mother Nature & Heat Miser (Source: Moviesnobs.net)
  • Snow Miser and Heat Miser are the two things people remember most about this special. They’re not evil, but they are jerks, and Mrs. Claus has incredible patience for putting up with their antics. I’m actually shocked she didn’t even object when the Heat Miser demanded that the North Pole be added to his territory. Lady, you live there, don’t you think you have the right to speak up a little? Maybe it’s Mrs. Claus who should be the saint. She just seems to be endlessly willing to go along with the Misers’ demands just so one jerkass mayor can have a White Christmas.
  • But she is at least resourceful and clever enough to realize that the Misers are unreasonable, and that she has to appeal to a higher authority – their mother, Mother Nature. She makes a big fuss about how nervous she is to visit her, as they’ve never met before…and then Mother Nature just turns out to be a powerful but kind and feminine older lady. Kind of an anticlimax, really. I was hoping for the female version of the Winter Warlock. It’s a shame Mrs. Claus and Mother Nature only discussed her sons, as we could have had a Bechdel Test pass here. Maybe Mrs. Claus will visit her more often now that she knows there’s no need to be intimidated.
  • The Misers’ fear of their mother is interesting, to say the least. She appears to be a very traditional type of woman in Victorian clothing, serving tea and chatting amiably with Mrs. Claus and her friends. Is their fear a subtextual message to the audience not to underestimate the power of women? Or is it just a comedic bit making light of the Misers’ emasculation? It all depends on your interpretation.
  • The film’s biggest failure is that it doesn’t celebrate Mrs. Claus nearly as much as it should. It was she who came up with the solutions for every problem, but as soon as Santa decides that he doesn’t want to be a jerk after all, the film is all YAY SANTA IS BACK! No thank you to Mrs. Claus for actually encouraging and helping her husband to be the man everyone expects him to be? The film even seems to give more credit to the children sending weepy letters to him. Yeah, that was cute, but…c’mon. Give the old lady her dues.
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.