(Sorry this isn't the second Name of the Wind post, but my brain has been frazzled and this post has been waiting in drafts for far too long. I also suspect it's going to be topical as we continue to dig into Kvothe's adventures in the coming weeks.)
Most people who aren't Ayn Rand are willing to acknowledge a difference between things they like and things that are "good", a distinction that is at once counterintuitive and perfectly natural. It is with that distinction in mind that I watched two movies recently: Conan the Barbarian (the 1982 original) and Vampire Academy (based on books of the same name). These movies aren't good, but they are bad in specific ways that call into question what exactly we mean by "good" to begin with.
I'll start with Conan, because I have less to say about it: it's the incredibly straightforward story of a Proud Warrior Tribe kid whose village is destroyed by an evil man, who gets taken as a gladiator slave, runs away to freedom, slays monsters, has gratuitous sex with dubious consent, and finally kills the evil black wizard who slaughtered his people. He has a love interest and a couple of comic relief sidekicks of indistinct ethnicity and fundamentally racist conventions, he gets some unexpected and inexplicable Christ imagery, and assures us all that a true hero is an independent burly man who single-handedly decapitates bad guys. Throughout the adventure, he is narrated in epic saga style.
This is a bad movie, let there be no question. Even the heroic POC tend to be cowardly and animalistic, and for all that James Earl Jones does some spectacular work as the villain, the climax of the movie is a white man setting a bunch of impressionable kids free by murdering a black man. The love interest dies literally fifteen minutes after our heroes performed a magic ritual to bring Conan back from the dead, and yet no one asks whether maybe they should just do that again. There's a thoroughly unexpected scene when Conan steals an evil priest's robes by using the man's predatory gay tendencies against him. All bigoted writing--literally every word of it--is also lazy writing.
But lord how I wish we could have good movies that take their absurd epic fantasy setting this seriously. It's the problem of the 1950s: love the aesthetic, hate the politics. Where are my stories about people who aren't cis-white-hetero-men-with-arms-like-bags-of-footballs, adventuring across untamed lands to fight animated statues and free vulnerable people from charismatic dictators while a wizened wizard narrates their quest with the kind of absolute severity that would make Adam West proud? Where victory isn't always murder, where strength is community and not a weird frappuccino of the philosophy of Nietzsche and incredibly unlikely Genghis Khan attributions?
Conan the Barbarian is not a good movie, but how I wish it were.
With that, we come to Vampire Academy, the bizarre Twilight/Harry Potter hybrid that I didn't know I was waiting for. This movie is absurd and cliched, with its convenient telepathic bonds and its magic princess on the run and a vampire queen who lives in the school and calls assemblies specifically to chastise her probable successor in public (for no personal benefit). Few of the actors seem comfortable being filmed, and the mandatory hetero love interests are a blatant discount bin Edward Cullen and some kind of Star-Trek-transporter-accident fusion of Jack Black and David Bowie.
And yet this is a movie that does an astonishing number of things right. Our heroic bonded duo of vampire princess Lissa and mostly-human bodyguard Rose are complex characters with multiple conflicting motivations and flaws, going overboard in their petty revenge or overprotectiveness and then regretting it, trying to make things right. The movie starts in medias res to a degree that reminded me of the original Star Wars, with our heroes on the run, immediately provoking questions about how they got there, why they left the eponymous academy, and why they're being dragged back. (And, if you're me, whether the romantic/sexual subtext between the girls is going to remain subtextual. It is. Obvs. Sigh.) They remain, throughout the movie, likeable but imperfect, with Rose in particular (as the action hero) getting to maintain a swagger and punchiness that is usually restricted to male roles. When her platonic bro starts to make some kind of I'm A Nice Guy rant at her, Rose dismisses him instantly to focus on more important issues. When Discount Edward hangs around Lissa in awkward and potentially creepy ways, Rose bluffs to get rid of him, but later accepts that she doesn't get to pick her friend's friends and apologises for lying--while still making it clear that she thinks his behaviour was creepy.
(In one reversal that the blogqueen particularly liked, Discount Edward spends most of the movie being markedly useless and then gets exactly one dramatic effective moment during the climax, a fate that usually befalls the token female action hero.)
To my utter lack of surprise, internet investigation told me that this movie was a colossal failure commercially, and its Rotten Tomatoes page (aggregate score of 11%) is full of blurbs from grey-haired white men declaiming the film for being impossible to follow and trying to lure in silly teenager girls by mashing up all the modern trends of magic school and hot vampire boys.
We are left with the question: would this movie have done better with male leads? Rose would certainly have been a more typical male character, though being younger than his hypothetical female love interest would have been a switch. More likely that Lissa would become the love interest in need of protection (unless she was a dude too, in which case I suspect there would have been way more No Homo being thrown around and all of the leads' emotions would have to be replaced with sex or punching). This is a movie with a strong focus on social status--characters care about how they're perceived and might prefer a battle to the death over public embarrassment--which is obviously such a girl thing, innit? And yet my mind drifts back to a little English underdog hero called Eggsy who who just wanted to prove his worth compared to his condescending upper-class peers...
Over on the page for Kingsman (aggregate score of 74% and my unfathomable scorn) a veritable flood of enraptured white men cheer for its "stylish" "subversiveness", wit, charm, and "devil-may-care exuberance". May I remind you that this is a film in which a lisping media tycoon decides to save the environment by inventing a machine that makes everyone turn into murderous berserkers for only as long as he holds down the button. But "vampires want to kidnap a princess to use her healing magic for themselves" is too convoluted and weird.
And I mean: I'm not trying to argue that Vampire Academy is a Good Movie, in the sense of technical expertise or top-quality performances (apart from Rose, who was honestly delightful in every moment that she wasn't being forced into a weird romantic subplot). But I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than plenty of other movies that are supposedly its superior, and so I start to wonder how we're defining Good Movies. Because when you get into institutions like that--film theory and literary criticism and the like--one of the first things that becomes apparent is that a lot of our metrics and expectations have been designed by aging white dudes who scorn everything that doesn't pander directly to them. How exactly do we decide which is more important: that a tertiary villain's actress has a natural style of delivery, or that the script acknowledges that women can have more than one personality trait? How do we weight fluid cinematography against the 'artistic choice' to only give speaking roles to white people?
There's some kind of idea out there, never quite stated (but clearly believed by people who consider themselves 'the default'), that you can tell an apolitical story. Like if a person just writes, lets the words flow freely without intending to make a statement about the world, they will necessarily not make a statement about the world. If they just want to tell a story about being a hero, and they coincidentally make the climax of that story a white guy brutally murdering a black guy, there is no way the story might be racist, because they weren't thinking about racism while they wrote it. It's only once other people come in and start overthinking things that we run into trouble, somehow introducing problems to the story just by observing what's in there.
If this blog had, like, a heraldic motto, it'd probably be something like what I wrote above there: all bigoted writing is lazy writing. It replaces truth and originality with lies that uphold privilege and comfort oppressors. I hope that we can, as a civilisation, move away from "X is okay if you don't mind all the bigotry" and towards "X could have been good if not for all the bigotry". A story that hates Muslims isn't 'controversial' or 'daringly un-PC', it's a bad story pushing a bad agenda.
And if we're going to recognise that bigotry is an artistic flaw, I think it's important to give artistic value to fighting bigotry. There's a new Ghostbusters out (it was great), and the choice to cast four lead women is considered a gimmick while the original's four leading men are apolitical. Nah, bruh. The original Ghostbusters has two significant women (the secretary and the damsel) and everyone else who matters is a man, and it's like that because it was written by men for themselves.* The new Ghostbusters has a quartet of proven comic ladies because the people involved in making it agreed that it's important that there are stories about women like this.
Which isn't to say that, say, casting women is always politically progressive and creative and meritorious. Joss "Female Characters Who Are Strong And Vulnerable In Exactly The Ways I Find Sexually Exciting" Whedon has taught us all that lessons several times over. Heralded for years as the great geek feminist, Whedon once imagined a conversation in which a hypothetical journalist asked him why he wrote so many female characters, setting himself up for the dazzling rejoinder "Because you're still asking that question". And yet he keeps producing exactly the same kind of character over and over again (all bigoted writing is lazy writing) because the story isn't about the representation of women, it's about that one particular kind of woman that Whedon likes best. The entire concept that launched Buffy was 'wouldn't it be weird to see a girl do this?' He was counting on women-as-gimmick to draw attention, but then circled back around to approximately-mainstream acceptance by slathering them in male gaze, and he has never stopped repeating this pattern. (And always tearing them down, showing them broken and abused and in need of saving anyway.)
I tragically can't close this by outlining the true rules for objectively determining what a good movie is. That is beyond even my power as an amateur blogger. But I think there's a lot more to be investigated in how we perceive movies aimed at or led by women. These movies can be flawed (oh, is Vampire Academy flawed) and it's easy to brush off a cheesy movie, but is it actually the cheese and the production values that people hate, or are those just the things we let a person target when they want to destroy something because it's For Girls?
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*There will likely be at least one Ghostbusters post coming soon, possibly one about the original and one about the reboot, in case you are hungry for more of the blogqueen's vitriol for Peter Venkman.
Showing posts with label surprisingly feminist media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surprisingly feminist media. Show all posts
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Hallowthon 2015 Anthology: For the Final Girl in all of us
Will here: Happy All Hallow's Eve-eve-eve-eve, gentle readers. There are a hell of a lot of horror movies out there and a lot of the same things to be said about most of them: exploitation cliches with sexualised violence against women, weak women predated upon or protected by strong men, and people of colour treated as expendable for shock value. Racist stereotypes as a source of villainy. Sex corrupts the young and then they get murdered while the pure girls maybe survive. We could do a hundred posts and they would all look basically the same. To save everyone time, here we present the SS&S Hallowthon 2015 Anthology, with myself and the blogqueen offering you some brief thoughts on a score of better- and lesser-known horror films, in case you seek assistance picking something to watch this weekend.
Erika here: Also a warning, a lot of these are movies I saw more than five years ago, so I may have not noticed or forgotten some of the more messed-up aspects of some.
(Content: misogyny, racism, gory violence, and sexual violence. Fun content: the greatest documentary of our time, and VAGINA DENTATA.)
Ghostbusters
Erika - As we all know, the greatest documentary of our time. That aside, I think Peter Venkman should get slimer'd. Not that he would notice as he is made of slime. Seriously. Fuck that guy.
Will - Oh my god Erika this isn't a documentary MOVING ALONG
Evil Dead
Will - Not the original with Bruce Campbell, but the remake from a couple of years ago. Much less terrible than I expected. Don't know if I could call it 'good'. Teens isolate themselves at a cabin in the woods--not for a weekend of drinking and sex, but as an intervention to get their addict friend clean. Everything goes horribly wrong because one guy decides to read aloud from a book that literally has 'don't say these words' written in the margins in blood. Gory as hell, a huge amount of bodily mutilation, and a literal rain of blood in the last scene. Not as inherently misogynistic as I would have expected--the original Evil Dead is famous for the 'tree rape' scene, which was exactly as gratuitous and voyeuristic as it sounds (the tree even ripped open the woman's shirt for the audience's benefit). In this version, the victim does get bound by an animated tree, and some kind of monstrosity spews out a demon eel that slithers up her skirt, but the whole thing is incredibly gross and violating (and a key plot moment) rather than played to arouse.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Erika - When I first saw this movie, I went in expecting it to be awful. I was very very wrong. It was magical. It's campy and cheesy and Abraham Lincoln kills vampires with an ax. Horses are thrown. Love yourself. Watch this movie.
Will - The only caveat I'd add is that this is a very White Savior kind of historical revisionism along with the vampire revisionism. Abraham inherits his mother's sense of equality ("As long as any of us are slaves, none of us are free", which...) and stands up for it his whole life. Vampires are responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and they throw in a line specifically to note that Africans were getting 'sold' to white people by other Africans, in that way that really defensive white people always want to make sure that we all know that we're all culpable, really, and I mean I don't even see race so why do you have to make such a big deal about it--et cetera. So there's that. On the other hand, Anthony Mackie plays Lincoln's best friend Will Johnson and, upon learning that they're going to fight vampires, jumps right in with deadly efficiency. Lincoln required an extensive training montage, but Johnson is just like "Oh, are we doing superhero stuff now?" and goes into bullet time.
Teeth
Erika - My old roommate, Devin and I got back from the bar late one night and weren't ready to crash yet, so we booted up Netflix and found this. It's about a Good Christian Girl who is attacked by reams of sexual predators and defends herself with her vagina teeth. She doesn't escape the non-stop sexual assault, but her teeth give her agency to fight back. Either way, it features a doctor, horrified, shrieking "VAGINA DENTATA" and I don't know what else you want from a movie.
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Erika - It's more an aesthetic than a movie, and not a great one. The music is tragically lacking, but has Anthony Head who is a surprisingly decent singer and makes up for a multitude of sins. Strangely, he isn't even in the best number of the movie. Also Paris Hilton's face falls off.
Will - Worth seeing if you don't mind some gore. I guess it's supposed to be an indictment of the modern American healthcare system and the encroaching forces of capitalism? But if I get into dissecting that for analysis, we'll be here all day. Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag is magnificent and probably a wizard.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Erika - I thought I was buying the first one when I bought it, not the (older) re-make. It's the first time I have bought the wrong movie and gotten a better one than I hoped for. This movie terrified me. It manages to be high tension and super creepy without using jump scares or gore. It's just, it's just a really well written and done. If you like getting your pants creeped off you, but like, not in a sexy way, check it.
Practical Magic
Erika - When scrolling through Netflix with Will trying to figure out what to put on this list I suggested this one. I hadn't seen the movie in like, ten years, but I remembered enough to think there was something to write about. I was right. Not that that should surprise anyone. This is a movie that is about women, and women loving and trusting each other to overcome anything. They also kill the same abusive boyfriend twice.
Will - Also there are two love spells used in this movie and I have a variety of questions as relating to consent and mind control whenever that sort of thing happens. But I'd say the movie leans toward the idea, not that the targets are compelled to adore each other, but magically made intensely aware of all the things they could love about each other and lets things flow from there? That's not textual at all, I admit. Great scenes with women coming together to support each other in dire circumstances, even when they otherwise don't get along. Like most things in life, needed more not-straight people.
Rosemary's Baby
Erika - Which is scarier? Being impregnated with the literal spawn of Satan (without fun Devil sex but with the extra challenges breast feeding) or having everyone in your life teaming up to gaslight you about it? Well, in this movie, you don't have to choose!
Human Centipede
Erika - I did not want to see this movie when I saw it. I didn't really know what I was getting into, which added to the glee of those with me as they cackled at my unprepared horror. Devin and his twin Doug decided this was what they wanted to do for their birthday, so my gift to them both was having to explain to my father what it was. Neither of us have forgiven them for this. The movie actually isn't as gross as you think it will be. It's gross, and it's fucked up, but the worst of it happens off screen. If you were thinking of seeing this movie but afraid of explicit gore, it's not that bad?
Will - I have literally cut people off midsentence to keep them from explaining the premise of this movie to innocent bystanders who didn't know better. Thus do I earn my place in the Elysian Fields.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Erika - I do not remember being introduced to the soundtrack of this movie. I just... always knew it. I have fond memories of my Father dancing around the kitchen in his underpants, making breakfast, singing "Sweet Transvestite" with all he's got (and my Dad is a very enthusiastic singer). The only copy of the soundtrack we had was on a tape, so after switching to CD there were a few years where I kind of forgot about it until my Discman died and I went digging through my old tapes. I was walking across the street when I realized what, exactly, most of these songs were about. I didn't get hit by a car, but not be as wide a margin as I would like to claim. The soundtrack alone is worth the watch if you've somehow not already seen this campy, sexy(?), parade of absurdity.
Will - The blogqueen tried to make me watch this a couple of years ago, but I was exhausted and she made me go home halfway through because sleeping through Rocky Horror is on her list of forbidden acts, along with wearing socks (Erika- Only to bed) and giving her husband ideas. So when I did actually see it all the way through this summer, it was at a local theater with a shadowplay cast and a lot of call-and-response from the audience. I'm not convinced that actually made it any harder to understand what was going on. This is a weird movie and the terms 'transvestite' and 'transsexual' are both waaay out of fashion now, and while I'm all for more LGBT characters in cinema, there's a lot of coercion and dubious consent here. I get why it's an iconic film (and apparently they're remaking it with Laverne Cox as Dr Frank-N-Furter) but I was not as enchanted as I hoped.
The Loved Ones
Erika - I don't even know where to start with this movie. I'm not squeamish but yikes. Gore, psychological horror, sexual horror, incest, I just--if you are looking for a movie that you will sit back and say "Wow, that was super fucked up in more ways than I have seen any one movie be fucked up in" then this is the deeply fucked up movie for you.
Garden State
Erika - What's more horrifying than a whiny entitled privileged white dude and his fantasies of a manic pixie dream girl who will fix all of his problems? Great aesthetic and soundtrack too.
Will - The most subtle psychological thriller of our generation.
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Erika - This should be called "Mandy Lane needs some better fucking friends" because every single one of them is awful. (Okay, the lone black guy (Bird) doesn't totally suck.) Also: unnecessary sexualized violence. I am not saying sexual violence, but the first girl is killed after giving a blow job by getting a shotgun rammed in her mouth as if she were giving a blow up before having her head smashed through. It's a slasher flick that fancies itself clever. I will give it credit that I didn't see the whole twist coming, and it makes some interesting visual choices.
Will - It's a very aware movie that becomes less cliche as it goes, both in narrative and cinematic styles. Could have done with a little more character exposition, since the motivations driving the whole murder spree are never given very clearly, and unlike most slashers that actually matters. There are enough hints given that you can piece something together, but a lot left up to interpretation, and I'm never sure if that's intentional or if the filmmakers just thought they were so clever that they didn't need to say more.
Shaun of the Dead
Erika - Since the saturation of the zombie market, Shaun of the Dead is an especially nice reprieve. It's clever and genre savvy without feeling "wink wink nudge nudge tee hee this is a zombie movie" with actually developed characters. Could stand to have more women and POC and fewer white dudes, but it's at least sort of a horror movie so I guess I can only hope for so much.
Will - Probably the best we're going to get in terms of 'ordinary people face the zombie apocalypse'.
Orphan
Erika - A movie that started off so strong and then went so wrong. It starts off with some psychological horror and cat-and-mouse type stuff between a grown woman and her adopted 9 year old daughter, with the 9 year old being the villain. Because if horror movies have taught me anything it's that children are creepy as fuck (and people wonder why I don't want any). Like many disappointing horror movies, it starts off clever and then takes a sharp turn into standard slasher horror right at the end.
The Witches of Zugarramurdi (English title: Witching & Bitching)
Erika - This is a weird movie. Weird in a good way, but weird. A group of robbers are trying to get away after their first heist but they get grabbed by a coven of cannibal witches who are trying to bring about the apocalypse. The basic theme and morals of the story are that women are evil and unstable, while men are immature and useless, but mostly well-meaning.
Will - I'm generally not one for gross-out humour, 'battle of the sexes' plots, or MRA talking points. Especially screw that one guy in the first seen who's like "the judges always favour women in custody cases" because that's not even slightly true. On the other hand, this has canonically bisexual secondary characters who become a happy couple, which probably makes it more progressive overall than 90% of Supernatural episodes, or Steven Moffat's portfolio.
Rubber
Erika - Almost all of the weird-ass movies on this list that I saw in theaters I saw at the same weird local theater and I hope everyone has one of those. This was a movie that I actually regretted seeing there though. Again, one that is best described as "weird" but I wouldn't say "good weird". If it had been a half hour long, I probably would have loved it but it was just so long. Still, if the premise of "A homicidal car tire with psionic powers goes on a rampage and also acts as its own framing device" catches your attention, it's probably worth checking out. Just maybe be willing to skip through a bit.
Halloween
Will - I actually like this movie. Not even as 'I guess among horror movies it's bearable'; I legitimately enjoyed it, which was a huge shock the first time because I have always hated standard-issue slashers. The thing is that this one came before most others and didn't use their bloody cliches. The daylight scenes are at least as unsettling as anything that happens in the dark. The horror has less to do with jump scares and more to do with an emotionless implacable force randomly deciding to kill all your friends. It also pretty much codified the final girl who faces the monster and lives. That said, when your villain is 'an escaped murderer from an insane asylum', it's not like we're going to get anything like a thoughtful film. Pure id.
Splice
Erika - When a husband and wife duo of "too-cool-for-school" scientists are told to stop their research on genetically engineering creatures, they cross lines of ethics, morals, and pretty much everything that gets in their way when they continue in secret and start splicing in human DNA as well. This movie starts off well. It challenges boundaries and ethics and social expectations and largely tries to be high minded about it even when getting into deeply uncomfortable territory. Which is what made it so terribly disappointing when it turned into a monster flick in the last few scenes and gets rapey.
Re-Animator
Erika - I have found the formula for good Lovecraft reading: read his shorter short stories. That's it. Otherwise he spends forever building up and up mundane circumstances to like, a paragraph of weirdness that overall is unsatisfying (I'm looking at you, Rats In The Walls). But the shorter ones tend to get to the weird stuff sooner, and feel like a bigger payoff without as much puttering around. All that to say, I haven't actually read Re-Animator. The Husbeast has, and he tells me it's super racist, which isn't terribly shocking. The movie is not. It is however incredibly sexist. The treatment of the lone female character is awful, she's stripped of agency, objectified, and assaulted. It does a better job getting to the weirdness more quickly than Lovecraft's writings often do, but the whole movie was a bit of a let down for me. The aesthetics are kind of fun but beyond that I don't have much nice to say about it, and a lot of negative. This is the only one on the list I am straight up telling you to skip.
Byzantium
Will - This is simultaneous not a Vampire Movie and also the best vampire movie I've ever seen. A couple of two-century-old women are permanently on the run for reasons the mother refuses to explain to her daughter. There are decapitations and literal waterfalls of blood and a Dangerous Romance between a frail human and the immortal vampire who won't risk hurting an innocent. There are positive depictions of sex workers and their work, and a sort of thematic crescendo that we should all be able to agree, whether living or undead, that the most important thing to do is defy and destroy the violent institutions of patriarchy. (On balance, this is an ultra-white movie and there's a fair about of offscreen rape-as-backstory, so it's not all sunshine and murder-daisies.) Basically the anti-Twilight. I recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't find the subject matter unwatchably disturbing.
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So that's our selection of judgments for this year--feel free to add your own in the comments if there's something else in this vein that you wish more people knew about. Also, expect more judgments of creepy stuff in the weeks to come, as Will finally gets around to marshalling his thoughts on the undying saga that is the Supernatural series, and the X-Files revival in January 2016 spurs some talk on the amazing Dana Scully and how weird it is that no one seems to talk about how super racist this sci-fi classic really was.
Erika has written far enough ahead that her posts should run uninterrupted through the next month in spite of NaNoWriMo, so enjoy those. Will insists that he has got his side covered as well but he is not a reliable source. Happy Halloween, folks.
Erika here: Also a warning, a lot of these are movies I saw more than five years ago, so I may have not noticed or forgotten some of the more messed-up aspects of some.
(Content: misogyny, racism, gory violence, and sexual violence. Fun content: the greatest documentary of our time, and VAGINA DENTATA.)
Ghostbusters
Erika - As we all know, the greatest documentary of our time. That aside, I think Peter Venkman should get slimer'd. Not that he would notice as he is made of slime. Seriously. Fuck that guy.
Evil Dead
Will - Not the original with Bruce Campbell, but the remake from a couple of years ago. Much less terrible than I expected. Don't know if I could call it 'good'. Teens isolate themselves at a cabin in the woods--not for a weekend of drinking and sex, but as an intervention to get their addict friend clean. Everything goes horribly wrong because one guy decides to read aloud from a book that literally has 'don't say these words' written in the margins in blood. Gory as hell, a huge amount of bodily mutilation, and a literal rain of blood in the last scene. Not as inherently misogynistic as I would have expected--the original Evil Dead is famous for the 'tree rape' scene, which was exactly as gratuitous and voyeuristic as it sounds (the tree even ripped open the woman's shirt for the audience's benefit). In this version, the victim does get bound by an animated tree, and some kind of monstrosity spews out a demon eel that slithers up her skirt, but the whole thing is incredibly gross and violating (and a key plot moment) rather than played to arouse.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Erika - When I first saw this movie, I went in expecting it to be awful. I was very very wrong. It was magical. It's campy and cheesy and Abraham Lincoln kills vampires with an ax. Horses are thrown. Love yourself. Watch this movie.
Will - The only caveat I'd add is that this is a very White Savior kind of historical revisionism along with the vampire revisionism. Abraham inherits his mother's sense of equality ("As long as any of us are slaves, none of us are free", which...) and stands up for it his whole life. Vampires are responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and they throw in a line specifically to note that Africans were getting 'sold' to white people by other Africans, in that way that really defensive white people always want to make sure that we all know that we're all culpable, really, and I mean I don't even see race so why do you have to make such a big deal about it--et cetera. So there's that. On the other hand, Anthony Mackie plays Lincoln's best friend Will Johnson and, upon learning that they're going to fight vampires, jumps right in with deadly efficiency. Lincoln required an extensive training montage, but Johnson is just like "Oh, are we doing superhero stuff now?" and goes into bullet time.
Teeth
Erika - My old roommate, Devin and I got back from the bar late one night and weren't ready to crash yet, so we booted up Netflix and found this. It's about a Good Christian Girl who is attacked by reams of sexual predators and defends herself with her vagina teeth. She doesn't escape the non-stop sexual assault, but her teeth give her agency to fight back. Either way, it features a doctor, horrified, shrieking "VAGINA DENTATA" and I don't know what else you want from a movie.
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Erika - It's more an aesthetic than a movie, and not a great one. The music is tragically lacking, but has Anthony Head who is a surprisingly decent singer and makes up for a multitude of sins. Strangely, he isn't even in the best number of the movie. Also Paris Hilton's face falls off.
Will - Worth seeing if you don't mind some gore. I guess it's supposed to be an indictment of the modern American healthcare system and the encroaching forces of capitalism? But if I get into dissecting that for analysis, we'll be here all day. Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag is magnificent and probably a wizard.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Erika - I thought I was buying the first one when I bought it, not the (older) re-make. It's the first time I have bought the wrong movie and gotten a better one than I hoped for. This movie terrified me. It manages to be high tension and super creepy without using jump scares or gore. It's just, it's just a really well written and done. If you like getting your pants creeped off you, but like, not in a sexy way, check it.
Practical Magic
Erika - When scrolling through Netflix with Will trying to figure out what to put on this list I suggested this one. I hadn't seen the movie in like, ten years, but I remembered enough to think there was something to write about. I was right. Not that that should surprise anyone. This is a movie that is about women, and women loving and trusting each other to overcome anything. They also kill the same abusive boyfriend twice.
Will - Also there are two love spells used in this movie and I have a variety of questions as relating to consent and mind control whenever that sort of thing happens. But I'd say the movie leans toward the idea, not that the targets are compelled to adore each other, but magically made intensely aware of all the things they could love about each other and lets things flow from there? That's not textual at all, I admit. Great scenes with women coming together to support each other in dire circumstances, even when they otherwise don't get along. Like most things in life, needed more not-straight people.
Rosemary's Baby
Erika - Which is scarier? Being impregnated with the literal spawn of Satan (without fun Devil sex but with the extra challenges breast feeding) or having everyone in your life teaming up to gaslight you about it? Well, in this movie, you don't have to choose!
Human Centipede
Erika - I did not want to see this movie when I saw it. I didn't really know what I was getting into, which added to the glee of those with me as they cackled at my unprepared horror. Devin and his twin Doug decided this was what they wanted to do for their birthday, so my gift to them both was having to explain to my father what it was. Neither of us have forgiven them for this. The movie actually isn't as gross as you think it will be. It's gross, and it's fucked up, but the worst of it happens off screen. If you were thinking of seeing this movie but afraid of explicit gore, it's not that bad?
Will - I have literally cut people off midsentence to keep them from explaining the premise of this movie to innocent bystanders who didn't know better. Thus do I earn my place in the Elysian Fields.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Erika - I do not remember being introduced to the soundtrack of this movie. I just... always knew it. I have fond memories of my Father dancing around the kitchen in his underpants, making breakfast, singing "Sweet Transvestite" with all he's got (and my Dad is a very enthusiastic singer). The only copy of the soundtrack we had was on a tape, so after switching to CD there were a few years where I kind of forgot about it until my Discman died and I went digging through my old tapes. I was walking across the street when I realized what, exactly, most of these songs were about. I didn't get hit by a car, but not be as wide a margin as I would like to claim. The soundtrack alone is worth the watch if you've somehow not already seen this campy, sexy(?), parade of absurdity.
Will - The blogqueen tried to make me watch this a couple of years ago, but I was exhausted and she made me go home halfway through because sleeping through Rocky Horror is on her list of forbidden acts, along with wearing socks (Erika- Only to bed) and giving her husband ideas. So when I did actually see it all the way through this summer, it was at a local theater with a shadowplay cast and a lot of call-and-response from the audience. I'm not convinced that actually made it any harder to understand what was going on. This is a weird movie and the terms 'transvestite' and 'transsexual' are both waaay out of fashion now, and while I'm all for more LGBT characters in cinema, there's a lot of coercion and dubious consent here. I get why it's an iconic film (and apparently they're remaking it with Laverne Cox as Dr Frank-N-Furter) but I was not as enchanted as I hoped.
The Loved Ones
Erika - I don't even know where to start with this movie. I'm not squeamish but yikes. Gore, psychological horror, sexual horror, incest, I just--if you are looking for a movie that you will sit back and say "Wow, that was super fucked up in more ways than I have seen any one movie be fucked up in" then this is the deeply fucked up movie for you.
Garden State
Erika - What's more horrifying than a whiny entitled privileged white dude and his fantasies of a manic pixie dream girl who will fix all of his problems? Great aesthetic and soundtrack too.
Will - The most subtle psychological thriller of our generation.
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Erika - This should be called "Mandy Lane needs some better fucking friends" because every single one of them is awful. (Okay, the lone black guy (Bird) doesn't totally suck.) Also: unnecessary sexualized violence. I am not saying sexual violence, but the first girl is killed after giving a blow job by getting a shotgun rammed in her mouth as if she were giving a blow up before having her head smashed through. It's a slasher flick that fancies itself clever. I will give it credit that I didn't see the whole twist coming, and it makes some interesting visual choices.
Will - It's a very aware movie that becomes less cliche as it goes, both in narrative and cinematic styles. Could have done with a little more character exposition, since the motivations driving the whole murder spree are never given very clearly, and unlike most slashers that actually matters. There are enough hints given that you can piece something together, but a lot left up to interpretation, and I'm never sure if that's intentional or if the filmmakers just thought they were so clever that they didn't need to say more.
Shaun of the Dead
Erika - Since the saturation of the zombie market, Shaun of the Dead is an especially nice reprieve. It's clever and genre savvy without feeling "wink wink nudge nudge tee hee this is a zombie movie" with actually developed characters. Could stand to have more women and POC and fewer white dudes, but it's at least sort of a horror movie so I guess I can only hope for so much.
Will - Probably the best we're going to get in terms of 'ordinary people face the zombie apocalypse'.
Orphan
Erika - A movie that started off so strong and then went so wrong. It starts off with some psychological horror and cat-and-mouse type stuff between a grown woman and her adopted 9 year old daughter, with the 9 year old being the villain. Because if horror movies have taught me anything it's that children are creepy as fuck (and people wonder why I don't want any). Like many disappointing horror movies, it starts off clever and then takes a sharp turn into standard slasher horror right at the end.
The Witches of Zugarramurdi (English title: Witching & Bitching)
Erika - This is a weird movie. Weird in a good way, but weird. A group of robbers are trying to get away after their first heist but they get grabbed by a coven of cannibal witches who are trying to bring about the apocalypse. The basic theme and morals of the story are that women are evil and unstable, while men are immature and useless, but mostly well-meaning.
Will - I'm generally not one for gross-out humour, 'battle of the sexes' plots, or MRA talking points. Especially screw that one guy in the first seen who's like "the judges always favour women in custody cases" because that's not even slightly true. On the other hand, this has canonically bisexual secondary characters who become a happy couple, which probably makes it more progressive overall than 90% of Supernatural episodes, or Steven Moffat's portfolio.
Rubber
Erika - Almost all of the weird-ass movies on this list that I saw in theaters I saw at the same weird local theater and I hope everyone has one of those. This was a movie that I actually regretted seeing there though. Again, one that is best described as "weird" but I wouldn't say "good weird". If it had been a half hour long, I probably would have loved it but it was just so long. Still, if the premise of "A homicidal car tire with psionic powers goes on a rampage and also acts as its own framing device" catches your attention, it's probably worth checking out. Just maybe be willing to skip through a bit.
Halloween
Will - I actually like this movie. Not even as 'I guess among horror movies it's bearable'; I legitimately enjoyed it, which was a huge shock the first time because I have always hated standard-issue slashers. The thing is that this one came before most others and didn't use their bloody cliches. The daylight scenes are at least as unsettling as anything that happens in the dark. The horror has less to do with jump scares and more to do with an emotionless implacable force randomly deciding to kill all your friends. It also pretty much codified the final girl who faces the monster and lives. That said, when your villain is 'an escaped murderer from an insane asylum', it's not like we're going to get anything like a thoughtful film. Pure id.
Splice
Erika - When a husband and wife duo of "too-cool-for-school" scientists are told to stop their research on genetically engineering creatures, they cross lines of ethics, morals, and pretty much everything that gets in their way when they continue in secret and start splicing in human DNA as well. This movie starts off well. It challenges boundaries and ethics and social expectations and largely tries to be high minded about it even when getting into deeply uncomfortable territory. Which is what made it so terribly disappointing when it turned into a monster flick in the last few scenes and gets rapey.
Re-Animator
Erika - I have found the formula for good Lovecraft reading: read his shorter short stories. That's it. Otherwise he spends forever building up and up mundane circumstances to like, a paragraph of weirdness that overall is unsatisfying (I'm looking at you, Rats In The Walls). But the shorter ones tend to get to the weird stuff sooner, and feel like a bigger payoff without as much puttering around. All that to say, I haven't actually read Re-Animator. The Husbeast has, and he tells me it's super racist, which isn't terribly shocking. The movie is not. It is however incredibly sexist. The treatment of the lone female character is awful, she's stripped of agency, objectified, and assaulted. It does a better job getting to the weirdness more quickly than Lovecraft's writings often do, but the whole movie was a bit of a let down for me. The aesthetics are kind of fun but beyond that I don't have much nice to say about it, and a lot of negative. This is the only one on the list I am straight up telling you to skip.
Byzantium
Will - This is simultaneous not a Vampire Movie and also the best vampire movie I've ever seen. A couple of two-century-old women are permanently on the run for reasons the mother refuses to explain to her daughter. There are decapitations and literal waterfalls of blood and a Dangerous Romance between a frail human and the immortal vampire who won't risk hurting an innocent. There are positive depictions of sex workers and their work, and a sort of thematic crescendo that we should all be able to agree, whether living or undead, that the most important thing to do is defy and destroy the violent institutions of patriarchy. (On balance, this is an ultra-white movie and there's a fair about of offscreen rape-as-backstory, so it's not all sunshine and murder-daisies.) Basically the anti-Twilight. I recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't find the subject matter unwatchably disturbing.
---
So that's our selection of judgments for this year--feel free to add your own in the comments if there's something else in this vein that you wish more people knew about. Also, expect more judgments of creepy stuff in the weeks to come, as Will finally gets around to marshalling his thoughts on the undying saga that is the Supernatural series, and the X-Files revival in January 2016 spurs some talk on the amazing Dana Scully and how weird it is that no one seems to talk about how super racist this sci-fi classic really was.
Erika has written far enough ahead that her posts should run uninterrupted through the next month in spite of NaNoWriMo, so enjoy those. Will insists that he has got his side covered as well but he is not a reliable source. Happy Halloween, folks.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Erika vs Dredd
I feel the need to defend this week's choice first. The idea behind "surprisingly feminist media" is to take the lowest scrape-the-barrel "Hey, this movie is only minimally harmful!" media and analyse its strengths and weaknesses. Which brings me to said choice of the week: the 2012 Dredd.
Content notes: murder, police violence, threats of sexual violence.
Also HOLY NONSEXUALIZED FEMALE CHARACTERS BATMAN! Am I making too many Batman jokes in this post? (Do I care?) Nah. There are two major female characters. Ma-Ma (Madeline Madrigal), the head of Ma-Ma Clan, who is a former sex worker who bit the dick off of her pimp and took over his holdings to become the top gang leader in the block. She's known not for being sexy or sultry, but for violence and cruelty. Her first scene is in the bath, and you see nothing. She's in opaque water up to her neck. The point is instead to show us what the movie's narcotic Slo-Mo feels like to the user--everything is slow and sparkly, and sometimes the movie feels like Twilight if the vampires were perma-violent gun fanatics. So, SFX porn, but not actual porn!
Then there's the rookie, Anderson. Her uniform is the same as Dredd's. They don't tighten it up or make it more fitted. They don't put her in awkward boobs and butt poses, she moves and behaves like someone who knows what they're doing. She is (and is treated as) competent. The only time we get anything remotely resembling "but ur a girl" is from villains. When Dredd doubts or questions her, it's because he's evaluating her, not because he doubts her for being a woman and (minor spoilers) by the end of the movie Dredd thoroughly relies on and trusts in her.
The movie on a few occasions actively subverts "sexy" tropes. Ma-Ma is a former sex worker but they never feel the need to show her acting "sexy". She isn't hanging out in heels and a cat suit ordering her minions around, we see her in loose shirt and in the war room. We see her taking action, and being the one to hold the knife to people herself. There's a set up for a GIRL FIGHT between Anderson and another woman, which the movie gleefully skips past by having Anderson psychically foresee the ambush and just shoot them down before carrying on her way. Later Anderson gets shot--it looked like a shoulder shot and when I first watched the movie I sighed. Great. Time for some awkward bloody cleavage. (Why bloody women in pain can be considered sexy yet people are so grossed out by periods baffles me.) But then: they don't do it. There are no weird bloody boobs. They unzip her uniform and she's not wearing a basically-see-through white tank top; she's wearing a dark t-shirt, and even though it looked like she got shot in the shoulder it's a gut wound.
Is Dredd groundbreaking in representation or writing? Absolutely not. It's awkward in how it handles it's POC characters (Dredd's boss is a black woman with two brief scenes, and that's about as good as it gets), and never tries to address the fact that it's about a fascist system of murder-cops. But it's a fun action flick that didn't leave me thinking "Why is it so hard to get action movies made with women as people?", which is depressingly rare. Whatever credit Dredd could be granted doesn't come from displaying empowered women who are 'just as good as men', but by making characters who simply are women while being cops and criminals. People who aren't written as if 'woman' is a personality trait, and who aren't just there to fuel sex fantasies.
Content notes: murder, police violence, threats of sexual violence.
Picture: The title character Dredd in a helmet that covers his eyes, frowning, with flames reflected in his visor.
He makes that face the entire movie and talks like Batman. (The one from the Dark Knight Trilogy, not the perennially wonderful Adam West.) I won't pretend I don't replace half his dialog in my head with "I'M BATMAN" in my head, and it doesn't really change anything. It's wonderful.
Dredd is a movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has built one giant mega-city (aptly named Mega-City One) and within this giant mega-city are giant apartment buildings (200+ floors). Because these cities are so huge and everything is corrupt and awful because there was some sort of apocalypse the new system of law enforcement is Judges, who are cops, but also juries and executioners. Sounds a bit like a wish fulfillment for some of the cops in the US, doesn't it? Our title character, the fascist Judge Dredd, is given a failed rookie to take with him to evaluate (she is a powerful psychic, which is why, even in a world of hard yes and no, they're testing her anyways). He will be the sole one to decide this, because this world is big on giving cops that sort of power. These two go to investigate a triple homicide in one of the mega blocks and then OH NO THEY'RE TRAPPED AND AN EVIL MOB BOSS HAS LOCKED THE PLACE DOWN AND SET EVERYONE IN THE BUILDING ON TRYING TO MURDER THEM!
If you are looking for an over the top DARK GRITTY ACTION MOVIE with super cheesy dialogue I will gesture emphatically at Dredd for you. (The Husbeast adores this movie, but is quick to point out that Dredd is
supposed to be a fascist and they never address that at all. There are no overt politics, although as we're about to dive into, there are some disturbing implicit ones.)
So, the bad: Dredd is kind of racist. The movie, not the character. Maybe the character? He gets very little development so I legitimately can't say (I also know nothing about the comics, if someone else wants to chime in). The Rookie (Anderson) is cast as a pretty white woman:
Pictured: A pretty blond white woman wearing a fair bit of make up
She spends a fair portion of the movie fighting with a black villain in their custody, who (on three separate occasions) threatens her with sexualized violence. Yeah. Awk. In one super unnecessary scene occurring psychically in his head, he twists things to make her perform oral on him, but she quickly twists the 'dream' around on him and, long story short, he pisses himself and she walks away completely victorious. She also doesn't wear a helmet so we can keep seeing her pretty face, although I will give them points for justifying why she doesn't (it interferes with her psychic powers, if you were wondering). The movie is set in a mega-block which we're told has an unemployment rate of 96% and one of the highest crime rates in the area. It has some of the most diverse casting of background characters that I have ever seen, which would be great if this wasn't a building mostly full of criminals and the unemployed. (How can a 96% unemployment rate be sustained? Where do they get their food and other necessities? They clearly can't be farming or ranching. Do they steal from other blocks? Does Mega-City One have a vast and abundant welfare program to go with its murderous ultra-cops?)
It would be nice seeing so many POC in the background if it didn't translate to Dredd and Anderson mowing through dozens of men of color without batting an eye. There are three times that we see hesitation from them: One is Anderson's first kill (a white man), another is a victim of violence (another white man, also Anderson being the one to hesitate), and the third is when Dredd tries to talk kids away and stuns them instead of shooting to kill (one is black, one is white). This is the only time we find out he has that capacity; it is never used again or mentioned, even when he is running dramatically low on ammunition. There are a lot of ways in which feminist goals (the health, safety, and freedom of all women, not just the privileged white ones) aren't compatible with a fascist police state that routinely murders people on a whim, but for the sake of this post, we're working within its premise.
(The 'whim' nature of the judges is both highlighted and ignored--Dredd will enter a room with guns blazing and take out four suspected criminals to make a point, but then declare that he won't execute one of the captives on a mere 99% chance they are a murderous drug dealer.)
It would be nice seeing so many POC in the background if it didn't translate to Dredd and Anderson mowing through dozens of men of color without batting an eye. There are three times that we see hesitation from them: One is Anderson's first kill (a white man), another is a victim of violence (another white man, also Anderson being the one to hesitate), and the third is when Dredd tries to talk kids away and stuns them instead of shooting to kill (one is black, one is white). This is the only time we find out he has that capacity; it is never used again or mentioned, even when he is running dramatically low on ammunition. There are a lot of ways in which feminist goals (the health, safety, and freedom of all women, not just the privileged white ones) aren't compatible with a fascist police state that routinely murders people on a whim, but for the sake of this post, we're working within its premise.
(The 'whim' nature of the judges is both highlighted and ignored--Dredd will enter a room with guns blazing and take out four suspected criminals to make a point, but then declare that he won't execute one of the captives on a mere 99% chance they are a murderous drug dealer.)
With all of that said, we get to the reasons that this movie qualified for SFM in the first place! (Did I mention the sweet action scenes and how all of Dredd's lines can be replaced with "I'M BATMAN"? Because I feel that's relevant.)
Also HOLY NONSEXUALIZED FEMALE CHARACTERS BATMAN! Am I making too many Batman jokes in this post? (Do I care?) Nah. There are two major female characters. Ma-Ma (Madeline Madrigal), the head of Ma-Ma Clan, who is a former sex worker who bit the dick off of her pimp and took over his holdings to become the top gang leader in the block. She's known not for being sexy or sultry, but for violence and cruelty. Her first scene is in the bath, and you see nothing. She's in opaque water up to her neck. The point is instead to show us what the movie's narcotic Slo-Mo feels like to the user--everything is slow and sparkly, and sometimes the movie feels like Twilight if the vampires were perma-violent gun fanatics. So, SFX porn, but not actual porn!
Then there's the rookie, Anderson. Her uniform is the same as Dredd's. They don't tighten it up or make it more fitted. They don't put her in awkward boobs and butt poses, she moves and behaves like someone who knows what they're doing. She is (and is treated as) competent. The only time we get anything remotely resembling "but ur a girl" is from villains. When Dredd doubts or questions her, it's because he's evaluating her, not because he doubts her for being a woman and (minor spoilers) by the end of the movie Dredd thoroughly relies on and trusts in her.
The movie on a few occasions actively subverts "sexy" tropes. Ma-Ma is a former sex worker but they never feel the need to show her acting "sexy". She isn't hanging out in heels and a cat suit ordering her minions around, we see her in loose shirt and in the war room. We see her taking action, and being the one to hold the knife to people herself. There's a set up for a GIRL FIGHT between Anderson and another woman, which the movie gleefully skips past by having Anderson psychically foresee the ambush and just shoot them down before carrying on her way. Later Anderson gets shot--it looked like a shoulder shot and when I first watched the movie I sighed. Great. Time for some awkward bloody cleavage. (Why bloody women in pain can be considered sexy yet people are so grossed out by periods baffles me.) But then: they don't do it. There are no weird bloody boobs. They unzip her uniform and she's not wearing a basically-see-through white tank top; she's wearing a dark t-shirt, and even though it looked like she got shot in the shoulder it's a gut wound.
Is Dredd groundbreaking in representation or writing? Absolutely not. It's awkward in how it handles it's POC characters (Dredd's boss is a black woman with two brief scenes, and that's about as good as it gets), and never tries to address the fact that it's about a fascist system of murder-cops. But it's a fun action flick that didn't leave me thinking "Why is it so hard to get action movies made with women as people?", which is depressingly rare. Whatever credit Dredd could be granted doesn't come from displaying empowered women who are 'just as good as men', but by making characters who simply are women while being cops and criminals. People who aren't written as if 'woman' is a personality trait, and who aren't just there to fuel sex fantasies.
(And yes, from all we've heard, Mad Max: Fury Road will definitely be the subject of an upcoming Surprisingly Feminist Media post.)
As always feedback and further suggestions for this feature are welcome. Tune in next week for more of Will suffering!
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Surprisingly Feminist Media
Erika here! Since Will and I have been spending a lot of time battling a malevolent being (which lives outside the realm of space and time just beyond our mortal understanding that wants to consume consciousness--you can understand why this is a difficult and time consuming task) we're going to try something a little different with the updating. 50 Shades was weakening me in the previously mentioned battle, but we're pretty sure that between the two of us we can get out a weekly post (still Wednesday) as well as save the world so long as I don't lock myself into only 50 Shades. So, without further ado, let me introduce a new feature to the blog:
Surprisingly Feminist Media!
I will take a piece of media that is not trying to be feminist or "empowering" and point out some that are unexpectedly kind of feminist. I've got a short list of things to work on for future posts, but suggestions on songs/books/movies (ideally things that are stand alone) would be wonderful.
And our first entry is...!
Boyz II Men - I'll Make Love to You
Content warning - Aggressively 90s croony boyband ballad, extensive use of soft focus, and a questionable amount of silk pajamas.
Lyrics can be found here.
And no, this isn't a joke. I wish it were. I had initially picked a different song, one that's actually good, but when I double checked the lyrics I realized the line that had initially gotten it qualified is in fact not what I thought it was, and it got disqualified. Also if this doesn't prompt you to send in suggestions, I don't know what will. I had to watch that music video before posting it. I also made Will watch it. Well, I tried to. He gave up halfway through and just giggled at my suffering because he's a good friend like that.
Why this song?
This song is about fucking. Going by the music video it's about courting someone when both parties are openly into it so you can get to slow tender candle- and fire-lit (this is actually just sounding like a fire hazard with all those rose petals scattered around) all-about-her genital mashing. Although it does just talk about being all-about-her sex, so, I mean, if she wanted to get to some pegging there may be no fire or flower petals, I guess that's a your mileage may vary scenario? The singer(s) don't seem to be expecting pegging, but I trust that when they say "anything she wants" they mean it. Meatloaf made it very clear, he would do anything, but he won't do that (I've always suspected that was anal, thoughts?) so who knows where their night took them. Let's be clear, there are a lot of songs about touching junk. So many. Like, at least seven. Maybe even eight or nine. So why this one? Two reasons:
Firstly, it is a song about female pleasure. A lot of songs about boning talk about female pleasure, but often through the lens of male pleasure. The singers are not in this for their bits, they are in this for their partners pleasure. If they, to reference the blog favorite 50 Shades, get to "shatter" as well, hey, awesome, but that's secondary.
Secondly, if you look at the lyrics (and I don't blame you if you don't want to) they often come back to consent and communication.
I'll do anything, girl you need only ask - Pegging or egg beaters? Readers, place your bets.
I'll make love to you
Like you want me to - The singer is again coming back to communication. This couple (by the song, not the video) presumably have been together awhile, so he knows what his partner is into, but again, there is an open invite of "tell me what you want".
I'll make love to you
When you want me to - WHEN you want me to. He isn't just turning up all turgid claiming it's about her LETS GO. He's here, his rocket is ready for lift off, but this is about her, on her terms, and when she wants it. Just because he's ready to pressure wash the quiver bone doesn't mean he expects or demands to right now. If she doesn't want to and just wants to snuggle and instead of dominating him in the bedroom do so at Mario Kart? Hey, her night, her call.
There are depressing few love/banging songs that consider and concentrate on consent or communication. When I googled around many got counted simply because the actual proposition was in the song. I saw Lady Marmalade counted, and while I like that song, it's about trying to get a John, not making sure your partner is safe and comfortable. Also "I would do anything for love" which is kind of about trying to pressure this woman into agreeing to have sex with Meatloaf, so, awk. But they do exist! There is now another entry for that "Not Rapey sexy time" playlist I know you're all secretly working on. May I also suggest the Power Rangers' theme because it's hilarious?
So chime in on things you'd like to see featured here in the future, otherwise I might be forced to do "Do ya think I'm sexy?" by Rod Stewart, so please. Don't force us through that. Make some suggestions.
Surprisingly Feminist Media!
I will take a piece of media that is not trying to be feminist or "empowering" and point out some that are unexpectedly kind of feminist. I've got a short list of things to work on for future posts, but suggestions on songs/books/movies (ideally things that are stand alone) would be wonderful.
And our first entry is...!
Boyz II Men - I'll Make Love to You
Content warning - Aggressively 90s croony boyband ballad, extensive use of soft focus, and a questionable amount of silk pajamas.
Lyrics can be found here.
And no, this isn't a joke. I wish it were. I had initially picked a different song, one that's actually good, but when I double checked the lyrics I realized the line that had initially gotten it qualified is in fact not what I thought it was, and it got disqualified. Also if this doesn't prompt you to send in suggestions, I don't know what will. I had to watch that music video before posting it. I also made Will watch it. Well, I tried to. He gave up halfway through and just giggled at my suffering because he's a good friend like that.
Why this song?
This song is about fucking. Going by the music video it's about courting someone when both parties are openly into it so you can get to slow tender candle- and fire-lit (this is actually just sounding like a fire hazard with all those rose petals scattered around) all-about-her genital mashing. Although it does just talk about being all-about-her sex, so, I mean, if she wanted to get to some pegging there may be no fire or flower petals, I guess that's a your mileage may vary scenario? The singer(s) don't seem to be expecting pegging, but I trust that when they say "anything she wants" they mean it. Meatloaf made it very clear, he would do anything, but he won't do that (I've always suspected that was anal, thoughts?) so who knows where their night took them. Let's be clear, there are a lot of songs about touching junk. So many. Like, at least seven. Maybe even eight or nine. So why this one? Two reasons:
Firstly, it is a song about female pleasure. A lot of songs about boning talk about female pleasure, but often through the lens of male pleasure. The singers are not in this for their bits, they are in this for their partners pleasure. If they, to reference the blog favorite 50 Shades, get to "shatter" as well, hey, awesome, but that's secondary.
Secondly, if you look at the lyrics (and I don't blame you if you don't want to) they often come back to consent and communication.
I'll do anything, girl you need only ask - Pegging or egg beaters? Readers, place your bets.
I'll make love to you
Like you want me to - The singer is again coming back to communication. This couple (by the song, not the video) presumably have been together awhile, so he knows what his partner is into, but again, there is an open invite of "tell me what you want".
I'll make love to you
When you want me to - WHEN you want me to. He isn't just turning up all turgid claiming it's about her LETS GO. He's here, his rocket is ready for lift off, but this is about her, on her terms, and when she wants it. Just because he's ready to pressure wash the quiver bone doesn't mean he expects or demands to right now. If she doesn't want to and just wants to snuggle and instead of dominating him in the bedroom do so at Mario Kart? Hey, her night, her call.
There are depressing few love/banging songs that consider and concentrate on consent or communication. When I googled around many got counted simply because the actual proposition was in the song. I saw Lady Marmalade counted, and while I like that song, it's about trying to get a John, not making sure your partner is safe and comfortable. Also "I would do anything for love" which is kind of about trying to pressure this woman into agreeing to have sex with Meatloaf, so, awk. But they do exist! There is now another entry for that "Not Rapey sexy time" playlist I know you're all secretly working on. May I also suggest the Power Rangers' theme because it's hilarious?
So chime in on things you'd like to see featured here in the future, otherwise I might be forced to do "Do ya think I'm sexy?" by Rod Stewart, so please. Don't force us through that. Make some suggestions.
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