Hello! This is a side blog I am trying to run about Art. Capital A, broad range Art. It will dip into all kinds of media, probably including news, because journalism is a kind of writing and all stories are political. It will deal with all kinds of visual art, including things that not everyone likes to call art. Probably. It will definitely be dealing with pop culture.
As you can tell, there are already some posts here! That is because I have been attempting to get this blog up for a while. And not doing a great job of it.
Most of the reason was because I was trying to come up with a consistent and reliable tagging system. Yeah, I am terrible at those things. I am still going to keep a page where you can browse the tags, and I am still going to be throwing a lot of tags under each post, but like, clicking on the tag “movies” is not going to get you every post about movies because some of them I will just not have tagged that way (try “film” or “cinema”)? I figured content is more important that a perfectly indexed tag system. Anyone who disagrees is free to co-run this blog as tag editor. Please. That would be wonderful.
Oh, and sometimes I might seem like I am taking myself very seriously. That is because Art is totally serious business. But also it totally isn’t. And so those times are just artifacts from me caring a lot about things and that being filtered through having to write English papers for a long time.
Please, enjoy, reblog, submit, share with friends, whatever. Questions are always welcome!
i’ve been reading a book of award winning literary short stories and a book of kinda trashy post-apocalyptic speculative fiction short stories and guess which book displays more jaded contempt for humanity hint it’s not the one with all the nuclear fallout
#how do people survive without sci fi#i have no fucking idea#seriously all these lit shorts are so weirdly cruel and cold#people living and dying and loving each other and apparently that’s meaningless and absurd#all the great machinations and dreams of human beings and the lives they build with one another amount to nothing#meanwhile in the wasteland people are reinventing love#dancing in the acid rain and diving for the scrap metal prayers of a distant age#and learning over and over again how to live#those are stories worth reading#those are stories worth telling#sigh
My 5-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl.
The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.)
But my daughter was determined. She liked the story pretty well so far, but Bilbo was definitely a girl. So would I please start reading the book the right way? I hesitated. I imagined Tolkien spinning in his grave. I imagined mean letters from his testy estate. I imagined the story getting as lost in gender distinctions as dwarves in the Mirkwood.
Then I thought: What the hell, it’s just a pronoun. My daughter wants Bilbo to be a girl, so a girl she will be. And you know what? The switch was easy. Bilbo, it turns out, makes a terrific heroine. She’s tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits to make off with a spectacular piece of jewelry. Perhaps most importantly, she never makes an issue of her gender—and neither does anyone else.
Do y’all know how striking this scene in an action movie was to me? Main lead, who is young and gorgeous and the whitest of whites, oversteps his bounds. He touches a commanding officer. In any other action movie the dressing down would not be this severe (Elba’s adlibbing on this is terrifying…forget kaijus, Raleigh looks more scared by him than anything that crawls out of the breach and half the audience squirmed in chastened sympathy because WOW). And the thing is, Raleigh is right. His initial argument that Stacker is holding back Mako is for all intents and purposes, the correct assessment. He’s RIGHT. But he isn’t in a position to tell that to a commanding officer, especially the way he does. So Stacker puts him back in his place. Raleigh KNOWS he went out of line the minute he touched Stacker and rather than argue or shout “you know I’m right” or storm off or IGNORE a commanding officer like any other action movie would have the hero do, Raleigh backs down. Stacker doesn’t even let him get away with just the nod and choked back frustration, he makes him VERBALLY back down as well. There is no question who is in charge here. Raleigh is obviously angry and frustrated and still riding the testosterone high of kicking Chuck’s face, but he FREAKIN’ BACKS DOWN LIKE ANYONE WITH SENSE IN THE MILITARY WOULD. It’s always baffled me that main rodeo cowboy hero of every movie can just walk all over rank and command and not pay for it because he’s “special”. Raleigh only sort of does this once (and remember, his argument is valid) and he’s immediately reminded that’s not what he’s there for. And he KNOWS because he never complains about it, never goes off and stews about how unfair Stacker is, never holds it against Stacker later. He knows he crossed a line and he belly crawls back across it because it’s all about respect and he overstepped.This is something 9 out of 10 action movies wouldn’t address.
This is carried through in really fucking interesting ways throughout the movie, actually. You remember the scene where we get introduced to Stacker? The Becket boys are joking with Tendo about his disaster of a love life, and it’s cute and fun and casual and dude shenanigans — and then it gets announced that the Marshal is on deck. The camera happens to be on Tendo, and you see him — you see on-fucking-screen how his shoulders straighten and he sits up and his tone of voice changes and goes professional. And you see it again, too, in the post-double event scene where people are in a joyous, packed crowd around Mako and Raleigh — and then Stacks shows up at the door, and a path fucking parts for him like he is smoking-hot Moses in a double-breasted suit.
That’s presence, folks. That’s charisma, and even more than that, it’s people respecting a natural fucking leader who has earned respect.
It’s been pointed out that people disobey Stacker in PacRim all the fucking time. You’ll note that it’s not something undertaken for shits and giggles, though. Instead, it’s because they’ve made an evaluation in the field and disagree because they think it’ll cost lives — each time, it’s presented in a sympathetic light, and each time, the movie shows that their disobedience Does Not Get What The Disobedient Ones Want. Remember that Yancy and Raleigh disobey Stacker’s order to stay back, and Yancy gets dead (and it’s not clear that they actually manage to save the dudes on the ship). Chuck and Herc disobey the order to stay back because they’re trying to save the other Jaeger pilots, which they not only fail to do, but they get hit with an EMP pulse from the kaiju. If Mako and Raleigh don’t arrive when they do, both it would’ve been a long, long fall into water for two Aussie pilots, and the world would have been well and truly fucked.
The movie underscores this with what I consider to be the goddamn climax of the whole thing. I mean, what’s the biggest command that Stacker gives? Like, the single biggest one?
To me, it’s gotta be when he tells Mako (Mako! Specifically!) during Pitfall that she can do this. She can finish it. And Mako does it, even though it clearly fucking costs her not to try and go to Striker’s aid, even though it isn’t phrased as an order. Stacker knows he doesn’t have to phrase it that way, because he knows that he has been Mako’s fixed point since she was ten years old. He knows that she knows what should happen. And he knows that he is right. And that Mako agrees, too, because again: fixed point for how many years now? The command doesn’t need to be verbalized as such. It doesn’t even need to be entirely articulated, because the Drift that Mako and Stacker share isn’t a physical one inside a Jaeger with a Pons mechanism. Instead, it exists because Stacker and Mako found each other in the wreckage of Tokyo. Stacker raised Mako, and they share the same value system and the same way of looking at the world and the same fierce pride and devotion and willingness to lay down personal attachments to other lives if it means saving the motherfucking world.
That’s their Drift.
So Stacker tells Mako that she can make this sacrifice — his life, for the world. It’s a parallel to the situation that Yancy and Raleigh have to make in Alaska, with the fishermen versus the city of two million, and the one that Herc and Chuck have in Hong Kong, with the lives of their fellow Rangers versus one of the few great coastal cities left. Yancy and Raleigh and Herc and Chuck choose to disobey, and each time, not only does it not get them what they want, but it’s got shitty consequences.
This time, instead of laying it down as an order, Stacker tells Mako that she can finish it. She’ll always be able to find in him in their particular version of the Drift.
And Mako obeys because she agrees with him.
And they save the world.
Let me emphasize that: the world gets saved without further loss of life because Mako and Raleigh follow Stacker’s directive to Mako.
Stacker fucking Pentecost, everyone. This fucking movie, everyone.
Consider the the rival powers in Westeros. The Starks are fatalistic, duty-bound, honorable but kind of unsophisticated. The Lannisters are appetite-driven plutocrats. The Baratheons were markedly varied, but the surviving one is driven and joyless, having perhaps inherited the Stark “hat” now that there’s not a Stark head left to wear it. The Martells are given to plotting and sexual license. We know less about the Tyrells, but they seem to value chivalry and court culture: consider Loras’ prowess, consider the splendor of Margaery’s entourage and weddings, consider how much more talented the Tyrell fool Butterbumps is than any of the other fools we’ve met.
Now, consider the rival powers among the Dothraki. Was it Khal Jommo’s khalasar that valued chivalry? Were Khal Ogo’s people the least trustworthy? Did Khal Drogo’s have a unique worldview shaped from their long tradition of cultural exchange with the Free Cities? Or are all the khalasars exactly freaking the same, because that’s how it works when you’re an oriental other in speculative fiction?
This is something of a dead horse, but while we are posting our definitive opinion on things, we might as well have at it. This issue is not just important to me, it’s a necessary step towards creating good narrative, so it really must be covered. It would be an understatement to say I feel passionately about this. Women and storytelling is pretty much all I care about, because “female characters” and “characters” are one and the same thing.
If there was a precise moment that I could point to and say, here, this is where the show lost me with Ward, it was this exchange.
Because, you know what? I could handle Ward the Wet Blanket up until this point. Sure, he poo-poos on everything fun in this show and acts like he’s above it all. Sure, he is all Judgy Mcjudgerson with his flat characterization as the ~jaded but talented agent with the hint of hidden tortured ~manpain to explain why he is a no fun, killer of joy. But that’s pilot-itis.
But when the writers of a Marvel show decide to have a character take potshots at cosplaying fangirls? When he chooses to dismiss Skye by buying into the Fake Fan Girl myth and using it as an insult with all disdain and contempt of That Guy? And then her response is a punchline, because oh haha, she did dress up once?
Yeah, no. Not really interested in you anymore.
And maybe I am judging this show harder because it is a Marvel show. Maybe I expected more from the creators of Buffy not to even hint towards buying into or reinforcing those aspects of nerd culture that are most frustrating to female comic book fans.
But everyone else on the show is like a fangeek’s dream and is a delight to watch. I want to watch Melinda come back from whatever her trauma was and watch her grump around as a reluctant babysitter and kick ass. I want to see Fitz and Simmons rejoice in science and geek out with new toys and bounce ideas off each other. And goddamnit I want to see what Skye will do with her abilities and if she can operate in more structured environment than she did on her own.
Because she is an asset, and Coulson recognized it, and fuck you if she also wants to dress up because she is a fan of Tony Stark who, p.s. does amazing sciencey things. Being a fan of something does not invalidate your knowledge of it, and I find it really distasteful that Ward, as a character, buys into that attitude AND the Fake Geek Girl myth, on top of being arrogant enough to think he knows better than the Adults in the room.
The best part of the episode for me was when he was knocked out. And until they write Ward as a better character, I am going to mentally replace his character with Hawkeye in every scene and picture better arms and a nicer smile, thank you very much.
I agree with all of this except for one thing: I think it was absolutely a conscious, deliberate choice to give Ward this joke because they’re trying to show that it’s not okay. Wet Blanket Ward is a massive dick and we all know it—Maurissa, Jed and Joss went out of their way, over and over again, to discount his opinions (though not his skills) and show how much he has to learn about being a decent teammate and human.
So yes, they chose to make Ward, as you call it, That Guy—but I think they did it to be like “yo, when you’re being That Guy, you’re being a yucky Wet Blanket Ward.” Are there fans who will be so enamored of his Cool Guy Veneer that they miss or choose to ignore the fact that his personality is being judged and critiqued by the show? Absolutely. But I do think they’re aiming for us to dislike him, and to be on Skye’s side, on purpose.
If it were just this scene, I’d be more inclined to be upset. But think about where it goes! The whole bit with the truth serum was just… classic Buffy. There was no way Coulson was ever going to violate Skye’s privacy or dignity like that, and we, as an audience, knew that—we just didn’t know how we were being framed until it happened, and then suddenly, bam: Ward was drugged. Skye’s agency was maintained and respected, and Ward was given, literally, a taste of his own medicine—experiencing what it’s like to be judged and manipulated the way he judges and manipulates.
Ward may have been cited as having the best combat scores since Romanoff, but Skye’s the one who’s actually been treated the way Natasha was—viewed as the asset she is. Instead of being taken out, SHIELD made a different call, because she has too much potential and too much goodness to waste.
Yeah, the bolded passage in particular is important. Ward’s comment doesn’t exist as a contextless remark. It’s followed almost immediately by Coulson CHEWING HIM OUT. It’s one of the few times we’ve EVER seen Coulson look really, truly angry.
It’s interesting to me that Ward’s role at the end of the episode is to wait till Coulson can persuade Michael to stand down. He has to choose between just taking him down as soon as he has a clear shot, and waiting till he’s already been convinced to join SHIELD’s side. The fact that he chooses to respect Michael’s agency, in contrast to his behavior towards Skye earlier, suggests to me what his broad narrative arc is going to be throughout the show. I could be wrong, of course, and it’s still very early days, but that’s my guess for where they’re going to go with him.