Look Sharp Me Mateys: There Be Spoilers Ahead!

I have decided that:

1) The final scene with the Kraken is a total shout-out to the Sarlacc - for obvious reasons

2) It's very sad that so few people have read or even seen Treaure Island - as evidenced by the occasional person admitting that they didn't get the whole black mark thing at first.

3) Luke is going to get the girl this time - or heads will roll!

4) All those critics are going to eat it in another ten years, just like they did with Empire. I'm just not sure how much crow they'll have to eat.

5) The whole cannibals storyline was only slightly less offensive than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

6) This series will have (very tiny) spoilers for Pirate's 3 inasmuch as it seems to be about how Jack became a pirate and how he first heard about the Aztec gold.

7) Elizabeth is not sad at the end of the movie because she thought she made the wrong choice (or decided she loved Jack more), she didn't tie Jack up to save herself, and she has so remained true to character. She has always been fascinated by pirates and has always been one at heart plus one of the first lines in the first movie is when her father tells her to watch over Will; every choice she's made in the movies has been made with that goal in mind.

8) All the people who are confused about Elizabeth's actions need to read House of Mirth and A Doll's House. In other words, Elizabeth is not confused about who she loves, but what she wants - not the same thing. She's also quite willing to sacrifice herself and her honor for the people she loves. She sacrificed Jack and her honor for Will's life, and now she's expects to have to sacrifice her hopes and Will's love for Jack's life.

9) The whole water wheel thing was a bit much. Not because it was too long, but because it was really hard to follow. Maybe repeated viewing will help. (checks gift card for Krikorian)

10) "Where's the rum?" = "I have a bad feeling about this."

11) "Savvy?" = "May the force be with you."

12) Do you know how I know Luke's going to get the girl this time? Because Jack and Elizabeth didn't kiss during the whole "my hands are dirty" scene. At the very least the writers would have given us more time to adjust.

13) Besides - Jack settling on one woman? Please.

14) Ok, well, considering #8, Will might not get the girl either. I might be ok with that. But I don't think most of America would be, so he probably is. Going to get her, I mean.

15) When we first see everyone in Pirates 3 one or more of the characters will be in disguise.

16) Davy Jones will ultimately help to break the East India Company's hold over the Kraken.

17) I am a freakin' idiot because it took me this long to realize that Pintel and Ragetti are R2-D2 and C-3PO

18) Jack became a pirate because he had a bad run in with the East India Company. (yeah, I know they already gave that one away)

19) Will will be much more interesting in the final chapter - or I'm going to be very mad.

20) Pirates 3 will be absolutely fantastic! (knock on wood)

Oh Yes It Is!

I seem to be having problems posting to monkeycrackmary's journal, so I'm replying to this entry here.

This is freakin' AWESOME.

And anyone who says otherwise will have to walk to plank!

I just finished this today during lunch - look for a review here later this week!

From Now On, I'm Just Handing Out Copies of "Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook"

OMG - yes! times, like, a thousand.

I will go through the following conversation at least once a day - often several times a day on the weekend:

"I need a book for a boy."

Sometimes the parent will go ahead and add the age without my having to ask - but they rarely leave off the gender.

"What grade is he in?"

"He's six."

If the child is standing beside the parent, he or she will usually simply gesture to the child. Because booksellers, like animators, can tell not only the ages of children, but their reading level as well, just by standing in their presence.

This is, of course, where I want to say "First of all, that isn't what I asked, and secondly, I hate recommending books to six year-olds through their parents, so I'm afraid you'll have to come back either with your kid or after the next shift starts."

Instead I say:

"What grade is he in?"

"First."

I love the parents who will still simply say "first grade" betwen the end of June and the beginning of September. Are they aware their child is not in school at the moment? (Yeah, yeah, we have year-round schools, but the majority are still on traditional schedules - it's dangerous to assume that their kid is one of the few who have already begun the new year.)

"Is he starting first, or leaving first grade?"

"Starting"

(Just my luck.)

"Is he reading already?"

"Yes."

(Ok, so obviously, I need to stop asking so many yes or no questions. I'm a bit afraid anything more complicated mught scare them away, though.)

"What kind of book are you looking for?"

I really don't know why I ask this question - they pretty much never have an answer.

"Do you want a book for him to read - or for you to read to him?"

"Oh - for him to read."

Again, I don't know why I ask this question, because they all give the same answer. Does anyone continue reading to their child past age five? Parents, a word of advice: my mother is a first grade teacher and one of her biggest regrets is not reading aloud to us after we learned to read. I really hope you won't have the same regret and that it's just that you have all kinds of cool read aloud books picked out already.

"How well is he reading?"

"He's at a level 1 / level 16 / level (insert random meaningless number here)."

Like this actually tells me anything - besides the fact that you bother to show up for parent-teacher conferences. Every single damn school has pretty much their own system and every single publisher has their owm system as well. I wasn't asking for a lottery number, I was asking for actual information. Can he barely read "cat" or can he manage a whole chapter in one sitting? Does he understand only basic phonics or can he manage some of the more complicated stuff? Does he still need to sound everything out or does he have a decent number of sight words stored in his head?

After asking the same question again and again in various forms ("What is he reading at school?" "Which reading group is he in?") we finally determine his approximate reading level and I take the parent to the Beginning Readers section and point out the right level of books for the main publishers and warn him or her that all the publishers use different systems, so a DK Readers level 1 will be very different from An I Can Read level 1.

"So what's good for a boy?

"Well, what does he like?"

About half the time the parents will actually have a decent answer, but half the time they really don't - and that's just very, very sad.

And then - even when they do have an answer, it's often something that ends up not being helpful.

"He likes karate."

Yeah...there's just such a huge demand for karate books for kids that are able to read "cat", but still struggle with "balloon". Did I mention that I hate recommending books to six-year-olds through their parents?

Mystery!

I found a scrap with the name of my old friend and roomate written on it just lying amid the mess on our coffee table - along with a a phone number. We haven't spoken in years (mostly my fault) and the area code is for a state that, last I heard, she wasn't living in.

No one is around to ask how it this scrap of paper found it's way on our coffe table! Is it myEm? Is it a different Em? Why is she trying to contanct me now? Is she trying to contact me now?

Grr...it's a good thing I'm off to see Pirates, I need something else to obssess about or I'll go crazy.

Color Blind vs. Civil Rights Activism

Tekanji is right, this is a must read.

What Teen Angst Novel Are You?

(quiz created by E. Lockhart - hat tip to "he who collects last words")

I am Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Which is really funny because Catcher in the Rye, like Charlotte's Web, is one of those rare kid/teen classics that I've never actually read.

I own a copy - because I thought it was really sad that I had never read it. I planned on doing so....really.

I bought it just over a year ago now and I've never really been in the mood to read it.

Now I know why. It's me - and I find me rather boring most days.





(I am so bummed I wasn't cool enough to get Tithe.)

:)

because:

1) I went shopping today and I didn't have to pay for (all of) it because I got some gift cards for my birthday. Retail therapy works - when you're not the one footing the bill.

2) The award-winning John Green dropped off a comment the other day.

3) I discovered a site with Westmark fanfic the other night while rummaging through my SiteMeter stats.

4) Not only are there a handful of open positions for librarians in my area - but a couple specialize in children's books and reading programs!

5) Uglies is going to be a movie!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pirates, Gluttony, and Wenches

(Ed. note: I started writing this back in March, but got sidetracked. I thought it would be fun to revive it and polish it off in time for the opening of the new Pirates movie.)

My brother and I took his girlfriend to Disneyland this week. She had been to Disney World once before, but never Disneyland. The first and (almost) last ride we went on was Pirates of the Carribean.

It's always fun to go on Disneyland rides with people who have never been on them before. It's nice to remember what it was like when I was little and going to Disneyland meant going to Disneyland and not just riding the same fun but familiar rides for the ten billionth time. It's also interesting to see, on rides like Pirates, what newcomers notice and what they don't.

We talked a lot about how Disney alluded to the ride throughout the movie (it was on our minds already because Pirates will be closed soon for updates in conjunction with the new movies). For those of you who have never seen the movie and/or the ride: the screenwriters did an awesome job of using the ride as inspiration while not letting themselves be constrained by it. In fact, the stories mirror each other so well we're all more than a little worried about what they plan on doing to the ride. Aside from the issue of messing with a classic, how are they going to be able to change the ride without changing it so that no longer matches the first movie? (Ed. note:I've been on it since they made the changes, and I can tell you how they did it, but I don't want to print any spoilers for another few weeks at least.)

We also talked a little bit about the "pc" changes that happened in 1995. I always thought the changes were stupid. These are pirates - the whole point is that they are bad people, so how much sense does it make to have them act in a "pc" way? As we were riding past the auction the second time, though, the girlfriend made some disparaging comments about the appearance of the women being auctioned off and I suddenly had an epiphany.

For those of you that have never been on Pirates, the "controversial" bits were the auction and chase scenes that make up the pirates pillaging a captured town. The auction scene comes first and I must admit has always annoyed me a bit. It consists of about five women lined up for auction (yeah, right - like real pirates would bother) - supposedly for marriage (ha!) - and all in various states of distress. Some are almost pretty, some are not at all, most have their faces partly hidden. Two more women await buyers a little bit apart from the main line. The woman who is second in line to be auctioned off is a ravishing redhead (yes, just like the one that slaps Depp in the movie). She is preening as the pirates make catcalls. The first woman to be auctioned is a relatively nice looking but extremely fat lady who also stands preening as the pirates instead make fun of her and ask for the redhead. The chase scene is just around the bend and used to consist the new "husbands" chasing their "brides" - except for the fat lady, she is the one doing the chasing. Now, however, the chasees carry food, so supposedly that is what the chasers are after. It's ambigious whether the fat lady is simply protecting her property or is acting out the tired stereotype of the fat person with an absurdly insatiable appetite. The scenes are funny (and more than just the women or the fat lady gets made fun of) but they also rely on cruel, adolescent jokes.

I think the reason the "jokes" never bothered me too much when I was younger was because it was obvious the real "joke" was one the pirates - they were so busy being naughty that they never even noticed the town burning to the ground around them and trapping them inside. To a certain extent, I still think that's true. The fat lady's gluttony is the most obvious punchline, but it's the pirate's gluttony that deals the harshest "joke" of all.

So what's the problem? The problem is not that the ride creators showed pirate's being well, pirates. It's not even just that they made juvenile fat jokes. The problem is that by setting up the scenes the way they did, they used her and the other women to perpetuate the cruelest "joke" of all - one that is both dangerous and unneccesary to the storyline. The real "punchline" of the auction scene (and the original chase scene) is not that the fat lady is absurd, but that the weeping women are. The fat lady's size would not be as much of a punchline if she were a man (several of the pirates are rather stout themselves) and neither would the joke be as obvious if the redhead was either not there or not preening. Both the fat lady and the redhead are needed to set up the joke, because the joke is not really that the fat lady is pathetic, but that the weeping women don't know how good they have it. The main point of the scene is that women can protest otherwise all they want, but in the end what they all really want is a man. The women are not weeping because their situation is dire, but because they are not pretty enough to have the "power" the redhead has nor are they so desperate that they must admit the "truth" as the fat lady does. Those wenches just don't know how good they have it - they're lucky they aren't so ugly* that they have to chase men down instead of the other way around.

Just as they keep Song of the South hidden deep within their vault (even as they built a new ride based on it) Disney made the changes to Pirates to protect themselves from public opinion. By adding food to the chase scene, they fool themselves - and try to fool us - into thinking that it's now about food and property, not sex. By putting more of the focus on the fat lady, and less of the redhead (who has always been notably absent from the chase scene) they are trying to pretend that the "joke" is now - and perhaps was always - all about fat people, and not at all about sex and rape. Since the auction scene remains unchanged, the changes they did make only end up highlighting the sexism of the original creators and the end result makes it quite obvious that the changes weren't really made in order to make the ride more palatable to feminists. "PC" was just the cover story. All the changes do is make the reference to rape (and therefore sex) that much more ambigious - the scenes certainly aren't any more respectful of women than they ever were. The real intent was yo make the ride less frightening to overly protective parents - but they could hardly admit to that.

*because, after all, in this day and age, is anyone really considered uglier than a fat person?

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom: In Which Miss Lucinda Abernathy Begins to Understand the Difference Between Being Self-Sacrificing and Being a Doormat

Although I think Ampersand's question about feminists liking Y: the Last Man deserves a more lengthy answer than the pithy one I gave him (if for no other reason than because the title of my post suggested that it would contain such an answer) my thoughts on that subject are still as jumbled as they obviously were when I wrote the post in question.

So, instead, I give you one of the many reasons I read romance novels. Er, well, why I read Julia Quinn, anyway. The quote below is from the latter part of On the Way to the Wedding.

Our hero, Gregory, and heroine, Lucy, are sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons and discussing Lucy's upcoming marriage to another man, his bad luck wooing her best friend, and other trivialities.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He turned. Regarded her with a contemplative curiosity. "You say that quite frequently."

"I'm sorry?"

"Yes."

"I...I don't know." Her teeth ground together, and she felt quite tense. Uncomfortable. Why would he point out such a thing? "It's what I do," she said, and she said it firmly, because...Well, because. That ought to be enough of a reason.

He nodded. And that made her feel worse. "It's who I am," she added defensively, even though he had been agreeing with her, for heaven's sake. "I smooth things over and I make things right.'

And at that she hurled the last peice of bread to the ground.

His brows rose, and they both turned in unison to watch the ensuing chaos. "Well done," he murmured.

"I make the best of things," she said. "Always."

"It's a commendable trait," he said softly.

And that, somehow, made her angry. Really, truly, beastly angry. She didn't want to be commended for knowing how to settle for second-best. That was like winning the prize for the prettiest shoes in the footrace. Irrelevant and not the point.

"Where Are We Going Guys?"

I don't know how she picked up this particular phrasing, but my niece has been asking this nearly as often as "Where we at?" (my sister insists that Precocious know asks "Where are we at?" but I have yet to hear the "are" except when the question is phrased "Whose house are we at?")

Yes, Precocious and Cuddles are back in town (along with my sister and brother-in-law) and my goodness have they changed in just a few months. Little kids tend to do that, I guess.

Cuddles, now that he is old enough to recognize faces, is much more clingy (to Mommy) than he is cuddly (still adorable, though).

Precocious has been slightly less daring lately than the name might imply (largely owing to the fact that we decided it would be a good idea to take her on some of the dark rides in Fantasyland - turns out it really wasn't). I suppose though, that having such well developed fears may in and of itself be considered precocious after all, since it's much more of an early preschool thing than a toddler thing.

Needless to say, they have both been cracking me up and wearing me out.

Cuddles is terribly proud of his ability to throw things - even though he's still rather confused on the mechanics of the process. He thinks that biting the furniture is hilarious, probably because we have a hard time not laughing when we tell him to stop, and he makes funny faces a lot. I think he thinks they sorta go hand in hand with talking - I can't imagine where he would have picked that idea up.

Precocious currently thinks that flies are the funniest things in the entire world. Don't ask me why. She also spent most of one evening running around my grandmother's house yelling "All aboard the circus train!" again and again and again. Yes, Disneyland was a big hit - despite not liking Pinnochio at all and becoming quite hysterical when Mommy and Daddy got in line for Pirates.

I should also warn the world that she is already quite the negotiator. When my parents were passing out gifts, she explained to us that she should get the bigger (stuffed) puppy and not Cuddles, because she's the big girl. When that didn't work she informed all of us that she and Cuddles had decided to trade. Earlier that same day she tried to convince me that the butterflies we were looking for lived a few houses down - directly after I had explained that we had to stay in great-grandma's front yard.

Silly, silly kids.

Why "The Last Man"?

(c'mon - someone had to to make that pun)

Yeah, so, I guess I ought to knock off a few of those things on my to do list.

Let's start with the one that will get me lots comments. (yeah, right.)

Y: The Last Man roxxx!!!!!! Ok, well, not so much. But it's amusing. Er....at least, issues 1-5 and 37-42 are anyway. The rest may be as well, but I haven't read them yet. (so...I may be revising my opinion later on)

The premise is, of course, idiotic. It is assumed to be every (hetero) man's fantasy (all the women in the world to myself mwahahaha...) and what every idiot assumes is every feminist's fantasy (no more men - almost, anyway - let's throw a party!). For some reason this comic is supposed to appeal to women, and despite the fact that I actually do like it, I have no idea why people assume that I would.

Very little possibility of beefcake? check

Leading female characters that are only leading because there are no men to take their rightful place as leaders? check

A storyline that manages to be all about men (especially one in particular) even though all but two of the characters are female? check

"Nice guy" character being chased by feminazi's, protected by la femme Nikita in dreadlocks, and occasionally sparing time from his busy schedule of tracking down his girlfriend (oh, sorry, fiance) and saving the world by his mere existence to put the womenfolk in their place? check

Remind me again why women are supposed to like this?

Remind me again why I ever broke down and picked this up?

Oh, yeah, because it's written by Brian K. Vaughan.

If you haven't ever read anything else by Vaughan - and I'll admit Runaways and a few issues of Ex Machina is pretty much all I've read - then I should probably tell you that he and Joss Whedon are mutual fans of each other's work. Which has you either suddenly intrigued or rolling your eyes. I most definitely fall into the former group.

When I saw how Vaughan handled the practically all-female Runaways, I started to wonder if maybe Y wasn't so bad after all. Every time Gertrude opened her mouth, it became that much harder to imagine Y as the completely sucky comic I had presumed it to be.

So, I picked up the first trade paperback, and found it both surprisingly good and predictably bad.

Y: the Last Man is not an interesting look at what the world would be like without (almost any) men; it can be rather annoying when it comes to that. (The Washington Monument? Seriously, Brian. I, personally, would end up parking myself in front of the statue of Lincoln and bawling my eyes out; I would not be lighting candles in front of a big phallus.) It is, however, an entertaining (and at times infuriating) look into the mind of a feminist leaning man in a misogynist world. Y: the Last Man is not really about women at all. At most it is about Yorick's/Vaughan's perception of women and his struggle to be fair and respectful of women in a world that pushes him not to be.

Franny at So So Silver Age wrote:

Ultimately, Vaughan is using the unmanned scenario to explore manhood and masculinity through a character who is decidedly not the American ideal superdude, who is a composite of anxious shortcomings thrust from being a guy to not just being a man but the man. And ultimately, it serves feminist purposes to reevaluate and reflect on the meaning of masculinity.

I think she has it exactly right and that this is the underlying and unspoken reason why people think women would be more interested in this comic than men: men aren't supposed to question these things (but all those feminists secretly wish they were men, right?)

When we are first introduced to Yorick he is practicing his escape artist skills. It's obvious - anvil sized obvious - that this is meant to foreshadow future events: in the near future he will be constantly hunted and must constantly escape capture. Throughout the story, pretty much everyone wants to tell him what to do. Those that don't usually simply don't bother telling, they just do.

I suspect it is also meant to by symbolic of Yorick's attempts to escape the constraints of gender - his struggle throughout the story is not just to escape physical capture but to resist being defined solely by his biology. His most valuable asset to society is his ability to help create the next generation (not that way - get your mind out of the gutter). He understands this and generally agrees that this needs to be his number one priority. He is often frustrated however, with the fact that he no longer matters as an individual - to everyone fighting over him he is an object, really. He spends much of his time trying to contact his girlfriend and is a constant advocate for the idea of romantic love, the importance of personal relationships, and the validity of emotions.

Of, course, Yorick being an escape artist is also a nice plot device; it makes it hard for people to keep him locked up - which would have made the story either really boring or forced Vaughan to focus on other characters. If it was possible to keep Yorick locked up, Vaughan might have actually had to write about a world run by women. Instead, he gets to write about about a man trapped in a world run by women.

Y: the Last Man does not turn the world on it's head by creating a world in which women fill men's shoes, it turns the world on it's head by putting a man in a traditionally feminine role. Sometimes the story shifts and it becomes the usual, annoying "nice, average guy searching for the perfect woman" but most of the time Yorick's story fits very nicely into the "fiesty heroine who is being forced to marry for the sake of the family reputation/younger siblings/war torn kingdom, but believes in true love anyway" cliche that pops up again and again in Romance novels. He's even got the taciturn bodyguard, the emotionally cut-off elder sibling who starts out as a hinderance but later becomes an ally, and the whole "physically weak but usefully clever" thing going for him.

Which explains why I like it: I read Romance novels. I'm not completely sure why everyone else is so into it, though.

I also find it odd but interesting that so much of the buzz about the book centers on not only it's gimmicky premise but on the Amazons - and the idea that they are stand-ins for radical feminists. With so many other examples of strong - feminist even - women in the series, it seems quite obvious to me that, in this world without men, they are meant to represent the unapologetic violence that men are supposed to embrace, not Andrea Dworkin and every woman who fails who disown everything she says. They are more than Rush Limbaugh's fictional feminanzi's brought to life, even if Vaughan has trouble shaking such stereotypes. Despite being women, they are "real men" who do what needs to be done and respond to heartache with destruction and anger, not tears. They understand that violence is needed and that the rest of the world "can't handle the truth." In some sense this is meant to be commentary on the human condition and the not so big differences between men and women. Mostly though, they are there to provide a foil for Yorick and create scenarios where he has to choose or reject violence.

It seems quite normal to me that a group like the Amazons would exist; anger is one of the stages of grief, after all. However, it also seems really abnormal that there wouldn't be other radical groups: ones that claim that the end is here and women were found unworthy, ones that blame women, liberals, the church etc. for the disaster, and so on. To me, it's the fact that such groups are almost non-existent in his world and the apparent focus on the Amazons that is troubling, not the mere existence of the Amazons alone - or even any of the actual interactions between Yorick and the Amazons (that I've seen). However, the Amazons exist and the religious fanatics don't because Vaughan sees the former as useful foils for Yorick, not because Vaughan thinks that feminists are evil, nasty, and out to get men. That doesn't mean his writing is any less flawed because of his lack of conscious intent, just that it's useful to keep that in mind when picking the story apart.

But, then, like I said, I met Gertrude first. It's hard to read a comic in which the fat, nerdy, cynic gets the hunk and think that the writer has it in for feminists.

(ps - don't worry about spoilers in the comments - I've obviously skipped ahead anyway.)

A Few Days Ago in the Backroom

Me: "Oooh...look! We got Backyardigans in!"

Co-Worker: "We got Madmartigan in?"

I spend the next few minutes giggling.

Co-Worker: "You're going to be thinking about that all night, aren't you?"

Today's Epiphany

After reading the ten billionth complaint about how X-Men 3 should have picked either The Cure or The Dark Pheonix storyline instead of trying to do both, then wondering for the ten billionth time how in the hell the writers/director/producers could manage not to see this, I realized exactly how this happened.

It's the Evita syndrome.

No, I'm not referring to Eva Peron herself, nor the movie really, and not Madonna either. I'm talking about the original musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber.

One of the fantastic things about going to a small, expensive, stuck-up, academically inclined, liberal arts college is that you get to take classes on weird but fun shit like "Musicals by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Stephen Sondheim" just because you feel like it - and still get actual credits for it. Ok, well, it was only one credit and it was an J-term (interim) class, but still - how many (non music majoring) UC students get to take interim classes where they study Sweeny Todd?

(Where was I again? Oh, right. Evita.)

It's even better, of course, when such classes are taken at a feminist-leaning women's college because then your professor isn't shy about pointing out the fact that Evita's biggest flaw is ALW's sexism - or the industry's, take your pick. Evita is supposed to be the story of Evita and Argentina. Or, rather, the story of Argentina told through Evita's experiences. However, ALW didn't think that a musical with a woman as the lead, rather than just a lead would work (for whatever reason). He didn't think her husband's character was really the right one to pull it off either, so he created Che, Antonio Banderas's character.

It should have been a good idea, actually. Che represented the working classes, Juan Peron the upper classes, and Eva Peron was the woman who fought her way from Che's world to Juan's. The problem is that Che's purpose was to take some of the focus off of Evita when he should have been simply used as a foil to highlight certain aspects of her character. So instead of an elegant story about class, corruption, and conflict, you get a schizophrenic mess that can't decide who the main protaganist really is.

X-Men 3 is the same kind of mess - it can't decide if it's setting up the younger generation to take over, dealing with the morality of a "cure" for something that may or may not be a disease, or the story of Jean Grey and why she is the way she is. It tries to do all of these and more and ends of doing none of them well.

It also suffers from the same underlying sexism - the belief that a woman (or a storyline centered around a female character) can't carry the movie.

100LittleDolls wrote:

I agree with others out there that the movie should have just been "the cure" storyline. A Dark Phoenix storyline is too big and should have had it's own flick.

I'd heard people say before that they should have picked one or the other, but if they'd stated which I'd missed it. The problem is, the powers that be probably felt that they couldn't do the cure storyline instead of the Dark Pheonix saga because Brian Singer's ending for X-Men 2 got fans all excited about the Dark Pheonix. (Damn you Brian for leaving before the trilogy was over! I have no idea if you would have been the best person to bring Dark Pheonix saga to the big screen, but you would have done so much better than the mess that ended up being made.)

Unfortunately, not only did all the new people have all their own pet ideas they wanted to use (and this was a big part of why we got the mess we did as well) but there aren't very many people in the movie business that think that a female lead can carry a movie the way a male lead can. So, no matter what, they would have been looking for another story to fill in the gaps of the one they were not capable of writing well- just like Andrew Lloyd Weber did back when he wrote Evita.

Et tu, Joss?

As much as I'm enjoying Astonishing X-Men - and just generally love Joss' work - I have to admit that Karen has a damn good point. (caution: spoilers there and below for Astonishing X-Men and Serenity)

I think it's quite evident that Joss has issues with adults and authority figures in general, but he does seem to have problems with adult women more than adult men on top of everything else. I think Karen is right that a lot of this is ingrained and unintentional. I also think it's the type of thing Joss was trying to allude to in his little speech about inequality eating at everyone's soul - but that still doesn't excuse it.

Kalinara once argued that women were stuck in refrigerators not because they were women, but because they weren't the main characters. I responded that it's more than that. Since male is the default gender, it's not just that male heros mean more female love interests, it means that women are less likely to be anything but love interests.

For Joss, it's not so much female characters as it is characters that exhibit traditionaly "feminine" characteristics while still retaining their confidence and authority that he tends to write off. It was Wash and Book that bit it in the movie, not Inara or Zoe. I have a feeling that a lot of this comes from the mysogynistic tricks people get taught as storytelling techniques. Somewhere I have a half-written and never posted rant that I started about the epiphany I had after watching the season finale of Criminal Minds: even when women make it all the way to secondary/co- hero, they are usually the obviously expendable characters - and I think that has to do with "feminine" characterstics being considered expendable.

It was obvious from the start of Lost* that Claire and Shannon were more vulnerable than Kate to the whims of the writers because they were both written as more "feminine." A part of this is due to all of these stories being action stories - but only part of it. Many of the story arcs have been about people stepping up and displaying survival skills they didn't realize they had - a character that starts out vulnerable need not end up that way, and not all vulnerable characters need to be female. Part of why Sun and Kim's stories are so interesting to watch is because both of them are vulnerable at times and strong at others. They not only love each other very much, they have learned how to rely on and support each other.

Joss has the kick-ass teen girl down. He also does a hell of a lot better job than most when it comes to treating women as people and writing about women who have relationships to each other and not just to men, but I do think Karen is right. Joss e really needs to find a way to write about strong, feminine adults without having to kill them off all the time.

PS

Betty says everything else that needs to be said over in the forums:

I think that Joss gets more than his fair share of criticism simply because he can support it. No one's going to bother spending more than five minutes on showing why, say Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire is problematic to feminists.

Alternately, he gets more than his fair share of criticism because he's not perfect, and he keeps on getting held up as the pinnacle of achievement by feminism in pop-culture. While Buffy is fabulous, I do hope that it's not the best thing feminism ever achieves in that medium. Onwards! Upwards!

*ahem - I should note that I've only seen the first third of the second season - so, sorry if what I'm writing doesn't make much sense in light of anything that happened after that point.

Things I Want to Write About But I Don't Have the Time (Yet)

Why I love my alma mater (inspired by Ragnell's post about joining the military and some of what's been going on at Girl Wonder.org)

My first impression of Gail Simone's Bird's of Prey. (short version: yes, I like it)

Why Y: The Last Man has me hooked despite the fact that when I first heard the premise I thought I was going to barf and I still have some serious issues with it. (hint: I'd be interpreting it completely differently if I hadn't read Runaways and met Gertrude first)

Misogyny in Disney's Pirate's of the Carribean ride - and why the changes actualy made it worse. (grrr..this one is half done and I really want to finish it in time for the release of the new movie)

Net Neutrality and how copyright issues got me reading blogs in the first place. (yeah...this was supposed to be done in time to actually attempt to raise awareness about the law being voted on today)

That really cute thing my niece did the other day.

Oh...and there was that summer reading thing.....and I have tons of ideas for this too.

Whedon's Words of Wisdom

A late edition of Wednesday Words of Wisdom

Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity; we need it to stand on this Earth as Men and Women. And the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.

Go here to hear him say it himself.

A Tale of Two Customers

The Saturday before Father's Day

Customer 1

I'm running around getting stuff ready for the Clifford storytime that's starts in less than an hour, and I notice that the man sitting at the picnic table with his two preschoolers has put playdough in front of them - right on the actual table. I'm so distracted by this stupidity of this that I idiotically ask him to make sure the playdough is on something other than the actual table top - rather than asking him right away to pack it all up like I should have.

A few minutes later I walk by again, and not only is the playdough still on the table, it is also now, predictably enough, on the floor as well.

I apologize (because we wimmin-folk must always apologize before we ask the menfolk to do something they should have done to begin with - god, I hate it when I do that) and I tell him that I need him just to pack it up and save it for when they get home - like I should have done to begin with. I point out the fact that his kids are like, three and they are going to be messy no matter how well he supervises them.

He looks a little flustered and confused, but says ok. He promises to pick the mess on the floor up as well.

A few minutes later I walk by again, and the kids are still playing with the playdough. Daddy is sitting right beside them absorbed in whatever reading material he is currently browsing. I say - in a slightly firmer and more exasperated voice, that I really need him to pack it all up - now. I make a mental note that he has at least picked the huge chunks off the floor - but that I'll need to pick up all the little bits he missed once he leaves.

However, at this point the jackass starts to argue with me. Not in a threatening way - no, in a wonderfully passive-agressive way. After I respond to something he says by pointing out the little bits still on the floor, he practically feigns blindness and asks me to point out ever single tiny piece on the floor so that he doesn't miss it. Somebody obviously doesn't know how to function without Mommy around - and it ain't either of the kids. (Who, btw, are playing very nicely - they just happen to be so young that I doubt either of them has the motor control to be able to write their names legibly. Keeping 100% of the playdough within a confined space on a horizontal surface is beyond them both in terms of mental and physical development.)

I walk away and come back a few minutes later - and yet again the kids are still playing with the freaking playdough. I say, quite emphatically and visibly annoyed, that he needs to put the playdough away now. Daddy Dearest then proceeds to look up at his preschoolers, who happen to be 6 inches away from him, and say "I told you to put the playdough away." Um, yeah. You know, what, jackass? It's actually quite age appropriate for them to not follow directions when they don't feel like it. You, otoh....

I immediately make a beeline to my department manager who happens to both be in the kid's section at that exact moment and the manager in charge of the store for the next few hours, and I ask her to keep an eye on them and go talk to him if he doesn't start putting the damn playdough away in the next 30 seconds.

He doesn't , of course, so she does, and then he finally does.

A moment later, as I'm walking within spitting distance of him, Daddy Dearest stops me and asks what our policy is regarding things, like oh say, bringing playdough into the store. I say that our customers are welcome to come in and hang out, so long as whatever that are doing is neither interfering with our business nor potentially damaging or annoying to our property or other customers. Exact policies depend on the situtation. Sitting down and using the table to do homework, for example, is ok - as long as there aren't people wanting to use it to browse the books that we actually sell. It's not as if, however, he ever would have brought paints into the store, now would he? He then asks "Is playdough really that messy?" To which I look at him incredulously and ask back "Have you ever had to pick it up off your own floor?" Unfortunately, this was obviously a rhetorical question. Even more unfortunately, he continues being a jackass and accuses my manager, who has walked up, of being rude. Still in that passive-agressive "but I don't understand why you needed to be so rude about it" kind of way. We both have a hard time not laughing when he threatens to report her to her supervisor.

Customer 2

After we are done reading Clifford stories, we invite the kids to come up and give Clifford a hug and get their picture taken with him. As always, the kids rush the stage to form a semi-circle around Clifford, and then patiently wait their turn to give him a hug or to pat his fur. Some are eager, others are hesitant. Some give him a quick hug and turn around. Others linger so long I start to think that I may have to remind them that other kids are waiting.

One particularly cute little boy comes up beside me; inching his way towards Clifford and giggling hysterically the entire time. When he finally makes it up to Clifford, he laughs even harder and starts sort of patting him with his fingers. I realize that he's trying to tickle Clifford, so I say to Collene/Clifford "Clifford, he's tickling you!" because I know you can't see or feel a damn thing in those costumes. (Half the time you can't tell when the ankle-biters are trying to hug you.) She hunches Clifford's shoulders and starts shaking like she's actually being tickled. Little boy giggles even more hysterically, which I hadn't though possible until then. He continues to tickle Clifford for a little bit longer, and then walks off, still having giggle fits. By this time, I am, of course, suffering from them myself.

Coldstone's or Ben and Jerry's?

(via When Fangirls Attack, as always)

For Christ sake I was attacked for using the term "female" instead of "woman".

Oh my, do I get to take credit for this, or is it just a matter of great minds thinking alike?

I may have to buy myself an ice cream - just in case.

Somehow using the word that most accurately sums up both girls and women as a group makes me a misogynistic woman hater. But I can refer to men and males, and that's fine.

Ok, well he does have a point there.

And yet, there don't seem to be very many boys in comics, at least not compared to the number of "girls" - a not insiginificant number of whom are all grown up and have been for quite some time. So I can rather see where his detracters are coming from, and I don't think that, at the moment, it is unrealistically demanding to ask people to use the term females not just when they mean both girls and women, but when it will be obvious to others that they are referring to both children and adults - for everyone's sake. It's good to be clear - the problem is that common usuage of the term "females" has made that particular word anything but clear in most instances.

Besides is it really going to kill you to type eight more characters?

(Well, apparently, it's much more of a task than forgetting you ever liked any of the characters and comics put out by one of the biggest and most well-known comics publishers in the nation (world?) because the people in charge of the company keep proving that they veer towards "asshat." Oh, no, Scott, you weren't being a tool at all - it's all the fault of those damn feminiazis)

Updated to add:

Scott is also being terribly inconsistent here. He claims that he was using the terms males and females to make it clear that he was talking about children and adults, but his initial complaint equates "female" with "woman" not "girl or woman."

I've said before that the unnecessary use of the term "females" bugs the shit out of me; since we're on the subject of consistency, I'd like to take this opportunity to make it clear that I'm not overly fond of the term "males" when used a synonym for "men and boys" either. It doesn't come across as nearly as derogatory as "females" - partly because it's used much less often. However, since it is most often used when one is discussing gender differences, it's purpose is usually to reduce people to their biology - not to save typing time or be more precise. I'm against this for obvious reasons.

Yes, Virginia, You Do Have to Grow Up

I'm posting this here because I'm going to have to gut this to post it on Hugo's blog, and I wanted it in it's entirety somewhere on the world wide web.

Carlos,

You wrote in Hugo's comments:

I am not a hard player. I was asking why I shouldn't try to be one! But I am not sure whether I am a profemnist!

I need to first point out that you seem to be setting up a false dichotomy here. Perhaps, though, you were really trying to ask "Is being a player really being anti-feminist?" or "Can I be feminist and a player as well?" These are not only thought-provoking questions but also happen to be the ones Amanda and others are trying to answer with their "feminism is fun!" comments.

What came out instead was "Do I really have to be an adult yet?" The answer to which is "hell, yes." Which, unfortunately, did not seem to be the bulk of Hugo's answer to you.

My beef with Hugo is not that his teaching method doesn't work, but that (judging by his own words) he's abandoned it in his most recent advice to you. I'm guessing that Hugo got you to treat your sisters more nicely and change your views on gendered double standards in part by tapping into your genuine concern for the women around you and challenging whether or not your attitudes were really helping them or being respectful of them.

That is what I'm suggesting he do now. Tap into your desire to be a responsible, respected member of your community - however you define it - and question your priorities. Not by arguing that you can't have fun, but by reminding you that any amount of power brings with it a certain amount of responsibility. If you can find a way to be a "player" and still be responsible and respectful, more power to you. But if you are trying to decide between being a "player" and doing what you should, your beef isn't really with feminism specifically - it's with being an adult.

That is not, however, what he did. Or at least that wasn't the part he focused on in his blog post anyway. Perhaps your actual conversation was quite different, but as he presented it, responsibility was only a quickly dropped tangent in the overall discussion.

Quite frankly, whether or not you consider yourself to be a feminist is not my main concern. My main concern is that you treat everyone around you with respect and dignity.

In a recent interview, comic book artist Brian Wood was asked

Would you consider yourself a feminist?

He answered:

I don't know.  I don't know how to answer that question.  I guess I would say no — I'm uncomfortable with labels, and writing mostly female characters isn't a deliberate decision, at least not on the level of a social or political statement.  However, I don't try to get in the way of other people's interpretation of my work.  I just find it odd and a bit sad that a story with a strong woman in the lead has to be something that's rare and noteworthy and possibly a feminist act, and can't just be commonplace.

The "I'm not a feminist, but..." sentiment usually annoys me to no end, but Wood's sentiment practically warms my heart, and I vastly prefer it to this:

I get that injustice and inequality exist, but at the same time, I don't know why I have to get involved in this now, when I'm so young.

Since Hugo couldn't be bothered to focus on the obvious, I repeat, once again:

If you are old enough to understand that injustice and inequality exist, you most definitely do have to get involved in this now - no matter how young you are. The extent of your involvement in any particular cause or issue will be tempered by how capable you are in dealing with it and by any other responsibilities you may have, but under no circumstances do you get to put off growing up until you feel like it. Not if you expect others to respect you back.

Please also note that, as Hugo points out, feminism is a process - this is mostly because growing up is a constant process. (God knows I'm still working on both myself.) The fact that other people - even female people - are sometimes less feminist than you is no more a valid excuse for you to backslide than "but everyone else was doing it!" was ever a valid excuse with your parents. Questioning whether or not certain actions are really feminist or not - based on your experiences with the way many women react to them - is a valid and logical response. Basing your conclusion on your experiences alone, or using others stupid behaviour as an excuse for yours, are not.

Life is a Process

Apparently Hugo wants to compound the annoying.

Right off the bat, he gets it wrong. I, at least, was not annoyed because I "felt [Hugo] took it too easy on Pete when he announced that he wasn't ready to practice pro-feminism and give up some of his "bad boy" behavior" I was pissed because he failed to concentrate on the most obvious and fundamental problem with Pete's framing of the question: treating others nicely in order to get something out of them isn't really very nice.

Hugo then goes on to argue for an incremental approach - without (yet again) explaining his actual approach. As far as I can tell, the idea seems to be that he wins Pete's trust by being one of the guys, and then Pete slowly comes to see how wise Hugo really is.

First of all, sorry, but that shit ain't ever gonna to work.

By all means, use your privilege to everyone's advantage - but if you aren't using your privilege to challenge the whole idea of privilege, then it really isn't to everyone's advantage, is it? That goes for every step of the process - not just the final event - because, as you point out, there isn't one. You can challenge it a little or a lot depending on the situation - but it must always be challenged.

Secondly, yes, Hugo, we all realize that becoming feminist is a process. Amazingly enough, we know this in part because practically all of us consider ourselves to be in the middle of this process ourselves. Despite my snarkiness, I don't actually believe I know everything - even about feminism. I'm not questioning that one needs to learn to walk before one can run - I'm questioning your actual arguments.

(....and that really bad pool analogy - but others have covered that pretty well already)

As I said elsewhere, like a lot of people asking for advice, Pete's question just screams "I know I should do this, but I don't want to; please tell me I don't have to!" At which point your job is not to say "No, you don't have to." Commiserating on the fact that life is both hard and strange is just fine - helping him turn this lament into further excuses not to act like an actual adult is not. Especially when such laments essentially boil down to "they are not worthy!" as one can easily argue your upholding of the of "good girls" who like "bad boys" stereotype most definitely falls under.

Pete is going to decide to be a good person or not. As with everyone else, this will be daily decision and struggle. Pete's problem is not with feminism in particular, but with being a responsible adult. Once he learns to act like an adult, you can argue feminism with him on a point by point basis - until he learns to be an adult, any feminism he adopts will be half-hearted and easily abandoned.

If your goal is to stay friends with him so that when he finally decides to become and adult, you can be there to guide him into feminism - fine. But that's not incremental, that's "waiting in the wings". And in the meantime you are reinforcing the homosociality that makes it so easy for him to stay a child when it comes to dealing with women.

You claim to be following Martin and imply that those who disagree with you think everyone should be Malcoms. I am saying that you are not even following King's example in this particular instance. King did not back down from focusing on the truth just because it might anger people. In fact, angering people was a crucial part of his strategy - the whole non-violence thing only really works when you have something to compare it to. If all they'd done was serve the protesters food when they sat down at the lunch counter, there really wouldn't have been anything to protest, now would there?

In missions work, you learn fast that hectoring (the "hellfire and brimstone" strategy) gets you nowhere fast.  Though Christianity has a history of aggressive and often violent proselytizing, modern evangelism is an elegant, intellectually sophisticated,  culturally sensitive seduction.  I'm convinced that those of us who preach feminism should use the same strategies!

WTF?

Telling people they are evil doesn't win many allies. Wow. Real shocker there. So feminists should do everything they can to never show anger - no matter how justified?

Again, WTF?

Feminism has never had quite the problem most religions have had with regard to separating the sin and the sinner. Public perception that they are one and the same is a big problem, but so is public perception that feminists are bitter, frigid, hypocritical, whores who do in fact hate all men (not just acts of sexism). You are in the position to help dispel these myths. And what do you do? You argue that even feminists like "bad boys" because women don't like wussies. You go from "Being pro-feminist isn't about getting laid!" to "you're reinforcing stereotypes if you act that way!" in less than a nano second. What about focusing on "women are individuals" or suggesting "maybe the "bad boys" were just better looking than you" or perhaps even "maybe the "good girls" could see through yourmask"? What the hell happened to "feminism is about (believing women are human/treating women with respect/etc.)"?

(sigh)

I can't give up on him though, because in addition writing a lot of thought provoking posts, he has the sense to apologize for his most obvious mistake.

For that reason, I'll reiterate. My problem, Hugo, is not with the idea of an incremental approach, it's with the idea that an incremental approach is synonymous with nibbling around the edges. I think that, no matter what, you always need to do your best to go after the heart of the issue before you. Sometimes it's not best to push very hard, but if the issue raised is childish selfishness, and you end up spending the bulk of your time talking about showing a good front and not giving fodder to enemies, you fucked up.

It's ok that you fucked up. As long as you admit it so that you can do better next time. (even if it's only to yourself)

This whole feminism thing is a process after all.