Our first little nugget of fun comes from a familiar face; one Gavia Baker-Whitelaw from the Daily Dot, who I imagine I will be regularly checking up on now, with an article about the sexism of Sherlock, let's see where this goes. Interestingly, I find myself in agreement with her little intro block, where she describes what I think is the show's greatest weakness, the showrunner's need to "ramp up the stakes." It is a problem I think, back when Sherlock and Watson were solving crimes in series one and two, it was brilliant, but the show has since become a different beast entirely; constantly needing to throw in twists, even when they don't make sense, dragging in espionage and politics every chance it gets, and turning Sherlock from a super smart master of Deduction to some kind of psychic, it's daft, and then they had to put them in a top secret island fortress prison for the finale, and I checked out. Speaking of checking out, the very next line really throws an unnecessary wrench in what, so far, has been a very fair and reasonably criticism of the show, get ready for some sexism. It's interesting that Gavia sees an archetype in Sherlock's female characters, and I'm sorry, but that's wrong; Mrs. Hudson is not smarter than Sherlock, more caring, yes, she clearly cares very much for Sherlock, Molly is more interesting, a girl who is not so secretly in love with Sherlock, but that Sherlock over looks due to a flaw in his humanity, one that the show constantly plays with, this isn't sexist, it's an interesting character flaw for both of them. And Mary is an assassin, let me repeat that, Mary is an assassin, and her affection for both John and Sherlock is very strong and very present. The show's only real female villain is Irene Adler, and she does actually come close to fitting Gavia's archetype, being just as smart as Sherlock, but her defeat is her secret love for Sherlock, and remember, Sherlock then goes and saves her from some terrorists, hardy a defeat then. Gavia briefly goes back to being correct, Eurus is a stupid villain, Gavia's "Xmen villain" comment is completely correct, as are, in my opinion, her statements on Eurus's appearance and mannerisms, but the being right thing stops at Gavia's interpretation of her motivations. Eurus can, in the episode, literally hypnotise and command anyone she wants, and, as Gavia admits, the show implies that she raped and mutilated a prison guard, to that end getting sex or the attention of men doesn't seem to either be a challenge or a concern for our villain, she just takes it. But Eurus doesn't desire the attention of 'men' anyway, she desires attention from Sherlock specifically; her actions are to mess with Sherlock, the stupid Redbeard and girl on the plane twists show that behind the stupid creepy super villain exterior, she has the same deep emotional problems as Sherlock and Mycroft, but has spent most of her life in a cell, despite my dislike of the episode overall, I thought Eurus' ending was actually very sweet. In short, boiling it down to she just wants male attention is a gross oversimplification of her character's motivations. Gavia is once again correct on the many, many inconsistencies and faults of the episode, yes, I can fully agree that her bullet point list of dumbs are fair criticisms, because how did they get they get John out of the well, and why didn't Sherlock notice that Eurus' cell had no glass? Seriously, I'm pleasantly surprised at how genuine and fair a lot of this article is, Gavia's right about a lot of problems in this episode, and in series four in general; "as ever, the world of Sherlock rearranged itself to the convenience of the writers' demands, regardless of logic, characterization, or narrative sense," is a statement I agree with, I think Sherlock lost the plot seven episodes ago. It just confuses me then that after making good point after good point, she shoots herself in the foot by calling this episode sexist, when it isn't, it wasn't good, it had many, many flaws, but sexism wasn't one of them. I found Gavia's take on Sherlock's series four finale to be very interesting, I'm surprised, I don't think very lowly of people whose articles I look at, except for Nico Lang, fuck that piece of shit, but while Gavia definitely strikes me as an ideologue, there is still some room for rationality, which is good.
Round two comes from Newsweek, with an article from Tufayel Ahmed with a curious title; Women had less than 30 percent of the lines in Hollywood's biggest movies in 2016, but unlike Gavia's Sherlock intro, Ahmed doesn't start strong. Ahmed starts with stating that last year's addition to Star Wars had a female protagonist, which it did, like episodes IV through VII didn't or something, never mind Rey and Leia. I still firmly believe that when it comes to media, no one should give a shit about diversity, what should matter is the quality of the characters and the story, and not what colour they are or who or what they like to shag, and only people who don't really care about the quality of the product itself care about these petty things, so when Ahmed said the film was praised for its diversity, they're flat wrong; because I haven't seen a single person who isn't a rabid ideologue even mention diversity, apart from a friend of mine who knows that I like ripping into social justice and feminism, and brought it up as a joke. The same amount of fucks should be given to diversity as to the ratio of male to female in movie dialogue, again, only people who are obsessed with this pointless and inconsequential waffle would think about it like this, normal people just watch the film. As a blogger, I suppose I don't have much to say on this data scientist, but how does one analyze the ratio of male to female dialogue in a film, I looked at the top ten and saw something funny, all ten of them are American films, shit; the top five are all Disney. This, I'd say, doesn't make these results all that relevant to the vast, vast, vast majority of films, in fact, it's relevant to these films, these ten, and none of them are romances or chick flicks, I've noticed, they're superhero films, animated films, adventure and fantasy films, I'm sure that doesn't influence the results. Sadly at this point while reading the article is when I went a bit mad, as this blogger Amber Thomas concludes based on something I didn't think was possible to even conceive that women are discriminated against. She counted them, she counted the words, I almost want to be impressed that she tallied every single word in all ten of these films; instead it makes my fucking blood boil. How did you get these numbers, did you look at script drafts, in which case, where did you get them, and are they final or just early drafts, or did you go to the cinema and count them in the theatrical cut itself, how can these numbers be trusted either way anyway, they can't, the simply can't. Only ideologues even care about this shit, but this particular ideologue seems to be a feminist monk or something, because she fucking counted them, and this author is spouting these numbers that seriously shouldn't exist, regardless of how accurate they are. I also love that this data scientist Thomas thinks Jyn and Cassian love each other, this really pisses me off, how stupid do you have to be to sit there and count how many words each character says, yet not get that at no point do they share a romantic moment, they hug once, but there's no kissing, no talk of loving, I personally see that hug more as a sign of mutual respect and as a final act of humanity, but no, this fuck's too distracted clicking a clicker, or however she counted them, because she fucking counted them. I'm going to start repeating myself if I don't just get to the point; no one who enjoys movies goes to the movies looking for 50/50 gender representation, because that shit doesn't matter, it's never mattered and it never should. Superhero films are superhero films, their audience will never change to fit any agenda, and as the current shit show that is Marvel comics plainly demonstrates, comic fans at large don't buy feminist and social justice crap, and films like Ghostbusters prove the same for movies. The Jungle Book is a piece of visual effects artwork and a fun coming of age adventure story, again, identity politics aren't relevant, Star Wars is a space war film set in a distant galaxy in the distant past, again, identity politics aren't relevant, and animated films are family entertainment, forcing any kind of politics into them is called propaganda, you stupid fucks. My advice is stop caring about what's between Jyn Erso's legs and start enjoying her quest to find her father and bring hope to hopeless, war torn galaxy, if that's not for you, laugh at queef jokes in Ghostbusters as much as you want.
That was rage educing, hopefully round three won't be quite as bad, doubt it because it's coming from the Verge and Kaitlyn Tiffany, and is about Jumanji, it is a slightly older story, but that's never stopped me. This article immediately starts off walking a fine line, cracking jokes about Karen Gillan's costume. The author then starts waffling about Karen Gillan's costume's impracticality, something that strikes me as very unimportant, a quick glance at the crew makes me think that these characters are deliberately cartoonish in appearance, Dwayne Johnson is his usual walking tank with gloves, Jack Black is likely to be an incompetent scientist type character, and Karen Gillan is seemingly going to be the badass jungle warrior chick. Jumanji once had a big game hunter who ran around with a big ass hunting rifle and some crazy facial hair, it also had mischievous monkeys and giant man eating plants, and is all inside a cursed board game, it's not exactly a film that's grounded in realism. This Jumanji has the advantage of 20 years of improving technology and visual effects, and probably a bigger budget too, which, if the film works out, will make this Jumanji even crazier than the first one. Is it any wonder then that the characters of the film, who, like the Hunter, are probably characters from the game too, judging from their appearance, look as cartoonish as they do. Instead though this author goes somewhere completely different, I can't tell if they're joking or not when they suggest that everyone else will get into sexy outfits in the film, I actually want to see this as a joke, if it is a joke, it's not funny, but if it isn't, it's stupid. The feminist outrage machine in general is stupid, in a post about Anita Sarkeesian, I remember going on about the male gaze; something I was taught about in film and media studies at school, and I think it's utterly stupid. The entire objectification of women argument really annoys me, because so, so rarely is it a remotely valid criticism, some ninety percent of the time it's just feminists getting outraged because a female character was showing a little skin, which is the case here. The idea that women who wear revealing clothing in films are only there to look sexy for a male audience is also coming from a position of hypocrisy; it's always the feminists saying it's demeaning and sexist, it's always the feminists saying that the character is nothing but a sex object, ignoring any and all context to peddle a narrative, projecting their hurt feelings onto all women because to them, women aren't people, they don't have individuality or agency, they're just one homogenous mass. Like I said in my BLM rant, they have removed that individuality and turned being female or being male or white from a physical characteristic to a label with which they can make character judgements, which, in the case of sex objects and the male gaze, makes them sexist, and in the case of white privilege, racist. The feminists who get mad about sex objects assume that sexy women in media are all just empty dolls by default, because no 'empowered woman' would dress like that, there to pleasure the men, who, because they are men, are all chauvinist pigs by default, yes, it's pretty damn sexist, and it's not coming from anyone other than feminists.
Well, that was fun, I did get a bit mad for a second with that Newsweek article, but I was much calmer when I was scratching my head at that Verge article, but once again, to recap, no one likes identity politics, the true sexists are the feminists, and, in a pleasant turn, some ideologues can still be level headed enough to make good arguments. And for once, I'm not ending on some evil, like a torture video or some government spying bill, and I'm left perhaps a tad hopeful that maybe the world isn't yet ready for the meteor.
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