The Mary Sue: In the Pursuit of Power

Well, that was a hell of a ride in May, wasn't it, but pumping out that many reviews, while I enjoyed it, left me in the position of being half way through writing my last post; Godzilla: King of the Monsters vs The World and realising just how much of a grind it had been. It was worth it, don't get me wrong, but two-thousand words into it, I just couldn't be arsed anymore and wanted to do something else for a while. That changed however while I was browsing my favourite den of rabid feminists to see if anything would grab my attention, and grab my attention, something did. Once I saw this article, I knew just from the headline that I wanted to read it, and so I hastily wrapped up my previous post so I could get to this, a Mary Sue article by one Kate Gardner, whose name rang a bell for some reason and would you believe it, I've shredded one of her articles before, back when Ghostbusters 3 news was sending the feminist hoard into an autistic fit. Today's offering is titled "I Only Want To Hear About Midsommar and Other Horror Films From Female Critics," so let's not waste any more time and begin, because I'm sure this will be fun.
https://www.themarysue.com/midsommar-reviews-trailer/

The article, as you might expect, opens with an introduction to the film, Midsommar, a horror film that, full disclosure, I haven't seen and for the time being, have no intention of seeing, so expect no insightful knowledge or commentary on this particular film, outside of me thinking that the film looks pretentious as shit and probably is, given that the critics are currently standing under its corn-chute with their mouths open. We're here today for one reason and one reason only, our author's admission of their own sexism, and we don't have to wait long to get that as we very soon get her saying she only clicked on reviews for the film by female critics. I will give her credit though for not trying to spin it; "because quite frankly, [she] didn't necessarily want a male take on the film." Let's play a drinking game, shall we, take a shot for every time our author says something that would be considered horrifically sexist were it about women and not men, because make no mistake, that there is our author clearly expressing a disinterest in male critics' opinions on the basis that they are male, and we all know the word for that. She's even so kind as to give her reasons why, and they're about as absurd as you'd expect; "Maybe it's the fact that the lead is a woman," how incredibly not shallow, "or maybe [she's] just tired of the horror criticism canon being defined by men."

It never fails to surprise and impress me when I hear something along these lines, this time it's the historical argument; the horror criticism canon, whatever that means, has been defined by men. That's just another way of saying male dominated, as is evident from the fact that our progressive author is tired of it, and by the fact that she just plain says it in the next paragraph. Of course, to any normal person, that wouldn't make a difference because you're reading/watching for their opinion and not because they either have a hot dog or a bun, but this is feminism we're talking about and for feminists, there will be no peace in the war against the patriarchy, not until we've all embraced communism to kill the pay gap and discriminated against men to the point that gender representation in all industries, that aren't demanding or dangerous, of course, is fifty fifty. On a side note, I hope you remembered to take a shot, because can you imagine what the response would be if someone said they were tired of something being defined by women, that'd be fun. Oh but it's not just the men, it's the white men especially that "tend to get the lion's share of press access and screening invites."

Way to make it sound like a boys club, but that's just the thing, our author words this in such a way that the scales seem unbalanced in favour of men, then this false pretence can be used to justify unbalancing the scales in the other direction. Our author is probably right that more men than women get special access and screening invites, but our author hasn't yet given us a clear reason as to why that's a problem, she just doesn't like it, A; because more men than women in anything is a problem, purely on ideological grounds and B; because if she got her way, she, a woman, would be a beneficiary of that. But rather curiously, our author pokes a hole in her own position by saying "everyone can be a critic," which necessarily means that there are no barriers to entry for anyone or any group, but that doesn't matter because our author just wants it a certain way. Having a preference for female critics isn't an issue, everyone has preferences, but look back to her title "I Only Want To Hear About Midsommar and Other Horror Films From Female Critics." If we can take this title at face value and I can't see why we can't, this is a statement of our author not only preferring female critics, but desiring to read/watch exclusively female critics, this is no longer a preference, this is an ideological position. Our author is, at the very least, intentionally limiting herself to a certain type of critic, and is doing so along gendered lines, unless it's not that simple but we'll get to that. If it is that simple though, that would make her a sexist as she is opting not to read the opinions of male critics on the grounds that they are male and nothing else.

"When it comes to female-led horror such as last year's Hereditary or Suspiria, or this year's Midsommar," but not Alien, interesting omission, "there's something important about centering female voices." Why? I'd have thought that she'd explain why, but she doesn't, not in this paragraph at least. She talks about Hereditary and Suspiria being films about female trauma and pain, and how those are films she "[longs] to see analysed from a female perspective," and that Midsommar looks to be another one of them, despite her not having seen it yet. That's not the justification she seems to think it is though; these are films she wants a female opinion on, so we need to "uplift female voices in 2019" because it's important, once again, we're stepping the line of preference and ideology, it's not enough that these female voices exist, they need to be prioritised and focused on, at the detriment of other demographics of critics that would be getting unfairly downgraded, almost like if you're a critic, being a woman means you should be given privilege.

That is unless it's not that simple, because maybe, when she says female or woman, that's not what she actually means, bear with me, what if when she says woman, what she actually means is feminist. That would make a lot of sense as feminism is an ideology, one its members love to spread, and who's members desire power that they can then project over other people and ideologies like the religious nuts they are. Our author being both a woman and a feminist, it doesn't make much difference as she gets more power either way, but it's just something to consider as we progress through this article. Our next paragraph gives us reason to think this is the case too, as she provides two examples; The Haunting of Hill House, a show I haven't watched and Captain Marvel, a film I have watched, twice. Apparently, "[she] was far more interested in reading reviews by women about why Captain Marvel didn't resonate with them than [she] was interested in reading why men didn't like it." I actually looked into this, I went to Rotten Tomatoes, the bastion of film criticism that it is, looked through the film's critic reviews and I found something very interesting. A lot of the Rotten reviews, both by men and women, are saying broadly similar things about the film; that Brie Larson was not a compelling hero, that the film was flat and generic, and most interesting from both men and women, that the film's message could have been better handled.

Meanwhile, the positive reviews are also all saying broadly similar things, like praising Brie Larson's performance and praising the film for being progressive. We know which side of this debate I'm on, just as we can comfortably guess what side our author's on, but the split in the film's reviews seems much less gendered and much more ideological, which is exactly what you should expect, both men and women have positive and negative things to say and there is a lot of overlap between the genders, bow chica bow wow. Curiously, since there are more male critics than female ones, it's actually a lot of men praising the film for being progressive, though the ratio of Rotten reviews is higher with the male critics than the female ones. But the bulk of the Captain Marvel hate comes from outside of the Critic bubble, with the film landing in the laps of the various anti-SJW YouTube channels like a gift from God. Once again though, we see a split along ideological lines, with Feminists thinking it was amazing, anti-feminists thinking it was terrible, and everyone else thinking it was just kind of meh. A lot of them also broadly share the views of the critics, either it's progressive and important and Brie Larson is amazing, or Brie Larson's boring and the film panders to feminism. As is usually the case though, the audience score is a bit lower than the critic score, if you can consider twenty-three percent to be a bit, so clearly there are more virtuous progressives among the critics, what's new. Our author is gendering a split of opinion that isn't gendered, but ideological and if that's what she's going for, it's an attempt to misrepresent the split as men vs women when in reality, it's progressives vs non-progressives.

But don't worry, "this is not to say that only women can review female-centric films," thank goodness, for a second I was starting to- "but the canon is made up of films praised by white male critics," oh, that went to shit fast. So let me get this straight, it's okay for male critics, even if they're white, to have opinions of female-centric films, but when film criticism canon is defined by them, it's a problem, as if the opinions of these particular critics are inherently problematic, hope you've been remembering to take your shots. And we then get the ultimatum; "until we get full parity across the board in terms of critics, [she's] going to choose to stick to what women are saying about films." This is rather more than our author having a preference, this is a clear statement that she intends to ignore the opinions of male critics until her absurd requirement is met. This demand will never be met, there is simply no way it is possible without engineering an environment to force it, which would necessarily require discrimination to an insane degree, to the point that not every person is allowed to be a critic, which is utterly tyrannical and the tip of a very scary iceberg. But let's say her demand is somehow met, does this mean that the male critics that weren't purged in the pursuit of parity will finally be worth her time? like Hell it does; with a demand as ridiculous as that, it's unlikely that she has any intention of going back on her line in the sand.

This is particularly the case with female centric horror, because apparently she doesn't need guys to tell her what is and isn't sexist, because that's a common talking point among non-feminists, and whether or not it's a good story about female trauma, which is also a common talking point among non-feminists, they gender things constantly, like, all the time. Our author then provides a handful of excerpts from female critics reviewing this film and there's a problem; I didn't read the Vox review for spoilers and the fact that it's Vox, but I read the other three and none of them support her ideological position, none of them throw any kind of female or even feminist spin on the film, not that I could see anyway. They're just reviews of the film, that talk about the film, and the good and bad in the film, no politics or gender stuff to be found, save for one point in the But Why Tho review she links that could conceivably be spun to support her position, but again, the author doesn't gender it. I'm struggling to see what our author is getting at with these examples; they're just normal film reviews, unless the Vox one's different, again, I turned back at the spoiler warning. To be honest, the ones I did read made me more interesting in watching the film, but that's the only thing I took away from them, not some deep and meaningful insight that only a woman can offer, which is why I again question; when you say woman, do you really mean Feminist?

Don't make the mistake of thinking that our author is well meaning with her demand for gender parity, because as I said earlier, this is about power, that's what feminism is all about. She's not happy that the canon is defined by men because she wants to define it herself, or rather, she wants her ideology to define it, especially now as more people than ever have the power to talk about what they love and what they don't love, more people than ever have the power to intact change in film, and in having more power over film criticism, feminism would even further secure its grip on Hollywood. And this would be done under the guise of Equality, even though as our author said herself, we have that in film criticism because anyone can be a critic, but there's a difference between equality and what she's asking for because she wants more power, particularly in this case, more power to define what makes a good film, which would inevitably be considered good or bad depending on how religiously they parrot her ideology. And the scary thing is this is not an uncommon idea within film criticism, just look at Rotten Tomatoes, just bloody look at it, it's full of progressive critics who define a film's quality by how smart it makes them feel, slapping Fresh scores on films that pander to them and Rotten scores on films that don't, regardless of how good the film actually is. Her utopian future of film criticism would be one of political and ideological tyranny and open discrimination against anyone who dissents or, heaven forbid, was born with a dick.

But to even get to this position in the first place, you must have already come to the same conclusion as Brie Larson; that being that you don't need a man's opinion on a film. This conclusion is very, shall we say, problematic for a few reasons, chiefly that for it to be your conclusion, you must think that a man's opinion is somehow worth less than a woman's, which is sexism, plain and simple. It's not like the examples you offered suggest the existence of some kind of special insight that's unique to women, one that doesn't exist to begin with because women aren't the Borg, they have minds of their own, just like men, again, this is deeply collectivistic and therefore, deeply unfair. How about this for a counter proposal to your sexist, collectivistic, feminist dominated utopia; we just let people be critics and let people like the critics they want to like, which means that even you, dear author, can have your way and only read the work of female critics, you can continue to be a shallow, closed-minded collectivist, meanwhile people who aren't backwards feminists can read the work of both women and men and not care about the gender because you're here for their opinion and not for their genitalia. With my proposal in place, you can stick to your feminist bubble, and I can stick to not caring what any of them say, and occasionally poke my head into your feminist bubble for shits and giggles. It's not perfect, I know, we'll still have the likes of Rotten Tomatoes and their wanker brigade of critics, but it's certainly better than forcing gender parity in a realm where it's literally impossible to further assert your ideological dominance over it.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Be wary of progressive activists; they love to tell you how virtuous they are and of all the noble causes they champion like Equality and the end of racism and sexism, but don't be fooled. Beneath their mask of fighting for positive change is either abject stupidity or an ulterior agenda, as we have seen today with Kate Gardner of the Mary Sue. It's all well and good to think we should have more female critics, it's fine that she prefers the work of female critics to male critics, but flat refusing to read the work of male critics on the grounds that they're male and demanding complete parity is another thing entirely, it's a power grab; an attempt to further expand the empire of Feminism at the expense of everyone else, and a tacit admission that in the eyes of at least this Mary Sue author, a man's voice is worth less than a woman's, which exposes her ideology for what it is, a supremacy movement. That all sounds rather doom and gloom, considering the relative harmlessness of one Mary Sue author, and in truth, this is all harmless fun, me ripping into the ramblings of an idiot with idiotic ramblings of my own. But if life were a movie, Feminism would be a half decent villain; refusing to die and never letting go of its endless quest for power, all while hiding behind smiles and kisses and pretending it's fighting for you, when all it wants is to control you, or in this case, to control the realm of film criticism. Moral of the story; like what you want to like, read who you want to read, and don't let your good nature drag you into their trap.