Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I’m in Margot Magowan‘s corner on this one, although I suspect for reasons that are different from what she has in mind. She found out about a nine-year-old boy who brought a My Little Pony lunch container to school, and was sent home with a message from the principal advising on a different choice of equipment, to prevent the bullying.
Well, we all like to avoid bullying incidents, the question is how. Margot’s point, as I understand it, is one I can appreciate: Teaching individuals to conform with the whims and the tastes of the (bullying) group is hacking away at the leafy part of the weed and doesn’t fix anything. It elevates the evil above the good, or at least, the dysfunctional above the not-dysfunctional. Or above the Brony-functional.
But, I had to point out to her that this was taking things a bit far:
Gender stereotyping CAUSES bullying. Bedazzling shoes? Not a solution here. What is that teaching your kid? To do whatever the bullies say to do. And what is it teaching the other kids? Keep bullying. Is that the lesson we want to be teaching? I honestly don’t even think these 4 year olds know they are bullying, because not enough parents and teachers are telling them that. I think these kids believe that they are stating a fact. It’s up to grown-ups to teach them differently. Don’t know how? Teach your children colors are for everybody, as are games, as are books, and TV shows, and movies. Seek out narratives with strong female protagonists for your sons and daughters.
I’ve been subscribing to her blog for a few years now, because she’s attacking the mindless-movie-culture with a formulation that I think makes a lot of sense: That fiction, especially fiction up on the big screen, has a way of shaping reality by way of shaping the expectations and the behaviors of the people who watch the movies. In that way, movie content has a way of determining cultural content.
Margot and I often agree about the problems and disagree about the solutions, as is the case here. Boys are to see females are strong and heroic? Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it turned out that’s why the nine-year-old became a Brony in the first place. In fact, to me this whole thing looks like a crisis borne from weak and inadequate definitions: The kid doesn’t understand the benefits of developing manly personal attributes, and as for the principal, well, he doesn’t seem to get the whole “good should win out over evil” thing. Principal and student could both have stood to see a few more John Wayne movies.
Margot’s solution, and this is the continuation of a pattern I’ve seen, is not to resurrect the strong gender roles, but rather to tone them down even further. So I can take it as a given she’s not going to like my John-Wayne-movie remedy too much.
But I know I’m right, because of what it means to be a hero. And it does — must — mean something. Heroes are more than just examples. I believe Margot’s questions are good, and her complaints are sound, that our children are being short-changed. Much has already been made of the damage being done to the Millennial kids; they’re being made to think that trying-hard is good enough, and if it ever isn’t, then that must mean a protest is in order and that, surely, will solve everything. They’re being pushed and bullied and coerced into taking on more debt to learn soft skills that won’t make them more employable so they could pay this debt back. But there’s another side to this. Their vision is being clouded. They’re not being pushed, the way kids were pushed in my generation, to see themselves as forces of good.
Oh quite a few see themselves as deserving, sure. But that’s different from my complaint. The “deserving” angle carries with it an expectation that the tough work is in the rear view mirror somewhere. Once again, a crucial point relies on a distinction to be made, and here it is the distinction between the near future and the recent past. This is important, because if the work is just-ahead, you haven’t earned your reward yet and failure is still possible. From what I’ve seen of the Millennial attitude, I’m worried, because they don’t seem to catch on to this.
This dovetails back to an observation I’ve made before about DC superheroes versus Marvel superheroes. I don’t like Marvel as much because it’s a “hipster” comic book publication. Both universes seek audiences of geeky kids who read comic books because — let’s be honest, now — they have not successfully cultivated an everyday social life that fulfills them. Most kids who have that going on, don’t do comic books. There are exceptions to everything, but when you look at the audience of this sort of product overall, you’re going to see a lot of kids who are still struggling with figuring out how to integrate, how to function socially. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s part of being a kid. Heck, I’ll be fifty in a couple years and I’m still figuring it out.
Comic books can help out with this. It’s not a perversion of the literary pursuits. It’s a noble calling. Well, DC’s message to kids who are in this situation is a good one: Sure it sucks not being able to fully fit in, but you don’t have to let that define you. Things will change, you will grow tall, strong and capable, who cares about being exactly like everyone else anyway. The world doesn’t need that from you, what it needs are your gifts. Marvel’s message is not so rosy: Yeah, you don’t fit in and you know why that is? Because society won’t let you. And it will never let you. Let’s just keep obsessing over that.
That theme is always there. Even with Spider Man, and Captain America, it’s still there. I suppose the Fantastic Four may be an exception. The X-Men certainly are not. I just can’t work up too much excitement over that gang. The sense of despair and angst and resentment, it’s just so thick you can cut it with a knife.
In moderate amounts, that can be okay though. Spider Man 2 was most enjoyable, I thought, possibly an entrant into the short list of “sequels better than their originals.” Heroes who are wallowing to excess in the angst from failing to fit in, have the potential of reaching a rise-above-it moment in which they decide “Well, life’s bigger than that little problem, let’s see what else I can do.” Like Peter Parker did when he ran out of money and his girl was about to marry someone else. That’s heroic. It’s the sort of heroism James Bond shows in just about every story, out of the books as well as the movies: Can’t fit in, the world won’t let me be part of it, I’m so angsty, but oh well. Hey, here’s a situation I can make better, and hopefully prevent large numbers of total strangers from being hurt or killed, therefore I shall act.
Sometimes, the hero makes the ultimate sacrifice to bring that about. Or tries to, or thinks he’s going to.
Within DC, Superman and Batman rise above all the rest, joined by Wonder Woman, although that last is debatable. Why are Superman and Batman on top? Some of that has to do with sequence; they were out first. But that doesn’t explain all of it. And obviously it isn’t superpowers, since Batman doesn’t have any. I believe there are other qualities that haven’t been explored above. In their case, they represent archetypal end-points on a spectrum of premeditation of the heroic act(s): Batman plans everything, Superman is constantly in reactive mode. Wonder Woman could certainly be as big as they are. But she would have to find her place on this spectrum.
You’ll notice that other heroes, who you might say have “figured out” what story they want to tell with regard to this, manage to achieve a level of profile that has been denied to all the others. James Bond, for example, has a better story to tell when Q is involved. It’s fun to watch because what the equipment is has been defined, the resources allocated, and things have been tested, tested and tested again before Bond ever found out he was being issued this pen, watch, cigarette case, lighter, whatever. How it is going to come in handy during the mission…well, nobody anywhere has the faintest clue. It’s a mix, but it works because it is strongly defined.
And then there’s Indiana Jones. What’s he going to do? “I dunno…I’m makin’ this up as I go.”
The hero doesn’t have to be completely altruistic. Many a story has been made more compelling by way of a “revenge theme,” such as Pale Rider, Robocop, The Count of Monte Cristo, Death Wish, Kill Bill, Lethal Weapon, Hang ‘Em High, Gladiator, The Road Warrior, Hannie Caulder, and several others. Sometimes in these stories, the hero is stopped by someone wiser and cooler, or perhaps from within, right before delivering the killing blow. I personally prefer to see the bastard smoked because the “don’t do it he’s not worth it” trope has been, in my opinion, so worn-out over the years, and offered so little for deep thinking at the very beginning, that it never delivered anything to justify the build-up. This late in the game, after all I’ve seen, it just annoys me.
The incremental acquisition of skill, like the pursuit of vengeance, offers another opportunity for the audience to relate to the hero. This is why the older Star Wars trilogy worked so well. The first time we ever saw a lightsaber was the first time Luke Skywalker was ever handed one, and it was obvious from the beginning that he was barely more knowledgeable of the device than we were.
A big part of the magic of the franchise, back then, was that we were becoming more familiar with the ways of the Jedi and this strange galaxy along with Luke. We had six years and some 400 minutes to watch this play out. At my age, that’s a saga that begins when you’re about to turn 11 and finishes up as you’re closing in on 17. That can have a huge effect on how a growing boy sees the world and the challenges in it.
I worry for this generation in that they’re not being given the same message, at least as far as I can see, and so it’s difficult to see from where they might be picking up that sort of vision, of “I don’t know much about what I’m doing yet but I’m going to get this skill developed, then I’m going to go out and do some cool stuff.” What’s missing — seems to be missing — is this incremental learning. The idea that if a skill is developed to the point that it’s worth some bragging, or some challenging of total strangers to physical contests with some degree of confidence in the outcome, then dues have to be paid. Someone is going to have to show a great deal of patience as they develop the skill. Feeling like you deserve to win because you’ve worked really hard and stuff, is not going to get it done.
This slow-cooking acquisition of skill, is merely an extension of something much more meaningful and much more important: The symbiotic relationship the hero has to the adventure. Just has he defines his heroism by changing the outcome — think of James Bond shutting down that death beam in space, sparing the lives of millions of people he’ll never meet who’d surely cook to death if he hadn’t happened along — the hero himself is changed by the adventure. That’s the second part of the story, like the submerged part of an iceberg it is much heftier, deeper, more massive, even though it is far less often seen.
In fact, that applies to just about everything I wrote down above: Stories. Augmentative, annexed stories. Other things that were happening, states of objects that were changed, people becoming acquainted with other people and learning new things, just before James Bond put the death ray out of commission. If those aren’t in there, it’s just boring. You can’t have everyone churning along, with their outlook on life and their priorities and their battle plans all set, everyone possessing all the fighting skills they’re ever gonna have, nobody needing to learn anything, heroes and villains alike all kicking-ass…well you can. It’s done quite often. Right before I fall asleep.
Some of that’s my problem, I admit. I have a bad habit during the long lazy summer days of rising before the birds, packing my errands into a busy Saturday, then heading off to the drive-in with wife & kid(s) where the show doesn’t start until it’s dark again…ZZzzz. But, heroes-in-movies should make it more likely I’ll stay awake until the end. Not less likely. And I think that’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?
All of that is prologue to what follows: No, that is not the solution. You can’t just put a woman on a movie screen, have her do some cool hero stuff, and wait for the girls and the boys in the audience to ooh and aah and express their admiration that hey, a girl did some cool stuff. That’s why Hunger Games, in spite of all the hype, fell short. Yes it made a lot of money and won a lot of awards along with critical acclaim — that’s because Margot is right, there is a market niche that has been under-served here, and for a good long time. But is Katniss an intriguing heroine? Not to anyone who is outside of the agenda, who just wants to watch something entertaining. You wouldn’t want to pop that puppy into the DVD player on a boring Saturday afternoon, as you might with Raiders of the Lost Ark or any one of a number of film adaptations of Zorro.
To make that happen, you have to tell the story — in some form or another — of Joseph Campbell’s transformation:
One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
The kind of hero we’re talking about, the fictionalized hero who fires up the imagination and gets people thinking and talking, does not & cannot live on past the end of the story. The hero is the story; neither one can exist without the other because each one is merely a part and not a whole. That makes things tough for the producer of a franchise — like, for example, the above-mentioned James Bond. The natural desire is that all significant situations should achieve orbit around something constant, so that by the end of each installment everything is returned to normal. The installments therefore become interchangeable; You Only Live Twice comes after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, or maybe before, who cares? In the end, though, that ultimately hurts the hero’s ability to captivate and inspire, because he stops acting like some living and growing thing.
To do it right, the hero must become the story, and the story must become the hero. The two are interwoven and inseparable, in the same way you and I are interwoven and inseparable from our stories. They make us what we are. That is what makes us alive, and we want our heroes to be similarly alive, even if they don’t really exist.
Now if you can capture all that in a female action-movie-hero, then you’ll have something. Today’s militant feminists will never allow it, though. Because to get there, you have to tell a story that involves female fallibility; you’d have to explore her concession that she had learning to do in prospect, or her admission of some error in judgment in hindsight. They’re not even cool with Wonder Woman wearing shorts, so they’re certainly not going to sit still for any of that.
They’re making their own problem.
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