Grumpy old trout, part one; or, Invisibility

[dreamer_easy]

In the past week we've seen the new Trek and the Wolverine flick and I've enjoyed them both: well-made, well-acted movies with plenty of pace and laughs. And yet I find myself oddly unmoved by either of them. Is it the brain chemicals? I've been having depression symptoms - terminal insomnia (fantastic name for waking up at 4 am) and teariness - so my shrink and I are inching up my dose. Is it a jaded palate? Is it the recycling of increasingly threadbare ideas - mad widower with superweapon bent on revenge, time travel paradox, mutant oppression, etc? Or is it that the only roles for women in both films are Mom and Girlfriend?

I enjoy all the What It Is To Be A Man stuff the boys get to do - struggle with their Feelings, their Daddy Issues, their Propensity for Violence, their wardrobes, etc. But despite the grafting of Skillz and Tude onto Uhura, her role is to amusingly prefer Spock to Kirk, provide emotional support to the former, and take her clothes off in front of the latter. The job of Spock and Kirk's mums, and wossname's missus, Mrs Romulan, whatever, is to die tragically. Even if changing the sex of, say, Chekov or Sulu would've caused a fannish uproar which might've split the Earth's crust, there's no reason the mad widower couldn't have been a mad widow, or that Sarek could've fallen off a cliff instead of Amanda.

Similarly, the long history of epically powerful women in the X-Men is forgotten in the Wolverine flick, which is overwhelmingly male. The few women are almost entirely passive victims: his cipher mother, his they-made-me-do-it girlfriend with her wimpy power and pointless self-sacrifice. Even the mean Queen herself, Emma Frost, is reduced to a human shield.

These are very outdated Hollywood ideas: chicks are there as love interests, to look pretty and motivate their menfolk, generally by dropping dead. It's distancing, alienating, like you're watching a movie which has nothing do with you. There's always the danger of SPFX-and-action-packed movies to turn into video games someone else is playing: marginalising the female characters only leads in that my-eyes-glaze-over direction.

Comments

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I am very interested in your opinion about whether Uhura has been shifted from acting as an intergalactic receptionist to acting as a "beard" for Kirk and Spock's slashy tendencies.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

The people who made this movie are obviously mad keen fans - Kirk's apple, ffs! I cheered! - so there's no way they weren't aware of the potential for slashtasticness. Moving Uhura from the Gang Of Four sidelines to the love interest role accomplishes quite a bit - gives them a Twofer front and centre; saves them having to squeeze in one more cast member; gives Spock a chance to show that he is, in fact, an emotional being; allows him to pwn Kirk, to the delight of all geekbois in the audience; and nails Spock down, ie, dispels the ambiguity of his sexlessness by giving him a sexuality.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

For some reason it weakened Spock for me. Not saying I want him to be a eunuch, but there was always something very dependable about the way Spock carried himself in "the old days" that seemed lost when he was snogging Uhura.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Mind you, his new powers of sarcasm are pretty awesome. Set phasers to snark!

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Hm I don't know whether it weakens him or not -- only time (har har har) will tell. I thought it was particularly relevant, though, that he never seemed to respond to her at all until after Vulcan was destroyed. It's part of being in that emotional state. (I wonder if it's sort of an alternate timeline parallel to how the character of Spock was portrayed in the original Menagerie flashbacks,)

I'll tell you, though, the movie struck me as one huge rendition/version of Killing Time. Which makes me laugh and laugh and laugh...

Back to the general erasure of women & POC, you bet. But the general trend has been swinging back toward Duditude movies for a while now. All the movies are awful in this respect right now (and we should be complaining, don't get me wrong). I expect the pendulum to swing back over the next decade provided our cultural atmosphere doesn't take another conservative nosedive :-P