I find the Oscars tedious, and only watched a few minutes last night — I bailed shortly after Captain Kirk made his appearance — but apparently I should have stuck around, if only to watch the insufferable Seth MacFarlane’s award-winning performance as Unfunny Misogynist Asshole Host.
What, you say, he didn’t actually win an award for that? Well, yes he did: Having read a number of accounts of the whole sorry spectacle, I’m awarding MacFarlane the non-coveted Man Boobz Boob of the Day Award (Oscar Edition). In the wake of MacFarlane’s performance at the Oscars, in which he devoted a whole song to actresses’ breasts, I should note that I am using the word “boob” to mean “nincompoop.” Which, to be honest, is an undeservedly mild epithet for a guy who punctuated his comments with repeated jokes about rape.
A few of the highlights of MacFarlane’s night:
That song-and-dance number about how great it is to see so many boobs in films – including, specifically, in The Accused, and Monster, and Boys Don’t Cry. You know, during the rape scenes in those quie serious films.
MacFarlane’s animatronic teddy bear (from his movie Ted) joking about attending an orgy at Jack Nicholson’s house – you know, the place where Roman Polanski raped a 13-year old girl.
Oh, and then there was MacFarlane joking about how 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis would be too old to date George Clooney in about 16 years. (What, is Heartiste writing MacFarlane’s jokes?) And his bizarre domestic violence joke about Chris Brown and Rihanna. And on and on. (See here for many more examples.)
Getting into the spirit of the evening, whoever was doing The Onion’s twitter account decided it would be hilarious to refer to the aforementioned 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis as a “cunt.” The Onion later deleted the tweet and offered an apology for it.
Somehow I doubt we’re going to get an apology from MacFarlane.
Here are a couple more takes on the whole unfortunate evening.
Why Seth MacFarlane’s Misogyny Matters (Vulture)
Seth MacFarlane and the Oscars’ Hostile, Ugly, Sexist Night (The New Yorker)
Oscar Watch: Was That Awful or What? (NY Post)
EDITED TO ADD: Oh, joy! The Men’s Rights subreddit weighs in on the issue, in a thread sort-of-responding to that New Yorker piece.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: Actually, r/mensrights has two threads on the subject; here’s the other one.
Good grief, Antz is back.
Are he and Arks trying to get a head start for Troll of the Year?
Sorry, fellas, your schtick hasn’t changed and it wasn’t interesting or varied enough to win before, however much wingnuttery it contained. Just because you’re not facing Meller and NWO’s competition, don’t think you can trot out the same tired old routine and expect the judging committee to pass it.
@ellex – I really like Timothy Spall. Did you ever watch Auf Wiedersehen, Pet? I don’t know if he made his start in that but it must be fairly early in his career, the first series was made in the 80s. Hugely funny show, especially the third series that’s based partly in Middlesborough and partly in Arizona.
Oh dear. Please do tell me about this plan of his and why he cares about it.
He thinks men and women can’t live together and should replace each other with virtual partners. Not even robots, just VR stuff. Old-timers will have more details.
The creepy part is that he is allegedly married and a father, and still thinks he’d be better off with a VR version of his wife, because there’d be no chance of her leaving him … even though I don’t think he’s ever hinted his real wife is going to. He’s so insecure I’m surprised his shaking doesn’t set off earth tremors.
Antz’ plan can be found here, both in video form and with links to his comments.
I can’t figure out why this post, out of all the recent posts, is what drew Antz back to this hive of evil bigots.
1. Feminism is making men mad.
2. Angry men think Seth MacFarlane is funny.
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
Hi, bigots! How you all doing today? 😉
“Alien” has already been mentioned, but on a much smaller (but more directly relevant to this topic) scale, Q. Wallis’s role in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was, IIIRC, originally written as a little boy, then altered to a little [i]child[/i] before they held auditions, which seems to have worked out pretty well for them. :-p I believe the author of the play the movie is based on has said that she thinks it’d be cool to see the play cast the same way in future.
Oh, dangit, I wish I could keep better track of where I was posting so I’d use the right kind of brackets. *sigh*
@Polliwog, I feel your pain. Someone (I nominate Argenti) should make a comment formatting “cheat sheet” and then we can beg David to put it over there in the sidebar.
It would’ve been really easy to make that boobs song a biting satire about the male gaze and treating serious actresses in serious roles as mere sex objects.
::waves:: I’m good!
I’m thinking I’m more a smallot than a bigot though. But I’d rather be an ocelot, they’re so pretty!
Okay, Kittehs’ is an ocelot. It’s official.
Today in (waning) bigotry: Did you guys see how over 70 USian Republicans signed onto a legal brief supporting same-sex marriage? Now that’s a transformative social movement for you — perhaps because that movement’s whole identity wasn’t wrapped up in hatred. Just saying.
Timothy Spall: Loved him in Life is Sweet.
@cloudiah
How would you see it as a reality show? The casting part you mean?
@polliwog
I hadn’t heard that. That is cool. I haven’t seen that movie yet, but it does sound well worth seeing.
@Fibinachi
I understood your Spanish! I have just started learning and this is the first time I’ve seen Spanish in the wild and known what it meant. So thanks! 🙂
Say, is an ocel-ot the opposite of an incel-ot?
Sir Incelot, the knight the ladies could
n’tresist.Not bad, not bad. How about you, bigot?
Bigot, biggerot, biggestot.
Ots of the world unite!
*thinks: WTF was in that coffee?*
When I was a pre-pubescent lover of adventure stories I used to get given all the cheap re-prints of classics. I was so annoyed by the lack of girls I used to do gender-blind casting in my head – and it worked pretty well, especially with first-person stories. I still remember Treasure Island as told by a cabin girl, and Professor Aronnax from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea works would be really easy to cast as a woman. I think it would be fantastic if they made movies and rolled a dice for physical aspects of casting – I’d say chose on personality, but I think people’s preconceptions can be so strong there would then be a tendency to identify people of the same gender or race as more of a match.
I recently went back and re-read a few of the old books to see if it still workded, but I don’t have the same tolerance for the stories – I can’t believe I could stomach 20,000 leagues as a 9 year old when about a 1/4 of it seems to be lists of fish.
@Kim, I think that was emilygoddess who had the idea about a reality show.
I see what you mean, but you’d still want to choose the best actor you could. Especially since they wouldn’t be able to rely on the shorthand storytelling of stereotypes. I think you’d have to rely on the people doing the casting making a conscious effort to ignore those stereotypes while casting.
Perhaps if you did casting by reality tv, you’d get enough votes that you could do some sort of algorithm that weighted votes based on how much a person matched the stereotype, so that a person who would traditionally be cast in a role would have to get more votes to actually win the role. I’m thinking some experiments that controlled for acting skill could measure those kinds of biases.
woops! I knew it was emilygoddess, but I wrote cloudiah. Sorry emilygoddess! And thank you cloudiah.
I am worried about the possible creation of a movie/TV series of the Honor Harrington novels since it would be such a good role they would refuse to let a woman play it. 🙁
When I was a pre-pubescent lover of adventure stories I used to get given all the cheap re-prints of classics. I was so annoyed by the lack of girls I used to do gender-blind casting in my head – and it worked pretty well, especially with first-person stories. I still remember Treasure Island as told by a cabin girl, and Professor Aronnax from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea works would be really easy to cast as a woman. I think it would be fantastic if they made movies and rolled a dice for physical aspects of casting – I’d say chose on personality, but I think people’s preconceptions can be so strong there would then be a tendency to identify people of the same gender or race as more of a match.
I used to do that too! I still think my gender-reversed version of Bester’s The Demolished Man would make a boss movie.
I used to write in girlfriends for the male leads in my head when I read stories about boys. I did it for movies too.
That seems so sad now.
I was thinking a show where some filmmakers are given bare-bones character descriptions from a well-known work, and they have to cast the characters and maybe film a few scenes, and then it gets compared to the original work. IDK how you’d strip the characters enough to keep the contestants from guessing the original work, and the filming of scenes might have to take place after the Big Reveal, but it could be very illuminating if someone could get it to work.
Hey Antzy! How’s the FOREIGN BRIDE?
Hi Kitteh/ocelot! No, I haven’t seen Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, although I’ve heard of it. But I see there’s a bunch of it on Youtube! Hooray! British TV can be so difficult to get for us USians. I just discovered that there’s a bunch of Butterflies episodes on Youtube and I’ve been watching that.
Wow, that show would boggle the minds of MRA’s. They’d never be able to understand or believe that Ria never actually is unfaithful to her husband. Or understand why she’s unhappy with her life.
I got my car back! Hooray! And due to the recall for the ignition, I didn’t have to pay $150 to get it fixed, which I can ill afford just now. Tomorrow I have to shell out $250 for my asthma meds.
Hi bigots, smallots, ocelots. I would like to be alot of fire, thank you very much. I just can’t seem to get warm right now. Imma go make me some hot buttered rum and cider, and imagine that you are all salivating over your keyboards, wishing you were here with me.