So the other night I watched Lucy, a highly entertaining movie with an incredibly silly premise: Scarlett Johansson develops superpowers after a drug enables her to use more than the standard 10% of her brain. (Yes, I know, and the film’s director knows, that the idea we use only 10% of our brains is a myth. And that being super smart wouldn’t give you power over the laws of physics.)
Anyway, after watching the film I took a peek at the IMDb message boards to see if anyone had a way to explain one particularly baffling plot point. Someone did. But I also encountered this charming fellow, who started two separate topics in order to express his extreme displeasure that the main character was … a woman:
Bear in mind that this is a science fiction film. In it, Lucy does many things that would be impossible for any human being to do, regardless of gender: she [SPOILER ALERT] causes a dozen men to collapse on the ground with a wave of her hand; she learns a language by overhearing three conversations on the street; she travels through time and meets the original prehistoric Lucy; she grows an extra hand just for the hell of it; and, oh yeah, she turns herself into a tiny computer with a USB plug.
Movie heroes and superheroes, most of them male, do impossible things in action movies all of the time. But somehow I never see any of these guys complaining that Superman can fly or lift cars off the ground or turn an entire lake into ice with his breath.
Even those movie heroes who don’t have superpowers regularly do things that would be impossible for any real human being to do. I mean, have you seen the Crank movies? Or, I dunno, Rambo? Or any of the other gazillion action movies out there with male stars?
Somehow Mr. Comment-Here — and all the other guys who put forward this complaint — have no trouble suspending their disbelief when it comes to male characters doing impossible things. But the idea that a mere “girl” could win a fight with a guy — something that isn’t impossible in real life — breaks their brains.
When another commenter responded to Mr. Comment-Here with a snarky putdown, he offered this odd retort
Looking back through Comment-Here’s previous contributions to the IMDb message boards, I discovered another, er, injustice he seems to care about a lot. In the forum devoted to the 1997 version of Lolita, he wrote:
Evidently the Men’s Rights movement is leaking. .
Huh, that movie sounds pretty interesting! Is it still in theaters or did you get it on DVD or Netflix?
Reblogged this on msamba.
//Evidently the Men’s Rights movement is leaking.//
I actually lol’d at that.
It would be interesting to compile a list of MRA ideological contradictions. It would be a long list.
Here’s one:
A. It’s totally impossible and literally inconceivable for any woman to win a fight with any man.
B. It’s unfair and discriminatory that women aren’t subject to (theoretically) compulsory military service.
A and B conflict. I mean, why would you want women in the military if they’re just going to lose every fight?
It’s pretty fun for a summer movie but the first ten minutes are triggering.
@zoon echon logon,
The idea of women in combat also concerns them because they fear that it will cause the military to lower physical standards and put everyone is danger. So, basically, their position boils down to us deserving fewer rights for being physically weaker or their having more responsibilities because they’re physically stronger. Naturally, they prefer the version where we have fewer rights.
Also, does he not realize that the sending of nude photos between minors is illegal because it’s distribution of child pornography that could easily be viewed by adults? I mean, he probably does. As he’s said, he’s bitter that teenaged boys can legally have sex with teenaged girls around their own ages.
It came out last summer and is available on DVD. I haven’t watched it yet but my parents have a copy so I may borrow it now.
Just about every action film defies the laws of physics and has men doing things that are just not physically possible. But no one moans about Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Jason Statham et al being able to do feats of strength on par with Hercules! No, it is only when women do these things that it becomes a problem!
I guess it is because those kind of men like to fantasise that they are the super macho protaganist. A female protagonist doing amazing stuff just sends them into a seething mass of confusion – ‘but women are just supposed to be pretty/ housewives/ mothers, where’s Doris Day when you need her?’ I hear them cry (I know DD was a pretty cool woman, I am referring to her screen image)!
Not to mention, this movie is actually more internally consistent than those movies because Lucy at least had superpowers. There is an in-narrative explanation as to how she can do these things. The movie actually answers Comment-Here’s question about how she does so well in fights against men. Granted, average, non-superpowered women can and do win fights against average men because most fights involve more than just throwing your weight at each other, so, while size can be an advantage, it is not everything.
The movie isn’t in theaters any longer but the DVD is out.
The first 45 minutes or so are pretty good, but then it runs into scaling problems. The story is suspenseful at the beginning, when Lucy is just barely smart enough and fast enough to stay one step ahead of the evil crime syndicate. But then she keeps getting smarter and faster, and for the last half of the movie there’s no suspense; she’s so powerful that she can change the laws of physics, so nothing can present any threat to her.
(I think it would have worked if one of the gangsters had taken the superpower drug and been able to challenge her, but that doesn’t happen.)
I’m a woman who loves sci-fi and fantasy and superhero literature and films. It’s the nerd gene or something. My friends, females too, are mainly people with the same interests so most women I hang out with would rather watch sci-fi than chick flicks any time. So there, women do like action films too.
That being said, I’ve seen Lucy and I thought it was bad. Not because of a female hero, just the movie wasn’t any good. But a great sci-fi with ScarJo is Under the Skin. Highly recommend it. Even to misogynists like the IMDb fellow – that’s way more up their alley.
@zoon echon logon: I still like “men are rational!” and “men are sexual animals who can’t control themselves!” best. Mosty because these notions are so often encountered together, in the same rant, and because their co-occurence is a rather big hint that the person holding both of these claims to be true looked at rationality and said ‘Ah, that isn’t for me.’
Another contradiction- If ” It’s totally impossible and literally inconceivable for any woman to win a fight with any man”, this conflicts with the frequent MRA assertions that men are regularly getting beaten up by women in domestic disputes.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/fox-news-posits-that-female-led-movies-are-misandry/comments/
We just can’t have anything to ourselves can we?
If you want a good source of fictional action that gets MRA’s angry, I highly recommend watching the show Vikings on the History Channel. Afterward you may feel compelled to research whether or not shieldmaidens really existed, from there you may discover a rich vein of MRA bullshit that denies historical record.
Long time lurker decloaking. I just couldnt help but comment on the fact comment-here specifically said it was hard for him to enjoy media with a protagonist not of his gender, but MRA’s are always telling us that being forced to play as a male character in games doesn’t make any difference and it is WOMENS prejudices making us unhappy. Everyone wants to see themselves as the protagonist, we all want to step into the limelight and do something unabashedly awesome.
A looong time ago, when I first started lurking on here, there was a troll who used a lot of the same “gggrrrrforcefedgirlpowerargh” language as the guy in the OP. Only he was all bent out of shape about the Drew Barrymore Charlie’s Angels reboot and spent a lot of time insisting that pull-ups were the best measure of overall fitness. I’d wonder if this was the same guy, but A) I know this complaint isn’t anything fresh or original and B) to the troll’s credit I don’t remember him showing any interest in bothering young girls (or the Jeremy Irons/Dominique Swain version of Lolita).
I heard about that Frozen thing. I know it’s silly to expect coherent thoughts from Fox News, but even so, I was baffled that an actual human being outside (card-carrying) MRAs said, “It would be nice for Hollywood to have more male figures in those kind of movies as heroes.”
12% of the top movies in 2014 had female protagonists. 12 PERCENT. The percentage of total speaking characters is still 30%.
12%. That’s less than the number of percentage of women paying child support (16%).
+1. It’s a great show.
fruitloopsie | March 1, 2015 at 7:21 pm
Nope. Because MRAs having anything less than everything is misandry.
Which is why I love Malefecent so fucking much. The MRA tears from it failing a “reverse Bechdel test” are so delicious.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSKyqTF63X54awTPjVqwiQ2SYydvM59JSF1jNcOZRn0F4Ndbkmk
http://rlv.zcache.com/mra_tears_mug-r14dc1018fe8a47dcbe13ba3e4a38ccc3_x7jg9_8byvr_324.jpg
It reminds me of this research thing I read about. There was a test run in classrooms to figure out how much girls speak vs how much boys speak in a classroom. The boys were reported to speak nine times more than the girls were. Then, when the girls were given a fraction more time to speak, the boys whined that the girls were having too much talking time, despite the fact that they were still getting more talking time overall.
It’s not that there’s suddenly more female-led movies that’s the problem for MRAs, it’s that the comparison is the number of female-led movies now compared to no female-led movies at all.
Their baseline for comparison is silence.
Damn. QFT.
Why should Ash be able to affix a chainsaw to his wrist stump? That is so unrealistic and a feeemale like me didn’t do it so it’s no fair!!!! Plus, why did Sookie Stackhouse get to sex hot vampires and werewolves but I don’t? I should get to do sex with them too. End of discussion!
I’m tired of the 10% of your brain thing. I want a movie where it turns out that people only use 10% of their skin.
weirwoodtreehugger | March 1, 2015 at 8:02 pm
I cackled. Good job.
Maybe my snark didn’t quite work. As a feeemale, I should be watching Meg Ryan movies and not know what Evil Dead II is.