Uh oh! Dean Esmay of A Voice for Men is outraged by the latest terrible calumny besmirching the good name of the Men’s Rights movement. That Big Lie? That Men’s Rights Activists are boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road.
As Esmay puts it, in his characteristically overheated prose, the very notion that there is such a boycott
is a completely fabricated story by a handful of elitists abusing their power in the media–and betraying their fellow journalists while doing it.
Using his powerful internet detective skills, Esmay has managed to track down “the source of the lie,” which, as he sees it, “appears to have originated from a discredited hate-blogger named David Futrelle … .”
I’ve left off the rest of his sentence, as it is straight-up libel. Well, so is the bit about me being a “discredited hate-blogger,” and the part about the “lie” originating with me. I will give him credit for managing to spell my name correctly.
I’ll cop to the fact that my post on a would-be boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road set off an avalanche of articles on the subject. The Mary Sue, I believe, was the first to pick up the story, and was quickly followed by a few others. And then other writers piggybacked off of them. For better or worse, that’s how it works in online journalism these days.
But if Esmay is looking for the source of the incorrect notion that self-described Men’s Rights activists were behind the “boycott,” well, he’s not going to find it in my post, which contained no mention of Men’s Right Activists at all.
Yep, I reported the 100% true fact that a Youtube bloviater named Aaron Clarey had written a post on Return of Kings urging men, in his words, to “not only REFUSE to see the movie, but spread the word to as many men as possible.” I described his readers on Return of Kings as misogynists, not MRAs, though clearly there is a massive overlap between those two groups.
The idea that this was specifically a Men’s Rights crusade was, to be sure, a bit of sloppiness on the part of the journalists writing about it, who are not quite as familiar as some of us are with all the different varieties of woman-hating shitheads there are in the “manosphere” — especially since their belief systems overlap considerably. As I noted in a previous post on this subject, writing about Esmay’s accusations against a writer for the Huffington Post,
It’s true that the HuffPo writer, in the original version of her piece, wrongly described the MRA-adjacent Return of Kings — which has urged a
boymancott of Mad Max Fury Road — as a Men’s Rights site proper. There are in fact some differences between ROK and AVFM. For example, while AVFM writers have declared women to be “obnoxious cunts,” who control men with their vaginas, ROK writers have suggested that women are actually depraved, disloyal sheep.
You can almost forgive journalists for getting a bit mixed up.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that some MRAs, including some associated with AVFM, have views on the movie that bear a striking similarity to those of Mr. Clarey and his comrades at ROK. It was an AVFM staffer, not Aaron Clarey, who posted this meme on AVFM’s Facebook page. (It’s since been removed, possibly because it contradicts the narrative that Esmay is now promoting.)
And if you want many other example of MRAs saying they won’t go to see the film because feminism, you’ll find more than a few in this thread on the Men’s Rights subreddit. Oh, and in this thread (archived here) on … the official AVFM Forum.
Yes, that’s right: there are MRAs talking about boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road on AVFM’s own official forum. One declares himself “a (former) Mad Max fan,” another writes “going to skip this one. Mad Max is now dead to me.” “I’m out,” adds a third.
But Esmay seems to think that there is some vast conspiracy afoot, writing that
we are really serious with this question: was anyone paid to put this fake story in the press? If so, who was paid and who did the paying?
Don’t be silly. No money changes hands. At least no human money. We do it under direct orders from our feline overlordsladies.
But as long as we’re asking questions I have one for Mr. Esmay: Are you ever going to do anything about the Holocaust denier and Hitler fan you’ve published many times on AVFM?
Apparently, to Dean Esmay at least, posting that Mad Max: Fury Road is being boycotted by MRAs, when most of the boycotters are in fact merely MRA-adjacent, is a greater crime against truth than denying the Holocaust.
@Andrew Capps
There are 320 million MRAs?
This story had legs not due to a feminist conspiracy to paint MRAs as a “threat”. It went viral because Aaron Clarey’s “Why You Should Not Go See ‘Mad Max: Feminist Road'” is fucking hilarious.
His outrage is based almost entirely on the trailer.
He refuses to believe Eve Ensler was simply consulted about sex slavery; instead she actively worked to transform the entire movie into “feminist lecture” despite having nothing to do with the actual making of the film.
He argues even female supporting characters are feminist plants that ruin all action films:
A humorous misspelling (now corrected) spawned endless jokes about and drawings of Feminist morays.
The comedy cherry on top is that was that he thinks this famously Australian film franchise is American. In fact, everything he said about the earlier trilogy makes it clear he knows and understand very little about the Mad Max franchise.
I mean, come on, this goofy paragraph of feverish fear-mongering is a hoot:
The kicker is the movie he’s telling them not see an instant classic. As Film Drunk’s review put it, “‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Might Be The Best Action Movie Of The Last 10 Years”.
http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2015/05/why-mad-max-fury-road-might-be-the-best-action-movie-of-the-last-10-years/
I always hated the term “anarcho-capitalist.” Capitalism thrives on hierarchy and trying to remove it from the equation would mean there’s no corporate culture to keep workers “in check” while venerating CEOs and board members, due to their high positions in such organizations, to the point of sainthood.
Couldn’t give a shit how much Murray Rothbard tries to distance himself from Objectivism, as he still nonetheless accepts most of its caveats and overall obsession with property rights over human rights (who, like all people that are full of shit, only pay lip service when called out). He dislikes Rand for her cult of personality and hypocrisy when it comes to Individuality – so, why doesn’t this seem to apply for the same corporate entities that he and others defend whole-heartedly? I’m pretty fucking certain corporate environments repress individuality almost all the time, whether it’s making them dress the same way or firing certain people from holding beliefs or sentiments that those in management dislike.
I’m surprised no libertarian has claimed that George Pullman is the greatest man to have ever lived…
Um, okay…?
@Andrew Capps
The article was on RoK, which has a lot more than 11,000 readers. To downplay RoK’s manosphere popularity, especially considering it dwarfs AVfM’s readership, is disingenuous.
It’s certainly one of the few I actually felt excited watching and became more invested in – John Wick is up there too – as opposed to falling into a zombified torpor due to how awful or boring they were.
I know people liked The Raid: Redemption due to the martial arts cinematography, but that’s all it is. There’s no bigger point to be made and seeing guys kick and punch each other in a variety of ways, without any further context, can get pretty dull (especially when all the places they fight in are either identical corridors or dilapidated apartments). In comparison, the recent Judge Dredd adaptation has a similar plot-line, but manages to make it about something (the militarization of police, how poverty fuels crime, and that strict adherence to certain rules can cause undue suffering) much in the same way Fury Road did – all while still having a lot of great variety in the action.
Yes, this. I’ve had this conversation several times when people are like “they aren’t Christian, they’re Catholic.” Okay, do they believe in Jesus as the son of the god of Abraham and redeemer of humanity? “Yes.” Then they’re Christian. It’s a descriptor, nothing more and nothing less. Work out the details between yourselves, mates.
I loved both Raid movies, Gareth Evens is hands down the best action director at this point, surpassing even James Cameron. The car chase sequence in Raid 2 is genuinely astonishing. I don’t even think those movie’s story or characters are terribly weak, it’s just that Evens recycles well worn plots and characters from the classic Hong Kong action films of the 80s and 90s. He should get a screen writing partner, a good one would do wonders for his next film.
That said, I wouldn’t recommend his movies without a caveat because of the violence, as I wrote earlier The Raid 2 turns into an endless orgasmic celebration of violence, which makes him a wee bit problematic. There’s a very bloody ten minute martial arts knife fight in a kitchen and that’s not a good time for a lot of people.
Mad Max: Fury Road is action packed in the sense that it’s almost all chase sequences, but people rarely stop to fight and they’re usually pretty unhappy when they have to. As far as I can remember, there’s never a lingering gruesome shot of bloody corpse after someone’s killed. There’s actually very little blood, I’m guessing because you can’t have a stuntman worry about blood squibs when he’s doing an elaborate stunt. A lot of directors CGI blood afterwards, which almost always looks terrible, but luckily Miller didn’t and avoided CGI as much as he could in general.
Mad Max also has a mythic grandeur and distinct esthetic which are actually strengthened by it’s wackier visual touches. It gets into Ken Russell and Alejandro Jodorowsky territory at times. The way Miller frames the action and tweaks the frame rate, plus the editing, give the film both constant flow and visual coherency, which is why you can follow the action and actually know what’s happening. I’d recommend it just about everybody.
Have you sen how they did the ‘through the car’ shot? Involves a camera operator disguised as a chair; amazing.
Objectivism is actually pretty easy to spot because it’s an ethical as well as a political philosophy. Like all the other right wing individualists, they say that the state should be limited to protect personal freedom, but they also have very specific ideas about what you ought to do with that freedom once you have it. There are lots of libertarians who don’t share those values, so I think it’s a pretty legit distinction to make.
I think Mad Max Fury Road is very nearly perfect for fans of action movies. I did have one problem with it that dropped it from “outstanding” down to “very good”: I found the action and story weakly integrated. Plenty of people have already posted here about how stellar the action sequences are; they really are very impressive, and those posters are right. The story is also pretty good. It’s pretty thin, sure, but what dialog there is is mostly very good, and whenever the characters do slow down long enough to socialize a little the results are fascinating. My only beef is that the dialog and character development is quite strictly separated from the action, and some of the big fights and chases really don’t reveal much new about the characters compared to their run time.
If you look at, say, the Marvel movies, they keep you invested in the action by weaving dialog and relationship beats throughout the fighting. Marvel directors have gotten pretty lazy with their action and I’ve found most of the recent fights boring as fights, but the characters carry it and when something blows up there’s an emotion behind it. When Mad Max blows up a car, it does so in a classy and clever way, but sometimes the exploding car is the only payoff you get for that action. I don’t especially care about exploding cars for their own sake, so at times I was sitting back thinking “huh; that was an interesting shot” more than I was really invested in the moment.
@Alan
Just to elaborate, there’s one continuous shot that starts with an exterior view of one car, moves to the interior of that car and then moves to an exterior view of a different car. To keep the shot continuous three cameramen must pass one camera to each other, while traveling at pretty good speed, and the cameraman in the car is disguised as the back seat.
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/car-chase-raid-2-chair-07162014-100330.jpg
Evens and his crew pulled off a shot that should be flat out impossible to do without CGI. The whole chase is groundbreaking, it’s more of a car fight than a car chase.
@brooked
No, there are 320 million Americans. Most of them are not MRA’s, meninists, or RoK trolls no matter how bad people need them to be.
Interesting how an attack on the media was twisted into an accusation of feminist conspiracy. The “media” is being accused of playing up the MRA threat by painting one troll as their leader. An alarmist view for the sake of clicks.
I was making a admittedly cheap joke about your odd phrasing with the 320 million comment.
You lost me, in part because all your sentences are in the passive voice. Who’s attacking the media, who’s twisting that attack, and who’s accusing “the media”? Who’s view is alarmist?
Feel free to use active forms of verbs and make it clear who’s specifically acting.
Finally, Is there a difference between the media and “the media”?
Um, what? We neither need or want more men to be MRA or PUA.
@brooked
Oh jeez. Attempting to save face by pretending you can’t understand English. Thanks for playing.
@weirwoodtreehugger
You’d be surprised how many people do. Pretending MRA’s are threats to our society gives too many people something to attack or, more to the point, something to do.
It’s about as necessary as grammar policing a blog’s comments section.
@Andrew Capps
Oh, we know they aren’t a threat. They’re just such fucking stupid assholes, everyone has to make a comment on what dumbass shitstains they are. Even the media.
Making fun of them is like making fun of good Ol’ G.W. Bush back in the day: So easy and so much material, you just can’t not mock.
And on top of that, they’re also fucking disgusting, which makes mocking them even sweeter. And the more people know about these assholes, the more they’ll scatter into the recesses, like cockroaches.
*flips light switch on suddenly* Flee, cockroaches, flee! Scatter! Bwahahahaha!
Okay, I know there’s Elam, two separate Allmans and one name that sounded like a dick joke that I can’t remember, but there’s no way I’m going to believe there’s an MRA with the real name of ANDY CAPP.
@SFHC
*shhhh!* Don’t let them know you know! If they know we know then they won’t stick around to try to convince us that they aren’t what we know they are which means less mocking. And where’s the fun in that?
Fury Road is a great movie. Roosh needs to give it a watch.
Hey, Andy Capp, how ya doin’?
And contrary to what you insist here, no one in the media “painted” Aaron Clarey as any kind of MRA leader. They didn’t “paint” him as anything, because he painted himself…into a corner…as a fool.
Much like you’re doing right now.
Please, carry on.
Totally legit opinion, of course, but I kinda feel the other way. A lot of quipping during a fight, like in the Marvel movies, makes the whole thing feel too low-stakes to me because it feels like the characters aren’t taking it seriously and aren’t really in danger, and that takes me out of the story. (Plus I thought there were a few good moments where character was revealed during action, like Max giving Splendid a thumbs up.)
A threat to what? I don’t find the MRM a threat to feminism and women’s rights politically speaking because they’re too stupid and too small in number for anyone to take seriously. But, considering their propensity for rape and domestic abuse apologia, I do think they’re potential threats to the women and girls in their lives.
@andy capps
By writing this in the agentless passive voice you are failing to tell the reader who is doing what. In the first two sentences, we know the media and the “media” are being acted upon but it remains a mystery who the agents doing the attacking and the accusing are. Passive voice isn’t inherently bad grammar, but your use of the agentless passive voice made your comment very unclear.
I’m not grammar policing, I’m asking you to clarify your point. If you want to be baby about it, that’s fine.
I’ve enjoyed the last two Hunger Game movies quite a bit, even though I haven’t read the books and thought the first one was pretty terrible, because the stakes are so genuinely high and I’m not sure what’s going to be left after the revolution. I feel like any character other than Katniss could die and those that survive will be understandably psychologically traumatized.
Guardians of the Galaxy was wildly entertaining but there wasn’t a whole lot of dramatic tension.
A glowing review of “Mad Max: Fury Road” in this week’s New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/high-gear-current-cinema-anthony-lane
Yeah, that’s an example where the characters treat fighting very seriously; they don’t joke around and they act scared and traumatized, like they in-story honestly don’t know if they’re going to make it or not.