John Russell Houser, who gunned down 11 moviegoers at a showing of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana Thursday night, killing two young women, was a volatile, violent, woman-hating, anti-Semitic, far-right loser given to dark and bitter diatribes against what he saw as cultural “immorality.”
It’s a safe bet that if Houser had stayed for the entire showing of Trainwreck, instead of pulling out his gun, he would not have enjoyed the film, a comedy about a young woman living an unapologetically “promiscuous” life in New York city, written by and starring Amy Schumer, a feminist comedian famous (or infamous, depending on whom you’re talking to) for her frankly sexual humor.
A more important question: Did Houser deliberately target viewers of Trainwreck as a sick protest against its “permissive” politics? And if so, was he inspired by attacks on the film from right-wing media and misogynists online?
Trainwreck has been a lightning rod for right-wing “moralists” since the first trailer for the film came out five months ago. A glance through the comments to the trailer on YouTube reveals months of sniping at the film by an assortment of angry misogynists decrying Trainwreck as “propaganda” and a celebration of “whores.”
“This is unbelievably degenerate,” one would-be cultural critic on YouTube wrote shortly after the trailer came out. “No respectable man would even touch an overweight whore.”
“Movies like this are the reason people can’t have normal, old fashioned relationships anymore,” another YouTuber complained. “Thank you Hollywood for yet another huge, stinking, steaming pile of crap contribution to society whose sole purpose is to teach women to act like men, be sluts and take relationships for granted.”
Still another attacked the film as subtle “propaganda” encouraging women to “behave like sluts” — even though Schumer’s character repents and gives up her “slutty” ways at the end. As this non-fan of Schumer saw it, the fact that the film has a happy ending
encourages the viewer to partake in her abominable behavior, because the message is that such behavior has no consequences: everything will go your way in the end. This gives young women a license to party, do drugs and whore around in their 20s, because they believe they can count on a Prince Charming to rescue them when the time is right.
The apotheosis of this kind of, er, criticism comes not from some irate, anonymous YouTube commenter but from Armond White, movie reviewer for the paleoconservative National Review, who, in a review last week, blasted Schumer for turning “female sexual prerogative into shamelessness” and promoting “the degradation of sex.”
And he was just getting started:
Trainwreck should be a wake-up call for anyone — especially for any conservative — who thinks pop culture is guileless, harmless fun. …
Not really a sex comedy, Trainwreck is a comedy that uses sex to promote feminist permissiveness.
Like the angry YouTube commenters he almost seems to be cribbing his critique from, White is especially offended that Amy — it’s not clear if he’s talking about Schumer or the character she named after herself, or both — can be so unapologetically sexual without suffering “social stigma.”
As White sees it, Schumer is “a comedy demagogue who okays modern misbehavior.” Apparently confusing Trainwreck with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Schumer with Madame Mao, White concludes that
Schumer doesn’t simply use humor for social readjustment; like all Comedy Central performers from Jon Stewart on down, she aims to acquire cultural power. … As the latest model of Comedy Central’s stealth comediennes (following Janeane Garofalo and Sarah Silverman), Schumer disguises a noxious cultural agenda as personal fiat.
Now, we don’t know if Houser was directly inspired by White’s antifeminist-diatribe-cum-movie-review; we don’t know if he even read it.
What we do know is that over-the-top attacks on feminism and feminists like his have helped to contribute to a widespread backlash, online and off, against outspoken women, a backlash that has both encouraged and excused attacks on, and outright harassment of, individual women who have challenged male cultural authority — from women daring to offer opinions about video games that offend misogynistic gamers to comedians like Schumer who challenge old-fashioned slut-shaming by joking unapologetically about female “promiscuity.”
No, movie reviews don’t cause terrorism, not by themselves, anyway. But John Russell Houser was a veritable rage bomb that had long been ready to explode, and “cultural critics” like White and his ideological fellow travellers online may well have inspired his choice of targets when he finally did.
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http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9bcjxXj3L1qevxy2.gif
Oh my fucking god, who the fuck thinks Chicken Little is a good movie ever for any reason?!
From his review of Up: “All this deflated cinema and Pixarism mischaracterizes what good animation can be (as in Coraline, Monster House, Chicken Little, Teacher’s Pet, The Iron Giant). Up’s aesthetic failure stems from its emotional letdown. ”
THIS GUY.
(Monster House is such a mess that the screenwriter, Community creator Dan Harmon, wrote an apology to a child who saw it: http://kellyoxford.tumblr.com/post/479774445/my-story-about-the-film-monster-house)
…I actually liked Monster House once you get pass the jerky animation and some problems with the story. Of course, I was 14 when I saw it, so, I mean, I probably wasn’t in the age bracket for the movie anyway.
Peni – the “magical Something” removers.
Can you also remove objects from your kitchen sink with them? I miss my earring.
Also, fucking Up is a national treasure and made me cry all throughout. This ass has the emotional depth of a tablespoon.
I’d like his definition of ‘Pixarism’, other than the word he can throw into a sentence pretending it’s something inherently awful, even sinister.
I officially lost it just reading this. What an ULTRAmaroon! I bet he’s a Nice Guy™ who can’t understand why nobody wants to sex with him.
PS: Hello, Carmen!
I notice he praises The Iron Giant, which suggests that even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.
@Nequam
Also Coraline, which is surprising.
“Most of the people I have known who have had a lot of partners have some pretty serious issues with alcohol/ drugs/ self esteem/ commitment.”
I made this comment in the ‘good faith’ of it being a factual comment. I would have thought that from the context and rest of my comment that it was obvious that I was not slut shaming. I have no moral issue with a person being promiscuous. I was just making the observation that around ME the people who did A LOT of casual sex were often engaging in high risk or destructive behaviours.
This Handle is a Test:
OK, I’m curious, what are additional benefits women get, in your opinion?
Wait. What’s so bad about being single, period? It’s not just about being about have sex with multiple people if you want to because your’e not committed to monogamy. It’s about having more free time to do what you want, being able to spend more time with your friends, not having to worry about your life plans will affect your future relationship, and a whole bunch of other benefits. Being in a relationship is a huge commitment. You’re making the decision to commit a certain amount of your time to them, dedicating more to keeping up the relationship than you probably would for most of your friendships, including them in your future plans, and giving up a lot of things that you’d get as a single person. Of course, if you’re happy in your relationship and in love, you won’t mind doing these things at all. The time spent together will be pleasurable, and you’ll want to spend that time and make those dedications because you want the other person in your life. However, if you don’t have a special person to whom you want to dedicate all of that time and effort because they make you feel good and happy, then you have a lot of free time that you can use for other things and without having to consider someone else’s plans.
In short, while there are definitely lots of benefits to being in a relationship, there are also lots of benefits to being single (and I’d argue that you wouldn’t miss the relationship benefits while being single as much because you don’t have a specific person to whom you want to dedicate that much while you would’t miss the benefits of being single as much while being in a relationship because you’d want to dedicate that much to that person), and I can’t see why men wouldn’t be able to enjoy those benefits as much as women.
@Carmen
You posts were interesting to read and I agree with a lot of your points, but I’d like to address a couple points.
I’m not sure if someone’s done this already (apologies if they have), but may I direct you to the new comments policy regarding the use of words like crazy and psycho?
I know that this isn’t exactly a rare sentiment and that you are speaking mainly for yourself, but speaking as an asexual, I do feel a bit put out every time sex is referred to as an integral part of the human experience, as an essential part of a loving relationship, as something all people should aspire to have with a special other person. I don’t. I don’t want sex, I’ve never wanted sex, and a relationship involving sex would be no more meaningful to me than a relationship involving, I don’t know, unclogging toilets together. Love and sex are not necessarily intertwined, one can have sex without love and love without sex.
Sorry, I do know you likely did not intend that, it’s just a bit of a bugbear of mine.
Well, as long as you “don’t push your morality on others”…
Gah.
I mean, personally, casual sex is not for me, because the emotional element is really important to me (and to my partner) and I can’t imagine enjoying sex without it. For me, yeah, casual sex would lack something important – that emotional connection that comes from knowing and loving my partner. But here’s the thing: for me. Personally.. Meaning, I know that this is a personal preference. I don’t go around assuming that just because I see sex that way, then this is the way it has to be, period. I realise that just like people can have different sexual preferences in terms of gender, looks, or whatever else (or even prefer no sex at all), people can also have a different mindset about what makes sex good for them. It actually seems kind of obvious.
(the two-dots up there is just a typo, by the way.)
And of course, romantic love isn’t the most important factor, or a factor at all, for some peoples lives, to amend my last post. If there’s a group of people more overlooked and inundated with ‘your lack of desire for this is wrong’ than asexuals, it’s the aromantics. Did not mean to other my fellow A’s, if there are any here.
You know the phrase “Sex is like pizza: When it’s good, it’s really good, and when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good!”?
I don’t think that person has ever actually had bad sex. At least, not sex that was bad for them.
Oh my god, there’s an actual answer to the question “Who the hell liked/disliked this movie?”
Check out his review for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: “G.I. Joe must be understood as an authentic measurement of our cultural values. Its appeal to the pop-commercial synapses also demonstrates livelier filmmaking than such utter banality as Iron Man and Star Trek and Harry Potter’s Half-Blooded Chintz.”
Maybe Armond White just very confused and perpetually celebrating Opposite Day.
I don’t think that person has had bad pizza either.
Don’t get me wrong, I like pizza, but there is such a thing as inedible pizza.
@WWTH, no one is judging your choices by talking about their own. If anyone here does criticize you for enjoying casual sex, I and countless others will take them to task.
One of the problems when it comes to discussing sexual behaviour is we are still tied to the misogynistic fallacy that men should want sex and women shouldn’t, making this a moral issue when it is a health and social issue. This is what makes society shame women who are sexually active and shame men who are not, while still expecting all sex to happen between men and women. It also makes society marginalize asexuals.
Unfortunately a lot of men absorb this trope that ‘nice girls don’t, bad girls do’ which encourages them to disrespect and mistreat women prepared to sleep with them outside of a relationship, Return of Kings is the perfect illustration of this. The notion of women sleeping around having low self esteem becomes a self fulfilling prophecy if a girl finds herself being judged by others and mistreated by the men she sleeps with. One of the reasons I don’t do it with anyone anymore is because the act has taken on so many negative connotations that I don’t want to be near anyone I can’t trust 100%.
I’m not saying this is still the case everywhere, it can’t be otherwise we wouldn’t have women here defending their decision to enjoy casual sex. I have found in polyamorous social groups men and women enjoy an enlightened outlook and actually manage to be genuine friends while indulging in guilt free non fucked up sex.
Curiously, a plot point in Clan of the Cave Bear.
This is what happened when my microwave went bad:
http://i.imgur.com/H1u98m1.jpg
That’s an actual solid charcoaled layer of pizza topping, and bizarrely, cheese ended up looking like that.
I tucked my pizza for a couple of minutes of nuking (’cause I put in extra cheese), and went to do stuff. But the microwave decided that 20+ minutes is more appropriate, and only after I started to smell something smoking I went to investigate and oh hey, how come I didn’t hear that ping and … oh.
As you can see, I did some exploring nibbling to find out if it was still edible. I was desperate and hungry.
Nope.
I would like to concur on the existence of bad sex and bad pizza. But sex is not like pizza.
I’ve got high standards for both pizza and sex. However, I don’t always make my own pizza.