By David Futrelle
You’ve probably heard of the Christian movie review sites that rate whether or not the latest Hollywood offerings will be good wholesome fun for the entire (evangelical Christian) family, carefully cataloging each film’s unsavory elements, from beheadings to glimpses of nipple, and even how many times characters in movies take the Lord’s name in vain?
For example, did you know that the film Hereditary contains “20 f-words … Multiple uses of the s-word and ‘h—‘ [and] some 10 misuses of God’s and Jesus’ name?” Though somehow I doubt that swearing will be what most offends fundamentalist Christians watching the film.
Anyway, now there’s a site that seems to have decided to perform a similar service for the sort of fragile male comic book nerds who get mad when allegedly man-hating ladies star in movies about superheroes in spandex, small businesses specializing in ghost-capture, and wars in space (among the stars, as it were).
So let’s take a look at the Cosmic Book News review of Captain Marvel: The One With the Lady in It, which opened (big) this weekend.
Like an unfortunate number of fragile comic book dudes who think they speak for all fans, Cosmic Book News’ Editor in Chief Matt McGloin doesn’t much like the film — though to his credit he has actually seen it, unlike most of those who have decided largely based on their own hurt feelings that the film is the worst thing to ever hit cinemas.
“Overall, Captain Marvel comes off as a rather dull and lackluster movie,” McGloin writes.
[J]oining Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, it is another spit in the face of Marvel Cosmic fans.
Ah, yes, very helpful to cite that universally loathed cinematic disaster Guardians of the Galaxy, which somehow managed to garner a 91% critic score and a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (back before angry dudes started review-bombing every movie they saw as a crime against maleness).
The film is loaded with anti-male imagery, footage and dialogue, which is simply insulting as well as alienating (similar to Disney Star Wars).
Apparently he’s still mad about Laura Dern’s purple hair in The Last Jedi.
It felt as if there were two different drafts of the movie, an initial draft with the storyline, but a second draft was commissioned which saw the directors, Feige and the producers go over it with a fine tooth comb to add the feminist male-bashing elements, of which there were many that came off forced and completely out of place, like much of the movie.
Yes. I’m sure that’s exactly how it happened. You may not know this, but all Hollywood movie scripts these days go through a rigorous misandering process, including an extensive review by the Misandry Board, to ensure that they contain the requisite amount of male-bashing, before hitting the screen.
You may wonder what specific misandries are contained in Captain Marvel. Well, our helpful reviewer has provided a list, conveniently titled “Male-bashing elements in Captain Marvel” in large type in case you weren’t sure that’s what they were.
Here are what I would say are the Top Five male-bashing elements from his list.
Carol’s dad is mean to her. …
When Carol crashed into the Blockbuster, she blew the head off Arnold Schwarzenegger (a male) of the True Lies standee, not Jamie Lee Curtis (a female).
Carol is hit on and insulted by the motorcycle guy.
What is wrong with calling a girl a young lady? Talos calls Maria a young lady a couple of times, which she gets mad about. Huh?
And the most egregious misandering of all:
Nick Fury … is shown washing dishes.
I’m really not sure is the male gender will be able to survive such an assault.
Apparently, these egregious assaults on maleness aren’t the only things wrong with the film. McGloin also feels that Captain Marvel doesn’t smile enough, that Nick Fury lost his eye for the wrong reason, and that the music used for the film was too girl-powery or something.
No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” was awful and didn’t fit with the scene or footage. Certainly, if we are trying to push the “girl power” aspect of the movie even further, a better song could have been picked. It was so out of place and killed all the build up. A majority of the songs also felt out of place, as they too, were pushing an obvious agenda.
Having not seen the film, I have no idea how well “Just a Girl” fits the scene it’s used in, but looking at the list of songs featured in the film I have to say that I am shocked that a film about a female superhero set in the 1990s contains numerous songs sung and sometimes also written and performed by women that were popular in the 1990s.
Be careful out there, fellas! You never know when or where you might be misandered. Not even the movie theaters are safe these days!
H/T — This tweet by @renfamous alerted me to the existence of this amazing review
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The L. stands for “Motherfucker.”
Sometimes it seems like Real Men™ are all about three things:
1. Attempting to impress women with things that generally don’t impress them, and punishing women for failing to be impressed.
2. Bragging about how much they get laid, while getting less sex than most Beta Men™.
3. Most relevant to the topic: Going to ridiculous lengths to justify laziness and poor self-care.
motherflerken? :3
@JessicaRed
Jesus’ name was Yeshua, the root form of Joshua. So he’s Josh Christ
Shooting the head off a promotional standee of a male actor is a particularly weird choice of complaint here, given how often these same dudes loudly insist that media depicting, normalizing, and justifying violence against women isn’t inherently misogynist.
Aaaaand if I’m at Flerken. Here are some comic strips that’ll be comic book covers thanks to the marketing around Goose (ie. Marvel MEOW):
Venom (will be on ‘Thor’)
Guardians of the Galaxy (will be on ‘Meet the Skrulls’)
Captain Marvel (will be on ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’)
Woverine (will be on ‘Wolverine: Infinity Watch’)
Spider-Man (will be on ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’)
Ms. Marvel (will be on ‘Daredevil’)
(10 pics per link. Swipe left / there are navigational arrows.)
Re: blowing off Ahnold’s cardboard head, it’s worth noting that in the image used for the standee, he’s holding a gun…
Re: small dishwashers
Somehow, I think they’d find Fury loading a small dishwasher just as horrid as hand washing, though.
When I someday have indoor plumbing, I’m putting a mini-dishwasher on the wish list. 🙂
Dry cabin, so dishwashing is a pain involving an electric kettle, modified water bottles, 2 ten gallon pails, as little water as possible, and lots of stubborn.
I’m happy to see the MRAs in tears over this. I hope they spend weeks crying into their anime child rape fantasy pillows. However, merely having a female lead does not make a movie feminist. Several elements of “Captain Marvel” are problematic to say the least.
1. The titular “Captain Marvel” is a soldier working first for the American military and then for the Kree. Both are aggressively colonialist and Captain Marvel willingly supports each in turn. She never condemns colonialism in the movie, not once. She simply decides she is working for the WRONG colonialist patriarchy.
2. “Action girl” characters like this are not meaningfully female. Captain Marvel’s womanhood is a character note, like in a line of toys for children (which the Marvel movies increasingly resemble). Each character is defined the Smart Guy, the Strong Guy, the Guy With A Dog, the Explosives Guy, ect, and Captain Marvel is simply the Woman Guy. This unsexes the character and presents her as an object for male play and fantasy. She’s an action figure for men and boys to covet, own, control, and fantasize about fucking.
3. Related to the last point. Captain Marvel solves her problems through intimidation, violence and murder. These are male-coded aspects, implying that women can only be powerful by adopting the brutality and hatred of patriarchal society. This tells our daughters that women are weak and the only way to be powerful is to cease being a woman.
4. The movie was not solely woman-written, solely woman-directed or woman-produced. Even when men allow stories about women to EXIST they don’t trust us to tell our own stories. A man is always involved at every step.
5. Perhaps most seriously the massive profits of this film do not benefit the sisterhood of women. Instead they are siphoned by the misogynist Hollywood capitalist machine, where it will finance pornography and continue the lavish lifestyle of media moguls who regard women as consumable and disposable.
If you want to laugh a lot, Google “Samuel L. Jackson reads ‘Go The Fuck To Sleep'”. ? And then forward it to all the new parents you know…
I must admit, I have a total potty mouth, though I’m careful where I uncensor myself. I don’t usually drop F-bombs in conversation, and to be honest I avoid movies where there’s a lot of swearing or characters obviously having sex (though that’s also because I’m more into Disney and Miyazaki than action films, and those heroines don’t exactly swear a lot!) But the whole “don’t use God’s name” thing totally doesn’t make sense for me; Muslims are always saying inshallah and alhamdulilah; the “lah” in those is Allah… So I guess by some standards….that’s swearing… JessicaRed, I had never heard the explanation that “don’t take Gods name in vain” meant “don’t call upon the Lord to give you stuff or do stuff for you that you can do yourself, especially if it’s not important, or is purely selfish”; that’s very interesting and puts a different spin on it!
I will now absolutely go see this movie; it makes all the right (wrong? Whatever) people angry…
Just saw it, it’s awesome, and the soundtrack is fantastic. Nothing felt out of place or forced. Take your kids, have a blast. Make a mean little man cry.
@ bookworm in hijab
The prohibition on using god’s name did give us some interesting mixed oaths.
Bloody for ‘by our lady’ is of course still common here; as is strewth, god’s truth.
But I’d like to see a comeback for gadzooks and odds bodkins; both references to the nails of the crucifiction. And zounds, as in god’s wounds.
In another news, Zidane’s return to Real Madrid made the Spanish Football Federation tweet this honorable entry in the Unfortunate Collages Gallery:
https://twitter.com/LaLiga/status/1105158194064691200?s=09
Notice how the smiling head on the left when juxtaposed with the body shot in front of it, if you don’t pay attention looks like Zidane is doing the Happy Merchant pose.
Weatherwax
At our previous house we had dishdrawers. Which is basically a large dishwasher with 2 separate bodies rather than an upper and lower drawer within a single machine. Now I have a single dish drawer.
Marvelous.
Bookworm in hijab:
Seconded! This came out when I was a new parent. My s.o. and I quoted it often.
Re: god’s name in vain.
My uncle’s explanation was, “God doesn’t like it when you yell at him.” He illustrated this by repeatedly yelling my name in the same tone and inflection used in cursing. I could see his point.
@mildlymagnificent
I want that. It sounds neat and would solve the problem of needing to dirty every dish before running a cycle so as to be energy efficient.
@ Curious Diversions,
Hmm. I do that to my pets when they misbehave…? Seems effective! If not at correcting the behaviour, than at least at making me feel better.
@ Genjones
I might have gone for Yeshua ben Yusuf/ Joshua Josephson, not sure how to fit in the Christ, what with it being a religious title rather than a surname.
@ Alan Robertshaw,
I didn’t know that! ?
@bookworm,
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–fC-ZDVQ—/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/18xp47i81k1b7jpg.jpg
That stuff was formative for me
I posted this in the other thread, but it works just as well as a response to McGloin’s review:
@Pocketnerd:
As you probably already know… “that’s different!!!”
re: taking the diety’s name in vain… while asking god for next week’s lottery numbers would likely qualify, and saying insh’allah (roughly “if god wills it”) after “see ya at work tomorrow” might imply more concern by the diety about out minor comings and goings than is reasonable…
I think the standard xian fundy objection refers to blatant exclamations like “Great bleeding Christ on a bucket with a fucking tambourine!!!”… and the like.
@ weird eddie
Well he does purport to take notice even when a sparrow falls, so I guess being omnipotent allows for such things. Or maybe he just like ornithology? He did make a lot of birds.
I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that the prohibition on taking God’s name in vain referred specifically to God’s actual proper name, the one that’s abbreviated YHWH in the Bible because using the full name would be, you know, taking God’s name too casually. Using his full name improperly was considered such a sin that only priests were allowed to utter it, and only during ceremonies, and, well, that’s why nobody knows what the vowels are supposed to be today since the line of priests was broken.
(And Wikipedia seems to agree! Which clearly proves I’m right because Wikipedia is the most trustworthy source of knowledge in the universe.)
Also, I think what ticks MRAs off about Thor: Ragnarok is just that Thor is treated humorously. He’s manly and muscled and should be treated with all the respect and reverence that raw masculinity is due, and this movie makes fun of him! MISANDRY!
I mean, it’s not like the real mythological Thor ever had stories making fun of him. *cough*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Erymskvi%C3%B0a
@ Alan Robertshaw
‘…an inordinate fondness for beetles…’
Sorry, couldn’t resist.