By David Futrelle
The right-wing snowflakes are out in force, clogging up the internet with gloating comments about the alleged utter failure of Birds of Prey, a comic book movie about a lady super-gang headed up by Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. In its opening weekend, you see, the film earned $33 million in domestic box office instead of the $45 million Warner Brothers was expecting.
To its angry-dude critics, the overwhelming majority of whom have not seen the film, this was proof that studios that “get woke go broke” because true comic book movie fans will reject this sort of “feminist propaganda” in favor of movies that don’t have quite so many ladies in them.
Naturally, some of the leading lights, such as they are, in the far-right griftosphere had things to say about Birds of Prey.
The right wing culture critics aren’t just mad that there are too many women in the film; they’re also mad that these women aren’t wearing skimpy enough clothing, thus making them ugly in the eyes of men who watch films with their boners. “They are so ugly,” complained one Twitterer, “why they dont choose pretty females? They seems like shemales, strong and masculine.”
BREAKING: Margot Robbie is ugly.
“[F]uck your gay ass woke birds of prey,” wrote another. “Sexualize Harley Quinn forever.”
You may or may not be shocked to discover that the film’s detractors include literal Nazis and at least one equally literal piss-drinker.
In a post on Sunday, The Daily Stormer trashed the film as “Another Gyno-Ghostbusters” with women not only in front of the camera but behind it. As the Stormer’s Andrew Anglin whined,
The film doesn’t just star women, it was also written, produced and directed by women. Even the soundtrack features exclusively female artists.
Actually, seven of the nine executive producers for the film are men, but it’s not like the Daily Stormer ever checks its facts..
Anglin sarcastically mocked the film’s less-than-perfect performance at the box office.
Basically, they are going to need laws forcing men to see these films. Because it is unacceptable for these women to go through all the trouble of producing these $100+ million films to lecture men and then men not show up.
Actually, as Variety notes, the majority of those who went to see the film were men, mostly over the age of 25.
And while most of the critics of the film’s not-sexy-enough-for-angry-dudes ladies focus most of their ire on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, Anglin is more troubled by the inclusion of, ahem, “afro-kike” actress Jurnee Smollett-Bell, though even Anglin admits she’s easy on the eyes.
Gotta say, for combining the two least attractive races – black and Jew – into a single individual, Jurnee Smollett-Bell did alright. Definitely bests Meghan Markle on the old “male gaze-o-meter.”
Meanwhile, Birds of Prey has also drawn the attention of YouTuber and former novelty congressional candidate Joey “Salads” Saladino, perhaps most famous as “the guy who literally peed in his own mouth on video”
In fairness to Mr Salads, he says he didn’t actually swallow any of the piss that he deliberately pissed into his own mouth, so he’s got that going for him.
Film criticism is weird.
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I’ve been more than a little puzzled about Bernie Sanders and people’s reactions to him. I’m chalking most of this up to the fact that neither Bernie supporters nor Bernie critics are a monolith, even in progressive-leaning spaces.
One big thing that concerns me is this idea that so-called “Bernie Bros” are a myth. I have no idea what the context of this is; it’s probably different between individuals, but at face value it just leaves me wondering whether this is a position from 2016 or something that specifically applies to this year’s campaign. The biggest argument for this I’ve seen is that Bernie’s 2020 campaign is the most diverse out of any presidential candidate. This seems to indicate to me that Bernie supporters by and large are not applying the “Bernie Bros are a myth” argument to 2016. Either that or the argument is that his campaign was also the most diverse out of any candidate in 2016, which seems rather beside the point considering how racially diverse states ended up voting.
On the other end, though, there is this notion that Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have the baggage that Bernie does. Well, there are at least some indigenous folks who are not exactly fans of her. She also seems to be all in on a reformist approach to dealing with agencies like ICE, which I know has rightfully upset a lot of people. And yeah, what we think of as ICE is really a specific division of ICE that even the rest of ICE hates and wants to abolish, but considering when the DHS in general was created and what it was created for, that argument seems a little moot.
I read Yang’s candidate questionnaire on disability. He advocates that the federal government subsidize salaries of disabled workers to provide incentive for companies to hire people with disabilities. The people working would indeed receive pay. This, together with universal health care, would remove any fiscal reason for being wary of hiring disabled folk. Then we’d be just left with the discomfort of TAPs (temporarily abled persons- as my paraplegic friend from college called them) which will fade with education and exposure.
He had a few good ideas- got them into the national conversation, but I’m not sorry to see him go.
@Tactical Progressive:
I’d like to enter into evidence Defense Exhibit 1: the MCU.
(We can quibble about AbramsTrek. The SFX are top notch but all those hyper young people where there used to be calm, cautious professionals? The third one is closer in the crew’s temperament to the original, at least. And … where the heck is the fourth one? It’s way past due at this point.)
@Lumipuna
As of 2013 or so, southern Ontario has a new unofficial calendar that goes January, February, March, March, March, July, July, August …
Pfft. Movies released in January and February almost always “underperform”. It’s where studios send the films they have no confidence in to die, usually. Unless it’s marketed as a Valentine’s Day movie (like the first Deadpool was/s). Not sure about this movie, but then I haven’t even seen half of the last decade’s superhero movies yet IIRC, despite liking the genre overall. The trailer wasn’t anything special either, and as mentioned, while Harley Quinn was one of the few bright spots in Suicide Squad (alongside Amanda Waller), the film will still be tainted by association (just as BvS tainted the DCEU as a whole – making BoP doubly tainted).
To be fair I haven’t been interested in seeing the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, but that’s because I wasn’t interested in a reboot in the first case (also those trailers were awful – seriously? One of the characters lasciviously licking her proton gun? Hiring Chris Hemsworth’s character purely as eye candy? Why?), and while the manosphere manbabies were definitely up in arms about it, I’m pretty sure they were only a small part of why it tanked (otherwise Black Panther and Captain Marvel would have also failed, which I’m pretty sure they didn’t).
And the asshat who said “sexualize Harley Quinn forever” may be forgetting that her original costume was a full-body jester’s motley bodystocking, so not exactly the pinnacle of sexualization (by superhero comic-book standards, in any case). I still think it’s superior to her more recent, less-covering costumes.
And yes, the irony of a bunch of Nazi-adjacent people showing indignation at a media who was pioneered by Jewish immigrants or their children is quite lulzy.
@An Impish Pepper
Re: Bernie Bros they are definitely a thing. Whether they are all that people say they are is another story, but there definitely is a constituent of Sanders supporters who have a Bernie-or-bust mindset and don’t care at all about or actively oppose social progressivism, only caring about economic stuff and not realizing that the two are connected. For example, the creators of these memes. Another good example would be the dirtbag left, such as Amber A’Lee Frost or Aimee Therese, who actively oppose feminism and other progressive movements.
I am by no means saying that all Bernie fans are like this, I’m just saying there are people that fit that description.
It may be because I live in Quebec province, but TBH Bernie and Biden are basically the two Dem candidates I hear the most about in media by a long shot. So far I’ve preferred Bernie, but I don’t know enough about the other candidates overall to choose anyone else (and since I’m not a US citizen it’s not like I get to vote). Gotta say I’m a bit curious about Bernie bros; is that the bunch of asshats who didn’t vote, or worse, voted GOP, because Hillary won the primaries? (Not a big Hillary fan, but between her and Orange Soda Tan I’d have at least bothered voting for the lesser evil – hint: not Cheeto Man)
In any case, trusting what was said in this thread about Yang, fuck him and good riddance.
“Bernie Bros” aren’t the majority of Bernie fans – as noted, Bernie fans are fairly diverse, with differing reasons to support him – though he doesn’t do nearly as well with black people as Biden does or with Hispanic people as Warren does, thanks to being somewhat tone-deaf around race issues. (Then again, Biden can be pretty tone-deaf too, and yet quite a lot of black people like him, particularly in the South, ?♀.) But they were loud and obnoxious and occasionally harassed Hillary supporters back in 2016 and likely helped drive away a small portion of his other supporters. They’re still around, still toxic, but for the most part rather quiet… yet some people are still acting as if they were screaming from the rooftops or something. It’s more expectation than reality.
For Bernie’s own part, back in 2016 he told them to shut the hell up and stop demeaning Hillary for being a woman. Maybe some of them listened.
@Paireon
Some of them did that, others stayed home or wrote in a 3rd party candidate.
To be honest I think only white men hated the 2016 Ghostbusters. Which is a huge part of why it flopped. :/
@naglfar
my old girl gets just as cranky as I do when it’s cold. so we’ll just kind of sit together and be really bitter about it.
@Elizabeth, Ikeke35, Cindy:
My understanding is that, when you get right down to it, the only real ‘flop’ of the 2016 Ghostbusters is that it was banned from screening in China. Without that, it didn’t quite make back its budget in box office receipts, but still did make a profit once merchandising was taken into account. So ‘flop’ is very much an overstatement. It definitely didn’t do anywhere near as well as was hoped, but it was not a flop by any reasonable standard.
2016 Ghostbusters was also just plain good.
Speaking of spiteful MGTOW/Incel type jerk faces, and given the fact that it’s Feb. 12th, I thought I’d post this:
It’s the one on the left that gets me.
But there are actually a bunch available at this address:
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?s=valentines+day
@Crip Dyke
I’d almost forgotten about the annual MGTOW Valentine’s Day meltdown. I wonder what they’ll say this year? I’m guessing another rehashing of the BS they say every year around this time. The incels might be doing something for the 2nd anniversary of the Parkland shooting, seeing as they celebrated the first anniversary.
Not as terrible as I had feared, but it still doesn’t make sense. Why not just enforce the laws against discrimination and provide direct subsidies to disabled people as needed? Using funds to bribe corporations to hire disabled people seems inefficient. Which makes even less sense that Yang is pitching this because the selling point of UBI is that it’s really efficient and cuts out middlemen.
He was actually funny in the role, though. The whole point is that it is a gender flipped version of the characters that beautiful actresses with real comedic chops tend to play. Think Marilyn Monroe, Goldie Hawn, Shelly Long and Megan Fox.
@Snowberry
I’ve heard that this is because many believe no one else can beat Trump, because they do not trust white people to vote for anyone but a familiar old white man. To which… fair.
I wonder how many of these doofuses realize that Harley is canonically Jewish?
Though the best were the ones responding to the news that Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster would become Thor in the next movie by crying that Hollywood is trying to “Jew Up” the superhero genre.
Um…. someone tell Jerry Siegel, Joe Schuster, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Stan Lee, Bill Finger, Bob Kane … (list goes on endlessly).
For Lainy
I don’t know what the weather is like where you are; but Winter here is like a guest who you think you’ve got rid of but keeps popping back because they left their car keys or something. And we’re officially meant to be sub-tropical!
@Allandrel
I actually didn’t know that. I know that a lot of early superhero cartoonists were Jewish (and that some sources say Superman is supposed to be Jewish, or at least representative of the Jewish people*) but I didn’t know Quinn was.
*Superman was created by Jewish cartoonists, he escapes Krypton in a manner some have likened to the story of Moses in the river, his Krypton name “kol-el” sounds quite similar to Hebrew for “voice of God,” and he seems to have been inspired by Zishe Breitbart, a Jewish strongman who was billed as “the Superman of the Ages.” Maybe the first part is just coincidence, but it seems like there are some intentional parallels between Superman and Jewish religious doctrine.
There’s quite a cool book on this called From Krakow to Krypton; which gets points just for the title.
@Allandrel
White people won’t vote for a moderate. I mean yes, the boomers won’t vote for a non-white.
I mostly lurk but since Yangs disability policies came up I wanted to share this Vox article. Since I am disabled myself i care a lot about the candidates disability plans and his seemed like a mess.
The male empowerment fantasy in Ghostbusters 1984 is being acclaimed and scoring with hot chicks.
The female empowerment fantasy in Ghostbusters 2016 is being believed.
https://www.salon.com/2020/02/12/donald-trumps-fascist-circus-maximus-pay-attention-to-whats-going-on-below-the-surface/
:O
Thank you, incels. I wanted to see this months ago but completely forgot about it in the pandemonium of my recent life. I will go see it, probably this week.
@Jenira Feuer:
I brought this up to two male friends who were gloating over how the “stupid girl Ghostbusters” brought in “no money”, making sure to point out that this problem would plague any male-centric Ghostbusters that come up. They kind of got quiet and seemed uncomfortable.
Also had to point out that the original demo for the original movie was men ages 20-39, roundabouts,and since then the very successful cartoon series pushed it into “family franchise” territory and all that implies, and that this also would equally affect even a male centric Ghostbusters as it would be assumed that people would want to take their kids to see it,and that we already saw some of this effect in Ghostbusters 2, in which they added a baby-focused plot with Playah Venkman becoming Loving Stepdaddy Venkman, and which some hardcore original fans despise for that reason. The “magic” of that original likely can never be reproduced on that adult level for that reason, regardless of the convexity or concavity of the respective Ghostbusters’ genitalia. And…they had to uncomfortably agree.
I’m an old fan and I know how to talk Ghostbusters!
For my own part, I liked it a lot for what it was and bought a copy for all my nieces, but I wish they had focused more on clever writing and less inexpensive over the top effects, knowing they were a priori kissing a ton of profit goodbye because of the China thing.
I also wish a girl Ghostbusters had been more of a continuation,with say Janine getting fed up and starting her own franchise in a different city, which could have justified the inevitable different environmental and cultural tone and provides a more organic opportunity for cameos. And some of the guys I’ve met who were squalling over the 2016 version said they actually sounds kind of awesome.
I’ll always have a soft spot for 2016 on a personal level though,because it was when I finally realized I was bisexual, after years of focusing on figuring out my gender identity and throwing my feelings about women in a backburner in the meantime. I’d only figured out my gender issue a few months prior to going to see GB 2016, and halfway through, I realized with surprise I had a total crush on Holtzman of the sort of only had for guys (or guy characters) previously. Thanks, Kate!
@Alan
Its Kansas, the weather has more mood swings and temperature differences then a 9 month pregnant person.