Check out my new blog, My AI Obsession, and my latest post there (Philip K.) Dick pics: Do AIs dream of electric sheep?
Proving themselves once again to be the most sensitive of snowflakes, right-wing culture warriors are losing it over the portrayal of a character in a video game movie. A couple of days ago, a clip from the new Super Mario Bros Movie hit the internet, featuring Princess Peach confidently making her way past an assortment of enemies and traps, prompting the culture warriors to cry foul, whining that this new “girlboss” Princess was a far cry from the damsel in distress they remembered from the video game.
Now-banned YouTuber Sneako, known for his deliberately offensive videos, led the charge:
Others had the same complaint:
Meanwhile,
Never mind that, as more than a few fans of the Mario franchise pointed out, Princess Peach has been not-so-quietly kicking ass in the games since the late 80s.
Weirdly, one regular player in the culture wars is sitting this one out: Bounding into Comics. In a post there, Spencer Baculi makes a point of noting that Peach
has long evolved past her being the simple ‘damsel in distress’ that pop-culture has portrayed her as … the dismissal of her character as nothing more than a helpless prize disingenuously ignores all the subsequent instances in which she played pivotal and capable roles in a story’s respective narrative.
Amazing, something from Bounding into Comics that isn’t completely ridiculous.
But, ever the pedant, our critic reacts angrily to those who say that Peach is a badass because of her role in the multiplayer brawler series known as Super Smash Bros, which according to Baculi represents only “what a child may imagine while playing with figures of the characters and thus should not be considered canon to any of the involved series.”
He added:
Ok, he didn’t really add that. But I do sometimes wonder if Bounding into Comics isn’t secretly written by this guy.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
To these right wing snowflakes. ‘Cry more noobs
Can’t wait to hear them freak out over the Barbie movie, which looks pretty engaging; all the Barbies are go-getters and all the Kens are – just Ken.
Wait until they find out that Luigi is a crossdresser. Okay, that’s mostly (entirely? I’m not a gamer) in the comics, but still.
[Edit] I do not mean to imply that this appears in the movie; I meant in general.
oh boy, the Barbie movie is gonna piss these people off
@Lizzie: They’re going to freak out even more once the discover one of the Barbies is being played by a trans woman. Specifically, Dr. Barbie is played by trans model Hari Nef.
@Lizzie:
Can’t wait to hear them freak out over the Barbie movie, which looks pretty engaging; all the Barbies are go-getters and all the Kens are – just Ken.
The last Mario game I played ended with Peach and her gal pal riding off into the sunset for a great fun sightseeing trip. Just saying.
Hate these fake fans. Ever since SMB 3, it’s canon that every kidnapping in the series is a performance play and Peach is actually a pretty cunning stateswoman (see the 1000 Years Door, Super Mario Super Stars games, Super Paper Mario).
Someone tell these goobers about Super Princess Peach. I mean, it was kind of unimpressive as a game and the whole premise of emotion-based powers brings up problems of its own, but it did very conspicuously feature Peach being the one to rescue Mario and Luigi.
@Snowberry
That actually happened in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. It must be seen to be believed (sadly, couldn’t find the 3DS remake’s version of it so you’ll have to make do with the original).
Re: Barbie movie. They already started, I saw the most inane comment and perfect killer reply to it.
“What, exactly, do you want from a movie about Barbie, out of curiosity?”
The Wrath of Ken
About the Barbie movie, MRAs should be at least a little happy, considering that one of the actors playing (a) Ken seems to be one of their own.
I know it won’t happen because of IP conflicts, but I want at least one Barbie to have a military ex-husband named Joe.
They don’t need to say that it is Joe Colton (i.e., the original G.I. Joe), because again IP conflicts (Barbie is Mattel, Joe is Hasbro), just leave it open.
@Allandrel:
I know it won’t happen because of IP conflicts, but I want at least one Barbie to have a military ex-husband named Joe.
They don’t need to say that it is Joe Colton (i.e., the original G.I. Joe), because again IP conflicts (Barbie is Mattel, Joe is Hasbro), just leave it open.
Barbie/G.I. Joe shippers are apparently plentiful enough to have been a target demographic for the 1997 Nissan 300ZX (they were careful not to specify any brand or character names, but it’s pretty obvious who the dramatis personae were):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGMI_mWmb7g
(Bonus Pop-Culture/IP Fun Fact: the Lone Ranger and the original Green Hornet were canonically created as great-uncle and grand-nephew—and no commercial work is allowed to acknowledge this. The two characters are in different and hostile corporate hands (whose chief interest in making a movie every generation or so seems to be to refresh the almighty trademark.)
We had Sindy here. She had an MGB!
https://www.oursindymuseum.com/sindy-and-her-mgb
And then later a Range Rover. She clearly has excellent taste in vehicles.
And speaking of Bruce Lee, here’s his audition tape for GH. You can see why he was Hong Kong Cha Cha Cha champion; with his brother as his dance partner.
“Be like water…”
@Reaktor
I love how I’ve heard so much about the bad things done and said by so many women actors, but nothing about him until today. Where read “love” as “am utterly exhausted by”.
@Alan Robertshaw:
And speaking of Bruce Lee, here’s his audition tape for GH. You can see why he was Hong Kong Cha Cha Cha champion; with his brother as his dance partner.
“Be like water…”
Everything Lee studied—the martial arts and the philosophy and the ballroom dancing—would go into the ongoing grand unified work that was Jeet Kune Do. (I keep telling a young aspiring animator of my acquaintance that his little brother in Drill Team and Color Guard would be a useful action consultant, being trained in the art of choreographing multiple bodies in frantic motion to dramatic effect, often with stylized weapon forms.)
(And that affords me a cue to share the famous Cracked video essay on Why Action Movies Are Musicals For Dudes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7iV-HZlMQM )
MRAs: Endlessly complaining about how women are just “useless” “helpless” parasites completely dependent on men to survive.
Also MRAs: Endlessly complaining because women are NOT useless helpless parasites completely dependent on men to survive.
It’s almost like these guys don’t actually have a coherent worldview of any kind.
That game also features a female villain who possesses the body of a male character (Bowser) but is still referred to with female pronouns. Sounds kinda trans? Birdo is also in the game, but you wouldn’t be able to tell she’s trans just from the game itself.
@bcb: Birdo being trans is sadly not canon. That was a mildly transphobic joke which only existed in the SMB2 English manual, and Nintendo has since distanced themselves from. This of course has not stopped people from making Birdo a trans icon. I’ve also seen people suggest that Luigi and/or Rosalina are trans women, plus Vivian is strongly implied to be trans in the Japanese version, but for some reason people strongly gravitate towards Birdo as the Mario trans icon even above Vivian. (Also I’ve seen fan characterizations that Daisy is a trans man, Wario is agender, and Waluigi is genderqueer, but those are a lot less common.)
That doesn’t mean Nintendo can’t one day make it into ascended canon, like Bridget (trans girl), Testament (AMAB femme non-binary), Poison (trans woman), and probably a few other game characters I don’t know about, became officially non-cis thanks to the fact that a lot of the fans thought it was true anyway. But those characters weren’t created by Nintendo, and I doubt they’d go there any time soon.
@bcb
No, that’s just body theft/possession shenanigans.
Barbie/GI Joe shippers have been a thing since at least the 60s. My and my friends’ Barbies were always more interested in the neighbor boys’ Joes rather than the boring Kens as the backyard jungle was explored, and they’d do a USO show on the back steps too.
Nowadays the scale doesn’t work out IRL.
(Still super-busy, plus the computer up and died and it took a while to get a new one. Love you guys, but I’m not reading/typing on my phone.)
@Kimstu:
Fascists never do. At least nothing more sophisticated than “us good, them bad” for some (often somewhat malleable) definitions of “us” and “them”.
Speaking of Barbie, I love the mermaid barbie poster! There’s something about the taffeta shiny outfit that rings nostalgia bells.
In regards to Girl Boss characters in gerneral, I was thinking the other day why this has become a bit of a go-to for writers (and can sometimes be a bit lazy). Which got me thinking about passivity in characters and I realised writing a 3-dimensional, interesting passive character that doesn’t drive the audience mad must actually be really hard. Ethan in The White Lotus is a good example of the type which I thought was done well. He’s kind of difficult to watch, and on reflection it’s because he’s a passive person and tries to assert himself in passive-aggressive ways.
I suppose for a long time writers got around this by not bothering to make their women characters 3 dimensional or interesting – just a damsel in distress. Although nowadays if they do the same thing they try to trick us by making her really good at kickboxing or something.