Strang Interlude

Your attention, please.

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:36:00 GMT

You will note that it has been some time since I have committed an entry to this journal. It is not, I assure you, from lack of material to criticize. If anything, the monstrous, soul-killing behemoth of western culture is worse now than it was when I put fingers to keyboard to discuss Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

What has changed is the amount of time I have to devote to my online life. My book The Urbaniak Effect has been put on the back burner for now, as I have been finishing my dissertation. However, when I was last dining with my editor I told her of an idea I have for a series of detective novels, about a young, idealistic grad student who uses her analytical skills and vast understanding of culture to solve murders, while simultaneously balancing her career and increasingly complicated love life. Look for the first one in the fall of next year!

Silver Surfer rises; Sue Storm, not so much

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:02:48 GMT

Sue Storm: whining, castrating bitch.

Reed Richards wants to save the world.

Johnny and Ben, over-grown man-boys, bicker and screw around.

Victor von Doom wants to take over the world, even in the face of its destruction.

What does Sue want? To have a perfect picture-book wedding, of course.

She hectors Reed for not paying enough attention to wedding details and shows up to be a wet blanket at his bachelor party. The Surfer ruins her wedding with massive destruction, and as Johnny zooms off after him, Sue sits down and cries because her wedding is ruined.

Later, when it becomes apparent that the world is ending, Sue still finds time to criticize Reed for spending too much time trying to set things right. She wants to give all this up, settle down, and force Reed to settle down as well. She can only be happy, apparently, as a castrating bitch.

Still later, it comes time for somebody to take a bullet for the world, to show the Surfer the value of sacrifice. Guess who receives that honor? Castrating-bitch-turned-victim Sue Storm, of course.

This is what she's good for: whining about not getting enough attention, keeping men down, and giving up her life. Oh, and "tenderness" of course, she's the one good at that. Because we wouldn't expect that from any of the men.

I bring this up because I saw this movie with a four-year-old girl who happens to be quite taken with Sue Storm. What does this movie say to her? It says: your job is to "be a girl," ie, pester men about affairs of the heart, demand that they set aside every possible consideration to fuel your archaic notions of romance, be "nurturing," whine to get what you want, worry excessively about your appearance, and place the longing for a quiet family life above everything else, even the end of the world.

Sue, of course, snaps out of this 50s housewife way of thinking. What changes her mind? Getting killed. She goes from being an irritating goad to being the sacrificial lamb -- big leap. Where can she go from there? Nowhere, not with out the help of man, this one from another planet, who brings her back to life and "gives her back" to her husband-to-be, helpless and destroyed, like the property she is.

I've read many reviews of this movie in the past few days, and haven't come across any that mention Sue's degrading, retrograde personality. This is as clear an indication to me of how much the goals of feminism have been rolled back in today's America as any -- a movie like this comes out and no one even notices.

The real "Identity Crisis"

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:56:37 GMT

Superman is the Last Son of Krypton. Always has been, always will be. Even during his "death" and resurrection in the 90s, his backstory remained the same. He was sent to earth by his loving father and provides us with an example of goodness and strength.

Batman is Bruce Wayne, a millionaire playboy whose parents died at the hands of a mugger in the back alley of a movie theater in Gotham City. He vowed then, as a boy, to one day avenge his parents' deaths, a vow that has led to a never-ending quest for justice for an entire city.

These things don't change. These things are sacred. To change these things would be a betrayal of the characters (and thus the valuable corporate brand they represent). Hal Jordan is always a test pilot, Billy Batson is always a homeless boy, Eel O'Brien is always a criminal who gets some gunk dropped on him.

That's how things are for men in the DC Universe.

Yes, things do get shuffled around, and minor characters do get reinvented when it serves the publisher's pleasure, and then there's the whole genre-killing "multiverse" nightmare, but for the important brands names, Superman is always the Last Son of Krypton and Batman is always the Dark Knight of Gotham.

How are things for Wonder Woman? She is the third of "The Big Three," how are things for her? Surely, one would think, for a brand as important as her, her backstory would never change, right? She's the Amazonian Princess, born to be untouched by Man's World, yet destined to be its savior. Right? Isn't that who Wonder Woman is?

Well, no, not always.

In the late '60s, Wonder Woman renounced her Amazon past and powers (why? well, to help out her boyfriend, of course) and became a gun-toting super-spy. The headline of the first issue says it all: "Forget the Old...the NEW Wonder Woman is here!" And we see that the "NEW" Wonder Woman, in her fashionable new Emma Peel duds, has painted a big "X" over that old hag in yesterday's clothes, much like a proud new girlfriend would tar the reputation of her antecedent. Why would she do this? Well obviously she disdains that "old" Wonder Woman, that sorry old biddy with her square looks and her frumpy outfits. She hates her past, she hates who she is, she wants to reinvent herself. Why? Well, the mercantile answer is "sales were dropping," but the psychological answer is "to please her male readers."

Forget the old, the new is here! Let's think about that for a moment. Can one imagine a headline crowing "Forget The Old Batman!" "Forget the Old Flash!" or even "Forget The Old Martian Manhunter!" DC, obviously, does not consider Diana a human being, but rather a product to market to a changing demographic, like a soap or a car or a TV. Or a girlfriend. Disdain the old, throw it away, celebrate the new.

What does this say to boys? It says "DC recognizes your needs! You're sick of that old sex object? Here's a NEW sex object!" (and certainly those wonderful new clothes will never look silly!)

What does it say to girls? It says "If you want to stay appealing, you've got to be willing to give up your strength, buy all the new clothes, and hate yourself."

I do not think I state the case too strongly.

Who is Supergirl? This image is a good place to start:

Here we see not one or two but six different Supergirls, all with distinct backgrounds and personalities. (And all a bunch of come-hither sluts, but that's a topic for another day.)

Supergirl's bio seems pretty straightforward. She's Kara, Superman's cousin, another survivor of Krypton, right? Well, it's true up until the dreaded Crisis on Infinite Earths when, for branding purposes, it was decided by the folks at DC that only Superman could be the Last Kryptonian. So Supergirl was killed off and then simply reinvented. As a blob of protoplasm, created by Lex Luthor. Holy wish fulfillment! Supergirl in a test-tube, lounging around Lex's apartment, dressed in skimpy outfits, powerless in comparison to her old self (but of course), and serving at Lex's whim. What could that possibly mean? (Lex, for good measure, was suddenly young, bearded, and had a full head of hair -- a virile new Lex to dominate the new weakling Supergirl.) Following that, she is "merged" with a real human girl, then shows up again later as the future daughter of Superman, then later still as Superman's cousin again, but this time a different cousin. And then she turns evil. Which, believe me, I can understand.

Jesus Fucking Christ on a pogo stick, what the hell are they thinking with this crap? Because I mean face it, at this point Supergirl isn't anything any more, she's a blonde with tits in a Superman outfit. This is no modification for a shifting market, this is homicidal. What contempt DC has for her! What contempt they have for their female readers! Supergirl! Last Daughter of Krypton! Until we need a new one, then, hey, kill the bitch off, reform her as an automaton, put her in someone else's body, do whatever the hell you want with her. She's only a superhuman, what's she going to do about it? As long as she's got blond hair and big tits, she's still Supergirl, right? One's as good as another! Why does she need anything like a personality?

Almost as bad as her total lack of identity, Supergirl no longer stands for anything. Superman stands for truth and justice, and always has, but I have to say, once you've been reinvented as a blob of protoplasm, you kind of can't stand for anything any more, except for the ever-changing desires of male readers.

And then, of course, there is Power Girl, pictured here in repose by the inestimable Adam Hughes.

Power Girl began life as, yes, another last surviving Kryptonian (at this point I'm wondering if maybe Krypton never blew up at all). She had, yes, enormous knockers and an aggressive fighting style, but at least, Jiminy Crickets, she was an actual, you know, superhero. Crisis simply eliminated her from the universe, and she was brought back as a completely different person, the grand-daughter of an Atlantean sorcerer. Same hair, same outfit, same tits, completely different person. Who cares? What does it matter? A woman, to the editors and publishers at DC, is her outfit, her hair and her boobs, what the hell difference does her, you know, life story matter? Power Girl has had a kid she's forgotten about, she's had her powers taken away on a moment's notice, she's gotten herself hoodwinked by a spaceship, for Christ's sake! And then, in the Justice League television show, Power Girl is reinvented yet again, this time as a clone of Supergirl, except, you know, with bigger tits, because there's always room for improvement, and renamed (gulp) Galatea.

And then there's Batgirl.

There have been many Batgirls, just as there have been many Robins. Betty Kane, then Barbara Gordon, then Helena Bertinelli, then Cassandra Cain. Okay, that happens.

I happen to like Barbara Gordon. That's me. She seems to me to be the best iteration of the character. She's a librarian (that is, "smart") by day, and an ass-kicking crimefighter (that is, "tough") by night. "Smart" and "tough" seems like a good combination for a female crime-fighter. (I can't speak to her red handbag pictured above.)

What happened to Barbara Gordon? Well, she got shot by the Joker, and paralyzed, and became Oracle, a wheelchair-bound homebody whose superpower is surfing the internet. Why? Batman got his back broken back there somewhere, why isn't he wheelchair bound? Why can't there be a miracle cure for Barbara Gordon? Why can't she be allowed to put on her skin-tight batsuit again and swing through the mean streets of Gotham once more?

Well, because she is, as the boys like to say, "damaged goods." She's in a wheelchair. You might feel sympathy for a beautiful girl in a wheelchair, but who would want to fuck her? Only for the sake of mercy. DC is "done" with Barbara Gordon. Now she's the helpful ex, the girl who can't quite let go, the bespectacled "good girl" who will get you out of a jam but will, at the end of the day, be at home alone. But that's okay, because DC always has a "NEW!" Batgirl to offer you, always another set of tits in a black suit to fantasize about, no need to wonder what happens to "old" sex symbols -- they're always around, alone, just waiting to be "useful."

The list, unfortunately, goes on. Huntress is the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Catwoman, until she's not. Catwoman is Selina Kyle, until she's not. Hawkgirl is Sheira Hall, until she's not, Black Canary is Dinah Lance, until she's replaced by her own daughter -- calling Billy Wilder, someone found your Fedora.

And then there is Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl is Diana as a younger person, right? Well, no. Or, she is, unless she's Diana's "younger sister," Donna Troy, who is or is not an Amazon, or else is a mortal given powers, or else she's a goddess-created twin sister, or else she's Cassandra Sandsmark, the daughter of a mortal woman and Zeus (ouch!).

Is it any wonder that the "Women in Refrigerators" device shows up so often in DC narratives? The women of the DCU aren't human beings, and certainly not ever at the level of their male counterparts. They're props, disposable, mere reflections of their male protagonists' (and readers') desires. If DC ever wonders why more girls don't read their comics, they might consider wondering first what a girl is. People, male and female alike, haven't been reading Batman for 70 years because he's got a cool suit, they're fascinated by the character, the Dark Knight waging his never-ending war on crime. But not one of the major female heroes of the DCU has made it from origin to now without changing her identity.

UPDATE: It occurs to me, upon reflection, that when Green Lantern came home to find his girlfriend in his refrigerator, that the editors may have been expressing Green Lantern's need for a new refrigerator. He had probably had the old one since college.

Happy Easter

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:45:47 GMT

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 06:11:42 GMT

This is an accurate portrayal of a number of people I run into on a daily basis.

The CEO President

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:59:28 GMT

George W. Bush refers to himself as "The CEO President." And so he is. I give him points for honesty and self-knowledge.

Let's examine the corporate ideal. The corporate ideal is: everyone gives me all their money and I give them nothing.

Now then: it's very difficult for a corporation to sustain itself for long at this level of profit. Sooner or later, they somehow have to actually provide some kind of goods or service to somebody, or else consumers start to ask for their money back and somebody goes to jail.

In the music business, the costs of manufacturing and distributing music keep dropping, yet the prices keep going up as the industry strains to achieve the corporate ideal. In the communications business, the cost of relaying information from place to place plummets yet the cost of doing business skyrockets as the communications businesses strain to achieve the corporate ideal. And so on, down the line. Insurance, banking, medicine, companies doing the best they can to attain the shining apex of their greed, the sacred space where everyone gives them all their money and they give nothing to no one.

And so here we are with the CEO President. When the decision was made to invade Iraq, there were protests all over the nation, the largest numbers of protesters ever assembled at a single time. The CEO President ignored them. When the city of New Orleans was destroyed, the CEO President looked sad and said it was a real bummer. Then, when citizens asked him what he was going to do about it, he looked startled -- what? I'm supposed to do something to prevent American cities from being wiped out? He was sincerely caught off guard at that moment; he sincerely had no idea that the government is in any way supposed to be responsible for the protection of its citizens. And from his standpoint as the CEO President, it is not. As the CEO President, the government has only one responsibility: maximizing profits for its shareholders. And the nice thing about running the government like a corporation is that you don't have to worry about regulation -- you are the regulatory agency! Ha!

Now he is living through the longest lame-duck presidency in history, just trying to keep all the plates spinning as he and his puppeteers sock away as much of the taxpayers money as they can before they are brought up on war crimes by the ensuing administration. I am against torture of political prisoners and capital punishment, but I'm sure, given enough time, I could think of a fitting end to the lives of this scum.

Long time no blog

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:39:20 GMT

I turn around and a season has passed.

Work progresses on the urbaniak book; I have just begun work on what is turning out to be a rather involved chapter regarding robolizard . Meanwhile, my subject (Urbaniak, not Robolizard), I dare say, runs the risk of metamorphosing from cultural minutiae to minor cultural entity. I've checked with my editor and she insists that urbaniak 's recent bloggy notice from the mainstream press will not significantly elevate Urbaniak's standing as a cultural force. Meanwhile, the rolling stone of Urbaniak's blog continues to gather the moss of lost souls who turn to him for whatever tiny slivers of limelight he may shed upon their apparently dead-end lives. Could Urbaniak be, in the end, a form of suicide prevention? That would, at last, be a positive contribution to the culture.

Gerald Ford, dead at last.

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 07:42:45 GMT

As the media slithers around in the sea of its own filth regarding the death of Gerald Ford, let us not forget the true legacy of the man.

Gerald Ford was, first and last, a block-headed, pig-ignorant moron who made it okay for the conservative movement to install whatever brain-dead idiot they wish in the White House, and they have succeeded in doing so ever since. Richard Nixon may have been an evil, Machiavellian schemer with a heart of ice, but he was ten times the man that Ford was and 100 times the politician our current Chimp-in-Chief is. He was also, on domestic issues, at least ten degrees to the left of Bill Clinton.

Stare into the eyes of the patron saint of stupidity.

Lights, please.

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 07:35:26 GMT

I know what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Christmas is all about control.

It starts with the family. Christmas is the time when the most crumbling power structures of the most morally bankrupt familes get to assert themselves, perhaps for the only time of the year. If you are unfortunate enough to be burdened with family, you will be greatly pressured to spend Christmas with them. You don't like these people, you didn't ask to be born into this family, and yet you will be forced to spend anywhere up to a week in their company. And not just in their company but under their command. You will be forced to eat their disgusting food, watch their insipid TV specials, listen to their crappy music, live according to their outdated, outmoded moral codes in their stupid, smug, self-righteous communities and take it all with a big fat shit-eating smile. Christmas is not something to be celebrated, it's something to be dreaded.

It moves from the family to the church. The church invented this accursed holiday, which, under the best of circumstances, should be celebrated once, and only once, on December 21, not for two weeks between the Friday previous to Christmas through the Monday after Jan 1. This is the time of the year when that doomed, evil organization, Christianity, gets to assert their control over the western world's minds. No matter who you are and what your particular beliefs are, the Christian church beats you over the head with their stupid fucking holiday and its unholy messages for a solid month, an entire month where the church and its media outlets get to remind you that the western world is theirs, motherfucker.

And then, of course, there is retail, because for some reason the ultra-Christian holiday of Christmas, where we are supposed to be wondering with great awe about the story of the humble babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, is spent in an anxious orgy of materialism. Because gift-giving is a requirement of all citizens, regardless of creed, on Christmas one is inundated with a ton of the most useless crap ever created to sate a culture obsessed with and doomed to gorge itself on consumption for the sake of consumption.

It is a lie, an obscene frenzy of hypocrisy, shame, anxiety and pointless activity, and perhaps most disturbing, it is a week-long, world-wide conspiracy to KEEP ME FROM GETTING WORK DONE.

And that's what's Christmas is all about.

Volver

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:44:51 GMT

Halfway through this movie, my date, a 40-year-old housewife with two children, leaned over and whispered "Now I won't need an estrogen shot this month."

Afterward I asked her if it was displeasurable or merely shocking to see a movie purely about women's issues. She said it was merely shocking. It's not just that Volver is a film about women; it is that it is (unlike, say, The Devil Wears Prada) an intelligent, witty, complex and not-easily parsed film about women. It's full of movie-movie moments, like a woman interrupted by a neighbor while trying to get rid of her child-rapist husband's dead body, or a dead woman showing up midway through the movie to "haunt" the rest of the characters, but those movie-movie moments are not the point of the film, they get woven into a much more interesting, vital, humanist story of, you know, love and betrayal and responsibility -- you know, women's issues.

But yes, it is disorienting to walk into a movie theater in the United States and see a film where men are presented as shallow, interchangeable plot points, eye candy and mindless doofuses, puppy-dogs and alien beings -- you know, the way women are portrayed in every American film released.

blog roundup

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:55:54 GMT

This is worth reading.

So is this. All of it.

Death of a President

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 09:28:02 GMT

Written and directed by: a man.

As part of my research into James Urbaniak, it was incumbent upon me to flounce down to my local tiny shitbox arthouse theater and watch this peculiar cultural artifact.

I'm sincerely curious: does anyone have any idea what the hell the point of this project was supposed to be? Because I find myself on the side of the conservative commentators who condemned it without seeing it. I think it's supposed to be saying something about American politics, foreign policy, the Bush presidency, something, but the more I think about it the stupider it becomes.

So, yet again, Mr. Urbaniak appears as the symbol of everything wrong with our culture (yes, I know, the film is from the UK, but as Mr. Tony Blair has spent his time in office making the UK the 51st state, I feel the piece is fair game). We have in the USA a government led by pinheads and lizard-brains, in a six-year-old state of permanent constitutional crisis, destroying the ideals and infrastructure of the nation it's supposed to govern while deploying its army like toy soldiers, and this is the film that is made in response to that? A film that takes a scenario as incendiary as the assassination of a sitting president and turns it into, what? A murder mystery surrounded by fuzzy, simplistic, half-baked political suggestions.

Who Killed George II? That's all the film has on its mind. Was it the shaven-headed protestor? Or was it the Syrian terrorist? But wait, maybe it was -- shock reveal -- the black guy with a grudge!

And I think it's supposed to look like a documentary or something, but it at no time is even remotely convincing in that regard. Everything from the New York Times headlines to the TV-station logos to the way the "news events" are shot is patently fake and, well, stupid.

Election roundup

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 07:52:42 GMT

Down with Coke! Up with Pepsi!

Sigh

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 05:02:46 GMT

Tell me again how things just get better and better for women in today's best-of-all-possible worlds.

Phew!

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 00:22:35 GMT

Sorry that took so long. Contracts can take a long time to hammer out. I'm back, with bells on.

As you can see, I've been busy. The deal for my book, The Urbaniak Effect: The Spectacle of Celebrity, The Subjugation of Women and a Holographic View of Culture is finally nearing completion and the work on the book itself will soon be under way.

How has this occurred? Funny story.

Faithful respondents will recall that I was working on my dissertation some months back when I got sidetracked by an online war with actor/blogger James Urbaniak. All the time I was cursing myself for getting drawn into such a petty battle with a cultural nonentity, it turns out someone was paying attention. Namely, my aunt Cecie, who, as it happens, is a rather influential literary agent in New York. She felt that I was really onto something with my holographic view of culture, where the smallest cultural grain of sand (and Urbaniak and his projects certainly qualify as that: an off-Broadway play, low-budget, independent films, two failed TV shows) can be seen to reveal everything one needs to know about a culture. The study of cultural minutiae is, apparently, a "hot topic" in publishing circles, with books about cod and salt and numbers and colors being abnormally popular at the moment; reaction to the proposal in the publishing world was immediate and substantial and I had several publishers competing for my favors, as it were.

The book is not "about" Urbaniak per se, but rather what he shows about American culture, distilled down to its most basic premises: ie, the primacy of male power, the relentless attack on the rights of women, the bread-and-circuses song-and-dance that keeps a nation distracted from the destruction of a planet at the whim of a male-dominated corporate oligarchy.

(The above artwork is a mockup that the folks in layout put together for me. The final cover may be substantially different.)

Some may see a contradiction in an anti-corporate critic publishing a book with a corporate-owned publisher. This contridiction has not escaped me. Although I was initially reluctant to participate with a corporate-owned publisher, but my aunt, to her credit, talked me into it. She offered that if corporation is willing to give me money to help bring them down, why should I refuse? The money is better off in my care than in theirs (and as soon as it is in my care, it will be in the care of charity, that you may rely on). As someone once said, "The greedy man will sell you the rope you use to hang him if he thinks he can make a buck off it."

There are chapters planned on each one of Urbaniak's major projects, one that gathers together the trends of his lesser works, and three on his blog (one on his entries, one on his fanatical, sheep-zombie respondents and one of which examines blog dynamics as the Iraq conflict writ small).

Anyway, there is still a lot of work to be done, but I admit to a certain amount of excitement as I begin my journey into the firmament of the culture I with which I have such trouble.

Women in American Culture

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 23:23:04 GMT

When I complain about the lack of roles for women in American culture, I am usually accused of being hysterical and fascistic.

Well, that may be so, but at least I have some company.

Yet more evidence...

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:58:47 GMT

...that some of today's best blogging is being done by and about women in comics.

Another Karen Strang found

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:41:25 GMT

Not me. Cute, but not me.

Best Served Cold

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:03:16 GMT

Big Urbaniak-related news coming, but in the meantime, since he persists in using his elevated place of power to attack me, I figure it's all right to respond in kind.

...working...working...working...

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 20:53:46 GMT

That's what my old computer would say when posed with a difficult problem.

For me, big news coming. But not today. Apologies.

In the meantime, enjoy this offering from the only place I get my news these days.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:36:56 GMT

If The Devil Wears Prada got violently ill and, in a shame-inducing spasm sprayed out from its anus a puddle of lumpy, steaming diarrhea, it might look something like My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

It is incompetent to the point of unreleasability. It's ugly, it looks cheap and shoddy, it's underdeveloped and pointless.

Did the men responsible for putting this film together ever have any talent? I've sometimes heard tales of such an idea, whispered by the ancients in the cool of a midsummer's night. If so, that talent seems to have long-abandoned these men.

It's not just that the ideas are philosophically repugnant (although they are), it's that the film is so poorly made. It's poorly produced, poorly directed, poorly written, poorly cast, poorly lit, poorly photographed. How poorly made is it? The color-timing is bad. Yes, you read that right. Here we have a major Hollywood midsummer motion picture where the color timer couldn't even do his job well.

The "idea" of the movie is that Uma Thurman is a superhero. Like Clark Kent (a lot like Clark Kent), she pretends to be a clumsy moron in order to fool people. So, okay, the ugly-duckling chick has secret powers, cool, let's see a comedy about that.

Except the movie they've chosen to make says that her secret powers are not where her strength comes from, they are what are ruining her life and making her miserable. Well of course they are. When any male gets super-powers, they make him grow up and face the burdens of responsibility. So when a man writes a movie about a woman with super-powers, of course those powers must make her act crazy and stupid and childishly.

And so the protagonist decides that, to make her happy (well, to make himself happy, of course, her feelings are never considered in the story for an instant) he will conspire with the supervillain to take her powers away from her. Because that, in this movie's view, is the real problem. Women just have too much power. That's why relationships don't last, it's why women are so unhappy, it's what has thrown the age-old battle of the sexes out of whack. Women have too much power.

None of the plot makes any sense, even in its own world. In addition, the writer and director have no respect for even the debased and ridiculous form of the superhero story. They steal the backstories of several major comic-book characters, but then put those tropes to use in bland, inconsistent, stupid, careless ways. It's insulting to anyone who buys a ticket, but especially so to those who might have appreciated its satire on beloved icons.

The "moral" of the movie, after all the tired, sloppy, lazy, nonsensical, contradictory, stupid stupid stupid plot developments have been exhausted? The male lead looks into the eyes of a super-woman and says, oh so tenderly, "Just because you have powers doesn't mean you have to use them."

Like I say, it would be depressing enough in its own right if it weren't so poorly made.

In the showing I was at, there was one audience member to my left who laughed uproariously, clapped his hands and cheered throughout. I let my curiosity get the better of me and looked to see what kind of idiot might respond to this movie. It was, in fact, a developmentally disabled teenage boy in the care of his father.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are enough of those in America to allow this film to turn a profit.

Corporations: infinity, Female cartoonists: zero

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:24:51 GMT

Why can't we just steal whatever we want? After all, an artist will never have enough money to fight us.

The Devil Wears Prada

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:35:49 GMT

This movie is impecabbly written, directed and acted. Of special mention is Meryl Streep's performance. She's rather astonishingly chilly and scary in this movie. How scary? Well, Stanley Tucci is the warm, cuddly one in the cast, if that gives you any idea.

It is also a vile, poisonous Trojan Horse of a movie.

For those unfamiliar with the story, it is about an idealistic young woman who goes to work for an wealthy, powerful, influential older woman. Her "ideals" allow the young woman to feel superior to the older woman.

At the end of the first act, the young woman gets "seduced" by the power, influence and prestige that her job affords her. She gets "it all" -- power, influence, prestige, one sexy boyfriend and another sexy admirer.

In Act II, the young woman finds -- surprise! -- that she can't have the power, influence and prestige without sacrificing her sexy boyfriend. Luckily, her sexy admirer has wealth, power and influence of his own and can help her in her career. In addition, the young woman has become so deeply enmeshed in her career that she no longer feels morally superior to the "dragon lady" older woman.

At the climax of the movie, the older woman is revealed to be a miserable wretch, hated by her colleagues and unloved by men, and worst of all, old.

So the younger woman decides that she doesn't want to have wealth, power, influence and prestige after all -- she'd rather have poverty, weakness, no influence and a boyfriend.

The movie asks us to consider the older woman, her struggles and conflicts, the pressures upon her and the sacrifices she has made, and then informs us that she is, after all, unworthy of our interest. That is to say, her struggle is considered, then cast aside so that the status quo might be preserved.

This is the big Hollywood Chick Flick of the summer, the surprise hit that the nation is embracing. Hollywood's message to young women: please, please, please don't seek wealth, power, influence or prestige. They won't make you happy. You might look better but you'll be miserable and alone and no one will like you. Stay in your place, find a position of no influence, stay out of the arena of powr and influence, and above all, hang on to your boyfriend at all costs.

This is mainstream entertainment, folks.

The other Karen --

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 06:43:44 GMT

-- -- strikes again. Plain-spoken wisdom and practical advice from a woman who has learned to tame her anger a tad more than I am comfortable with for myself.

Those nuanced and real female roles on television, part II

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 06:02:00 GMT

What a surprise. And here I thought that my informal poll was scientifically useless. Turns out trained professionals can't find nuanced, real roles for women on television either.

The comic-book editors say "Why pick on us? We're just comic books," the motion picture studios say "Chick Flicks don't sell," the television producers say "Police procedurals are the big thing now, and everyone knows there are no women in the world's police departments." The Voucher Anklets say "Why pick on The Venture Brothers? Everyone else is just as bad, and besides it's a satire, a satire of 'boy stuff,' and isn't that the important thing?" Everyone makes their individual little excuses, and little by little we have a culture that barely acknowledges that women exist at all. And on and on down the line, it becomes easier for the next male-dominated corporation to say "Well, why give equal rights/pay/stature to women, since it's obvious that they're second-class citizens?"

And my male respondents flap their arms in despair and say "Christ, what do you want?"

Hint: not this.