The digital world is a-twitter thanks to a recent interview with J.K. Rowling in Wonderland magazine conducted by Emma Watson. In the interview, Rowling claims putting Hermione and Ron together romantically was a mistake. She describes the choice of "the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” and wrong because it
was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility.
Of course Buzzfeed immediately jumped in with a listicle supporting this position. That's what Buzzfeed does. But then came the push back. Slate assistant editor L.V. Anderson laid out the reasons why Hermione's know-it-all personality meshes so well with Ron's take-it-with-a-laugh philosophy. She also pushes back against the underlying assumption that "an intelligent, type-A woman" should end up with a traditionally successful guy like Harry Potter (he's "athletic, rich, famous") instead of a "kind, charismatic, supportive, but penniless guy" like Ron.
Anderson makes a good point. My reason for resisting the "naturalness" or "credibility" of a Harry and Hermione pairing, however, is simpler: it's sexist. Harry, a naturally and supremely gifted wizard, and Hermione, probably the brightest wizard of the age, apparently can't just be friends because one has an outie and the other an innie. It's the erroneous "logic" of this (admittedly hilarious) Chris Rock bit. Heterosexual men and women aren't capable of respecting each other, cherishing the other's company, depending on the other for counsel and guidance, or leaning on one another for support without the spectre of sexual attraction haunting their relationship.
Harry and Hermione defy that assumption. Even though others at Hogwarts presume they are a couple because of their intimacy, Harry and Hermione don't waver in their "just friends" position. Hermione might put Harry in his place from time to time, but it's only to check his ego, not to remind him that his place is in her bed. Harry exhorts Hermione repeatedly to bend and break the rules but never to cross the boundaries of their friendship. They make each other better by pushing and prodding and encouraging. You know, like (same sex) friends do.
That physical attraction or romantic thoughts must follow from their mutual respect and capacities, in Rowling's and other people's minds, is sexist. When Rowling backs away from her literary decision to put Harry's technical advisor and his emotional advisor (admiringly gender swapped from expectations) together, she casts aspersions on a model of gender equality for this generation. She denies that compatibility borne of complementing talents and friendship can be valued in another person without heterosexual anatomical "compatibility" therefore becoming destiny if those two people are not the same sex.
Men and women can just be friends. Even (especially) when they are equals. This is one of the most progressive and enduring of themes in Rowling's stories of the Golden Trio. It's a shame six years after publishing the last book of their adventures she now wants to fall back on old prejudices about match-making.
Oh, Sucker Punch. You should have been so much better than you were. But I've been around the block enough times on the back of this pony before. When I was an undergrad, Baise Moi was supposed to be this big female empowerment film. Turned out to just be unsimulated sex and unsophisticated violence masquerading as something thought-provoking, new porn for the MTV age. Sucker Punch aims a little higher.
Sucker Punch is a visually stunning movie. The color palette, costumes, settings and special effects are all top notch. Zach Snyder's eye didn't fail on that front. Unfortunately, that's not enough to really carry a movie, especially one that tries to go all Cerebro on you.
The film operates on three levels of reality, but without the utter mindfuck of confusion that was Christopher Nolan's Inception. Rather, the three levels are clearly delineated and easy to follow not only because of setting and plot but also because of obvious visual clues. Babydoll is committed to a psych hospital by her stepfather who wants to hush her up and steal her inheritance. He pays one of the orderlies, Blue, to lobotomize her to make sure that happens.
Babydoll then creates an alternate reality in which Blue is a gangster brothel owner, the therapist (played Slavic and sultry by Carla Gugino) becomes a strip dance instructor, and Babydoll and the other female patients are the sex workers in this sleazy club. The impending lobotomy is re-cast as Babydoll's virginity to be sold to a man called the High Roller.
Babydoll then retreats into another level of fantasy, a world populated by giant samurai statues, WWI steampunk zombies, orcs & dragons, androids on hyper-trains to cities on faraway planets, and the like. In this fantasy-wihtin-a-fantasy, a Wise Man (Scott Glenn) gives her a fetch quest to retrieve 5 items to make her escape from the brothel qua hospital before the bad thing happens. Babydoll then gathers a party of 4 other girls, Rocket, Sweet Pea, Blondie, and Amber, to collect the items and escape.
If this plot sounds very much like a video game, it kind of is. That's one of the main criticisms leveled against Sucker Punch by critics. In itself, the video game plot and action sequences don't bother me so much. It's not like Uwe Boll or the Rock are involved here. The problem is the lack of something more substantial to pull it all together into something you actually care about.
While we're on the topic of critical reception, I didn't really find the film to be misogynistic. Sure, it fails at being a female empowerment fairy tale but I don't think the message here is that objectification of women somehow makes them stronger. Yes, there are lots of young, attractive girls wearing hardly anything as they wade into the midst of dangerous battles and yes, most of the time selling sex like this simply reinforces prevailing social norms that women only matter for their looks. Yes, the film is an adolescent boy's fantasy, akin to Lara Croft, Bayonetta, the Dead or Alive series, and a lot of anime / manga. I agree that the girls are fetishized in the extreme, and threat of sexual violence and rape that pervades the film is disturbing. But where I disagree with the critics is that this, in and of itself, makes Sucker Punch a bad movie.
The flaunting of sexuality has become rampant, not just in entertainment media but in the real, every day world. Women and girls are wearing skimpier and skimpier clothes every season. Women are now on a more equal footing to pursue sex as an end in itself, for pleasure, without (slut) shaming. For good or ill, this is the direction American society is moving. Sucker Punch is very much a contemporary movie in that regards.
One of the problems with the (male) critics slamming Sucker Punch for its "fetishizing" of women is that it recreates in a new form the madonna-whore divide. Unattractive, overweight, and older women are free to explore their sexuality on the big and little screen. This is empowerment. But if the one doing the exploring happens to be young and fit, it's no longer empowerment, it's exploitation. Yes, there's a line to be drawn there but I think most of the critical world draws it with too broad of brush strokes. Being attractive, somewhat counter-intuitively, disqualifies you from actively exploring sexuality. In other words, the pretty girls are getting punished for being pretty.
Ok, back to the review.
Babydoll lays out a plan to get the 4 objects with the help of her companions, the 5th, an undisclosed and unknown item that will require "a great sacrifice," she leaves to be discovered when the time comes during the escape. The girls move from the brothel fantasy into the battle fantasy worlds when Babydoll dances. Each world, representing a mission to collect one of the items, has its own theme.
The first world is a snowy Japanese temple. Babydoll slips into this world alone when she is first forced to dance for Madam Gorski. It is here that the Wise Man gives her a katana, pistol, and a list of the items she needs to escape. Babydoll then battles 3 giant stone samurai. The design for the temple and the stone guardians is superb and the fight scene is well choreographed. It's an over the top summer blockbuster featuring a blonde girl in a burusera uniform.
The next world involves a mission through the trenches of WWI to retrieve a map from German steampunk zombies. Yes, I said steampunk zombies. The costume designs for said zombies as well as the battlefield and zeppelin that functions as the map courier's escape all provide ample eye candy, nevermind the skimpily dressed females. Amber climbs into a steampunk mecha at the beginning of the mission with way too digital a UI for the otherwise steampunk trappings of this setting. Meanwhile, in the brothel world, Rocket has gone off to fetch the map from Blue's office.
The next world is a mashup of fantasy and technology. Babydoll, Sweet Pea, and Rocket drop into the middle of a castle being besieged by orcs to retrieve a pair of gems from a dragon to make fire. Blondie and Amber stay behind in the B52 bomber that delivered them to the battlefield. Slaying a baby dragon to retrieve the jewels angers their mother, who climbs out of the fiery bowels of the castle seeking revenge. There's an exciting chase sequence with the dragon pursuing the plane before the beast is ultimately slain by Babydoll. In the brothel world, Amber has stolen a lighter from her cigar-smoking client who has come to see Babydoll dance.
It's after this sequence that I got pretty annoyed with the film since it became crystal clear that there was no connection between what was happening in the brothel (and I assume the hospital world) and the fantasy fight sequences. No matter who was on the fetch quest to get the item in the real / hospital world, the three principals in the fantasy sequences were always Babydoll (understandable since it's her story - sort of), Sweet Pea, and Rocket. The three blondes. The two dark haired (and "ethnic") girls are almost exclusively relegated to the sidelines and support roles only. The one exception is Blondie's participation in the trench raid in the earlier WWI sequence.
Wouldn't it have made more sense for the girl fetching the item to always be relegated to a support role in the fantasy battles since she's away from Babydoll and engaged in another activity rather than watching her dance? Or to always accompany Babydoll in these second-order fantasy sequences because of her active role in retrieving the item? But neither logical reason to always include or exclude the fetching girl is followed. Instead, the rule is if she's blonde she's going on the adventure and if she's brunette she's not. The lack of a principled reason to explain who's on the strike team gives those sequences an unnecessarily fetish-driven tone.
The last fantasy sequence arises out of the girls trying to steal a knife from the brothel's cook. The girls lock the kitchen door and use an old radio to play music for Babydoll to dance to. Blondie is not present in the kitchen and Amber serves as a lookout.
The blondes are dropped off on a hyper-train barreling down on a city located on a faraway planet. They are to disarm and retrieve the bomb that is being sent to blow up the city. After fighting android sentries in a sequence that reminded me a lot of the very first trailer for FFXIII, they struggle to get the disarmed bomb lifted off the train by their flying transport. Not all of the bolts fixing it to the floor were undone. Unfortunately, that's not the only task the blondes have failed to complete. One of the androids, bisected but not inoperable, manages to restart the bomb and locks the girls out of its countdown. Rocket sacrifices herself to help Sweet Pea, her sister, get off the train. This is paralleled in the brothel world where the cook stabs Rocket instead of Sweet Pea. But the girls do manage to take the knife, the third item on their list.
Getting wind of the plot when he overhears Blondie talking to Gorski, Blue locks Sweet Pea in a closet and shoots Amber and Blondie in the head. He then attempts to rape Babydoll[1] but she manages to stab him with the stolen knife (item 3), gets his key (item 4) and uses it to unlock the door holding Sweet Pea. They use the lighter (item 2) to set a fire in the closet, setting off the fire alarms which unlocks the main door. They then escape through the brothel / hospital using the map (item 1) to get to the outside.
Once outside, Babydoll and Sweet Pea find a group of men gathered near the front gate, making a stealthy escape impossible. Sucker Punch then goes all M. Night Shyamalan. Item 5, the great sacrifice, is Babydoll herself. What a twist! Yes, that's the "sucker punch" of the movie. Babydoll isn't the main character at all. This is actually Sweet Pea's escape story.
Sweet Pea, as I mentioned before, is Rocket's older sister. Unlike the other girls in the brothel / hospital, she didn't have a problem "fitting in" in the outside world. She ran away from home to follow Rocket and look after her. Babydoll, whose own little sister died at the beginning of the film when Babydoll tried to rescue her from their creeper stepfather raping her, realizes she has nothing to escape to but Sweet Pea can go home and lead a normal life. And so Babydoll sacrifices herself, distracting the men so Sweet Pea can slip away and board a bus, driven by the Wise Man, home.
Tying up the loose ends, the High Roller is actually the doctor who will perform Babydoll's lobotomy. He performs the procedure but is disturbed by the look in Babydoll's eyes. He asks Dr. Gorski why she signed off on the procedure, which the therapist denies doing. Blue has forged her signature. The police are called and Blue is arrested and nobody but Sweet Pea lives happily ever after.[2]
Pretty depressing stuff for a movie that's just supposed to be BAY-splosions with fetishized girls in skimpy clothing kicking ass. Snyder has advanced as one interpretation of his film that it is a critique of the way geek culture fetishizes women. Unfortunately, Sucker Punch lacks the requisite subversive elements to qualify as a critique. It doesn't subtly or unabashedly twist its fetishized forms to comment on them. It doesn't hyperbolize those figures to the point of absurdity to undermine them. Instead, it puts them into play without challenging the larger edifice of sexism and sexualization in geek culture and culture at large.
Sadism and sexual violence against women? Check. But most of it may not have even happened except in the mind of Babydoll. What does it mean when the principal character is just "making it up"? And the tables aren't turned on Blue or the cook because of their sexual violence. The cops arrest Blue not because he is brutalizing Babydoll (and possibly brutalized the other girls). He is arrested for forging a signature, in effect manipulating the mechanisms of (masculine) medicine for his own selfish gain. And the stepfather gets away free and clear. He attempted to rape both his stepdaughters, youngest is dead, and the only witness to his crimes and rightful inheritor of the future has been lobotomized by his machinations. The violence against women remains hidden and unpunished.
Female sacrifice? Check. I guess at least it wasn't to save her beloved boyfriend, brother, or father. It's to save other girls: sisters and friends. But for all the gunplay, sword fights, martial arts and acrobatics, the girls can't be heroes through their active deeds alone like men. What makes them significant is their ability to sacrifice. This is a standard trope not only in the West but also in Japanese fiction.[3] Rejecting this trope and giving Babydoll the power to free herself by her own hands or at least dying actively trying to escape would have been one way for Sucker Punch to move from merely a geek fetish film to something more akin to a feminist empowerment fairy tale.
Hot girls, particular blondes, in skimpy clothes. Check, check, and check. Why would you wear those outfits into a warzone? Trinity (the Matrix) kicked ass and wore a mean looking jacket and pants while doing it. This problem is also sometimes referred to as the chainmail bikini. Men can armor up from head to toe in plate but a woman fulfilling the same role wears little more than a bikini top and a thong? This is an area of much contention in the universe of video games, an element of the geek culture Snyder is referring to.
I never thought I'd say this, but I wanted to see more Vanessa Hudgens. Jamie Chung, too.[4] Unlike Babydoll, Sweet Pea, and Rocket, their characters (Blondie and Amber) don't even get the outlines of a backstory as to how or why they've ended up in the hospital. It makes Babydoll's assessment that Sweet Pea is the only one who could integrate back into society hollow and without substance. Really, the only reason they seem to be there is to (1) fill in the mission support roles (mech pilot, airplane pilot) and (2) provide eye candy for those who don't like blondes or have a thing for Asians. That "thing for Asians" and these one dimensional characters are yet more examples of how Snyder panders and plays to the fetishes of geek culture rather than critiquing them.
All of this probably sounds like I disliked Sucker Punch, which I didn't. It was a very flawed movie, definitely not the female empowerment film you're looking for. But it did the pretty pictures well. I <3<3<3 the design of minigun wielding giant samurai, the steampunk zombies, and the orcs. Each setting had a strong and unique visual signature and style. And the use of color throughout the film was fantastic, between the muted b&w & gray backgrounds to the more colorful costumes of the girls. These are things Snyder also did really well in 300 and Watchmen.
Sucker Punch fell down because it couldn't be more than a big budget, reality-hopping Roger Corman sexploitation flick, the kind you would see at a grindhouse double feature.[5] But I don't think this kind of action-er starring pretty girls is ultimately doomed to failure. It's possible to have short skirts, BAY-splosions, and still say something thoughtful and subversive about gender roles. Angelina Jolie's character in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow illustrates a good way how to do it in an otherwise bland movie.[6]
It's not fair to say I disliked Sucker Punch. I liked it ok. But it had a lot of potential to be something more clever, more transgressive, more interesting. I had high expectations for Zach Snyder's pet project. Instead we got pretty girls battling monsters and machines with a fantasy-within-a-fantasy-within-reality narrative structure firmly entrenched within the confines of Western tropes of gender and reflecting unreflectively the sexual fantasies of geek culture.
No, I didn't dislike Sucker Punch. It just disappointed me.
[1] Which would then deprive her of the value for which she is being sold to the High Roller, but these are the escapist fantasies of a girl on the precipice of being lobotomized so illogic can be forgiven.
[2] Why aren't the police called because 3 of the girls are dead? Ok, maybe not Rocket because that may fall into the category of expected mayhem inside a psych ward. But what about Blondie and Amber, who were shot in the head? How do they die in the real / hospital world? Or are they even dead at all? I didn't see them roaming the halls of the hospital after Babydoll's lobotomy. So many questions but they were quite literally disposable characters.
[3] I've briefly dealt with this before in my primer on anime female types, which itself referenced on article on wussy JRPG girls.
[4] See my review of the Hangover 2 for another film I criticize for underutilizing Jamie Chung and playing up to stereotypes about women, specifically Asian women.
[5] Confession: I haven't seen the Tarantino / Rodriguez double feature Grindhouse. But Tarantino is one who can write strong female characters: Mia Wallace, Jackie Brown, the ladies from Kill Bill, even going back to Mallory in Natural Born Killers and Kate Fuller in From Dusk Till Dawn.
[6] Ling Bai's character, on the other hand, drove me crazy in the movie, though perhaps not so much for the character itself as for her penchant to always take roles playing the exotic erotic of one stripe or another. Always. That said, I did fancy her costume and fighting style. She's a comely 44 year old though it's hard to show that here on the blog because her very large nipples seem to have taken lessons from Houdini on how to escape the confines of her clothes.
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I went to see The Hangover 2 yesterday. I haven't seen The Hangover so my opinions of the movie are mostly on its own merits and not how it measures up as a sequel. But I have seen a number of reviews of The Hangover 2, how it compares to the original, and how it falls short both in originality and by making others, the Other in fact, the butt of the jokes this time around.
Stu Price (Ed Helms) is getting married, this time to a nice Thai girl (played by Jamie Chung, who I last saw playing a teenager in Sucker Punch). Her parents want the wedding to be in Thailand so the Wolf Pack re-unites, reluctantly, to make the trip to Thailand. Although Stu wants to avoid a repeat of their Vegas hijinks, unfortunately the crew wake up in a shitty hotel room and are forced to piece together the previous night's insanity in time to save Stu's wedding.
I don't really want to re-cap the plot here. Go see it if you're so inclined. Like I said at the beginning, I can't really tell you how The Hangover 2 stacks up to the original. But I do have a few words about the groupthink of critical reviews.
In case you haven't heard them, the mantra goes something like this. The Hangover was funny because these mostly average guys were the butt of the jokes. Vegas swallowed them up and spit them out. The Hangover 2, on the other hand, is more mean-spirited because it makes other people the butt of the jokes rather than the Wolf Pack.
The scene many critics point to to drive this point home is the one where the Wolf Pack return to a strip club to try to piece together more of last night. As they interview one of the dancers, things go from bad (Stu cheated on his bride-to-be with a Bangkok stripper) to worse when comments are pieced together to reveal that the stripper is actually a shemale. The scene is complete with a full frontal nudity shot of the very busty ladyboy with penis as well as a few other naked ladyboys walking by to reveal that that's this club's stock in trade.
Much is made of the gross out factor by critics, who feel this scene epitomizes the meanness of the sequel's tone. I take a slightly different view. Yes, the penis reveal is played for shock & discomfort value, but there's not really any meanness about it. Stu freaks out but Phil (Bradley Cooper) calms him down by telling him to just forget it. Phil alludes to lots of terrible things he's done that he's just forgotten. And this seems to be enough for Stu to soldier on through the rest of the Maguffin hunt.
Aside: Is it just me, or is Phil pretty much the same character as Vince Vaughn's Beanie Camplbell in Old School? Maybe that should come as no surprise since both were directed by Todd Phillips.
What I think is important here to note is the lack of malice or deep homophobia. Stu isn't angry at the ladyboy who penetrated him; he doesn't shout slanders or slurs at her and references to the incident later in the film lack virulent disgust. And Phil and Allen (Zack Galifianakis) don't attack Stu's identity based on his gender-bending encounter. Sure, it's not a long meditation on trans identity and gender roles, but this is a gross out comedy, not a contender at Sundance. Given the overall tone of the film, I didn't feel this scene was particularly mean-spirited and if anything, more mature about a hetero man and a ladyboy having sex than most of its audience.
But there are two underlying problems with the movie.
First, there's the lack of consequences. Stu was barebacked by the ladyboy stripper but the possibility of STD transmission doesn't even occur. Too serious for a gross out comedy? Sure. But STDs, including HIV, are a major problem in Thailand's sex work industry. Glossing over it feels irresponsible. In fact, the only worry that Stu et al have is his fiancee finding out that he's cheated. Said ethical dilemma, however, evaporates by the end of the film.
Let's briefly return to the Maguffin. From what I understand of the first film, Doug, the groom-to-be, goes missing in the first film and the Wolf Pack must piece together the previous night in order to find him. In The Hangover 2, Teddy (Mason Lee), Stu's fiancee's younger brother, a 16 year old prodigy at Stanford pre-med and cellist, is the missing Maguffin. Joining them for one beer on the beach, Teddy goes missing after losing a finger this time around.
Ok, back to the no consequences problem. Stu, in a moment of clarity, realizes he has a "demon inside" him, one with a penchant for sex workers of all stripes, apparently. After searching for most of 2 days for Teddy, only to find out the person who says he had him was lying, Stu decided to call off the wedding to save his bride-to-be from the evil that men like him do. Then he puts the pieces together to deduce where Teddy is. Emboldened by his flash of memory, Stu reconsiders his plans to end the relationship and the Wolf Pack rush off to save Teddy.
Teddy has lost a finger, basically ending his career as a surgeon and a cellist. But he isn't upset about it at all. Rather, he considers the evening out fondly even though he can't remember most of it. And when Stu and co finally arrive to the wedding late, Stu owns the "demon inside me" realization, presenting to his soon to be father-in-law as proof positive that he isn't the tasteless mushy rice porridge the man compared him to at the rehearsal dinner toast.
Neither the sister or the father, for whom Teddy is his "prized possession," are at all angry that Teddy has lost a finger and, incredulously, neither blame Stu or his buddies for the permanent maiming of the young ingenue. One ridiculous speech garners Lauren's reconfirmation of love and earns the father's respect. They don't even freaking acknowledge the missing finger!!!
As they are prepared to say their vows, Lauren remains steadfast to Stu, saying that she could grow accustomed to the Mike Tyson-esque tribal tattoo on his face. But she wants to switch sides at the altar so she doesn't have to see it.
So, let's see. Ending up in Bangkok 2 days prior to the wedding. Losing and maiming the youngest child. Bareback anal sex with a ladyboy. Routinely getting so wasted with his buddies that he blacks out. None of these things has consequences for Stu. He ends up marrying the docile Asian girl with the blessing of her father in the end. Um, no. Too many loose ends. Maybe Teddy could see losing his finger as a way to escape his father's pressure, giving him the freedom to pursue his own dreams, but said subplot is not developed and still wouldn't explain why the rest of the family is so nonchalant about the whole thing. These unacknowledged and unresolved tensions left me stupefied. Did they even bother to review this script?
My other problem with the movie is how it treats Bangkok and Asians in general. Lauren is the docile Asian girl.[1] She has only a quick flash of anger at Stu's antics that has little effect. As I mentioned above, she's treated as the docile Asian woman in the exotic erotic fashion. The lush tropical environment as the Wolf Pack arrive and start their misadventures at the resort where the wedding is to take place serve as the perfect backdrop for this fetishized female caricature.
Teddy's non-threatening to everybody but Allen, who doesn't want a new face in the Wolf Pack. It's actually Allen's jealous scheme to remove Teddy from the picture for a few hours that launches the debauched evening. But otherwise Teddy's all smiles and accepting of whatever is inflicted upon him, be it by his father or the Wolf Pack. He's also docile.
And then there's the city. "Bangkok has got him now" is a refrain repeated often as the Wolf Pack look for Teddy. Meaning the city's seedy underbelly won't return Teddy. Bangkok is filled with international gangsters (including an amusing cameo by Joe Rogan), ladyboy hookers, plastic bags of Fanta, drug dealing moneys, and other exotica. It's the "Orient," a far off place of forbidden pleasures and untold dangers.
The only people who actually suffer any consequences as a result of the Wolf Pack are Asians. Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) ends up arrested by an undercover Interpol agent (Paul Giamatti) who baited the Wolf Pack to present the gangster with false promises to release Teddy. Teddy loses his finger. All Stu gets is a tattoo on his face and Allen has his head shaved. Even the drug dealing monkey takes a bullet while these 3 guys skate through life avoiding all but the most superficial of negative consequences.
The Wolf Pack wins. But really, do we want these guys to?
[1]Yes, there are pictures of Jamie Chung with a lot less clothes floating around the internet. But I wanted to emphasize that she's a very pretty girl from the neck up. Haven't seen her do a lot of acting, but I thought she was woefully underutilized in Sucker Punch, a movie I intended fully to review when I say it in May. Let me make you a promise. Let me talk about the Electric Ballroom in London and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart show next and then I'll give you my 2 cents on Sucker Punch.
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Ok, I'm about to go off script and off the rails here. Usually my snarky comments are in reply to some news article or possibly book I've just read. But this time imma turn the camera on me and talk about the ways my assumptions about the world color my view.
I'm no fan of mail order brides or those international "matchmaking" services that connect Western men with women from Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe, or Latin America who are "eager to meet them." I also find the sex tourism that turns into "love" with a native girl less than nice as the way to start a relationship. To a lesser extent, I'm also deeply troubled by marriages emerging out of US soldiers stationed abroad who "fall in love" and decide to marry a local girl.
All 3 of these scenarios emerge, in my opinion, at the intersection of economic exploitation and exotic eroticism. The Other, bound up in notions of Eastern mysticism cum sexuality and feminine subservience, is made more readily available because of, well, brute necessity. Poverty drives many young women into relationships with Western men whom they perceive to offer them a way out of need. (The same factor also drives many young women wittingly or un- into sex work.) In a sense, they exchange their youth and beauty for financial stability. Often, it is older gentlemen who seek out mail order brides or turn a sex holiday into a committed relationship. For some, it may be a way to have a family or find someone to take care of them as they age. Military brides are probably less prone to the latter.
Remember that thesis I never finished? Well, one of the themes that emerged in a number of stories was this notion that Asian women were more feminine than their Western (American, white and sometimes black) counterparts. Many expressed a downright hostility to modern Western feminism (described as "bitchiness" and "uppity") and praised the fetishized object of the narrative for not being "corrupted" by Western ideas of the role of women. Such praises accompanied physical and socio-cultural descriptions emphasizing radical alterity.
However, how much of my repulsion against these types of relationships stems from their economic and racial exploitation and how much it comes from the simple fact that it challenges modern Western ideals of romantic love as the basis of a relationship and marriage? For much of the world's population, the idea of the individual choosing his or her mate based on emotion or an intimate bond is not the norm. It wasn't the norm for much of the history of the West, either. Cementing bonds between two families, healthy offspring, politics, business, and other factors caused parents (or a matchmaker) to pair off two individuals regardless of their preferences. Love would come after the marriage or, if it did not, it wasn't a failure because love wasn't the point of marriage, It was a kinship bond, a blood relation, a way to perpetuate the species and the genetic line.
Romantic love as a notion emerged during the Crusades, as men left behind pitched woo at the wives of men away fighting in the Levant.[1] But it didn't really take hold broadly until the end of the 19th century. Now it's firmly rooted in the narrative of our books and movies and tv sitcoms (ahem, How I Met Your Mother). We even implant the idea into our children at an early age through fairytales and Disney. But it's just that: an idea. It's historically constructed, contingent.
The problem is in disentangling opposition to economic and racial exploitation from the distaste for non-romantic marriages when critiquing mail order brides, sex tourism marriages, and military brides. The latter is simply a value judgment, a preference. Just because a marriage is very much rooted in economic exchange (youth and beauty, devotion for financial support) doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad marriage, contrary to our recent gossip magazine disdain for perceived "gold diggers" of the Anna Nicole Smith / Hef's girlfriends / Trump's revolving door of wives variety. If anything, the coincidence of romantic love and marriage is a recent fiction. Don Draper might even take credit for inventig it as a way to sell nylons and toaster ovens.
[1] Seriously? You expected there to an actual footnote here? Shame on you. This isn't academic writing.
This is an article about the wussy JRPG girl but the historical background is also useful for understanding the female archetypes in anime. After finals I'll get around to writing up those anime reviews and exploring those archetypes. And then: Wonder Woman.
Here's a few archetypes to get you started. I won't list examples. Yet.
busty, sweet, but stupid
vixen-ish rogue
tough, loud, and obnoxious - usually short
geeky lesbo
the quiet warrior
Enjoy Chun Li Baby in the meantime. She's so adorable. And if you want to generate more, go here.
Friends of Charlaine Harris' by way of Alan Ball vampire series may remember that it was about this time last year that Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse) also came out as bisexual. What is it about that show that makes it's female stars feel compelled to confess their sexual desire for both men and women? Am I the only person who's wondering if bisexual Evan and bisexual Anna have gotten together? And did Stephen Moyer, Anna's vampire paramour Bill Compton on the show and now real life husband, join in?
But seriously, the reason I mention this story isn't because I have any fondness for Hollywood gossip. Rather, it's because Ms. Wood's announcement is very much a non-story. It's as if she announced she's a vegetarian. Or prefers panties to thongs. And the question is: why?
Immediately she was suspect as unpersuasive for any rom-com leads because no one would buy her on-screen chemistry with a man knowing her off screen sexual preferences. (Though this criticism applies more to Anne Heche, Ellen's former love interest, than to Ellen herself who never really courted rom-com leading lady status.) But Ellen kept at it with poise and dignity and now has one of the most popular daytime talk shows on television. Since then, Rosie O'Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Portia di Rossi (Ellen's current love interest), and others have come out as openly lesbian.
On the one hand, we might say this trail has already been blazed when Ellen DeGeneres became the first widely-recognized actress to come out as a lesbian. Yes, she initially endured a rather savage backlash. Ellen Degenerate, anyone? Besides homophobia, the other major question is how would it effect her career.
So perhaps Ellen's bravery in helping to start a national conversation that resulted in major shifts in America's sexual mores. After all, now Bravo, HGTV, TLC and other cable channels are dominated by obviously gay men giving style advice to both women and straight men. I mean, there's a show called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, for heaven's sake. And I did mention that Ms. Wood's True Blood co-star revealed her own bisexuality about a year ago.
But I think there's another force at work here. In loosest terms, bisexual females do not threaten to disrupt the logic of heteronormative phallocentrism. Accordingly, the female body might be the site at which sex happens but sex itself is defined as the penetrative act. The phallus must be present / present itself to institute the order of a sexual encounter. The lack of the phallus in girl-girl encounters relegates those acts as something other than sex since genital stimulation, pleasure, orgasm, while possible in the phallologic encounter, are merely ancillary to the sexual act.
Bisexual females, in other words, don't upset the norm of penis-with-vagina. Dildos, vibrators, fingers, fruits & vegetables, etc. merely imitate the phallus; they cannot displace it. Note here that the penis does not actually need to be inserted into the vagina for the encounter to constitute sex. Oral stimulation of the penis and anal sex between a woman and man suffice when the penis is present.
Not to go too far down a detour, but because the phallus itself is an abstraction, real penises cannot partake of the order of the ideal. They are deficient, not completely present. Men cannot live up to the ideality of the phallus. Such a view has implications for representations of the masculine and theories of porn.
The penis, then, is not merely a sign of the male; the phallus is virility, the masculine, maleness. Sex requires both this presence and the lack, the absence that is the order of the feminine. The presence presents itself into / among / amidst this absence.
Girl-girl is simply the "encounter" between two absences. Quite literally nothing comes from their meeting. On the other hand, the encounter of the duplicated phallus, presence against presence, explains the revulsion at male homosexuality. The presence of the phallus must be ignored, even partially and temporarily, in the encounter. I guess the point is that the problem with homosexual male sex isn't that it's "not sex" but that it's unnatural; it deforms the "natural order" with dual presences instead of presence presenting itself by erupting out of or thrusting into / through absence.
Getting back on track, bisexual women are not an "issue" for heteronormative phallocentrism because nothing, literally no thing, is at stake in girl-girl play. As she still desires the phallus, she does not attempt to displace the centrality of the phallus to the sexual encounter. There may be temporary substitutes but they are admitted to be only poor imitations and lack the present presence of the penis.
These are just theories, ideas that I've been tinkering with for years now. I struggle against the quasi-Freudian implications, essentialism, and ahistorical assumptions of that kind of description. But I've also been studying Foucault's notions of sexuality as a historical construct of discursive practice, a power-effect and not a thing upon which power acts. And just recently I've been working through Victoria Grace's _Baudrilliard's Challenge: A Feminist Reading_ about the overlooked value of Baudrilliard's social theories for feminist critique.
Lastly, some observations about the place of bisexual women in sexual society.
The MFF threesome has been elevated to the status of "every heterosexual man's fantasy." We could explore possible why's of this particular combination of bodies with the above analysis of the presence/absence dyad of the phallologocentric order. A girl who doesn't mind playing with other girls seems more amenable to the "desired" multi-partner play than a girl who doesn't have any physical interest in other girls.
Dan Savage speaks a lot in his podcast about the hostility some self-identified lesbians have towards self-identified bisexual women. The view is that these bisexual women are trawling lesbian bars in search of another woman to bring into the bedroom to entertain their male partners. The hostility seems to emanate from two places. First, that lesbians would not mind playing with a man if there is also a woman present. Second, that girl-girl play doesn't constitute a relationship. The so-called bisexual women treat lesbians as a means to attain their heterosexual sexual satisfaction rather than treating them as an end in themselves.
Final thought. I read somewhere a theory that vampires are a symbol of the vagina. The empty space of the mouths, parted lips, the bloody wound left on the neck. But I don't remember what said theory had to say about the fact that the most popular instantiation of the vampire mythology in the Western imagination is Count Dracula, Bram Stoker's mesmerizing blood-sucking lothario.
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unfortunately it's that busy time of year around here for 1Ls. brief is due in a few days. applications for fall clinics and field placements must be submitted by tomorrow. and just 3842 more minutes until spring break for this guy.
but i didn't want to leave you without a daily dose of my own special brand of geek.
here's a link to an article about the fear of the feminine in video games. there's a lot of freud in there, especially vagina dentata, castration anxiety, and repression / expulsion. i've got a troubled relationship with freud but that's gonna have to wait for another entry.
here's an interesting video about the origins of wonder woman.
i've discussed the complex story of wonder woman and her creator william moulton marston before in the context of jodi picoult and gail simone scribing for the amazon. it's particularly interesting stuff, especially dr. marston's unconventional lifestyle and beliefs about gender inequality (spoiler: they aren't equal; i for one welcome our new female overlords); maybe i'll revisit it in the future in the context of gender and representation. oh goody, the topic of comic books and feminine bodies. better haul out the gallagher poncho now...
