Sexism is the Fire in Which Jurassic World's Undisputable Queen was Forged (and Consumed)

This review contains spoilers and profanity.

First and foremost, let's get something clear right away:

Claire Dearing is a goddess, and anyone who thinks differently can fight me.

*ahem*

Okay.

I have to say that I enjoyed the heck out of Jurassic World. It wasn't the splendid perfection of Jurassic Park, of course, but I never had any expectation that it would be. It was fast-paced, well-acted, decently-scripted. It hit all the beats a summer popcorn blockbuster is supposed to hit: science gone horribly, desperately wrong; precocious children in peril, evil military/corporate goons who get their just desserts; a Drive-In Saturday romance (1). And it featured a fabulous female protagonist. (Seriously, fight me on this one.) All in all, not bad (2).

I loved the raptors; I loved the T-Rex Hail Mary in the denouement. And, oddly enough, I loved the rampant sexism.

Hear me out on this one.

As other reviews have noted, the character of Claire Dearing is subjected to piles and piles of sexism through the whole film. She's constantly under the microscope of the patriarchal gaze, judged and found wanting. She gets sexist shit from her boss, from her subordinate, from the coworker she went on one date with, from her nephews, and even from her own sister—all of whom fail in varying ways fail to respect her capabilities, her drive, her comfort levels, her intelligence, or her life choices. And I love this. I love it because it is so real. The sexism of Jurassic World is so believable, so exactly how powerful career women often are treated by their family and colleagues, that it becomes a thing of beauty—especially given that Claire consistently refuses to bend to these people's attempts to shape the person she is. In spite of everyone talking over her or telling her what to do and how to be, Claire Dearing knows that she isn't called upon to conform to another person's idea of how she should run either her personal or her professional life.

You think Claire Dearing won't get five feet in those fancy heels of hers, you smug, self-absorbed jerk? She will outrun your punk ass so fast, you won't even know what hit you. You think Claire Dearing isn't capable of empathetic care of children because she a) has a demanding job and b) doesn't want children of her own, you hypocritical, meddling older sister? She will teach your sons the true meaning of the phrase boss-ass-bitch by ensuring that they believe (on an emotional level) that she's going to get them home safe.

Claire Dearing is a motherfucking queen. Blue the Raptor, Indominus Rex? They ain't got nothing on Claire. Claire Dearing for President of Everything Ever.

Given that the film features such a powerfully-written (and powerfully-portrayed) female character, it's a real shame that Jurassic World doesn't stick the landing. And it fails to stick the landing by sending Claire Dearing off into the sunset with sexist jerk extraordinaire, Owen Grady.

I really wanted to like Owen. He's basically Star Lord—if Star Lord had a raptor squad instead of the guardians of the galaxy—but without the personal character growth. And that's why he doesn't work. (And why the relationship between him and Claire doesn't work.) It's not that I have a fundamental problem with characters who possesses unsavory personal traits. I actually appreciate those characters when the narrative appropriately calls out their behavior. But the narrative of Jurassic World doesn't do that.

Owen Grady opens with a pathetic pickup line, and he ends with a pathetic pickup line. And, for my money, nothing that he does or says in the course of the film really indicates that he's learned anything about how to treat women with the respect they deserve. Over the course of the film Claire Dearing passes the test to become one of the guys, and since he wanted to sleep with her right from the start that's very convenient for him, but there's no sense that he truly sees her or understands how his previous treatment of her was inappropriate. He never tells her that he misjudged her, and he never apologizes. Maybe it's meant to be implied, but for me—in 2015—implied just isn't good enough.

By all rights, Owen Grady should have done something to indicate that he was at last truly capable of deserving Claire, of deserving an intelligent, resourceful, and multifaceted woman. Failing that, Claire Dearing should have thanked him for his help and politely declined his offer to stick together for survival.

Of course, the second alternative—at the very least—wouldn't have been appropriate to the kind of film that Jurassic World is. (The Drive-In Saturday romance is a tried-and-true component of this sort of film, one I don't necessarily object to if it's done well.) But dammit, it would have been nice to see the filmmakers use the trope to drive home a material lesson about how sexist jerks don't get the girl in the end unless they reform.

Maybe that would have been too unrealistic.

Notes:
1) The phrase "a Drive-In Saturday romance" comes from a song by David Bowie, the lyrics of which are "She's uncertain if she likes him, but she knows she really loves him. It's a crash-course for the ravers; it's a drive-in Saturday..." I use it to refer to a particular trope of romance, where the two main characters start off detesting each other but end up in a relationship in spite of that fact. See "Drive In Saturday," Aladdin Sane (Rykodisk, 1973).
2) As is typical for a Hollywood film of this scope, the diversity was so-so. They didn't kill off the black best friend, which is something, but they also didn't have a single woman of color with a speaking role as far as I could tell.

Review - Agent Carter: "Snafu"

This review contains spoilers.

Not gonna lie here, when Chief Dooley looked at Peggy Carter and said, "Atta girl!" before doing a sacrificial header out of the office window to save his team from the explosive strapped to his chest, I totally cried.

This reaction was one-third the fact that Chief Dooley had grown into a complex character that I cared about, one-third the pitch-perfect performance of Shea Whigham, and one-third the sheer significance of his last words. Dooley asked Agent Thompson to speak to his wife; he asked Agent Carter to get the son-of-a-bitch who killed him. The fact that Dooley looked to Peggy, rather than to any of his other agents, to solicit the promise that the SSR would catch Doctor Faustus (aka Dr. Ivchenko)—the man who put Dooley's head on the chopping block—was deeply meaningful. It indicated that Peggy had finally succeeded in earning not just Dooley's respect but his trust as well, and I would argue that earning Dooley's trust is what lay at the heart of Peggy's actions. She thought she wanted his respect, but—as last week proved—having his respect meant nothing without having his trust.

What's most interesting here, though, is the manner in which Peggy had to go about earning first the respect and then the trust of her male coworkers. The final blow against their deeply-rooted sexism came during a positively electrifying confession scene, in which Peggy called each and every one of them out on their misogyny—a call out that very clearly shamed both Sousa and Thompson because they knew not just that Peggy was right but that she was dead right. (Chief Dooley was unmoved, but in fairness to him Dr. Ivchenko already has his claws in by that point, so Dooley was fighting a harder battle than either Sousa or Thompson.) That call out would not have been possible, however, without the violent campaign of resistance on Peggy's part that first got the attention of those men. To whit, neither Dooley, Thompson, nor Sousa was in a position to really see or hear Peggy until she violently claimed their attention. Days of clandestine operations and properly channeled challenges didn't fully earn their respect—to say nothing of their trust. Working her way into the boys' club didn't fully earn their respect. Only forceful resistance and explosive violence earned their respect, and only a confession delivered in a tone of carefully controlled, but nevertheless vehement, anger earned their trust.

Peggy could not earn the respect or trust of her SSR colleagues simply by remaining pleasant and working within their prejudiced system. She had to act against that system, and against her colleagues, to do so. There's an implicit message in the fact that Peggy couldn't earn the respect of her colleagues by either remaining demure or playing the game by their rules that applies generally to the nature of successful resistance: politely asking for your rights gets you nothing; anger, on the other hand, gets shit done. It's a sad fact of life, but most people will never give up their privilege without first having their ears boxed, and "Snafu" was a perfect illustration of that principle at work. White women, not to mention minority communities not represented on this show (1), are often told that they should be polite, that they will get more flies with honey than they will with vinegar, that they need to not alienate people from their cause if they want to be victorious in the end. The narrative of Agent Carter explicitly rejects this argument and tacitly supports the viewpoint that change, social and otherwise, requires a willingness to resist, a willingness to challenge people and upset them, a willingness to wield anger as a tool, and—yes—a willingness to resort to violence should the situation call for it.

The world tells minorities to remember their place, and to have consideration for the feelings of their oppressors. Agent Carter reminds us that bitches get shit done.

Notes:
1) I've fiddled with the language of this sentence multiple times in an attempt to articulate the fact that these issues are being writ large with an overwhelmingly white palette. The social justice commentary of the show is obviously meant to apply to more than just white women, and yet many people quite justifiably feel that such a message is undermined by the fact that Agent Carter takes place in a world of manufactured whiteness. My intention with this statement is to acknowledge the criticisms while analyzing what I perceive to be the intended message of the narrative.

Review - Agent Carter: "A Sin to Err"

This review contains spoilers.

Well, Peggy Carter is in a tight spot now, and no mistake. After confirming his suspicions in what must be noted as a rather unscientific manner (isn't it bad form to only have one person in a lineup?), Agent Sousa took his findings about Peggy to Chief Dooley—igniting a manhunt that was equal parts exhilarating, intense, and at times distinctly amusing.

On a personal note, I have to say that Sousa's interruption of Dooley's debriefing with Dr. Ivchenko was one of the best instances of good timing/bad timing I've seen in a long time. I had a strong sense that Ivchenko was a Leviathan operative in the last episode (he was willing to kill a man under his care with far more ease than was plausible for a person in his supposed situation), but nothing could have prepared me for the near-apoplectic levels of fangirl flailing I would ultimately go into when I realized that he was shaping up to be the MCU's version of the iconic Captain America villain, Doctor Faustus. So, good job Sousa for saving the Chief, but bad job Sousa for busting Peggy.

As I said, Peggy Carter is in a tight spot, and it is one delineated by bitter ironies. The first irony is that Peggy got into this situation in part because of the internalized misogyny that prevented her from realizing that Dottie from Iowa was a threat. The second is that, as of "A Sin to Err," Peggy has only just managed to earn the hard-won respect of her male coworkers in time for that respect to be turned against her. Had she been caught in the conspiracy to aid and abet Howard Stark before she had earned that respect, Peggy might have been able to call upon the feminine wiles that served her so well when practically everyone in the office saw her as a creature of inherently lesser talents as a defense. Having seen her in action and developed a healthy appreciation for her abilities, however, none of her fellow agents were inclined to take it easy on her.

One of the primary driving motivational forces on the show has been Peggy's desire to be valued by her male coworkers, but that desire has manifested not in an attempt to improve her colleagues' perceptions of women, but in an attempt to be perceived as one of the boys—a strategy that in itself has sexist overtones. Joining the boys' club often seems like the solution to the problem sexist discrimination, but as this episode demonstrates it actually does little-to-nothing to advance the cause of gender equality. Though the agents of the SSR have come to respect Peggy's abilities as a trained operative, that esteem does not extend to women in general—a fact made all too clear by the fact that both Thompson (who has come to admire Peggy over the course of the show) and Sousa (who admired her from the very beginning) were taken in by the relatively simple subterfuges of both Dottie and Angie. Clearly, Peggy, like many women who find themselves in the boys' club, has won a battle only for herself—not for feminism—and the spoils of that battle are not nearly as valuable as she might have imagined.

It's interesting to speculate on whether or not Peggy would have had the opportunity to win her colleagues' approval without the chain of events that transpired as a result of her taking Howard Stark's offer to investigate for him. For my part, it's debatable. After all, much of her success in the department seems to have hinged on the mission to Russia that came about as a direct result of their acquisition of Sasha Demidov's typewriter, an object that the SSR—arguably—would never have acquired if Peggy hadn't provided them with Demidov's dead body and thus his identity, residence, and possessions. In ways both orthodox and un, Peggy has had to make all of her opportunities for herself, and she will undoubtedly continue to do so as the series draws to a close. But what this episode has made clear is that she has been making opportunities only for herself at this point, and not for women as a whole. The pressing question now is not so much whether or not Peggy has engendered enough respect amongst her colleagues for them to believe in the possibility of that her intentions were honest, but whether or not Peggy will realize what membership in the boys' club actually means for her and for the fight against sexism in general.

Review - Agent Carter: "The Iron Ceiling"

This review contains spoilers.

The plot of Agent Carter is heating up as we come into the back half of the series, with several threads weaving together for what will no doubt be an exciting explosion in the next episode, "A Sin to Err." Chief Dooly of the SSR (can I say again how much I love that he is obviously incredibly good at his job?) is onto the fact that there's a lot more at stake than a witch hunt for Howard Stark. Dottie from Iowa, now revealed to be a product of the Black Widow program, is advancing her covert agenda right under Peggy's unsuspecting nose. And Agent Sousa has—as we all knew he would—succeeded in uncovering the identity of the mysterious blond operative. There's a lot to talk about, but perhaps the most intriguing element is the dynamic that has developed between Peggy and Dottie and the way it represents yet another subtle layer of sexism's insidious cultural reach.

For the seasoned television viewer, comic book reader, film buff, etc., the introduction of Dottie from Iowa in episode three ("Time and Tide") immediately raised a ton of plot-twist red flags, which the showrunners were wise not to drag out. The show's reveal of her as a spy in episode four ("The Blitzkrieg Button") probably came as a surprise to very few people. In "The Iron Ceiling," however, the writers did give us something surprising—an exploration of Dottie's backstory in a manner that enabled us to contrast her experiences with Peggy's in a wholly unexpected way. Like Peggy, Dottie is a hardened soldier—skilled not just in warfare but in the ability to disconnect the emotional responses that is intrinsic to the successful pursuit of war missions. And like Peggy, Dottie is being underestimated on the basis of her gender. For just as Peggy's coworkers should have sussed her out ages ago and have not solely because she is a woman, Peggy should have noticed Dottie's maneuvers and did not solely because she is a woman. Internalized misogyny here we come.

Peggy has never really taken notice of Dottie. In fact, she had absolutely no interest in Dottie when they first met as she was lost in thought over her upcoming mission to trace the path of Howard Stark's stolen technology at the time. That motif of not taking notice, of being lost in thought, of inherently—and without even the slightest critical consideration—assuming that she can lose herself in thought around other women because women are safe was repeated in this episode's diner scene. Sitting across the table from an apparently-planning-a-walking-tour-of-New-York Dottie, Peggy loses her focus completely while looking at Jarvis' business card. She loses her focus so entirely that Dottie has to verbally recall Peggy to herself—something that would never have happened if Peggy had been sitting across the table from a man. But just as Peggy has consistently used the sexism of her male coworkers against them, Dottie expertly uses Peggy's own sexism against her. Dottie's method of stealing Peggy's room keys—knocking over her purse and then insisting on picking everything up as a penance—is such an obvious tactic that it's almost unbelievable that an agent as good as Peggy is wouldn't pick up on it. In the end, however, she is no more immune to her own prejudices than Chief Dooley and Agent Thompson were when Peggy botched their interrogation of Jarvis in the most staggeringly incompetent fashion.

Peggy's dangerous dismissal of Dottie, predicated on her internalized misogyny, is presented alongside Peggy's first taste of success at making her way into the boy's club, and the juxtaposition of these two events is significant. This episode presented a radically different view of Agent Thompson that both humanized him and gave him some common ground to share with Peggy—thus laying the groundwork for the rehabilitation of his character that was hinted at in "The Blitzkrieg Button"—but the fact remains that Thompson is an ethically questionable figure. We've seen him beat, berate, and bribe witnesses; we've seen that he's quite capable of, and comfortable with, lying (although, he is—as I've noted before—not one to lie to himself). In short, we've seen that Thompson's desire to do his job, sometimes trumps his ethical standards—as the desire to do the job sometimes trumps many SSR agents' standards. And while that's okay for a government agent, if Peggy Carter really wants to be a hero she may have to rethink her club membership goals.

Just as it significant that Peggy's tentative acceptance into the boy's club has come at a moment when her own sexism is showing, it is also no coincidence that said acceptance came at the moment when the one person who has always respected her—Agent Daniel Sousa—has discovered a reason to doubt her. Right from the very beginning of the series, Sousa's quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious blond operative (Peggy) who was independently investigating—and possibly sabotaging—the SSR's case against Howard Stark has set him apart from his contemporaries. Unlike Thompson, and even Chief Dooley, who expressed frustration at the existence of this operative but otherwise ignored the conundrum, Sousa has been convinced that the identity of the unknown operative was a key to cracking the case. Neither Thompson nor Dooley ever felt that much time should be devoted to the problem because neither of them really thought that it was possible for a woman to be an important player in an espionage case. Sousa, on the other hand, knew that a woman could be an important player—an embrace of gender equality that actually puts him a step ahead of Peggy Carter for the moment.

Thus, in yet another ironic turn, it is not Peggy Carter but Daniel Sousa who has turned out to be the most emancipated thinker on the show.

Review - Agent Carter: "Time and Tide"

This review contains spoilers.

Agent Carter is really, really killing it.

In this episode, Peggy and Jarvis set out to follow up a lead given to them by the mysterious (and now deceased) Leet Brannis, but before they can do so, Peggy is called upon to sacrifice her professional pride in order to save Jarvis from persecution at the hands of the SSR in one of the episode's most intriguing moments.

I've seen a couple of good metas that have pointed out how brilliantly the writers have fit the perception of Peggy as incompetent by her male coworkers into a pitch-perfect narrative that explores the institutional sexism of the period, and I'd like to expand on this theme a little bit. As has been noted, in "Time and Tide" Peggy flubbed in a major way to get Jarvis out of a difficult situation, and her flubbing was so obvious that if a man had done it he would have come under immediate suspicion. But in Peggy's case her fellow agents expect her to be incompetent, and so it never registers that her obviously deliberate actions are deliberate. It doesn't register even in spite of the fact that they know a) that she is an associate of their suspect, b) that she is on record as stating she thinks the SSR is after the wrong man, and c) that there is an unknown female operative in the mix who seemingly came out of nowhere. It's staring them right in the face, but they can't see it at all.

Now, it would be really easy for the writers to portray the male agents on the show as brainless hacks. (One of my major problems with Marvel's other spy show was that it regularly requires its characters to be temporarily, and inexplicably, bad at their jobs in order for the plot to move forward.) That's not the case in Agent Carter, however. As we have repeatedly seen, the male agents of the SSR are very good at their jobs—if occasionally unthinkingly impulsive. These men are smart; these men are experienced; these men are capable. From the chief on down, they have been shown to be highly observant, methodical in their analysis of evidence, and quick on the uptake. In the first three episodes, we've seen agents Sousa and Krzeminski pour over evidence with a fine tooth comb, leaving no stone unturned. We've seen Agent Thompson routinely move his investigations forward quickly using a combination of tactics (interrogation, carefully maintained personal contacts in the espionage world, etc.) and while coordinating the activities of an investigative team. We've seen Chief Dooley consider and implement good suggestions rather than simply give orders, and we've also seen him to be an expert investigator—as when he immediately noticed that Demidov's typewriter was unusual and had it impounded intact. Time and again it's been made very clear that these men know what they're doing.

And the fact that they so clearly know what they're doing makes their inability to recognize what Peggy is doing all the more explicitly rooted in sexism.

These men are not soft targets for Peggy to work her way around. These men are not tools for making Peggy's (and the writers') job easier. These men are rigorously trained and highly skilled operatives who are so blinded by the institutional framework of sexism in which they live their lives that they cannot see the rigorously trained and highly skilled operative who's going to save the damn day. At the same time, though, the fact that these men are sexist, and that their sexism has material costs (both to them and to the women around them) does not mean that they have no redeeming qualities or that they are inherently bad people. Just as it would be easy for the writers to make Peggy look smarter by making her male coworkers stupid, it would also be easy for them to paint these men with a stereotypical brush, and I am so thankful that they are not doing that.

The nuances of the show's writing came strongly to the fore with this week's handling of the death of Agent Krzeminski, who was not a nice man. The writers never shied away from this fact when dealing with Krzeminski. The reality of what kind person he had been was never glossed over, even as his death was treated with sympathy and respect, and what this indicates is that the writers and showrunners understand that the world is a place where people are complicated. Krzeminski was a sexist, abelist jerk. He was a cheat. He had a wife and a girlfriend and big, rude mouth, and (like a number of the men working under Dooley) he had a very flexible sense of ethics. But he was dedicated to his country, and he was good at his job, and he didn't deserve to die. And the fact that the writers acknowledged this, and showed Peggy acknowledging this, is so important. You can dislike someone and still feel sorrow over their untimely death. You can disagree with someone, and wish they would be different, and—failing that—wish them to stay the hell away from you, and still be cognizant of their fundamental right to exist.

The writers of Agent Carter are giving us so much more than caricatures and sloppy worldbuilding. They are giving us a time and a place and a story imbued with honest, relatable realism. And I am loving it.

Review - Agent Carter, "Now is Not the End" & "Bridge and Tunnel"

So I caught up with Agent Carter last night, and oh my gosh was it a breath of fresh air.

Obviously, quite a lot happened in the double-episode series premiere. The show established the main plot of SSR agent Peggy Carter attempting to clear her old friend, Howard Stark, of treason (with the assistance of Howard's butler, Jarvis), and quickly thickened it by introducing both the implication of a broader international conspiracy—with allusions to a shadowy organization called Leviathan, whose renegade agent Leet Brannis stole Howard Stark's weapons in the first place and whose unnamed assassin was sent to bring Brannis down and reacquire something—and a precarious situation for Peggy—with the SRR's acquisition of photographs that show Peggy, though only from behind, investigating the Stark case on her own. Nevertheless, the writing was super smart and the acting was fully on point throughout. Using a situation in which Peggy must turn traitor against her own organization to help her old friend prove his innocence in a weapons leak case as a framework, the show is taking on sexism in a pretty frank manner and challenging traditional concepts of masculinity as well with the inclusion of the Daniel Sousa character.

Furthermore, the writers have given these themes a beautiful continuity with the world of the Captain America films. There's definitely a sense here of looking at inequality through the lens of Erskine's philosophy about strength and weakness. ("The strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power," Erskine tells Steve the night before his procedure, "but a weak man knows the value of strength—and he knows compassion.")

In The First Avenger, Erskine's philosophy (in the context of the movie as a whole) was mainly applied to foreign powers and foreign serum-enhanced megalomaniacs, with only brief glimpses of how that philosophy is reflected in, and applies to, American culture. Though such glimpses were present, they mainly served to give shape to the reality of Steve's lived experience. In Agent Carter, however, we're seeing a world populated and run by the strong men that Erskine was so leery of, and we're seeing what that world is like for people who do not fit within the narrow parameters established by that hegemonic system. Taken together with the show's subtle but ongoing allusions to the threat of America's unnamed enemies, this exploration of a world run by strong men represents a superb social commentary. Contrasted as these allusions are with an examination of the world taking shape under the hands of the strong men running the American justice system, the American intelligence system, and the American government, a story that seriously considers the disconnect between propaganda and reality in the US is emerging—a theme that is beautifully echoed in the "Captain America Radio Program" sequences that are interspersed throughout the tale and whose timing couldn't be better.

I seriously can't wait to see what the show has got in store for us next.