My Thoughts on Ant-Man: A Close-Up Look at an Enjoyable Film's Lesser Points

Spoilers. (Obvs.)

A couple of days ago I made a short text post about my reaction to Marvel's Ant-Man.

This is what it said:

If you had told me a year ago that I would like Ant-Man (with some qualifications) more than I liked Age of Ultron, I would not have believed you.

This is a sentiment that seems to have been very relatable for a lot of people—as of this writing, the post has nearly 600 notes. Consequently, I feel that I should say a bit more about the film and unpack the qualifications that I alluded to in my original post.

Ant-Man was a lot of fun. It was not the best MCU film by a wide margin, but it was definitely not its worst either. It was better than Age of Ultron, but in my considered opinion being better than Age of Ultron is not a high bar to jump (1). For me, Ultron is in the bottom three of to-date MCU films (2). In contrast to Age of Ultron, Ant-Man had a cohesive plot. It was well acted, it had several decent gags (and several very inappropriate gags), and it set things up for Civil War with an impressively deft narrative hand. That said, however, Ant-Man had some serious problems.

To begin with, the film had a massive race problem. This was one of the more diverse offerings from Marvel to date, and that fact (and its positive and negative implications) should not be ignored. Nevertheless, the film played its diverse characters like stereotypes. There were moments where you could see the filmmakers trying to play against type a bit (3), but for the most part the non-white characters were there to be played for culturally insensitive trope-dependent laughs. And also, they were all criminals. Which. That's a problem.

And no, the well-to-do African-American family who we saw for half-a-heartbeat getting their family barbecue obliterated by Ant-Man and Yellowjacket do not make up for the missteps taken with the film's prominent PoC characters.

The film also had quite a bit of a woman problem. As with the film's portrayal of PoC characters, there was a sense that the filmmakers were trying to subvert a trope (4). Obviously, the filmmakers were trying to somehow flip the Ridiculously Average Guy trope on its head by making the reason Scott Lang winds up doing the job that Hope Pym should have done that Hope is that much better than him and more important as a person generally. But first of all that's a trope of its own (see: Men Are Expendable), and second of all it only works if Hope—rather than Scott—is the person who goes off to help Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson fight a civil war and the Avengers wage an infinity war. And we all know that that is just not going to happen.

So, no filmmaker dudes. Nice try with the attempted trope inversion, but you have to stick the landing. And you did not stick that landing.

The same could be said of the film's treatment of Janet Van Dyne. Her MCU death was presented as the sort of classic comic book "death" that is easily reversible (and therefore gives Marvel a lot of room to claim that they haven't actually fridged her (5)), but until she actually comes back she's fridged. And it's a pretty safe bet that she isn't coming back anytime soon. Most likely not before Infinity War, which might just be cosmic enough in its scope to enable a return-of-Janet-from-the-quantum-dimension subplot, and that's ages away.

So, again, guys: nope. I do see what you were trying to do and what you think you were doing, but I also saw what you actually did. And you only get points for what you actually did.

But Ant-Man was better than Age of Ultron, and it had Falcon in it—and the MCU always benefits from MOAR Falcon (6). And as of now the Civil War setup is looking Bucky-centric enough to keep the ravaging fangirl in me happy. For the moment, anyway. So that's a thing. Speaking of which, can we have a Civil War teaser soon? Kthxbye.

Notes:
1) My review of Avengers: Age of Ultron can be found on this website.
2) Yes, I said bottom three, and I stand by that. Age of Ultron is better than The Incredible Hulk. It might even be better than Iron Man 2. It's not better than any of the other films Marvel has released. For those who are curious, I rank the MCU film as follows: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guaridans of the Galaxy, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, Ant-Man, Iron Man 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Incredible Hulk. Interestingly, in every case except The Avengers, I think the sequel was better than the original, which is atypical for sequels.
3) Michael Peña's Luis, for example, very clearly had impeccable personal taste and a range of cultivated knowledge in spite of the fact that he was your garden variety Latino criminal caricature. Actually, I would love to know how viewers in the Latinx community felt about this representation. And indeed how PoC viewers felt about the supporting cast in general. I am not a member of those communities and do not speak for them.
4) In this case the "female supporting character who is better than the male protagonist in every conceivable way teaches him everything he needs to know to be a badass in 48-hours or less and then makes out with him upon his triumphant return" trope. There's got to be a shorter title for that one.
5) Which, as a matter of fact, they have already started doing. See Kyle Buchanan, "Spoiler Bomb: Ant-Man's Surprise Twists and Cameos, Explained," (Vulture, July 2015).
6) Of course Falcon was basically use to make the infinitely less badass white dude look good, which... I'm gonna start referring to that particular permutation of the Ridiculously Average (White) Guy trope as "pulling a John Diggle," and I'm sideeying the hell out of it, to be perfectly honest.

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.

When Ur Fave Is Problematic: Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, and Fandom Responses to Mistakes

Welp, it finally happened. Chris Evans put his foot in it.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner were asked what they thought of Scarlett Johansson's character, Natasha Romanoff, being paired up with Bruce Banner in spite of fan preferences that she be paired with Steve Rogers or Clint Barton (or both!) instead. Renner said that Natasha was a slut. Evans cracked up laughing and said that she was a complete whore. And a large swath of fans on Tumblr and Twitter (and elsewhere, I imagine) got very upset. Another swatch of fans got very upset with those who were upset, admonishing them to calm down and take a joke. It wasn't long before a decided portion of responses were more about other people's responses than they were about the original incident.

Interestingly, most of those who were upset were upset about Evans rather than Renner. A fan darling, particularly in the MCU fandom, Chris Evans is typically perceived as the ideal white frat boy with a heart of gold—the one good dude in a sea of dudebros. Very few people seemed to be surprised by Renner’s comments, but almost everyone was shocked and dismayed by Evans’.

These fandom outcries are pretty common, and they follow a standard pattern. An actor or performer makes statements about social justice issues that are intelligent and thoughtful, thereby putting them on fandom’s radar. If such statements continue the person comes to be idolized by the fandom. Eventually, however, they wind up saying or doing something that is ill-considered, insensitive, or inappropriate. Certain members of the fandom reel with shock, certain other members of the fandom tell everyone to take a joke, and the conversation about the original issue gives way to a conversation about the problematic attitude of the fandom.

And frankly, I don’t know how to avoid enacting that pattern here and now with my own response. Perhaps, I cannot. Perhaps, I should not.

So, let’s take it from the top, shall we?

First of all, and let there be no mistake: Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner’s response to the question they were asked was ill-considered, insensitive, and inappropriate (1). What could have been an opportunity to call out—or at the very least point out—the sexism inherent in the media approach to the MCU franchise in general and the Black Widow character in particular, became a pile on. It probably was not intended to be, but that's what it was. When faced with a chance to do something positive, these men instead did something negative. They made light of an ugly stereotype about women that is fundamentally grounded in a double standard that normalizes misogyny and male supremacy: men who play the field are studs; women who play the field are skanks (2).

It’s a disgusting, oppressive, and boring trope, and the people who were disappointed to see it perpetuated by some of their favorite actors were not wrong to be disappointed or to want to have a discussion about it. Yes, it was just a joke. But it wasn't a very good joke. And it's worth having a civilized conversation about a) why it wasn't a very good joke and b) why it is so easy for people to tell these sorts of not-very-good jokes without really thinking about it.

Which brings us to our second point: telling people to shut up and take a joke when they are upset about something is an inadequate and unhelpful response to such a conversation. Everyone has the right to dislike a joke—to think it was discriminatory or stigmatizing, to think that it was inconsiderate, to think that it was just not funny—and they have the right to express their dissatisfaction. You don’t have to agree with them, but you can’t really tell them to shut up and get over it either.

The thing about problematic performers, productions, actions, and statements is that everyone’s line in the sand lies along on a slightly different axis. We’re all pretty much agreed that if you can’t like problematic things then you can’t like anything at all. We’re less clear on the idea that different people are going to have different ideas about what is too problematic to be acceptable.

This gets us to our third, and final, point. We’ve reeled with disappointment, we’ve been told to learn to take a joke, and now we’re simmering with resentment at the fans who attempted to silence us or otherwise remained silent themselves. But the thing is that, for some people, the sexism demonstrated by Evans and Renner was simply not problematic enough. It didn’t cross their line. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t aware of, and/or frustrated by, it. It simply means that it didn’t cross their individual line. And just as telling people who are upset to take a joke is neither appropriate nor productive, telling people who decide that they are going to like something in spite of its problematic nature that they are wrong to do so is neither appropriate nor productive.

Now, certainly, there’s a value in critiquing the ways in which fandom falls short of its claims to fairness and equality—just as there is a value in critiquing the actions of people who fall short of social ideals. But the line between critique and shaming can get awfully thin in situations like this. When these spurts of outrage ripple through the fandom—as they inevitability do (I remember how disappointed fandom was when Anthony Mackie said that Selma failed not because of racism but because of America’s racism conversation fatigue; how let down we were when Scarlett Johansson accepted the title role in the upcoming live-action Ghost in the Shell remake)—I cannot help but be struck by the notion that, intentional or not, fan responses often run the risk of translating into a metaphorical public whipping.

For better or worse, we now have the technological tools to enact a call out culture that, in my opinion, is fatally based on the patently false notion that your fave (and you yourself) will never be problematic, and therefore will never need an empathetic critical response, and therefore will never need to moderate your own responses to other people's verbal mishaps. And this misapprehension is particularly dangerous in an era of online shaming, self-righteous harassment campaigns, and doxxing as a form of vigilante justice. It may be tempting to imagine that such tools can be used safely in the pursuit of a good cause, but the reality is that if you condone such behavior for a good cause then you have to accept it when it is utilized to intimidate activists and silence minority critics and creators (3).

This does not mean, of course, that people cannot (or should not) express their opinions. I'm not referring here to fans who have posted measured responses to the video that point out the context of the interview—which takes place well into a long press tour and involves two notoriously flippant interviewees—and discuss the ramifications of sexism in culture broadly and in this interview specifically. I'm referring to those people who are calling Evans and Renner disgusting, suggesting they die in a fire, haranguing them on twitter, etc (4).

Yes, Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner said something incredibly sexist, and it was hugely frustrating—although not entirely unexpected in our age of constant media exposure. But people say fucked up things from time to time, and incidents like this are going to continue to happen. (I shudder to think what we’ll do when Mark Ruffalo finally says something problematic.) Given human nature, and the nature of humans on the Internet, we need to think carefully about how we can respond to situations like this in a way that will truly effect change.

Notes:
1) And they have already apologized for their remarks. Evans' apology was particularly free of equivocation or excuses.
2) I am not even going to get into the argument that in the MCU Natasha wasn’t actually playing the field. While it’s true that she wasn’t, that’s not what makes Evans and Renner’s response wrong. It would have been wrong regardless of the level of Natasha’s promiscuity.
3) Neil Gaiman's excellent piece on what it means to support freedom of speech raises some points that are relevant for this discussion. In it he notes “The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.” In my opinion, the same rule of thumb applies to shaming, harassment, and doxxing. The minute you utilize one of those tools to achieve a goal, even a good one, you are no longer in a position to rail when the same tools are used in service to a cause that you find deplorable. See also: Ijeoma Olou, “Taking Down Bigots With Their Own Weapons is Sweet, Satisfying—And Very,Very Wrong,” Medium (April 6, 2015).
4) Many of these sorts of responses appear to have been deleted, but several of them remain.

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: "The Blitzkrieg Button"

This review contains spoilers.

Well, things have well and truly been turned on their head now. Howard Stark returned to New York in "The Blitzkrieg Button" in order to reacquire a specific piece of technology now in the SRR labs after Peggy's successful discovery of Howard's missing weapons at the end of "Time and Tide." However, his failure to tell Peggy the truth about his motives cost him, and, in my opinion, it was no less than he deserved.

Around about a month ago, a short (but apt) tumblr text post made the rounds on my dash. It said:

"I can stomach bro-type boys who actually are quite sweet and loveable beneath their bro exterior significantly more than like, guys who study philosophy and write “poetry” but beneath it all actually have the skewed moral compass and heedless self absorption of your common or garden[-variety] bro."

This post strongly resonated with me for the way it struck at the heart of an issue that had been troubling me for a while—the way some men either pretend allyship for the purposes of getting something out of a women or mistakenly believe themselves to be an ally when they are actually, at their core, committed only to a selfish personal agenda. For me and many of my friends, spotting a true ally has become an ofttimes fraught task, as discovering that someone you trust is untrustworthy is incredibly emotionally draining. However, on the flip side, the discovery of allies in places you never imagined they'd be can be a wonderful and uplifting experience.

As of "The Blitzkrieg Button," Peggy Carter has experienced the profound disappointment that comes with realizing a trusted ally was actually a self-absorbed snake in the grass, but she hasn't yet found that ally in an unexpected place. Of course, the dichotomy between false allies and allies in unexpected places is not so clear-cut in Agent Carter as it is explained here. Nevertheless, I find it an apt description of the lines that are being drawn between the characters of Agent Jack Thompson and Howard Stark.

On the one hand, we saw Agent Thompson riding Peggy hard over her continued commitment to the SSR. He said things to her that were utterly deplorable and cruel. And yet, I cannot help but admire that he had the guts to say such things to her face. Thompson has never hidden his disdain for Peggy and her doggedness. He has never disguised the fact that he considers her persistence to be a waste of everyone's time—not because she is not capable, but because she is a woman and the system will not allow her to succeed. Failing at this point to understand his role in perpetuating that system—and consequently his ability to change it—Thompson has been consistently unpleasant and unashamed of his unpleasantness, and I kind of love that about him. Because as a awful as he is, it is nevertheless clear that he has very few illusions about himself. (A fact that was made equally plain in his exchange with Agent Sousa.) Whatever else we may say about him, Agent Thompson—at the very least—is not a hypocrite.

Howard Stark, on the other hand, is a hypocrite. He's a user and liar, and he has used and lied to Peggy—deploying her desire to prove herself against a rigged system against her, not because he has no respect for her but because he has no respect for any woman. During this episode, Howard Stark spent his time wreaking havoc in Peggy's apartment building and ordering her around like a servant. And when his scheme to steal back a vial of Steve Rogers' blood was ultimately revealed, it was so very clear that he had viewed Peggy as just another girl he could manipulate. He claimed to respect her, but his intention was always to use her as his running dog—fetch this, fetch that—just like her coworkers do and with even less integrity. As Peggy rightly noted, when her colleagues tell her to do some menial task she at least knows that they mean what they say.

What we are seeing in Agent Carter is not just a depiction of sexism, but a deconstruction of it—an examination of its nuances and complications. This is not a black-and-white world but a world of greys and grays. And what has emerged thus far is the improbable notion that Agent Thompson—for all his faults—may well be a more redeemable character than Howard Stark is. Thompson knows the system is unfair, and he thinks Peggy is a fool for trying to change it, but he is neither completely oblivious to her merits nor entirely unsympathetic to her plight. By contrast Stark knows the system is unfair, and he thinks Peggy is a perfect mark because of it. He is surprisingly oblivious to her merits and unsympathetic to her plight. His first inclination was to take advantage of her weaknesses, and it never occurred to him that she would be able to look past his manipulation to see the truth. In the end, he had even less respect for Peggy than her SSR coworkers. And that's not exactly a direction I was expecting the show to go, though I'm rather glad that they have.

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.

AoS, Season Two, Eps. 4-8, Pros and Cons

(This post contains spoilers.)

I'm almost up-to-date on AoS again, so it's time for some more pros and cons—this time for episodes 4-8. (Click here to see my pros and cons for episodes 1-3...) There are more pros than cons, and one of the cons is mainly nitpicking on my part, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is still rocking a lot of sexist tropes and idolizing the cis-white-dude. I had a lot to say this time, so let's jump in, shall we?

Pros
•  The writers have finally figured out how to make Ward an effective character.
     I've said before that a show like AoS (which is a live action comic book) needs a compelling and complicated villain against which to pit its heroes, and Ward is growing into that villain. With the twists and turns the writers have given his back story in the past couple episodes, Ward has come to far outstrip both Daniel Whitehall and Skye's father in terms of believable menace. Whitehall is the two-dimensional evil man that you love to hate, and Skye's father is beautifully over-the-top, but Ward's ambiguity makes him threatening in a way that neither of the others are or, I suspect, ever will be. At this point, there's really no way to tell whether his past was truly tortured or if the tragedy of his childhood is just a story he told himself to justify a life of terrible deeds. And honestly it doesn't matter at this point; in fact the uncertainty adds to the drama in a fantastic way.

• Through it all, none of the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., from Coulson straight on down the roster, have been willing to give Ward an ounce of sympathy.
     And that's exactly as it should be at this point. Skye's consistent refusal to give Ward the time of day is particularly gratifying. Whatever happens with his character in the future, he and Skye should never, ever be together. Ever.

• Contrary to my fears, the writers have continued to handle Fitz's storyline very well.
     The writers have avoided giving Fitz's aphasia a quick fix, they have steered clear of magical negro tropes in developing his friendship with Mack, and they have even included some in-narrative corrections of ableist treatment of Fitz by Simmons. I really love that AoS now has a disabled team member character who is valued, respected, and cared for by the other characters, and I love that the writers are taking a nuanced approach to a topic that needs a lot more exploration and media representation. I'd be delighted to see other disabled characters, like Akela Amador, make an appearance as well.

• The will-May-have-to-kill-Coulson-because-alien-DNA-is-making-him-erratic storyline got wrapped up quickly and without a lot of angsty fuss.
     I wasn't a fan of the way the writers rushed to explain the mystery of Coulson last season. It was somewhat understandable given the need to introduce Kree elements to the story for the purposes of developing an Inhumans narrative, but at the end of the day, I felt that the revelation fell flat. (To be fair, the implications are having more of an impact now that they can breathe than they could when the series really needed to get to a jumping off point for The Winter Soldier and then deal with fallout from the same.) Needless to say, I didn't particularly want to see the writers drag out a Coulson-centric subplot that, in many ways, was a rehash of a story that they had already told. However, the story of Coulson's increasing need to carve, and understand, a strange and inexplicable pattern, and what it meant for his long-term stability, was actually very well paced. The writers used it efficiently to advance interesting plot elements without dominating the main story lines and then retired it, and that was a smart move.

Cons
• It's great to see Bobbi Morse, but I really wish we were seeing her as something other than yet another female character whose function is to make Lance Hunter look good.
     Bobbi's debut was really promising. She entered the story with a bang; she was cool and capable, and she didn't appear to be fazed by the fact that Hunter was still holding a grudge against her. For a minute, it looked like Lance Hunter was going to be a Matt-Fraction-esque Hawkeye type—a loveable fuckup with a string of exes who still care about him but can't take him seriously. Since the MCU has gone a somewhat different direction with their actual Hawkeye, the characterization makes sense. But the writers almost immediately started undermining it. At first it was just the constant bickering. Then Bobbi was used to make Hunter look like a better operative during the hunt for Ward.
     (As a side note: Trip was also used this way during the same sequence, and this bothers me for a couple of reasons. First because it aggrandizes the cis-white-dude at the expense of his minority partners, and second because it's just shoddy writing. A few lines of dialogue could have easily made the sequence look more like the team effort that it probably would have been in a real-life covert operation of this nature. Ward knows Agent Triplett by sight; he presumably knows Agent Bobbi Morse [or knows of her] as well. He has no reason to know Hunter the freelance merc. If the writers had staged the manhunt scene as a coordinated effort to drive Ward to a specific pursuer and a specific destination, it would have felt more believable and less lazy. More on that sort of thing below.)
     There are other examples of Bobbi's role as the designated woman who makes Lance Hunter look good—during her meeting with the Japanese demolitions expert when she needed to be saved by him and after her failed interrogation of Bakshi led to an argument-followed-by-a-romantic-interlude between the two—and I can tell you: I am not here for Bobbi Morse playing a lovesick second fiddle to Lance Hunter. Not here for it at all.

• S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to stop being depicted as a happy family and start being shown to function like an espionage agency.
     This is a problem that has carried over from the first season. At times, I feel like the people who work for S.H.I.E.L.D. have no idea what that means. Skye's constant questioning of Coulson's orders and insistence on knowing every bit of intel is a relationship that looks more like a teenage daughter rebelling against her dad than a serious operative working with a superior, and his indulgence of her is even weirder. This is just one example of the way S.H.I.E.L.D. often doesn't seem to be written like a realistic organization. The manhunt for Ward sequence that I mentioned above is another example, as is the way several characters criticized Simmons for "abandoning" Fitz as if she had not in fact been directly ordered by her superior to run a dangerous and invaluable covert mission that payed huge dividends for the agency. The misfits on a bus vibe needs to be tabled; it occasionally makes the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. look incompetent. I'm not saying you can't have a show where a group of professional agents develop family-like ties (NCIS is a great example of a show that has done this trope beautifully), but the agents need to be professionals first and family second.

• The repeated, graphic torture and/or murder-death-kill of women (of color) needs to stop.
     I am not kidding around here, writers. I want you to stop. Just. Stop.
     In episodes 4 through 8 alone, we've had a girl-on-girl fight that ended in death by disfigurement for the loser, an unnamed character who was known only by the codename Agent 33 and who was written in for the sole purpose of being depicted in scenes of torture, being deployed as a double for Agent May, and then a being written out again with a violent and meaningless death (1). (And let me tell you, if there's one thing I love it's expendable female characters. Bonus points when they're women of color.) We've also had the torture, degradation, and defanging of Raina—previously one of the most powerful and compelling characters on the show. We've had the graphic torture, experimentation on, and dismemberment of Skye's mother, who also has not yet been given a name. And we've had the brutal murder of a woman in a classically sexist "Mr. Goodbar" scenario (2). (So remember not to have one-night stands, ladies, because you will totally get murdered and then the story will focus on a married-with-children, middle-aged white dude who is put in peril by the same murderer but totally survives, natch!)
     Please just stop, writers; I'm asking you seriously and properly. Stop.
     There are other ways to show us that Daniel Whitehall is an awful, irredeemable villain than by showing him to be a senseless torturer and killer of women. And, frankly, when you've got your heroes acting in a similar way (Melinda May has no qualms whatsoever about the fact that she just killed a brainwashed woman who worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. before being kidnapped? Coulson is fine with tagging Raina like a dog because she's a bad guy and anyway payback's a bitch?)—when you've got your heroes acting in a similar way as the villains do, it doesn't tell the story you think you're telling. If the point is that the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are still as ethically compromised as the forces they are battling, that's one thing—although in that case you need to have a come-to-Jesus moment soon—but if you want your heroes to be above the forces they're fighting, then they need to be above them. Or, at the very least, they need to be having hard conversations with themselves (and therefore with the viewers) about what price freedom and how to fight a battle of this nature without becoming what you behold.

Notes:
1) EDIT: It has come to my attention that Agent 33 was recently revealed to be alive after all. I will address this development in a future "pros and cons" post.
2) Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1977 erotic thriller that stars Diane Keaton and Tom Berenger. The film focuses on the sexual exploits of Keaton's Theresa, who at the end of the film is beaten, raped, and stabbed to death by a man she picked up in a bar for a one-night stand.

Fridging, Manpain, and the Cis-White-Dude Hero: Lazy Storytelling in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Poor Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

When the show debuted last year, they had the so-called perfect team setup: the world-weary, yet secretly soft-touch upperclassmen, Coulson and May; the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and brilliant (and British!) scientists, Simmons and Fitz; the idealistic, be the change you want to see in the world newcomer, Skye; and the hyper-masculine, stoic yet tragic, cis-white-dude hero, Ward.

You just can’t lose with that many character boxes checked, right?

But something happened on the way to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. becoming a network hit. The cis-white-dude hero fell flat. Oh, sure, he had his defenders in fandom—many of whom continued to support him even after the writers switched gears and made him the villain his character was far more suited to be (Captain America: The Winter Soldier says “you’re welcome,” by the way)—but for a lot of people he never completely clicked.

By contrast, Agent Antoine Triplett (affectionately referred to as Trip), who was brought in mid-season as an affable foil to Ward’s taciturn loner, was an almost immediate hit whose popularity only increased as the season progressed and plot twists revealed the true natures of Ward, his mentor Garrett, and Agent Victoria Hand (may she rest in peace). Initially treated with suspicion by some members of the team, including Coulson, Trip repeatedly proved himself to be loyal, dependable, and a complete and total badass. He turned out to be so popular, in fact, that Marvel is rumored to have given him a role of as-yet-undetermined significance in their upcoming film Age of Ultron (1).

You’d think that B.J. Britt, the actor who portrays Agent Trip, would have been a shoe-in to join the regular cast of the show in season two. (During a Q&A hosted by Comic Book Resources before the season two premiere, in fact, more than one person asked about the possibility of Britt joining the show as a regular cast member (2).) But it wasn’t him. Instead, the new member of the regular cast was an English actor named Nick Blood who had been brought in to portray Lance Hunter.

It’s not necessarily curious that the writers of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would bring in Hunter—he’s an established character in the 616 universe with ties to S.H.I.E.L.D.—but it is curious that they would bring him in as a regular, and obviously with every intention of sliding him into the hero role that was vacated by Ward, when they already have someone—an awesome someone, a someone who is adored by the fans—waiting to take that role.

Think about it.

Agent Trip is, as has been noted, loyal, dependable, and a badass. He’s witty, he’s warm, he’s an adorable tech geek, and he’s a freaking legacy. His grandfather was a Howling Commando, for Stan Lee’s sake. He should be the guy. But he’s not the guy. Lance Hunter is.

There’s an elephant in the room, people: Antoine Triplett is an African-American character.

Lance Hunter is a British mercenary with a heart of gold; he’s a man with a checkered past who just needs someone to believe in him. He’s a cis-white-dude, and he’s ready to be a hero. And, more importantly, the cis-white-dudes who traditionally run everything in the entertainment industry are ready for him to be the hero. They aren’t ready, in any way, shape, or form, for Antoine Triplett to be the hero.

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s hard to believe it gets worse.

But it does.

The casting news about the introduction of Lance Hunter was made during the Marvel Television panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. At the same time, another piece of casting news was made: legendary fantasy icon Lucy Lawless would play the role of Isabelle Hartley—another, albeit extremely minor, character taken from the pages of the comics (3). This news was very well received by just about everyone, and Marvel quite quickly set about the task of fanning the flames of viewer excitement—releasing a first look at Lawless as Hartley in late August (4) and a spate of interviews with her teasing her character in the week leading up to the season premiere (5).

Imagine everyone’s surprise, then, when Isabelle Hartley debuted in episode one and promptly died a rather horrible death (6).

At first, I wasn’t sure what had happened. “So is Lucy Lawless going to come back to life with superpowers?” I asked my roommate, who was watching the premiere with me. “Are we going to have, like, a zombie Lucy Lawless who’s kind of like zombie John Cho on Sleepy Hollow?”

The way Lawless’ character had died made such a scenario barely possible, “But still,” I thought to myself. “Stranger things have happened. This is a comic book, after all.”

In that moment, even such a flimsy origin story was preferable to the alternative: that Isabelle Hartley had been fridged (7) in order to advance the storyline of her male counterpart, Lance Hunter—the cis-white-dude ready to be a hero and in desperate need of a sympathetic backstory to grease the wheels of fan acceptance.

As episode two premiered, however, and Hunter went on his crusade to ensure a proper burial for “Izzy” and do the right thing by her and her surviving relatives, the grim reality of what the writers of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had done began to sink in.

They fridged a female character, played by a prominent and beloved actress (whose death was therefore guaranteed to elicit an emotional response on the part of the viewers), for the sole purpose of providing their new cis-white-dude hero with a conveniently tragic backstory (8).

Lance Hunter might be a mercenary son-of-a-bitch, but deep down all he really cares about is doing the right thing—because deep down he’s got a heart of gold and he was deeply, deeply hurt by the death of his friend. And Coulson can see it. Coulson—the everyman stand-in for the Marvel fandom—is ready to give Hunter the deep and meaningful speech about joining the team and making a difference. And Hunter is ready to hear it, because he’s the hero we’ve been waiting for. He’s the guy that made regular cast, the generic cis-white-dude hero that every show supposedly needs if it wants to succeed.

Don’t you just love him?

There’s a blatant calculation at work in these narrative (and casting) choices that reveal a profound lack of respect for the audience’s intelligence. It’s very clear that the writers are essentially trying to get a Ward-type character right. Viewers seem to like British people so let’s make him British (9), and the straight-man archetype didn’t play well so let’s shoot for funny-man this time, and clearly he needs to be someone people can empathize with right out of the gate, so let’s show him being devastated by the sudden death of a character who is played by a beloved actress. Because even though the viewers know nothing of the Isabelle Hartley character, their love for the actress will transfer to her and, consequently, to her friend, and we’ll finally have our perfect team-up courtesy of some well-placed manpain (10).

And meanwhile, Antoine Triplett—the guy who by all rights should be the guy but isn’t—is left to badass his way around the show’s background scenery, being the dude you can always count on, a member of the recurring cast, probably waiting to make his Age of Ultron sacrifice play.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Lance Hunter will grow to be a character of real depth. Maybe Antoine Triplett will become a fixture of the show for seasons to come and make the regular cast roster in season three or four (if the show gets that far). Maybe the writers have plans that I can’t yet appreciate and will heartily approve when they finally do come to pass.

But the fact that Antoine Triplett has been passed over now is a problem. And the fact that Isabelle Hartley has been fridged in order to legitimize the character who has taken his place is also a problem.

And those problems will stay with the show until someone in charge steps up and works to solve them. Ball's in your court, Marvel. Let's see if you've got what it takes.

Notes:

1)  Kelly West,“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Actor Spotted on the Avengers 2 Set,” Cinema Blend (June 14, 2014).

2) “‘Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD’ Showrunners Answer YourPre-Season Premiere Questions,” ComicBook Resources (September 23, 2014).

3) Andrew Wheeler, “Agents of SHIELD Blooper Reel, CastingNews, Mockingbird, and Agent Carter Directors Revealed,” Comics Alliance (July 26, 2014)

4) Kevin Fitzpatrick, “Marvels ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’Season 2: First Look at Lucy Lawless as Isabelle Hartley.” Screen Crush (August 26, 2014).

5) A Google search of the terms “Lucy Lawless” or “Lucy Lawless Agents of Shield” will return a large selection of these articles, which were posted mainly in the third week of September 2014.

6) Isabelle Hartley has essentially been confirmed as really and truly dead. See Nick Tylwalk, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In Case YouWondered, Lucy Lawless’ Character is Really Dead,” Bam! Smack! Pow! (September 25, 2014).

7) For more on the “fridging” trope, see “Stuffed into theFridge” TV Tropes (accessed October19, 2014) and “Women in Refrigerators,” TV Tropes (accessed October 19, 2014).

8) The use of Isabelle Hartley as a mere plot point, and not as a full-fledged character, becomes even more problematic when you consider that the Hartley character is thought to have been modeled on a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Isabelle from the original comics, who was the girlfriend of canonically-LGBTQ character Victoria Hand—herself fridged near the end of AoS season one. This, combined with the casting of Lawless, who is most famous for her portrayal of lesbian character Xena in Xena: Warrior Princess, suggests that the creators have undercurrents of queerphobia running through their writing as well.

9) As an attempt to forestall any potential but-Lance-Hunter-IS-British-in-the-comics rebuttals, let me make it clear that when I say “let’s make him British,” the “him” I am referring to is “the Ward-type character” and not the character of Lance Hunter specifically.

10) As of right now, the perfect team-up is somewhat compromised by plot developments from the end of season one and the beginning of season two. (I would argue that it has been compromised in a potentially good way.) However, for the purposes of this essay I have omitted discussion of those developments because they are not directly relevant.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Whose Girl Is She? The Intensely Problematic Depiction of Mystique in 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

Warning: Here Be Spoilers.

About a month before X-Men: Days of Future Past opened, I saw a gifset taken from this scene of the film, and I got very, very nervous. The clip appeared to show a Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnscherr (Magneto) who were at odds over a girl—Raven Darkholme (a.k.a. Mystique), retconned to be Xavier's foster sister as of X-Men: First Class—rather than at odds over an ideological difference of opinion. The philosophical difference of opinion that Xavier and Magneto have over how to achieve mutant prosperity is the cornerstone of the X-Men universe, and it is what has enabled the story of the X-Men and their foes to remain consistently compelling since their debut in the 1960s. The crux of the struggle between Xavier and Magneto (and the X-Men and their various foes) is that they essentially want to achieve the same goal, but they have radically different notions about how to do that. Where Xavier and his X-Men favor pacifism and outreach, Magneto and "villains" like Mystique and her Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants favor vigilantism and revolution.

This distinction between the two factions was admirably maintained in X-Men and X2: X-Men United, but it began to erode in X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: First Class. I was naturally extremely worried by the possibility that the exploration of ideological contention between the main characters might have been abandoned in favor of a two-dimensional spat over a female character—a trope that is both sexist and boring. I began to fear that Days of Future Past was not going to be the triumphant return to the beloved X-Men films of the early 2000s that I was hoping for.

As it turned out, I was somewhat misled by the gifset I saw. Days of Future Past did not simply distill a complex debate down to a fight about a woman, and it would be a gross oversimplification to say so. In fact, Days of Future Past did something far, far worse. For in this film Mystique was not merely the thing that Xavier and Magneto fought over; she was the battleground on which they fought—a blank slate devoid of agency or identity, picked up and used and tossed aside when their need for her was gone. Mystique's entire character arc, if you can call it that, hinged on a struggle between identification with one or the other of two men, and at no point was there ever any indication that she might conceivably have been her own person, capable of making her own, well-informed decisions.

Mystique as she exists in the comic books, and in the first two X-Men films, is an extremely powerful character. She is grounded in deeply-held beliefs about her mission to secure mutant prosperity. She is comfortable in who she is as a person and a mutant. She rejects other people's labels about who she should be and how she should act. She is an unqualified badass.

We see this Mystique in X2, when she disagrees with Nightcrawler's suggestion that she use her powers to hide: "Why not stay in disguise all the time? Look like everyone else?" he asks. "Because we shouldn't have to," she replies. And we see this Mystique again in X-Men: The Last Stand, when she continues to help the cause of mutant prosperity even after she has been depowered—illustrating just how strongly her sense of self is grounded in the belief that her cause is just. In X-Men: First Class, however, this Mystique was erased in favor of a depiction of her as a sheltered, naive girl-next-door, whose acceptance of self hinges entirely on being sexually desired by a man. This marks the beginning of the transformation (completed in Days of Future Past) of Mystique from an autonomous character to subordinate tool.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, the horrible dystopic future of a world ruled by Sentinels is precipitated by an assassination carried out by Mystique. So far, so good. (This is what caused the dystopic future in the original Claremont/Byrne story arc.) However, unlike in the original comic book, where Mystique's actions were part of a larger vigilante project that was underlined by a specific ideological belief, in the film Mystique is motivated primarily by a surplus of feminine emotion (read: hysteria) over the deaths of her friends. These paper-thin and stereotypical motivations are emblematic of the way in which the writing team of the prequels have pulled Mystique's fangs. She is no longer a powerful force in her own right; instead, she is an erratic, overly-emotive will-o-the-wisp, desperately in need of guidance because she cannot stay grounded without a force greater than herself upon which to orient herself. In other words, she has no real autonomy.

This lack of autonomy makes her the perfect tool for the primary male characters to fight over, and her representation in this manner is part and parcel of a larger problem of representation in superhero films in general. As Monika Bartyzel has noted:

"The female superhero problem isn't just one of reluctance and indifference — it's one of seriously skewed attitudes. The creative teams behind superhero franchises (and much of the media that report on them) simply don't treat female superheroes as superheroes. Instead, they're viewed as objects and used for male support." (1)

The objectification of Mystique in this film could not be more clear. It is the sole basis on which the dramatic tension is built, and it is visually and narrativistically reinforced throughout the course of the film. Mystique is manipulated, physically and mentally by both of the primary male characters at various points. Magneto moves her body (by means of a bullet embedded in her leg) with his power; Xavier freezes her body by seizing control of her mind. Both men do this to her, without her consent, for her own good, and in defiance of her stated desires. Yet even her stated desires are characterized in terms of her alliance to one or the other of these men. Her decision to assassinate or to not assassinate is framed purely in terms of whose girl she is. Is she Charles' girl? Or is she Erik's girl? After all, she certainly is not her own girl.

In the end, Mystique does not actually make a decision. She merely functions as a blank slate onto which the philosophies of the main male characters are projected.

And allow me to repeat that, so that it is clear. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, the desires and worldviews of the two main male characters are literally projected onto the blank-slate body of a woman who spends the majority of the film in a state of virtual nakedness. She is not a character in this film. She is an object to be used by her male counterparts, an object whose meaning and function are defined by them.

This is, in no uncertain terms, horrible. It is indicative of the deeply ingrained misogyny and male entitlement that characterize our society.

And it needs to be challenged in a major way.

Notes:
1) Monika Bartyzel, "Girls on Film: The Superhero Genre's 'Giant Green Porn Star' Problem," The Week Magazine (May 23, 2014).


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.