How not to review Wonder Woman
June 11, 2017 12:37 PM Subscribe
Though the Wonder Woman movie has received almost universal critical and box office success, David Edelstein's review of it was less than glowing, musing that all the "gushing reviews of Wonder Woman suggest that people are grading on a big curve." His review prompted Gavia Baker-Whitelaw's
acerbic response in The Daily Dot, a piece in Daily Kos calling it one of the most sexist movie reviews ever, and a satirical piece in Jezebel titled Gal Gadot Did Not Give Me a Hard Enough Boner. Feeling misunderstood, Edelstein then
wrote a defense of his review, prompting Drew Magary to
marvel at his "non-apology". Ultimately, Edelstein's review is a good reminder of the point raised previously by Emily McCarty:
we need more female film critics.
I haven't seen it yet, and would appreciate if spoilers could be kept to a minimum.
Honestly the worst part of this review to me was the "Israeli women are a breed above" comment, which shows how some American Jewish Men really hate American Jewish women. Its a common refrain among a certain kind of American Jewish dudebro. Inter-group misogyny and such. ICK
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:54 PM on June 11, 2017 [13 favorites]
Honestly the worst part of this review to me was the "Israeli women are a breed above" comment, which shows how some American Jewish Men really hate American Jewish women. Its a common refrain among a certain kind of American Jewish dudebro. Inter-group misogyny and such. ICK
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:54 PM on June 11, 2017 [13 favorites]
Oh god, that Edelstein quote about 11-year-old Emma Watson in the Drew Magary piece. What. A. Gross. Dick.
posted by lovecrafty at 12:55 PM on June 11, 2017 [22 favorites]
posted by lovecrafty at 12:55 PM on June 11, 2017 [22 favorites]
Can I agree with some of the criticisms in the review, say the framing of the review is remarkably terrible, and also strongly recommend the movie?
posted by zippy at 12:56 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by zippy at 12:56 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
Yeah I'd still say people need to watch it because the Amazonian island was just... CAN I STAY THERE THE ENTIRE MOVIE?
posted by Talez at 12:57 PM on June 11, 2017 [27 favorites]
posted by Talez at 12:57 PM on June 11, 2017 [27 favorites]
People can bring all the spoilers in the world over to the Wonder Woman discussion on Fanfare, where third-act CGI annoyance is rife.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:00 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:00 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
But also go see it if you haven't, it's a lot of fun and gets a lot of things right that would be really easy to get wrong.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:03 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:03 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah I'd still say people need to watch it because the Amazonian island was just... CAN I STAY THERE THE ENTIRE MOVIE?
The panning shot (used repeatedly in the trailers) of Wonder Woman watching the plane go down into the water is one of the most gorgeous shots I've ever seen in a superhero film. I'm sure it will be on the DVD extras, but I have to wonder how much they CGI'd up the island and the waters to make them that beautiful.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 1:07 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
The panning shot (used repeatedly in the trailers) of Wonder Woman watching the plane go down into the water is one of the most gorgeous shots I've ever seen in a superhero film. I'm sure it will be on the DVD extras, but I have to wonder how much they CGI'd up the island and the waters to make them that beautiful.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 1:07 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
Edelstein was behind a really gross comment about Gabourey Sidibe in his Precious review which he got called out for, and he responded with a jaw-dropping "HDU call me racist when I admire Angela Bassett!" response.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:08 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:08 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
And wow, having read the Edelstein review, his complaints are all about virtues of the movie. He's pointing out (with dissatisfaction) all the ways the movie chooses not to do a stupid common bad thing. Wow.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:10 PM on June 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:10 PM on June 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
Yeah I'd still say people need to watch it because the Amazonian island was just... CAN I STAY THERE THE ENTIRE MOVIE
That island is what I am now going to envision at every mention of Crone Island here on Metafilter.
posted by romakimmy at 1:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [77 favorites]
That island is what I am now going to envision at every mention of Crone Island here on Metafilter.
posted by romakimmy at 1:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [77 favorites]
The review was awful, and the defensive followup, which mostly seemed to say "I meant something different and maybe it's my fault for not being more precise but people also need to read better," was worse. The review constantly explicitly referenced Gal Gadot's appearance, and her attractiveness to the reviewer, as the basis for critical remarks. That was not a misstatement, nor a misreading, and it reduces the film to an object of pleasure for the male gaze. It was shitty, and the critic was so blinkered about how and why it was shitty that I am not sure he is actually able to do his job with any credibility. At least, not in films which have women in them.
posted by maxsparber at 1:18 PM on June 11, 2017 [36 favorites]
posted by maxsparber at 1:18 PM on June 11, 2017 [36 favorites]
I've often liked Edelstien's writing in the past but I cringed so hard when I read that last week, you'd think that any sane editor would have flagged the hell out of that. The annoying thing is that Vulture also publishes the awesome Angelica Jade Bastien but her review of Wonder Woman ended up on RogerEbert.com.
Some of the female critics who I try to read are Bastien mentioned above, Dana Stevens, Sheila O'Malley, Christy Lemire and Alison Willmore.
posted by octothorpe at 1:18 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
Some of the female critics who I try to read are Bastien mentioned above, Dana Stevens, Sheila O'Malley, Christy Lemire and Alison Willmore.
posted by octothorpe at 1:18 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
Man, I've always thought Edelstein was a little full of himself in the past and this whole kerfuffle tells me I was way too easy on the guy.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:21 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:21 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Every single word about Gal Gadot in that review is about what she looks like. Damn.
posted by lovecrafty at 1:25 PM on June 11, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by lovecrafty at 1:25 PM on June 11, 2017 [13 favorites]
The only redeeming feature of that review is the takedowns it spawned. I admit to a huge weakness for snark, but challenge anyone to read that Jezebel piece without engaging in some serious snickering.
posted by Slothrup at 1:28 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Slothrup at 1:28 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
Also, I don' care if you're a Jewish film critic, you don't get to write about Israeli women like they are a monolith, especially when you then defensively imply that they have become the monolith you described because they have to deal with Israeli men.
posted by maxsparber at 1:29 PM on June 11, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by maxsparber at 1:29 PM on June 11, 2017 [13 favorites]
Sounds like someone hasn't read the FAQ.
That remark about Sidibe was the most appalling one I've seen outside of a Youtube comments section. He should have been reduced to reviewing movies for Breitbart after that.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:36 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
That remark about Sidibe was the most appalling one I've seen outside of a Youtube comments section. He should have been reduced to reviewing movies for Breitbart after that.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:36 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
Heh, just saw the movie last night. My reaction entirely was "such a fine line between empowering feminism and giving guys eye candy."
posted by Melismata at 1:38 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 1:38 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
I think people are grading Wonder Woman on a curve - the other DC films are so awful that it is amazing they managed to turn out something fun and competently made. I saw Batman/Superman for free and after it finished I wanted to bill the studio for what felt like hours and hours of my life wasting away. Compared to that, Wonder Woman is A++
The line about Israeli women is really gross and then he apologises and says that the problem is Israel. Offering 'but it's true' as a defense for xenophobic sexism just makes it worse.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:46 PM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]
The line about Israeli women is really gross and then he apologises and says that the problem is Israel. Offering 'but it's true' as a defense for xenophobic sexism just makes it worse.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:46 PM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]
And while I'm at it, boy do I hate the word "mouthiness." It's like saying that a woman is "feisty" or "spunky," except it invites you to think about her actual mouth. Ugh.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [20 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [20 favorites]
Daven Edelstein previously called out in Jezebel: I’m Sorry, What?
The Awl: David Edelstein’s Enduring Fixation On Keira Knightley’s Jaw, Documented
Job Idea: Preëmptive Public Editors
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
The Awl: David Edelstein’s Enduring Fixation On Keira Knightley’s Jaw, Documented
Job Idea: Preëmptive Public Editors
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
That review has nothing on this.
Fair warning, review is from National Review. I was ready to break it down sentence by sentence, but refused to allow an idiot to invade my headspace that much.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 1:57 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Fair warning, review is from National Review. I was ready to break it down sentence by sentence, but refused to allow an idiot to invade my headspace that much.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 1:57 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I loved Wonder Woman, but if I was grading it on a curve, it was the curve of the other absolutely awful DC movies. I hadn't let myself hope this movie would be actually good. I deliberately avoided most of the trailers and buzz until just a couple weeks ago, and resigned myself to seeing it on opening weekend whether it was good or not, just to vote with my dollars that I want more of this sort of thing (i.e. woman-led superhero movies). That it ended up being genuinely good, and genuinely moving, third act annoyances aside, was frankly a little euphoria inducing. And oh my god, the relief of Diana and the Amazons being free of the male gaze. I actually read Edelstein's review a couple days before I saw the movie, and I was retroactively furious about it after I saw the movie, because to my mind he got his gross male gaze all over a movie that almost entirely rejected it.
Little thing I loved about Gal Gadot's performance that has nothing to do with her looks, Edelstein: the way she walked, especially in the crowded city scenes. It wasn't that she walked like a man. She walked like she deserved to take up space, and like she wasn't ceding any of her space to anyone else. There was no deliberately sexy hip-swaying, no focus on her ass. Such a nice change, and a great character note too.
posted by yasaman at 2:02 PM on June 11, 2017 [38 favorites]
Little thing I loved about Gal Gadot's performance that has nothing to do with her looks, Edelstein: the way she walked, especially in the crowded city scenes. It wasn't that she walked like a man. She walked like she deserved to take up space, and like she wasn't ceding any of her space to anyone else. There was no deliberately sexy hip-swaying, no focus on her ass. Such a nice change, and a great character note too.
posted by yasaman at 2:02 PM on June 11, 2017 [38 favorites]
That review has nothing on this.
Hmm. What could "this" be, I ask myself. Oh, the National Review. Not something I read often (and certainly not my first choice for arts and entertainment reporting) but I like to hear things from a variety of points of view. Let's give this a chance.
What Does a Wonder Womanchild Want?
Kind of a dismissive, needlessly antagonistic headline.
by Armond White
Life is too short. [closes window]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:05 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
Hmm. What could "this" be, I ask myself. Oh, the National Review. Not something I read often (and certainly not my first choice for arts and entertainment reporting) but I like to hear things from a variety of points of view. Let's give this a chance.
What Does a Wonder Womanchild Want?
Kind of a dismissive, needlessly antagonistic headline.
by Armond White
Life is too short. [closes window]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:05 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
Armond White seems to have styled himself after the world's real villains — super-noxious contrarians for whom everything is a game of nasty intellectual one-upmanship — so the fact that he didn't write a column rooting for the Germans is a bit of a surprise.
posted by maxsparber at 2:08 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by maxsparber at 2:08 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
That island is what I am now going to envision at every mention of Crone Island here on Metafilter.
Yes! OMG, I just about lost my mind in the theater when I saw it! And because I was there with a pack of non-Mefites, there was no one I could tell.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:16 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
Yes! OMG, I just about lost my mind in the theater when I saw it! And because I was there with a pack of non-Mefites, there was no one I could tell.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:16 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
Omg the National Review. "This 'She-ro' status might satisfy comic-book fans who found it difficult to accept the spiritual complexity of Snyder’s male superheroes" -- was he watching the same Snyder movies as the rest of us?
posted by Slothrup at 2:21 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Slothrup at 2:21 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
All of this bullshit about how the movie is being "graded on a curve" really only makes sense if you think that the fact it's about Wonder Woman is unimportant. Like, these people want to treat the decision to do a story about a female superhero with the cultural significance of Wonder Woman as somehow extrinsic to the quality of the movie.
And it becomes really obvious why - it lets them downplay any threatening feminist interpretations, and chide women who are excited to finally see something like it on screen.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:24 PM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]
And it becomes really obvious why - it lets them downplay any threatening feminist interpretations, and chide women who are excited to finally see something like it on screen.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:24 PM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]
Holy shit, how does one use "alluring" and "prepubescent" in the same sentence, as Edelstein did in his review of the first HP movie???
posted by praemunire at 2:25 PM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 2:25 PM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]
while there's probably some space where 'reviews got a relieved nudge because movie was way better than expected' and 'that review gave me wayy more information about the turgidity conditions for David Edelstein's boner' could both be true, the worst I've heard about it is the ending is a bit dumb, and by blockbuster standards that's almost expected at this point?
posted by Sebmojo at 2:32 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Sebmojo at 2:32 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah, that thing about 11-year-old Emma Watson is something else. I have no idea how that got past an editor, and I have no idea how anyone can read anything he's written subsequently without feeling icky.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:33 PM on June 11, 2017 [9 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:33 PM on June 11, 2017 [9 favorites]
The things I didn't like about it were the same things I don't like about most DC movies. The pacing is weird, it kind of simmers for a while and then rapidly escalates to world ending proportions and a huge CGI fight, and emotional motivations are a little thin.
It contrasts well against Captain America: The First Avenger where we're shown a sustained campaign against an organization that naturally culminates in a final battle that involves a large operation in addition to the protagonist. It still feels like it organically leads to the showdown between our hero and their nemesis.
It's got a some great action sequences and fun scenes. The penchant for DC movies to apply that 'grimdark' filter to their movies kinda works in this setting. Gadot is fantastic in every scene, she really nailed the character and Pine is great as WWII Chris Pine (he gets beamed fewer places). I kinda miss how she was so joyous jumping into battle in Dawn of Justice but the story made it necessary. I think it's the best DC movie so far. I expect Wonder Woman will be the best part of the upcoming Justice League movie too with tough competition from a cool Aqua Man.
I think it's a better movie than Thor I and II (though I still like the 'Thor in the normal world' bits) and maybe better than Iron Man II. It will probably be the first DC movies that Mrs. VTX and I watch multiple times which is high praise. I'm glad we saw it in the theater too.
I do wish that her outfit had more substantial shoulder straps and the skirt could have been longer with more layered segments. I think it should look more like Greek hoplite armor, basically.
I think it would have worked better if they had spent basically the whole movie on the island. Then we could have seen Diana and Steve build more of a relationship and build more mystery behind Diana's real origins and purpose. Have a second invasion by the guys looking for Steve where Diana discovers the extent of her true powers before convincing the Amazons to follow her as she takes out the base full of folks who seem to be able to find their island. They become convinced that Aries is actually behind this after all and anyway that scientist lady and her boss escaped. Well, it looks like Diana and her new friend Steve have to go after her...in the sequel. Without spoiling too much, that would let the sequel draw out the rest of the story so that it doesn't seem to hurtle through the rest of the plot points.
posted by VTX at 2:34 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
It contrasts well against Captain America: The First Avenger where we're shown a sustained campaign against an organization that naturally culminates in a final battle that involves a large operation in addition to the protagonist. It still feels like it organically leads to the showdown between our hero and their nemesis.
It's got a some great action sequences and fun scenes. The penchant for DC movies to apply that 'grimdark' filter to their movies kinda works in this setting. Gadot is fantastic in every scene, she really nailed the character and Pine is great as WWII Chris Pine (he gets beamed fewer places). I kinda miss how she was so joyous jumping into battle in Dawn of Justice but the story made it necessary. I think it's the best DC movie so far. I expect Wonder Woman will be the best part of the upcoming Justice League movie too with tough competition from a cool Aqua Man.
I think it's a better movie than Thor I and II (though I still like the 'Thor in the normal world' bits) and maybe better than Iron Man II. It will probably be the first DC movies that Mrs. VTX and I watch multiple times which is high praise. I'm glad we saw it in the theater too.
I do wish that her outfit had more substantial shoulder straps and the skirt could have been longer with more layered segments. I think it should look more like Greek hoplite armor, basically.
I think it would have worked better if they had spent basically the whole movie on the island. Then we could have seen Diana and Steve build more of a relationship and build more mystery behind Diana's real origins and purpose. Have a second invasion by the guys looking for Steve where Diana discovers the extent of her true powers before convincing the Amazons to follow her as she takes out the base full of folks who seem to be able to find their island. They become convinced that Aries is actually behind this after all and anyway that scientist lady and her boss escaped. Well, it looks like Diana and her new friend Steve have to go after her...in the sequel. Without spoiling too much, that would let the sequel draw out the rest of the story so that it doesn't seem to hurtle through the rest of the plot points.
posted by VTX at 2:34 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers.
Maybe not from straight men. As we know from the movie, though, they're hardly necessary for pleasure and neither are their opinions.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:38 PM on June 11, 2017 [23 favorites]
Maybe not from straight men. As we know from the movie, though, they're hardly necessary for pleasure and neither are their opinions.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:38 PM on June 11, 2017 [23 favorites]
by Armond White
Hah, I had no idea that he ended up at the NR. They deserve each other.
posted by octothorpe at 2:40 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
Hah, I had no idea that he ended up at the NR. They deserve each other.
posted by octothorpe at 2:40 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
was he watching the same Snyder movies as the rest of us?
Why start now?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:42 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
Why start now?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:42 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
The harshest criticism I've seen towards this movie hasn't even been about the movie at all, but about the actress supposedly being an ardent supporter of the IDF... which is a whole other can o' worms, and likely not without its own undercurrent of sexism, who knows.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:11 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:11 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
He dismisses the flaws of the movie because of the amazing third act. Why would anyone think his opinion has value?
Also, I'm busy retching over the "prepubescent allure" of Emma Watson. How does he still have a job doing this??
posted by greermahoney at 3:15 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
Also, I'm busy retching over the "prepubescent allure" of Emma Watson. How does he still have a job doing this??
posted by greermahoney at 3:15 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
gushing reviews of Wonder Woman suggest that people are grading on a big curve.
Wonder what he thought of the Black Panther trailer? "HURF-DURF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION...REVERSE RACISM..."
posted by fuse theorem at 3:29 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Wonder what he thought of the Black Panther trailer? "HURF-DURF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION...REVERSE RACISM..."
posted by fuse theorem at 3:29 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
I had decided not to watch Wonder Woman based on this article, because it affirmed my impression that Rotten Tomatoes inflates scores. More and more I'm getting the experience of going to 90%+ scoring movies, along with my parents, but not getting the value I used to expect, nor their enjoyment.
I could be missing something, but it looks like a high Tomato score only means that a majority of reviews were positive. That's totally different from a grading system where reviews are assigned a 10-point scale and the final score is the average score. If every critic awards a Tomato, that could still mean the overall movie was a weak positive by each review, but a 90%+ overall, which is misleading. So, unless there's some additional psychology that maps such aggregated weak scores into a precise rating, I don't know how to separate marketing from critical evaluation. Based on its own description on the website, the Tomatometer score is not a normal average score, it's the average of the indicator function on each individual review i.e. the count of a referendum. But again that doesn't measure reviewer's perception of quality, in fact it theoretically discards such information from each review.
So with that context, I had clicked "Top Critics", then saw the first negative Tomato in the list, skimmed it (skipping most paragraphs--if it were an AO Scott or Manohla Dargis review, I likely would have read the whole thing, but it wasn't), and my interpretation formed through the skimming was:
a) Gadot/protagonist is the best part of the movie, everything else mediocre.
b) The movie has poor fight scene choreography.
c) The reviews are gushing and inflated: which confirms my experiences of using Rotten Tomatoes.
d) The plot is weak.
I didn't notice the other insensitive lines , except the one about the "grading curve"--which gave me pause and I remember thinking, "Surely he didn't mean the misogynist notion but something more general about comic book franchises, anyways the phrase is incoherent because a curve in grading is actually harder but he's using it to suggest leniency in reviews".
So I wrote off the movie based on that set of plausible, but unverified, claims. My concerns are 1) my limited money/time/mental budget for avoiding evermore typical Hollywood garbage (to put it crudely), and 2) making sure it will be an activity that my elderly mom will actually enjoy. She knew about the film from the Chinese papers, but when I casually brought it up she didn't seem as excited. Which disappointed myself, because I liked the trailer a lot, and as a non-gender conforming boy in my childhood, She-Ra cartoons and action figures (which my parents thought was amusing and didn't discourage) and Catwoman were kinda my thing (and not my sister's, who liked to play with the guy toys).
So Edelstein's follow-up piece makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe I want a pop culture movie story about someone I can identify with better, who's not the straight white male schema, because that's not remotely me. But I'm simultaneously okay with a film critic telling me the way it was done was just in service of Hollywood values and not a great piece of literature. It doesn't threaten me, rather, it speaks to the meaning that I want to construct out of lived experience and social, political, economic relations. Suggesting that mass media has very problematic standards compared to the alien language and ivory tower values of literary critique doesn't mean that one has to dismiss the good and valid aspects of either. Both spaces are important, and it's a more valuable challenge learning how to navigate that.
posted by polymodus at 3:34 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
I could be missing something, but it looks like a high Tomato score only means that a majority of reviews were positive. That's totally different from a grading system where reviews are assigned a 10-point scale and the final score is the average score. If every critic awards a Tomato, that could still mean the overall movie was a weak positive by each review, but a 90%+ overall, which is misleading. So, unless there's some additional psychology that maps such aggregated weak scores into a precise rating, I don't know how to separate marketing from critical evaluation. Based on its own description on the website, the Tomatometer score is not a normal average score, it's the average of the indicator function on each individual review i.e. the count of a referendum. But again that doesn't measure reviewer's perception of quality, in fact it theoretically discards such information from each review.
So with that context, I had clicked "Top Critics", then saw the first negative Tomato in the list, skimmed it (skipping most paragraphs--if it were an AO Scott or Manohla Dargis review, I likely would have read the whole thing, but it wasn't), and my interpretation formed through the skimming was:
a) Gadot/protagonist is the best part of the movie, everything else mediocre.
b) The movie has poor fight scene choreography.
c) The reviews are gushing and inflated: which confirms my experiences of using Rotten Tomatoes.
d) The plot is weak.
I didn't notice the other insensitive lines , except the one about the "grading curve"--which gave me pause and I remember thinking, "Surely he didn't mean the misogynist notion but something more general about comic book franchises, anyways the phrase is incoherent because a curve in grading is actually harder but he's using it to suggest leniency in reviews".
So I wrote off the movie based on that set of plausible, but unverified, claims. My concerns are 1) my limited money/time/mental budget for avoiding evermore typical Hollywood garbage (to put it crudely), and 2) making sure it will be an activity that my elderly mom will actually enjoy. She knew about the film from the Chinese papers, but when I casually brought it up she didn't seem as excited. Which disappointed myself, because I liked the trailer a lot, and as a non-gender conforming boy in my childhood, She-Ra cartoons and action figures (which my parents thought was amusing and didn't discourage) and Catwoman were kinda my thing (and not my sister's, who liked to play with the guy toys).
So Edelstein's follow-up piece makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe I want a pop culture movie story about someone I can identify with better, who's not the straight white male schema, because that's not remotely me. But I'm simultaneously okay with a film critic telling me the way it was done was just in service of Hollywood values and not a great piece of literature. It doesn't threaten me, rather, it speaks to the meaning that I want to construct out of lived experience and social, political, economic relations. Suggesting that mass media has very problematic standards compared to the alien language and ivory tower values of literary critique doesn't mean that one has to dismiss the good and valid aspects of either. Both spaces are important, and it's a more valuable challenge learning how to navigate that.
posted by polymodus at 3:34 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
All else aside...
I could be missing something, but it looks like a high Tomato score only means that a majority of reviews were positive.
Correct!
posted by Shmuel510 at 3:37 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
I could be missing something, but it looks like a high Tomato score only means that a majority of reviews were positive.
Correct!
posted by Shmuel510 at 3:37 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
Joel Schumacher still doesn't understand the problem with nipples on Batman.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:44 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Smedleyman at 3:44 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Mod note: Couple comments deleted. tunewell, go troll somewhere else.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:48 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:48 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
Wonder what he thought of the Black Panther trailer? "HURF-DURF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION...REVERSE RACISM..."
Given the follow-up piece where he sort of lays down his creds as a film critic (lots of important name-dropping), I think he would have immediately thought of blaxploitation in film history. That's a predictable connection to make for an essay about the imagery in the trailer, because it's the kind of discourse we're taught in the humanities at the college level.
posted by polymodus at 3:48 PM on June 11, 2017
Given the follow-up piece where he sort of lays down his creds as a film critic (lots of important name-dropping), I think he would have immediately thought of blaxploitation in film history. That's a predictable connection to make for an essay about the imagery in the trailer, because it's the kind of discourse we're taught in the humanities at the college level.
posted by polymodus at 3:48 PM on June 11, 2017
Holy shit, how does one use "alluring" and "prepubescent" in the same sentence, as Edelstein did in his review of the first HP movie???
Ugh, how the fuck did that get published? If your heart is skipping beats over 11 year olds, you deserve a punch in the face, not to be published.
posted by corb at 3:54 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
Ugh, how the fuck did that get published? If your heart is skipping beats over 11 year olds, you deserve a punch in the face, not to be published.
posted by corb at 3:54 PM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
polymodus, what you want is the Metacritic score. In the case of Wonder Woman, the Metacritic score was 76. Rotten Tomato assigns a binary thumbs up, thumbs down to reviews (fresh and rotten), while Metacritic puts reviews on a 0-100 scale. 70 and above counts as "favorable." In my experience, Metacritic errs towards the lower end, rather than the higher, in terms of assigning values to reviews, but it does give you a more balanced and nuanced view of critical reception to a movie.
posted by yasaman at 3:58 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by yasaman at 3:58 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
> "... a high Tomato score only means that a majority of reviews were positive."
You may want to check Metacritic, which aggregates reviews more along the lines you seem to prefer. They consider the actual amount by which the review is positive or negative, rather than just a yeah or nay. Wonder Woman gets a 76 by their rating, which I will note is nonetheless still higher than the other movies in theaters now (The Mummy is at 34, and Alien: Covenant is at 65, for example), and similar to their rating for Captain America: Civil War, which is at 75. Although obviously there are higher rated movies on the site (Carol gets a 90, to pick a random example.)
Edited to add: Jinx.
posted by kyrademon at 4:00 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
You may want to check Metacritic, which aggregates reviews more along the lines you seem to prefer. They consider the actual amount by which the review is positive or negative, rather than just a yeah or nay. Wonder Woman gets a 76 by their rating, which I will note is nonetheless still higher than the other movies in theaters now (The Mummy is at 34, and Alien: Covenant is at 65, for example), and similar to their rating for Captain America: Civil War, which is at 75. Although obviously there are higher rated movies on the site (Carol gets a 90, to pick a random example.)
Edited to add: Jinx.
posted by kyrademon at 4:00 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
As with many of your comments, polymodus, I think I might take issue with that if I could follow what you were saying!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
Although I do agree that there should be more female movie reviewers, I would put this more in the field of
We need more non-crap film critics.
posted by Samizdata at 4:57 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
We need more non-crap film critics.
posted by Samizdata at 4:57 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
I only get to make two points because I haven't seen the full movie yet, only watched the first trailer (the good one, the one with the arrow freeze-frame and the galloping Amazons and as little Chris Pine as possible) about twenty times. but I still have my two points, which are:
1. ha ha dumb old naive Wonder Woman shaped out of clay (CLAY, can you believe it) and brought to life by the breath of God, what a weirdo, no wonder she doesn't understand men in all their glorious complexity: DAVID EDELSTEIN YOU EXTRAORDINARY DINGDONG, THAT IS THE LITERAL ORIGIN MYTH OF HUMANKIND FROM THE BOOK OF GENESIS, SORRY THE NAME "ZEUS" AND THE INVOLVEMENT OF A MOTHER CONFUSED YOU SO MUCH. if this notion fills you with so much genial befuddlement you are so alienated from the history of Western culture that you are completely incompetent to consider such questions as, are personified forces of evil and gods sometimes "metaphors" even if the people inside a work of art don't evince a thorough critical awareness of it, because they are inside the fucking movie about it? because the only answer you will be able to give is "I don't know what a metaphor is."
2. they didn't actually take all the S&M out. sorry, you extreme dingus, but just because you didn't get to see her sexually tying people to beds with her golden lasso and ravishing them in her invisible plane doesn't mean there's no power fantasy at play. it's just one that is, like her plane, invisible to the eyes of men. men like david edelstein anyhow.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:07 PM on June 11, 2017 [24 favorites]
1. ha ha dumb old naive Wonder Woman shaped out of clay (CLAY, can you believe it) and brought to life by the breath of God, what a weirdo, no wonder she doesn't understand men in all their glorious complexity: DAVID EDELSTEIN YOU EXTRAORDINARY DINGDONG, THAT IS THE LITERAL ORIGIN MYTH OF HUMANKIND FROM THE BOOK OF GENESIS, SORRY THE NAME "ZEUS" AND THE INVOLVEMENT OF A MOTHER CONFUSED YOU SO MUCH. if this notion fills you with so much genial befuddlement you are so alienated from the history of Western culture that you are completely incompetent to consider such questions as, are personified forces of evil and gods sometimes "metaphors" even if the people inside a work of art don't evince a thorough critical awareness of it, because they are inside the fucking movie about it? because the only answer you will be able to give is "I don't know what a metaphor is."
2. they didn't actually take all the S&M out. sorry, you extreme dingus, but just because you didn't get to see her sexually tying people to beds with her golden lasso and ravishing them in her invisible plane doesn't mean there's no power fantasy at play. it's just one that is, like her plane, invisible to the eyes of men. men like david edelstein anyhow.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:07 PM on June 11, 2017 [24 favorites]
On the subject of great (and, incidentally, female) film critics, I like Abigail Nussbaum's criticism so much I read her blog frequently despite having consumed only about 5% of the media she reviews. And she did indeed review Wonder Woman.
posted by valrus at 5:35 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by valrus at 5:35 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
I would put this more in the field of
We need more non-crap film critics.
I actually disagree. There have been generations of brilliant and (mostly) male critics, but their brilliance alone can't solve the problems and limitations of the male perspective. We need to explicitly seek out non male/ non white thinkers, and not just assume that the "non-crap" critics won't have these same issues.
posted by Think_Long at 5:35 PM on June 11, 2017 [24 favorites]
We need more non-crap film critics.
I actually disagree. There have been generations of brilliant and (mostly) male critics, but their brilliance alone can't solve the problems and limitations of the male perspective. We need to explicitly seek out non male/ non white thinkers, and not just assume that the "non-crap" critics won't have these same issues.
posted by Think_Long at 5:35 PM on June 11, 2017 [24 favorites]
oh he is also wrong about the comments allegedly made by his unnamed female colleague, about how everybody got so mad because he didn't pay the superhero genre proper respect. superhero movies are garbage (oh yes) and he can be disdainful of them all he wants without enraging women like me and also everybody else. this one is different.
since he mentions Buffy, just as if he'd seen the show and understood any of it: Gal Gadot has that special Sarah Michelle Gellar quality of inspiring adoration without requiring any identification at all. this would not be a special quality in an actress or a character played by her if the world and media weren't so sexist, but they are. It is a quality nobody in their right mind would think of ascribing to e.g. Scarlett Johanssen for example, or any actress in a naturalistic drama. usually, women in or out of superhero movies are written to be cute fuck-ups, so men can enjoy looking at them and women, being the insecure slow-witted literal thinkers we are, can imagine we are them. relatability is key.
but you don't have to imagine you're like Buffy or Wonder Woman to enjoy watching them. it would in fact be an act of hubris not everybody can even muster, if they're over 10. you don't have to identify with them, because you can worship them. you can adore them. I didn't watch that trailer twenty times because I thought finally, a movie about the modern woman! at last I can see ME up there on that screen! I watched it because I want to gaze at a woman with awe and hero-worship and if I were to fantasize about being anybody in her world it would be her cup-bearer or her faithful attendant. I want, and women want, to see a woman on the big screen that makes me say not I could be her! but I would follow her anywhere. because anybody can be a dweeb who gets bit by a fuckin spider and gets surprise sticky powers, and anybody can pour liquid latex over their nipples and fight crime because their parents died suddenly and this is just how you cope, but not everybody can shine with a holy light of righteousness and have the strength of a billion because her heart is pure.
sure it isn't fair that boys get all the movies telling them every boy is a king and they are all superheroes just like every girl is a princess. sure girls should get those wearisome and extremely dull fantasy vehicles too. sure every new bat- and spider-man should be cast as a woman for the next 50 years. no question, no debate. but this is a different thing and I think it is a nice thing.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:36 PM on June 11, 2017 [36 favorites]
since he mentions Buffy, just as if he'd seen the show and understood any of it: Gal Gadot has that special Sarah Michelle Gellar quality of inspiring adoration without requiring any identification at all. this would not be a special quality in an actress or a character played by her if the world and media weren't so sexist, but they are. It is a quality nobody in their right mind would think of ascribing to e.g. Scarlett Johanssen for example, or any actress in a naturalistic drama. usually, women in or out of superhero movies are written to be cute fuck-ups, so men can enjoy looking at them and women, being the insecure slow-witted literal thinkers we are, can imagine we are them. relatability is key.
but you don't have to imagine you're like Buffy or Wonder Woman to enjoy watching them. it would in fact be an act of hubris not everybody can even muster, if they're over 10. you don't have to identify with them, because you can worship them. you can adore them. I didn't watch that trailer twenty times because I thought finally, a movie about the modern woman! at last I can see ME up there on that screen! I watched it because I want to gaze at a woman with awe and hero-worship and if I were to fantasize about being anybody in her world it would be her cup-bearer or her faithful attendant. I want, and women want, to see a woman on the big screen that makes me say not I could be her! but I would follow her anywhere. because anybody can be a dweeb who gets bit by a fuckin spider and gets surprise sticky powers, and anybody can pour liquid latex over their nipples and fight crime because their parents died suddenly and this is just how you cope, but not everybody can shine with a holy light of righteousness and have the strength of a billion because her heart is pure.
sure it isn't fair that boys get all the movies telling them every boy is a king and they are all superheroes just like every girl is a princess. sure girls should get those wearisome and extremely dull fantasy vehicles too. sure every new bat- and spider-man should be cast as a woman for the next 50 years. no question, no debate. but this is a different thing and I think it is a nice thing.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:36 PM on June 11, 2017 [36 favorites]
And incidentally, regarding the "grading on a big curve" comment -- I would jump for joy if there were somehow an immediate end to the school of criticism which takes the position, "Hm, other people liked a thing I did not like so much. How is such a thing possible? The only reasonable explanation is .. everyone else is lying!"
posted by kyrademon at 6:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 6:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
women in or out of superhero movies are written to be cute fuck-ups
Outside of the traditional RomCom tropes, Woman as smartest person in the room is more common these days imo.
you don't have to identify with them, because you can worship them. you can adore them. I didn't watch that trailer twenty times because I thought finally, a movie about the modern woman! at last I can see ME up there on that screen! I watched it because I want to gaze at a woman with awe and hero-worship and if I were to fantasize about being anybody in her world it would be her cup-bearer or her faithful attendant. I want, and women want, to see a woman on the big screen that makes me say not I could be her! but I would follow her anywhere. because anybody can be a dweeb who gets bit by a fuckin spider and gets surprise sticky powers, and anybody can pour liquid latex over their nipples and fight crime because their parents died suddenly and this is just how you cope, but not everybody can shine with a holy light of righteousness and have the strength of a billion because her heart is pure.
this is a great comment
While I'm blockquoting, here's Abigail nussbaum:
Wonder Woman - Plot-wise, DC's latest movie--and, amazingly, the very first superhero movie in the decade-old "expanded universe" craze to star a woman--is not much to write home about. Its opening segment on the island of Themyscira is overlong and stuffed with portentous pronouncements (though it does feature the film's most distinctive action sequence, in which a legion of Amazons on horseback battle a boatload of pistol-packing German infantry soldiers). The rest of the movie, after heroine Diana (Gal Gadot) leaves her home with crash-landed spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) in order to bring an end to WWI, feels almost like a remake of Captain America: The First Avenger, and especially because, despite some solid action scenes, Wonder Woman doesn't really have a signature moment along the lines of Winter Soldier's elevator fight. None of which is intended as a criticism of this movie, but more an observation that its strengths lie elsewhere than plot.
Near the top of any list of those strengths would be the characters. Gadot plays up the young Diana's naivete without ever losing sight of her innate heroism. Neither the audience nor the characters around her ever doubt that Diana is a born hero, but she also spends the movie in genuine dismay at the cruelty and suffering of the first modern war, and her conviction that this is all the work of the war god Ares, and that all she needs to do is kill him in order to restore peace to the world, grows thinner and less persuasive as the story progresses. [...]
Diana herself is simultaneously unequal to the challenges set before her, and a figure of hope and inspiration whose strength lies, in no small part, in her refusal to accept that she can't save everyone. Another way of putting it is that Wonder Woman earns the tone of bleak hopelessness that infected the previous Justice League movies--Diana's experiences actually justify the loss of faith in humanity that both Batman and Superman take as their starting position. And yet this is by no means a hopeless movie, but rather one that powers through hopelessness, the recognition that there is evil in the hearts of men that no superhero can vanquish, and nevertheless lands on the choice to continue fighting. I don't know if future DC movies will follow in Wonder Woman's ideological footsteps, but they might be wise to, as it lays out a template for setting themselves apart from the MCU while still remaining recognizably heroic.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
Outside of the traditional RomCom tropes, Woman as smartest person in the room is more common these days imo.
you don't have to identify with them, because you can worship them. you can adore them. I didn't watch that trailer twenty times because I thought finally, a movie about the modern woman! at last I can see ME up there on that screen! I watched it because I want to gaze at a woman with awe and hero-worship and if I were to fantasize about being anybody in her world it would be her cup-bearer or her faithful attendant. I want, and women want, to see a woman on the big screen that makes me say not I could be her! but I would follow her anywhere. because anybody can be a dweeb who gets bit by a fuckin spider and gets surprise sticky powers, and anybody can pour liquid latex over their nipples and fight crime because their parents died suddenly and this is just how you cope, but not everybody can shine with a holy light of righteousness and have the strength of a billion because her heart is pure.
this is a great comment
While I'm blockquoting, here's Abigail nussbaum:
Wonder Woman - Plot-wise, DC's latest movie--and, amazingly, the very first superhero movie in the decade-old "expanded universe" craze to star a woman--is not much to write home about. Its opening segment on the island of Themyscira is overlong and stuffed with portentous pronouncements (though it does feature the film's most distinctive action sequence, in which a legion of Amazons on horseback battle a boatload of pistol-packing German infantry soldiers). The rest of the movie, after heroine Diana (Gal Gadot) leaves her home with crash-landed spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) in order to bring an end to WWI, feels almost like a remake of Captain America: The First Avenger, and especially because, despite some solid action scenes, Wonder Woman doesn't really have a signature moment along the lines of Winter Soldier's elevator fight. None of which is intended as a criticism of this movie, but more an observation that its strengths lie elsewhere than plot.
Near the top of any list of those strengths would be the characters. Gadot plays up the young Diana's naivete without ever losing sight of her innate heroism. Neither the audience nor the characters around her ever doubt that Diana is a born hero, but she also spends the movie in genuine dismay at the cruelty and suffering of the first modern war, and her conviction that this is all the work of the war god Ares, and that all she needs to do is kill him in order to restore peace to the world, grows thinner and less persuasive as the story progresses. [...]
Diana herself is simultaneously unequal to the challenges set before her, and a figure of hope and inspiration whose strength lies, in no small part, in her refusal to accept that she can't save everyone. Another way of putting it is that Wonder Woman earns the tone of bleak hopelessness that infected the previous Justice League movies--Diana's experiences actually justify the loss of faith in humanity that both Batman and Superman take as their starting position. And yet this is by no means a hopeless movie, but rather one that powers through hopelessness, the recognition that there is evil in the hearts of men that no superhero can vanquish, and nevertheless lands on the choice to continue fighting. I don't know if future DC movies will follow in Wonder Woman's ideological footsteps, but they might be wise to, as it lays out a template for setting themselves apart from the MCU while still remaining recognizably heroic.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]
That was just creepy. Why would anyone publish that review? And they need to go away if they did it just for page views.
posted by cirhosis at 6:14 PM on June 11, 2017
posted by cirhosis at 6:14 PM on June 11, 2017
I mean everything is published with page views in mind. I'm just sick of the "well controversy brings eyeballs" that seems to be the justification for gross shit like this.
posted by cirhosis at 6:31 PM on June 11, 2017
posted by cirhosis at 6:31 PM on June 11, 2017
Its opening segment on the island of Themyscira is overlong and stuffed with portentous pronouncements
man I like Abigail Nussbaum but I like portentous pronouncements even more. this is a conflict
and who doesn't love amazon island most of all? surely we all hoped the whole movie would be set there. a little galloping here, a few spear-throwing contests there, portentous pronouncements all around, no Christophers washing up anywhere. there is no dramatic function served by a man in a superhero movie that can't be served equally well by a training montage and a few thunderstorms
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:32 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
man I like Abigail Nussbaum but I like portentous pronouncements even more. this is a conflict
and who doesn't love amazon island most of all? surely we all hoped the whole movie would be set there. a little galloping here, a few spear-throwing contests there, portentous pronouncements all around, no Christophers washing up anywhere. there is no dramatic function served by a man in a superhero movie that can't be served equally well by a training montage and a few thunderstorms
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:32 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
Given the follow-up piece where he sort of lays down his creds as a film critic (lots of important name-dropping), I think he would have immediately thought of blaxploitation in film history.
Which I would not find entirely problematic since the Black Panther character was born as it were during the blaxploitation film era. However, a movie with a largely Black cast, with Black characters presenting defiant imagery and engaging in violence does not necessarily a blaxploitation film make. In 2017 I wouldn't consider that a reasonable parallel to draw unless you're the typle of White male film critic who thinks a successful superhero movie with a female lead means the usual standards were lowered for it.
posted by fuse theorem at 6:54 PM on June 11, 2017
Which I would not find entirely problematic since the Black Panther character was born as it were during the blaxploitation film era. However, a movie with a largely Black cast, with Black characters presenting defiant imagery and engaging in violence does not necessarily a blaxploitation film make. In 2017 I wouldn't consider that a reasonable parallel to draw unless you're the typle of White male film critic who thinks a successful superhero movie with a female lead means the usual standards were lowered for it.
posted by fuse theorem at 6:54 PM on June 11, 2017
I liked the part in the apology where he mansplained the definitions of simple words and idioms. That was the best part. Which means basically the whole things was the best part.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:31 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:31 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
I would put this more in the field of
We need more non-crap film critics.
I actually disagree. There have been generations of brilliant and (mostly) male critics, but their brilliance alone can't solve the problems and limitations of the male perspective. We need to explicitly seek out non male/ non white thinkers, and not just assume that the "non-crap" critics won't have these same issues.
Not sure where gender or race determines whether or not a critic is crappy or not. ANYONE from ANY background can be a crappy critic.
posted by Samizdata at 8:00 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
We need more non-crap film critics.
I actually disagree. There have been generations of brilliant and (mostly) male critics, but their brilliance alone can't solve the problems and limitations of the male perspective. We need to explicitly seek out non male/ non white thinkers, and not just assume that the "non-crap" critics won't have these same issues.
Not sure where gender or race determines whether or not a critic is crappy or not. ANYONE from ANY background can be a crappy critic.
posted by Samizdata at 8:00 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm going to split the difference and say both that we need fewer crappy film critics and that we need a much more diverse pool of film critics. It would also probably help to have a more diverse pool of editors who are choosing film critics and assigning reviews.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:08 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:08 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Omg the National Review. "This 'She-ro' status might satisfy comic-book fans who found it difficult to accept the spiritual complexity of Snyder’s male superheroes" -- was he watching the same Snyder movies as the rest of us?
Rhapsodizing about mediocre action movies and shitting on everything else is about 85 percent of Armond White's schtick.
posted by atoxyl at 8:11 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Rhapsodizing about mediocre action movies and shitting on everything else is about 85 percent of Armond White's schtick.
posted by atoxyl at 8:11 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'm going to split the difference and say both that we need fewer crappy film critics and that we need a much more diverse pool of film critics.
yeah, I don't like the idea that as long as there are women and minorities around to be intelligent and refrain from being sexist and racist, white men don't have to also worry about those things. nobody said that but it often seems to work out that way.
like Chesterton said, just because your aunts are your pals doesn't mean you need no pals but your aunts. where aunts = men and pals = pals, more or less.
(that is not exactly what he said. I know. and he would have liked Wonder Woman very much but for terrible reasons.)
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:13 PM on June 11, 2017
yeah, I don't like the idea that as long as there are women and minorities around to be intelligent and refrain from being sexist and racist, white men don't have to also worry about those things. nobody said that but it often seems to work out that way.
like Chesterton said, just because your aunts are your pals doesn't mean you need no pals but your aunts. where aunts = men and pals = pals, more or less.
(that is not exactly what he said. I know. and he would have liked Wonder Woman very much but for terrible reasons.)
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:13 PM on June 11, 2017
sorry, you extreme dingus, but just because you didn't get to see her sexually tying people to beds with her golden lasso and ravishing them in her invisible plane doesn't mean there's no power fantasy at play.
When Steve wrapped the lasso around his own wrist, I was downright scandalized.
Ordinarily I don't like to infer too much about a critic's personal life based on his writing, but since Edelstein keeps insisting on oversharing...what with the Hermione comments and this review, he comes across as one of those creepy male subs who wants a domme as a sexy-posin' life-support system for a whip.
posted by praemunire at 8:15 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
When Steve wrapped the lasso around his own wrist, I was downright scandalized.
Ordinarily I don't like to infer too much about a critic's personal life based on his writing, but since Edelstein keeps insisting on oversharing...what with the Hermione comments and this review, he comes across as one of those creepy male subs who wants a domme as a sexy-posin' life-support system for a whip.
posted by praemunire at 8:15 PM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Not sure where gender or race determines whether or not a critic is crappy or not. ANYONE from ANY background can be a crappy critic.
"We need more non-crap film critics" is getting perilously close to #allfilmcriticsmatter in terms of reasoning.(Though obviously not in degree of impact/importance, not trying to compare the weight of film criticism to the weight of black people suffering from publicly funded violence, just analogizing on the line of reasoning.) Yes, fewer crappy film critics is an admirable goal, but when someone is arguing specifically for representation and attention to be paid to their specific perspective, that's a need that shouldn't simply be lumped into some other issue.
If there are a bunch of much better white male film critics out there, just looking for jobs that they are not getting, hiring them still will not solve the representation problem, even if the overall standard of criticism improves.
And yes, if there were many, many more women and people of colour in film criticism, it is likely that some of them would be mediocre at it, or, maybe, if things get really equal, even crappy. Which would be a nice change from the status quo in most fields, where only white men are allowed to be crappy and successful, while anyone who is a minority has to be quite good at their job to achieve the same success.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:28 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
"We need more non-crap film critics" is getting perilously close to #allfilmcriticsmatter in terms of reasoning.(Though obviously not in degree of impact/importance, not trying to compare the weight of film criticism to the weight of black people suffering from publicly funded violence, just analogizing on the line of reasoning.) Yes, fewer crappy film critics is an admirable goal, but when someone is arguing specifically for representation and attention to be paid to their specific perspective, that's a need that shouldn't simply be lumped into some other issue.
If there are a bunch of much better white male film critics out there, just looking for jobs that they are not getting, hiring them still will not solve the representation problem, even if the overall standard of criticism improves.
And yes, if there were many, many more women and people of colour in film criticism, it is likely that some of them would be mediocre at it, or, maybe, if things get really equal, even crappy. Which would be a nice change from the status quo in most fields, where only white men are allowed to be crappy and successful, while anyone who is a minority has to be quite good at their job to achieve the same success.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:28 PM on June 11, 2017 [19 favorites]
Gal Gadot has that special Sarah Michelle Gellar quality of inspiring adoration without requiring any identification at all.
to sort of expand on this in a different direction, Gal Gadot and SMG are both Jewish and I know it's significant to me and a lot of Jewish women I know that there can be that mix of identification and worship/adoration
posted by colorblock sock at 8:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [10 favorites]
to sort of expand on this in a different direction, Gal Gadot and SMG are both Jewish and I know it's significant to me and a lot of Jewish women I know that there can be that mix of identification and worship/adoration
posted by colorblock sock at 8:47 PM on June 11, 2017 [10 favorites]
And yes, if there were many, many more women and people of colour in film criticism, it is likely that some of them would be mediocre at it, or, maybe, if things get really equal, even crappy. Which would be a nice change from the status quo in most fields, where only white men are allowed to be crappy and successful, while anyone who is a minority has to be quite good at their job to achieve the same success.
That reminds me of this, about which I either remember or imagine a previously.
posted by The Gaffer at 8:51 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
That reminds me of this, about which I either remember or imagine a previously.
posted by The Gaffer at 8:51 PM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
The most infuriating part of the Edelstein review, for me, was this bit:
"A vertical crease appears at the base of her broad forehead — her mind is churning. Why do humans kill the innocent? Where is Ares? Are men necessary for anything but procreation?"
Because, of course, this kind of shitty, fuckability-based critique is never truly complete without one of these classic, "Aww, it's trying to think!" moments.
And for the record: You couldn't really see what was happening with Gal Godot's brow during the bit where she was talking about men's utility or lack thereof, because it was the middle of the night on the open ocean, and it was therefore quite dark. And furthermore, even if we could have seen it, that discussion most likely would not have caused her brow to furrow, because Diana had completed her literature-based analysis of the issue quite some time before, thankyouverymuch, and she had no doubts whatsoever about the solidity of her conclusion.
I feel like it's worth going all Comic Book Guy about this point, because doing so exposes yet another shitty aspect of Edelstein's monumentally shitty review: In the scene with the speculation about whether men are necessary, Diana is 100% comfortable her own knowledge and physical power, her own objectives, and her agency as a physical being. Steve Trevor is attracted to her but worried propriety: Diana has other things on her mind, and does not view Trevor as any kind of a threat, so she could give a toss. Diana's focus, her sense of security, and her insistence on acting like a person instead of a woman reduce Steve Trevor to confusion and hapless stammering. It's a funny scene, but there's nothing stupid about it, so it's jarring that Edelstein chose to use a moment from it to back up his suggestion about the Diana's (or Godot's?) visible lack of intelligence. At the very least, this is a lazy move; more likely, it's bald, intellectual dishonesty.
So why does Edelstein feel both the need and the freedom to do this? My guess is that to him, despite the character's backstory, Diana's statement that men are unnecessary is just undeniably prima facie stupid; so obviously so that he can't imagine anyone seeing it any other way. Men are everything! They are the sun, the moon, and the stars! Without them, the tides go still, bullets and missiles deflate in their chambers, and and the mightiest rivers turn to nothing but cold, still mud! Even someone who has never met a man before this week should be able to see that!
And because Diana's statement also touches on procreation, it's not just stupid, it's sexy stupid. And this makes it an easy point of ingress into that enduring-and-endlessly-vile fantasy/trope about how great it would be like to find a super-hot woman who is also so amazingly dumb that a regular, salt-of-the-earth guy (like the assumed reader of the review) would have no trouble tricking her into bed. And then that guy could really show her what she needs a man for, amirite, boys? Hell, she's even asking for it!
I am so unbelievably freaking sick of this crap. Seriously.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 8:59 PM on June 11, 2017 [51 favorites]
"A vertical crease appears at the base of her broad forehead — her mind is churning. Why do humans kill the innocent? Where is Ares? Are men necessary for anything but procreation?"
Because, of course, this kind of shitty, fuckability-based critique is never truly complete without one of these classic, "Aww, it's trying to think!" moments.
And for the record: You couldn't really see what was happening with Gal Godot's brow during the bit where she was talking about men's utility or lack thereof, because it was the middle of the night on the open ocean, and it was therefore quite dark. And furthermore, even if we could have seen it, that discussion most likely would not have caused her brow to furrow, because Diana had completed her literature-based analysis of the issue quite some time before, thankyouverymuch, and she had no doubts whatsoever about the solidity of her conclusion.
I feel like it's worth going all Comic Book Guy about this point, because doing so exposes yet another shitty aspect of Edelstein's monumentally shitty review: In the scene with the speculation about whether men are necessary, Diana is 100% comfortable her own knowledge and physical power, her own objectives, and her agency as a physical being. Steve Trevor is attracted to her but worried propriety: Diana has other things on her mind, and does not view Trevor as any kind of a threat, so she could give a toss. Diana's focus, her sense of security, and her insistence on acting like a person instead of a woman reduce Steve Trevor to confusion and hapless stammering. It's a funny scene, but there's nothing stupid about it, so it's jarring that Edelstein chose to use a moment from it to back up his suggestion about the Diana's (or Godot's?) visible lack of intelligence. At the very least, this is a lazy move; more likely, it's bald, intellectual dishonesty.
So why does Edelstein feel both the need and the freedom to do this? My guess is that to him, despite the character's backstory, Diana's statement that men are unnecessary is just undeniably prima facie stupid; so obviously so that he can't imagine anyone seeing it any other way. Men are everything! They are the sun, the moon, and the stars! Without them, the tides go still, bullets and missiles deflate in their chambers, and and the mightiest rivers turn to nothing but cold, still mud! Even someone who has never met a man before this week should be able to see that!
And because Diana's statement also touches on procreation, it's not just stupid, it's sexy stupid. And this makes it an easy point of ingress into that enduring-and-endlessly-vile fantasy/trope about how great it would be like to find a super-hot woman who is also so amazingly dumb that a regular, salt-of-the-earth guy (like the assumed reader of the review) would have no trouble tricking her into bed. And then that guy could really show her what she needs a man for, amirite, boys? Hell, she's even asking for it!
I am so unbelievably freaking sick of this crap. Seriously.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 8:59 PM on June 11, 2017 [51 favorites]
and who doesn't love amazon island most of all? surely we all hoped the whole movie would be set there. a little galloping here, a few spear-throwing contests there, portentous pronouncements all around, no Christophers washing up anywhere. there is no dramatic function served by a man in a superhero movie that can't be served equally well by a training montage and a few thunderstorms
And a martial arts tournament. There's no problem so intractable or complex that it can't be solved with a martial arts tournament
I know at least one person who would have been happy if the entire movie had been on the island, with the major conflict being Meghara and Evrayle and others competing for Diana's affections. But maybe we read too many shoujo manga.
Anyway, looking forward to the time when we don't even need to say "we need more women reviewers". Or directors. Or movies that are centered on women.
posted by happyroach at 9:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
And a martial arts tournament. There's no problem so intractable or complex that it can't be solved with a martial arts tournament
I know at least one person who would have been happy if the entire movie had been on the island, with the major conflict being Meghara and Evrayle and others competing for Diana's affections. But maybe we read too many shoujo manga.
Anyway, looking forward to the time when we don't even need to say "we need more women reviewers". Or directors. Or movies that are centered on women.
posted by happyroach at 9:12 PM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
I think Wonder Woman is getting a boost for a number of reasons that no amount of Zapruder Film-esque analysis of the roundhouse kick from frames 84197 thru 84327 are going to reveal, which, yeah, makes sentences like "Alas, much of her fighting is computer-enhanced" just downright puzzling. Say it isn't so! Next you'll tell me Henry Cavill can't fly and Benedict Cumberbatch is unable to travel backwards through time!
Wonder Woman is part of the Holy Trinity of comic book characters. Your grandparents probably won't know who The Vision, or Drax the Destroyer are, but it's a pretty safe bet they've heard of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Since Snyder has spent quality time making Bats and Supes spiritually complex (AKA brooding angst pits*) everyone who is a fan has been muttering "Don't screw this up! Don't screw this up! Don't screw this up! under their breaths. And lo and behold, Jenkins didn't. And now everyone's like "There's hope for the DC Extended Universe!!!"
Beyond that, current events make this movie especially relevant to it's audience. There's a previous case of this. In the super hero genre even; Sam Raimi's Spider-Man got a huge boost in audience feels because of the September 11th attacks. A New York superhero was what America needed at that precise moment in time. (And it still has a lower Rotten Tomatoes score than Wonder Woman.) Pretending that a movie that gives it's audience the feels is, somehow, cheating is being out of touch with what cinema is.
*Also, Brooding Angst Pit is my new Gwar cover band.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:22 PM on June 11, 2017 [6 favorites]
Wonder Woman is part of the Holy Trinity of comic book characters. Your grandparents probably won't know who The Vision, or Drax the Destroyer are, but it's a pretty safe bet they've heard of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Since Snyder has spent quality time making Bats and Supes spiritually complex (AKA brooding angst pits*) everyone who is a fan has been muttering "Don't screw this up! Don't screw this up! Don't screw this up! under their breaths. And lo and behold, Jenkins didn't. And now everyone's like "There's hope for the DC Extended Universe!!!"
Beyond that, current events make this movie especially relevant to it's audience. There's a previous case of this. In the super hero genre even; Sam Raimi's Spider-Man got a huge boost in audience feels because of the September 11th attacks. A New York superhero was what America needed at that precise moment in time. (And it still has a lower Rotten Tomatoes score than Wonder Woman.) Pretending that a movie that gives it's audience the feels is, somehow, cheating is being out of touch with what cinema is.
*Also, Brooding Angst Pit is my new Gwar cover band.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:22 PM on June 11, 2017 [6 favorites]
Well, I was dissapointed by the movie, thought it was pretty bad, but this review is... Is just... Ugh!!! So now I feel like I wasted time watching the film, and then I wasted time reading that total dick review the crappy film. Entirely too much time spent on WW. I'm moving on now. Hopefully Valerian and Blade Runner will be good.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 9:52 PM on June 11, 2017
posted by WalkerWestridge at 9:52 PM on June 11, 2017
I know at least one person who would have been happy if the entire movie had been on the island, with the major conflict being Meghara and Evrayle and others competing for Diana's affections. But maybe we read too many shoujo manga.
Everyone I know - literally everyone, all genders, all orientations - would be thrilled with this movie. We would watch the Themiscryan Senate C-Span style. We would be happy with endless training montages. Add in lesbian soap opera drama and I see no reason for any of us to ever leave the house again.
The part on Themiscrya was the best, and then the movie got worse as more men were added.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:20 AM on June 12, 2017 [13 favorites]
Everyone I know - literally everyone, all genders, all orientations - would be thrilled with this movie. We would watch the Themiscryan Senate C-Span style. We would be happy with endless training montages. Add in lesbian soap opera drama and I see no reason for any of us to ever leave the house again.
The part on Themiscrya was the best, and then the movie got worse as more men were added.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:20 AM on June 12, 2017 [13 favorites]
Pretending that a movie that gives it's audience the feels is, somehow, cheating is being out of touch with what cinema is.
I feel it's just the constant conceit that anything empathic, emotional or with any level of artistic craft by women is 'insincere'. See, for example, Lana del Rey.
posted by signal at 7:49 AM on June 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
I feel it's just the constant conceit that anything empathic, emotional or with any level of artistic craft by women is 'insincere'. See, for example, Lana del Rey.
posted by signal at 7:49 AM on June 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Edelstein has a lot of problems, but I think that one of them is that he's kind of a throwback to an era before our current pop culture moment. He still really believes in the highbrow/lowbrow divide, and he doesn't really have the tools to engage seriously with anything he thinks of as lowbrow. And he still thinks that the penis feelings of middle-class, white, straight, cis dudes are the stuff of great art and deep philosophical musings, so when he doesn't have anything meaningful to say about something because it's lowbrow, he reverts to talking about his boner. And not only is that sexist and objectifying, it's also really stodgy and out-of-touch. He shouldn't be New York's movie critic because he's a sexist creep, but he also shouldn't be New York's movie critic because he's still writing like it's 1978.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:02 AM on June 12, 2017 [16 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:02 AM on June 12, 2017 [16 favorites]
I've been thinking about this "grading on a curve" thing. As some of you might know, I am an arts journalist and critic, and have been for more than half my life. In my experience, all art is graded on a curve, or, generally, on several curves.
There is no absolute for excellence in art. So we judge art by comparing it against what we like in art, and what we have determined to be masterful of what we like. That's the curve that we create, and an honest critic discusses the curve and allows that it is personal and idiosyncratic.
But the phrase "grading on a curve" suggests that there is something illegitimate about the grade, just as, as signal says above, there is frequently a charge that the experience of enjoying this art is insincere.
I think it is a poisonous phrase, because I generally see it lobbed against art like this, ignoring that many audience members are, in fact, having profound, sincere responses to the work. It dismisses their responses by suggesting that they have a curve, but other lauded art doesn't, and that their curve is suspect, while there is nothing suspect about the unspoken curve used to judge other art.
And completely unsurprisingly, it's always films made by white male artists and loved by white male critics that are somehow curve free, and everything else has a curve. And that sucks. It's just more of the presumption that whiteness and maleness is some dispassionate neutral.
I was at a theater festival years ago, and had a friend read a play, which the audience loved but baffled the respondent. "I don't even understand what you're doing here," he said, "but obviously your audience does, and I have to honor that."
I've remembered this always. Even when I don't particular like or understand a piece of art, it is entirely possible the work wasn't meant for me, and that the audience is coming to it with a different and equally valid set of expectations and values.
Always honor the audience's responses as valid and legitimate. If you don't share them, that's okay, but it doesn't mean the art failed.
posted by maxsparber at 8:03 AM on June 12, 2017 [38 favorites]
There is no absolute for excellence in art. So we judge art by comparing it against what we like in art, and what we have determined to be masterful of what we like. That's the curve that we create, and an honest critic discusses the curve and allows that it is personal and idiosyncratic.
But the phrase "grading on a curve" suggests that there is something illegitimate about the grade, just as, as signal says above, there is frequently a charge that the experience of enjoying this art is insincere.
I think it is a poisonous phrase, because I generally see it lobbed against art like this, ignoring that many audience members are, in fact, having profound, sincere responses to the work. It dismisses their responses by suggesting that they have a curve, but other lauded art doesn't, and that their curve is suspect, while there is nothing suspect about the unspoken curve used to judge other art.
And completely unsurprisingly, it's always films made by white male artists and loved by white male critics that are somehow curve free, and everything else has a curve. And that sucks. It's just more of the presumption that whiteness and maleness is some dispassionate neutral.
I was at a theater festival years ago, and had a friend read a play, which the audience loved but baffled the respondent. "I don't even understand what you're doing here," he said, "but obviously your audience does, and I have to honor that."
I've remembered this always. Even when I don't particular like or understand a piece of art, it is entirely possible the work wasn't meant for me, and that the audience is coming to it with a different and equally valid set of expectations and values.
Always honor the audience's responses as valid and legitimate. If you don't share them, that's okay, but it doesn't mean the art failed.
posted by maxsparber at 8:03 AM on June 12, 2017 [38 favorites]
Edelstein has a lot of problems, but I think that one of them is that he's kind of a throwback to an era before our current pop culture moment.
Edelstein is a modern-day John Simon. And that's not meant to be a compliment. I like to think that if Simon wrote the stuff now that he wrote then (if you have a [very] strong stomach, read these letters about his review of Midsummer Night's Dream and his response), New York Magazine would fire his sorry misogynist, racist ass. But Edelstein suggests that they wouldn't. It's really dispiriting.
posted by holborne at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Edelstein is a modern-day John Simon. And that's not meant to be a compliment. I like to think that if Simon wrote the stuff now that he wrote then (if you have a [very] strong stomach, read these letters about his review of Midsummer Night's Dream and his response), New York Magazine would fire his sorry misogynist, racist ass. But Edelstein suggests that they wouldn't. It's really dispiriting.
posted by holborne at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Holy crap, Simon really goes beyond the pale (excuse the expression) in his response. "Use conspicuous non-Caucasians as Caucasians, men as women, women as men, dwarfs [sic] or giants as ordinary people, round pegs in square holes, etc., and you deflect attention from what the play is about and undermine it." Imagine what he'd have thought of Peter Dinklage in anything besides Game of Thrones. Or, you know, the long history of cross-gender casting, going back to Shakespeare's time, if not earlier. He cites the possibility of a black Romeo as "a confusing double exposure", and later says that he'd allow it--if whiteface was used, and the actor learned "standard stage English." Christ, what an asshole.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:23 AM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:23 AM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Oh, he was a vile man. Absolutely vile. He's still with us, although NY Mag finally did fire him, way too late, in around 2005. He has a blog, I think.
Yeah, ok, buddy -- you're watching a play about fairies turning a man into a donkey, and it takes you out of the play to have a black actor playing one of the roles. Like I said, a vile man. And Edelstein carries on his tradition.
posted by holborne at 9:44 AM on June 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Yeah, ok, buddy -- you're watching a play about fairies turning a man into a donkey, and it takes you out of the play to have a black actor playing one of the roles. Like I said, a vile man. And Edelstein carries on his tradition.
posted by holborne at 9:44 AM on June 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
I think many of us have an anti-reliable critic, and that person for me, for like twenty years, has been Edelstein. I despise his criticism to the point of despising him personally,
What's always rubbed me the wrong way more than anything is my sense in all his reviews that he is utterly incapable of separating his own, barely-examined superficial response to a film and what claims to be his sober, analytical review. He dresses up his own idiosyncratic "I don't like the taste of oranges" as a fifteen paragraph polemic about the objective badness of oranges. He is utterly incapable of identifying virtues in a film -- technical, stylistic, storytelling -- if he himself hasn't taken pleasure from them.
He's my anti-Ebert. I was always simpatico with Ebert in his willingness to not be coy about his own visceral reaction, but to also attempt to go beyond it and ask himself what the film was trying to do, and if it managed to do anything of those things, and how well. Often Ebert would say that he didn't enjoy something, but that it was well-made, or otherwise praise aspects of it. Edelstein will never find anything praiseworthy in a film that he didn't enjoy watching.
This review doesn't surprise me in the least. I think the only reason he's still working is because there are people with the same tastes and annoyances that Edelstein has, and for them his reviews are quite gratifying.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:39 AM on June 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
What's always rubbed me the wrong way more than anything is my sense in all his reviews that he is utterly incapable of separating his own, barely-examined superficial response to a film and what claims to be his sober, analytical review. He dresses up his own idiosyncratic "I don't like the taste of oranges" as a fifteen paragraph polemic about the objective badness of oranges. He is utterly incapable of identifying virtues in a film -- technical, stylistic, storytelling -- if he himself hasn't taken pleasure from them.
He's my anti-Ebert. I was always simpatico with Ebert in his willingness to not be coy about his own visceral reaction, but to also attempt to go beyond it and ask himself what the film was trying to do, and if it managed to do anything of those things, and how well. Often Ebert would say that he didn't enjoy something, but that it was well-made, or otherwise praise aspects of it. Edelstein will never find anything praiseworthy in a film that he didn't enjoy watching.
This review doesn't surprise me in the least. I think the only reason he's still working is because there are people with the same tastes and annoyances that Edelstein has, and for them his reviews are quite gratifying.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:39 AM on June 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
This is the mom of a friend (a short review but insightful): joanellis.com
posted by DesbaratsDays at 11:09 AM on June 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by DesbaratsDays at 11:09 AM on June 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Wait, there is criticism about the fight scenes not being good?!? I LIVE for those high kicks and sweeps and jumps and *fans self*. I thought some stuff felt shoe-horned in - most of the Steve Trevor and "sexual tension" felt very after-thought-esque or like they needed it to check off a box to appease anyone who wouldn't believe that a man and a woman could interact without at least addressing their opposing genitals. And the third act was *sigh*... And, as awesome as No Man's Land was visually, it was definitely set up. But I really LOVED most of the pre-third-act fight scenes! All Amazonian fight scenes, all the time!
posted by jillithd at 12:54 PM on June 12, 2017
posted by jillithd at 12:54 PM on June 12, 2017
Man, it bugs me that his (and his knuckle-dragging apologists') defense is, "you're mad that I didn't give it a glowing review."
Nah, man. Plenty of people gave it mixed reviews. Your review was actively bad writing and managed to be racist and sexist at the same time.
Not only that, it embodies the worst kind of film review - where the writer is trying to show off how clever s/he is instead of reviewing the fucking movie. It's all about these "clever" turns of phrase and how he strings them together. "Superbabe-in-the-woods! Get it? She's a BABE because she's a HOT CHICK, but she's SUPER, and 'babe-in-the-woods' is an antique idiom! I'm a genius!" he said, with one hand on the keyboard and the other in his pants.
posted by skullhead at 1:09 PM on June 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
Nah, man. Plenty of people gave it mixed reviews. Your review was actively bad writing and managed to be racist and sexist at the same time.
Not only that, it embodies the worst kind of film review - where the writer is trying to show off how clever s/he is instead of reviewing the fucking movie. It's all about these "clever" turns of phrase and how he strings them together. "Superbabe-in-the-woods! Get it? She's a BABE because she's a HOT CHICK, but she's SUPER, and 'babe-in-the-woods' is an antique idiom! I'm a genius!" he said, with one hand on the keyboard and the other in his pants.
posted by skullhead at 1:09 PM on June 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
I didn't hate the fight scenes, but the slow-mo was overused and got a little stale for me. It just seemed like the ramp up to the punch/blow, then the slow-mo delivery of the blow/release of the arrow, then the landing pose formula was done a lot. However the No Man's Land scene was just fantastic.
I admit finding the final scene of her leaping out into the sky of Paris ready to...punch the air? a little cheesy, though.
I really, really liked the chemistry between Diana and Steve. I never found his character to even be slightly eclipsing hers, as I've seen some people mention. Generic love interests of any gender are boring, but if you have someone like Steve (or, another favorite of mine, Marie in the Bourne Identity), somebody who is real and has their own goals and isn't just along for the moment when they kiss...that's so satisfying to me.
posted by PussKillian at 1:10 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
I admit finding the final scene of her leaping out into the sky of Paris ready to...punch the air? a little cheesy, though.
I really, really liked the chemistry between Diana and Steve. I never found his character to even be slightly eclipsing hers, as I've seen some people mention. Generic love interests of any gender are boring, but if you have someone like Steve (or, another favorite of mine, Marie in the Bourne Identity), somebody who is real and has their own goals and isn't just along for the moment when they kiss...that's so satisfying to me.
posted by PussKillian at 1:10 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
What's truly amazing to me isn't that David Edelstein typed out his review using his semi-tumescent schlong, it's that he has the accompanying testicular fortitude to be shocked, shocked I say, that anyone would accuse him of such a thing.
Like, take this bit from his defense:
I’m sorry that it wasn’t more clear that this line was meant as approving: “With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers.”
Well, that doesn't even read as approving on its own, and the reason is the use of the word "even", like how I just used it. It reads like he's saying, "this female doesn't even film the hot chick right".
But when I look at the context, what occurs to me is that David Edelstein fundamentally misunderstands who the audience and fanbase for Wonder Woman is. Check out this paragraph:
While this Wonder Woman is still into ropes (Diana’s lasso both catches bad guys and squeezes the truth out of them), fans might be disappointed that there’s no trace of the comic’s well-documented S&M kinkiness. With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers. Slobbering, S&M-oriented American patriots will be even more put out, given that WW is no longer dressed in red, white, and blue but golden-toned for the international — and perhaps these days less American-friendly — ticket buyers. I didn’t miss Lynda Carter’s buxom, apple-cheeked pinup, though. It was worth waiting for Gadot.
First of all, eww, so gross. Second of all, he thinks he's being approving, because he thinks that "Wonder Woman fans" == "Slobbering, S&M-oriented American patriots", and he thinks he's excoriating them. He thinks that the audience for this movie is horny boys, because he is a horny boy. The idea that the audience for this movie is women who want to be Wonder Woman, rather than men who want to fuck her, doesn't appear to have even occurred to him. The curve he thinks everyone's grading on are Gal Gadot's curves, so he's just going and doing thou likewise. In that light, no wonder he's confused that people don't appreciate his carefully-metered description of Gadot's decolletage. Wasn't he just giving the hoi polloi what they want?
But, honestly, the fact that he invokes a woman solely to describe her as a "buxom, apple-cheeked pinup" and then has the unmitigated gall to deny flatly that his review is "leering"...well, I believe both he and Gadot may understand my use of the word "chutzpah" here.
posted by Errant at 1:38 PM on June 12, 2017 [12 favorites]
Like, take this bit from his defense:
I’m sorry that it wasn’t more clear that this line was meant as approving: “With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers.”
Well, that doesn't even read as approving on its own, and the reason is the use of the word "even", like how I just used it. It reads like he's saying, "this female doesn't even film the hot chick right".
But when I look at the context, what occurs to me is that David Edelstein fundamentally misunderstands who the audience and fanbase for Wonder Woman is. Check out this paragraph:
While this Wonder Woman is still into ropes (Diana’s lasso both catches bad guys and squeezes the truth out of them), fans might be disappointed that there’s no trace of the comic’s well-documented S&M kinkiness. With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers. Slobbering, S&M-oriented American patriots will be even more put out, given that WW is no longer dressed in red, white, and blue but golden-toned for the international — and perhaps these days less American-friendly — ticket buyers. I didn’t miss Lynda Carter’s buxom, apple-cheeked pinup, though. It was worth waiting for Gadot.
First of all, eww, so gross. Second of all, he thinks he's being approving, because he thinks that "Wonder Woman fans" == "Slobbering, S&M-oriented American patriots", and he thinks he's excoriating them. He thinks that the audience for this movie is horny boys, because he is a horny boy. The idea that the audience for this movie is women who want to be Wonder Woman, rather than men who want to fuck her, doesn't appear to have even occurred to him. The curve he thinks everyone's grading on are Gal Gadot's curves, so he's just going and doing thou likewise. In that light, no wonder he's confused that people don't appreciate his carefully-metered description of Gadot's decolletage. Wasn't he just giving the hoi polloi what they want?
But, honestly, the fact that he invokes a woman solely to describe her as a "buxom, apple-cheeked pinup" and then has the unmitigated gall to deny flatly that his review is "leering"...well, I believe both he and Gadot may understand my use of the word "chutzpah" here.
posted by Errant at 1:38 PM on June 12, 2017 [12 favorites]
a) Gadot/protagonist is the best part of the movie, everything else mediocre.
She is indeed the best part of the movie, and since she's the central protagonist, that works very well. I wouldn't say everything else is mediocre, but she's definitely what makes the movie work. And nothing overshadows that - it's not like the audience is stuck thinking, "oh, this is dull... OH HEY! There she is again; things are looking up!" Instead, the slower parts inspire thoughts like, "who are these egotistical buffoons, and why is anyone letting them be in charge of anything... gee, it'd be awesome if a kickass lady came in and handed them their... THERE SHE IS!"
b) The movie has poor fight scene choreography.
Is not the best. Dunno that I'd call it "poor," although I agree that the slo-mo effect was not used as well as it could've been. I was not wincing through the fight signs as I often am while watching Arrow or The Flash. (That's often less about the choreography than the character decisions, like, "why would you drop your ranged weapon and rush in for hand-to-hand?")
c) The reviews are gushing and inflated: which confirms my experiences of using Rotten Tomatoes.
Part of the gushing reviews is abject relief that they didn't botch this one like the last two in the collection. As others have mentioned, Metacritic has more "objective" reviews, and a harsher grading system. I found the reviews fit my daughter's analysis: The movie could've been tightened up about a half-hour's worth, the final scenes were overblown, and Wonder Woman herself was terrifically awesome and we can't wait to see more of her.
d) The plot is weak.
The plot is a superhero plot. Hypertrained Guardian of Good discovers evil, must go fight it; even turns out to be more complicated than expected; she will fight it anyway. Plot did not have horrible gaps or problems, no obvious, "hey, if they'd just noticed X earlier, they could've bypassed this entire sub-problem."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:43 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
She is indeed the best part of the movie, and since she's the central protagonist, that works very well. I wouldn't say everything else is mediocre, but she's definitely what makes the movie work. And nothing overshadows that - it's not like the audience is stuck thinking, "oh, this is dull... OH HEY! There she is again; things are looking up!" Instead, the slower parts inspire thoughts like, "who are these egotistical buffoons, and why is anyone letting them be in charge of anything... gee, it'd be awesome if a kickass lady came in and handed them their... THERE SHE IS!"
b) The movie has poor fight scene choreography.
Is not the best. Dunno that I'd call it "poor," although I agree that the slo-mo effect was not used as well as it could've been. I was not wincing through the fight signs as I often am while watching Arrow or The Flash. (That's often less about the choreography than the character decisions, like, "why would you drop your ranged weapon and rush in for hand-to-hand?")
c) The reviews are gushing and inflated: which confirms my experiences of using Rotten Tomatoes.
Part of the gushing reviews is abject relief that they didn't botch this one like the last two in the collection. As others have mentioned, Metacritic has more "objective" reviews, and a harsher grading system. I found the reviews fit my daughter's analysis: The movie could've been tightened up about a half-hour's worth, the final scenes were overblown, and Wonder Woman herself was terrifically awesome and we can't wait to see more of her.
d) The plot is weak.
The plot is a superhero plot. Hypertrained Guardian of Good discovers evil, must go fight it; even turns out to be more complicated than expected; she will fight it anyway. Plot did not have horrible gaps or problems, no obvious, "hey, if they'd just noticed X earlier, they could've bypassed this entire sub-problem."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:43 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
No, see, you don't understand. It would only be leering if described her approvingly as a buxom, apple-cheeked pin-up. Since he said he didn't miss the buxom, apple-cheeked pin-up, that's not leering at all. That's just reducing a talented actress who played an iconic character to a brief description of her boobs and face which is *totally different*.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:45 PM on June 12, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 1:45 PM on June 12, 2017 [11 favorites]
Putting aside all the reasons why Edelstein is gross (and there are reasons aplenty), context matters. It would be impossible for me to describe Wonder Woman without observing the profound effect the movie had on my wife and daughter.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the movie "wasn't for me" as a man in the sense that Beyoncé's Lemonade "wasn't for me" as a white person (because I enjoyed the hell out of the movie), but it is true that my opinion of the movie (even a favorable opinion) is less important than the opinion of a woman seeing a female superhero up there on the big screen for the first time.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 2:13 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the movie "wasn't for me" as a man in the sense that Beyoncé's Lemonade "wasn't for me" as a white person (because I enjoyed the hell out of the movie), but it is true that my opinion of the movie (even a favorable opinion) is less important than the opinion of a woman seeing a female superhero up there on the big screen for the first time.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 2:13 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I found John Simon's blog. "(A) vile man. Absolutely vile," just about covers it. Ugh. In the most recent entry, he goes over all the physical traits he values in women: blonde hair or brown hair, legs and asses, and though he knows that some men prioritize attractiveness of either face or figure, Simon has always required "never less than both."
After winding himself up in this fashion for eight or so paragraphs, he finally reveals the ostensible point of the exercise: This is meant as an attack on a recent NYT article about sapiosexuality.
Simon takes extreme issue with the idea that anyone could possibly find another human being attractive on the basis of heart and mind. As proof of sapiosexuality's bankruptcy, he smugly notes that one of the interviewees, a newly-minted Rilke fan, failed to understand that her date had not actually given her "all of Rilke's books" when they met at an art show, because in addition to the standard, English-language must-haves, there are actually volumes and volumes of untranslated letters, and the date in question could not possibly have carted the complete lot them to the meeting. (Poor, dim darling: If she doesn't know Rilke's full bibliography, how can she possibly know her own mind?) For bonus points, Simon scoffs at the idea of emotional intelligence (contradiction in terms, hurf derf) and makes fun of an African guy's name.
I, personally, have never described myself as "sapiosexual," and I have a few issues with some of the ways I've seen the term used, but holy crap, this is gross. I can't believe this loathesome gasbag kept his job until 2005-- but the fact that he did sure does shed some light on how a guys like Edelstein continue to get and hold prestigious, international platforms.
tl; dr: Edelstein comes from a distinguished line of priveliged asses who write knowingly about the asses of others, and think very well of themselves for it. Also, everything is terrible.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:15 PM on June 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
After winding himself up in this fashion for eight or so paragraphs, he finally reveals the ostensible point of the exercise: This is meant as an attack on a recent NYT article about sapiosexuality.
Simon takes extreme issue with the idea that anyone could possibly find another human being attractive on the basis of heart and mind. As proof of sapiosexuality's bankruptcy, he smugly notes that one of the interviewees, a newly-minted Rilke fan, failed to understand that her date had not actually given her "all of Rilke's books" when they met at an art show, because in addition to the standard, English-language must-haves, there are actually volumes and volumes of untranslated letters, and the date in question could not possibly have carted the complete lot them to the meeting. (Poor, dim darling: If she doesn't know Rilke's full bibliography, how can she possibly know her own mind?) For bonus points, Simon scoffs at the idea of emotional intelligence (contradiction in terms, hurf derf) and makes fun of an African guy's name.
I, personally, have never described myself as "sapiosexual," and I have a few issues with some of the ways I've seen the term used, but holy crap, this is gross. I can't believe this loathesome gasbag kept his job until 2005-- but the fact that he did sure does shed some light on how a guys like Edelstein continue to get and hold prestigious, international platforms.
tl; dr: Edelstein comes from a distinguished line of priveliged asses who write knowingly about the asses of others, and think very well of themselves for it. Also, everything is terrible.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:15 PM on June 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
DesbaratsDays, I just read your friend's mom's blog post about Wonder Woman--I didn't realize how old she must be until I came to the part where she said she bought a Superman comic for ten cents in 1938! I looked at the "About Joan" part of her blog and I have to repost the whole thing--she sounds like an amazing woman:
I love this! "Movies are magical and one of the most important shaping forces in my life. Well, I did also go to Vassar, worked for the CIA for two years, had three kids, founded an electronics company with my ex-CIA husband, you know, the usual. Oh, I also went back and finished my degree at Princeton that got interrupted 27 years before by my stint in the CIA. But now that I'm retired I'm writing about how movies reflect culture and vice versa, winning awards for my writing. No big."
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2017 [17 favorites]
Scratch a genuine movie fan and you are likely to uncover a movie soaked youth. In a Midwestern high school Joan Ellis began slipping off to the make-believe world of the local movie house. At Vassar College, while spending many hours in the Juliet movie theater, she teamed up with a Yale man with a taste for adventure. At 19 and 21 the bride and groom signed into another make-believe world: two years at the CIA. The experience made of Ellis a skeptic, a liberal, a passionate opponent of censorship, and an advocate of transparency.
After CIA she raised three children, helped to build electronics company with her husband, and took on a bit of unfinished business. Twenty-seven years after entering Vassar she took her senior year at Princeton University.
Then the movies began to exert their old pull. Intrigued by the way film reflects our culture (or is it the other way around?), she began writing reviews. Her reviews earned a Critical Writing Award from the New Jersey Press Association.
I love this! "Movies are magical and one of the most important shaping forces in my life. Well, I did also go to Vassar, worked for the CIA for two years, had three kids, founded an electronics company with my ex-CIA husband, you know, the usual. Oh, I also went back and finished my degree at Princeton that got interrupted 27 years before by my stint in the CIA. But now that I'm retired I'm writing about how movies reflect culture and vice versa, winning awards for my writing. No big."
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2017 [17 favorites]
Was Edelstein the guy whose review of the film Wild compared the book author's body to Reese Witherspoon's? Why yes, he is.
Ugh, and what is his obsession with women's foreheads? About Witherspoon, he finds it relevant and necessary to write, "It was only in the past few years, in her evident quest to be America’s sweetheart, that she wrinkled her large brow and worked her big jaw for the sole purpose of looking adorable."
How is this driveler still being published, and where can I fundcentivize an undergrad to sift through all of his reviews and write a paper analyzing his various reductions of women's talent into descriptions of various body parts? Or is his audience already aware of this and happy to pay for more of his uninspired misogyny?
posted by wonton endangerment at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Ugh, and what is his obsession with women's foreheads? About Witherspoon, he finds it relevant and necessary to write, "It was only in the past few years, in her evident quest to be America’s sweetheart, that she wrinkled her large brow and worked her big jaw for the sole purpose of looking adorable."
How is this driveler still being published, and where can I fundcentivize an undergrad to sift through all of his reviews and write a paper analyzing his various reductions of women's talent into descriptions of various body parts? Or is his audience already aware of this and happy to pay for more of his uninspired misogyny?
posted by wonton endangerment at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'm just thinking: if a movie in which men simply aren't admired and centered at all costs is enough to provoke these kinds of reactions, one can expect the entire man-o-sphere to spontaneously combust when Black Panther is released.
posted by praemunire at 2:51 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 2:51 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
or like they needed it to check off a box to appease anyone who wouldn't believe that a man and a woman could interact without at least addressing their opposing genitals.
To be fair, the other reason that Steve is there is so that us men can identify with him and equate Diana to their spouse/significant other. That said, you're dead on about the execution of it. It's the kind of detail the DC movies just can't seem to get right.
I watched it because I want to gaze at a woman with awe and hero-worship and if I were to fantasize about being anybody in her world it would be her cup-bearer or her faithful attendant.
I feel the same way but with more of a romantic bent. She seems like a male feminist's wet-dream. Strong, smart, kind, curious, dislikes violence but is still fierce AF. She's not rude but she doesn't take shit from her partner or anyone else. An awesome person who happens to be female.
I mean, she's Mrs. VTX with different super powers, basically. It's one of the things that made the movie feel fresh for me since it's the intent isn't for me, a man, to identify with the protagonist as is the case with literally every other modern comic book movie.
I'm not really well-versed enough in feminist thinking and rhetoric to unpack it beyond that but I think it's a good thing.
posted by VTX at 2:58 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
To be fair, the other reason that Steve is there is so that us men can identify with him and equate Diana to their spouse/significant other. That said, you're dead on about the execution of it. It's the kind of detail the DC movies just can't seem to get right.
I watched it because I want to gaze at a woman with awe and hero-worship and if I were to fantasize about being anybody in her world it would be her cup-bearer or her faithful attendant.
I feel the same way but with more of a romantic bent. She seems like a male feminist's wet-dream. Strong, smart, kind, curious, dislikes violence but is still fierce AF. She's not rude but she doesn't take shit from her partner or anyone else. An awesome person who happens to be female.
I mean, she's Mrs. VTX with different super powers, basically. It's one of the things that made the movie feel fresh for me since it's the intent isn't for me, a man, to identify with the protagonist as is the case with literally every other modern comic book movie.
I'm not really well-versed enough in feminist thinking and rhetoric to unpack it beyond that but I think it's a good thing.
posted by VTX at 2:58 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
"Use conspicuous non-Caucasians as Caucasians, men as women, women as men, dwarfs [sic] or giants as ordinary people, round pegs in square holes, etc. ..."
If there's ever been a play that this kind of casting would suit, it's Midsummer's Night Dream.
I haven't seen Wonder Woman yet, tho every one I know who has seen it has either liked it or really liked it. AFAIK, tho, there's no Lyle Waggoner cameo. Which makes me a little sad because I loves me some Lyle Waggoner.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:37 PM on June 12, 2017
If there's ever been a play that this kind of casting would suit, it's Midsummer's Night Dream.
I haven't seen Wonder Woman yet, tho every one I know who has seen it has either liked it or really liked it. AFAIK, tho, there's no Lyle Waggoner cameo. Which makes me a little sad because I loves me some Lyle Waggoner.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:37 PM on June 12, 2017
Holy crap, Simon really goes beyond the pale (excuse the expression) in his response. "Use conspicuous non-Caucasians as Caucasians, men as women, women as men...
Sigourney Weaver as the typical male action hero.
Helping!
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:14 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Sigourney Weaver as the typical male action hero.
Helping!
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:14 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Oh lordy, I went and looked up that John Simon blog post palmcorder_yajna mentioned. Now I want to vomit. The most telling line? "Some men apparently even like their women bald—how else explain women with shaven heads?"
How else, indeed.
posted by lovecrafty at 5:27 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
How else, indeed.
posted by lovecrafty at 5:27 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Reports from two Wonder Woman fans on the ways the movies could have been better:
Son of Baldwin & Valerie Complex
My Soul Looks Back and Wonders: A Critical Examination of the Wonder Woman movie
CarlyRM
The Wonder Women movie's treatment of disability
posted by Jesse the K at 5:35 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Son of Baldwin & Valerie Complex
My Soul Looks Back and Wonders: A Critical Examination of the Wonder Woman movie
CarlyRM
The Wonder Women movie's treatment of disability
posted by Jesse the K at 5:35 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Ugh, link bork. Here's the "Treatment of Disability" article link
https://medium.com/@carlyrm/the-wonder-woman-movies-treatment-of-disability-34dd3df945a5
posted by Jesse the K at 7:06 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
https://medium.com/@carlyrm/the-wonder-woman-movies-treatment-of-disability-34dd3df945a5
posted by Jesse the K at 7:06 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Wow, that John Simon blog post is… something. I need to go wash my brain now.
And the comments… especially the string of five or six (logically weak and blatantly racist) self-responses that reach GYOFB territory. Ugh.
posted by Lexica at 7:27 PM on June 12, 2017
And the comments… especially the string of five or six (logically weak and blatantly racist) self-responses that reach GYOFB territory. Ugh.
posted by Lexica at 7:27 PM on June 12, 2017
AV Club: Wonder Woman and the Critical Generation Gap
"It’s when we get into writing about how films make people feel—and good movies do make people feel things—where the new generation of socially conscious critics could teach the old timers a thing or two. For my money, the most important step forward is acknowledging that the traditional journalistic concept of “objectivity” was created by white men speaking amongst themselves. And, if that’s the case, do we re-define what that term means, or do we throw it out the window entirely? Critics should be fair, yes. But if that fairness means not taking into account what Wonder Woman means to female superhero fans, for example, or the upcoming Black Panther for fans of color, well—you’re going to be left behind. It’s a disservice to the filmmakers, to the audience, and to yourself."posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:12 AM on June 13, 2017 [7 favorites]
Always honor the audience's responses as valid and legitimate. If you don't share them, that's okay, but it doesn't mean the art failed.
Dan Brown.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:14 AM on June 13, 2017
Dan Brown.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:14 AM on June 13, 2017
It is reasonable to examine the reasons Dan Brown is popular and acknowledge them as valid even in a negative review.
posted by kyrademon at 5:17 AM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 5:17 AM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
More specifically, if my job is to say IS THING GOOD then saying THING IS BAD BUT PEOPLE LIKE THING is legitimate. He didn't say that, he said THING VERY GOOD, SUSPECT PEOPLE THINK THING SUPER GOOD B/C PERSONALLY MEANINGFUL, DISAGREE.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:17 AM on June 13, 2017
posted by Sebmojo at 5:17 AM on June 13, 2017
Edelstein has a lot of problems, but I think that one of them is that he's kind of a throwback to an era before our current pop culture moment. He still really believes in the highbrow/lowbrow divide, and he doesn't really have the tools to engage seriously with anything he thinks of as lowbrow. And he still thinks that the penis feelings of middle-class, white, straight, cis dudes are the stuff of great art and deep philosophical musings, so when he doesn't have anything meaningful to say about something because it's lowbrow, he reverts to talking about his boner. And not only is that sexist and objectifying, it's also really stodgy and out-of-touch. He shouldn't be New York's movie critic because he's a sexist creep, but he also shouldn't be New York's movie critic because he's still writing like it's 1978.
THIS THIS THIS THIS I don't know how to reply directly to you Arbitrary because I'm on the subway and new but THIS. This is the exact articulation of something I have felt for a while about older media types (especially in NY where I live and consume media) really being tone deaf to not only newer pop culture, but also to the broader political activism and ideas happening right now. I get a real uncritical and earnest "but, do not ALL LIVES MATTER??" vibe, which is sad insomuch as all these guys really need to quietly get going on their journeys of introspection already (they won't be quiet about it, though, unfortunately for us).
posted by Kemma80 at 6:21 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
THIS THIS THIS THIS I don't know how to reply directly to you Arbitrary because I'm on the subway and new but THIS. This is the exact articulation of something I have felt for a while about older media types (especially in NY where I live and consume media) really being tone deaf to not only newer pop culture, but also to the broader political activism and ideas happening right now. I get a real uncritical and earnest "but, do not ALL LIVES MATTER??" vibe, which is sad insomuch as all these guys really need to quietly get going on their journeys of introspection already (they won't be quiet about it, though, unfortunately for us).
posted by Kemma80 at 6:21 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
"For my money, the most important step forward is acknowledging that the traditional journalistic concept of 'objectivity' was created by white men speaking amongst themselves. "
It's interesting that they are critical in those terms because my gut reaction to Edelstein has always been the opposite: that his reviews are always entirely an expression of his personal subjective experience, but dressed up in the pretense of some well-understood, agreed-upon objective standard.
And that's sort of the same criticism, just the other way around.
I'm not, in practice, a strong relativist about aesthetics. Rather, to me it's always been evident that there's a kind of complicated stew of one's idiosyncratic response at a given moment, the subjectivity of one's values and experiences, the subjectivity of what one brings to bear on the experience via one's experience of social identity and class, and then also the more so-called objective stuff, such as degree of mastery of a recognized technique, or an informed subversion of the technique, of convention, of the "success" of a piece of art vis a vis the majority of its audience, etc. This is all part of criticism and I have as little patience for people who just tell me that something is good merely because they liked it as I do when someone tells me something is good because it is self-evidently is so, in all times and places, from within the context of their acquired cultural capital.
Either form of criticism offends me because it's so ... aggressive and colonizing, if those are the right words. I'm very sensitive to carelessly asserted absolutist aesthetic judgments. They push my buttons. My response to just about everything is, well, let's think about this awhile and see if we can come to some understanding of what this work is doing, or trying to do. I'm perfectly willing to form judgments and I'm moderately (given enough diligence and time) willing to make judgments that function as if they were objective.
But Edelstein, all the way back to when he was Slate's film reviewer in the 90s, has just been like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. He's smug, he's narrow-minded in his own way. And, yeah, I hadn't thought about this before the quote in your comment, but I think a lot of this has to do with how white men of a certain generation and educational attainment are taught to, and come to believe without question, that theirs is the standard of experience by which all others can be judged. And, worse, its not that they are even usually aware of this, it's just inculcated in them and essential to their worldview.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:18 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's interesting that they are critical in those terms because my gut reaction to Edelstein has always been the opposite: that his reviews are always entirely an expression of his personal subjective experience, but dressed up in the pretense of some well-understood, agreed-upon objective standard.
And that's sort of the same criticism, just the other way around.
I'm not, in practice, a strong relativist about aesthetics. Rather, to me it's always been evident that there's a kind of complicated stew of one's idiosyncratic response at a given moment, the subjectivity of one's values and experiences, the subjectivity of what one brings to bear on the experience via one's experience of social identity and class, and then also the more so-called objective stuff, such as degree of mastery of a recognized technique, or an informed subversion of the technique, of convention, of the "success" of a piece of art vis a vis the majority of its audience, etc. This is all part of criticism and I have as little patience for people who just tell me that something is good merely because they liked it as I do when someone tells me something is good because it is self-evidently is so, in all times and places, from within the context of their acquired cultural capital.
Either form of criticism offends me because it's so ... aggressive and colonizing, if those are the right words. I'm very sensitive to carelessly asserted absolutist aesthetic judgments. They push my buttons. My response to just about everything is, well, let's think about this awhile and see if we can come to some understanding of what this work is doing, or trying to do. I'm perfectly willing to form judgments and I'm moderately (given enough diligence and time) willing to make judgments that function as if they were objective.
But Edelstein, all the way back to when he was Slate's film reviewer in the 90s, has just been like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. He's smug, he's narrow-minded in his own way. And, yeah, I hadn't thought about this before the quote in your comment, but I think a lot of this has to do with how white men of a certain generation and educational attainment are taught to, and come to believe without question, that theirs is the standard of experience by which all others can be judged. And, worse, its not that they are even usually aware of this, it's just inculcated in them and essential to their worldview.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:18 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
Re "Treatment of Disability" link
SPOILERISH
I didn't read that as a disability (admittedly as an able-bodied person), but more as shame of a personal mistake, because isn't there a kind of suicide pill where if you try to take it but do it wrong, it instead burns part of your face? So I read that more as evidence of a failed suicide attempt? Or a botch of her own poison testing that left her scarred? There were pictures of her without the prosthetic in one scene, so that makes me wonder what happened between those pictures and then what she looks like now.
posted by jillithd at 7:33 AM on June 13, 2017
SPOILERISH
I didn't read that as a disability (admittedly as an able-bodied person), but more as shame of a personal mistake, because isn't there a kind of suicide pill where if you try to take it but do it wrong, it instead burns part of your face? So I read that more as evidence of a failed suicide attempt? Or a botch of her own poison testing that left her scarred? There were pictures of her without the prosthetic in one scene, so that makes me wonder what happened between those pictures and then what she looks like now.
posted by jillithd at 7:33 AM on June 13, 2017
I can certainly understand the criticism. However it happened, Dr. Poison is now disabled, and constructing a story in which a disabled person responds to that disability, or draws inspiration from that disability, to become a mass murderer is pretty questionable.
There was another disabled person in the film, Ewen Bremmer, who was suffering PTSD, or what was then called shell shock. It's not a big part of the movie, and just touched upon, but Bremmer's fellow soldiers treat his illness with a great deal of respect — far more so than the military's response, which was to ignore it and refuse to allow the condition to be medicalised, but instead to declare them uninjured and return them to the front line. When Bremmer cannot fire his gun early in the movie, the other soldiers do not blame him and are a little defensive of him.
The film is generally good and generous and compassionate when depicting heroes and not very good when depicting villains.
posted by maxsparber at 8:02 AM on June 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
There was another disabled person in the film, Ewen Bremmer, who was suffering PTSD, or what was then called shell shock. It's not a big part of the movie, and just touched upon, but Bremmer's fellow soldiers treat his illness with a great deal of respect — far more so than the military's response, which was to ignore it and refuse to allow the condition to be medicalised, but instead to declare them uninjured and return them to the front line. When Bremmer cannot fire his gun early in the movie, the other soldiers do not blame him and are a little defensive of him.
The film is generally good and generous and compassionate when depicting heroes and not very good when depicting villains.
posted by maxsparber at 8:02 AM on June 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
constructing a story in which a disabled person responds to that disability, or draws inspiration from that disability, to become a mass murderer is pretty questionable
Is that what happened, though? Sincere question: I've only seen the movie once and may have missed some dialogue. As I was watching it, I just assumed that she had severely injured herself during her experiments, since she was clearly working with the kinds of agents that would do such things.
posted by praemunire at 9:21 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
Is that what happened, though? Sincere question: I've only seen the movie once and may have missed some dialogue. As I was watching it, I just assumed that she had severely injured herself during her experiments, since she was clearly working with the kinds of agents that would do such things.
posted by praemunire at 9:21 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
Continuing that digression, wasn't that kind of appliance fairly common to cover facial injuries of returning WWI soldiers? I saw that simply as a sign she'd been in a shooting part of the war at some point.
It does feed into the trope, though. Perhaps if we had seen some of the returning vets with similar wound/appliances. Her turn to evil would have been all on her and not her disability itself.
posted by Devoidoid at 9:38 AM on June 13, 2017
It does feed into the trope, though. Perhaps if we had seen some of the returning vets with similar wound/appliances. Her turn to evil would have been all on her and not her disability itself.
posted by Devoidoid at 9:38 AM on June 13, 2017
constructing a story in which a disabled person responds to that disability, or draws inspiration from that disability, to become a mass murderer is pretty questionable
At no point did the movie suggest this happened, and it's weird to draw this conclusion at all, given the immediate more likely explanation is lab accident. Her injury is never explained in the movie, but neither is her motivation, beyond her evident glee in seeing her work kill people. We see the photo of her pre-accident, and IIRC, the exposition about it only said that she was "brilliant." That doesn't mean there isn't still plenty to criticize; I definitely rolled my eyes at the implied disfigurement = evil thing going on there. It's just that in the movie, there's no connection, implicit or otherwise, between her disability/disfigurement and her murderous actions.
posted by yasaman at 9:40 AM on June 13, 2017
At no point did the movie suggest this happened, and it's weird to draw this conclusion at all, given the immediate more likely explanation is lab accident. Her injury is never explained in the movie, but neither is her motivation, beyond her evident glee in seeing her work kill people. We see the photo of her pre-accident, and IIRC, the exposition about it only said that she was "brilliant." That doesn't mean there isn't still plenty to criticize; I definitely rolled my eyes at the implied disfigurement = evil thing going on there. It's just that in the movie, there's no connection, implicit or otherwise, between her disability/disfigurement and her murderous actions.
posted by yasaman at 9:40 AM on June 13, 2017
I wondered about that during the movie - what's the movie trying to say, by having that reveal at that time? (spoilers)
I think it's unclear. My husband thought it was a meant to show Ares's wrong values -- that Ares caused the mask to slip because he's trying to elicit disgust in WW and make her kill the baddie, but that he was wrong to think the reveal would cause disgust, and the reveal was either neutral or actually created more sympathy in WW causing/affirming her decision to spare the baddie.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:41 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think it's unclear. My husband thought it was a meant to show Ares's wrong values -- that Ares caused the mask to slip because he's trying to elicit disgust in WW and make her kill the baddie, but that he was wrong to think the reveal would cause disgust, and the reveal was either neutral or actually created more sympathy in WW causing/affirming her decision to spare the baddie.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:41 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
At no point did the movie suggest this happened, and it's weird to draw this conclusion at all, given the immediate more likely explanation is lab accident.
It's from the director's explanation, quoted in the above article. Regardless of how it happened, she is undeniable disabled, and her disability is tied to her villainy.
posted by maxsparber at 9:46 AM on June 13, 2017
It's from the director's explanation, quoted in the above article. Regardless of how it happened, she is undeniable disabled, and her disability is tied to her villainy.
posted by maxsparber at 9:46 AM on June 13, 2017
"[Dr. Maru is] an interesting character because, you know, we don’t get super into her backstory, but we know her backstory, which is that she’s a woman who has had all kinds of damage in her life, and now she delights in bringing — and I’ve known people like this — delights in bringing that to other people’s lives… There is that way of being a damaged and dark person where you’re waiting for other people to face that wrath too.”
posted by maxsparber at 9:47 AM on June 13, 2017
posted by maxsparber at 9:47 AM on June 13, 2017
That statement reads like the implication is that all the damage is emotional.
The only time the facial scarring has anything to do with the plot is when Diana is looking at her about drop a tank on her before deciding to let her go.
Throughout the rest of the movie, she has a prosthetic over it and seems like the prosthetic is supposed to add to her sinister aura. Which I think it does more from a "weird old medical device" angle than anything else.
That sinister veneer is ripped off revealing a complex human under it.
I'm thinking maybe the idea is that it acts as a visual symbol for the audience to see Dr. Maru as an emotionally scarred, damaged, and complicated human being who covers it all up under a veneer of sinister evil.
I never saw it as a disability really so I think I need to see the movie again before I can reach any conclusions about problematic representations of disability.
posted by VTX at 10:15 AM on June 13, 2017
The only time the facial scarring has anything to do with the plot is when Diana is looking at her about drop a tank on her before deciding to let her go.
Throughout the rest of the movie, she has a prosthetic over it and seems like the prosthetic is supposed to add to her sinister aura. Which I think it does more from a "weird old medical device" angle than anything else.
That sinister veneer is ripped off revealing a complex human under it.
I'm thinking maybe the idea is that it acts as a visual symbol for the audience to see Dr. Maru as an emotionally scarred, damaged, and complicated human being who covers it all up under a veneer of sinister evil.
I never saw it as a disability really so I think I need to see the movie again before I can reach any conclusions about problematic representations of disability.
posted by VTX at 10:15 AM on June 13, 2017
I read Patty Jenkins' comment as referring to emotional/psychological damage, but "damage" is uh, a not great way to be referring to disability, obviously. I don't get it, Anaya's portrayal of Dr. Maru didn't at all suggest a disability leads to evil narrative to me. Why is Patty Jenkins even suggesting it? Ugh. Disappointing. Dr. Maru was one of the real weak points of the movie for me. It felt a little like she was the main villain in earlier drafts and didn't get edited out when they added other villains.
posted by yasaman at 10:17 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by yasaman at 10:17 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
Or, when someone with a disability speaks up and says "Hey, this thing made me feel bad about being a person with a disability" we could accept that they are speaking the truth about their lived experience, even if it does not precisely match our own.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:26 AM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 10:26 AM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
I never saw it as a disability
Unless you're disabled, this might be one of the "trust the person who is disabled who wrote the article responding to the film" moments.
posted by maxsparber at 10:32 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
Unless you're disabled, this might be one of the "trust the person who is disabled who wrote the article responding to the film" moments.
posted by maxsparber at 10:32 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
It has nothing to do with their lived experience. It has to do with their assessment of the movie being accurate. I'm not saying she's wrong and in fact, I'll assume she isn't until proven otherwise. But I feel like I missed something and need to see the movie again to see it and I think it's possible that she read more into it than is fair. Odds are good that I'll rewatch the movie paying more attention to Dr. Maru and say, "Oh yeah, I guess that is kinda shitty." But the possibility is there that I'll disagree with her opinion. Being disabled makes one a LOT less likely to be wrong about something related to being disabled but assuming they're right feels like an appeal to authority fallacy to me.
For a slightly different example, I recently watched "The Babadook" because I missed it when it first came out and was recently in an FPP where I learned that the movie's namesake monster is gay. Now, I didn't dig too far into it, I just believed all the gay people telling me he's gay. After watching the movie, I just didn't see it. When I looked into it (still assuming that I was missing something), it turned out to have been based on some weird mistake that got turned into a meme that had then been appropriated by the gay community. I'm happy to be the "victim" of that joke (it IS hilarious) but at the end of the day, The Babadook isn't gay. It's still totally possible that I missed something but I'm not going to feel bad about asking for some detailed specifics from someone trying to convince me otherwise.
posted by VTX at 10:53 AM on June 13, 2017
For a slightly different example, I recently watched "The Babadook" because I missed it when it first came out and was recently in an FPP where I learned that the movie's namesake monster is gay. Now, I didn't dig too far into it, I just believed all the gay people telling me he's gay. After watching the movie, I just didn't see it. When I looked into it (still assuming that I was missing something), it turned out to have been based on some weird mistake that got turned into a meme that had then been appropriated by the gay community. I'm happy to be the "victim" of that joke (it IS hilarious) but at the end of the day, The Babadook isn't gay. It's still totally possible that I missed something but I'm not going to feel bad about asking for some detailed specifics from someone trying to convince me otherwise.
posted by VTX at 10:53 AM on June 13, 2017
I absolutely agree that the most obvious read of the face-scar-yields-evil thing is: offensive, bad, tropey, crap, stop it, why. The whole reason we were talking about it in the first place was its obvious and pointless offensiveness. I just find it really puzzling, because the rest of the movie is at least preeeetty good about avoiding common obvious tropey stuff like that. There's a lot they managed to NOT get wrong (yes, there is so much BS that's common in movies like this, it's a low bar), yet they seem to have gotten this really obviously wrong -- why? Is there some explanation or was it really just as thoughtless and crummy as it seems?
I had the same thought about Dr Maru as yasaman, that at first it seemed like she was being set up as the main villain (which, awesome, stoked to have a female villain who's just a mad scientist and isn't like a jilted love-interest or some garbage). And then it switched gears to have her be this second banana, to seemingly have a crush on the general dude (eh), and to be possibly-seducable by Chris Pine (eh), and then the dumbest possible eyerolling thing of "a cosmetic injury turned her evil" -- it's not just a bad ancient cliche about disability but also a bad ancient cliche about what motivates women. The character got progressively more common-stupid-tropey as the film went on until the final reveal being this almost parodically stupid thing. It'd be nice to think there was some underlying expectation-subverting reason that they just did a bad job getting across; or at least that there was an original smarter version that got rewritten or studio-interferenced and that's why. Maybe there isn't.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:53 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
I had the same thought about Dr Maru as yasaman, that at first it seemed like she was being set up as the main villain (which, awesome, stoked to have a female villain who's just a mad scientist and isn't like a jilted love-interest or some garbage). And then it switched gears to have her be this second banana, to seemingly have a crush on the general dude (eh), and to be possibly-seducable by Chris Pine (eh), and then the dumbest possible eyerolling thing of "a cosmetic injury turned her evil" -- it's not just a bad ancient cliche about disability but also a bad ancient cliche about what motivates women. The character got progressively more common-stupid-tropey as the film went on until the final reveal being this almost parodically stupid thing. It'd be nice to think there was some underlying expectation-subverting reason that they just did a bad job getting across; or at least that there was an original smarter version that got rewritten or studio-interferenced and that's why. Maybe there isn't.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:53 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
The Babadook=gay thing is a joke, was a joke to begin with, was said by someone in jest. Seems like probably not a helpful comparison here.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:55 AM on June 13, 2017
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:55 AM on June 13, 2017
A delightful joke.
posted by maxsparber at 10:59 AM on June 13, 2017
posted by maxsparber at 10:59 AM on June 13, 2017
Not to sound like I am correcting LobsterMitten. I just am incredibly tickled by the Babadook thing.
posted by maxsparber at 10:59 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by maxsparber at 10:59 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
(For anyone who hasn't seen it, recent post about the Babadook as gay icon.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:20 AM on June 13, 2017
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:20 AM on June 13, 2017
See I think that what makes it at least a little helpful is that I never got to the joke part of it. So I got to the same stage with that as I'm at with the disability aspect of WW. I'm a little incredulous but I believe the marginalized group. Like, I knew it was kind of a joke for the gay community to be holding up a movie monster as a gay icon but I thought it was more being done ironically. Like the references to the Babadook being gay were definitely there but obviously not intentional. I had read enough to be curious about it and was really surprised when I didn't see any suggestion that the Babadook is gay. I still assumed I missed something.
I'm surprised that I don't recall Dr. Maru being presented as a disabled person. Now that I'm aware of that aspect I want to watch the movie again to look for it. I just outlined one possible explanation for why it might not be a problematic. I'll admit that part of the issue probably has to do with the...bimodal, I guess, nature of the movie. It gets a lot of things right and others it gets wrong and there isn't a lot of middle ground. It's pretty feminist, does well with the depiction of PTSD, etc. But the things it gets wrong are the pacing, plot structure, and character development. My assumption is that it's typically the studio that screws up that second set so had the filmmakers been left alone to fulfill their vision, those things would have been fixed and Dr. Maru would have been a lot more flushed out. That assumption probably leads me to more charitable judgements than I would make otherwise. I'm judging the character based on the movie I think the director and writer(s) wanted to make rather than the film they actually made.
I didn't see what Patty Jenkins saw and want to watch the movie again to look for it because I think and assume that it's because I missed something (and also 'cause I like the movie). I'll leave it at that.
posted by VTX at 12:05 PM on June 13, 2017
I'm surprised that I don't recall Dr. Maru being presented as a disabled person. Now that I'm aware of that aspect I want to watch the movie again to look for it. I just outlined one possible explanation for why it might not be a problematic. I'll admit that part of the issue probably has to do with the...bimodal, I guess, nature of the movie. It gets a lot of things right and others it gets wrong and there isn't a lot of middle ground. It's pretty feminist, does well with the depiction of PTSD, etc. But the things it gets wrong are the pacing, plot structure, and character development. My assumption is that it's typically the studio that screws up that second set so had the filmmakers been left alone to fulfill their vision, those things would have been fixed and Dr. Maru would have been a lot more flushed out. That assumption probably leads me to more charitable judgements than I would make otherwise. I'm judging the character based on the movie I think the director and writer(s) wanted to make rather than the film they actually made.
I didn't see what Patty Jenkins saw and want to watch the movie again to look for it because I think and assume that it's because I missed something (and also 'cause I like the movie). I'll leave it at that.
posted by VTX at 12:05 PM on June 13, 2017
The question of how a movie character makes one feel isn't something that's right or wrong or can be judged by you as a third party to be correct or incorrect.
It doesn't matter if the author or director intended this character to be disabled or to carry the message that her disability turned her bad. If that's the actual message that's being received, it doesn't matter if it's being sent through intention or obliviousness to the feelings of disabled people or completely accidentally.
I mean, let's say you go back and rewatch the movie, and decide that nope, Dr. Maru is definitely not disabled, just disfigured, and that's simply a result of her madness, not a cause of it and no message toward the disabled community was intended. Does that change anything for the disabled person who goes to the movie, and sees an evil, prosthetic-wearing person on screen?
posted by jacquilynne at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
It doesn't matter if the author or director intended this character to be disabled or to carry the message that her disability turned her bad. If that's the actual message that's being received, it doesn't matter if it's being sent through intention or obliviousness to the feelings of disabled people or completely accidentally.
I mean, let's say you go back and rewatch the movie, and decide that nope, Dr. Maru is definitely not disabled, just disfigured, and that's simply a result of her madness, not a cause of it and no message toward the disabled community was intended. Does that change anything for the disabled person who goes to the movie, and sees an evil, prosthetic-wearing person on screen?
posted by jacquilynne at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
I enjoyed the film, but I really wish I could have seen it at one of those all-women screenings so that I could have been carried away by the shared experience as I wasn't, quite, by the film on its own. The performances were great, Themiscyra was great, the No Man's Land sequence was fantastic, and I really appreciated the complexity and growth potential of Diana's hero's journey--like a lot of other people here, I feel like the third act really let the movie down, but I'm still looking forward to future films now that they've had a chance to get the kinks worked out.
Perhaps this is my disability-o-vision talking for me, but I don't see what there is to litigate here. Visually marking an evil character through disfigurement or disability is a conceit as old as fiction, presumably criticized by real disfigured/disabled people for just as long, and Dr. Maru fits that to a T--whether her origin story is sufficiently delinked from her disfigurement and what her creators intended don't change that in any way. How you weigh up the use of this cliche in your personal reckoning of the film is up to you, but debating whether or not it's present is like arguing whether or not the film used slow-motion, i.e., there's nothing to argue about because it's. Right. There. Literally there on her face!
The only slightly non-standard aspect of Wonder Woman's use of the trope is that it comes alongside a sympathetic if incomplete portrayal of mental illness (I don't think Charlie's struggle with PTSD ever came up after the church tower scene, it just stopped mattering--did I miss something?). But even that's not that unusual--it's pretty common for "good" characters with invisible disabilities, especially ones that are adequately compensated for with superpowers/assistive tech/etc, to show up right alongside "bad" characters who are visibly monstrous. Sometimes stories will even play with the boundary line between the two: to pick up another famous hero's journey, Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand is invisible and irrelevant to the story--except when it's a sign warning of his potential to fall to the dark side like his father, Darth Vader, the man in the walking iron lung.
posted by bettafish at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
Perhaps this is my disability-o-vision talking for me, but I don't see what there is to litigate here. Visually marking an evil character through disfigurement or disability is a conceit as old as fiction, presumably criticized by real disfigured/disabled people for just as long, and Dr. Maru fits that to a T--whether her origin story is sufficiently delinked from her disfigurement and what her creators intended don't change that in any way. How you weigh up the use of this cliche in your personal reckoning of the film is up to you, but debating whether or not it's present is like arguing whether or not the film used slow-motion, i.e., there's nothing to argue about because it's. Right. There. Literally there on her face!
The only slightly non-standard aspect of Wonder Woman's use of the trope is that it comes alongside a sympathetic if incomplete portrayal of mental illness (I don't think Charlie's struggle with PTSD ever came up after the church tower scene, it just stopped mattering--did I miss something?). But even that's not that unusual--it's pretty common for "good" characters with invisible disabilities, especially ones that are adequately compensated for with superpowers/assistive tech/etc, to show up right alongside "bad" characters who are visibly monstrous. Sometimes stories will even play with the boundary line between the two: to pick up another famous hero's journey, Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand is invisible and irrelevant to the story--except when it's a sign warning of his potential to fall to the dark side like his father, Darth Vader, the man in the walking iron lung.
posted by bettafish at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
I absolutely agree that the most obvious read of the face-scar-yields-evil thing is: offensive, bad, tropey, crap, stop it, why.
What is literally Nazis? (and Neo-Nazis.)
OK Alex, I'll take meme's we've forgotten the origin of for $800.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2017
What is literally Nazis? (and Neo-Nazis.)
OK Alex, I'll take meme's we've forgotten the origin of for $800.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2017
I mean, let's say you go back and rewatch the movie, and decide that nope, Dr. Maru is definitely not disabled, just disfigured, and that's simply a result of her madness, not a cause of it and no message toward the disabled community was intended. Does that change anything for the disabled person who goes to the movie, and sees an evil, prosthetic-wearing person on screen?
Well no, basically. Only in the narrow circumstance that her observations are factually incorrect. Again, what I expect is that MY opinion will change. It's likely that my impression is wrong as I tend to pick up on intent blunted by apparent studio interference and I gravitate towards more charitable interpretations than is otherwise fair. From what I remember, both the PTSD and Dr. Maru plot arcs seemed to have been cut short and were more fleshed out in previous version of the script. But they avoid so many other pitfalls that I'm willing to fill in those missing pieces on behalf of the filmmakers. Look, I get that I'm the asshole here and the problem is mine. But, it shouldn't a controversial statement around here that opinions should be based on accurate facts. For whatever reason, my facts don't seem to be accurate so I need to examine the facts again. I think the author is right and I am wrong, but I can't just take her word for it, I need to look at the evidence and I'll operate on the assumption that I'm wrong until then. I can't change my memories so I need to add new ones.
I actually kinda struggled with this question. When you frame it like that, my gut answer is a quick and definitive "no". I said, out loud on reading that, "Well, when you put it that I'm a huge asshole aren't I?" Nice and easy, I'm wrong, admit it, move one, and try to do better right?
My problem is placing the same concept in a different scenario. I'm sure we can find some men's rights nutbar who hates the whole movie and calls it "feminist propaganda" or something. Everyone around here would rightly dismiss that opinion out of hand right?
It's not the same situation and I know it's not. One of these people clearly has a valid opinion and the other does not. My problem is that I can't seem to articulate to myself how and why they're different.
Is it just that men aren't actually an oppressed group or is there more to it? I mean, I'll keep thinking about it and reading stuff until I can make sense of it, but I'd appreciate some help.
posted by VTX at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2017
Well no, basically. Only in the narrow circumstance that her observations are factually incorrect. Again, what I expect is that MY opinion will change. It's likely that my impression is wrong as I tend to pick up on intent blunted by apparent studio interference and I gravitate towards more charitable interpretations than is otherwise fair. From what I remember, both the PTSD and Dr. Maru plot arcs seemed to have been cut short and were more fleshed out in previous version of the script. But they avoid so many other pitfalls that I'm willing to fill in those missing pieces on behalf of the filmmakers. Look, I get that I'm the asshole here and the problem is mine. But, it shouldn't a controversial statement around here that opinions should be based on accurate facts. For whatever reason, my facts don't seem to be accurate so I need to examine the facts again. I think the author is right and I am wrong, but I can't just take her word for it, I need to look at the evidence and I'll operate on the assumption that I'm wrong until then. I can't change my memories so I need to add new ones.
I actually kinda struggled with this question. When you frame it like that, my gut answer is a quick and definitive "no". I said, out loud on reading that, "Well, when you put it that I'm a huge asshole aren't I?" Nice and easy, I'm wrong, admit it, move one, and try to do better right?
My problem is placing the same concept in a different scenario. I'm sure we can find some men's rights nutbar who hates the whole movie and calls it "feminist propaganda" or something. Everyone around here would rightly dismiss that opinion out of hand right?
It's not the same situation and I know it's not. One of these people clearly has a valid opinion and the other does not. My problem is that I can't seem to articulate to myself how and why they're different.
Is it just that men aren't actually an oppressed group or is there more to it? I mean, I'll keep thinking about it and reading stuff until I can make sense of it, but I'd appreciate some help.
posted by VTX at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2017
I mean, disfigurement and madness are both disabilities. I'm not disabled, and I go to a lot of movies where these are both just plot points and not meant to represent disability, but instead meant to metaphoric representations of evil, and we are not supposed to read them as disability, and for a long time I didn't.
But they are, and using them as metaphors is ablest.
posted by maxsparber at 7:43 AM on June 15, 2017 [5 favorites]
But they are, and using them as metaphors is ablest.
posted by maxsparber at 7:43 AM on June 15, 2017 [5 favorites]
then the dumbest possible eyerolling thing of "a cosmetic injury turned her evil" -- it's not just a bad ancient cliche about disability but also a bad ancient cliche about what motivates women.
It's fascinating what other people took from the movie.
I came away absolutely convinced that the mask reveal was that Dr Maru, as a brilliant woman who was a scientist, had had acid thrown in her face, which was a common Victorian way of disfiguring women who were acting in ways outside societal norms. So when Ares was showing that, he was saying, "look what the world does to women here, what it does to them and makes them become, join me in eradicating all this."
posted by corb at 9:17 AM on June 15, 2017 [5 favorites]
It's fascinating what other people took from the movie.
I came away absolutely convinced that the mask reveal was that Dr Maru, as a brilliant woman who was a scientist, had had acid thrown in her face, which was a common Victorian way of disfiguring women who were acting in ways outside societal norms. So when Ares was showing that, he was saying, "look what the world does to women here, what it does to them and makes them become, join me in eradicating all this."
posted by corb at 9:17 AM on June 15, 2017 [5 favorites]
Looks like a bullet was dodged... Joss Whedon’s leaked ‘Wonder Woman’ screenplay is mindblowingly sexist
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on June 16, 2017
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on June 16, 2017
That's an interesting read, corb; I hadn't thought of it that way.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:18 AM on June 17, 2017
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:18 AM on June 17, 2017
Edelstein’s review of Sophia Coppola’s The Beguiled, is, I guess, better? More careful? Is it because The Beguiled isn’t a genre film? Or did he actually let someone edit his copy?
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:34 AM on June 20, 2017
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:34 AM on June 20, 2017
I watched it last night and was also feeling pretty deeply ambivalent about how Wonder Woman really went all in on the Evil-Crip trope for Dr. Maru, but having slept on it I'm no longer convinced this was a nice movie that leaned a bit hard on a shit trope, bigoted abelism was baked in throughout as a core theme. Its not just a contrast between Gal Gadot who is presented as God-like in her physical and moral virility and Dr. Maru who is presented as pitiably degraded and broken on both counts, but nearly every single speaking character exists on a spectrum between the two extremes with both qualities intrinsically and explicitly linked. Disability is used consistently as more than just a marker for villains but an external representation of their sin. Every single speaking villain we're presented with conspicuously fails to meet the Platonic ideal represented by Godot and Chris Pine in some way, whether its Ares's cane-wielding mobility impairment, Ludendorff's heart condition, or the German spy in London's obesity. Even the hero's company has Charlie presented as morally, spiritually, and physically degraded with his pride in sniping, frailty, and PTSD ticks in relation to the rest of the party making him pitiable, weak, and in need of Wonder Woman's able-bodied salvation.
posted by Blasdelb at 9:26 AM on June 20, 2017
posted by Blasdelb at 9:26 AM on June 20, 2017
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posted by Talez at 12:51 PM on June 11, 2017 [14 favorites]