Indignant Desert Birds

[[Warning: The only important part of a Transformers movie is that giant robots will be fighting one another. You know that going in. Spoilers are thus impossible. To the extent that a spoiler might be possible for this film, I will spoil it. If that keeps you from seeing this movie, say "thank you".]]

This movie is bad. All it really needs to do is give a half-decent excuse for robots to beat one another up, and it fails. It does, however, do one extraordinarily thing right: It calls Michael Bay- the movie’s director/producer!- a giant douchebag. I’m not sure he noticed.

Hollywood formulates dictates that there is a girl (Carly Spencer) in this sort of movie. She isn’t there to be an independent actor, but rather to be a Princess Peach– a motivating force for someone else to act on behalf of. Some of the minor characters in the movie actually seem to balk at putting themselves in danger so that the hero (Sam Witwicky) can rescue his girl, but they go along with the plan once they figure out that the world is also at stake.

I’m not kidding about that.

In a triumph for the say-don’t-show school of storytelling, Carly’s is presented as a intelligent, capable individual. We see her working for the White House, running logistics for a global corporation, and are told that she’s worked for the British Embassy in Washington DC. She is in every way more fit to be the story’s lead than the actual dude performing that role.

Perhaps Sam is meant to be an audience stand in. A sort of everyperson hero that we can empathize with. That would help explain his constant inability to quite nail the suave behavior that he seems to be aiming for. After all: who among us hasn’t done some really dumb things that we’d rather everyone forget about? This doesn’t seem quite right, however. Sam’s buffoonery is rewarded. It is as if Director Michael Bay doesn’t know the difference between actually awesome behavior and a parody of such. Could it be that he has mistaken Duke Nukem for something other than a cautionary tale?

In a classic display of the male gaze, through the first half of the movie, the camera reduces Carly to a sex object. When she’s in a shot, her secondary sex characteristics are on full display.

Michael Bay has had this problem with women before. Indeed, in the words of one Bay defender “Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality.” Presumably he means “16-year-old [boy]“.

So for the first half or so of the movie, the camera is perving on the female lead. And at one point one of the characters- Bruce Brazos- actually does a double take at her. And everyone in the room reacts badly. Like he’d ruined their fun game by calling attention to it. From that moment on, the camera treats Carly as a human being. I think we can thank the editorial staff for that beautiful and wicked commentary on Transformers and sexism.

Now, if only the writers had come up with something interesting for her to say.

Tags: Feminism, human rights, movies and television by Punning Pundit
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Despite having an entire week to ourselves, my boyfriend and I only managed to finish one game, Dreamfall, the Longest Journey. If you want an actual, full-fledged review, I suggest you visit GameSpot’s review.

A couple of issues I had with their review:

First, GameSpot seems always to pander to the “core gamers”, rather than the leisurely ones. Honestly, Dreamfall is targeted at people like my parents, which is why I bought it for my mom for her birthday. This makes the review slightly frustrating because they do not criticize it in the same way as they would if they took the game’s target audience into account. For example, Kasavin makes a small reference to the game’s controls, that “Dreamfall plays more like an action adventure game” than a point-and-click adventure and “The game controls quite well. The camera can get a little awkward in tight quarters, but since there aren’t many action sequences, this is almost never a liability.”

I would say, understanding my parents, that the controls were terrible. Granted, I was only frustrated for a few minutes, but the game controls by moving with the arrow keys and moving the camera with the mouse, but there is no cursor, and you have to wave your mouse around until you get a blue square and click on it. Granted, this might not seem very trying to the average gamer, but for people who rarely play games or *only* play adventure games, this is stupid, pointless, and only detracts from the game. This is one of the main reasons that Myst: Uru sucked. The reason why it is such a big deal is there is a tendency for very casual or virgin gamers to get frustrated with the controls right off the bat, and most point-and-click adventure games are incredibly simple for that reason alone.

The other thing I disagreed with is that the game did not really need gameplay, which Kasavin argues a number of different times. While he admits that there was not a lot of gameplay in the game itself, he also states that it was not important anyway

While I would say that the story was very good, and the dialogue and voice acting were also very good, I am saying this in the context of a video game. There *must* be gameplay to accompany the storyline, or else it feels like I am reading a very long, drawn out, terribly written book. Because yes, the dialogue is fairly well-written, but compared to, you know, reading a classic, it’s about as dull, uninventive, absurd dialogue I’ve ever read. I would have put it down faster than I did The Davinci Code.

The puzzles also felt incredibly easy and the combat was just superfluous, though it did provide options in a singular event in the game.

However, my negativity is probably too great (I’ve been watching too much Yahtzee), as it is a good adventure game, better than most of the tripe The Adventure Company puts out (though those games tend to have more puzzles/adventure/gameplay). The voice acting was absolutely stellar, and the environments were really nice.

The story was very engaging and interesting, and left a hell of a cliffhanger at the end. It was also well paced and kept me interested throughout the entire game.

I think the one part that struck me, and something that I wanted to talk about (which Kasavin did not mention once) is the feminist aspect of the game. Generally, I am accustomed to female main characters in adventure games. I feel that they are aiming at women largely with this sort of game anyway, and I also feel that there is a greater possibility of a female designer working on an adventure game than, say, a first person shooter.

First, well, the main character is female. She is generally fully clothed, other than a few underwear sequences (but even those are tasteful and she is not absurdly proportioned). There are many female characters in high positions, in fact most of them are in positions of power. Honestly, there were very few males in the game and they were mostly boring or serving only as love interests. Talking about this makes it seem so obvious, but it took me forever to figure out that they really were overcompensating. This seemed fairly unremarkable to me, but it is interesting when you think about how real life is generally the other way around.

The thing that finally brought this to my attention is when one of the playable characters said something to the tune of, “See? This is why females [rather than males] should run things.” I was agape, mostly because this was so direct about the feminist message. They weren’t trying to paint a picture which features equality of the sexes, they were honestly designing a game to compensate for the sexism of the gaming industry.

Honestly, though, while satiating some parts of me, this bothered me. If he hadn’t said it, I would never have noticed. I tend to write like that when I do write, with mostly females and a couple of boring, one-sided male side-characters. I think this bothered me because of the fact that if they were honestly focusing that much on feminism or whatever, they really should have had a game which had men and women on equal footing, rather than displaying an entirely matriarchal society. I do not think that there has to be an extreme. I believe that equality can be achieved, with patience and effort, and it is not a matter of one sex or the other reigning supreme.

On the other hand, if this was a message to gamers, that there is sexism in the gaming industry, and it is only really noticeable if the tables are turned, would an adventure game really be the best venue for that? Honestly, so many of these games are at least somewhat geared towards casual female players, doesn’t it seem like they are preaching to the choir?

Tags: Feminism by futile
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I graduated college two months ago. Since my exit from forced women power and crazy scheduling, I’ve realized how much an asset my private women’s education is – and what I now miss from my ignorance.

I went to see Mamma Mia last night. I am a musical fanatic. I’ve seen all the movie musicals – old and new – and I’m happy to see that they are on the rise again.

While Mamma Mia is very entertaining, and I’m ecstatic to see older women having as much fun as younger ones, it has its problems. The story is about a white woman and her daughter, and their respective white friends. It could have been easy to put a woman of color among the four friends – they’re supposed to be in Greece anyway – but every woman was a variation of the American ideal. There was unnecessary race differentiation between the main (white) characters and the (Greek/one black man) chorus. The only black man in the movie was sexualized and said only a few lines throughout the movie. It reminded me a bit of how scantily-clad women are sexualized in music videos.

Second, even as this movie was about women (having fun), the director ignored that idea, and went straight to sexism. It began with the black man taking the bags for the white woman. The woman couldn’t get the bag herself – she was living up to her “helpless” role. It makes you wonder how the bag got in the car in the first place. Throughout the movie, women crawl to their men (literally), sit in the presence of their man, be blocked by men, be saved by men, and have men take over their tasks. Not once, did a woman did any of those actions (as far as I could tell) in the movie. Women had no power in the action, only in the song, it seemed.

Yet, after my criticism, I still encourage you to go see the movie. It is funny, cute, appeals to both old and young, campy, and – most importantly – a wonderful musical!

Tags: Feminism, movies and television, race by wanton frolicking
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“The house could use a woman’s touch,” said my boyfriend’s step-mother, my aunt, my step-mother, and finally one of my friends when I moved into my boyfriend’s house last month. My first order of business was getting a kitchen cart, which will soon be followed by curtains and screens for our windows. These changes aren’t part of a “woman’s touch”, though, they’re due to “real” jobs that afford us the luxury of not worrying how to pay for dinner.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.

“Are you a trailing spouse?” asks the CNN.com headline. When married couples relocate, husbands generally get a salary increase of $3000; wives receive a cut of about $750. Why? “[M]en and women are taught to play very different roles within marriage. Women are socialized to play a homemaking role within the family, whereas men are encouraged to focus on their careers and breadwinning.” It’s good to know that after 40 years since the second wave of feminism began, we still have the same problems and the same answers: socialization.

Since my decorating skills are limited to “organized clutter”, I can’t imagine my “woman’s touch” is helpful. All the same, I do laundry, dishes, and make meals. He takes me out and buys me pretty things. I can’t imagine myself as a trailing spouse, but I never imagined myself doing all the cooking either.

Maybe I should just marry a woman, now that it’s legal in California. I mean, as long as she’s willing to re-locate for my $3000 increase in salary.

Tags: Feminism by wanton frolicking
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I tried to laugh at this article Crazy Religious Person Calls for Burning of Video Games, but as I kept reading I ended up at this “youth program”:

“For young ladies, we have a ministry called Vessels of Honor. It’s about life skills for young women. We try to be more proactive than reactive, so we do counseling to prevent teen pregnancy, and even if you do become a teen parent ,you can still succeed. We have a youth service every second Friday of each month.”

Oh no he didn’t. He did NOT just say that. He did NOT just use a word which has been used to belittle and oppress women for centuries in the name of religion. I’m sorry, Mr. Pastor, you have lost all credibility. I am more than just a Vessel. I, too, can apply for jobs and do more than push out babies.

And besides that, the term “vessel” used to describe a woman’s role in reproduction is damaging and misleading. Now we have science that tells us that women do MORE than just carry the child of a man. We actually CONTRIBUTE to the entire process. Half of that child’s genes are from the mother. I understand the desire to live in the dark ages (well, sort of), but this sort of language is really not appropriate.

You’ll notice the lack of any career-based programs for young women. This is even more appalling because it is important, if not necessary in our society right now to have women in the workforce, both individually and for the economy as a whole, but I suppose he wants us in our place.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that crazy religious people are sexist and destructive, but I always am.

Tags: Feminism by futile
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She had a tough job with this speech. On the one wrist, she had to acknowledge that her supporters had done a magnificent job. Then she had to explain why Obama will make a fantastic president.

“The way to continue our fight now – to accomplish the goals for which we stand – is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States. ”

The way she said it, with such obvious passion and sincerity in her voice, she means it.

“I understand that we all know this has been a tough fight. The Democratic Party is a family, and it’s now time to restore the ties that bind us together and to come together around the ideals we share, the values we cherish, and the country we love. ”
Absolutely, 100% the right thing to say. The Party isn’t the “Hillary Clinton Show”, it is about a certain set of ideals– ideals which both Hillary and Barack share. Obama has the standard, let’s line up behind his charge.

And, as a final swing, she reminds all voters how good they had it when we last had a Democratic president:

“We made tremendous progress during the 90s under a Democratic President, with a flourishing economy, and our leadership for peace and security respected around the world. Just think how much more progress we could have made over the past 40 years if we had a Democratic president. Think about the lost opportunities of these past seven years – on the environment and the economy, on health care and civil rights, on education, foreign policy and the Supreme Court. Imagine how far we could’ve come, how much we could’ve achieved if we had just had a Democrat in the White House.”

I’ll leave it off there. Hillary: you did good. And if– gods forbid!– things don’t work out for Barack, I’ll gleefully pull the lever for you in 2012…

Transcript

Tags: Election 08, Feminism by Punning Pundit
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