…is excellent. You should go see it. Really. I want to go back just to catch all the bits of dialog I missed the first time, and maybe to see it with people who will laugh at the same things I laughed at–because I think the other people in the theatre may have thought I was a sociopath.
Anyway, Cabin in the Woods isn’t what I want to talk about right now. What I want to talk about is why the fuck the world hates women. It could just be synchronicity messing with my head, but lately it seems that everywhere I turn is evidence that the world *hates* women. In the past 24 hours I have been introduced to:
Project Unbreakable which features pictures of rape victims (men and women, but mostly women) holding signs of statements made by attackers.
And speaking of rape: Scott Bakker’s Neuropath is so gross I don’t even know how to process it.
Oh and reproductive rights are apparently a thing of the past now? In Arizona you might be carrying life before you even have sex! Oh and in Kingsville, Texas you’re going to need your father’s permission before you can get rid of his rape baby.
And there’s been other stuff too but strangely it didn’t come crashing in until the previews for Cabin in the Woods. I don’t remember how many trailers there were, but at one point I realized that I hadn’t seen a single female main character. First was Expendables 2 which featured a bunch of aging male action stars. Then there was some ‘chase people’ movie which did have one female: a 12 year old Asian girl who is apparently good at memorizing numbers and needs to be saved by some grizzled cop. Finally there was Looper which DOES have Emily Blunt but as far as I can tell she’ll just be some random love interest who has to shoot a gun at some point so the movie can claim that it has a ‘powerful’ female character.
And that’s supposed to be SF… the “progressive” film genre. Hey, you know who had power and agency? Ellen Ripley and Newt. Also SF. Also TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO. How is it that I have to go back in time to find any character I want to identify with?
The Tor blog did a post on how movie posters tend to feature women’s asses instead of their faces and while I agree, it’d be nice if the problem was just with the poster and not the entire movie.
You know what also irritates me? Right now I want to type a certain sentence. You know the sentence… the apologist sentence. The nice girl sentence. The one that goes ‘Now I’m not against attractive women as heroines but…’ which is starting to sound an awful lot like the ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ sentence. How weird is it that I feel this urge to define what I’m against by first proactively stating what I’m not against? Can’t I just say it? Isn’t it OBVIOUS how Joss Whedon’s films and tv shows can only be considered feminist because there is such a TERRIFYING ABSENCE of female characters who do things OTHER than scream, take their tops off, and die?
I am against films which treat women like objects. I am against the culture which makes people forget that women can have jobs too, and that black people can play roles other than thugs. And why is it that black women only get nominated for academy awards when they play maids, slaves and drug addicts?
This is getting a lot more rambly than I intended… and I’m not even sure what my point is other than… go see Cabin in the Woods. Get yourself worked up about how the world sucks and then laugh and clap as EVERYONE DIES.
</spoiler>
Oops.
after ever after 