Stoopid-Hero Movies

[CyberLord]

Just To TICK ShawWow OFF!
This time I am making reference to an article that does NOT originate at Comics Alliance! This time I am pulling from The New York Times.
They have an article entitled "Super-Dreams of an Alternate World Order" by Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott that discusses the abundance of super-hero movies.

Some interesting quotes:
MANOHLA DARGIS ...I like some comic-book movies very much, dislike others. But as a film lover I am frustrated by how the current system of flooding theaters with the same handful of titles limits my choices. (According to boxofficemojo.com “The Avengers” opened on 4,349 screens in the United States and Canada, close to 1 in 10.) The success of these movies also shores up a false market rationale that’s used to justify blockbusters in general: that is, these movies make money, therefore people like them; people like them, therefore these movies are made.

A. O. SCOTT ...It’s telling that Hollywood placed a big bet on superheroes at a time when two of its traditional heroic genres — the western and the war movie — were in eclipse, partly because they seemed ideologically out of kilter with the times. The studios turned to fantasy, science fiction and a kind of filmmaking that was at once technologically advanced and charmingly old-fashioned. Along with “Star Wars” and Indiana Jones there was Superman, played, starting in 1978, by the square-jawed, relatively unknown Christopher Reeve.

A. O. SCOTT What the defensive fans fail or refuse to grasp is that they have won the argument. Far from being an underdog genre defended by a scrappy band of cultural renegades, the superhero spectacle represents a staggering concentration of commercial, corporate power. The ideology supporting this power is a familiar kind of disingenuous populism. The studios are just giving the people what they want! Foolproof evidence can be found in the box office returns: a billion dollars! Who can argue with that? Nobody really does. Superhero movies are taken seriously, reviewed respectfully and enjoyed by plenty of Edmund Wilson types.

And just to make ShamWow happy I will include this final quote that mentions Comics Alliance.

MANOHLA DARGIS They’re certainly avatars of reaction in how they justify and perpetuate the industry’s entrenched sexism. You just have to scan the spandex bulges in “The Avengers” to see that superhero movies remain a big boys’ club, with few women and girls allowed. Yes, there are female superheroes on screen, like Jean Grey from the “X-Men” series, but they tend not to drive the stories, while female superheroes with their own movies never dominate the box office. Most women in superhero movies exist to smile indulgently at the super-hunk, to be rescued and to flaunt their assets, like Scarlett Johansson’s character in “The Avengers,” whose biggest superpower, to judge by the on- and off-screen attention lavished on it, was her super-rump.

Historically the comic book industry survived partly because its superheroes changed. In the early 1960s Stan Lee helped come up with a new kind of long-underwear character, Spider-Man, an imperfect super-teenager whose failings helped bring young-adult readers and turn Marvel into a powerhouse. In 1986 Frank Miller created “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” which ushered in a new, grittier bat-freak that influenced Mr. Nolan’s resurrection of the Batman movies. Yet, like the movie industry, the comic industry remains staggeringly male dominated. As Laura Hudson wrote in December on the online site ComicsAlliance, both DC and Marvel “illustrate two different but interrelated problems: the lack of women playing major roles in the comics, and the lack of women playing major roles in creating them.”

The movie industry has also adapted to survive, yet it persists in recycling maddeningly troglodytic representations of women that its embrace of superheroes has only perpetuated and maybe exacerbated. For all the technological innovations, the groovy new Bat cycles and codpieces, superhero movies just recycle variations on gender stereotypes that were in circulation back in the late 1930s, when Superman and Batman first hit. The world has moved on — there’s an African-American man in the Oval Office, a woman is the secretary of state — but the movie superhero remains stuck in a pre-feminist, pre-civil rights logic that dictates that a bunch of white dudes, as in “The Avengers,” will save the world for the grateful multiracial, multicultural multitudes. What a bunch of super-nonsense.

[weirdozhead]

What a bunch of super-nonsense.

Pretty good summation of this "article" I think (really stuff like this would be better served as some type of video debate imo).. sounds like they were making assumptions about movies like "the Avengers" and then went back and tried to make them fit. I thought the Avengers was simply a mindless popcorn movie spoon fed to the brain dead masses.. but having a black guy leading them and a human female fighting on the team alongside the guys even though she possesses no superpowers to speak of - I'm not sure how this plays into 1930s roles of racism and 'girls can't do anything' type attitude.

Even at the beginning when Black Widow seems to be a 'damsel in distress' or whatever, she doesn't wait to be saved, she simply breaks out of her shackles seemingly at will and easily takes control of the situation. I'm questioning whether this writer even saw the movie, or simply based this article on their own prejudices and assumptions after seeing the trailer and nothing else.

Also the big wheel always go round, in 5 years superhero movies could easily be dead and westerns be the new hot thing.

[sirandal]

Black Widow is not a full member of the Avengers in the mind of the public, she is a side-kick character (like Hawkeye). That is what she is complaining about. Also I believe her point is where is the Wonder Woman movie.

[weirdozhead]

1 vote for 80s Capt Marvel in the sequel

[dmario]

Photon.


and when we get a GOOD female super MOVIE, instead of horribly written ones, this article will be null and void.

[weirdozhead]

I just wonder why no one ever complains about sexism in romance novels, or even in romance movies. No one seems concerned that poor Brad Pitt is being used as a sex object.

Also the superhero genre is heavily male dominated cuz well, that's who digs it. If the audience was 70% female I'm sure we'd see that reflected in the content (ie Twilight, again that poor Jacob, forced to take his shirt off for the female audiences).

What's next, complaints about diversity and lack of compassion in Call of Duty? This all just reeks of political correctness to me.

[NickRocks]

in 5 years..westerns be the new hot thing.

don't tease me