So, awhile back I saw the movie X-Men: First Class. I went with friends who are long-time X-Men fans. I have personally always enjoyed X-Men, but in a more casual fashion, probably thanks to an early childhood shortage of Saturday morning cartoons.
I hated the movie. I could go into it at length here, but in short, this and this and this is why. The depictions of women and people of color made me cringe. Then there was the moment when the male "heroes" of the movie set up three naked female mannequins and smashed, burned, and mutilated them with gleeful laughter as they honed their powers. I felt sick to my stomach, exclaimed under my breath in disbelief. Then I looked around to see if my friends had noticed this blatant image of violence and objectification in service of male bonding.
None of them had, and they were all looking at me as if to say, what is your problem?
After we left the theater, I explained my experience of the movie, listing off the moments of glaring chauvinism and white privilege. Every female character shown naked and sexualized, from the very first scene where the "strong, kick-ass" FBI agent dresses as a hooker for Plot Related Reasons, to the teenaged Mystique naked in Xavier's kitchen, to the vapid sexuality of Emma Frost later bound pornographically to a bed and choked by Xavier and Magneto, to the X-Men recruiting Angel in a strip joint after she shows them what she's got. And the fact that the two characters of color on the X-Men team were dispensed with IN THE SAME SCENE: the supposedly invulnerable Darwin summarily humiliated and killed for cheap pathos while Angel joins the bad guys with no clear motivation. The final image of the movie shows us the X-Men as exactly that: a team of white men. Ugly, but uglier still for a fictional universe with its roots in the Civil Rights Movement.
As I talked, I realized I was making my friends deeply uncomfortable. They had enjoyed the movie and had not seen what I had seen. They didn't understand what I was so upset about. I began to try to explain further, how the filmmakers didn't HAVE to make those choices, how the images we had just absorbed were informed by the privilege of the creators.
Then I stopped myself. I was being a killjoy, and I knew it. They had wanted to simply enjoy their entertainment, not interrogate it. I was complicating their enjoyment.
Later, my best beloved told me that the fierceness of my criticism had taken him aback, that it made him feel that he too was being harshly criticized and found wanting, and made him fear being criticized in the future.
I told him that I couldn't unsee media this way, through the lens of social awareness, seeing context and subtext. That I did not mean to go on the attack, but that sometimes I just couldn't help being a critical bitch.
We both laughed over this (because he is pretty awesome that way and we had talked out the conflict already) and then I said, "Oh man...Critical Bitch! That would make an AWESOME title for a feminist blog about geek culture, games, and media."
Time passed, Rogue J.D. languished, things changed, and dreams came true. My Best Beloved became mine in truth and moved in with me. My career priorities shifted. Now, still trying to strike a balance between necessary assimilation in legal culture and upholding my ideals, I have decided that I needed an outlet for my less sociable opinions. I also wanted to widen the focus of this blog to include my other passions, rather than just focus on my career. Since a lot of my energy is devoted to grappling with the latter, I don't really feel inspired to blog about it too. While I'm sure I'll still post about my life as a law firm bitch from time to time, I look forward to having a space for my thoughts on media and geek culture.
If you're still reading, please update your links and feeds!
