I ask you, what the hell else you gonna call a post about Iron Man 2 and feminism?
So saw Iron Man 2. Nice. Anyone else notice how much the original version of Hammer's armor looked like Spartan MJOLNIR armor? I think Bungie should be proud they've managed to color how we think of powered armor.
But apparently not everyone had an enjoyable moviegoing experience. Ms. Magazine's critic actually says the film is advocating acting like Tony Stark. That is, she seems to think that any of the things Tony does other than invent cool gizmos and stomp bad guys is presented as good, admirable, or in any way worthy of emulation. I'm curious, Natalie Wilson, do you also think Gregory House is being offered up as a paragon of the medical profession? Because pretty much the point of Tony's entire character ark in this movie is that he's an ass. He is, in fact, Gregory House—just swap out liquor for Vicodin, heavy metal poisoning for a bum leg and superscience for diagnostics. The whole point is him becoming a hero by growing out of that.
Maybe Gloria Steinem needs to sleep with more rich businessmen so Ms. can hire literate film critics. No I'm not making that up. I couldn't actually make up feminist hypocrisies that are worse than the real things Steinem and Simone "Harley Quinn" Beauvoir have actually done.
What the hell, though? Apparently it's also racist that Tony had a problem with his weapons being used to kill Americans but not America's enemies—you see, the only distinction is one of race, not, you know, one's your damn country and the others are its enemies. I'm racially identical to most of Canada, but if we were at war with them, I'd have no problem killing their soldiers. Nationalism has its own abuses, but not to know that it is, in fact, not the same concept as racism, is simply to announce you don't get complicated ideas. Maybe Ms. Wilson had a boy do her social studies homework or something.
When Tony ogles every female around, I'm curious, did Wilson not notice Pepper calling him on it? Did she not notice that the women he does it to hold him in contempt?
Did she not notice that, far from women's most important asset being their bodies, every woman in this succeeds far more frequently by computer know-how or sheer brute authority? The one use of force by a woman in the whole movie was pretty damned stylized, but we can't expect every female secret agent to be Nina Williams.
One last thing: Wilson objects to the "overt sexualization of females" (emphasis mine). Uh, Wilson, I'm pretty sure you just outed yourself, because I'm a straight guy and I think Tony Stark was fricking hot. If you don't understand that the Iron Man suit is far more fanservice than the very tightest of leather catsuits, you're really not qualified to have opinions about geeks. (Pepper Potts was no slouch either, and she wasn't "overtly" sexualized.)
And Tony's leering? Yeah, you're not supposed to approve of that. His backup dancers, at his presentation? Yeah, again, you were supposed to cringe at that, permit me to congratulate you on actually having a human response to one thing in the whole movie. It's like the Almighty Tallests' laser show in the first episode of ZIM, a tacky, pro wrestling-style gimmick. It's intentional, to show just what kind of shallow, again, ASS Tony Stark is.
I just checked: my 13-year-old brother understands that movies don't endorse every behavior they depict, even on the part of their heroes. Wilson appears unable to avoid divorcing incidents from their obvious narrative point, and assigning them meanings without reference to their context: she's actually less qualified to critique films than a seventh grader! Maybe chicks should leave film criticism to the boys.
I kid. Really, what happened is that Wilson saw the movie she expected to see, rather than the one she did see, a classic confirmation bias and to be expected in a "church circular" like Ms.. Ideology makes you stupid, and it's not just feminism—I've read a libertarian who thought It's a Wonderful Life was collectivist. Yeah, I know, the quintessential private-property, small-town populism movie: apparently you're a damn Commie if you happen to object to towns being dominated by joyless misers.
Still, though, Wilson is unusually unsubtle about being a vapid ideologue.
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