Oh Monday. How you sneak up on me and my 3.5 readers.
The latest debate in the nerdosphere is whether or not Apocalypse should have strangled Mystique.
Read more about it in Variety.
So if you’re not a nerd, there’s a new X-Men movie out, X-Men: Apocalypse.
The plot is that the meanest mutant of all time has been lying dormant for thousands of years, but is back and ready to conquer the world.
To promote the film, Fox put out posters featuring Apocalypse strangling Mystique (the blue bodied, orange haired shapeshifter that dudes dig because she sort of walks around naked all the time except she doesn’t have nipples or a butt crack so it’s like Marvel found a loophole to have a naked chick walk around in their movies.)
Rose McGowan, who used to be on Charmed but I can’t think of anything she’s done lately, took offense, complaining on the Interwebs that this promoted violence against women.
Eh…here’s my two cents.
Could the studio have chosen a different image to promote the movie?
Yes.
Did I notice a problem until Rose McGowan said something about it?
No.
And you could say that maybe that means I’m oblivious to the plight of violence against women but rather, I’d say you women folk have done a fine job of training me like a dog to recognize women as equals.
I saw these ads around and it didn’t pop into my mind “Oh geez. Violence against a woman.”
Nope. All I really thought was “Cool. New X-Men movie.” And if anything, I thought, “Wow. Looks like Mystique’s in a bit of a pickle with this new bad guy.”
In other words, I didn’t see the ad so much as portraying violence against a woman but rather, a superhero taking on a super villain, combined with the thought that this villain is the worst the X-Men have ever faced as even the powerful ninja shapeshifter Mystique is getting bested.
That’s what we want, right? We want Mystique to be considered just as big a bad ass as Cyclops or Wolverine, don’t we?
When I saw this ad I didn’t think “Damn it. A woman is getting abused.”
I thought, “Holy shit! Apocalypse is the scariest villain ever! If even the great and powerful Mystique can’t handle him then surely we are all fucked royally! Everyone run for your lives! Apocalypse is coming! Get me to this movie so I can see just how evil Apocalypse is and how fucked all the X-Men are, whether or not they have penises or vaginas, all X-Men are truly fucked when this monstrous villain comes along!”
I don’t mean to complain but in my opinion, there’s just never been a time like the present where men have no idea what to do to keep women happy.
Consider:
- It is sexist to show Mystique getting roughed up by a male villain.
- It would also be sexist to tell Mystique she needs to sit out the fight because she’s a fragile delicate woman who couldn’t possibly defeat a man.
So…what the heck do we do then?
Equality is great and all but I have to admit there have been some times when I fear that women, in their quest for equality, may have abandoned some things that actually made them better than men.
Case in point. Ronda Rousey. Most popular female UFC fighter ever. Trained in martial arts. Can beat up the strongest dudes with her pinky finger.
Good for her and all but sometimes I’ll see female UFC fighters knocking the crap out of each other and wonder if maybe, just maybe, “knocking the crap out of each other” might have been one of those male concepts that women would have been better off had they not aspired to.
Yes, you women have the right to beat each other up in a UFC fight, but why do you want to?
I’m a man and I don’t even want to fight anyone.
But I also understand that not every man and/or woman is the same. Not every man and/or woman wants to be a fighter.
It just becomes hard for me to know what to say. If women are clamoring for more female superheroes (“Rah rah, we can fight evil just like the men!”) then you can’t have it both ways.
You can’t demand more female superheroes, put those superheroes in a position where they have to fight evil, then cry foul or “Hey! You’re being mean to a woman!” if the big bad villain knocks the female superhero around.
Because honestly, it would be easy to start getting a little old school on this. I’d rather not see women get beaten up on screen, so if women don’t want that to happen, then we can just start a movement for women to no longer be superheroes. (I’m just trying to prove a point. I don’t want women to stop being superheroes.)
Then again, I also realize this is all fantasy. Men don’t have superpowers either. But these films are make believe. We’re expected to suspend disbelief and assume these men and women have superpowers. We shouldn’t look at the men or the women as being mere fragile humans but rather superheroes with great abilities.
It’s playing pretend. These films let us fantasize about how great life would be for us if we had special powers and since these movies are open to everyone, the fantasy is easier to indulge in when each movie goer sees someone who they can relate to. Men can fantasize about being male heroes. Women can fantasize about female superheroes and so on.
Eh. I can see all the points on this. Perhaps that didn’t need to be the image they put out everywhere.
Otherwise, I don’t know women. Yes, they are many douchey men out there who get off on violence against women.
On the other hand, the majority of average, trying to do the right thing men will probably do whatever you want, because let’s face it, that’s what we do anyway.
You want us to treat you as fragile and keep you out of the superhero fights? We will. (I say we like I’m some kind of studio exec that can make this happen.)
But if you want to be superheroes and fight evil villains alongside male superheroes then that’s great too.
Just keep in mind villains like Apocalypse don’t believe in chivalry. Apocalypse isn’t going to think, “Huh. Mystique’s a woman so maybe I ought to go easier on her.”
No. Apocalypse is going to think, “This is a do-gooder superhero who is trying to get between me and my plans for world domination so I better stop her.”
Look, I don’t want to get carried away, it’s just that at the end of the day, Mystique getting strangled by Apocalypse means she’s been accepted in the world of superheroes.
Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, Professor X, Nightcrawler – shit. Ask any of them and they’ll tell you that getting strangled by a villain is just a hazard of the job.
You could argue it would have been sexist for Mystique to not have been strangled by Apocalypse.
Apocalypse beats up all the male heroes and then pats Mystique on the head and says, “Take a break honey?”
Please. Had that happened I would have contacted a civil rights lawyer immediately to help me voice my anti-sexism concerns.
What say you, 3.5 readers?
Bookshelf Battle 
I find it amusing this came from Rose McG after she starred in that movie where she killed her best friend with a jaw breaker, talk about violence against women.
As I recall that was a darkly funny movie too. Crap. So long ago now. How did we all get so old?
I have no idea how to make women happy. You’d better put more women into superhero movies, but they’d better not get hurt.
I ran into it a little bit in my horrendous novel. I felt like Miles needed to defeat a werewolf so he could become a man wolf. For five minutes it was going to be a female werewolf then I was like…eh it’s already a kid hero so that’s kind of weird and then if he defeats a female werewolf that gets even weirder.
Obviously it was going to be a bad ass female wolf with all kinds of powers and shit. Someone truly scary.
So the villain became a male wolf. I think it actually worked better given the situation.
Sometimes I think we forget not all men are the same and not all women are the same. I had Gunther and Slade as heroes but for example, Gunther was the voice of reason arguing to avoid fights if possible.
And the Reverend just avoids the fights and drinks until his last moment of misguided courage.
Then you have the Widow Farquhar who goes catatonic and useless for most of the novel vs. Miss Bonnie who I think actually has the highest kill count in the novel.
I don’t know. Women need to make a website where they post daily updates on their latest decisions about things as they change their minds often. Otherwise I have no idea what to do other than nod approvingly and then wait for them to express the complete opposite of what they just said so I can also nod approvingly.
Rofl
As always, I appreciate your semi-serious musings on such topics.
As Rose McGowan implies, context is important. A single movie that fails the Bechdel test is not necessarily a problem, but an entire genre of movies that does is. Similarly, a single scene from a movie doesn’t tell the whole story. This scene may be a trigger for some women who have been abused…and they should therefore probably not see this movie.
We know the context: Mystique is being choked by Apocalypse, who is a villain, and a flatly evil one at that; frankly I can’t think of a single redeeming quality the character has, so I think it is pretty clear that anything Apocalypse does, you should not be doing. (That being said, he does seem pretty fair in his hiring practices, since half his team is women.) Mystique has a leading role, and is shown as a strong character. Additionally, a lot of the violence in the movie is perpetuated by women.
The problem therefore I have, and Ms. McGowan has, is not with the movie, but with the marketing, because the ad strips the scene of its context. Many of the people (even children) seeing this ad won’t know who the characters are, just that there is a large man choking a helpless-looking woman. Honestly, I think it is kinda weird to use a still of *anyone* being choked as part of an ad. I get that they are trying to make Apocalypse seem menacing, but I wouldn’t really want to see that kind of violence so casually displayed on my commute, regardless of man or woman.
I guess on the feminist rage-o-meter, this rates a “meh, do better next time” from me.
Apocalypse ran a truly next level evil organization. His flunkies included Magneto, Angel, Psylocke and Storm.
Ergo, 50% of his workforce was female.
And he paid them all equally – absolutely nothing.
And seeing as how the movie took place in the 1980s, he was truly ahead of his time.
A true boon to equality in evil super villain organizations if you ask me.
Indeed, he is a true role model for the politically correct supervillain. #mutantlivesmatter
I heard that Trump thought the poster was okay because he is racist against blue chicks.
#shapeshifterlivesmatter