I’ve tried, in vain apparently, to ignore the uproar that is
accompanying the release of The Avengers sequel. It’s seems jumbled and misdirected and convoluted (a lot
like the second half of the movie, if I’m being completely honest) but I can’t
ignore it. It’s on every site I choose to visit on a daily basis. Yes, a simple solution to this part of
the problem would be for me to ONLY visit the Apartment Therapy or
Anthropologie websites for the next two weeks. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the issue exists,
nor does it change the fact that I’d probably be (roughly) 500 bucks poorer at
the end of those two weeks.
Seriously, have you seen these bird pillows?! They’re practically a steal at 78 bucks!
But let’s attempt to deal with the myriad of issues at hand in
order, of course to avoid dealing with actual world events that none of us
single-handedly can fix. Let’s try
to break down exactly how those sticks got up everyone’s butts about the Black
Widow story arc, and see if we can’t decipher whether or not that stick
deserves to be up there in the first place, or if you might want to think about
morally un-constipating yourself over a comic book movie. The first step to
doing this is untangling this massive web of issues that somehow everyone has
managed to jumble into ONE giant issue that illicits horrifying responses from
both sides of this, more often than not, imagined argument. Oh, and SPOILERS
WILL ABOUND, so buckle in or get off the ride now.
Issue #1: Joss Whedon as Antifeminist:
If
this is your issue with the film, I’m going to tell you, right now, to get out
that Sam’s Club –sized bottle of Ex-Lax, because this has never, ever been the
case with any of Whedon’s female characters. As a girl who got to look up to Buffy instead of Marsha
Brady, I’m infinitely grateful to Mr. Whedon for giving me a female character
that made me think “I’d like to learn how to throw a punch., but I should
probably wait until after dance class”.
Because that was the way Buffy was too. She was a three-dimensional girl with
inter-dimensional problems. When
she was angry about the fact that the man that she loved lost his soul, she
cried AND kicked ass.
But apparently,
this is a combination that people can’t understand. “Black Widow becomes trapped in a romantic story-line” the
Issue 1 folks claim. Well, what
movie did you watch? Because from what I could tell, it’s the fact that Natasha
is willing to put the world’s concerns over the concerns of her own heart that save
the day at the end of the movie.
She’s the only one working to get things done while the sad sack dudes
figure out who can lift Thor’s hammer.
While the guys are busy having a pissing contest about who’s the most
super-heroic of all of them, Natasha is jumping out of a plane to make sure
that Vision can be, well…birthed. Which leads me to
Issue #2: Black Widow and the scary, sad, uncomfortable
word:
Sterility
is one of those things we just don’t talk about as a society. It’s something that’s used as
punishment, or as an indication that you’re reading a post-apocalyptic horror
story, or as I like to call it now, YA. It’s a word that invokes sadness,
awkwardness, and all of those other feelings that seem to stem from dealing
with female sex organs in general.
It’s like the word “miscarriage”. It indicates that a woman can’t fulfill her feminine duty to
the world, which is, of course,
“procreation”. It's a word that invariably makes people look at said woman and think “poor girl”. A woman who can’t have children is
automatically, even if subconsciously, put on the second-tier of the female status
ladder. She’s the girl you don’t
talk to about your children, and if you can’t talk to her about your children,
then what’s the point of talking to her at all, right?
The
central theme of the movie, to me, was that every single one of the Avengers
team believes themselves to be a monster.
And I don’t believe that Natasha’s line to Banner is “I’m sterile so I’m
a monster”. In fact I’m almost
CERTAIN that is the exact opposite of what she says to him. And because I saw the film a week ago,
I can’t remember verbatim, but let me share how my brain interpreted her scene
with Banner:
“Hey,
remember when I was like catatonic a little while ago. Oh well that was because I was reliving
the horrible nightmare that was my childhood and assassin training. I started young (remember, I told you
that in the first movie that everyone loved?) because every good villainous
organization knows that if you get them young, you can basically condition them
to do anything. I wasn’t allowed
to be a ballerina. I was
conditioned to shoot my targets and hit them. Before I was allowed to go on missions, I was sterilized
because the organization that grew me like a Human Chia Pet didn’t want my
loyalty being compromised. I’ve
done a lot of bad things because I’ve never allowed myself to care about
anyone. And then, well, shit, you
came along. Now all I can think of
‘will you think of me as a monster if you know what I’ve done?’ or will you
realize that we’re both messed up, but kind of perfect for each other?”
Would
everyone have bitched so much if that had been her actual speech? Or would you still be pissy about the
fact that she’s attracted to Banner in the first place? If you’re still pissy, then I hope you
don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy or Scandal or The Good Wife, or any other prime time show based around a profession where co-workers fall in love with each other (which is pretty much all of them). I also hope you’re not busy bitching about comic
“continuity” or “mythology”. You
know why? Because Marvel doesn’t give a crap about YOUR idea of continuity or
mythology. Every comic has been written and re-written and re-booted dozens of
times by dozens of authors with different takes. Only the base details stay the same. Superman is always an alien, Bruce
Wayne is always an orphan, and Black Widow is a spy. Beyond that, you can take your precious notions of what YOU
WANTED TO HAPPEN, and flush it down the toilet with the remnants of your Dorito
and Mountain Dew dinner.
If you wouldn’t have been mad if
that had been the above had been her actual speech, then you might fall into
the Issue #3 camp.
Issue #3: Your real issue is with Marvel, but you’re too
afraid to say it out loud because they’ve been like a member of your family
since you could ogle the bright colors of a comic book panel
If
this is the camp you fall into, I’d say you have good reason to have a stick up
your butt. Firstly, Marvel has
handled the promotion of this film poorly, in terms of acknowledging Black
Widow as a full-fledged character.
You can’t have a Target ad with Hulk, Thor, Captain America and even
friggin’ Ultron and NOT HAVE BLACK WIDOW.
Just make the toys Marvel.
If you make them, girls will buy them or have them bought for them, by
parents who are just really psyched that they have an alternative to Hawaiian
Luau Barbie. I guess Marvel should
just expect us to be thankful that Scarlett Johansson was allowed to tag along
with all the boys on what seems to have been an exhaustive press/hype
tour.
Additionally,
there’s been some clarification on Whedon’s part of what he was “allowed” to
keep in his story and what the higher-ups at Marvel fought him on. It seems that all of those annoying,
niggling character development moments (like seeing what terrifies our
superheroes and gallivanting off to Hawkeye’s farm ) were Whedon’s idea. So if you have a problem with those,
then yeah, I guess you could be mad at Whedon, as long as you realize that having
heroes go to farm and split wood the old-fashioned way and attempt to hash our
their (working) relationship doesn’t make him anti-feminist, it just means he’s
a writer who wanted to do more with the story than collateral damage. If all you want to see are buildings
being destroyed, I’m sure DC will come out with a movie to satisfy your most
basic needs soon. Have no fear,
Zack Snyder has never been too worried about character development. I’m sure Marvel has also already made
sure that the Russo Brothers don’t have any grand ideas of making the story
their own. We do have a universe
to build, after all! I mean what
will we do if we don’t get to Thanos?!
By the way, my concerns over the direction Marvel was deciding to go in
sprang forth as soon as Edgar Wright departed Ant-Man. If that chink in the
armor turns into Marvel’s first movie to not do so hot at the box office, it’ll
be interesting to watch them scramble.
But
then again, despite some of the strides made in the industry, there’s still
that annoying feeling that comics aren’t really made for girls. Oh wait, I get that feeling because some
authors have actually said those exact words…in the last five years! And while
the indicated author(s) may have just been having a bad day or had words taken
out of context in some way (the way they always claim they are), it’s clear
that the mentality of the entire industry has a way to go before that glass
ceiling is shattered, probably by She-Hulk, let’s be honest.
Issue #4: You don’t like the movie but you can’t pinpoint
why and you feel like you should, so you jump on the Black Widow band wagon.
In this day and age, we all have to have our reasons
right? We can’t just NOT like
something because it doesn’t connect with us. There has to be a reason, dang it! And if you went in wanting to LOVE or be blown away by
Avengers 2 and thought it was just ok, I’m here to tell you, that’s fine. It’s a movie. It’s a
bit of a jumble towards the end and you could tell that the studio notes
started to overwhelm Whedon and that the focus gets a bit lost, but that’s
ok. If someone says “what didn’t
you like about it?” don’t feel lik you owe them an Ebert-esque answer, “You can just say, it didn’t do it for
me the way the first one did”. You don’t have to just use “ugh, the Black Widow
storyline” as your excuse. Because
if you don’t really believe it, then you just sound like one of those dummies
who uses the “Ewoks are annoying muppets” argument when trying to convince me
that Return of the Jedi isn’t the best Star Wars movie. It’s annoying and overdone and loses
its punch due to groupthink.
I guess what I’m saying is, I liked the movie and I just liked the storyline
between Natasha and Banner. It
made sense to me. It made sense
that if Hawkeye was married (and clearly had been for a while with 2 kids that
seemed to be like 5 and 7) that she wouldn’t be with him. That they could be the best of friends. It made sense that then, out of all of
the people that she’s in life and death situations with every single day, maybe
she’d fall for another one of them.
Maybe she doesn’t want to be alone but also doesn’t necessarily want to
join HeroMatch.com because maybe all of those guys are Tony Stark Lite. Maybe she’d fall for the quiet and
geekily handsome Bruce Banner for exactly the reasons she says in the movie. Maybe just because your business card
reads “assassin turned spy” it doesn’t mean you have to be alone kicking-ass
your whole life but it also doesn’t mean you should have to apologize for ANY
decision you make. I guess the
bottom line is this: you’re Black Widow, you do what you want to do
dammit. You like who you like and
you stick electric volts in the ones you don’t. Sometimes you get to use Captain America’s shield, or save
the world, or sometimes you just go soak in the bath and cry. Whatever, you’re an Avenger. And the world needs you. It’s the same advice I’d give to my
daughter and every other young girl, and I think it’s what the movie is trying
to say, if the outcries could be a little less shouty and a little more thought
through. Seriously, the anger over
this is louder than a Hans Zimmer score.
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