man of steel chapter 2

and we're back! in today's chapter, jor-el commits grand theft skull! yay!

so, we start right where we left off. no, i don't think you understand: the chapter literally starts with 'tor-an carried out zod's orders'. this dude really doesn't trust us with figuring out that time has passed, does he? anyway, they strip jor-el of his cape and shit before they lead him off to wherever they're taking everyone.

jor-el looks back to see zod in the throne room, not looking all happy like he thought he would, and thinks about how much of a shame it is that the war zod's starting is for nothing. you know, i really do like this relationship they've set up between zod and jor. it's suitably sad and heartfelt, even if it is a rip-off of grindelwald and dumbledore. i don't think i've mentioned it here, but one thing chris nolan movies are always lacking is platonic relationships, especially between two dudes. cox did this in the tdkr novelization too, adding in the connection between nameless dude #1 and bane during the plane scene. i'm sure this relationship is in the movie, but i doubt it's seen this in depth. good move, mr. cox.

the moment is kind of ruined by a line reminding us that jor-el has 'plans', though. sigh

everything has gone to shit now, and there's a huge battle raging outside. zod's dudes are cut off in the hallway by jor-el's one robot, kelex, and jor-el is able to make his escape when kelex fucking blinds everyone. as badass as that is, this is such a dues ex machina; we don't find out that kelex was there until he shows up in the tunnel. this could have been avoided with a single line in the last chapter, so that's big points off, man.

as jor is running away from zod's dudes before they can get back up, he skypes lara and tells her what's up. there's a nice moment when he's too busy thinking and she's like 'behind you!'. that was cool. however, that's ruined by the part where the author mentions lara's 'flawlessly rendered' lips as she starts to argue with jor-el about the baby ship. i shit you not, this is the point where i officially threw out any headcanon i had of her and she just became liv tyler as arwen. what the fuck dude? she's just some kryptonian lady, not a model or a doll or something. jesus, i'm dreading what he'll do when we reach lois lane.

now, having said how much i like the relationship between jor and zod, i hate his relationship with his wife. like, yeah it's obvious that they love each other, but they're so boring. and it's the fault of the author, because he paints lara as two dimensional and plain. she's basically edward cullen with bella's lack of conviction and personality. jor-el isn't much better, but at least we have a sense of history about him.

this next section begins the numerous mentions of the color of the sky, all of which are unnecesary, as he said it last chapter and that was enough. it wasn't like it was changing or anything. another dues ex machina happens, saving jor-el from a crashing ship that was headed towards him when he exited the tunnels. lovely. somehow this guy finds a way to remind us that superman is a boy while reminding us that jor-el has 'plans'. how would we forget that??? man is in the title - we know the gender of the child dude!

jor-el is still standing on the terrace above the shitstorm when he calls on his animal-airship thing, which is called h'raka and i literally cannot envision in my mind's eye. she's not described well enough - he doesn't even mention how many legs she has - for me to come up with anything. think of you're favorite non-avian flying type pokemon and imagine that instead, i guess. i know this is adapted from the screenplay, but i have such a hard time believing this is in the movie. it feels so out there, even for an alien planet like krypton. it really takes me out of the story. also, why wasn't she mentioned before? see, this is what happens when you ***. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS.

but anyway, he flies her over the battle toward this building called the genesis chambers, giving us some time to see the carnage up close. there's a lot of the unnecessary paragraph breaks here and it's annoying as hell. like, i know the method of breaking for poignancy, i've done it before too, but when you do it more than once on the same damn page the effect is lost.

we get another *** (there was one right after he spoke to lara) and homie is at the genesis chamber, which is basically the literal tree of life. the place is unguarded because of the war going on, which is lampshaded by jor, and dude lands and dives right in. literally. the tree is filled with fetuses and their robot nurses floating around in amniotic fluid, which is kind of cool but mostly gross. jor's looking for the codex, which is another thing i don't really get and isn't explained well, even though i read ahead a chapter. there's a fun moment before this when kelex tells jor where the codex is, and starts to warn him of the legal action that'll be taken if he breaks in, and jor is like 'no one cares anymore, kelex, the world is ending.' i'm there dude.

in this part we also learn that krypton has, apparently abandoned the 'recklessness' of sexual reproduction for the much more controlled method of test tube babies in a tree. so superman isn't the first baby born on krypton in ages - he's the first baby born out of a vagina in ages! he gets more and more special by the minute! if it turns out that he's never going to age once he gets to earth he really will be the new renesmee!

after almost getting caught because he accidentally kicked one of the baby bubbles (i'd say that'd have a lasting effect, but the world is ending), jor gets to the codex, which is a fossil covered in writing hanging right above the pool he came out of. he doesn't even have to get out of the baby juice to grab it! how nice! getting the skull sets off the alarms, so jor has to get out of dodge while the nurse bots chase after him and bite his ankles. he's not hurt though, because he's wearing an advanced skinsuit to protect himself - so, basically, under armor. i hope you all didn't think he was running around naked, or in his underroos! oddly, this is the only thing that avoids being a dues ex, but it's so much easier to mention these things as the story demands instead of establishing they exist prior.

one of the robots manages to get him as he's getting out of the water and he loses the codex for a moment, but it was already established that these robots weren't built for fighting, so he's able to kick it off and get it before it rolls off of the branch. he came out through the wrong one in his haste, so dude takes the most literal leap of faith ever and is, thankfully, caught by h'raka before he falls to the ground. the chapter ends with him directing her home.

this chapter is full of imaginary stakes. things happen that should hinder jor significantly - zod's men, the falling ship, the codex rolling toward the edge - but they don't because of course they don't. there aren't any real stakes outside of the world ending in a week and the civil war happening. i feel like i just read a padding chapter, and the retrieval of the codex is hella important. it doesn't help that we have no idea what the codex even is yet, and i feel like we won't learn until much later in the book. we get over-explanations of everything else, but we can't get a small hint at what this is? i smell a mcguffin, everyone.

some words on the objectification of women

• naked woman =/= objectification. this is misogyny at its most subtle, everyone. the idea that any woman with her clothes on is unfair to two groups: 1) the woman, because it implies that the female body cannot be viewed as anything but an object for sexual pleasure, and 2) men, surprisingly, because it assumes that all men are drooling idiots. both of those ideas are bullshit, and you're not helping anybody by implying that the only way to show a woman respectfully is with her clothes on. the framing of the scene/shot/panel is more important than the content, so before you complain, really look and see if the author/illustrator/whatever actually meant for it to be titillating.
• objectification doesn't have to be sexual. this is one i ran into while reading man of steel. you're not jumping out of the box because you're not mentioning how 'sexy' she is, okay? the more times you mention how earth-shatteringly beautiful this girl is, the less relatable she becomes. not even kidding, every time gary cox mentioned how warm and exquisite and 'beautifully rendered' lara was, the more i imagined her as arwen from lord of the rings, because she wasn't just a regular person anymore! instead of turning her into a sex object she's turned into a porcelain doll or a marble statue - she's not a person either way, and both are just as bad as the other. if she's pretty, just say she's pretty - using the word pretty is fine - and leave it.

review of a chapter: man of steel novelization

so i got around to reading the sample of the man of steel novelization that i downloaded on my kindle, and i start this with a few claps for greg cox? i gotta say, dude totally stepped his game for this one! he makes a lot of the same mistakes as before, but those mistakes are better written and more engaging, so that counts for something! i actually, like, want to read this thing. wait, was that supposed to come at the end? oh well.

anyway, ONWARDS!

i remind you again that i haven't seen the movie for this, so i'm judging the book strictly as a book. that being said, was the destruction of krypton a prologue in the movie? because it feels like it should have been. one thing i do know is that superman's back story isn't told chronologically, and i already typed out this protip yesterday, but this scene taking place thirty-three years before the events of the movie that isn't a flashback should be a prologue!! if this isn't a prologue in the movie either, than boo on you chris nolan and david goyer! get it together!

okay, so, to the actual story. the book jumps right into the action with the birth of superbaby. the first line of the book is jor-el telling his wife lara to push. i actually like this, because at least now i know that mr. cox doesn't start all his books the same way. very good. points of for using the word cranium again, though. what's up with that??

it's worth noting that the design aesthetic of krypton is very basic sci-fi stuff. it's the same mix of organic and futuristic as, like, the chitauri in the avengers and the predator planet in predators. that's not the fault of the author, i think, but i haven't read the script so i don't know.

now onto the thing that bothered me the most in this chapter. i've noticed a trend in male writers to mention how attractive the attractive female character is too much. Lara Lor-Van is called beautiful at every turn, with every synonym. it's not just this guy either: joss whedon does it in the script for the avengers, and the guys who wrote pirates of the caribbean do it any time elizabeth has a costume change. what gives, guys? i know lara is beautiful, you told me once already, you don't have to tell me every single time. also, stop describing  all attractive women like they're angels! you don't need to mention how 'exquisite' her features are. there isn't this much energy spent on telling us that jor-el is attractive; hell, as far as i know he's plain as hell! all we know about him is that he's fit and has a beard. this is similar to the problem of only mentioning a char's skin tone if they're a person of color, and just like how that's racist, this is sexist. say it once, don't wear it out.*

so, anyway, lara gives birth to little supe, the first baby born on krypton in a long time, because of course he is. i got nothing wrong with superman being special, that's why he's superman and not batman, but god dammit can't he just be the last surviving member of the race? he has to be the first baby born in a really long time too? if they keep this up he'll start bordering on renesmee-levels of ~specialness~, and that's not good at all.

a weird thing happens here, where the author puts a

***

and then the scene changes slightly. see how weird that feels? three asterisks it the writing equivalent of a dissolve: it's meant to show the passing of a significant amount of time. i would be okay with it**, but this is not that long after the first part of the scene. she didn't even leave the room, she just moved to the couch. what gives?

there are things i do like in this part, though. i like that the author eludes to the house of el's sigil and tells you what it means without telling you it's an S. i like that superbaby's space ship is mentioned without telling you what it's for. it's nice to know that he trust us to put two and two together that way.

a this point jor-el has to leave and go yell at the council members because everything on krypton is ruined and he's trying to pitch a back up plan before it all goes to shit. he's sad because he has to leave his son and wife so soon (more proof that the *** was unnecessary), but he has to because,as i mentioned, if he doesn't everything will go to shit.

another *** happens and then we're at the council chamber. there's a short description of what krypton looks like on the outside, and you really do see why he's so desperate to get them to listen to him: the surface of the planet is completely uninhabited because everyone lives underground, where they can mooch off of the planet's core for warmth because their sun is shitty and red. in turn, mooching off the core is what's ruining them, so the situation is pretty dire. they've got a few weeks before shit goes down, but the stodgy old council is all 'we've submitted the plan for peer review', like they've got time for that shit. is it just me, or is there any story where the council isn't stodgy and old? mass effect is the only one i can think of.

just as jor-el is explaining to the council how they can use the outer space resources to help themselves out, general zod comes crashing in with his folks to stop him from being so damn genre savvy. we're introduced to his team as well, and, once again, we come crashing head first into some sexism.

remember how i made a whole post about how the good/bad dichotomy in the tdkr trilogy and inception was false? yeah, well gary cox busted in and made sure it existed in this story. faora-ul is directly compared to lara. how bullshit is that? why do we have to bring her into this? also why does faora have to be a femme fetale? why can't she be a burly soldier boy type? i'd vouch for a tiny feminine thing but people with that type of body don't usually exist in military settings, regardless of gender. also, speaking of that, why does krypton have the same gender roles as we do? aren't they supposed to be super advanced aliens? gender shouldn't even exist on that planet anymore.

zod pulls a cutler beckett on these guys and says that the council is dismissed, and they're all fired. he kills the head one for daring to ask who's authority he had, and the rest of the old coots are tied up and taken away. jor-el steps in, and the story reminds us for the third or fourth time that he and zod used to be bros. zod is the grindelwald to jor-el's dumbledore; i'm not even kidding, their friendship has the same origin, minus the unrequited gay love (or does it???). jor-el tells him he's going about it all wrong, zod says he's tired of all this shit, jor-el silently agrees, but then comes the kicker: zod asks jor-el to join him. this would be pretty basic, but it's kind of heartfelt? and by that i mean that zod's not asking for his help simply to get himself ahead. he wants to save the planet as badly as jor-el, but he's racist, and jor-el wants nothing to do with his third reich eugenics bullshit, so he declines. good move, dude. however, zod gets offended, because he didn't get the memo that they didn't like each other anymore, and has him taken away.

and that's it!

so, for this book, the verdict is that this is also okay, but i want to read more of it and see what happens, because the sample cut off during chapter two. the good thing is, i can buy this now! and i wanna do chapter by chapter reviews! yay! so i guess this will be a thing now. yay!

* the only real exception to this is if it's written from the pov of someone who's really in love, in first person or third person limited, and even then just find a strong synonym and use it once
** on a personal note, i'm not a fan of *** in general, though i have seen it used okay. i feel like it promotes the disuse of transitions, which are really easy to use anyway.

a review of a chapter: the dark knight rises

i'm back already, and i'm here with something completely different (dog bless)

so in an endeavor, which i'm still not sure will be worth it, i decided to read the novelization of man of steel to see if i would like the story even a little bit. i haven't seen the movie, and, quite frankly, i'd rather spend six dollars on an ebook i'll never read again than twenty making a bet on a movie i'm already feeling iffy about. i also decided to take a peek at the novelization of the dark knight rises too, because it's by the same author, and why the heck not. that's the one i read first, so that's the one i'm talking about (as the title says)

so i downloaded the sample to my kindle last night, which includes the prologue and a chapter and a half? i think. it said i was 70% of the way through it on the first page of chapter two so i'm gonna pretend that's absolutely correct. while i do this, i'm gonna try to avoid mentioning my fic of the same story, mostly because this is a review, not a comparison, though i should mention that was sort of the other reason i wanted to read this book anyway. so, ONWARDS!

the prologue in this book is the scene where jim gordon is talking at harvey dent's funeral, nicely getting the time setting out of the way without having to mention it in the text, though they're probably going to mention it in the text. in the movie this is more like an epigraph more than anything, though it's hard to apply terms like that to a movie because it's not a book, you know? but here it's used as the prologue.

the narrator (this is written in 3rd person omniscient) kindly reminds us that harvey dent wasn't actually killed in the line of duty in the third sentence, which would be okay, maybe, but it's written in clumsily. that could have been it's own sentence, honestly. also, this author has a problem with using paragraph breaks properly. like, it's kind of a rule to break for every line of dialogue by a new speaker, but he breaks the last line of gordon's speech from the dialogue tag before it for no reason. that's one of my top pet peeves about writing, and while reading this it drove me crazy.

i'll be honest, i'm not a fan of this author at all. this stuff is readable, but he's just kind of amateur?? i feel like i'm being narcissistic when i say this because i'm really only comparing to myself, but i write better than this guy! that's not cool! i've only been doing this for ten months! not cool.

anyway, back to the prologue. it ends with gordon rushing out the words "i believed in harvey dent" and getting the heck out of dodge because he can't stand to praise the man who tried to kill his son anymore. completely understandable. what's funny, though, is that he's written as thinking this:

With any luck, people would think that he was simply overcome with emotion. God forbid they should guess what he was really feeling.

and like??? who's sitting at harvey dent's funeral service wondering if he really got killed by the batman except maybe the odd investigative reporter? i just find it funny that that's what gordon's thinking about at the moment. there's also an odd part where the narration refers to batman as 'gotham's true dark knight', which is strange, seeing as harvey was gotham's white knight. there is no other dark knight.

is this nitpicking? maybe, but nitpicking gives me life, so this'll have to do. ONWARDS!

so, chapter one!!! in this book is what was the prologue to the movie. writing hack: if you have a random scene that takes place six months prior to the timeline, presented chronologically instead of as a flashback, it should be a prologue, friend. it doesn't matter if it's long enough to qualify as a chapter - read game of thrones if you're worried about something like that. not a fan of the presentation, but okay whatever let's get to the goods.

one of the thing i realized while reading this is that it's written word for word from the screenplay (which i know because i own the complete screenplays for the dark knight trilogy. i really do like this batman stuff, i promise you). if this were any other screenwriter it wouldn't be a problem, but i can tell you from experience that writing a chris nolan scene without some rearrangements is bullshit. he writes his fast cuts right into the script, and if you don't make up for it it makes the writing choppy and hard to follow sometimes. i kind of don't want to fault the author for this, but i feel like i have to because it's his job to accommodate the change in medium, you know?

so, in this chapter we're introduced to dr. leonid pavel, the man with two first names, or so everyone tells me. they're a-speeding through the country side of Unnamed Eastern European Country #12 towards an airstrip outside of a city that's the front for some war that's going on, the likes of which we aren't privy to because it doesn't matter to us - which is fair enough. we learn a lot about dr. pavel, such as the fact that he's unsure of what he's doing, that he doesn't look like the actor that played him in the movie, and that he's apparently racist. there are other people in the car, but they don't matter, save for the three dudes in the back seat with bags over their heads - it wouldn't be a tdk trilogy movie without at least one person with a bag over their head. these paragraphs are pretty alright, except for a sentence that literally says 'other sounds began to be heard' as they near the war zone that's bugging the heck out of me because really?? really????

anyway, this is the part where they get out of the car and meet the cia agent played by the dude who plays petyr baelish on game of thrones. the book doesn't make moves to distinguish the driver from any of the other peripheral characters in the car, but i assume it's because that character is only named in the credits of the movie and we don't really have a reason to know that the driver of the car is important, because he kind of isn't. seriously, dude has approx three lines in the movie, but he seems important because he shows up everywhere bane is. that's another reflection of the script, but not one i'm faulting the author for.

the cia agent takes the doctor on the plane, as well as the three bag heads because driver told him that they worked for bane and cia dude is like 'yo that's what's up'. pavel is upset about it but he doesn't say anything because they're saving him and it's not ike his opinion matters anyway. i love the way the author goes out of his way to remind us that cia man is plain. like, nondescript and unmemorable are used in the same sentence to describe this dude. this is a personal thing, but when characters are plain i don't think you should spend even that much energy picking out synonyms to use. but that just might be me, so moving on, there's a thing i like!!! wow!! i like that bane is described as a mystery with a body count, it's actually a pretty succinct description of the char in general, which is nice to see in this.

also, adding to the plain, cia dude's name is Bill Wilson. like.. that sounds like an old man that lives next door to you, or your grandpa. i love it. agent wilson and co. board the plane and begin their flight over some mountains as wilson thinks about how he's gonna get a promotion if he can get the scoop on bane, since dude has eluded the cia pretty well. we also get that great scene where agent dude interrogates the guys by hanging them out the door and pretending to shoot them. fun stuff.

bane gets his first lines in the next paragraph, and, quite frankly, i'm mad the author didn't take the opportunity to describe the way his voice sounds. i guess it wasn't as important in the script or s/t. however, in this version bane is wearing a leather jacket, and that's cool as hell. bane, who is still one of the mystery bag heads at this point,  hints that he's bane, and wilson flips out internally. i gotta say, agent wilson has got to be the dumbest dude i've ever seen. do you know how many times bane is equated with blood and death and destruction in this chapter alone? according to pavel, dude is nearing voldemort levels of name-being-synonymous-with-terror-ability in that part of the word, but agent wilson is hella excited! he ain't scared of no bane!

so the bag comes off and tada! he's here!! and i hate the way his mask is described!!! it's not scary at all, or even a little intimidating because it's too excessive. the description in the script mentioned that it gripped his head like a vice, and that's about it. that's intimidating. this long ass paragraph isn't. if he'd pared it down and kept the part where he mentions that it made his face look like a skull it would have been fine. also, using cranium as a synonym for head is generally a dumb move unless you're talking science.

in the conversation that ensues after the de-bagging, wilson actually gets scared of bane, but only after he threatens to kill him, which i can't help but find a little unreasonable, seeing as this is bane. then again, maybe i'm just projecting myself into the situation, because bane is truiggery as hell for me and even reading some of this is hard. either way, now wilson is starting to get nervous about the sitch at hand, though he's trying not to show it.

now, this is the part where following the script exactly gets iffy, because this is when the bigger plane shows up. as cool and complicated as the plan is, i think it would have been better to keep the perspective in the plane for this part, just to make it easier to follow. hopping in and out of the plane is a bit disorienting. also one of the random soldiers gets name dropped here and i don't know why, seeing as he isn't mentioned again after this. can we talk about how wilson's last thoughts are "this can't be happening! i'm in charge here!" really dude?

the narrator switches between telling us what's happening inside the plane and outside as everything goes to shit. pavel has tons of thoughts that make bane seem like satan, or death in the final destination franchise. i'd mock him for being so down during this but a plane is falling apart around him so i can't fault homie for that. they do the thing where they give him a corpse a blood transfusion with his blood and that's not as gross as it could have been but that's really nitpicky i think. however, i love the part where the one dude gets left on the plane in this one! it's so much more involved in this version, and you really see how much these dudes care about this stuff, especially bane. like, it actually looks like he cared about the guy that got left behind! whoa!

of course, the chapter ends with the plane being dropped onto the mountains and pavel and bane carried off. pavel screams bloody murder in this version, which is only funny because the narrator mentions before that he's a distinguished scientist and engineer before hand.

so... this was okay. like i said, it was readable, but i don't like the author's style. the prose is also really formal, which is hilarious considering who the movie is by. i am curious to see the rest of this though, and how he handles man of steel, which i also have a sample of on my kindle. maybe i'll do chapter by chapter reviews if i'm able to purchase the whole book. idk. but, for now, all i'll say is that the author would benefit from a creative writing class. it worked for me.

deconstructing the good woman/bad woman dichotomy in the tdk trilogy

ah, dichotomies, the bane of every person who isn't a... well, actually dichotomies hurt everyone, but i'm not here to talk about real life ones (atm anyway). i here to talk about the one i mentioned in my last post: the good/bad dichotomy in chris nolan's female characters. (i'm only focusing on the tdk trilogy because i haven't seen any of his movies outside of it except inception.)

like i said, this thing is really, really false. even without factoring characters and characterization, i can tell that the thing was something inadvertently made up by the fans. it probably started as them pointing out a flaw and now they're trying to stick all the girls in there. "but frankie, but frankie, why is it so easy to put them in there at a first glance though?" that's answered easily: it's because nolan doesn't write enough women. when you make a series of three movies with a big cast of characters you should have more than six females among them. that even number makes it more than easy enough to separate them into dumb groups without a second glance. for two, this dichotomy in general ignores nolan's work deconstructing yet another dichotomy: the one between good and evil. also, misogyny, because you sure don't see anyone trying to force the male characters into these limited moral spaces!

but yeah, to the girls. i mentioned the four main female characters in my other post - rachel, anna, selina, and talia - and how they 'fit' into the dichotomy. of course, it doesn't work that easily. for one, three of these four girls slide around the grey area more than batman does, really. rachel is the only girl that can be called good, but that's because she dies before she can be forced to do things that would put her into the grey area as well. the good/bad thing really flattens the characters into two-dimensional caricatures of the things nolan actually wrote.

i wanna talk about talia next because she's the only one who might fit into the 'bad' category, but even then it's only because she doesn't care about what her father really stood for - if she did she would be an antivillian like her dad and bane. her revenge makes her a bit more shallow in terms of morality compared to selina and anna.

i like anna because she's one of the characters that sits right in the grey; she's a cop on the mob's payroll but it's only because she wants to help her mom. she has a hand in rachel's death but it was unknowingly. she refuses to sit firmly in the 'good' or 'bad' area - she's the epitome of what nolan was trying do, really.

selina is a fun one as well, because she's also firmly in the grey; she's a jewel thief, but only because she can't get any higher in life because of her record. she has no qualms with killing, but the only people she kills are people who are endangering her (of course, us having spent so much time with batman skews our perspective on this). she even has a sort of code when it comes to her stealing. she's a darker shade of grey, but still grey nonetheless.

and this isn't even counting the fact that to put the dichotomy in effect you have to erase the three neutral female characters from the story: barbara gordon, judge surillo, and talia's mother. all three put into the plot of one of the movies in some way but aren't there enough (or are too dead) to reallly have an established moral compass.

like i mentioned above, the real problem here is the fact that there are only seven of these guys amongst a sea of complex male characters. let's not make it worse by trying to erase pieces of their characterization, please?

subverting tropes with c. nolan

okay guys.

so yesterday there was a post on my tumblr dashboard about how the marvel movies do better than the dark knight trilogy at portraying women. i'm not really here to talk about that rn, because i made a lot of posts about it on my blog already (here, if you wanna see them idk), but i'll just tell you that i agree with the sentiment but literally every argument, while they do apply to the portrayal of women in media, doesn't apply to the tdk trilogy. but, like i said, that's not what i'm here to talk about. while i was talking about that i mentioned that the only time nolan really did something interesting with his female chars was in inception. i mentioned how in his movies if there are two female chars one is usually good and one is bad and that's annoying, we all know that. in inception he subverts that with both of the girls.

there are a lot of ways to interpret inception, but the two most popular are the theories the one where mal was right (cobb is in some super deep dream state), and the one where she's wrong (she's really dead). there are others, and even within those two there are separate subtheories, but i'm gonna focus on these two supertheories for this.

in the movie, mal is presented as a sort of villain: not only does she get in the way of jobs, she has no problems with killing them in the one occasion where death has some kind of weight in a dream. she's dangerous, and it's only because cobb confronts her that the team can complete the job. ariadne, on the other hand, is the team's architect, and is one of the most important members of the team even before she makes cobb take her into the dream with them. she builds the mazes, and is the one who sees through cobb and actually takes initiative to do something so that the team won't be compromised by mal in the field. from what i've said above, you can deduce that they fall neatly into the categories most female characters do in a nolan story: ariadne is the good one, and mal is the bad one, right?

but it's not that easy.

to say that mal is the 'villain' and that ariadne is some kind of 'hero' is grossly simplifying both women.

in the case of ariadne, it's a bit simpler: if you've seen inception more than once while simultaneously having an internet connection, you know that the team aren't heroes. you don't have to look far to see it; miles straight up calls cobb wanting ariadne to work with them corruption. she's not neutral, but ari isn't exempt because she's new either. she's not the good one, she's just another person helping the protagonist.

now onto mal. there are two things that need to be put out there right now: 1, mal is still the antagonist. antagonists don't have to be evil, nor do they have to be villains, they just have to be against the protagonist, and she is. 2, mal does qualify as an anti-villain: on the sliding scale of anti-villains, she's a solid type four. 

however, like i said, to say that she's a villain at all is still simplifying the character a lot, and when you really look at it she doesn't really fit into the list of 'bad' women in nolan's films.* first off, her MO is super important. her whole motivation in the movie is getting cobb to realize that the world he's living in isn't real, and that he needs to come back home. whether you agree with her or not, that's not really that villainous or evil or even that bad. her means are more than a bit dodgy, let's be honest here, but in the end she doesn't want to ruin their job, she's just willing to do it if it'll get her husband to wake up. 

secondly, you have to take into account that mal isn't real. (this is where subtheories can make things mucky, but let's work under assumption that in both theories she's a projection.**) sure, she gets in the way of the crew at times when they're trying to work, but she's a projection, and an extension of cobb. take away all the layers, and the thing that's really getting in the way of the team is cobb's subconscious. ariadne says as much when cobb stops her from asking him about the layout. so, really, if you're really pressed about inception not having a villain, it does have one: it's cobb.

"but frankie, but frankie, cob can't be the villain! he's the protagonist!"

i said it above, but i'll say it again: the antagonist isn't always a villain, and the villain isn't always the antagonist. the protagonist can be evil just as easily as your antagonist can be good; heck, sometimes they're both evil, and sometimes they're both alright folks! protagonist is just term that means 'person/people we're following'. that's it. it doesn't mean 'hero' or 'good guy' or anything else, just that. mal is an antagonist because she's opposing cobb, but cobb is the villain because he's really the one getting in the way - also, not to mention the little stunt he pulled with not telling everyone about limbo. if you want to take it even further, you could say that cobb is the antagonist as well, since mal is an extension of him. 

so, in reality, the nolan dichotomy doesn't work here, as the 'good' woman isn't really good, just on our side, and the 'bad' woman isn't even real.

* my real problem with the good/bad dichotomy is that it's actually false (they all are, lbr). going off of the four nolan films that i've seen, it seems like it works - rachel is the good one and anna ramirez is the bad one, selina is the good one and talia is the bad one - but that completely ignores a) the nuances of the last three (rachel is a bit too saintly, but that's for another day), and b) the other three women who have some kind of presence in the dark knight and the dark knight rises. this is something i ought to discuss in a separate post though.

** there's a subtheory within the 'mal was right' camp that says that she was the real thing, and that she was really there and all that jazz. i'm not really here to argue that that was wrong, because i needed to make a point, but i will say that if that was the real mal why was she acting that way???

internet, we need to have another talk about barbie

hello! i'm here to reply to a post i made about barbie last, like, may or april (maybe even march) on my other blog. i'm mostly doing this because i've become a lot aware of the problems plaguing our society as a woman, and while my post had good intentions it did get a little misguided. so let's have at it, shall we?

original post found here

i highly doubt that barbie i the reason that so many girls have low self esteem and want to attain impossible figures. it makes sense on paper, but think about it. barbie is, first and foremost, a toy. she's made of plastic. also, there's the fact that there are pressures from the media to look like what's desirable, like the ladies in the magazines. and guess who's not in the magazines. of course there's probably people out there who do want the look like barbie, but don't blame everyone's low self-esteem on a doll. or at least think about it. 

so i'll admit, i still stand by this a little bit. but i'm not going to deny the fact that, yeah, barbie has probably hand an impact on girl's self-esteem and self image. but the thing i still stand by is this: you can't blame everyone's low self-esteem on a doll. you can't. it's never as simple as that.

that being said, i do believe that barbie is the source of some negative self image issues. but one things that's nice about the mattel company is that they recognize this and change barbie to help combat these problems. today's barbie has a much different body shape than barbies i had as a child specifically because of this. they;re trying t make barbie as good a role model as they can and making sure she has something close to and attainable body shape is definitely a step in the right direction. but let's not erase people' struggles by saying that barbie has never caused someone to feel bad because they can't look like.be as good as her.

barbie doesn't come in pink packaging and lots of pink (not only pink, but lots of pink) clothes because she's meant for girls. this is something called characterization. over the years mattel has turned barbie from just a fashion doll into full fledged character. she has a whole family, likes and dislikes, she even has an entire name. so it makes sense that barbie would have a favorite color right? and guess what that color is? pink. 

let's not kid ourselves here; the color of barbie's packaging has, at least in the past, had something  to do with marketing towards little girls. it is true that barbie has turned into a character over the years, but you can't just deny that marketing pink to little girls was never a thing because it's barbie's favorite color.

nowadays the packaging for barbie dolls has included other colors depending on the series/doll line the toy belongs to and whether or not said doll is barbie. the packaging for barbie's friends has less pink in it. and, even better, they don't take the pink off for ken dolls, which is really cool. but these are recent things that came along with the developments of barbie's characterization and the creation of actual personalities for her friends, and we shouldn't pretend that it's not.

(aside: this is one of the things the bratz always had going for them. the very first bratz dolls came in dark blue boxes, as did the boys. mga, the company that makes bratz, doesn't pander to to girls, and they acknowledge their male fanbase, which is nice.)

and probably the most important thing, barbie is not a slut, nor is she dumb. the movies have established that. for one, being a slut isn't even such a bad thing, let alone something that you call a cartoon character. also 'slutty' isn't a style of dress, it's a lifestyle choice (for lack of better word). and to top that off, barbie doesn't dress in what is traditionally thought of as 'slutty'. a regular barbie's style is probably best described as feminine, and the clothes are not overtly revealing. and there isn't really any evidence to prove that barbie is 'dumb'. there's the whole 'math is hard' thing, but not everyone is good at math, you know? it's not a sign of stupidity. besides, barbie has had what seems like a hundred jobs, which means she's qualified for every one. 

this is the one that has the strongest argument. barbie's not a slut, but what really needs to be acknowledged here is the fact that a) being a slut isn't a bad thing and b) people are slut-shaming a doll because of they way she's dressed. how sad is that? literally slut-shaming a toy. the bratz got this one flung at them a LOT when they first came out. but it's just so upsetting that people are slut-shaming a  female, real or fictional, because of the way she dresses. that's not even mentioning that barbie's clothes are in no way provocative."but look at the hem lines/length of her shorts!" you might say. well to that i say, "who cares?" really, why is it so bad for a girl to wear a short skirt/dress or short shorts? many people own clothes just like that,  but when it's a doll it's suddenly a problem?

of course it needs to be said that very real people deal with this stuff everyday, and honestly it's not fair.just the very notion that we should according to what might or might not appease a man is insulting, and it's even worse that we're imposing this on our kids. barbie's clothes reflect the style of the times. that's all it is, that's all it ever will be. and there's nothing "slutty" about that.

(aside: congrats to mattel and mga for not caving to the peer pressure on that point. i'd rather my kids (if i had them) get their fashion trends from dolls rather than magazines. i'm serious; a lot of fashion magazines are special editions or spin offs of the same magazines that bash celebrities, which teaches really bad attitudes and behaviors. barbie is never gonna spy on britney spears from a bush from the latest scoop. who would you trust?)