When Was the Last Time I Did a Round Up of Good Shit to Read?

I don't even know.  But as I was linkspamming the shit out of my Facebook friends (sorry y'all) I thought to myself that really I should be doing this here....  And it's going to be quite the clusterfuck of various areas of my interest and their recent discussion in media, so buckle up.  You're welcome!  :D


Cleveland anarchist bomb plot aided and abetted by the FBI

Rather than target real risks of domestic terror, like neo-Nazis, the FBI entrapment machine demonises anarchists and Muslims

A+ priorities and strategies FBI!  /sarcasm  This is one of the reasons why I am so burned out on anything professing to be "law and order" or "security" matters.  We're creating terrorists so we can catch them...instead of looking at ACTUAL TERRORIST GROUPS like neo-Nazis.  Oh, ok.


The homeless man and the NYPD cop's boots: how a warm tale turns cold

A picture that started as a seasonal heartwarmer has now become a reason not to feel sorry for the homeless as Hillman is painted as a wilful eccentric.

I was really struck by this story and what a great example it is of the demonization of the poor, the way that there is only one "proper" way to BE poor, and the way deviance from that narrative is SOUGHT OUT by people and then used to blame the poor for their situation and thus absolve all others of any complicity or guilt in the system that keeps them there.  I also think this overlaps with my final story....


In solidarity for the respect of Holy Places

In appreciation of the many gestures of solidarity from the Muslim world following the recent desecration of Christian Holy Places, the Auxiliary Bishop of Jerusalem, Bishop William Shomali, visited Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday, October 4 where he met Grand Mufti Mohammad Hussein and the grand magistrate of the mosque Abdel Adhim Salhab...The Bishop also assured Muslims the support of the Christian community with respect to their holy places.

People not being assholes.  I felt like I should mix it up a little bit.


Homefulness! A Real Solution to Houselessness

Homefulness, a project of POOR Magazine, is a solution of interdependence, love, and equity-sharing for landless youth, adults, and elders across Pachamama. It is a poor people-led, self-determined, truly green model for housing, art, microbusiness, spirituality, interdependence, self-accountability, caregiving, and community that incorporates the teaching of our elders, ancestors, and spiritual leaders in harmony with Mother Earth. We aim to create permanent and lasting solutions to houselessness for families in poverty who have been displaced, evicted, gentrified, and destabilized out of their indigenous lands and communities.

An IndieGoGo campaign that I would really encourage you to participate in, if you can!


Remember Their Names: In Memory of Kasandra, Cherica & Others

This tragic story pushes to the forefront an important issue in terms of domestic violence and murder. When the murderer is famous, attractive, rich, or charming people don’t want to believe that they are guilty. I don’t pretend to know Jovan Belcher’s heart, motives, or mind set when he fired numerous gunshots into the body of his baby’s mother, and then turned the gun on himself. I don’t know why his only option, in that moment, felt like a desperate one. I don’t know what caused him to murder Kasandra, but what I do know is that it was not Kasandra’s fault. I know that staying out until 1 o’clock in the morning at a concert was not an invitation to die. I know that it doesn’t matter what she wore that night, or what she may have said, or whether or not she may have been intoxicated, or rolled her eyes at him, or called him out of his name, or talked to another guy in passing, she didn’t deserve to die.

Nigeria: Security Forces Open Fire On Protesting Ogoni Community

Armed security forces protecting the interest of the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major, Shell, on Friday, opened fire on a protesting Ogoni community in the Rivers State axis of Southern Nigeria. The community, Eleme, was protesting against the presence of some Shell officials at the Ebubu Oilfield.

U.S. finalizes $3.4 billion settlement with American Indians

The missing funds at the center of the class-action case involve what are called Individual Indian Money accounts, which are supposed to represent the property of individual Indians. The accounts are held by the United States as trustee.
The lawsuit had accused the government of failing to account for the money, failing to make proper payments, and converting tribal money for the government's own use.
In making the announcement Monday, Obama remembered Cobell for "her honorable work." In 2009, she said that many represented in the class-action lawsuit "subsist in the direst poverty," and that the settlement is "significantly less than the full amount to which the Indians are owed."

This one made me happy, sort of, and also really fucking angry and sad.


The Adoption of Johnny Depp

A video from the 1491s recounting and dramatizing the events of Johnny Depp's adoption by LaDonna Harris of the Comanche nation. Not to be missed.  I'm serious.  Watch this shit.



WUT DUZ TRNAS GENDERE MENA?@??!

An absolutely wonderful infographic on what "Trans" means!!!!!!!  <3

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Confirmed for BBC Miniseries

If you've read this book, you know why I'm excited!


Who's Afraid of the Qassams?

So stopping Palestinian rockets is not a plausible explanation for Israeli attacks. Indeed, the Israeli leadership – at best – does not care much about such deaths, posturing to the contrary. There’s a reason for that. The Zionist political and intellectual elite makes a lot of cantankerous noises about the rockets falling on southern Israel, usually accompanied by the question, how would you respond if rockets were falling on your head? But less frequently noted is whose heads those rockets are falling upon. Sderot and other southern cities are not merely populated by Jewish Israelis. They are also populated by mostly Mizrahi, usually lower-class, Jewish Israelis, the outcome of a planning regime which puts some populations of Jews in some places and kept other populations of Jews in others. 

Sderot, summoned up so sedulously as the very symbol of Israeli terror and fear due to Hamas’s – mostly ineffectual – rockets was initially a transit camp for Kurdish and Persian Jews. Later, it was populated by Moroccans. And still later, Ethiopians and the darker Jews of the ex-Soviet Caucasus. That was where they were dumped, with the European elites concerned, according to a 1950 Jewish Agency brochure, that the darker Jews might create “quarters of poverty, filth, unemployment, and crime.” Accordingly, there needed to be “a greater effort to settle the immigrants in the countryside.” And so they were. 

[...]And so Tel Aviv, the cosmopolitan, Ashkenazi, cultural core of Israel could remain distant from the front lines of the conflict created by the policies pursued by its economic and political elites, while the cannon fodder on the Israeli periphery would bear their brunt.

So, yeah.  Let's keep this in mind when we're talking about rockets and "retaliation," yeah?


Finally, 'Squatters are not home stealers'

What the squatting dispute boils down to is a split between those who consider private property to be sacred, and those who would prioritise the right to shelter. Few people would happily forfeit a second home to squatters, but nor does it feel morally justifiable for a nation to have an estimated 930,000 empty homes while people sleep on the streets.

This is a really interesting article recounting the situation primarily for squatters in the UK, where a measure (section 144) was recently passed criminalizing them in new if not unprecedented ways, as well as in several other European countries and the United States.

The part I've highlighted here is, for me, one of the common denominators in all of these debates: private property and profit versus the right to shelter and measurements of worth outside of capitalist profit.

Even as I plan to buy a house one day and thus participate more directly than I currently do in the system of private property/profit (through equity), I really think we as communities need to THINK ABOUT what private property means to us, its "sacredness," its use for profit, and our priorities around use of space.  Because it's simply not a question of IF we have an excess of buildings - WE DO - and if people are going to put them to use as homes, gardens, community spaces; isn't that a GOOD THING?

I think it is. And I don't think everything needs to be about PROFIT, or that the use of space is only "good" if PROFIT is made.  But that's the way all this is constructed and POLICED right now.....

This is just one of those things I don't think many people know about, much less question. It's something I didn't know about or question until it was put in my face with the response to building "occupations" over the last couple of years.  So here I am...writing about it.

Cloud Atlas: Racebending, Genderbending and a Film for Us

Before going to see Cloud Atlas, I knew I few things about it.  I'd seen the trailers, and could see its scope was epic.  From the trailers I also knew it was a film by the Wachowskis, whose movies I generally FUCKING LOVE.  I knew it had been a book.  I knew it practiced racebending (actors of one race made up to look like people of another race/characters of one race played by actors of another).  And I had read two reviews, one referenced and linked to in the other: Cloud Atlas is a Film For Us - It is Our Film, in which the author argues, in part;

This won’t make much sense to a lot of people, but Cloud Atlas is Our Film. And there isn't a trans person in the film. But truly, this is a movie that is as rich and complex and deeply moving as the lives of Trans people, and it carries forward with so many themes that it resonates soundly with transness in a way that it id challenging to describe (sic).

It is a movie for those who love, and for those who are loved. It is a film for those who struggle, who wonder, who hope.

As I was watching the film myself, I couldn't help but agree with this review.

Her words kept ringing in my ears.

But I don't want to start there.  I want to start with what made me profoundly uncomfortable about the movie: the racebending.  Quite frankly, the white men made up to look Asian looked more like Vulcans or Romulans than actual Asian people of any ethnicity.  Like, the makeup people really tried, but it just DIDN'T work.  It was SO distracting.  It was SO awkward.

Similar feelings were conjured when Doona Bae was made up to be white and then a darker Latina, although this was more successful.

Halle Berry I didn't actually even recognize when she was made up as a white woman.

There is a LOT in here about my own perceptions, the perceptions of the other people in the theater, about "passing," about Otherness, and about mixed race features and "beauty" that are beyond the scope of this review (like I'm wishing I was back in school cuz I just keep coming across more things that are so fucking worth analyzing and talking about that I just want to write a huge research paper or something, but I don't want to do all of that right here and now)...

But whether the makeup "worked" or didn't, isn't really the point and isn't what ultimately bothered me about watching white men play at being Asian.  What bothered me was thinking about all the Asian men who could have played these roles, and who ultimately weren't in the movie because of the choice to racebend white men into the roles instead.

At the same time, I do understand the choice to have the same actors portraying many different characters.  I mean, without going into heavy spoilers, this is a lot of what the movie is about.  And not in some white-washed liberal colorblind way (even if in the end whitewashing did occur) but more in the sense of the idea that our souls have been/will be tied into bodies that are different from the ones we have now, and to represent that, they chose to use the same actors, so we can identify these souls visually as they move from body to body throughout time.  From a visual storytelling perspective, this strategy makes sense, and as I said to one of my friends as we discussed our reactions, this is basically the ONLY scenario I can even entertain the idea of racebending of this nature being remotely appropriate/excusable.  It's also a very theatrical choice, as my husband pointed out, which given the Wachowski's grand style of film-making, is also rather appropriate.

That said, I can think of other ways they could have achieved this.  There is a running visual element throughout the film of a distinctive birthmark.  Put that birthmark on anyone, and we could know it was this character reincarnated.  You could then have multiple actors play that role (which they did) and we know to trace them all together.  Obviously the actors, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving and especially Tom Hanks in particular would have had considerably less fun and demonstrated far fewer of their acting ability in that case, but many more actors, and importantly, many more actors of color, would have had the opportunity to demonstrate THEIR skills instead, and it would not have reinforced Hollywood narratives of the erasure of actors of color and current social narratives of whitewashing.

Note I do not say here "colorblind" narratives, because I absolutely did not take that message away from the film.  The message of the film, in the way it takes us through so many various lives, and shows us their interconnections, is one that does not shy away from difference, nor try to argue we are "all the same;" but that we are connected, that we are not totally separate from each other.  This was one of the messages that I thought was brilliantly done and beautiful to behold.

So yes.  This practice of yellowface made me deeply uncomfortable.  Even as I think it attempted to challenge the idea of the Racial Other, I also think it didn't really succeed.  And that is where I wanted to start my discussion of the film, because it deserves to be put front and center.

Existing alongside this really fucking important discomfort is the fact that I loved this film.  So I cannot over-emphasize my ambivalence here.  What they tried to portray with it was just epic.  There are quotes from the film I want to put in here, and I regret not taking notes as I watched, but I return now to the idea that "this film is for us."  I'm not trans, but I kept thinking about that review at different points in the movie, because, YES.  As someone who has long felt that the status quo/normative culture is one I am forcefully alienated from, YES.  The complexities, and beauties, and tragedies of life, hope and betrayal and greed and love are all in this story instead of some easily digested fantasy, and what ultimately comes out of it all is the need for us to stand up for each other.  To risk that.  To risk telling our truths.  To risk suffering and dying for each other.  That "boundaries are conventions," and conventions must be challenged, pushed at, broken through.

In other words:

REVOLUTION.

Revolution so that we all can survive and REALLY FUCKING LIVE.  In all our difference and splendour and variation and BEAUTY.  And even in our imperfection, making some of the imperfect choices made in its creation perhaps even sort of appropriate.

This movie is so QUEER that it doesn't surprise me that not everyone is "getting" it,* as attested to by the fact that it hasn't been a box office "success," apparently, and that I've heard/read so many saying they were confused by it.  But I don't know.  With all its flaws, it spoke very clearly to me.

And this was why the genderbending didn't make me uncomfortable like the racebending did.  Yes, Hugo Weaving still basically looked like Hugo Weaving, but he didn't play that character as a caricature.  More than that, I was fascinated by this choice of genderbending, given that this is the first movie (IIRC) after Lana Wachowski's transition, the first film she released as Lana publicly.  And in it she chooses a man who has been in like, all but one of the Wachowski's movies, to play a woman.  To play a butch, masculine woman.  Maybe, to play a trans woman.

In fact this is perhaps one of the most stereotypical ways that Hollywood presents trans women, one of the ways it displays it's transmisogyny** and undermines trans feminine identification.  That REALLY, they are not women at all, but "men in dresses."

It would be easy to read this character in that light, and it can't be ignored that this character exists within a movie-making context that is openly hostile to trans people, one that does undermine the perceived validity of trans identification in this manner.  And yet, in her first movie created openly as Lana, she chooses this man, clearly like their favorite actor ever and I'm guessing close friend, to portray this character.  And he does so really, really well.  Nurse Noakes is not played for laughs (although I did hear some VERY uncomfortable and surprised laughter when she first came on screen), and her femininity is not played to a hyper/false-feminine "drag queen" stereotype.  Weaving does affect his voice to make it higher, and this isn't done flawlessly, but it also isn't done hyperbolically.  So to me, this read as a great moment of trust on Lana Wachowski's part.  Of wanting to put characters on screen that don't conform to cisnormativity even as she had to know the hostile environment she would be adding that character to.  And so she chose to person close to her to portray that character, and tried to navigate a razor thin line between challenging the normative and falling into its traps.

It worked for me.

Let me also not ignore here that Weaving was not the only actor to genderbend in this film.  At least one of the woman actors (Xun Zhou, I believe) portrayed a man.  However, this character didn't have as big of a role as Weaving's nurse, and was not as apparently genderbent.  In fact, it wasn't until the end of the movie that I realized she had played that character at all.  And part of my brain screams about what this says about the way in which Asian men are portrayed/perceived as feminine, that this perception arising out of white supremacy's influence on normative gender means it is the Asian actors who have more gender mobility when swapping parts.  It is playing along that edge again, of challenging normativity, and sort of playing with normative perceptions too?  Perhaps in that legacy of Disidentification.  I'm not sure.  I probably won't be sure until I've seen this several more times, but I don't want to ignore any of the inklings of critique bubbling their way to the surface of my mind.

If you have gotten this far, I'm going to guess you've figured out this is a complicated and multi-layered film.  It is.  It is also at times a beautiful film.  Maybe even a transcendent film (a word I don't use lightly as I find it horribly cheesy and pretentious usually).  I do hope you will see it.

It is a film for us.



Footnotes:
*and by that I do not mean "have a problem with any of the totally critique-able parts" but the frequently heard "I have no idea what this movie is about"
**versus "merely" its cissexism in pursuit of "validation" of trans feminine identity through their portrayal by cis woman actors


Addendum:
As for Time relegating this to "the worst movie of the year" all I can say is LOLZ.

Imagining Social Justice Through Sci-Fi TV: From "Trek" to "Torchwood" (Part Two: Reviewing the Literature)

See part one of this series: HERE

CHAPTER ONE: WHERE’S MY PLACE?

“We need to imagine living elsewhere 

before we can live there” (Gordon 4).

Science fiction (across its various articulations in literature, film, television, etc.) has long been about imagining potential futures or alternate presents, and as such sci-fi offers a framework of imagination within which ideas of social justice are potentially able to flourish.  For example, many writers have envisioned their own utopias, or warned their home societies against foreseeable dystopias.  In doing so, these writers do the work of imagining how people of their current age might build better (or more terrible) worlds.  Fandom then takes these stories and reworks/repurposes them, engaging with and stretching the ideas contained within into something that applies to and/or interrogates our lived realities.  I have been a part of this process in some way for most of my life, and the personal and intellectual work I have done within those arenas has been both rewarding and trying.  I extend that work now into the academic realm, hoping to make a worthwhile contribution to studies of television, science fiction, social justice, gender, race and sexuality.

There are three principal fields of inquiry with which this project is engaged: Television Studies, Science Fiction Studies and a nexus of Women/Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies and Queer/LGBT Studies (where my analysis falls into the liminal spaces/overlap between these last three academic disciplines).  My academic background primarily consists of the literature of Women and Gender Studies with an emphasis on the work of Women of Color (particularly Chicana) feminists, a foundation I do not see shared by the literature on science fiction TV I have read.  Disciplines such as history, literature, critical race studies, queer theory and feminist theory have all contributed something to my research, theoretical framework and/or argument.  Popular engagement with the television shows also comprise elements of this critical archive, as I am not solely interested in the interpretation of these shows by academic scholars but by activists and fans outside of the academy as well.  Further, at times I also draw from other popular culture sources that engage with ideas similar to my own. 

The intervention I most hope to make through this project is one that allows fan-scholars like myself to take these stories into academic spaces as a popular source of social justice, and/or to take the knowledge produced in women’s studies and ethnic studies into normative geek discourse.  It is within the give and take of both communities that I live, and that I hope others might learn from.  My positionality makes this project rather unique, but it also means mapping the placement of my work within the massive network that is the scholarship on television and science fiction is, frankly, daunting.  However, I attempt it here to the best of my ability.  The two over-arching frameworks of my project deal with the imagination as a social/political practice and the ambivalence of television (both in the narrative and in the watching of it).  For ease of reading these will also be the dividing categories of this chapter.  In truth, there are sources that could overlap the borders between sections, and the sources discussed are not the only ones to influence my thinking or writing.  However, they are, as I look over the work I have done, the most important or influential, and/or contain or explicate the ideas and themes which I return to again and again, or help place my work within a larger context.  

“Who’s the Queer?”

Queer Themes and Neoliberalism in the BBC’s Torchwood

“Entertaining, engaging stories become popular. They become narratives that shape our cultures…embedded in our daily existence…they become our lived reality”  
– Robin Wright [1]

This essay is an exploration of the UK-based television series Torchwood and its unique productions of cultural knowledge.  The central questions of that exploration are: first, how does this show queer science fiction television/the crime procedural, and second, what does that queering produce?  In short, I argue that by utilizing familiar genre tropes (such as the “conflicted hero” and “good versus evil” story lines) Torchwood performs a televisual disidentificatory practice, deploying the familiar in unfamiliar ways and queering an otherwise normative masculine hero (Captain Jack Harkness).  By comforting us with these familiar tropes Torchwood is able to infiltrate our minds with queer ideas about partnership, sex and, importantly the nature of the world around us.  As a useful and productive juxtaposition to illuminate how these ideas work in practice, I demonstrate how Torchwood is effectively the anti-24 (24 being an immensely popular and in some ways thematically similar drama from the United States); using similar tropes and themes to dramatically different outcomes. 

My methodology is one of bridging cultural studies and feminist, queer and critical race theory in an examination of one particular contemporary popular culture item so as to deconstruct and analyze the various messages and ideas propagated by it.  Primarily, I utilize Jose Muñoz’ theory of disidentification as the foundation for my argument.  While Muñoz conceptualized his theory with live performance art in mind, the idea of inhabiting as well as contesting an image thereby producing a different and new image or concept can, in my view, be applied easily to almost any visual medium.  In addition, this theory is instructive and useful to my project because “disidentification is not an apolitical middle ground,” in fact, “its political agenda is clearly indebted to antiassimilationist thought,” although “it departs from antiassimilationist rhetoric for reasons that are both strategic and methodological” (Muñoz 18).  The distinctions Muñoz makes clear here are important to my own argument, which suggests that in embodying common tropes Torchwood is able to create new knowledges through a queer deployment of those tropes.  Just as its plots deploy the uncanny to frighten or discomfort its viewership (Rawcliffe 102), so too its “queer moments” disturb the waters of the desired sexual dichotomy (Sullivan 191).

I choose this path of argument because it seems to me that it is in the uncomfortable borderlands of the cultural productions these disciplines study where knowledge is being produced in the television viewership every week.  In undertaking this particular work, I take seriously Nikki Sullivan’s assertion that “queering popular culture…involves critically engaging with cultural artefacts in order to explore the ways in which meaning and identity is (inter)textually (re)produced” (190).  I understand both the queer themes of Torchwood and my current explorations of themes, both explicitly queer and not, as operating within this ideological construction of “queering popular culture.”  I choose to engage in this project, centered around a popular culture (and for much of its life, subcultural) text, because of a personal and observed belief in the power of stories in shaping the world we live in. 

Indeed, the power of fictional stories in the development of people’s beliefs is shared by Robin Wright, documents in her work the ways in which adult education teachers have been able to use fiction to challenge hegemonic cultural perspectives, as well as the way the television we watch aids in perpetuating hegemonic political discourse (Wright).  This belief is also reinforced by scientific research, for example, one such study “concluded that the use of fiction…to introduce a socio-scientific issue in the classroom stimulates students to develop their opinion-forming skills” (Knippelsab, Severiensa and Klopa).  Although this is hardly an exhaustive list in corroboration of my previously articulated assertion, these texts combined with the way in which we use stories and folk tales in the education of children and in everyday relations with each other suggest to a satisfactory extent the marked significance of stories.  Thus, my stakes in this work is high, as like Wright, I see in the stories we tell the potential for authoring and disseminating “alternative scripts for human interactions the promote liberty, equality, intellectual growth and community” (Wright 50).

Review: Heat Wave

Heat Wave by Richard Castle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Reads just like watching Castle on TV...but with sex scenes.



View all my reviews

Doctor Horrible Sequel Moving Along Slowly But Surely

Jed Whedon: Captain Hammer is comedy gold | Los Angeles Times:

"JP: There’s been talk of a sequel. How far along is the planning for it, if at all?

JW: We have some songs, a rough outline, and no time. Though I have a feeling that when Joss is finished making his massive, expensive superhero movie, he will want nothing more than to make a tiny, cheap superhero movie. With songs."

This pleases me. And so I thought I would share it with the rest of you! The interview also has a few other interesting related details.

School Stuff: My Current Research Projects

Long time, no see!

So, I'm guessing if you're still here you might have some interest in what I'm doing while I'm away. Well, I had to turn in my three research project proposals recently, so I thought I'd share and let you see what I've been and will be working on...

First up...

I'm taking a class on Raza Women. For my additional project I'm going to read the book Desert Blood by Gaspar de Alba and discuss how the book intersects with what we've been discussing during the semester. As the book is on the Juarez femicides I'm guessing I'll be talking a lot about Latinas and violence; you know, happy stuff! Am pretty sure I'll find myself having to critique the book for ignoring trans Latinas, but, I'll hope for the best until proved wrong. Still, I'm planning to have to do supplemental research to talk about that in the paper.

Second...

The project I am proposing is one that will require me to research the Wizard Rock community and genre. I plan to do this through primarily internet research and the podcast WZRD, as well as by looking for documentation/discussion in film and print. The final project will consist of a paper of 15 double-spaced pages sharing my findings and analyzing them within the context of the course and our discussions of gender, race and class in popular music. It is also likely, should time permit, that I will analyze one or two songs by a Wizard Rock artist(s) as Sheila Whiteley does at times in her book.

Already since turning this project proposal in I have found in preliminary research that I might end up talking about "filk" (genre focused folk music) initially as a precursor to wrock, and that thinks like trock (TARDIS rock, aka Dr. Who themed rock music) also exist. Might have to inform her of changes as I turn more stuff in on the schedule she (professor) laid out for me.

and Last...

For my research project during this term I would like to analyze three episodes of science fiction television and their portrayal of Indigenous people; specifically, “The Paradise Syndrome” from Star Trek, “Journey’s End” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and “The Blessing Way” from The X-Files. While the primary “object” of investigation in this project would be the way these episodes deal with race, I would approach the subject from an intersectional perspective, analyzing the way in which gender, sexuality, ability and other axes of identity as well as structures/issues of power, such as colonialism and Whiteness, complicate the projects of these episodes and their impact on the audience. At this time the questions I have are rather basic; “how are indigenous people portrayed in these episodes?” and “how have such portrayals changed over time?”

Thoughts are, of course, welcome.

Help get Nathan Fillion to host SNL

Whedonesque.com:

"According to @MarcBernardin, a comic writer/Nathan Fillion devotee, on his twitter, 'Hell, if it worked for Betty White...' http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nathan-Fillion-to-host-SNL/108127602542526"

Transformers

Oh dear gods where to even begin with this movie. Oh, and spoilers below.

First of all, if you were annoyed by the tropes in the first movie, don't even bother trying to see this one, they've multiplied in numbers and intensity at least 5 fold.

For instance, one of the things I liked about the first one is that at least the lead female character you know DID SOMETHING. She drove a huge truck backward and was AWESOME. In this one? Same lead female does NOTHING. You know except scream a bit here and there and get rescued and such. Bleh.

In the same vein, the running while holding hands trope of action movies was alive and well. This has become a huge irritant for me. Have you ever tried to run while holding someone's hand? Your arms can't help you out anymore and you go along really slow and really awkward. Yet they insist on doing this in these movies and in this one it was all over the place. WHY?! JUST RUN DAMN IT!

I never really thought of these robots as having a sex. I mean, they did, obviously, they all have male voices. But I guess I'll give a point to social conditioning for being successful in my not really thinking about it. But I have now, because there are female robots (for 5 seconds)! They're motorcycles with hot female voices who metallic boobs when they stand up. Yay! I mean motorcycles are cool and all but couldn't we just give some of these same big bulky cars female voices? Do they have to be SO gendered for anyone to consider that?

Also, since when are these robots "Terminators"? Why was there a perfectly human looking Decepticon? WHY?! I mean the "my gf walks into my college dorm right as this chick kissed me!" trope is bad enough but seriously did we just throw everything we know about these bots in the process? Was it worth it Michael Bay? Oh, also, in a very "Species"ish move this bot kills people either with a tail which creeps out all dangerously sexy from under her very short skirt or...with her tongue. Oy.

Another fun observation? The Black character has no lines. If you saw the first one you will remember a Black military dude character. He was somewhat important to that movie and had lines and stuff. Well, he's in this movie too. But his lines basically consist of "uh huh".

And my FAVORITE are these two walking robot black face caricatures! I guess maybe someone decided we needed "diversity" in the movie so we get chick robot motorcycles and these two guys. The faces themselves are ridiculous, they look like minstrel show posters, huge lips and googly eyes and I'm not even joking huge buckteeth one of which is GOLD in the front. And they talk like the most glaring MTV "ghetto Black" stereotype you've ever seen. My mouth hit the floor when I saw these two.

All in all, I can't even say I was entertained by this movie. I was alternately annoyed, astonished and bored. The action sequences were cool and it had it's moments, but these tropes just ruined it.

Gratuitous Hot Men of Color

Shortly after my post about my concern over my taste for white men, I saw a picture that made me go, "hmmm, there are some MOC I find attractive, maybe I should take stock of them..." I haven't done a post of gratuitous hot men for well over a year. And let me be clear here, this isn't just "guys I intellectually understand to be attractive" there are plenty of those. These are guys that I think are HOT, as in; who have at times made me flat out horny.

So...enjoy.

The original picture in question was posted at Sylvia's tumblr (not usually up for gay male porn as a turn on, but you know, apparently I'll make an exception for this slash fiction):

Yah, Sendhil Ramamurthy (no matter how annoying Mohinder has sadly become) is really fucking hot, from looks to voice to attitude. But since Zachary Quinto takes up the majority of that picture, here's another...

Then we have another long time favorite, Daniel Sunjata, "Franco" on Rescue Me.

In the last season of Heroes, Ando started coming into his own and being his own assertive character. And suddenly I found him increasingly hot. So, James Kyson Lee.

The always classic Zach de la Rocha

Gary Dourdan (last I watched it, he was still playing "Warick" on CSI, but I heard he quit).

This list is pretty short... But it's a start.

People I Love Who Have Done Shit I Hate...2!

Last time we talked about Seth Rogen and Nathan Fillion. Two actors who I like quite a lot generally speaking, who had both recently done work I thought was absolutely horrifying.

Well, it's time for another edition. Who is the star this time? Rainn Wilson.

In a series of tweets earlier today Rainn recounted the people he has offended since taking up Twitter, and how this number displayed his twitterific success.

in 2 mos on twitter i've offended: hippies, rape victims, Christians, veterans and fans of 'Kings of Leon'. Must be doing something right.

You might think at first that this hippy is going to bitch about him insulting hippies. Oh no no, I'm used to that part of my identity being hated on. No, I saw this tweet and went "...rape victims??" Well, being the ever helpful wench that she is, Cara pointed me to the right post.

Pretty hungry after a long days shoot. Gonna go home and date rape some leftovers.

What, the, fuck?

Really?

Why is this still ok people? How is it funny? Rape isn't funny. Using the word flippantly like this isn't funny, it's triggering.

Now I don't know how I missed this in the first place, but I did.

But here it is now, and not only that but apparently it's something to be bragged about?

And then....

Oh, and transsexuals and geriatrics. And twidiots everywhere. And Ed Asner. And mice.

Transgender people too, eh? I missed this one too (apparently I am at times a very inattentive Twit). But, geez. Really?

It's just so frustrating, and like I twittered, moreso because I don't think Rainn Wilson is just a big douche. I don't. It'd be easier if I thought he was. But no, and yet here he is, acting like a huge one, and bragging, BRAGGING about it.

I realize that people are bound to disappoint us... I'm sure I'll at some point trip over my own ingrained racism or ableism or some other ism. We've all got that. And I would expect if others saw such a thing for them to call me out on it.

So where do we draw the line? What do we overlook because we know everyone is imperfect (or do we)? And when it comes to pop culture like this, do we forgo someone whose work we like because of stumbling moments like this? Should we? Is it a function of privilege that we do or don't?

I don't know. I struggle with drawing that line. I know I'm not going to boycott The Office (though I boycotted Observe and Report) and I will still generally see Seth Rogen movies and anything Nathan Fillion is in. And sure, I post about this stuff, I'll call people I like out for doing fucked up things, and I twittered my displeasure to Rainn. Is that all we can do?

I just don't know. But here it is. Another someone I like who did something I hate.

So I Went and Saw Star Trek

(ON IMAX suckers!)

And then I read Black Amazon's post and got really annoyed by the idiocy of some fellow sci-fi folks. I haven't looked into what's going on with that in depth yet, but I read the links BA's put in her post, and it seems that some people are having trouble with Uhura and Spock's relationship. Apparently such a relationship makes her a "whore"? (As an LJ commenter pointed out, if her being in a monogamous relationship makes her a whore, what exactly the fuck is James T. Kirk?)

Others apparently annoyed that she didn't get a big enough part, or was relegated to "just a girlfriend". Now, at least here I can see some justification. But let's remember folks, this is an INTRO movie. The only characters who got any REAL development were Kirk, Spock and Bones and even they got very little. This is to be expected. That said, yes, I was left wanting more Uhura, and specifically Uhura that didn't relate to her relationship with Spock, I would like to see more of her as an individual in the next movie (you know, like Uhura was SUPPOSED TO BE in the series).

But the relationship doesn't diminish her. I can't say much here that hasn't already been said at BA's and at the lj link she included. Call me silly, but brainy girls are just as awesome to me as ass kicking girls. And clearly she was not just the top of her class but rather a genius. That's a good set up for character development if you ask me. BUT LET'S HAVE SOME OF THAT PLEASE NEXT TIME.

I will tell you something that annoyed me though... Why was Harold from Harold and Kumar in this movie as Sulu? Don't get me wrong, his part was cool enough I suppose. John Cho is a fine actor and all that. But. He's Korean. Sulu is Japanese. Why does Hollywood still think Asian actors just all look alike? I mean, for serious? He doesn't look remotely like George Takai (unlike the UNCANNY resemblance between Quinto and Nimoy and no it was not just the ears) or sound remotely like George Takai. I mean, just, that just kept annoying me. Zachary Quinto really couldn't call up Masi Oka? I mean, hello, he IS Japanese, also he looks a LOT more like young George, he's awesome, and oh yah HE PLAYED GEORGE TAKAI'S SON already, which would have made a hilarious cross-franchise tie-in (one I would have especially appreciated since BOTH Takai and Nichols have been on Heroes).

(And let me be perfectly clear here, in the hierarchy of irritants, the fact that the actor doesn't look like the original actor is my chief annoyance, after that it's like, wait, so they didn't get someone who looked like him OR someone who was even of the same ethnicity?  Were they even trying or do they just think all Asians look alike so we won't even notice that this guy doesn't look like Takei?)

I shall also complain about excessive slow motion action blow up sequences. About 3/4 of the way through I was starting to get bored with them. I just DIDN'T CARE. I was way more interested in the interpersonal stuff going on with these new actors and this new version of the crew. Yes JJ you can shoot a pretty action sequence, congratulations, WE KNOW. So yah a bit less of that would not be amiss.

But lest you get the wrong idea, I really liked the movie overall. I enjoy the new franchise.

But there is one more thing, to anyone who's seen it... When Spock and Kirk are fighting on the bridge and Spock's got him pinned down with his hand on Kirk's throat and he's just choking and glaring, did anyone else have the inescapable feeling Sylar-Spock was totally about the cut the top of his head off?

Cuz I did, and I started laughing hysterically while poking my husband and making that finger motion and laughing some more.

Thus ends the review.

People I Love Who Have Done Shit I Hate

This week quite a few posts came out damning Seth Rogen's new movie "Observe and Report". Now, you may (not) recall that during the criticisms of "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" I was on Seth's side.

Well, not this time.

My favorite post on the subject is by Natalia Antonova, called: Dear God, Seth Rogen, Rape is Rape. And honestly I think the title alone says it all (but go read the post anyway cuz, really, it's good).

If you've yet to hear about this and have no idea what I'm talking about, in the course of the movie Seth Rogen's character date rapes the main love interest. She's drunk, he's not and he has sex with her while she's passed out. What is supposedly meant to justify this scene is that she wakes up long enough to say "why are you stopping, motherfucker?" That's according to Seth himself.

Not. Fucking. Cool.

I don't care what someone says when they're *not actually conscious*, that's not consent. Is this really that difficult?

Now, apparently we're not really supposed to even like his character. I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me.

Do you know WHY that doesn't work for me? Because we have realities like this in the world:

Although a few boys may have quietly disagreed with their classmates, the vocal [middle school] students spent class arguing that James had not raped Tonya [in the hypothetical scenario (which is almost exactly like Rogen's character's)]. Ironically, the boys based their arguments on many of the same things that legally defined teh scenario as rape: they said it was not rape because Tonya was passed out, because seh was drunk, because she had failed to make any decision - yes or no. Others argued that Tonya did not protest when she woke up, she was James's girlfriend, she flirted, and, had she been able, she might have said yes. [The rape crisis presenter's] tried futilely to convince the boys that the sex was rape: "It was against her will," they reminded the boys. "Did she get to make the decision to be sexual?" the women pleaded. The boys insisted that because Tonya had not indicated that she did not want to have sex, the sex was consensual.

(Risky Lessons, by Jessica Fields, pg 90)

That's why.

Overall, I still like you Seth Rogen, but you just reinforced this FUCKED UP assumption that boys are already making. THAT'S NOT OK. How would YOU feel, if this was deemed to be all that was needed for your own consent?


People I love who have done shit I hate might be a recurring segment. Not sure yet. Hope not.

But I do have one more... Did any of you see any of these "PG Porn" things? They're webisode dealies from some supposedly very clever people, whatever. The very first one featured Nathan Fillion. So of course I was like, ok the premise sounds funny and, well, Nate! So I watched it.

Dear gods. Horrible. At the end he shoots a nail into this woman's head while she's going to give him a blow job. I'm sorry, that's not funny. I can see, on paper perhaps, why it seemed funny. But. It's not. At all. It was, in fact, unbelievably disturbing and I was extremely pissed that Nathan did it. Just, no.

Milk

You know I haven't even seen the damn movie yet, but it's getting talked about a lot on campus and in the blogosphere, and after writing a rather large comment at Renee's place, I knew I should post here as well.

So Sean Penn won for Milk and I'm sure he was very good. (I was happier to hear of Heath Ledger's win, to be honest) And the acceptance speeches of him and writer Dustin Black are getting circulated.

Well, we talked about this in my Variations in Human Sexuality class today. My professor is a gay man who was active in the community in those days and introduced himself to us as "sex radical" on the first day of class. He gave us a quote from Harvey Milk and talked about how he didn't understand how either of these guys could tie Milk to the efforts of Prop 8.

He also told us about a rally he went to, in November, remembering 25 years since Harvey had been shot, and the first woman Supervisor spoke at it. Carol Ruth Silver got elected in the same elections as Milk and worked with him. She was also on Dan White's kill list, but was out at a meeting when he came to the offices. That day at the rally she spoke about Harvey and asked the crowd what they thought he would be working on now.

"Prop 8!!!!" many people yelled out.

No, she said, he'd be working to end the drug war. The LGBT people caught up in that horrendous national policy would be what concerned him now. Prop 8, he probably wouldn't have cared about much, and the reason why is in the quote my teacher gave us:

"As homosexuals, we can't depend on the heterosexual model. We grow up with the heterosexual model, but we don't have to and we should not follow it. We should be developing our own lifestyle. We must take the rights associated with marriage and give them to everyone. There's no reason you can't love more than one person at a time."
(1978) The Weekly Standard

My teacher went on to talk about, can you imagine if the benefits you get from marriage, you could give them to whoever you wanted? What if your sister is really the one who needs medical insurance? What if grandparents could have rights to their grandchildren to provide this stuff for them? What if everyone got these tax breaks? What if we weren't so bound by this strict nuclear heterosexual family model? He said that was the sort of change that Harvey Milk was interested in, not in replicating dominant culture norms, but figuring out better ways.

There are also some problems I have with what they chose to do with Milk, itself. Harvey was not THE leader against the Briggs Initiative. He was one of many, but the people he got to run that campaign were Bill Krause and Gwen Craig (a black lesbian). Somehow, they didn't make it in the movie (or onto Wikipedia, I had to put them in), though I hear there is a shot where a black woman who is supposed to be Craig is literally in the background of a crowd. The only reason I even know this is because I happen to go to an awesome university where another teacher of mine was one of the organizers behind a panel in San Francisco on the concerns about Milk called "Skim Milk".

I hate the way gay history gets white washed, in more ways than one. Symbols are made of people, and they are reinterpreted through our own cultural lens (hello media) and then given whatever meaning we want them to have. It makes it difficult to love these things (movies especially) as much as I want to.

Dr. Horrible Series: Chapter 4, The Final Chapter - Archetypal Gender

Now, I have previously stated that Dr. Horrible is “birthed” after Penny’s pivotal death, however, that is a bit too simplistic. If his first pivotal decision is whether to continue in his mission to steal Wonderflonium, his second is the transformation after his confrontation with Hammer over Penny. This transformation is divided into two parts and demonstrated through two different musical numbers, “Brand New Day” and “My Eyes”.


“My Eyes” is a duet between Billy and Penny about their two very different experiences of life after the Wonderflonium heist. Penny is on a date with Captain Hammer, Billy is pouting and stalking her while she is on that date. This is also one of the moments I alluded to earlier, where Whedon hints at the audience that perhaps this story is not quite as light and happy as we might thus far believe it to be. As Billy walks through the streets of L.A., the darkness all around him speaks to his state of mind; “it’s plain to see / evil inside of me is on the rise,” he sings as he sinks away from the light and into the shadows. In contrast, Penny is consistently hit with bright light, often warming sunlight. This dualism is most striking in the two screen section of the duet when both Penny and Billy are on screen in different settings; Penny’s light, Billy’s dark.

“Brand New Day” is also cinematically interesting for many reasons; one being that it is the first time we view Billy from a cinematically “powerful” point of view. Up until then we have related to him on a peer (eye line) level, but as he confronts Captain Hammer the camera is positioned to look up at him, as it was for Hammer on our introduction to him. When we transition to Billy as giant Dr. Horrible there is the added elements of the sunlight glinting off his goggles, we literally “see the light” along with him (an interesting technique which is re-deployed later on in the finale when Dr. Horrible is revealed with the Freeze Ray before he tries and fails to kill Captain Hammer). Coupled with the aggressive, confident lyrics we know the change he alluded to in the earlier song “My Eyes” is indeed underway.


This is also the scene where Billy’s objectification of Penny takes a different turn, as he sings from his imposing super villain chair “she may cry but her tears will dry / when I hand her the keys to a shiny new Australia”. Such a common, sexist, perspective; give women something just shiny enough and they will come to terms with anything. This is not at all far off from Captain Hammer’s arrogant assumption that showing Penny around “the command center” will be the “time of her life” needed to seduce her and attain for himself “what [Billy] wants”. That it is this declaration of ownership of Penny that sends Billy into the fury of his “brand new day” is telling as to his feelings for Penny; she is an object to be had, not a person capable of making her own decisions. To sum up, what the two male characters have in common says a lot about Whedon’s view of archetypal masculinity, which is clearly not very flattering.

So, if Joss Whedon set out to critique mainstream portrayals of masculinity, he did it very well. If Dr. Horrible is meant to be a critique of the power structures we currently operate under through music and comedy, it has done so in an original and intelligent way. It is my argument that this was exactly his goal. Choosing to do so within a medium that provides the opportunity for a level of creativity often stifled in Hollywood has proved the viability of that medium, and I sincerely hope other filmmakers will take up the challenge to turn their own oppositional gazes (hooks) on the industry within which they work and produce their own web content. Perhaps those of us on the outside of that hegemonic network have finally found an effective and easily distributed way to make our voices heard.

Perhaps Penny’s death is not in vain.


P.S. Hubby thought it odd that Penny knew who Bad Horse was, and suggested to me, "perhaps she has an evil twin who is in the ELE". How awesome would that be?? And very appropriate to the "comic book" genre Whedon was pulling from!

Dr. Horrible Series: Chapter 3 - Teh Menz

Read Chapters 1 and 2 first!

Both male leads are obvious masculine archetypes. Billy is the “Nice Guy” who gets walked all over and is rather socially awkward, spending his days pining after a girl he can’t get the courage to talk to and fuming that she would go out with the guy who does. Captain Hammer is the mythical captain of the football team who gives the Billy’s of the world wedgies at lunch.

To suggest that Billy is closer to Joss Whedon’s perception of himself (and more similar in this regard to his fans as well) is not a stretch. Even if this is not true for all of the audience, it is always easier to identify with the underdog, which we are encouraged to do from the opening shot. Therefore, I will begin with Billy/Dr. Horrible, as he is inarguably the main (and title) character.

The hard truth about Billy is that he is really no better (or at least not much better) than Captain Hammer. As much as the audience wants him to be, subtle cues let us know he is just as self absorbed and narcissistic. For example, in the first shots of the film Billy is addressing “us” via his “vlog” (video weblog) and while emphatically stating “look, I’m just trying to change the world, ok?” he looks into his screen and adjusts his goggles to make sure they’re “just so”.


These are not the actions of the self deprecating Nice Guy Billy portrays himself as, but the ego strokings of Captain Hammer. That he is so unaware of his self-centeredness and so antagonistic to the egoism of Captain Hammer does not paint a very flattering portrait. Yet we forgive him his vanity because after all, at least he cares about Penny, doesn’t he?

But, why does he care about her? As we learn during the song “My Freeze Ray” Billy has never even successfully spoken to Penny, which begs the question, how exactly has he managed to fall in love with her? In fact he objectifies her just as much as Captain Hammer does, if not as explicitly. Like so many men before him, he looks at her as a pretty accessory. One who can be bought with shiny things even; “and she may cry / but her tears will dry / when I hand her the keys / to a shiny new Australia”, instead of as a person to respect and get to know. Rather, we see he doesn’t respect her as a person very much at all.

When they talk for the first time as she is "hunting wild signatures" for the homeless shelter and he blows off her activism as unimportant, only “treating a symptom”. Additionally, they never even have an honest conversation; he is always presenting the side of himself he thinks she will like, never owning his aspirations to be a super villain. Yet, I think the latter point is more about his own ambivalence about his own goals than his objectification of Penny.

This ambivalence is depicted well after Billy and Penny’s first conversation. “She talked to me,” Billy says. “Why did she talk to me now? Maybe I shou…” he sighs, “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do / don’t plan the plan if you can’t follow through”. This is a pivotal point for Billy’s development as a character. It is here that he has the chance to choose what is more important to him; developing a relationship with Penny, or achieving the good will of the ELE. Little does he know that this choice also seals a death sentence for Penny, as it sparks the escalating “pissing contest” between him and Captain Hammer which ultimately ends her life. This crossroads is effectively his last chance to be Billy, and not evolve into Dr. Horrible. Well, we all know how that decision-making turns out.

In contrast, Captain Hammer’s character suffers from no such ambivalence. He knows exactly who he is, he is comfortable in that role, and his attention seeking nature is expressed openly and without self consciousness. In our introduction to him we are positioned from below, looking up at him as he rides atop a courier van. This positioning is telling as to what sort of character he is; it denotes power. He is someone to “look up to”, although as we find out as the narrative unfolds this is an ironic message because in fact he is the villain of this story.


Captain Hammer is a “hero” but it is very clear that he does good deeds quite simply because they attain him the recognition, fame, and female companionship he craves. Additionally, he proves himself thoroughly not to be a hero in the films conclusion; where Billy is reluctant to kill even his arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer has no such hesitation in ending a life.

While it is easy to thus compare Billy favorably to Hammer it is important to remember that Billy’s desire for change stems directly from his “need” to rule the world. A lust for power, even when arising from lack of recognition or validation in one’s life, is no more altruistic than a desire for constant attention and (various) female companionship. Coming back to the symbolic narrative their battling represents we see that the competing interests of the “corporate tool” and the “revolutionary” continually end in the silencing of the powerless but hard working community activist.

Dr. Horrible Series, Chapter 2: The Death of Penny (and Billy)

Read Chapter 1 first!


To pick up where we left off... In a very literal way, Penny’s death creates Dr. Horrible, because her death is the death of Billy. “Here lies everything / the world I wanted at my feet / my victory’s complete” he sings over her body. The tears in his eyes and pained, stunned expression on his face draw the audience through a flashback of former scenes in our minds; Billy fantasizing of ruling the world together with Penny, Billy considering forgetting about the Wonderflonium and pursuing her to continue their conversation, the two eating frozen yogurt together at the Laundromat. Whedon doesn’t have to create a traditional montage to make the audience relive these moments because Neil Patrick Harris’ brilliant acting coupled with the moving score do it for us. The incongruence in the words mimics our own stunned surprise.

If his victory is complete, how can the world he wanted be at his feet?

It can because the world he wanted was symbolized in Penny; change, hope and goodness. These are the things he’s been saying are missing from the world all along; “any dolt with half a brain / can see that humankind has gone insane / to the point where I don’t know / if I’ll upset the status quo / if I throw poison in the water main”. In tragic irony the death of the world he wanted catapults him to the victory he was working for.

A death is just what Bad Horse has asked for, and so Dr. Horrible has attained the goal he has been seeking throughout: admittance to the Evil League of Evil (“ELE”). This victory is a transformation (both figuratively and literally before our eyes); Dr. Horrible dons a new outfit (blood red, significantly) and finally pulls down over his eyes the goggles he has been wearing throughout but never actually used.

Billy is dead.

Or is he? The final shot leaves us with some ambiguity here, with Dr. Horrible finishing the last word of his song back in his apartment, on his blog; he is Billy once again, looking sad, stunned, and alone, not victorious at all.

This scene once again mimics the audiences’ feelings, as we sit at our own computers and sift through our feelings at the films end. It is impossible for us not to feel somewhat torn as well, as we have been identifying with Billy throughout the film. We start and end with him addressing “us” directly through his blog, the story unfolding from his perspective, and the camera almost always at an eye-line view, often in intimate close-up shots of his face; our “gaze” is sutured to his (Mulvey).

So, are we meant to be sad for the loss of Billy’s hopes? Or should we be happy for Dr. Horrible’s resounding victory over the loathed Captain Hammer and entry into the ELE? This brings us back once again to the possible metaphoric message in the ending, but first I think it is important to interrogate what the dueling Billy/Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer represent as symbols of masculinity.

Dr. Horrible Series: Chapter 1 - Penny

Chapter 1 of what looks to be a four Chapter series!


Joss Whedon has made his name in the business of powerful female lead characters. From Buffy Summers, to every female character on Firefly, he has created and nurtured an expectation in his audience to see powerful women in his work. It is that expectation to which I attribute the rage observed in response to the demise of Penny’s character in Dr. Horrible.

Many expected, as one blogger put it, there to be an “11th hour reveal of ass-kicking potential” (Holly) to vindicate what was seen as an unusually weak and inconsequential Penny. When Joss instead appeared to opt for the “comic book trope [of] ‘Women in Refrigerators’” (Allen) many fans and feminists vehemently called foul.

While this is a valid criticism, it is my view that the character of Penny is more complicated than this simple plot device.

When considering Penny's character it should not be overlooked that while Billy claims to want “social change” and while Captain Hammer is called a “hero” and gets the homeless shelter opened (which would not have been possible without Penny’s hard work), Penny is the only character actively working towards the betterment of her community in a dedicated and long term manner. One commenter put it; “[Penny] does more for good than both of the other characters” (Zoinkers #126), which I think is a pointed observation. As much as the audience is meant to (and does) identify with Billy/Dr. Horrible and is amused by Captain Hammer, in the end we are Penny (especially those of us in social justice).

We do not have access to the power/prestige of Hammer, or to the genius level creative resources of Horrible; we only have our two feet, hope in our hearts, and a pen for signatures to “turn a life around”; like Penny. Read in this light, Dr. Horrible becomes a cautionary tale “illustrating how caring, generous people are out-shouted, over-shadowed, and often killed by those who feel it’s better to make grand gestures and exercise force” (Zoinkers #137) than to put in the time needed for change from the ground up. Indeed, as I see her, Penny is an incredibly powerful (if tragic) symbol of hope, and her death a demand for change from business as usual.

Penny’s death itself is important not only because it provides the needed catalyst for Billy’s final transformation from “joke, dork and failure” into Dr. Horrible, but because it is so jarring. On first viewing it is easy to accept Dr. Horrible at face value; light hearted, campy and fun. While there are clues of a deeper message and lingering darkness, they are masked by humor and the spectacle of the musical numbers (Shohat and Stam, Dialectics of Presence/Absence).

Penny’s death is so jarring not only because of our identification with her, or her cringe inducing last words (“Captain Hammer will save us”), or even the erasure of her identity viewed in the headlines (“whats-her-name murdered”) but because of its perceived incongruence with the rest of the series. This ending casts a completely different light over the film and forces the audience to re-examine their interpretation of it, as well as their impressions of the two more “active” characters (especially Billy, the one we had been sutured to throughout).

Dollhouse

Oh yah, so, did anyone else watch this?

I'm a bit behind because I'm using Hulu to watch it. But, anyone? What did you think?

I'm intrigued, I noticed three or four definite topics of interest/plot that Joss is setting up to explore which I found intriguing, I continued my love/hate relationship with Eliza Dushku (sometimes I really like her and sometimes I just don't think she's a very good actress), and I liked the way he's constructed the premise to actually seem plausible.

I'll keep watching for sure.

But what did you think?

"Captain Hammer Will Save Us"

I'd just like to jump for joy right now that my final paper on Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog is finished! And it could have been longer, even though I went to the max length. Good times! \o/

My Victory's complete so hail to the king! ^.^