Tag Archives: harry potter

FRIDAY NIGHT FIEND – MISOGYNY

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no girls allowed 1What’s crackin everybody! It’s your favorite villain-loving, miscreant-embracing host getting the party started this Friday night with a SAT vocabulary word. Party over here, whut whut!

Now misogyny is a downer word replete with a downer definition: the hatred or dislike of women or girls. I’m not talking about the kindergartner “I don’t yike guls so I hitted her” approach. I’m thinking something a bit more pervasive and more institutional…and wholly unintentional. I know you’re like “Damn, Chris. It’s Friday, I love girls, and you are really fucking up my vibe.” I get it. Let me put it in comic book terms.

A couple of years ago, DC Comics and Warner Bros put out an absolutely horrible superhero flick called Green Lantern. This was at the height of the superhero craze: Heath Ledger had earned a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in the Dark Knight, Robert Downey Jr. had been Iron Man twice, and Marvel was one year away from pulling together the Avengers into the 3rd highest grossing film of all time. You might remember Green Lantern (if you saw it, I ‘m sorry—the support group meets on Wednesdays at the Y): it had Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds in a snug CGI suit, a villain with the largest head on film (and it pulsated), Dora-level special effects, and it made about $14 at the box office. It was a shit movie and this is from somebody who likes shit movies.

But this isn’t about Green Lantern. This is about the trailer for the Green Lantern.

I took the Honey Badger to see one of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies—whichever one had fucking Alvin doing the Castaway on a deserted island after falling off a cruise ship. As an aside, talking chipmunks or not, once they were off the ship, fuck the damn rodents and their high ass voices—I would have taken the money and run. Anyway, as we’re waiting for the movie the start, we get to see this wonderful trailer:

The trailer was better than the movie. Trust me. But as we watch the trailer and I start to get hopeful about Green Lantern (I kinda like the character but don’t tell nobody), the Honey Badger says, loud as day, “How come it can’t ever be a girl that saves the world?”

And some of the women in the theater clapped.

But I didn’t have an answer for that. I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know what to tell her. I watch movies with her and I see her fall in love with Bella Swan—a girl stuck in a horribly abusive and controlling relationship, who refuses to act EVER, and simply lets everything happen around her. I see Katniss Everdeen start a revolution but be mired in a love triangle. SHE STARTED A REVOLUTION!! Fuck Peta! She’s changing the world. (BTW I haven’t read the books—maybe there’s more, I don’t know). I see Hermione play second fiddle to Harry’s Jesus Christ and Ron’s redheaded idiocy when she is CLEARLY the smartest, most prepared player in the game. How the fuck did Ron survive those 7 years at Hogwarts and how the hell did his broke ass pull Hermione Granger?

And, as much as I love her, I see Scarlett Johannson get played to the curb in 2 different movies. If there was a pretty perfect portrayal of a female superhero in the movies, it’s Johannson’s Black Widow. This woman infiltrated Stark Enterprises and got Tony Stark back to work, she hacked Ivan Danko’s Russian computer system and rebooted Don Cheadle’s suit AFTER beating the cowboy shit outta like 6 dudes. She took a backhand from the Hulk—THE HULK who fought Thor, a demigod—then got up and socked the shit out of Hawkeye before she dove into battle with 2 guns and a taser. There were no romantic entanglements, she was nonplussed about all these people with their amazing powers, and held her own in the Battle of New York. Oh yeah, and she outsmarted Loki (the God of Mischief) and shut his shit down.

But she isn’t considered an Avenger. They only count Cap, Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor as Avengers. She doesn’t get equal billing. She’s a token. Marvel actually removed the other female founding member of the team because…well, I actually don’t have an answer for that.

And that’s bullshit. And my daughter knows it.

A couple weeks ago, I made Canada my Friday Night Fiend. You might remember that one. A friend of mine, my villainous partner in crime, writer ED Martin, added a comment about how independent women should be my next villain. She has a point. What are TV and film studios so afraid of? The portrayals of women in cinema have a massive impact on who our daughters and sisters and nieces decide to be. Who they believe they can be. How do I convince my daughter to be less Bella and more Hermione when she’s ridiculed for her intellect and eschewed for her preparation? How do I encourage her to start revolutions like Katniss and be independent like Natasha Romanov when the world is more concerned with her love life than her capabilities? When she’ll never get the credit she deserves?

I’m gonna end this little diatribe with the most important female superheroine who, for the dumbest of reasons, cannot get ANY cinematic love: Wonder Woman. It is an absolute travesty that, in 2013, after Hillary Clinton garnered 16 million votes and led the most viable campaign for a female president in history, Wonder Woman cannot find a place on film. Or TV. Or her own cartoon. Do you know why? She’s “tricky.” That is the actual reason.

“We have to get her right, we have to. She is such an icon for both genders and all ages and for people who love the original TV show and people who read the comics now. I think one of the biggest challenges at the company is getting that right on any size screen. The reasons why are probably pretty subjective: She doesn’t have the single, clear, compelling story that everyone knows and recognizes. There are lots of facets to Wonder Woman, and I think the key is, how do you get the right facet for that right medium? What you do in TV has to be different than what you do in features. She has been, since I started, one of the top three priorities for DC and for Warner Bros. We are still trying right now, but she’s tricky.”

Tricky. Tough. Hard. So fuck it, right? By the way, it was the female president of DC Comics who gave us that quote.

I’ve paid for shitty Superman, Batman, Green Lantern (well, I didn’t pay for that piece of shit), X-Men, Star Wars, and Spiderman movies. Jackass is a SERIES. You saw Bill and Ted just like me. And Gremlins 2. And any of the Child’s Play movies. Jason Vorhees has like 57 shit movies. My point is someone is greenlighting these bullshit movies and you cannot say a guy who stalks you in your dreams or a retarded kid who lives at the bottom of the lake and cannot die or a group of idiots who film themselves hurting themselves makes more sense than Wonder Woman.

So there you have it: Friday Night Misogyny courtesy of superhero movies. I’m gonna leave you with this tweet about Marvel’s response to DC’s “Wonder Woman is tricky” comment. I thought it was just funny:

brett white Marvel:DC See ya Tuesday!

My Top Ten Heroes #OBSummer #Books

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So the next magnificent miscreant in our repertoire is…wait, what? Heroes? Did I read that right? My Top Ten Heroes? Yes, friends and foes, after all this time pouring over the dastardly deeds of about 50 of my favorite baddies, it’s time to give a brief – and I mean BRIEF – introduction to my all-time favorite do-gooders.

But you know I’m not doing that nonsense here, right? Oh no! As part of the Orangeberry Summer Splash, the good folks over at WeFancyBooks are hosting my first ever Top Ten Heroes list. Swing by and pay them a visit!

Celebration of Wickedness Day 20: VOLDEMORT #atozchallenge

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Welcome back boys and girls, ladies and gents, wizards and muggles, the villain for today’s Designated Day of Misery (I stole that) is Tom Marvolo Riddle, known to his friends as Lord Voldemort.

Unless you can’t see, read or understand braille, you know who Voldemort is—he’s THE villain in the Harry Potter series. I’m gonna say now, I’ve only read four of them (but I have seen all the movies—does that count?). He attends Hogwarts, learns that you can become immortal by committing murder, splitting your soul and putting it into other objects. He begins this campaign of conquest, slaughtering all those who get in his way until he meets a lil boy named Harry who, when Voldemort dispenses the Killing Curse, reflects it off his noggin and wishes Voldy to the cornfield. And all this is before the books get started. For the rest of the series, he is trying to restore his power and exact revenge on the rugrat who ruined it in the first place.

The entire series is spent on Harry learning his powers and Voldemort regaining his. The noseless wonder spends his time living out the back of somebody’s head, messing with young girls from the pages of a tawdry diary, and killing Edward Cullen (thank you, God!) until he can finally get his body back and exact revenge on the kid who screwed up his plans.

Voldemort is the anti-bullying poster child. You remember that creepy kid with the greasy hair in junior high that nobody wanted to have lunch with? Or that weird guy in the third cubicle on the left at your work? You know who I’m talking about. What’s his name—Eric? (“You invited Eric? You said he gave you the creeps!”) Yeah, that guy. Leave his ass alone: for all you know, he’s trying to split his soul in half so he can live forever. Ain’t no telling what he’ll do to you.

To date, there have been millions of words written about Voldemort, his impact on literature, the threat he poses to good Christians. Whatever. I’m not intent on dissecting those. Here’s why he’s awesome: Voldemort spends the entire Harry Potter series—7 years—working to regain his powers, to achieve his greatness solely so he can destroy Harry Potter and get back to business. This cat is driven. He is focused.

He’s so focused that even when defeated, the victors are too scared to speak his name. There is not another soul in history, real or imagined, who inspired so much fear people wouldn’t even say his name. Because they knew he was driven enough to come back. Think about that. Not even Jesus’ disciples where wholly convinced he’d be coming back. And he was the Son of God. Voldemort’s people know he’ll be back, they know he’s gonna pick up where he left off so they keep the band together, maintain the Deatheaters, and make a little kid’s life miserable, all at the whim of a guy who’s a Kuatu stunt double. (For you uninitiated, Kuatu is the tiny Siamese twin leading the Martian resistance in Total Recall.)

My point here is this, Voldemort is awesome as a villain because he is going to get what he wants. Period. There’s no stopping him, not even death. Not even his soul. Think about that: Voldemort risks his soul—he splits it—for the sake of being immortal. He commits the unthinkable—or tries to—so he can live forever. There are few characters in literature who are willing to go to the lengths Voldemort does and that willingness is attractive. People join him because they realize that he cannot be stopped, because they know that he’s going to achieve what he wants. They’re scared of that kind of focus. They know it is better to be on the side of inevitability than against it.

Take a look at Voldemort. Learn from him. Give your villains and your heroes that clarity of purpose, that focus. Make their aims so basic and ensure they are wholeheartedly committed to their cause. Even if it means their very souls. That is how you make an enduring character.

Tune in tomorrow for my favorite Disney villain, Scar. Be Prepared!