It's all about me(n)

[theatokos]

10,000 BC. I saw it. Last night, with Adam, alizarin71 and our upstairs neighbor. It was a fun outing. But SUCH a stupid movie. It is possible that my extreme tiredness made me prone to the severe crankiness I experienced upon leaving the theatre. Besides being a ridiculous hodgepodge of culture, archeological, geographical and historical elements and being pretty dull in plot, the film also triggered one of my major pet peeves: a movie made by men all about men, featuring nothing but men (I'm sorry, two women characters don't count).

Yet when I enumerate the good things about this film I wonder why I'm so annoyed. Here are the good things about the movie:
+Beautifully shot, great art design, nice music
+Features hardly any white people!! *(BUT...)
+The love interest saves herself at the end *
+Great values - loyalty, keeping your word, being brave, stepping up to responsibility, affection between men, banding together in unity makes great things possible *
+Very well done special effects
+No sex or nudity or swearing (how rare is that in a grown up movie??)

I want to add silly escapist fun to that list, but honestly the movie was kind of boring. Very formulaic. We know what's going to happen. Let's get to those Buts:
-There were hardly any white people, or at least plain white faces. However, the two whitest faces were the main man and woman. Perhaps I'm just picking a fight on this point, but I don't think so. There was some legend about a blue eyed woman, blah blah blah, so the main girl wore these horrible blue contacts, making her look vapid since her pupils never changed in size. Not something we think about normally, but try reading a face whose pupils never alter. Weird.

-The love interest/main woman (Evolet) does indeed save herself when she is taken by one of the baddies in the end. Which was great. And she does show strength of character and resourcefulness throughout the film. But the movie isn't about her, even though she's the reason D'let (main guy) goes on this journey. Evolet is a woman to whom things happen. In that regard she is a completely passive woman. Her lines, which are few, consist mainly of "You came back for me" "You left me behind" etc. Pah! The other woman is the main tribal elder, the seer-woman. But she also doesn't DO anything. Again, she is a passive woman to whom visions come. I AM SO BORED WITH THIS FEMALE TROPE.

-The values of the film are great. I wholly support them - for men or for women. Yet repeatedly these values are only demonstrated by men and discussed in male terms. There is a great set of lines where Tik'tik, D'let's mentor and tribal chief, tells D'let that "Every man draws a circle around himself. For most men that involves himself, his woman and his children. Some men draw a larger circle that encompasses his larger family and maybe his tribe. But some men draw an even bigger circle that encompasses even more people." (paraphrased, emphasis mine) I guess women don't need to think about their own boundaries since we're just objects to be won and bred with. Where are the movies showing women acting valiantly, with strength and honor and dedication to a higher cause? Oh, I'm sure they're out there, but let's also clarify this: where are those movies with women embodying those values without being martyrs or at the expense of their male counterparts?

I also think that so many of modern middle class films employ the "band together and rise up against injustice/usurpers!" motif and I am continually confused by this. Do we like this and relate because it reminds us of our early American history? Because we sure as hell ain't banding together to overthrow injustice, tyranny or theocracy today. In the film, the tribal people band together to free their people from slavery at the hands of the greedy, religiously insane proto-Egyptians building their pyramidical symbols of power and largesse. So we root for these tribes - they are in the right! Down with tyranny! But do we connect this kind of injustice with sweat shop labor? Or migrant produce pickers? Or sex trafficking? Or even religious hegemony in our own modern politics? Of course we don't. Do we just live vicariously through these characters? That's my guess. Better to support honor and loyalty and bravery in the face of injustice in fictional characters than have to be those things ourselves.

Ok, I may be taking a silly movie out of context. Sure. Each movie on it's own is fine, but when we have the vast majority of films with this sort of structure, and CERTAINLY the vast majority of films made by men about men for men, I do not think I'm overreacting. [This is where I get shit for loving 300. I do see the irony, the hypocrisy. I still maintain that 300 is camp. I also still have no problem with people liking individual films. Hell, if I hated every misogynist, patriarchal film I'd never like anything. By the way, no comments on 300. I'm looking at you Alizarin!]

As an experiment, I decided to reorder my netflix queue to reflect movies about women (for example, Fellini films about women don't count) or by women - 22 out of 170. I've decided that I need a break from all this maleness. So for some undefined period of time I will only listen to music by women, watch films about women and/or by women, and read books by and/or about women. Depending how long I decide to do this I may have to make an exception in June for the first opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle at the SF Opera. And of course, there's the new Batman film coming out this summer AND the Ironman movie (both movies made by men about men, superheroes no less) starring the immeasurably wonderful Robert Downy Jr. But those I can catch on DVD if need be.

It's not that I hate men, it's that I loathe the patriarchy.

Comments

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

Where else do you see the "band together...etc." theme? I'm curious where you see it, if anywhere, because I've been thinking in an unsystematic way about a lot of what I read online about natural parenting, especially resistance to vaccinating children. It's not "band together" per se, but I think there is some kind of serious anti-authoritarian thing going on in it that I don't understand. It's often phrased as being about "choice" and "individuality" and stuff like that, but people are so adamant about it that there is clearly more going on than just making a choice.

[thekitchenvixen.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch the movie.
But thank you for making me feel like I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Or at least like I'm not the only one.

[snowcalla.livejournal.com]

I watched the movie....and while it wasn't great..I can't fault how it portrayed women. I mean...the Womens' Movement just didn't have much critical mass back then.

[howilearned.livejournal.com]

I would venture to say that almost any movie coming out of Hollywood is ultimately about us versus them. To me, being a writer of stories, its an engaging premise because it reflects, or is sympathetic to, human psychology and self-narratization. Sure its less obvious in the less heroic, less epic-y films, but its there in most cases. And in the cases in which it is not present, or a least less obvious, you get a much smaller audience. There's a reason superhero and fantasy films are so popular and prevelant. They appeal to some powerful human feelings; and in a complex world, its easier to to take step back from realtt to tell these stories.

Also, all films are political, whether silly escapist fun or not (or maybe especially if they are silly escapist fun.) So there's nothing wrong with pointing to an individual film or the trend it embodies.

Me not mentioning 300 at all but being really nitpicky instead

[hrafntinna.livejournal.com]

It's its. Also: imply (last post).

[alizarin71.livejournal.com]

What a great movie. OK, not. But, as I was saying last night, I actually found everything pre/historically fine until the guys showed up with metal tools and weapons. And then the boats. And then the big stone edifices, about 6 or 8,000 years too early. But as soon as someone said "they're from Atlantis" (or the stars, to be fair to my E.T. brethren), I just relaxed and decided I was watching a Conan story.

I agree that the lead woman was kind of a sap. Women from Stone Age-equivalent tribes (19th-c. Amer. Indians, or above-the-falls Amazonians) are stoic and fierce, even if not hunters themselves. And some say that early agricultural societies were matriarchical, so it's not too much of a stretch to claim positions of authority for women in hunter-gatherer groups.

Speaking of women in authority, I disagree that the Old Mother was a passive figure. All that time she was freezing or bleeding, she was using her magic to keep the people safe! And she actively changes things quite a bit at the end, through force of will. (This was a weak story moment, but not on account of her.)

In this paragraph, I will not bring up "300." I will just say that a strong leading woman in that story had the historical leeway to be much more "Girl Power" than they wrote her for. Okay, I guess that is bringing it up.

Does "Terminator 2" count as both being about women and having a band-together theme? "Serenity"? Of course we're just talking about _pop culture_ movies here. Maybe it's our current war-against-the-world era that encourages all these man-vs.-society (lone wolf, superhero) and men-vs.-society (armies, movements) movies. For all that, superhero/loner women are not uncommon.

Of course, "10,000 B.C." was about much, much more than fighting oppressors. It was about fighting weird, alien oppressors. The freakishly large, god-like master needed his pyramids (with the gold nibs at the top) to bring his two dead Atlantean companions (no doubt entombed inside) back to life. The poor, misguided Egyptians built mere copies of these resurrection engines 6,000 years later, without any knowledge of what really made them tick.

[(Anonymous)]

Please, please, please, please VACCINATE THE PENIS INSIDE YOU!

(I feel strongly about this issue)

I have yet to see 10,000 BC. Jay's archy dept was all hot to see it on opening night, but opted for bowling instead at the last minute! Not srue what that was about. The movie is likely still on the horizon. :-) Jay loves cheesy ridiculous and inaccurate psuedo archaeology films. In Corsica they have evening theater via the LCD projector on the outside wall of the ranger station (complete with bugs flying through the light beam, truly creepy) and Jay makes the undergrads watch all the Indiana Jones movies.

Lots of great roles for women there.

Not! Ha.

Despite this, we will be seeing Indy on opening night and I'll be sure to blog a review. :-)

and I still haven't seen 300 (please don't hate me!)

[erinya.livejournal.com]

It's not that I hate men, it's that I loathe the patriarchy.

*cheers* Exactly.

No matter how silly the movie, I still think it qualifies as a candidate for feminist criticism. I haven't seen 10,000 BC (wasn't planning on it, read it was simply awful) but totally agree with you about the passive-female trope. What's worse is how hard it is to get away from--as a writer, I've often had to consciously examine my characters and plots for this and found a LOT of it lurking about.

I also feel you on the excessive white-maleness of movies, by men, about me, for men. Have you heard of the Mo Movie Measure (http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-mo-movie-measure/)? I just discovered it the other day while reading about something completely different (I love the internet.) To pass, a movie must 1) feature at least two named female characters, who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man. I now feel the need to seek out movies which fulfill these criteria.

*uses King Arthur icon somewhat ironically*

Hrafntinna goes gadfly

[hrafntinna.livejournal.com]

I just wondered what you all thought about this one. One of my all-time favorite movies is Laurence of Arabia. There are no women in it at all. Problem? Why or why not?

[snowcalla.livejournal.com]

Hey!!!

A film for you! (and for me!!!!)
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/03/blood_on_the_scrolls_alexandri.html


Agora stars our own Rachel Weisz as the fourth-century AD Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer and editor Hypatia. A famous scholar in a city of scholars, she was caught up in the violent religious tensions that prevailed, and blamed by the rising Christian movement for poor relations between the Alexandrian bishop and the imperial Roman prefect. In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon described her death thus, "On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the Reader and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster shells and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames."