Ryan Elias's Open Salon Blog

Avengers, gender and the Morgan Rule

Mon, 7 May 2012 19:05:21 -0400

Saw Avengers the other night. I think it's pretty clearly the genre high point of the mainstream superhero movie to date. Its execution ranged from solid to masterful, it was exhilarating, funny and gorgeous. But.

Avengers has approximately five main characters, four secondaries, and a handful of tertiaries. Of the five protagonists, four are male and all are white. The four secondaries are three white and one black male. There is exactly one tertiary character of any significance who is not a white male -- two if you count Gwennyth Paltrow's twoish scenes as Iron Man's girlfriend.

Needless to say, it abjectly fails the Bechdel test.

I swear it's an idea I got from Richard Morgan, though now that I go looking I can't find the original quote -- but for the sake of expedience let's call it the Morgan Rule, even if it's a misappropriation: in the process of constructing a narrative, particularly in boys-club genres like superhero, sci-fi, or action films, if there's no specific reason for your protagonist not to be female, of colour and/or a sexual minority, they probably should be.

In the case of Avengers, for better or for worse, we're pretty firmly locked in to four probably white probably straight men for our main characters (Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk and Thor), and of course ScarJo as the fifth. None of that can really change without it being a pretty big shake-up, and this isn't a genre that's inclined towards subversion. That's fine.

But really, thus constrained, why the ever-loving fuck do you choose another straight white dude as your sixth character? Especially an egregiously dull B-lister like Hawkeye?

I've been complaining about this for months, since the first trailers came out, but having actually seen the movie it's even worse than I'd thought.
Black Widow, ScarJo's character, and Hawkeye are portrayed as a bit of a pair. And don't get me wrong, it's a good, they play off each other well, and Jeremy Renner's portrayal is perfectly strong. There are narrative parallels too: they're the only two heroes without overt superpowers, relying on skill, grit and intelligence instead of invulnerability and lasers. There's some emotional heft to that, a kind of battlescarred camaraderie.

But recasting Hawkeye as some equivalent female hero, or even Hawkeye as a female hero, would have been strictly better -- then, we'd also have sympatico via female veterans of a male-dominated world, to go with that of (comparatively) ordinary humans thrown in with the demigods. And though I really appreciated the depiction of a non-romantic mixed-gender friendship, it's not like female friendship is over-represented in action flicks. I think it could have been extremely fruitful, in an otherwise entirely unchanged movie.

There's also the plain question of avoiding tokenism. When your hero squad has one woman, she feels like a token (particularly with a name like Black Widow), no matter how strong and well-developed. Add a second minimally developed female character and this is just less of a problem, optically.

But the larger issue is that throwing in Hawkeye adds nothing to the film. He is, I'm told, one of the original Avengers in the comic, but he hardly brings an established fan-base. The archery schtick is kinda dopey and stretches credulity. Making him the sixth was an affirmative choice, made somewhere presumably quite early in the film's conception, and there's no reason, save uncritical laziness, to have chosen this particular male hero for the role.

Diversity is worthwhile for its own sake, of course, but it's also interesting -- the movie was constantly concerned about how its main cast would interact, and adding more women into the mix simply opens up a wider range of possibilities, even if we're staying strictly hetero. Sexual tension and power dynamics and condescension: you've got a character from the 1940s, ferchristssake! This stuff doesn't need to be especially deep or thoughtful, but a broader cast just gives you more to work with, period. So why Hawkeye?

All this doesn't even touch on the race question, nor broader problems endemic to the superhero genre of highly sexualized female characters (in the film's defense, I suppose, the camera isn't shy about lingering lovingly over skintight leather-clad mancandy either), nor the total lack of queer anything, and so on. But the choice of Hawkeye as the sixth Avenger is just baffling in its dull thoughtlessness. Can't get over it at all.

(I should add that I am in no way a comic book reader -- everythng I know about these characters was picked up through the Hollywood films or second-hand through friends. But I have it on good authority that there are a great many perfectly acceptable female candidates in the Avengers canon who could have been brought in for the role.)

On writing about transgender issues

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:03:17 -0400

There's a lot to be said for writing about gender identity. From a nakedly opportunistic reporter perspective, it's a gold mine. It also happens to be incredibly important and dramatically undercovered.

Why it's important should be obvious, but just in case: Trans issues are some of the last bastions of mainstream, overt, unapologetic bigotry in North America. Remember when Morning Joe said he felt sick at the mere thought of Thomas Beatie, the trans guy who got pregnant a few years back? Or when David Letterman called him an "androgynous freak show"?

The Beatie story also demonstrates what's easy about trans stories. On what other topic can you sell "Married Couple Has Child"? Even pedestrian stories about trans people doing entirely ordinary things interest readers -- I wrote a rather well-received article that was, basically, "Transgendered People Have Lives, Feelings in Vancouver BC".

So that's the good part: the very thing that makes these stories important, that they're controversial and challenging, also make them easy to write and pitch, a potent blend of man-bites-dog unfamiliarity, social relevance, human interest and prurient fascination.

I'm sure you can see the danger there, as well -- there's a lot of awful, freak-show-tranny-safari stuff out there in the media. Matters stand better today than they were even three or four years ago (as I think the largely respectful coverage of Jenna Talackova has shown), as gender identity seems to have emerged for real as a human rights issue. But it definitely still happens (warning: Daily Mail), and the strangest things can draw the insane bigots out of the woodwork.

When writing about this stuff for the mainstream press you are to some extent exploiting voyeuristic interest. I worry about it, but I think there's a line you can tread: Curiosity isn't necessarily wholly negative, familiarity leads to acceptance, don't be an asshole.

That was the whole premise of Girl Meets Boy. I figured that the audience of the Tyee -- centre-left, educated, somewhat older -- was basically queer-friendly, but also broadly unfamiliar with, and thus probably kneejerk uncomfortable about, trans stuff. They didn't need a lecture about human decency, they just needed a trans friend, and could be drawn in by the prospect of a glance into a world they knew nothing about.

There's a tradition of this -- Hanna Rosin's excellent A Boy's Life worked the same way, in 2008, with an iota more newsy window-dressing. Readers are hooked by the idea of a little boy who wants to be a little girl, but end up spending some time with a perfectly ordinary family dealing with something ultimately not terribly different from what many other children go through.

'Don't be an asshole' is how I think the terminology issue needs to be resolved. Perhaps the hardest part, technically, of writing about trans issues is vocabulary.

The first hurdle, that seems close to common practice now, is referring to people by their pronoun of choice. That this should even be a question now baffles me, but I'm sure it's still debated in newsrooms, especially regarding people who haven't yet changed their legal sex, or haven't yet (or don't plan at all to) undergo genital reassignment surgery. But it's actually pretty easy: how would the subject like to be referred to? Alright, now don't be an asshole.

You can be explicit about this to your readers, too. Especially if you're going to use one of the gender neutral pronouns (zhe, ze). No need to be coy, just write "[Subject] prefers to use the pronoun 'zhe', and this article will thus do so as well".

But pronouns are only the beginning. Trans language is, bluntly, a fucking quagmire. The activist community is vibrant and combatitive, and questions of terminology are highly political. And a lot of the best-practice terms, when such a thing even exists, are jargony and unfamiliar to a mainstream audience.

Some of those, like 'cis', you probably just need to pony up and teach to your reader. Other distinctions, like transsexual vs transgendered vs FTM/MTF, are probably beyond the scope of any article, but you should probably be at least passing familiar with their implications.

And then there are common turns of phrase like 'born-woman' which are actually generally considered to be terms of prejudice, used to attack the legitimacy of a trans person's identity. 'Assigned female' is better, but possibly confusing to readers.'Trans' is of course okay, but other change words are often problematic: many trans people don't see themselves as 'becoming' their chosen sex -- they always were, and the surgery has aligned physical details with what they always were internally.

Luckily, there's an easy out: Don't be an asshole! Run with what your subjects are comfortable with, and don't be afraid to ask. Trans language changes fast these days, and different factions within the greater community have different preferences -- you're not going to please everybody, but you can at least not offend the people you're actually working with.

Pique the public's curiosity, give them some familiarity with the issues and the people, don't be an asshole. How's that for the trans- (and trans-ally) agenda?

[This was originally two posts.]

Romney's southwestern strength

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:03:58 -0400

Kornacki ran some numbers over in real-Salon today. Some interesting thoughts, but I'm not sure there's a lot of there there.

Kornacki writes, in brief, that most of Romney's lead this primary comes from territories that don't vote in the actual election, Northwestern states that no Republican nominee will win in November, and the "Mormon belt" states in the south- and midwest. Take away those and he's running much closer to even with Santorum.

Other than actually, y'know, choosing the nominee, the interesting thing about primaries is what they tell us about the general election. In that regard, I'm not sure where Kornacki's going with this -- the Mormon belt states are mostly purple, and Romney showing strength there is far from meaningless.

Indeed, one might argue that his losses in the South, meanwhile, really are. Virginia aside, none of the southern states will vote for Obama in 2012. Romney can depress GOP turnout in Mississippi all he likes; he's not going to lose the state.

Nevada, though? Colorado, New Mexico? If the GOP is looking for electability, these states matter. Discounting them because Romney has an edge in Mormon voters seems silly. Mormons still vote in the general elections, and the margins in these states are often very slim.

I don't think Romney's a strong candidate, but I don't see the coalition he's assembled for this primary as an indicator of weakness in and of itself.

If, as seems likely, states like Ohio and Pennsylvania are going to decide this election, it's his inability to win over blue collar voters that's his real problem, not his mediocre regional showing in the South.

The case for neosuffragettes

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:03:08 -0400

My partner-in-crime got embroiled in one of those internet hate-spirals this weekend, starting with this post, that left her feeling pretty disillusioned. We got to talking about what it would take to provoke a real backlash, to make women stand up and say enough is e-fucking-nough. She worries that it's not going to happen at all.

Linda Hirshman wrote today that she doesn't think it will either. Both of them have precedent on their side. I'm not so sure.

These last few decades, the struggle for women's health has focused on abortion. It's a worthy fight, but a messy one. That messiness is reflected in the many many lost battles and setbacks we've suffered.

There is, I think, one very simple reason for this: the anti-abortion case, while often blind to the facts and usually sitting atop a much darker agenda, rests ultimately on the value of a human life.

This means that even when they're wrong (and they are), their argument is the simple one. Don't you hate murder? Ours is the complex case to make, which means that many people who haven't thought about it will instinctively disagree. In arguing, we risk coming across cynical and callous.

Abortion is complicated, and it's possible to be wrong on it for the right reasons. I think its difficulty as a subject has had something of a dampening effect on the energy of the women's rights movement. Such is the price of victory, right? The easy battles were mostly in hand.

But now, thanks to some dickhead from Pennsylvania and the GOP's inability/unwillingness to laugh him off the stage, we're talking about contraception again.

The case for contraception is simple. So simple, in fact, that it used to be the great saving grace to the abortion debate, right? The one thing everybody, other than a handful of old men in silly hats in Rome, could agree on was that readily available contraception works for everybody -- fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer abortions.

That we might have to refight this battle is, of course, incredible, and I think the sheer lunacy of it will make a difference.

The dial hasn't moved much yet on this, as Hirshman points out, but it's only March. Nobody's paying attention yet, and I suspect that even quite uninformed voters know better by now than to pay too much attention to primary season chatter.

But the contraception conversation is happening, and Romney's hilarious inability to take a stand on even the most basic principle (and, to be fair, the Obama campaign's knowledge that it's a winning issue) means that we'll probably keep having it through the summer and all the way to November.

And on this topic, quite apart from being right, we have the simple argument. If you haven't given this a lot of thought, you're on our side. And if you have given it a lot of thought (and aren't utterly bereft of sense and principle), guess what? You're also on our side.

Abortion's a tough topic to get fired up over -- the pro-choice voice is always a devil's advocate, the call to permit something most of us have qualms regarding because to not do so is wrong and counterproductive.

Contraception? Fucking bring it.

L'affaire Ravi

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:03:16 -0400

The problem with dystopia is that even when things go right they go wrong.

In 2009 Dharun Ravi spied by webcam on his Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi in an assignation with another man, and then tried, semipublically, to arrange a viewing party the next time Clementi took a date home. Clementi threw himself off the George Washington Bridge the next day.

Ravi was found guilty today of a handful of charges, including invasion of privacy, intimidation, and evidence tampering. His sentence hasn't been announced yet, but word is that it will be between 5 to 10 years, and he may also be deported to India, the country of his birth.

There's a lot to be said for all this: We don't as a society do enough about bullying. Bullshit like Ravi pulled on Clementi too often goes completely unremarked, let alone punished.

A boy is dead.

But that's where I, at least, start to run into trouble. Though he is to some extent complicit in Clementi's death, Dharun Ravi is not a murderer. Indeed, even indirectly he's hardly (as Dan Savage pointed out at the time) the only one responsible. He behaved inappropriately, and the consequences of his behaviour were grave, but to what extent is it right to punish him for those outcomes?

5 years in prison is a lot to put on a 20-year-old. Hell, it's a lot to put on anyone. It's hard to see how society as a whole benefits from putting this kid, vicious little snake though he may be, away for most of his 20s.

But that's the bind we find ourselves in, isn't it? This is just how our justice system works. Ravi was brought to the attention of the authorities because Clementi killed himself, and the charges against him were brought and pursued with such fervour as a result of the death. But I don't believe there was an "and also, the victim died" rider on any of the charges he was found guilty of. These are actually the punishments the American justice system demands for these crimes.

Do we set the penalties as high as we do because we really consider 10 years in prison a fair punishment for them? Do we cost in the terrible things that result from them, that the perpetrators nevertheless cannot be tried for? Or is it simply an artifact of a political system that makes it much easier to raise penalties than lower them?

(hint: it's problably option 3)

But go back think about the process here for a moment -- these are charges that are unlikely to ever be laid unless something terrible happens as a result, despite the fact that, as in this case, the degree to which the perpetrator is actually responsible for those consequences might be rather low. We're not punishing for the actual offense charged, but for the (possibly minimally related) effects thereof.

I think this is a similar phenomenon to the Capone effect, where we nab somebody for a lesser charge because we don't have a strong enough case to nail them for the greater. Except Capone was actually guilty of many many murders, whereas Ravi is an asshole teenager being lumped with full responsibility for a tragedy that was only partially of his making.

And then, to top it off, the primary punishment mechanism we deploy is hilariously destructive, inefficient, expensive, and possible even unjust.

A commenter on Dan Savage's post on the issue today wrote that he was uneasy with a "back-door murder trial" -- and that's exactly what this is. For all that I feel strongly that Ravi should be punished, it shouldn't be for murder.

Complicating matters in the other direction, Ravi himself rejected a plea bargain that would have netted him 600 hours of community service, no jail time, and help with immigration to avoid deportation. Instead he pled innocent, and lost. Easy to just say, well, then, fuck him, right? He had his chance.

I don't know about that, either. If 10 years is too much for his actual crime (being a bully and an asshole), then it's still too much if we add the "crime" of making a poor tactical decision in his defense.

Better than nothing? I think so, probably, but I can't help but regret that we're meeting wrong with wrong.