I’ve been rewatching the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and ohhhhhhh
when otto octavius quietly says “i’ll do it” and goes to destroy his life’s work because it’s the right thing to do, even knowing he’ll die doing it
when harry osborn smiles and says “none of that matters. you’re my friend”
when peter resolves that “i will always be Spider-Man.”
when MJ sticks up for Peter just because it’s kind.
when May says sometimes you have to give up your dreams to do the right thing
bestie that’s what it’s all about T_T
YES
Frankenstein
I saw Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein last week and I immediately became OBSESSED with it. Like many of del Toro’s wonderful films, it’s about life and death and love, but it hit me in a way no other GDT film has. Not even Pacific Rim!
A lot of that is down to Jacob Elordi’s absolutely Oscar-worthy performance as The Creature. I had the usual doubts that your standard teen heartthrob could actually act and I instantly got Robert Pattinson’ed. I’m so sorry Jacob, I was unfamiliar with your game.
“To you I am obscene, but to myself I simply am.” What a line! And unsurprisingly it REALLY resonates with the Tumblr crowd. Including me. I am the Tumblr crowd.
After watching the movie I almost immediately read the book and it was a fascinating experience. It’s very different from the film (in fact, it’s very different to most of the films based on it). The Creature isn’t as sympathetic, and soon turns to outright toddler-murder after being rejected by humans, but it’s clear what Mary Shelley wanted to say about humanity, society and the religion she followed. I remember seeing a great post on Tumblr or Facebook that read something along the lines of, “When you know Mary Shelley lost a child before writing Frankenstein, you won’t wonder why she wrote a story about someone abandoned by God.” Her letters after that loss (see Wikipedia) are truly devastating, by the way: “I am no longer a mother now” really hit me in the solar plexus.
Victor on the other hand is more sympathetic than he is in the movie, but still not exactly a paragon of virtue or good sense. After making the Creature he runs away in terror, but when he finally returns to his lodgings he offhandedly mentions how a servant brought him dinner. So he left the Creature in the house… with a servant? Who might have gotten mauled or eaten for all he knew?! I wonder if that was written into the novel deliberately to show how callous Victor is or if it was just a oversight in a world where everyone in the position to write a novel could only do so off the back of invisible labour from servants.
But on the other hand the rest of the novel does care about servants? A lot of page time is devoted to the awful fate of Justine. Justine is probably the most sympathetic character in the novel actually, and in her last speech it’s made clear she and the Creature share the same fate in a way:
“I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition.”
-but Justine, even though she’s likewise condemned to live as a ‘monster’ for her last day of life and probably be remembered that way by most people in death, doesn’t resort to revenge. Hashtag #JusticeForJustine. It does not escape my notice that all the women in this novel are much more morally decent than most of the men… ur, assuming the Creature counts as a man. (And of course, ‘does he count as a human’ and ‘does he count as a male’ are different questions. Oh look I’ve slipped into using he/him pronouns for him, which is interesting in of itself.)
There’s a line not long after Justine’s death, said by Elizabeth, that really struck me: “Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; at least they were remote and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood.” I guess it just made me think of the times we’re all living in. Sorry, depressing.
Less depressing is that one line from the book that’s gone round social media so many times you’re probably seen it already: “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” There’s nothing I can really say about that one that hasn’t already been said, but I love it.
I’m having so much fun and feelings uncovering this new-to-me myth.
i think that the creature from Frankenstein should have met Bishop Myriel from Les mis. I feel this would have ended well. The creature would get a father figure/guy who is nice to him. Myriel would get someone who can get things from the top shelf for him
♪ But remember this, my brother
Humankind is not that bad
God has raised you out of darkness
Now beat the shit out of your dad ♪
ot3:
part of the fun of the does it like women polls is that everyone sets their own criteria for what that question actually means to them. and i think it says a lot about how devalued womens’ narratives are that “are the incredibly few women in this narrative written with a baseline level of competence” and “does this narrative avoid being explicitly hostile to its female characters” are enough for people to view something as being actively pro women. its the media equivalent of that phenomenon where men view women as having spoken an equal amount when they have in fact spoken far far less. imagine if we used criteria this nothingburger for gauging literally anything else. youre like ‘does this piece of work like it’s characters’ and someone else says ‘yeah they have character arcs and everything. the narrative doesnt even punish them for existing.’ you just have to be like. okay but is it good though. are those character arcs meaningful? compelling? well executed? thematically resonant? the bar is low people it is loooooow
#also leads to stories that have really interesting and well-written female characters being judged as bad#just because bad things happen to the women in them
never forgiving that blog’s voters for how they judged mary jane watson
Thoughts will not leave me alone – I do take does-it-hate-women and similar blogs/articles/etc rather seriously, to my own detriment. But I think “Is it feminist? Does it hate women?” are questions that answer nothing. Because what’s feminist? What’s hate? What’s it?
What’s feminist? I’m reminded of this very good post which points out that feminism means different things to different people depending on how you were socialized, and what traumas you’ve suffered. One woman might appreciate a fictional rape victim being shown to have a complete messy breakdown after their assault while a different woman might appreciate that a fictional rape victim immediately turns into a stone cold badass and kills her rapist. It depends if you want realism or a power fantasy. Both women are right.
What’s hate? Steven Moffat always got a lot of flak for his female characters (all of whom I love) but has never been accused of harming a real woman. Neil Gaiman was lauded as a feminist, a lover of women and advocate of girls and we now know he’s a rapist. It’s clear from his actions that Joss Whedon hates women, but did he create Buffy Summers or did Sarah Michelle Gellar? Does the love Gellar put in negate the hate Whedon put in?
What’s it? Let’s say the It is a long-running franchise like Batman or Doctor Who that’s been going since the 60s or earlier. Does it hate women? It’s had hundreds of writers, directors and producers, statistics are not on my side here, some of them definitely hated women. You can always point to one panel or scene from 1969 and say, “This is proof that this franchise hates women” but then a female writer or showrunner shows up and attempts to put all that in the past. Do we forgive? Is the It absolved?
Can a TV show be considered feminist if even one woman was harmed in all 60+ years of it, even if the perpetrator is dead?
There’s more! There was a debate once as to whether Pacific Rim was feminist – Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro definitely seemed to love Mako Mori, but she’s the only woman in the film with lines. Then the franchise went to different people and Mako was fridged. When Black Panther came out it was lauded as the MCU’s most feminist film, but Disney are involved, and Disney have mistreated countless real women. But on the other hand, how much creative control do Disney have over the franchises they suck up like leeches? I love the show Gravity Falls and don’t consider it Disney, just something Disney bought, but Disney was dictating what made it into the show while at the same time women who worked at Disneyland were sleeping in their cars.
The subject of this very blog, the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, was directed by Sam Raimi, and Sam Raimi has in the past donated money to the Republican party. What 16-year-old me spent on my movie ticket for Spider-Man 2, some of that could well have gone on preventing teengers just like me from getting abortions.
If I (a woman) love it, is it feminist?
I really want answers.
Tbh this all might just be overthinking. But though it’s unrelated, I’d like to touch upon this one part:
I love the show Gravity Falls and don’t consider it Disney, just something Disney bought
Characterizing Gravity Falls as “something Disney bought” makes it sound as though there was a time the show was not owned and produced by Disney. This isn’t the case. Not only did Alex Hirsch specifically pitch the show to Disney, the show itself was inspired and influenced by the old Disney Afternoon shows that Hirsch enjoyed in his youth. Disney doesn’t merely “own” Gravity Falls, Disney is an essential part of the series’ DNA. To enjoy Gravity Falls is to enjoy what generations of Disney animated storytelling on television paved the way for and formed the foundation of. This would be a mark of shame only to one who views “Disney” as an entirely malicious entity and a bad thing to enjoy and support, but the reality is that Disney has always brought to the tables of art, entertainment, society, culture, and big business capitalism as much good as it has bad. It’s just a messy truth of life we can’t really turn ourselves away from.
(Moving this to my personal blog…) See, that’s a fascinating tidbit I never knew. But Alex Hirsch seems to be so bitterly anti-Disney now that I feel like I need to take sides there, so I took Hirsch’s. I consider him the author of Gravity Falls, not Disney. Disney played an important role but it’s part of Hirsch’s soul I’m looking at when push comes to shove. I suppose that raises another interesting question, what do you do when author and publisher fall out?
I guess I look at it like this: When I was a kid I had some Barbie dolls I loved. They were made by Mattel, who have a long history of unethical labor practices. My beloved Jewel Hair Mermaid Barbie was probably made by, at best, an underpaid person who hated the company and all it stood for. But she was still mine!