Shortly after the launch of Avengers 2, Joss Whedon decided to take a break from Twitter. This prompted the Outrage Machine to spin up and announce that Joss’ departure was based on the shrill response he got from feminists based on the depiction of Black Widow in the movie. Joss has since replied that this notion is ‘horseshit’.
“I saw a lot of people say, ‘Well, the social justice warriors destroyed one of their own!’ It’s like, Nope. That didn’t happen,” he continued. “I saw someone tweet it’s because Feminist Frequency pissed on Avengers 2, which for all I know they may have. But literally the second person to write me to ask if I was OK when I dropped out was [Feminist Frequency founder] Anita [Sarkeesian].”
For the record, I didn’t see Anita say anything on twitter personally, but I did see her partner Josh McIntosh wonder why the Avengers 2 has so much darned violence in it. The answer is simple: because it’s the FUCKING AVENGERS. You don’t make a movie starring the Hulk, for example, and then have him not smash things in an orgy of violence the whole time. Unless you’re Ang Lee. Note: this is probably something that most directors consider a cautionary tale. I sure do.
Still, Joss’ makes a point that I want to underscore, which is that you shouldn’t get in the business of making pop culture (movies, television, books, video games, whatever) unless you’re prepared for your creation to be cross-examined and critiqued by pretty much everyone who touches it. Joss has been being praised and criticized by feminists for his portrayals of women going back to Buffy. He’s also gotten plenty of criticism from people complaining about how the Avengers were portrayed from die-hard comic book nerds (“Tony Stark didn’t make the Vision, Hank Pym did!”) As a creator, this is all input. You take what is useful to you, and you discard the rest. If you’re too thin-skinned for this process, then you’re too much of a mewling baby to actually handle being a film or game creator.
That being said, let’s talk about the Avengers 2 and what’s wrong with it.
I thought that the Hulk/Black Widow storyline was the only sour note in what is otherwise perhaps one of the finest comic book movies I’ve ever seen. In particular, I loved their treatment of Scarlet Witch, really enjoyed the treatment of the rising tension between Cap and Iron Man (which will conclude in Civil War), and I adored James Spader so much as Ultron that I want to release a recut of the movie with Ultron only using Robert California quotes.
But that Black Widow storyline – seriously, WTF.
There’s a lot of people complaining about various aspects, but I don’t buy into most of them. For example, sure, she’s damseled, but that’s after the most heroic act in the movie by any hero, and once damseled, she immediately uses her tech know-how to rescue herself by leading the Avengers to her location. It’s all good.
However, it’s pretty disquieting when a woman describes herself as a monster because she can’t have kids. NOT because she’s a ruthless assassin who has done some pretty dark things (a storyline I though was very well-handled in the first movie, and was dropped here). But because she’s sterile. As IO9 points out:
That’s what the Red Room did to her. It’s not the loss of innocence through killing or being forced to live a life of betraying people. The greatest loss is motherhood. That’s why she’s a monster like the Hulk. Poor Black Widow. She leaned in, and where did it get her? She’s a lonely, incomplete, monster.
And ultimately that’s a great deal of what I want from my female action heroes: that they not be required to take off their femininity when they suit up for battle, and that they not be required to leave it hanging in the closet when they return from the wars. Certainly, there are some female characters for whom violence may be straightforward and have few other implications for their senses of self. But isn’t the whole point of having women as well as men be superheroes and swordfighters that they bring a new range of perspectives to our experiences of these very old stories?
And this is all valid. What Rosenberg misses in her analysis, though, is that the Age of Ultron Black Widow rubs people the wrong way because she doesn’t act in a way that is at all consistent with what we know about Black Widow.
Natasha has always been an interesting character because she is a femme fatale who fights on our side. She is Mata Hari, but fights (and kills) on the side of the angels. This is not a story that gets told very often, and it’s interesting. She has no superpowers, beyond being cold, calculating, and willing to do ‘whatever it takes’ to get the job done. That will and tenacity is the only thing that allows her to get on the same battlefield with titans and gods. In the first Avengers, you got that clearly. In this movie, you got 2 hours of Widow being tentative and full of self-doubt, going back before the Witch charmed her.
The definitive Natasha scene for me in any Marvel movie is her tied to a chair in The Avengers. She’s clearly been caught using a sex kitten ploy to get information, and is now tied to a chair and is being interrogated. As the scene unfolds, it becomes clear that things are not as they seem, and that there has been no point in the exchange where she’s not in full control. She’s been toying with them all this time, which has been easy because men are pretty dumb when around a beautiful woman.
I would have liked to see THAT Natasha giving the Hulk a lullabye. Watch her switch seamlessly into calming, soothing feminine force in complete and firm control, and then once the job is done, switch back ‘on’ Ruthless mode to rejoin the team. Lullabye mode is just an extension of her willingness to use male foibles to get the job done. Instead, we got the tentative, cautious, fearful Black Widow that is suddenly deciding out of nowhere that maybe she DOESN’T want to get it done.
Her willingness to get it done’, as mentioned previously, is her motherfucking superpower.
I would have liked to see THAT discussion of whether she’s a monster. Is someone who toys with intimacy as a weapon a monster? Does someone who can control a monster become a monster? These are still interesting questions which challenge feminism and what we know about the character – but they feel like questions that would challenge the Black Widow we know.
We also get a Black Widow who seems cautious, tentative and coy when chasing a man she clearly wants. Um, really?
I dunno. Overall, I still loved the movie, and I thought that Scarlett did a good job with the lines she was given. All of this is more impressive (and discordant from her themes) when you realize she was pregnant throughout filming. I just kind of wish that the Black Widow I loved from the previous Marvel films had made an appearance.
Went to see the ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ over the weekend. Suffered a bit of sensory overload, both from the film and the price of the cinema ticket :O , so some of my recollection is a bit hazy. I don’t think it was as good as the first Avengers movie but it was still a blast 🙂
Being a UK resident I’ve not had that much exposure to the comic books of an American audience. My childhood was filled with 2000AD characters like Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog rather than those from the Marvel and DC universes. I enjoy the superhero movies but I lack much of the background and preconceived history of the characters.
Without this history of who Natasha is in the established Marvel universe it’s very hard for me to look beyond the journey she went through in Captain America: Winter Soldier. She was almost as much the lead in that film as Captain America was and had the organisation she had pledged her allegiance to crumble from within. I can stretch the boundaries to allow her a little more room to be testing her own options now that she is closer to being a free agent again.
If I was a little more cynical I would think the romance arc was there because neither character had more to do in the rest of the film. Bruce Banner is just there to take up screen space until the Hulk can be let out… that must be frustrating for an actor to know that the fans really want the cgi :/
To be honest it felt like I’d seen the romance before, possibly from the interaction between Captain Mal Reynolds and Inara in ‘Firefly’. Same sort of tone of a woman with highly developed seduction techniques not using them to woo the man she is becoming enamoured with.
As to ‘not using her man manipulation techniques’ to get what she wants, this comes down to an issue of long term prospects and trust. To retain any respect towards the person you love you would need to refrain from using the arsenal of tricks, otherwise they’d be viewed as no better. Maybe I’m reading a little to much into it but that makes her feel a more rounded character than the more single dimension ‘does what needs to be done’ automaton (and there are enough male representations of that character dynamic on screen 😉 ).
It brings up the question of just how integrated the movies are and the expectations of studio execs have on a fan base to watch them all. The Marvel universe has a vast repertoire of superheroes and at times it felt A:AOU felt the need to cram in as many as possible. This hurt the screen time some of the characters had. The Thor sequence and the cave seemed to be crowbarred into the story by marketing to remind us that A:AOU is part of a larger series building up to the Infinity Wars, and something the end credit sequences seem to have teased far better.
She definitely didn’t get to shine like she did in Winter Soldier, but it had a much smaller cast a clearer focus.
I don’t think she “damseled” at all. Look back to Avengers when she meets Banner for the first time and the moment he bangs the table with his fists in controlled anger. The sheer terror in her eye because she knows, even with a small army backing her out just outside, she doesn’t stand a chance, because really, no one would. Veronica was busted up pretty bad and she was designed to fight the hulk. I think we see that same “I’m out classed, what are my options here.” look when she see’s Ultron. Ducking into a cell and playing the prisoner is her calculated move for self preservation. Same goes for the way she handles the hulk at lullaby time. She’s watching all the angles and making she this green rage monster isn’t going to kill her if she makes a wrong move, even though it’s implied she’s done this so many time before.
“We also get a Black Widow who seems cautious, tentative and coy when chasing a man she clearly wants. Um, really?”
Fuck yeah. The way she effortlessly flirted with awkward Captain America was tactical. He was an asset she was trying to protect (really out of self preservation). She doesn’t look at Banner as an asset she needs to secure. Plus, the hopeless romantic in me thinks she’s trying to be honest with him instead of just trying to get him.
I totally want to see a Black Widow solo movie where all that background darkness can be looked at and she can totally out play all her targets like she did tied to the chair. See her confidently go from brutal killer to cocktail waitress and all that. If they tried to accomplish all that in Age of Ultron I think a lot of people would be complaining about lack of other characters, or that it was too long. As it stands, people are clamoring for more, which I think was by design. It wasn’t the best Marvel movie (I’m still split between Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy for which one is the BEST Marvel movie) but it was solid.
I would also love to see a solo Black Widow movie.
And not in a similar vein to the Captain America: Civil War where it looks to be more of an ensemble movie than the Avengers Assemble. But a true standalone solo movie.
I think a big issue for me with A:AOU is that the number of characters in the story meant even at 2 and a half hours long there was no time to be subtle with the characters.
Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to see a solo outing I think it would be a struggle to develop the character away from the male dominatrix fetish fantasy that seems to lurk at the core of the character.
Personally I saw Black Widow’s revelation as “I can’t have a baby because I’m a monster” not “I’m a monster because I can’t have a baby”, in fact your version didn’t even occur to me until I saw it pointed out somewhere on the ‘net.
I must admit I was a bit surprised this was a ‘Thing’ http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/an-open-letter-to-joss-whedon-after-watching-age-of-ultron-from-a-disappointed-feminist-fan-20150430
But then being in the target audience for superhero films…male… I probably don’t go in with an agenda to break down every frame into possible infringements on my belief structure. Given the volume of the special effects it’s very difficult now to recall the more nuanced elements of the film. I guess I’ll have to wait till I pick it up on DVD to see if the scene was as bad as people seem to think.
If I was to find anything offensive about the Black Widow/ Bruce Banner (HULK) romance is that it skirts the issue of domestic violence. Is it okay for the HULK to commit violence (remember the fight between Black Widow and the HULK in the original Avengers) but forgive Bruce because it was ‘out of his control’? I thought the whole point of the HULK was it was an expression of the inner rage. But, the HULK seems to have been tamed and put into the ‘flashy CGI fight’, comedy relief box and now the ill advised romance box.
Anita didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t just that McIntosh made goofy criticisms of it. The Feminist Frequency twitter account (either by Anita or McIntosh himself) retweeted those goofy criticism.
Superheroes have amazing abilities to manipulate the physical world around them. Obviously the stories by and large are going to be set up for them to use these abilities, lest every single story become some angsty “I have to learn when NOT to use my powers” yarn.
But those were simply criticisms, not personal attacks, so it doesn’t really matter.
Criticism of the art quickly turns personal, of which you are surely aware. Calling the litany of verbal abuse hurled at Joss Whedon, along with threats and admonitions to kill himself, “a shrill response.” This sounds like the minimizing you’re so fond of accusing gamergaters of. But, hey, go ahead and tell Brianna Wu “If you’re too thin-skinned for this process, then you’re too much of a mewling baby to actually handle being a film or game creator.”
And of course Joss Whedon wouldn’t admit it if rabid feminists had driven him off twitter. That’s not really evidence once way or another. What we do know is that he left twitter very shortly after receiving a litany of “artistic criticism” that he’s a misogynistic awful person who should kill himself.
Is the shrill response that Whedon got really all that different from the response from Star Wars fans over Episode 1? Or from the response of BioWare fans to the ending of Mass Effect 3? No. In fact, the responses to those were even more widespread and violent.
People act like somehow those who criticize from a different point of view are better than these stalwarts of geekdom. They’re not. Joss Whedon has gotten criticism for his choices his entire career – most successful professionals, including myself, are pretty used to it. What I saw, as did many others including Joss, was the conservative blogosphere invent this rationale out of thin cloth with pretty thin evidence, simply because they’ve decided that feminism is somehow evil and must be stopped.
Are you willfully blind? There’s ample evidence of it, even if The Mary Sue wants to avoid mentioning it while speculating about all sorts of other people to blame.
And in the meantime we have this silly campaign to say that gamergate is this crusade to drive women out of the industry. And as examples we get admitted misandrists like Samantha Allen. So, sure, let’s stick to the “mewling babies” assessment.
Gamergate is not a crusade to drive women out of anything.
It is a crusade to cause chaos and noise in the guise of having any higher purpose at all. If it causes people pain, then there will be lulz. That’s all there is.
If there’s evidence of Joss Whedon leaving Twitter specifically because of feminism and not for any other reason, especially from what the very prominent screenwriter and director said were his motivations, go ahead and say them, but taking Joss Whedon at his word in regards to Twitter does not mean anyone’s being willfully blind to other possibilities.
Maybe Joss is being truthful. He wouldn’t tell the truth if we were right, though. It wasn’t a motive invented from thin cloth. All sorts of people linked his departure to harassment, it just happened that The Mary Sue et al were willfully blind to the source of the most vocal and vitriolic harassment Whedon was receiving.
Gamergate doesn’t exist for the lulz. It’s an amalgam of free speech activists, disgruntled gamers, justified media critics, moderate feminists, with right -wing and MRA hangers-on who saw a common enemy: the dominant and unethical progressive media which gives us hard-hitting fabrications like “A Rape On Campus.”
But maybe Damion is still a Jackie true believer. I’m pretty sure he believes you’re an MRA if you’re astute enough to know that the sexual assault risk is lower for women on college campuses than for similarly aged women off-campus.
People who see misogyny everywhere and engage in aggressive gatekeeping in the feminist community make a lot of enemies.
This is pretty indicative of the level of evidence that GamerGate brings to the table about anything. As a parallel story, there are still people on Twitter who happily tweet the fact that I was either fired from BioWare for writing about GamerGate, or that I quit BioWare to, I dunno, poke GamerGate with a stick full-time, I assume to pad my massive Patreon account. Neither is true, and there is no good evidence to support either, and there is in fact direct refutation from the person in question (me) that is unchallenged by any evidence out there. However, people such as yourself are so convinced that you’re right that you’re unwilling to actually even start with the person’s statements at face value.
GamerGate is terrible at promoting free speech, terrible at promoting ethical journalism, and actively serves to undermine moderate feminists, so anyone who is in GamerGate for those reasons is pretty much deluding themselves.
Why is someone who quits twitter over such widespread and violent responses a mewling baby? Why is this criticism reserved for so many women when you speak of how many women you know who are too scared to, what, troll the gamergate hashtag? If you can argue that it’s somehow the fault of gamergate, it’s a tragedy and we all need to have a conversation about misogyny and civility, and if it’s not tied to gamergate, it’s just the nature of the internet and these mewling babies just need to get used to it.
As for whether it’s different from the response to Star Wars episode 1 or Mass Effect 3? Where are the news stories about death threats mailed directly to George Lucas. I’m sure there was hate mail, but I don’t know how much there was. I was an angry teenager at the time and I thought he was a fucking sellout who made a shitty movie and was actively undermining the magic of the original trilogy by repeatedly changing the originals to fit his new vision. I wasn’t sending him mail. I was just calling The Phantom Menace a shitty movie on imdb.com. You’re free to show me some news articles about the volume of death threats that he received.
I don’t know what sort of volume of personal messages was received over the Mass Effect 3 ending. Poor reviews based on the half-assed ending, tweets under a Mass Effect hashtag, or posts on the Mass Effect forums aren’t exactly what we’re talking about, so let’s not conflate them. Jennifer Hepler quit Bioware after people misdirected their anger at her over the systemic failings of Dragon Age 2. Was she a mewling baby and was that just “a shrill response” or do we need to really think about how we talk to people on the internet? My guess is that you’d probably concede that one because, hey, those were mostly angry white men –> anti-woman proto-Gamergaters.
Your schtick is obvious:
Angry white men raging at a woman or a male feminist –> this is terrible we need to do something about it.
Raging feminists or anything otherwise not connectable to Gamergate –> don’t be a mewling baby about it.
Because you can’t be against bullying or against the harassment of women if you believe in Gamergate. It’s not just possible. And you can’t be against terrorism if you actively defend Islam. We just can’t accept that you’re a good person if you don’t renounce your faith.
People believed you were fired from Bioware based on what? Essentially nothing, right?
So, why do people think Joss Whedon was harassed off twitter?
Joss Whedon had taken previous breaks from twitter. This time he deleted his account.
He had just received a deluge of harassment, primarily from angry feminists.
Most people speculated, not just conservatives, that he had finally left twitter over being harassed online.
The Mary Sue published an article about this, giving speculation about every potential catalyst for this harassment except angry feminists.
Then, he acknowledges the harassment from radical feminists and denies that they were the cause of his deleting his account.
But, would he have admitted it had that been the case?
Seriously, why should I take him at his word?
Did you think that Joss Whedon was harassed off twitter before he said anything? If so, who did you think caused it?
Honestly, at this point I don’t care if it’s true or not. I don’t know why he deleted his twitter account. But there was a substantial basis to believe it before Joss Whedon spoke out, and there’s a lesser but well above zero probability that he’s simply saying what he needs to say to lessen future verbal abuse and death threats from feminists.
Well, nevermind the comment about Hepler. I forgot the updates that she didn’t leave because of harassment, so I guess she’s not a mewling baby after all.
If someone quit their job because of Twitter harassment, would it necessarily make them a mewling baby?
John, no.
I’m mocking Damion’s above assertion:
“If you’re too thin-skinned for this process, then you’re too much of a mewling baby to actually handle being a film or game creator.”
This is rather humorous to me in light of much of Damion’s blogging about Gamergate.
Did it occur to you that getting negative reviews for your movie and getting dogpiled on Twitter are of different degrees?
Is Joss Whedon leaving Twitter an appropriate response to one but not the other?
Did you come to this site specifically to mock the site’s author? If so, you’re kind of a jerk.
And of course Joss Whedon wouldn’t admit it if rabid feminists had driven him off twitter. That’s not really evidence once way or another.
In other words, if he confirms it it’s true, if he denies it it’s still true because it fits someone else’s narrative. I see how that works.
The denial is evidence, sure. But it has to be considered in light of whether he would have said the same thing regardless.
Joss Whedon is pretty open and free speaking his mind. As an example, he’s given in no uncertain terms his opinion on GamerGate. Do you think that the SJW superlobby is somehow scarier to him than Gamergate?
Of course they are. What kind of fucking stupid question is that?
Do you think that Joss Whedon is less worried about offending his feminist allies than about offending Gamergate?
Do you honestly believe that Joss Whedon would have given Gamergaters ammunition against feminists by admitting (if it were true) that it was a bunch of insane radical feminists that finally made him give up on twitter?
So, Daniel, I have in my time also pissed off feminists, and pissed off Gamergators.
The feminists wrote me some nasty emails, and said some very not nice things about me on twitter.
The gamergators were…. much, much worse.
Your ‘of course they are’ statement is, to quote you, ‘fucking stupid’.
Yes, you may think it’s fucking stupid if you remove it from the context of the conversation we were having about whether Joss would more likely admit it or deny it if it were true. You’re still doing a rather piss-poor job of actually refuting that idea.
Are you having a conversation with Damion, or are you being a loudmouth shit-slinging jerk?
SJW superlobby is not a real thing, sir.
John,
You’re welcome to offer your opinion.
Joss Whedon is a self-identified feminist who is a promoter of Anita Sarkeesian and who had already compared Gamergate to the KKK, if he’d deleted his twitter account because of a wave of vitriol and death threats sent to him by feminists, would he be more likely to obfuscate than to admit it?
If you have an actual answer, and not poorly constructed attempts at rhetorical questions, feel free to share.
If you, like Damion apparently, don’t wish to accept the premise, then don’t waste my time.
“Do you honestly believe that Joss Whedon would have given Gamergaters ammunition against feminists…”
Do you honestly believe anyone at this stage actually gives a fuck about giving ammunition to GG? Nobody who isn’t already on board is getting convinced by anything you say. Any chance of having any actual tangible impact was wasted late last Autumn. What is left is a shrinking permanent outrage generating machine whose only claim to relevance remains the ongoing vile actions done in their name.
Here are the facts. Someone who you most likely don’t know, most likely never met, makes a statement. Whether you take it at face value or not is your choice, but as I sincerely doubt that you can read minds, your logical deductions are contingent on your limited life experience being universal. Which they are not. And even if they were, if everything people did or said was logical, gamergaters would be talking about ethics in game journalism instead of still constantly bringing up Quinn, Wu or Sarkeesian NINE FUCKING MONTHS LATER.
Whedon does sound like a battered wife, they beat him up unfairly, yet he won’t come out and say anything, just little passive aggresive comments.
Just like you sound like a hypocrite Damion, now the response to harrasment is “get a thick skin”.
It never fails to surprise how gamergaters cannot differentiate between recieving criticism and occasionally insults, and getting so scared for your life you feel the need to flee your home and contact the authorities.
The truth of the matter is that #gamergate is desperate to try to create some kind of equivalency of vileness on the other side of the equation to justify their own bad behavior. This is utterly doomed to fail because, you know, common fucking sense.
Whedon also received threats of violence which you ignored, only he choose to ignore it instead of broadcasting it.
Basically it’s less important because the victim didn’t scare(or pretend to) easily…
Wow, it is good to be American. What is Vietnam worried about? China. What is Finland worried about? Russia. What are Americans worried about? Did age of ultron deliver an appropriate feminist message.