Excuse me while I have some righteous feminist anger... it will pass soon
I drove home on Friday through driving rain with tornado sirens and low visibility. it was pretty cool out during the storms, but then when I stopped for gas just outside of town, it was UNBELIEVABLY HOT AND HUMID. How could it be that awful at 5 pm when it had been raining all day?
Meanwhile, just because they are guys who own their own canoes doesn't mean they actually know how to use them all that well. Sometimes, though, it's just no longer worth it to keep trying to prove my superior skills. It feels patronizing, but it's not about me, it's about them beating their chests. I don't like being collateral damage - it's arguably worse than being intentionally put down since it's harder to convince people it's happening - but I'm going to have to pick my battles here and who sits where in a canoe for one day is just not that important. Let them do their thing, get it out of their system, and be smug over the fact that I'm better at it than they are and they totally would have gotten yelled at by my old canoeing instructors from Girl Scouts.
In other news, let me direct you to this very amusing semi-review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,* which I had no interest in seeing, but now that I am informed that reviewers are mostly concerned with defining the supposed target audience - a group to which I apparently do not belong - and then being really condescending, I feel like I should see it OUT OF SPITE.
This reminds me a lot of a couple reviews I saw of The Fellowship of the Ring years ago that argued that you shouldn't complain about the changes to Arwen's role because it gives the girlfriend you dragged along something to be interested in.
~*RAGE*~
I, for one, had no problem with the changes, although I fully understood the various complaints people had about that bit.** Where it gets all ragey is the assumption about who the audience is - that women would only go see the movie because they were badgered into going by their nerdy boyfriends. Not only is this ridiculous because everyone knows nerd boys don't have girlfriends*** because there have been female fans of Tolkien since the books were first published, but it places the blame for a controversial adaptational change on an entire gender. Don't like any changes to your precious source material? Blame the woman in the row in front of you. It's her fault the film industry ever does anything that doesn't directly appeal to you. How horrible it must be to not be catered to all the time.
I don't even remember if Jackson and Co. ever stated why they gave Arwen more to do in the first movie. I would guess it was more a matter of finding a way to introduce her than a calculated attempt to put girlie stuff in at regular intervals, since the rest of the movie and the trilogy doesn't really work that way. In any case, it's not like the female faction of Tolkien fandom went to the screenwriters and petitioned for Arwen at the Ford, so blaming the change on the female audience is just right out. If media producers want to appeal to me, that's their choice. You can't blame me for something I didn't ask for. (And if I did ask for it, tough cookies, suck it up and deal.)
At least those reviewers assumed they were being read by people who might actually enjoy the movie, which I guess is incrementally better than assuming your audience is fully comprised of people who would like to laugh at the kind of people who you think might enjoy the movie.
*Links to NPR, but it's a written blog, not a audio download.
**Many of the complaints I heard were leveled by women, which shows it was a matter of changing the story, not Arwen being female. This really just makes the reviewers' assumptions that much worse.
***See? I can make unflattering generalizations too!
Meanwhile, just because they are guys who own their own canoes doesn't mean they actually know how to use them all that well. Sometimes, though, it's just no longer worth it to keep trying to prove my superior skills. It feels patronizing, but it's not about me, it's about them beating their chests. I don't like being collateral damage - it's arguably worse than being intentionally put down since it's harder to convince people it's happening - but I'm going to have to pick my battles here and who sits where in a canoe for one day is just not that important. Let them do their thing, get it out of their system, and be smug over the fact that I'm better at it than they are and they totally would have gotten yelled at by my old canoeing instructors from Girl Scouts.
In other news, let me direct you to this very amusing semi-review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,* which I had no interest in seeing, but now that I am informed that reviewers are mostly concerned with defining the supposed target audience - a group to which I apparently do not belong - and then being really condescending, I feel like I should see it OUT OF SPITE.
This reminds me a lot of a couple reviews I saw of The Fellowship of the Ring years ago that argued that you shouldn't complain about the changes to Arwen's role because it gives the girlfriend you dragged along something to be interested in.
~*RAGE*~
I, for one, had no problem with the changes, although I fully understood the various complaints people had about that bit.** Where it gets all ragey is the assumption about who the audience is - that women would only go see the movie because they were badgered into going by their nerdy boyfriends. Not only is this ridiculous because everyone knows nerd boys don't have girlfriends*** because there have been female fans of Tolkien since the books were first published, but it places the blame for a controversial adaptational change on an entire gender. Don't like any changes to your precious source material? Blame the woman in the row in front of you. It's her fault the film industry ever does anything that doesn't directly appeal to you. How horrible it must be to not be catered to all the time.
I don't even remember if Jackson and Co. ever stated why they gave Arwen more to do in the first movie. I would guess it was more a matter of finding a way to introduce her than a calculated attempt to put girlie stuff in at regular intervals, since the rest of the movie and the trilogy doesn't really work that way. In any case, it's not like the female faction of Tolkien fandom went to the screenwriters and petitioned for Arwen at the Ford, so blaming the change on the female audience is just right out. If media producers want to appeal to me, that's their choice. You can't blame me for something I didn't ask for. (And if I did ask for it, tough cookies, suck it up and deal.)
At least those reviewers assumed they were being read by people who might actually enjoy the movie, which I guess is incrementally better than assuming your audience is fully comprised of people who would like to laugh at the kind of people who you think might enjoy the movie.
*Links to NPR, but it's a written blog, not a audio download.
**Many of the complaints I heard were leveled by women, which shows it was a matter of changing the story, not Arwen being female. This really just makes the reviewers' assumptions that much worse.
***See? I can make unflattering generalizations too!