Feminism, Sucker Punch, and Arguments
Originally published at A Singularity. You can comment here or there.
So my live journal’s re-post of my Sucker Punch review got some interesting comments and my assumption that geeks, regardless of gender, would like the film. It turns out I am wrong but it has produced some good arguments as to why.
Additionally, else where on the internet, Scott Adams, creator of the famous comic strip Dilbert, unintentionally trolled the feminist movement.
And finally above we have a video about feminism and how it is or might change.
All three of these things link together and I invite you to read it all over and then I’ll explain.
Take some time to read the blog post by Scott Adams. If you don’t have the time here is an excerpt:
The short answer is that I write material for a specific sort of audience. And when the piece on Men’s Rights drew too much attention from outside my normal reading circle, it changed the meaning. Communication becomes distorted when you take it out of context, even if you don’t change a word of the text. I image that you are dubious about this. It’s hard to believe this sort of thing if you don’t write for a living and see how often it happens. I’ll explain.
Regular readers of my blog know that the goal of my writing is to be interesting and nothing else. I’m not trying to change anyone’s opinion, largely because I don’t believe humans can be influenced by exposure to better arguments, even if I had some. But I do think people benefit by exposure to ideas that are different from whatever they are hearing, even when the ideas are worse. That’s my niche: something different. That approach springs from my observation that brains are like investment portfolios, where diversification is generally a good strategy. I’m not trying to move you to my point of view; I’m trying to add diversity to your portfolio of thoughts. In the short term, I hope it’s stimulating enough to be entertaining. Long term, the best ideas probably come from people who have the broadest exposure to different views.
I like the above ideas, specifically the one about writing and context. Words definitely mean different things in different contexts and contexts can be hard to establish. I think this links back, at least tangentially, to another blog post by the creator of the comic titled Goblins about Jokes, Censorship, and Rape. When you write it, how you present it, and where it is presented, has a big impact upon meaning. Satire being probably one of the best examples. Scoot Adams proclaims a theory that even writing bad ideas and exploring them leads to better opinions, which sounds right to me. It seems like those who hold tightly to factually false opinions are the ones who don’t actually research their stance or listen to their opponents.
Next up we have Courtney Martin discussing her childhood growing up surrounded by the feminist movement and her attempts to be an activist. Feminism has always been about equality but the message I take away from her video is more egalitarian than simply focusing upon female issues. The talk focuses a lot of dealing with the depression that can come from tackling huge issues like social change but there is still plenty to take away from it in regards to how to treat each other.
So now we get to the linker. Sucker Punch. I admit some of the reviews and second-hand information informed my review that I wrote a few posts back. Not being female, I was informed that a majority of viewers who watched the film and enjoyed it were women. I combined this with my knowledge of how people who are geeky generally like the fantastic elements and narrative structure Sucker Punch provides and claimed that all geeks would like this film and, as two of my female friends pointed out, that is a false assumption.
I wrote the review in under an hour and thinking upon it, I probably should have waited and slept on it because my analysis of the film is somewhat different now. Most films I very much need to write the review right after but I haven’t written a review in a while, I was rusty, and I rushed a bit. I still feel the character writing was done extremely well but I agree that the characterization of the film was lacking on almost all but three of the characters. I tipped toed around it in my review but I think ultimately I agree that this film did not know what its message was and the visuals, while beautiful in many ways, did not support the story it might have been trying to tell.
I do believe the film was trying for female empowerment and instead let itself get edited and muddled. What’s worse, by demonizing the majority of males, they actually the movie far left (or is it right?) of the message of modern feminism as presented by Courtney Martin in the above video.
So where does Scott Adam’s come into all of this? Well if we extrapolate from his theory that listening to and presenting the other side is a way to make better opinions, then there is still inherent worth in viewing Sucker Punch, even if it’s message was not perfectly communicated. Indeed I feel the movie does get across the woman have gone through in history and some even still go through today, at the hands of men.
Ultimately I still like the film. Perhaps I haven’t done an in-depth enough analysis of it to see what some of the critics have said are true or not, but I still invite those who were really to read all of this to go see the film, and of course, as always, to discuss it in the comments.
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