The Cutprice Guignol

The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House

Let’s Talk About Rape on TV

Right, before I begin, I’m going to put a big fat Trigger Warning here for discussions or rape and sexual assault. Last chance to bail.

Right, okay, so I was catching up on the new series of Orphan Black last night, and I was enjoying it for being the stridently feminist, utterly ridiculous slice of sci-fi entertainment that I love so much. Then, at the beginning of the second episode, a sexual assault happened. I don’t want to give spoilers as this episode’s pretty recent, but suffice to say that a situation where consensual sex was happening was very quickly turned into one where one party had not agreed to the acts being initiated, and her lack of consent was ignored and caused further violence. The episode cuts to the next day, where the woman has reported her assault to the police and ducks into a cab, never to be seen again.

I’ve had huge, huge problems with the way that television portrays rape and sexual assault for a long time now, because so many shows have no clue as to how to depict them in a respectful way. For example, like the Orphan Black example above, The victim asks if she can have some kind of police protection, voicing her concern that the perpetrators will return and attempt to attack her again, then her violent assault basically is forgotten about so that the characters can focus on how her assault affects their story. The modestly feminist teen show Reign- about Mary, Queen of Scots- did it too, with the writer claiming that having her lead character get violently raped would lead to interesting character development for….Mary’s husband. Vikings has done it, when of their lead cast members was shown violently raping a woman to underline how bad he was. The Walking Dead rounded off last season with a domestic abuse storyline that was there to push forward Rick’s plot. Game of Thrones did it several times in the three seasons that I watched before ragequitting. These are just a few examples, and I’m sure you can think of many more off the top of your head.

And then, of course, you’ve got the other side of portraying rape; when a powerful female character is disempowered through rape or sexually assault. Game of Thrones did this with Cercei (and, more disturbingly, were reluctant to acknowledge that a scene in which a person says “no” to sex was actually rape); Sons of Anarchy did it with Gemma. Elizabeth in The Americans, Robin in Top of the Lake, Clare in House of Cards, even, arguably, Lagertha in Vikings, who is an immensley powerful character, is sexually assaulted. I’ve never quite got my head around why this is such a persistent trope- that when a strong, well-written, powerful female character gets a couple of series in, she’s often the victim of rape or assault. There’s a lot of arguments to be made for the reasons behind it, whether it’s an attempt to soften the hard edges of strong women to make them more palatable and pliable to viewers, that rape presents a shorthand for an interesting, emotional plot that is bizarrely specific to women (and therefore also erasing male assault and rape victims), that it’s a quick way to get across the fact that your show is edgy and adult. Whatever the reason, what I’m trying to say is that television- even television with great female characters- has real trouble depicting sexual assault and rape. Not just because they often seem to be employing it for the wrong reasons, but because they often refuse to acknowledge the effect that kind of event can have on someone’s life- rape, after all, can have a devastating impact on the lives of victims, as well as the nightmare many victims face trying to get justice.

So, television is bad at portraying rape and sexual assault. Television’s not meant to be real, so it’s no big deal, right? The problem is that we, as a society, have no fucking clue how to address rape and sexual assault. Whatever the gender of the victim, tacit victim blaming (what were you wearing? Had you been drinking? Were you leading them on? How much do you masturbate?) is a classic feature of the way we treat survivors of crimes like these. And that’s utter bullshit, and it makes me so angry that I can’t think straight. Every time a show fails to realistically portray rape and the impact it has on it’s victims, it’s missing out on the chance to fix something that the media is catastrophically failing at- whether it’s a Fox News anchor mourning the “poor boys” who had been convicted of the gang rape of an unconscious girl, or a talk show guest explaining the difference between date rape and, y’know, “real” rape. Television is pushing boundaries all over the place, taking on things that the rest of the media wouldn’t go near, and has some of the most grown-up, respectful, and interesting stories and characters you’ll find anywhere in fiction. But writers and directors are still flinching coming out of the gate in the way they portray rape- by othering it, by making it something that wouldn’t happen to someone like you, by refusing to show the impact it has on the lives of survivors. Come on, TV, don’t fail me now- you can do this, and more importantly, you should.

Avengers: Age of Ultron Spoiler-Free Review

We booked up the tickets, we got a bit drunk beforehand, we piled into the cinema like a family of hamsters, clambering over each other until we were firmly settled for what was one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Not only was it the latest Marvel team-up movie, but it burst forth from the mind of demi-god Joss Whedon. At the very least, I was expecting to be entertained.

And, well, I was. Age of Ultron is certainly pretty far from being a boring movie (apart from the last twenty minutes, but we’ll get to that). It’s straining at the seams as it is with a main cast of five characters, but when you threw in all the set-up for future movies and all the plots and sub-plots (from The Vision to the Maximoff twins to FLASHBACKS) the film honestly felt a bit over-full. It was like Whedon was less writing a script than he was attempting to balance a bunch of plates on a single stick, every movement causing them to wobble precariously and threatening to send the whole thing crashing to the floor. I like that the film’s business meant than it didn’t have a second act lull or a major drop in pace, but the sheer overstuffed nature of the story meant that moments of emotional weight were a little bit lost in the fray. It left me a bit annoyed that we didn’t get to spend more time with some of the new characters because there were so many other things that we had to do first.

The cast themselves were as good as expected; I’ll always make a good case for Chris Hemsworth’s jovial, hilarious Thor as the best, but Captain America was a close second. As hinted at in the trailers, a subplot unfolds involving Black Widow and The Hulk, and it fell pretty flat for me, with a dearth of chemistry that apparently just couldn’t be helped. James Spader as Ultron was as utterly fantastic as I had hoped he would be, engulfing every line with a thick coating of venom and wit. There was far too little Maria Hill for my liking, although it was good to see another female superhero (Scarlet Witch, or Eyeliner Maximoff as I have dubbed her) appear in a Marvel movie because, you know, it’s probably difficult when they all get their periods at the same time. Women, amirite?

There’s not really a place for this comment anywhere else in the article, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Quiksilver was on a par with Evan Peters in Days of Future Past, because they were both played in a totally different way. Both were excellent, and standouts in their movies.

I digress. The script was peppy as fuck, full of cheeky jokes and enough quips to overdose on (the finest came with Hawkeye trying to lift Thor’s hammer; “You’ve had a long week, Hawkeye, we understand if you can’t get it up”). In fact, by the third act, it might have been a bit too heavy-handed on the hilarity, pulling focus from the semi-serious shooty-shooty gun-gun bits so the Cap can spit out something else from between those perfect, perfect teeth. It felt at times like Ultron was more of a Joss Whedon film, with the meta-humour and whip-smart jokes, than it was an Avengers movie, which is probably why it felt like it was a little unsure of itself at times. A few sloppy holes in the script left it feeling a little bit like a first draft, which was a shame as it was clear that the script had been worked on and worked on and worked on until all the pieces fit together, but they just wouldn’t go.

And speaking of shooty-shooty gun-gun bits, I always seem to forget that Marvel movies are always building to a climatic frenzy of an action sequence that I always find kind of dull. It’s not that Joss Whedon didn’t direct it well, or that it wasn’t performed convincingly; it was that we’d spent the whole film watching stretched-out action sequence after stretched-out action sequence with some vague bits in between to get the plot moving; the plot was essentially abandoned in the third act in favour of totally forgettable orgies of destruction. Thinking back, most Marvel movies have had at least one really “woah” moment in their big action scenes- whether it’s Nick Fury in his car in The Winter Soldier, or, well, mostly all of any Thor film- but I was struggling to bring to mind any really “fuck me, this is amazing” moments from Ultron.

I knew what I was going in for, and Ultron mostly delivered. But it felt way too much like a step torwards the next sequence of movies as opposed to a movie in it’s own right- a stepping stone instead of a bridge. It was perfectly entertaining and, for that,I can’t fault it. But it was a little bit disappointing, after all the hype, to see a film that topped out at pretty good, not one that sporadically blew my mind like the first Avengers Assemble movie did. A popcorn movie, not a rewatch movie.

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Batman Versus Superman: Dawn of Justice Trailer

Look, I fucking hate Man of Steel. I fucking HATE Man of Steel. I’m not fan of Ben Affleck, and I’m not exactly warm to the idea of gritty reboots of reboots. But since I gave due attention to the Age of Ultron trailer (and quite enjoyed doing it) I’m going to stick with breaking down whichever superhero movie trailers seem the most brilliant or utterly shite. Where will Dawn of Justice fall on the scale? To the review! Read the rest of this entry »

I Don’t Care If You’re A Feminist

You know something that really pisses me off? The whole “Do you believe in gender equality? Then you’re a feminist” angle. Now, I’m a feminist myself, and I reckon we need to re-evaluate the way we define feminists, and why we feel the need to put that label on them.

I have friends who are feminists and I have friends who are not. And I understand fully why people might not want to associate with feminism, especially now, with a toxic mush of Twitter screenshots and appallingly handled rape reportage feeding into the idea that feminism wants to make women victims and men villains, to strip women of any responsibility for their actions and cast every single man as a potential rapist. Even as a feminist myself, I look at what some of the bigger feminists (such as Jessica Valenti or Laura Bates) are saying, and don’t always agree with it. I can openly admit that sometimes feminists will target small issues, like someone wearing a slightly misjudged shirt, and hold them up as indicative or a larger problem, and that I don’t think that’s the best way to tackle the issue. But I associate myself with feminism because there are a large number of feminists I seriously respect- everyone from my own mother to Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the feminist collective who spearheaded the changing of rape laws in America to include male rape. By calling myself a feminist, I accept that I am both associating myself with the good side of the movement, and of the often more publicised bad side. And I’m happy with that.

But I’m also in no rush to force the label on anyone else. If you’re an egalitarian, fantastic. If you want to focus your efforts on dealing with gender-based problems that affect men, great. As long as you are actively working towards gender equality, and doing so with activism in the areas that mean most to you, you go for it. If you fight for the causes that mean most to you (and are not getting in the way of genuine gender equality by doing so), I’ve got no reason to try and foist the label that I’ve decided to go with on you. In fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s important that we encourage anyone passionate about gender equality to work alongside feminism, even if they don’t want to directly identify with it themselves, because by excluding people who do not go for the feminist moniker we’re cutting out the opportunity to absorb new experiences, new information, and new issues that help move towards gender equality into the movement.

I know a lot of people who are not feminists, but who are equally as passionate about gender equality as I am. They’ve come to an informed decision about what they choose to term themselves, and that’s fine by me. Proving the legitimacy of feminism doesn’t come down to how many people we can browbeat into actually calling themselves feminists; it comes down to how we as a movement can make steps towards gender equality, and how we can work with other people aiming for the same goal. And that’s the last I have to say on the matter.

Bloodline: A Season’s Review

With my computer fixed, normal service will resume shortly; in the meantime, enjoy this review of the excellent new Netflix drama Bloodline.

Insidious and the Future of the Horror Genre

I wrote a piece for VideoKrypt about what films like Insidious say about the horror genre.

thethreepennyguignol's avatarVideo Krypt

Insidious

If you’ve even kept half an ear to the ground of the international horror scene over the past decade or so, you can’t have missed Insidious, the haunted-house horror from the minds of James Wan and Leigh Whannel, the duo behind cult slasher flick Saw. I say this because I am someone with my ear permanently stuck to the floor (like that bit in Blair Witch Project!) and constantly on the look out for cool new horror movies, and when I saw the hype surrounding Insidious I swore I would see it as soon as I possibly could. So I did.

I think Insidious falls broadly under the banner of horror movies for people who aren’t necessarily fans of horror. The kind of people who might fancy a scary movie from time to time, but who don’t feel the need to terrify themselves into involuntarily bowel spasms…

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“It’s Just a Book!”: Examining the Influence of Fifty Shades of Grey and After

So, my apologies for the lack of posting in the last week- I’ve been snowed under with university stuff and computer problems, so the blog had to take a back foot while I caught myself up. But I’m back, bitches, and this week’s Friday discussion is about the classic defence for problematic literature- “It’s just a book!”

I was thinking about this earlier today when I came across the #SuspendAnnaTodd hashtag on Twitter. For those who don’t know, Anna Todd published a wildly successful One Direction fanfiction on Wattpad, which was later purchased by Simon and Schuester and turned into a real-life book series. Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s pretty much the same path as that EL James wound up on when she published Fifty Shades of Grey. And that’s not the only thing the books have in common- they both depict seriously abusive relationship, presented to the reader as romance. You only have to jump on Twitter to see the scores of fans starry-eyed over the thought of their favourite romantic hero, with hundreds of tweets about how they want their own Christian Grey, or how they envy and want the relationship depicted in After.

Let’s make it clear: I’ve already done numerous breakdowns on the abuse in Fifty Shades, and read the first book of After, in which Hardin Styles terrorises heroine Tessa with his violent posessiveness, bargaining with her virginity, and dangerous levels of jealousy. These are the kind of relationships which would be undeniably abusive if they existed in real life, the kind of relationships you hope no-one you know ever ends up in.

But it’s okay, though, because they’re just fiction, right? And the defence that gets thrown my way more than any other? “It’s just a book.” “It’s just a book.” “IT’S JUST A BOOK”. And on the surface, that’s a pretty good defence; after all, I watch the Saw and Human Centipede movies, but it doesn’t mean that I’m more likely to go rip someone’s head open in a bear trap or sew someone’s mouth to someone’s, um, moving on.

But the difference between violent media and books like After and Fifty Shades is that they’re not being sold as romance. These novels are being marketed as books depicting an enviable, if fantastical, romantic relationship. Here, we’re encouraging readers to read these books and go “yeah, that’s something I want for myself!”. We’re training them to see obvious signs of abuse as signals that someone loves you, which is fine in the world of the story where a writer makes it so the heroine comes to no real harm. In these books, the author has it so when the heroine loves the hero as passionately and meaningfully as they can, the hero loves them back (often not actually changing their abusive behaviour) and they all live happily ever after. Anna Todd and EL James direct the action from behind the scenes, making sure Ana and Tessa don’t end up getting physically assaulted or killed; in real life, where two women in Britain are killed per week by a partner or ex-partner, we’re not so lucky.

It’s reflective of the society we’re in that books like these could achieve such astronomical fame and fortune. And the thing is, I’m not saying that they should be censored or banned or that everyone who likes them MUST STOP READING IMMEDIATELY. The problem is that these books are fantasy being sold as reality. You’ve probably heard a lot about the romanticizing of abuse in books like these, and that might sound like a lot of hot air; after all, most people are smart enough to tell the difference between what they enjoy reading on the page and what they want in real life. But when you’re being screamed at from all sides that this book will save your marriage, fix your sex life, sweep you away on a romantic journey-by publishers, film companies, and every scrap of advertising that has leapt on these books (which includes, lest we forget, washing powder)– that line can get blurred. So it’s important that we keep shouting about the problematic elements these books have from the rooftops, not because people shouldn’t be reading them, but because we’re living in society where emotional and verbal abuse is swept under the carpet with a “well, he/she should have just left”.

It’s not just a book. They’re books so popular that they begin to influence marketing decisions, popular culture, and, yes, real people. Books like these, whose stains seep into every corner of the media (lest we forget, Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest selling book of all time), start to instill the idea that if we or someone we know is being treated like the heroines in this book, then they’re lucky. If someone stalks us, acquires personal information about us, lies to us, manipulates us, ignores our boundaries and deliberately makes us uncomfortable, that’s love. The effects of abuse, whether emotional, physical, sexual, or an combination of the above, are long-reaching and sometimes devastating- and if we can convince just one less person that that’s the way they should expect to be treated by someone they love, then we’ve succeeded.

 

Let’s Talk About Trans Casting In Pop Culture

Well, this week it’s another jolly topic for the blog: transgender people in fictio. And specifically, why we continually cast men as trasngender women.But my main point of contention is this: why do shows and movies continually cast cisgender men as transgender women?

I’m talking specifically about two of what are arguably the highest-profile transgender roles in a while (OINTB gets a pass here, obviously): Jeffery Tambor in Transparent, and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club. Let me preface all of this by saying that the performances I’m talking about are both bloody excellent and are worthy of all the praise (/academy awards and Golden Globes) that they’ve been showered with. But both the characters that Tambor and Leto play are women. True, the story in Transparent hinges around Jeffery Tambor’s coming out as a transgender woman, so there’s a case to be made that to accurately portray the process, a man should be playing the role. But Leto is playing a woman; regardless of whether she’s transgender or not, she’s a woman. It seems profoundly odd that we’re happy casting men as female characters (or, in more rare cases, women as male characters) as long as their transgender when it might be seen as a bit strange to cast, I don’t know, Evan Rachel Wood as Iron Man (think about it: it would work). While Leto does a great job in the role, it’s arguably kind of insensitive- in a world where transgender people and others who don’t fit within the gender binary are consistently misgendered or have their true identities ignored to cast a man as a transgender woman. It seems to show on some basic level that the filmmakers are tacitly agreeing with the idea that transgender women aren’t “real” women, because they haven’t chosen to genderbend casting on any other characters. The history surrounding Rayon’s gender in Dallas Buyers Club is apparently the reason that a man was chosen to play her.

But then you’ve got the more complex case of Jeffery Tambor in Transparent. As I mentioned above, we follow Tambor through his coming out as transgender to his transition, with flashbacks to his previous life as he came to terms with his true gender. So, I can see why they chose to cast Tambor in this role. But, at the same time, it boils down to the idea that this character is, and, arguably, always has been, a woman. In this bit of casting, we’re agreeing that a man can play feminine, but a woman can’t play masculine. The same goes with Gael Garcia Bernal’s highly-touted performance in Bad Education, where he plays both a pre- and post-transition transgender woman. Sure, it’s not that he’s not good, but once again the people who chose to cast him ignored the possibility that a woman could play both roles just as convincingly. If you need another example, take a look at the much-hyped Eddie Remayne performance in The Danish Girl; pictures released of him in costume as Lili Elbe, one of the very first recipients of a gender reassignment operation, and it seem so to boil down to this idea that there’s some discomfort around casting women in high-profile transgender women roles.

Thing is, I think it’s a good thing that we’re seeing more high-profile roles surrounding trans issues. That’s awesome. But there’s still a bit of apathy around actually casting women as, um, women, if they’re transgender. Don’t get me wrong, if a man is just right for the job and can depict the things that the filmmakers need them to depict best, then great. But if we’re doing that, then why aren’t we holding more genderless auditions that don’t let a character’s gender define who plays them? There will always be something really strange to me about almost exclusively casting men as transgender women, especially in post-transition roles. But I’m throwing open the gates here: what do you think? Have you seen any of the roles that I’ve mentioned, and do you think they could have been performed by a woman? I don’t have a particular answer here, so please jump in in the comments below.

The Unbelievable Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

A bonus blog post on the excellent, go-watch-it-now Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Walking Dead Season Finale

It’s been a buggeringly long week, and it’s not even halfway done yet, so I apologise if I’m not up to my usual levels of blinding brilliance this week. I’d also like to draw your attention to the newly-added Blog Directory (just scan your eyes up a bit), which I’ve added to dredge up some of the long-lost blog posts and make them easier to find, as well as to make finding your way around the weird but well-I’m-sticking-with-it-now design of the Guignol. Now, on with the rant!

So, season five of The Walking Dead finished this Sunday. As you might have guessed from my increasingly bitter posts on TelePlayTime, I’ve had…mixed feelings about this series (oh, I’m going to stick a big fat SPOILER WARNING here for anyone who hasn’t seen the whole season but was still stupid enough to click on that link). The series continued in it’s quest to kill off all the interesting new characters (Gareth, Bob, Noah) while preserving the decent characters whose arcs have essentially nowhere else left to go (Maggie), or who the writers have no clue how to write for (Sasha- seriously, I refuse to believe that the great Sonequa Martin-Green is what’s stopping me from getting invested in the lazily-written OMG SASHA GOES MENTAL subplot), or who they’ve just thrown in to satiate the fans of the comics without any clear plan of how to make them a compelling part of the story (Father Flopsweat). After powering through the potentially brilliant Terminus plotline in a few episodes so we could spend a few full episodes with Beth almost tipped me over the edge, but then they killed her off and set Emily Kinney and her gorgeous voice into the wild once again, thank utter Christ (confession: a close friend of mine started watching TWD over the last few weeks, and she mentioned to me that she didn’t get why I loathed Beth so much. I vaguely remember explaining to her politely that she was watching the show wrong when I was pretty slammed last weekend. I hope that didn’t happen. Sorry Ellie, again). Then the team arrived in Alexandria, and Abraham got to say things like “Motherdick!” before he fought a pack of zombies and Noah got his face literally ripped in half and all was good again.

The last two episodes have left me with really mixed feelings, probably because I’ve watched them several times in order to write those scripts, and The Walking Dead is a brittle, brittle creation that tends to shatter into dust under any sort of scrutiny at all. Firstly, there was that abuse storyline, performed with some nuance by an increasingly impressive Alexandra Beckenridge (shout out to the American Horror Story peeps), as Rick positively leered over this married woman only for the plot to make his slightly creepy flirtation 100% okay because she was being abused and hey, it turned out she wanted Rick anyway, even though he outright states that he wouldn’t have intervened in any other situation, and it’s really just because he wants to get his dick wet (look, I watched that scene about four times in a row, and it was so creepy and grim that I just started making up my own dialogue, shut up). Tensions were building in Alexandria, or at least the writers liked to think they were. The incredible speech Rick gave at the end of the penultimate episode was the high point of the season, properly deranged, utterly beyond the pale, performed with violent gusto by Andrew Lincoln at his gruffest and most bloodied. It seemed to point to an explosive finale, as the tinderbox of plot machinations came together to create something that actually looked to be pretty good as long as you didn’t think about it too hard enough. It seemed like the death of a major, first-season character was near, and in fact, I went into this episode wanting a bloodbath of some kind, and some Lennie James for my buck.

And I got plenty of the latter. But the episode seemed oddly muted for a season that started out with Carol blowing the fuck out of an entire community and blasting her way in there like a pixie-cut Rambo to save her friends. They slotted a lot into place for the next season (which will contain an episode written by Stephen King- get it up you!), but the episode itself felt like a midpoint, not a satisfying ending. I was delighted with Lennie James’ Morgan, continually played with the kind of understated excellence that proved a magnificent contrast to Andrew Lincoln’s articulate descent into utter madness, and his encounter with one of the Wolves at the start of the episode was by far the best thing they pulled off. But stupid plot machinations got in the way of the show pulling any real punches- Glenn finds himself under a pile of rabid zombies, only for the show to cut to commercial before he could fight them off; he appears later, uninjured. We’re repeatedly told by Rick’s group how little the Alexandrians understand of the outside world, and how much they need to be educated and dominated by the incomers, despite the fact that they’ve created a functioning community that’s actually somewhat thriving given the situation, and Rick and company have basically failed to do anything close to that. I will never deny that this show has some awesome character moments and some superb actors under it’s belt, but it’s also in the habit of telling us one thing then refusing to back it up by actually proving it through actions. The jaw-droppingly stupid Alexandrian who decided to just leave a gate open, allowing zombies to wander in, was so dumb I flat-out refuse to believe it wasn’t part of some sort of ploy. And sure, we got a couple of deaths at the end- alcoholic wife beater and Hercschel 2.0 provided the dry episode with a little bloody lubrication-but I wanted the show to go out with a bang (or a bite). Specifically, I wanted to see a fan favourite go. I would have welcomed it- Glenn was surely ripe for the culling, and finishing off Carol would have been a great way to spark of next season’s actions and bring an abrupt halt to the Machiavellian-comic-book level of evilness they’ve been hurling at the incredible Melissa McBride of late.

It sounds cynical, and it is, but The Walking Dead has been hitting the same plot points over and over for the last couple of seasons- is Rick evil or good? What do you have to do to survive and also keep your humanity in a situation like this? Why do TWD writers seem so intent on mowing down all the black men in their show, except the boring ones?-and the best they can do is to present them in an interesting or shocking or exciting way. This episode kept things relatively muted, but simply doesn’t have the narrative clout it once did that would carry the quieter episodes along. It feels like the show has tried to pump itself into an early puberty, pushing itself to be something that the writers just can’t keep up with, and it’s straining at the seams trying to be the grown-up, clever, thoughtful show the people behind it so want it to be. And, until they cull a few of the overworked first-season characters, they’re stuck treading water with the same characters, the same relationships. The season five finale wanted to show that radical change was on the way for The Walking Dead, but all they proved is that killing off fan favourites is still far less acceptable than having mutilated, naked dead chicks hanging off of trees.

But goddamit, I’m still looking forward to season 6.