I don't know if you've noticed, but things here at HC have been a bit negative of late. We haven't given anything more than a couple of stars since March. Depressed by this, I thought it was time to pull out an old favorite and see how it held up to a re-watch.

It didn't disappoint. I love A League of Their Own. And how could I not? It features two Heroine Content all-stars, Geena Davis (from The Long Kiss Goodnight) and Lori Petty (from Tank Girl). It's got Madonna, back when Madonna was cool. It's directed by grrl-power director Penny Marshall (making her Heroine Content debut!). And it's about women playing baseball.

Set in the mid-40s, A League of Their Own doesn't pretend sexism doesn't exist. In fact, the central conflict of the film, aside from the sibling rivalry between Geena Davis' Dottie and Lori Petty's Kit, is about sexism. First, it's about convincing obnoxious drunk manager Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks, in my favorite role of his ever) that yes, "girls" can absolutely be ball players. Then, it's about convincing both the game's audience and its financial backers than it is worth it to them to let the "girls" play (which, eventually, they do, at least for a dozen years or so).

The women in the film actively fight sexism. Yes, they are forced to play baseball in ridiculous short dresses and take etiquette and deportment classes, but they do play. And they are shown playing--hitting and throwing and catching and running and sliding. They get tired. They get dirty. They get bruised. That, all by itself, is worth something. I have watched a lot of baseball movies. A League of Their Own is a baseball movie.

It's also a movie about women. Women who have relationships with each other that are highlighted above and beyond their relationships with men. It would have been so easy to slip into a stereotype and write in a romantic relationship between Hanks' Jimmy and Davis' Dottie, and, to the credit of everyone involved, they didn't. Ostensibly, this is because Dottie is married, but it's also because that's just not the point.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is the one during which the ball players sneak out and go to a dance hall. In part, I just like the dancing--Madonna tears it up--but the really great thing is how May, Madonna's character, and Rosie O'Donnell's Doris are really dancing with each other. Again and again, the film focuses on this relationship--the one between the women--and that puts it in a distinct minority.

The inclusion of O'Donnell's Doris, and of the much-maligned non-beautiful Marla Hooch (Megan Cavanagh), also forces at least some discussion about women who are not traditionally beautiful or feminine. Marla's initial scene, in which the scout, Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz), rejects her as a possible player due to her looks, is unpleasant to watch. That discomfort is only made worse by the girls' deportment teacher's snide remarks towards Marla (she suggests that the only thing to be done about Marla's looks is "lots of night games"). It gets better, though. Marla is redeemed. She not only gets to play; she's the only character to fall in love in the film. Her teammates include her in the dance hall escapade where she meets her husband because she's one of them. She may not be pretty like they are, but, like them, she's a ball player.

A League of Their Own is also one of the few cinematic portrayals of older women that doesn't make my stomach turn. The film begins with Davis' Dottie getting ready to go to a reunion of her teammates upon the occasion of them getting inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and it ends with that reunion. Having followed these women through what had to be one of the best times of their youth, the viewer immediately sees the older versions of the women as complete, interesting characters. You wonder what has happened to each of them, in between when you left them in the 40s and where you pick up with them in the 80s. They don't suffer the invisibility to which older women are so often relegated, both in cinema and in real life. Making this part even better, many of the women featured are actual members of the All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League, most of whom were in their 70s and 80s when the movie was filmed.

The All-American League was an all-white league, and this is an all-white film. Given the historical moment it portrays, I have to forgive that. I wouldn't have been able to, however, if it hadn't included a moment's nod to this racist mistake. At one point, a ball is thrown out of the practice field, and a Black woman picks it up. Dottie, standing not far away, asks her to throw it. The woman hauls off and throws it over Dottie's head, far away. And she throws it so hard that the woman who catches it is left taking off her glove and shaking out her sore hand. Even though the whole thing takes up less than a minute of the movie, it makes a pretty strong impression about who is being left out.

A League of Their Own is a greatest hits movie for me. When it comes to heroine content, I have no complaints. Four stars.

We apologize for the delay in issuing this review of Terminator Salvation. You see, after I took one for the team and reviewed Terminator 3, I was kind of hoping that Grace would step up and save me from what I feared would be a race and gender FAIL. Alas, no. So here it is.

Ladies, be not afraid! In the future, your important roles as accessories to men's Important heroic actions will not be disturbed! You will be free to be kidnapped, knocked around, and rescued just as before, with no concessions made to the fact that the future of humanity depends on every person fighting tooth and nail against unstoppable foes!

People of color, you too will continue to enjoy your traditional positions as sidekicks to the Important White Men! And lest you fear that diversity will not be as highly valued in the future as it is now, let me reassure you that some of the higher echelons of the fight against the machines will be extremely international! There's a guy from Japan or somewhere!

p.s. To the guy who got a piece of rebar shoved through his chest: hope you like your new heart with a side of sand! And I'm glad they taught organ transplant surgery in vet school! Now if you just had access to a lifetime supply of anti-rejection medications, we'd be rocking this thing!

I'm sorry, what? Not long enough? Okay fine. I'll start over.

Continue reading "Terminator Salvation" »

Here at Heroine Content, we are blessed with a wonderful community of readers. Two of them have become guest posters, and during our email exchanges they have each asked very good questions which I'd like to address today - before walking through our list of films for the rest of 2009.

First question is from d (who apparently is spending her time writing really long comments here and at Women & Hollywood instead of getting me those final Matrix trilogy review edits). She asked this:

Do you ever get discouraged about the state of women in action films? Sometimes I feel like we, we as in the women who want these films, are just a small few screaming in a vacuum and no one hears us. I loved Sarah Conner in T2 and enjoyed Ripley in Aliens and Alien 3, but gosh, why are those still like the only ones we have that are good? Or rather, the ones most can agree are good? [...] So I guess I just wondered if you and Grace ever became discouraged as you saw the state of things, as well as watched all those movies.

BonnieBelle, who represented with her Star Trek review, asked this:

I'm looking at what's coming out this summer, and am not impressed. There are hardly any action movies, let alone girl-friendly ones. Transformers looks like a 2 hour shot of Megan Fox's backside, with 10 minutes of robot fights. :( What are your thoughts?

In 1992, I went to college in St. Paul, MN, and shortly thereafter found a world of amazing women rock stars on the radio. Hearing PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, and Tracy Bonham was like a revolution to me. I didn't quite realize they were a new thing on the scene, and I didn't realize that they were part of a mini-boomlet of female rockers that would fade away. I didn't realize that something I loved so much would be so limited.

That's part of the challenge Grace and I face with writing Heroine Content. The list of films we could possibly review is quite limited. For the first two years of the site, we were reviewing about 40-50 films per year. We have a list of past films split up between us. Though we don't think it's complete, we think it's pretty close. Each year we review some of those, and whatever new films we can find. In 2009, we've reviewed seven new release films so far, and there are only eight more new films left that we have identified as possibilities for reviewing here. A couple of them probably won't pan out. So let's say at best 12 new films, and then we'd have to pull 25 or more from the "old" list. At that rate, we would basically run out of films to review in the next three years... unless we start mixing in substantial amounts of Hong Kong cinema, which neither of us are particularly qualified to write about.

Can you imagine that happening if were were writing about action movies in general? I'm pretty sure that for all practical purposes, there are an infinite number of action movies. What we lack is action movies in which women have action roles. So if you want to talk about being discouraged, let's talk about the fact that we could actually run out of movies.

Let's also talk about the fact that we often post several reviews in a row that basically say "Well, that sucked." I hate doing that. It feels negative and depressing and it almost takes away the central reason for doing the blog. We do it because we love seeing women really and truly kick ass, just like I really loved my women rockers during that lovely renaissance period. It's demoralizing showing up over and over again on the blog to point out the flaws, the disappointments, and the general suck. We have not given a film four stars since August of 2008. Watchmen was the first one to win three stars since September of 2008, and the last American big budget release to win three stars before that was reviewed here in January of 2008.

Part of that is undeniably our rising standards over time. (Unless Grace disagrees with me, in which case it's my rising standards over time.) We started this blog in part to practice our critical viewing skills, and by golly it's working. I don't claim to be perfect at this, or even very good, because what I know about race, ethnicity, class, disability, and other issues is still exceedingly slim compared to what I know about the rich white women's feminism that was my entry point into anti-oppression thought. However, writing Heroine Content has meant that I spend a whole lot more time thinking about these issues, reading about these issues, and being disappointed as hell when filmmakers fuck up so much.

Let me now throw in a snippet from The Invisible Woman, a September 2008 essay in The American Prospect by Alyssa Rosenberg:

When I was a kid, visiting my cousin meant I got to do two things: sleep on the top bunk and page through his epic comic-card collection. I may have learned about dating from Archie Comics' Betty and Veronica, but the superheroines of Marvel and DC Comics were much more exciting. I coveted Rogue's kinetically charged boyfriend, Jean Grey's red mane, and Wonder Woman's strength, even squeezed down to trading-card size. It was perfect training for a future superhero-movie consumer. I've followed my memories of those tiny illustrations to the theater to see the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises, I cheered Stan Lee's cameos in The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man, and in May, I read everything about Marvel Comics' announcement that its film-production division would release six new movies by 2011.

But as the biggest superhero summer so far comes to a close, I can't help but notice that women have been firmly relegated to the sidelines as girlfriends and assistants. Five of the six upcoming Marvel movies feature male leads, and it's not clear which, if any, superwomen will end up in the only ensemble picture in the lineup, The Avengers. Why is it that a film industry will cast lovably schlubby Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet and will take a serious chance on an Ant-Man movie (both are due to hit theaters in 2010) but can't get it together to make a Wonder Woman flick? Or any true superheroine movie at all?

I think many of the people reading this blog will recognize her experience immediately, both the love and the painful disappointment. I've read comments about our work here, both on other blogs and in comments here that we have not published, accusing us of having an agenda, setting out to bash films, trying to tear things down. I know that people of color, especially, are targeted for that kind of criticism. Here's a newsflash, people. We want Hollywood to give us something to love. Like Alyssa Rosenberg, we have a history with certain kinds of content that makes us want to accept it, internalize it, and share it. We give it the benefit of the doubt, we try to make excuses for it, but often it's just inexcusable and un-ignorable. We can't love it enough to make it anything other than what it is.

Beyond my own personal reaction, I can't imagine how much more acute it must be, what a horrible sense of being erased and backstabbed, for people of color, people with disabilities, and others who have bonded with these fantsy worlds and then get treated like they don't exist or like they're jokes. I have no way to understand it viscerally, my position in society is far too privileged.

So when d asked if we ever get discouraged, I would say hell yes, and the process of writing this blog has actually been one of the factors that has discouraged me. Learning more about how bad it is has discouraged me. Watching a bunch of terrible movies also doesn't help. (Red Sonja review coming up soon!)

d said she felt like one of a small few screaming in a vacuum. I was going to say that I am part of the problem because I often give filmmakers my money even though I know a film is going to be bad for women and everyone else... but now I'm realizing that my moviegoing patterns have shifted significantly since college. Here's what I noticed. I actually have to take BonnieBelle's word on it that there is a drought of action films this year because I don't track action films overall anymore. I used to go to just about every big action film that came out, unless it starred Sly, or Arnold in a non-Terminator role. But I stopped going to Bond films, because they just didn't interest me. And then I stopped going to some of the other action films. Never made it to Die Hard 4 (and not just because of the negative comments I heard about how Maggie Q's character was treated). I just wasn't interested anymore. Iron Man and Bourne managed to draw me in, but I can't recall any other action films from the last several years that has appealed to me unless they had women in action roles.

So my economic vote is going to different films than it was in the past, and I guess that means I'm less part of the problem than I used to be. Do I think there are enough people like me, or us, to make a difference any time soon? No. Sorry. We're not going to achieve anything through sheer numbers. Sometimes I have hope, like when suddenly the Bechdel test gets a lot of media attention, but generally I think that ticket sales

Looking at the film list for the rest of 2009, like BonnieBelle, I am not particularly inspired. Several times a year I look through upcoming film lists for any hint of a potential Heroine Content title, which is discouraging in and of itself, since it's so rarely evident from the film's description whether the one woman is actually going to do anything. But here are my thoughts and some trailers for the films we expect to review for the rest of this year. If I missed any, let me know.

Continue reading "Heroine Content Summer 2009 Film Preview (and some thoughts on discouragement)" »

We just received a comment on the Wolverine review that I'm not going to publish because it doesn't even begin to respect our comment policy. However, I had to share this one bit of it:

Of course it's a bunch of men, most of the movie was set in times before women were allowed in the army, much less help with anything non-medical or teacher related.

Let's leave aside the incorrect statement that "most" of the movie was set in times before women were allowed in the military. The part that interests me is the appeal to historical accuracy in a movie about a man with magical self-healing powers who has big metal claws sticking out of his hands.

During the part of the movie where Wolverine is in the mutant ops team that I mentioned in the review, the commenter is correct that in the military, women were not allowed in combat roles. I find it hard to believe, though, that Bad Guy Stryker would really care. Unless you specifically make the argument that he would have been just as sexist as his compatriots, despite his embrace of any and all means to his end in every other way, I just can't respect objections like this. If his attitude is your argument, I can probably respect that, because sexism does have the tendency to result in bad decisions - in this case, not using a powerful mutant as a weapon just because she's a woman. But I can't go with the argument based solely on historical policy, as if Stryker was thinking "Gosh, it's too bad that women aren't allowed in the military, because otherwise this mutant who can shred metal with her mind would come in really handy."

A similar came up in the comments on the review of Van Helsing, with commenter kira saying this:

i liked the movie. it kept with the era the film was suppose to be in, if the woman were stronger it wouldn't have fit right. i mean u cant have a caveman with a car it just doesn't fit. i do agree that Dracula's brides could have been tougher,but in the context of the time once again women not being string blah blah its fits. plus they would have been turned earlier in time when women were way timid.

Again, we have to leave aside part of the comment, in this case the part where it's argued that women living in rural areas in the late 19th century were "way timid." (Though I am not a historian, it doesn't seem likely to me given the demanding lives people led at the time.) The filmmakers aren't to blame for their sexist movies because history was just like that! It's not their fault there just weren't any women!

In a movie that's set in reality, I am usually down with this (though I would also argue that we need more movies depicting what everybody else was doing while the white able-bodied men were Making History). In the scenes in Wolverine that were supposed to be set during regular military operations during World War I, for example, I would not have expected to see a fully integrated team, because that was not how things worked.

In stories about monsters and demons, though, where we're obviously not dealing with reality? Sorry, I'm not buying it.

First of all, it's time for everybody to get involved with Racebending.com, the protest effort over the casting of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Please go ahead, I'll wait.

Thanks!

Allrighty, so here are some links about items we've discussed lately, which you may already have seen since you probably read these blogs, but presented for completeness:

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Same Old Story by the angry black woman at Feminist SF - The Blog!
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine - The Greatest Story Never Told? at Fantasy Magazine.
• Star Trek doesn't update the gender roles by Ariel Wetzel at Feminist SF - The Blog!
• Live Long and Prosper at In Other Words.
• To Boldly Go...Backwards by Jennifer Weiner at The Huffington Post
• Star Trek's Reboot Seeks Out New Life, New Civilizations, New Audiences by Liza Paitz Spindler on Caution: Writers at Play. See particularly the section on Danger Gals.
• Star Trek's Gender Problem at Women in Hollywood.
• Working in the Dollhouse by Shannan Palma at Feminist SF - The Blog!
• Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, Just Like Ibsen's Except With More Yoga Pants at The Rest is Cream Cheese.

Some older pieces I enjoyed:

How movies/TV help to change social norms (for better or worse) at Anthro Goggles.

Stories for Men. Just go read it, seriously.

The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters on Cracked.com. (This one's for Grace, love ya!)

The Day the Earth Stood Still Would've Been Great, If it Hadn't Been So Underwhelming by Mana G at All Mirth and No Matter. I was totally sympathizing with the "wow look at all this non suckiness and yet this movie is so boring oh well" vibe.

Babylon AD: Yet Another Scifi Flick About the Virgin Mary by Annalee Newitz on io9.

Terrified Waitresses and Chicks Who Kick Ass at Brutal Women, about the Terminator series.

Also don't miss the 3rd Tell It WOC Speak Carnival, Voices Have Power, and the first Asian Women's Carnival.

And that's it for this time. Coming up in a couple of days, I think we'll do a little preview of the rest of 2009 in new releases...

For this review of the new Star Trek film, please welcome BonnieBelle of A Working Title. She called her review "Star Trek: Deconstructed" when she sent it in, and I have to say it's a darn thorough deconstruction! Thanks for making BonnieBelle feel welcome, I know we're all looking forward to some good discussion. -Skye

First of all, let me say that I am a Trekkie. I love the original Star Trek, and TNG and all the other ensuing seasons and spin-offs. Star Trek: TOS was a pioneer show in its time, portraying not only non-stereotypical characters of color, but women in strong roles. I'm going to spoil the heck out of the new movie, so read on at your own discretion.

Director JJ Abrams did a fantastic job of reimagining the style and visual impact of the series, the story he told was original and very much in line with the Star Trek legacy. The actors he chose, many of them unknowns or B-list stars, were perfect for their roles and very similar visually to the previous stars. It is a true restart for the series, and I hope to see more Star Trek movies in the future from this cast and director.

And yet... And yet...

Continue reading "Star Trek" »

Men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men. If you need men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie has men. Men over here, men over there, some more men hanging out over n the corner as backups just in case they run out of men. Which they won't, because of all the men everywhere.

If you need women, though, you're kind of fucked.

Before I lay out my complaints, let me say that I have little sympathy for any argument like "But they had to do it that way, it was like that in the comics." Sorry, but "the comics" aren't in and of themselves consistent. Also, the filmmakers don't hew to "the comics" all the time anyway, tons of stuff is rearranged, so to identify any specific detail and use that defense is just silly. Except for the part where Wolverine had claws.

Let me also say that I'm just going to spoil the fuck out of this movie, so make your own decision about whether to keep reading.

Continue reading "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" »

New Video Game Technology Finally Allows Rendering Of Smaller Breasts

Zoe Saldana's Playing Uhura! on TransGriot. (I don't know how I missed out on reading TransGriot until last week, but if it's not in your feed reader yet, you should fix that immediately.)

A Call for Diversity in Web TV on Everyday Goddess.

Especially in light of the conversation in the comments on Grace's review of Dragonball Evolution, I found A Chocolate Coating to make the Bitter White Pill Go Down Easier by nojojojo on The Angry Black Woman quite informative. And freakin' depresssing.

The Incredibles by Mz Razorblade at The F-Word.

Best. Starship Captain. Ever. at OverMediated.

Media Ethics, Blogging & "Battlestar Galactica" at Megan's Minute. What I find so interesting about this is how anyone writing about BSG and feminism had NOT come across the Feminist SF post in question.

Movie review: Watchmen at WriteBlack.

That's why it's called go-go, not cry-cry by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, regarding Tarantino's Grindhouse.

You may have seen previews or read about Dragonball Evolution and thought "wow, that looks really bad." I did. I had no idea, before seeing this film, just how right I could be.

I saw the movie with my lovely co-blogger, who, at one point near the end of the film, just burst out laughing at the sheer stupidity of it. I'm surprised it took one of us that long to guffaw. This movie is, beginning to end, terrible. The dialogue is painful, the acting belongs in a high school play, and the characters are paper cut outs. As far as film quality is concerned, there is nothing good about it. Zero stars.

However, Dragonball doesn't fail its female characters. To begin with, there are three major females--Emmy Rossum's "I have a Ph.D. in applied dynamics with a minor in tactical weaponry" Bulma, who is part of the "good guys" group searching for the dragonballs, Piccolo's henchwoman, Mai (Eriko Tamura), and Goku's love interest, Chi Chi (Jamie Chung). Bulma, though she is played as a joke quite a few times in the film, is independent, smart, and brave. The device that allows the group to track the dragonballs is her invention. Mai is a role that could just have easily been male--she is treated by Piccolo and acts towards him just as a male henchman might. Even Chi Chi, who is "just" a love interest, holds her own. She's a fighter with her own moves, which we get to see, and the movie ends with her challenging Goku on his assumption that he could beat her in a fight. Taken by themselves, the female characters are surprisingly good. I'd give them three stars.

Dragonball has a major race problem right from the inception. It's another "white boy does martial arts" movie. Goku may have a Japanese name, but he's played by Justin Chatwin, a white Canadian actor. The comic book Goku, on the other hand, is actually from an alien race, but is drawn to appear Japanese. It is clearly more important in Dragonball casting that Goku has the right hair than the right racial heritage. That, as always, bugs. Much of the rest of the cast is actually Asian or of Asian descent: Goku's grandfather, whom we would assume should also be Japanese, is played by Hawaiian native actor Randall Duk Kim. Master Roshi is played by Chow Yun Fat (who really ought to be ashamed to be involved in this). Chi Chi is played by Korean-American Jamie Chung; Mai by Japanese actress Eriko Tamura; and the other "good guy," Yamcha, by Korean-American actor Joon Park. Lord Piccolo is played by a white dude (James Marsters, who is the whole reason I consented to see the movie in the first place), but really, he's green, so who cares? As an extra nod toward racial diversity, the film briefly features a Buddhist monk played by African-American actor Ernie Hudson (thanks to Skye for pointing that out, as I may have missed it). Given the preponderance of other good things it has going on, I give it three stars for race, with just one subtracted for Goku.

So if I give equal weight to the overall film, gender, and race categories, Dragonball Evolution gets an average of .5 stars. I'll be generous and round that up to 1. Which is sad--this would be a three star movie if it didn't suck so very, very much.