Grace and I are looking for guest reviewers to cover Speed Racer and Prince Caspian (plus an optional extra review of Narnia) in the next few weeks. We would appreciate someone who will take a look at the films in terms of feminism and anti-racism, while also monitoring for class, national origin, sexual orientation, disability issues, etc. If you want to take one or both, please email us ASAP. If you don't have a blog, that's fine, as long as you can send us a brief writing sample so we know your review won't come out "HEY DUDEZ THIS F1LM RUUUUULD!!!"

Now on to the links.

First, a big ol' apology to the always awesome People of Colour in SF Carnival, which posted a day or two before we did our carnival last week. My Google Reader was overflowing and I totally missed it. Go there! Go there now!

News blurbs recently:

• Ghost in the Shell going to be adapted in 3-D.
• Moon Bloodgood has been cast as the female lead in Terminator 4 (she's also now in Street Fighter, says Cinematical)
• Finally, A Dystopia Grim Enough For Vin Diesel with stills from Babylon A.D. on io9

Bizarre interview reprinted from USA Today at ComicBookMovie.com: The Supergirlfriends of Batman, Hulk & Iron Man. Gwyneth Paltrow apparently thinks "Comic books are still for boys." Maybe that's why she was so lifeless in Iron Man? Maybe if you're going to get caught sneaking into an office, you should at least TRY to bluff instead of just looking terrified? Maybe when your boyfriend is on the roof, you could try yelling "Get off the roof, dammit!" instead of screaming "But you'll die!"

To be fair, Patrick at The Hathor legacy thought Pepper was fine. Jess McCabe has something to say about it on The F-Word blog, and links to this awesome post at WOC PhD.

Elisabeth Rappe over at Cinematical asserts that Frank Miller Loves Tough Girls, in reference to the forthcoming film The Spirit.

(I love the descriptions of the women in this synopsis from Lionsgate:

...a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill our masked crusader. Surrounding him at every turn are ELLEN DOLAN (Sarah Paulson), the whip-smart girl-next-door; SILKEN FLOSS (Scarlett Johansson), a punk secretary and frigid vixen; PLASTER OF PARIS (Paz Vega), a murderous French nightclub dancer; LORELEI (Jaime King), a phantom siren; and MORGENSTERN (Stana Katic), a sexy young cop. Then of course, there's SAND SAREF (Eva Mendes), the jewel thief with dangerous curves. She's the love of his life turned bad.

With characters like that, how can we lose? Oh, I mean, how can we win?)

Sarah Seltzer gives us a little link love in Take Back The Screen at R H RealityCheck, analyzing the portrayal of rape and assault in film. She mentions 300 and Spiderman, so go take a look.

I have a really hard time believing that Zombie Strippers is an intellectual feast.

The 58th Carnival of the Feminists is up at Be A Good Human, who then moved to Hop To It.

Let's keep in mind that the character Angelina Jolie plays in Wanted was a woman of color in the comic book.

Via Cinematical:

Who would you have rather seen in this poster?

Welcome to the 21st Edition of the Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans. We're glad to include some new voices this time as well as some old favorites.

Props to Uncool, host of the 53rd Carnival of the Feminists, for clever use of alphabetization as a carnival organizing technique. It's not as lush as the technique we used last time, which was to spend 1.2 million hours organizing by theme and including long quotes and pictures, but doing it this way meant we could actually get it done!

So here we go:

A

Alan Kistler at Alan Kistler's Universe gives his thoughts on women in Marvel.

Mana G takes a look at Stargate: Atlantis - Gender, Race, and Teyla's Baby at All Mirth and No Matter.

Niall at All Things Uncertain gives a very favorable review to Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods.

C

Announcement: Cerise is looking for interviewers.

D

Dollymix asks Do Video Games Need More Naked People? If Skye had written that post, she wouldn't have been able to say "Thanks" to Kotaku without adding "for totally missing the point, you morons."

F

Naamen talks about The Fantasy of Rape: The Use of Rape as a Catalyst on Female Protagonists in SF/F at Feminist SF - The Blog!

Shannan takes on the problems of race and gender in Torchwood at Feminist SF - The Blog!

G

okelle at Garden of Words has some media recommendations.

H

Hathor Legacy's Revena tells us about Nim's (almost awesome) island.

Patrick at The Hathor Legacy gives an introduction to Justice League.

I

Ink-Stained Amazon Jennifer introduces The Sarah Jane Adventures and discusses the issue of powerful women being mentored by men.

Rhonda Jones, the Independent Author, Grace - Chapter 1: Bad Cargo. (We ask you, what's not to love about a blog with the tagline "Humor. Guns. Spaceships. Freedom."?)

L

nenena at Little Iron loves Wonder Woman, loves Shadow Hunter, and had a complete freak-out about Sakura Taisen, which "features one of the greatest casts of kick-ass women ever featured in a combined video game/anime/manga/novel/stage musical franchise."

LesbiaNation give us their Top 10 Women of Sci-Fi.

P

Kylie at PodBlack Blog gets our attention with a post titled From 'Bimbos' To Books And Wonder Women.

S

Filed under S for Shameless Self-Promotion: Grace loves on Firefly and Serenity here at Heroine Content.

T

The 2007 Tiptree Award for "gender-exploring science fiction" was announced this month! Congratulations to all the nominees and to winner Sarah Hall for The Carhullan Army (Daughters of the North)!

W

Katie King at Women, Art and Culture discusses the history of women in science fiction.

Naamen makes his second appearance in the Carnival with Female Protagonists and Why I Connect With Them Across Gender Lines posted at Words From The Center, Words From The Edge. Some good discussion of both gender and race in this one.

In Conclusion

The location of the next Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans is as yet unknown, but keep your eyes peeled!

Skye: Hello, Heroine Content readers. Today's review of The Forbidden Kingdom is being co-written by our good friend and fellow feminist Beth. Hello, Beth.

Beth: Hello Skye!

Skye: So Beth, what did we think of The Forbidden Kingdom?

Beth: Unfortunately, I think it was very predictable in the way it portrayed women.

Skye: I was somewhat disappointed myself. What was the first thing that tipped you off that it was going to be less than stellar as far as gender roles?

Beth: Well, I thought it had promise when Sparrow (Yifei Liu) rescued our Young Hero. However, she quickly faded into the background.

Skye: I totally agree. We were so excited to see her kicking ass, but after that incident it was like they started using her for decoration instead of making her an equal partner. The white kid fanboy geek becomes a kung fu master, but the fact that Sparrow already kicks ass isn't really honored.

Beth: She becomes window dressing.

Skye: I didn't have a problem with her being young and pretty, 'cause I just expected that since it's a movie, and I liked the fact that she was dressed in keeping with the rest of the cast instead of falling out of her dress.

Beth: I was disappointed that all the time the hero is becoming a kung fu master, she's just playing music in the background.

Skye: Why wasn't she training? Why wasn't she teaching? I realize that Jackie Chan and Jet Li are supposed to be the stars, but she's just a sidekick. The poster has four characters standing side by side, but it's kind of a lie. She should be off in the corner.

Beth: I was disappointed to see them portray the evil female (Bingbing Li as The Witch) in such a characteristic style.

Skye: Basically she's the sexy evil version of Sparrow?

Beth: Yes.

Skye: She fights with her HAIR.

Beth: And she has to keep hissing and making little claws with her hands.

Skye: Cody told us yesterday that in kung fu cinema, you often see men fighting with feminine styles but you don't see women fighting with, for example, a big club. I can totally see that here.

Beth: None of the men wanted the women to get dirty.

Skye: Sparrow got the chick fight in the end, as we would expect, but then Jackie Chan even saved her from the chick fight! She didn't even look like she was losing.

Beth: Apparently they don't think she was even competent enough to hold her own against the witch. And you made a good point, also, about how women have to have a revenge motive in some way, they have to have been damaged. They can't just be mean.

Skye: The witch almost seems like she's just mean, but instead she's the sexy femme fatale. She's not just a straightforward warrior. I would have loved to see a woman fighter in this movie who isn't just a little slip of a pretty girl. Jackie Chan and Jet Li aren't exactly GQ material. I thought of Landlady from Kung Fu Hustle. Qiu Yuen would have been awesome as one of the Jade Warlord's top minions.

Beth: That's what they're missing.

Skye: It's awesome that people in various countries in Asia have spent hundreds and thousands of years to develop martial arts so that skinny white boys who watch a lot of television can get Hot Asian Girls. Thank goodness for kung fu.

Beth: The women didn't even get a lot of parts that were funny!

Skye: Thinking more about Sparrow and the vengeance motivation, I think maybe the reason she spends all her time playing music is to show us that she's not really violent. That's the girl she was supposed to be if her life hadn't been warped by her parents' murder. She's really just sweet. Whereas the witch is violent, with no reason given, and it turns her evil. Total contrast to the male world, where you can be violent and pursue justice.

Beth: Yeah, they have to make her more palatable in some way since she's on the side of good. She didn't even get to achieve her revenge, because in the end she wasn't able to kill the Jade Warlord and the Young Hero had to do it for her. So they really portray her as incompetent even though she's sweet.

Skye: He's a Chosen One, there's no way his kung fu could have been better than hers after such a short time unless there was magic involved. Why the heck is there a white guy in this movie anyway? Oh right, so it will sell in America.

Beth: I would have liked to see them take more risks in how they portrayed the female characters, and the plotline in general.

Skye: They could start by making it so that women don't always have to pay for their violence, whereas men fight the battles and come out perfectly fine. Unless they get staked with a jade hairpin. Note to self: stay away from jade hairpins.

Beth: SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Skye: Hey, don't do that.

Beth: Sorry. They have to find that out for themselves.

Skye: I would say this movie gets a "So Close" rating, because they get about halfway there and then just screw it up.

Beth: I agree.

Skye: Thank you for coming all the way from Eugene, Oregon to assist with this review.

Beth: I'm happy to oblige. It was fun.

Skye: Do you hate me for taking you to see it?

Beth: No, of course not. It was entertaining.

Skye: We just wish it was better.

Beth: More progressive. But I don't expect much from action movies to start with.

Skye: We don't expect, but we hope.

Beth: Yes.

Bye!

First things first. Chak De! India is not about women. Chak De! India is about a man trying to redeem himself on the eyes of his country. There's a reason that the poster says "Shahrukh Khan and His Team of 16 Girls."

To be fair, though, Bollywood operates under a strict quota system where half of all films must star Shahrukh Khan. I suspect that when they were working on the concept for this movie, there was a Shakrukh Khan crisis. Someone said "Hey, we have this great idea for a movie about the Indian women's field hockey team going to the world championships!" Then someone else said "Please tell me they need a coach so we can cast Shahrukh Khan! Otherwise we're never going to make the quota!"

(Alternately, they just borrowed the formula from American team sports movies in which a down and out coach tries to regain his former glory by leading the underdogs to victory. But I like my version better.)

So as you're watching Chak De! India, you basically have to push the Shahrukh Khan-ness to the side. He plays the inspirational leader who is helping these young women figure out how to be team players, which in the sports movie formula means that he plays a lot of mind games and always knows what's best for them even when they don't. His high-falutin' speeches about being a good team player also collapse spectacularly when they need to kick Korea's ass and the only player who can do it is an unrepentant saboteur. And you especially have to ignore the part where he goes to SLAP one of the players, but stops short, and no one seems to have a problem with that. WTF?

At this point, you may be saying "So why did you give it three stars? It sounds horrible!"

Basically, I watched the other half of the movie. The part that actually IS about the women.

Oh. My. Word. These women are incredible. Love them! They don't make any speeches about how trying hard is enough, how they have grown as people and athletes and that's what really matters, etc. They want to WIN, dammit. They are the best players in India, but the distance between that and becoming world champions is huge - especially when you're dealing with a lot of sexist crap. The sport's officials think the team is a joke, and tell the women that their real place is in the kitchen.

Things are no better on the personal front. Vidya's husband wants her to schedule her training around family social events, though he and his family benefit from her apartment and job that come to her because she's a national level athlete. Preeti's famous cricket-playing boyfriend wants her to stop playing and be a proper little wifey. Koumal's father scolds her for playing at all. The pivotal "now they're a team" scene takes place in a mall, where they get together to beat up some guys who are cat-calling two of the players.

None of this is a revolutionary expose of gender issues, but it doesn't come off as trite because the women's feelings are so real and nuanced. Vidya isn't just torn by the demands placed on her, she's also weary and wistful. Preeti is ambitious for herself, hurt by her boyfriend's lack of support, but also excited about dating a famous athlete. Koumal goes for the cheeky grin and pursuit of excellence route instead of fighting with her father.

There are several other characters on the team whose personalities are distinct. None of them struck me as stereotypes. It isn't a team made up of "the nice one," "the backstabber," "the big sister," etc. It's made up of women. As you start to know them, you really get behind them as they struggle to find their places in the team and excel.

I'm not qualified to analyze the race and ethnicity issues with any knowledge of how someone from India would perceive them, but I can describe how it appeared to me. The coach places a high value on Indian unity; the women are expected to play for their country, not their state. However, incidents occur over and over that highlight how divided the country is. A couple of the players from a more remote part of India, who have light skin, are harassed by passing young men with lascivious comments about how they're vanilla instead of chocolate. Then, one of the field hockey officials assumes they don't speak Hindi. One comments sarcastically about how it feels to be treated as an outsider in your own country. Some of the players also make racist remarks about two of the players, who are from an area known for its jungles. Language barriers arise multiple times for various players until they start working together as a team to help each other.

So I got the sense that the film reflects current tensions, but encourages people to "rise above" the divisions of state and ethnicity and come together as Indians. From my standpoint, I liked how the racist incidents were treated by the filmmakers as ridiculous and wrong. There was a lot of eye rolling in response. However, I have no idea how that strikes people from various groups within India. Is it something they aspire to? Do they feel like they're being erased in the call for unity? I know enough to feel like there may be some dangerous territory here.

If it weren't for the near-slap, and my suspicions about the unity theme, I would give this four stars. It was a ball to watch, and I totally recommend it, so it gets three stars. Add it to your Netflix queue today! Seriously.

A few news items about movies I've been tracking. Cinematical says Rose McGowan is Still Barbarella. Also, Rogue Giving Femme-Centric Comic Book a Chance - 'Hack/Slash' on the Way. Then, we find out that Michelle Yeoh is in Babylon A.D. as a butt-kicking nun, but the movie has been edited from 160 to 90 minutes. Yikes. Finally, Radha Mitchell, who was in Silent Hill, poor thing, will be in a sci-fi thriller called The Surrogates. Can't quite tell if it's an action role, but it looks promising.

There is going to be another Ultraviolet, this time anime. All I can do is show you the entirety of the notes I took when I reviewed it:

And not in that good way.

You should read Firefly: The Trouble With Saffron by Purtek at The Hathor Legacy.

The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film is being created at San Diego State University.

The Carnival of Allies has been announced at The Angry Black Woman. The April edition of Cerise is up. The 57th Carnival of the Feminists is up.

And an old one: Decoding Hot Girl-on-Girl Action by Lisa Jervis, LiP Magazine, as published on Alternet.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

The 21st Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans will be hosted here. Our specific topic suggestion is "Who Do You Love?" but anything blogged between February 7th and April 28th is game, as long as it is a feminist perspective on fantasy and/or science fiction.

Submissions can arrive by email to Grace or Skye, or through the submission form. Extra credit if you skip all those modes of communication and transmit directly into our brains. Less clutter that way.

Get 'em in by April 28th, and the carnival will be posted May 1st.

In previous reviews, I've let you in on my late-blossoming love for Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel). This week, I finished up my viewing of his trio of shows with the one and only fourteen-episode season of Firefly. Previously, I'd also watched the film version of the Firefly story, Serenity, which was made after Firefly was taken off the air. Since Serenity is basically a continuation of Firefly, with nearly identical characters and actors, this review is for both the series and the film.

Like Buffy (and more or less unlike Angel), Firefly/Serenity has strong, central female characters. Firefly/Serenity's feminism is much different than Buffy's, though, as the entire premise of the show isn't a reversal of horror movie victimhood. Instead, Firefly/Serenity is a new take on the western frontier adventure story, which is certainly another area of traditional film misogyny. Though the main character, Mal (Nathan Fillion, who is amazing here as compared to his incredibly misogynist role as Caleb in Buffy) is male, he is surrounded by super competent women. First, there is his lieutenant, Zoe, played by Gina Torres. Zoe is confident, deadpan, and deadly. If Firefly/Serenity is a new take on westerns, Zoe is a new take on Clint Eastwood. She's a woman of color, and neither her femaleness nor her color is at all the point. She's just as likely to save Mal (or her husband, the ship's pilot, Wash, played by Alan Tudyk) as he is to save her. She's unabashedly stronger and cooler-headed than her husband, who mostly admires, rather than resents, it. In my book, Zoe is up there with Sarah Connor and Ripley in the cannon of badass action heroines.

Next, there is the ship's mechanic, Kaylee (Jewel Staite). We see her take her job from a man (with whom she is having sex in the engine room of the ship), and she's a mechanical genius. She's also a very realistic, funny, self-effacing character. The actress reportedly gained 20 pounds to play Kaylee, putting her at a larger-than-usual size for television (though still by no means fat). Given the unfortunate tendency for women in the Whedonverse to be waifs, this was nice to see as well.

The third major female character is Inara, played by Brazilian actress Morena Baccarin. Inara is a "companion," which translates, in the world of Firefly, to a very respectable, expensive, high-class prostitute who has complete control over who she chooses as clients. She is also the only person on the ship who doesn't answer to Mal--she rents a shuttle from him and runs her own business from it, she's not part of the crew, and she makes it clear that she doesn't take orders.

Finally, there's River (Summer Glau, who is now starring in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Unlike the rest of the cast, River's character is quite a bit different in Firefly than it is in Serenity. In both, she's a young, brilliant woman who was imprisoned, tortured, and experimented on by the Firefly/Serenity government baddie, The Alliance. In the film version, she's not only slightly crazy, but a killing machine and the action hero of the film. The television show treats her differently, focusing on her empathic (and telepathic) powers, rather than her physical prowess. She's much more of a victim on Firefly than in Serenity, which is too bad, but was probably planned to change had their been further episodes of the show (and it's foreshadowed a bit at the end of the series). She also has some great moments in the series, like when she tells backstabbing crewmember Jayne (Adam Baldwin) that she could kill him with her brain.

It isn't just the strength of the female members of the crew that makes them stand out, it's also the relative "weakness" of their male counterparts. Simon (Sean Maher), the ship's medic and River's brother, is constantly portrayed as weak, effeminate, and even foppish. Pilot Wash is good at what he does, but takes a backseat to Zoe if any actual danger comes along. And even Jayne, who was hired for his muscle, is in short supply of both class and brains. The only really heroic male character is Mal, and even he falls to the deviousness of repeating villains. The villain who gets the best of him most often is a woman, Saffron (Christina Hendricks). Even though the women on the ship include a "professional" and a "crazy," it's Mal, not any of the female characters, who ends one episode in the buff (with his hip tattoo showing, even).

In Buffy, feminist action is defined within the narrow parameters allowed by white, middle-class high schoolers/young adults--Buffy can kick ass, Willow can do magic, but they still behave within the confines of normal white teen girlhood, never becoming sexually aggressive, overly angry, or independent of male guidance. Though the feminist potential grows over time, it remains constrained up until the show's end. In Angel, the female characters are rarely treated with respect at all. In Firefly/Serenity, though, a more mature and unconstrained idea of feminism begins to be explored. Women play the roles of warrior/gunslinger (Zoe), innocent/mechanical genius (Kaylee), psychic/assassin (River), wise independent professional and prostitute (Inara) and various supporting villains and heroes (Patience, Saffron, Mandy). There doesn't seem to be a role in the Firefly/Serenity universe that a woman can't play. To my mind, that is absolutely progress. (Please note that other reviewers disagree very strongly. For example, Katherine at Whereof One Can Speak says that all of the female characters are stereotypes.)

Race is also treated more maturely and completely on Firefly/Serenity than on Buffy. Three of the major characters (Zoe, Shepard Book, and Inara) are non-white, as is one of the major villains (Early in the show, The Operative in the movie). The world in which the Serenity crew operates seems to be one in which race and gender are no longer major markers of anything. There is never a mention of race in reference to any of the characters. It is only in the case of Inara, who often dresses in Persian-inspired costumes, where it even seems to come into play. We are clearly meant to read Inara as exotic, though this is just as much a trope of her class and profession as her non-whiteness. For Zoe and Book (Ron Glass), race seems to be a complete non-issue.

Though Firefly/Serenity do better with characters of color than Joss' previous work, they aren't perfect. As several bloggers have pointed out (including Claire at Hyphen, Katherine at Whereof One Can Speak, and Rob at Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk), it is very troublesome that the future imagined for Firefly/Serenity includes an English-Chinese hybrid language and eating with chopsticks, but no actual Asian characters. I can think of no rational reason for the decision not to include Asian actors as both major and minor characters in Firefly/Serenity. Other Magazine's Liz writes that she "would have liked Firefly and Serenity even more if the history were deeper, and the "multiculturalism" well thought out." That criticism is valid.

Some of the other claims of racism in Firefly/Serenity just don't work for me. Helpy Chalk's Rob writes that Firefly is "a fictional world where the most troublesome parts of the myth of the West are actually true. The surrogates for Native Americans really are savages. The surrogate for the Confederacy really was justified in its cause." He goes on to explain that the Reavers are the "savages" and the outer planet resistance is the Confederacy. I find this reading of Firefly/Serenity as a Western to be too literal.

Claire at Hyphen wrote to Joss, "Maybe you'll find yourself a little more relevant to non-geeks if you bother to really look at the people who already populate and are going to populate the spaces you exploit for your fictions." I don't buy this as a reason for Firefly's cancellation. While she is right about the stupidity of not including Asian characters, Firefly is still one of the most racially balanced action movies or television shows I've seen. I think that had Whedon as much time to develop the Firefly/Serenity story as he did Buffy and Angel, it would have ended up being better than either of them, at least in terms of feminist and anti-racist action. The world created for Firefly/Serenity bases worth as a person on actions, morality, taking care of your friends, doing what needs to be done. There is no room for judgment based on sex or race. And that may well be something the viewing public wasn't ready to see.

I am giving both Firefly and Serenity four stars, under the assumption that the direction taken in Serenity is what would have happened in Firefly if it had been allowed to continue (especially with regards to the changes in River). Even though they are flawed, both the film and the series are among the most feminist and anti-racist action media I've ever seen. They also represent a positive progression in anti-racism and even feminism for Mutant Enemy's work. I think Joss should be proud.

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. I actually watched it.

If a DVD has a ten minute selection called "Sexy Outtakes" (presumably for those who thought the five minute half-naked Pamela Anderson music video at the beginning of the movie was not long enough), then I think we all know why it was made.

Strangely, though, I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. It gets no stars, 'cause it's just so horrifyingly exploitive of Pamela Anderson's body, which is really scary looking. I think I may have nightmares. However, Barb Wire the character is really quite competent. I would have been more impressed if her cover wasn't always stripper or hooker, but see previous comment about exploitation.

Also, it produced a good conversation with my husband:

Cody: I think I'd be annoyed with my boyfriend, if this is his idea of helping. Now I'm hanging from a crane over the ocean?
Me: On a car that's stuck to a forklift. With a Nazi on it.

The End.

I liked Doomsday. Cinematical liked Doomsday, though I can't figure out why the reviewer thought Sinclair was a doctor/scientist - she's obviously the muscle. io9 also liked Doomsday.

Hollywood's 6 Favorite Offensive Stereotypes by Juan Arteaga on Cracked was, well, a crack-up. And a really good, thoughtful read. So of course the commenters slammed it repeatedly.

The 55th Carnival of the Feminists is up at Penny Red. The 56th Carnival of the Feminists is up at Redemption Blues.

A couple of older links:

Bad Heroines, by Mary Spicuzza, published in the San Jose Metroactive in 2001. You know, back in the good old days when heroines abounded.

Revena, on the Hathor Legacy, reviewed Fantastic Four 2. My favorite quote: "I think I knew from the moment Jessica Alba looked into the camera while sporting contacts that made her look like she'd been vacationing on Arrakis and eating melange between the two films that things were not going to go well." I was interested to learn, though, that a character who was white in the comics was cast as black in the movie. Is that a first? (Also see these thoughts on Jessica Alba's appearance on notcoming.)