Yesterday

[mothwing]

Yesterday was pretty much the perfect day. Perfect. I had asked Crocky whether she'd like to see What the Butler Saw with me, and so she came along and spent the day with me in Hamburg, which is always a good foundation of a perfect day.

At first, I went to see one of my examiners, the didactics one, who is just generally wonderful and awesome and who chatted to me about my final paper and was very interested in my topic. I love her. Then, I picked up two Scheine, which I was very pleased with, as well.



Since by then it was only around 3pm, there was a lot of time to kill until 7.30pm. Thus, we went to see Hancock, which I had unwisely not read any reviews of and which I was exited about because it features a Will Smith as a superhero.


Why I Did Not Like Hancock In Spite of Will

After three quarters of an hour, feeling vaguely self-conscious and nerdy for doing so, I leant across to Crocky and told her I was wondering whether this movie is actually worse from a gender perspective or a race perspective only to find out that she'd been trying to make up her mind about that, too.

Of course now some people will roll their eyes and marvel how she and I can even be bothered to care enough about such things to let them interfere with watching a good movie, and rest assured that I really wouldn't have, had there been a decent enough movie to watch. Now, it's not as bad as The Happening, which had me wondering and thankful for watching it, because it may actually be the absolutely worst movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing, but just generally... sort of... wrong on several levels.

The only good things were probably the special-effects and the mere fact that it has a black superhero! As a main character! As the title role! Which was awesome.

Not so awesome was pretty much everything else.

The blatant, really unnecessary nationalism, which was probably only to be expected of a movie that opened on the fourth of July - and still I think that the film could have afforded to lose a few eagles, especially the random real eagle that made a WTF-inspiring appearance in the closing scenes.

The way the hero had to be told to adjust to the role of the tradintional, white superhero to be accepted by society, guided by a wise, well-adjusted white mentor figure and with the vulnerable white, blonde woman as the ultimate prize at the end. How- in spite of her freaking super powers- said white, blond woman's purpose was to be saved by the male hero, for heaven's sake. How this is also a movie about a poverty-stricken, aggressive alcoholic being polished up for society by the nice upper-class, white family.
How the backstory stayed lame and vague and was only introduced in the last part of the film, making a rushed appearance.

How, in spite of Hancock, there was just one other black character, who was of course a male news presenter, and a few criminals without lines, and no black women at all. This especially made Hancock not only "the only of his kind" as a superhero, but also the only of his kind as a black character, which is sad, as the film was promising.

So, I did not really like it. I still love watching Will Smith, but the first black superhero could really have deserved a different context in my eyes.

We then went and watched the University Player's performance of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, which was very, very enjoyable.
Even though I know that some people had had their doubts about the effectiveness of having the characters played by cross-dressing characters of the opposite sex, that made the play all the more enjoyable to watch for me.
The skill of the actors and the professionalism of the production once again made me marvel at the skill of the people involved.

As always.

Comments

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

Almost all mainstream animation is hypocritical about relationships and tolerance. Take the original Shrek - for almost ninety minutes we're treated to messages about acceptance and seeing beyond the exterior only to have the princess turn into a monster at the end to make her visually more 'compatible' with the hero. What a stupid reversal of the very formula Shrek pretended to go against! If Fiona had stayed human and pretty and still married the ugly guy, that would have been something different. No, it always has to be 'to each their own'.

Like most ideas Political Correctness is a good concept. However, interest groups these days are not just after idealism, they're after money, too. That's where the whole affair drifts into pretension. One of my favourite anecdotes is this:
In 1997, Oddworld Inhabitants, an American studio, released a video game starring the alien Abe. The goal of the game was to help Abe and his brethren escape the exploitation from another alien race. As soon as their game was released in Japan, Japanese interest groups threatened to sue Oddworld Inhabitants. Why? Like many other cartoon characters, Abe had four fingers. This posed a "problem" because in Japan missing fingers are a sign of belonging to a certain group of people way down on the social ladder. Alluding to their social conditions, even if the allusion isn't wanton, is regarded as an insult. Oddworld Inahbitants was given the choice to either pay a hefty fine (Disney does this every year, by the way, to placate the interest groups) or alter Abe's appearance. They opted for the latter, stating they wouldn't play an interest group's game that pretends something is politically incorrect to their national consciousness unless they are paid a lot of money.
So that's the problem as far as animation is concerned: as a creator, however good your intentions may be, you will always tread on somebody's toes and there will always be people who will like what you do for the wrong reasons. Sadly, there will also always be people who will seek profit from a fabricated misdemeanours. That's why I ask, where to draw the line?
I don't like Coal Black an de Sebben Dwarfs a whole lot but that doesn't have everything to do with it making fun of black stereotypes. (On the other hand, many say nobody complains that bald, fat, incompetent Elmer Fudd or short, ill-tempered, trigger-happy Yosemite Sam throw a poor light on white people.) Personally, I love Warner Bros. World War II anti-Nazi Germany cartoons which are sometimes extremely funny. As a German I've never had a problem with them because I can 'rank' them historically. Still, nowadays they're considered too offensive and are never shown, not even outside of Germany. Cartoons like that were common practise during the 30s. Disney made them as well; The Führer's Face starring Donald Duck even won an Academy Award.
Political Correctness is right to step in if someone produces offensive material with the sole intention to rub people the wrong way. However, it should not restrict artistic possibilities through sheer paranoia.

[bronnyelsp.livejournal.com]

If Fiona had stayed human and pretty and still married the ugly guy, that would have been something different. No, it always has to be 'to each their own'.

Apparently that was the original concept, would you believe?!

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

I would. The idea must have been new because in William Steig's original book, Shrek indeed marries an ugly princess. She was ugly to begin with, though, and not someone who used to be pretty and through some cheap plot device turned into a monster. Even that is better than what DreamWorks eventually went with. In my opinion.