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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2015 15:10:26 GMT -5
Some counter points...from Joseph Campbell
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
Joseph Campbell
It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may very well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid.
Joseph Campbell
The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by the virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through the millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight is truly desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us the courage to face the Minotaur, and the means to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain?
Joseph Campbell
No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.
Joseph Campbell
The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... the two are the terms of a single mythological theme... the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form).
Joseph Campbell
All cultures … have grown out of myths. They are founded on myths. What these myths have given has been inspiration for aspiration. The economic interpretation of history is for the birds. Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works.
Joseph Campbell
and others...
The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.
Harold Goddard
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. LeGuin
If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
Barry Lopez, in Crow and Weasel
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
Salman Rushdie
Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher...
Patti Davis
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
Robert McKee
Stories are how we learn. The progenitors of the world’s religions understood this, handing down our great myths and legends from generation to generation.
Bill Mooney and David Holt, The Storyteller’s Guide
History is nothing but a series of stories, whether it be world history or family history.
Bill Mooney and David Holt, The Storyteller’s Guide
All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by ... religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.
Harvey Cox, The Seduction of the Spirit
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
Robert McKee
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser
I will tell you something about stories, (he said) They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All we have to fight off illness and death
Leslie Marmon Silko
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation….Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
Ben Okri
and more and more and more...
-M
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2015 15:22:45 GMT -5
With all that being said, I don't think Joss should be vilified for how Natasha was portrayed in Avengfers 2 (or Avengers). In fact I think here arc is a powerful story, and a positive one. Natasha was taken as a child and trained by the powers that be to squash out any trace of compassion and humanity, to become the perfect killer, a monster, and do so they altered her physically and psychologically, but despite that, and through it all even though she did many things she regrets, in the end, it is her humanity and compassion, her strength that comes through and wins the day...she transcends what has been heaped upon her, she was victimized but chose not to be a victim, finding the strength not only to perservere it all, but to overcome and find her own way and make her own choices in the end. She is a hero, not because she kicks ass and beats up badguys, but because she found the inner strength to do the right thing even when everything she had been subjected to made it far easier for her to give up and become what they wanted her to be.
Again, if super-heroes and comic stories are our modern mythology, it's not just about super-powered exemplars battling each other and performing mythic deeds, it's about what their stories reveal to us about who we are as a culture, as a people, as a society who made those myths.
-M
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Post by macattack on May 6, 2015 18:48:33 GMT -5
I thought Natasha's speech to Bruce was the best part of their interactions, honestly. Bruce is grieving after what he did in Johannesburg and wants to isolate himself, and Natasha revealing that part of herself was meant to show Bruce he was not alone. That played a big role in Bruce's decisionmaking for the rest of the film, including him sneaking into Ultron's base to find Natasha personally, un-Hulked. That's what started true chemistry between the two characters after some largely forced interactions.
That being said, even if Joss voluntarily left Twitter and it wasn't because of the rabid "SJW" types going after him, that doesn't excuse the treatment he got from those people. There were some exceptionally cruel comments made. Did these people not pay attention to how at the end of the film, the nearly all-white male team is down to just one white male (who is leading, deservedly so, he's Captain America), two women, two black men, and a sentient almost godlike robot? Joss just handed you diversity on a platter and you turn on him over some choice words said by Black Widow. How hypocritical.
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2015 21:09:37 GMT -5
Thanks, coke and comics.
But don't hold your breath waiting for the people who blamed "militant feminists" and "social justice warriors" to apologize for spreading the meme they liked without evidence.
I'll apologize. But my apology doesn't mean he wasn't being relentlessly hounded for absolutely no reason by social justice warriors either. Maybe the people who called him a racist sexist ablest should apologize too. As far as the Black Widow's representation being sexist, have they ever read a Marvel comic before? I think the movie version is toned down quite a bit. If that's not enough, understandable, but don't act surprised that a movie based on that comic shares some of it's characteristics. What I'd go ahead and do, and what I have done, is vote with my wallet. Don't read the comics, don't watch the movie, and instead support creators who write women characters as more than cheesecake in body paint. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,870
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Post by shaxper on May 6, 2015 21:22:53 GMT -5
Thanks, coke and comics.
But don't hold your breath waiting for the people who blamed "militant feminists" and "social justice warriors" to apologize for spreading the meme they liked without evidence.
I'll apologize. But my apology doesn't mean he wasn't being relentlessly hounded for absolutely no reason by social justice warriors either. Maybe the people who called him a racist sexist ablest should apologize too. As far as the Black Widow's representation being sexist, have they ever read a Marvel comic before? I think the movie version is toned down quite a bit. If that's not enough, understandable, but don't act surprised that a movie based on that comic shares some of it's characteristics. What I'd go ahead and do, and what I have done, is vote with my wallet. Don't read the comics, don't watch the movie, and instead support creators who write women characters as more than cheesecake in body paint. Whedon's made it clear that he respects and is even friends with many of the feminists attacking him for his portrayal of Black Widow. It's precisely because he generally does portray strong, real female presences in his works that I think they are articulating such disappointment. I've not seen Avengers 2 yet. I LOVE how Black Widow was depicted in the first film, but still, she was only one character on the team, and one without much depth/complexity either. Being bad-ass itself isn't enough when you've got Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Banner all doing serious soul and identity searching in that film. It really is the Smurfette Principal, and I seriously doubt it happened because Whedon didn't care. Rather, Whedon, who's made a habit of fighting producers who hamper his integrity, likely gave in to pressure from studio execs who felt that more than one leading female was too much and that not too much time should be spent on the one. |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 6, 2015 22:36:40 GMT -5
Maybe the people who called him a racist sexist ablest should apologize too. Wow. He really got called a racist sexist ablest? Do you have any examples of these vilifications of Whedon? I am really curious about just how bad it was. |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 6, 2015 22:44:47 GMT -5
Well, I found this in the BuzzFeed article:
It looks like Whedon is also kind of sick of the "both sides do it" argument.
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2015 22:50:34 GMT -5
Maybe the people who called him a racist sexist ablest should apologize too. Wow. He really got called a racist sexist ablest? Do you have any examples of these vilifications of Whedon? I am really curious about just how bad it was. Before I read about it here Patton Oswalt and Eric Powell had posted about it on Facebook. In one of their links it showed a ton of tweets where they called him racist over and over, and ablest at least once. This is a link that came up when I googled "Joss Whedon Racist." It's not the same exact link I saw earlier, but it does repeat one of the same exact tweets. moviepilot.com/posts/2015/05/05/radical-feminists-chase-joss-whedon-off-twitter-2909232?lt_source=external,manual |
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2015 22:52:09 GMT -5
Well, I found this in the BuzzFeed article: It looks like Whedon is also kind of sick of the "both sides do it" argument. Oh, I understand the threats of violence against women who piss off misogynists is far worse, to the point of threats of violence against men for pissing off social justice warriors is near incomparable. But threats of violence aren't the only way to act shitty online. And just because someone else acts shittier doesn't make it okay to be slightly less shitty. Sometimes I can root for a social justice warrior. If they're doxing someone sending random dick pics or a gamergater who threatened violence against a woman. But that's far from all they do, the targets they pick and the lengths they go to screw with regular people for perceived unintended insults is ridiculous. It is counteractive to their cause, makes them look like a bunch of idiots, and is just plain cruel. Kind of like how I don't like the idea of animal torture, but Peta is a bunch of jerks. |
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Post by gothos on May 11, 2015 11:12:56 GMT -5
Meh. It's the age of the internet and everyone's angry about some perceived wrong no matter how small. With the internet and too much free time people can really stoke a fire. If you ask me people should be mad at him from that abomination Serenity. That's at least a valid complaint of a horrible patched up ending to a good short lived TV show. :-) In the words of Nietzsche: "No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant. " From the excerpted quotes I've seen, none of these people are thinking about communicating. They just want to score points off a perceived oppressor, nothing more. |
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Post by gothos on May 11, 2015 11:38:03 GMT -5
Except story is the very thing that allows us to imagine things can be different and strive for them... Story has been what has shaped our understanding and expectations of the world since we as a species were first able to communicate-those cave paintings-story, myths and religion used to shape our mortals, ethics, and values...story, history as we tell it...story....fiction or non-fiction-story shapes our world, so the stories we tell and we share and we pass on are absolutely crucial to how we will respond to the social ills that face our society, to all challenges we will face as a collective entity. If we cannot imagine it, we cannot prepare or strive for it. Equality is simply a fiction we strive to make a reality. Justice is a fiction we strive to make a reality. Reacting to story is part of our biology. It's not just fiction. It is the foundation of what makes us human and sentient beings capable of learning and growing and not just adapting to our environment to survive to procreate. -M I spent some time thinking on this. While I can't argue that it is obvious that people do allow fiction to shape their view of the world and use it as a platform for causes and movements I have never thought it wise. I was raised with the greatest fiction ever written, and have come away with the good and the bad. I think there are enough people in the world that are speaking with truth, that is readily available. Fiction is exciting and easier to digest. There are people doing real things with a real voice, that I choose not to look to Avengers 2 for a moral guide on how women should be treated. Nor do I expect Marvel of Joss to adhere to my guide on how women should be treated in society. But as I looked at various things there's a few things I picked out that I thought were interesting that seemed to apply in one way or another. If it's all fiction, then really, does anything matter? Thanks for making me think M. “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
― Mark Twain
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
― Tom Clancy
“There's a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called 'fan fiction'.”
― Joss Whedon
“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
― Doris Lessing
“The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.”
― Brent Weeks I used to hear Twain credited with the "fiction has to make sense" quote. Not that I'm motivated to go look it up. Brent Weeks' comments are incisive, as they get to the heart of the matter: everyone likes to feel superior in some way, and most of the time the reasons are dopey and not thought out. But if you are going to claim that your s**t doesn't stink in comparison to someone else, you ought to really be able to show that your target is *egregiously* wrong. For instance, Jeremy Renner was jumped on for making an admittedly stupid comment about Black Widow being a "slut." IMO this was so offhandedly dumb that it wasn't worth responding to; it was just an actor talking smack to get attention. In contrast, when David S. Goyer called the She-Hulk a slut, and came up with this incredibly convoluted line of reasoning about how fans wanted to fantasize about She-Hulk making it with the Hulk, I thought he deserved censure because his quote was egregiously dumb, perhaps because he tried to give a patina of rationality. I'll vent just a little on something that happened to me last week, which relates to the Janelle Asselin/CBR crapstorm last year. I read an online essay in which the author was going on about how the cyber-threats against Asselin, as well as the attempt to hack her bank account, were a symbol of "straight white males" resisting diversity. I made one post in the comments-section, asserting only that Asselin admitted she had only circumstantial evidence to tie CBR-readers to the attempt on her account. I didn't make any attempt to claim that all CBR-readers were innocent of cyber-bullying, only that there was no public evidence that any of them were guilty of account-hacking. For that, I was called a Men's Rights Activist. At least I hope that's all the letters "MRA" meant!  |
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Post by gothos on May 11, 2015 11:48:13 GMT -5
Some counter points...from Joseph Campbell Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. Joseph Campbell It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may very well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. Joseph Campbell The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by the virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through the millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight is truly desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us the courage to face the Minotaur, and the means to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain? Joseph Campbell No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold. Joseph Campbell The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... the two are the terms of a single mythological theme... the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form). Joseph Campbell All cultures … have grown out of myths. They are founded on myths. What these myths have given has been inspiration for aspiration. The economic interpretation of history is for the birds. Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works. Joseph Campbell and others... The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. Harold Goddard There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. Ursula K. LeGuin If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. Barry Lopez, in Crow and Weasel Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. Salman Rushdie Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher... Patti Davis Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. Robert McKee Stories are how we learn. The progenitors of the world’s religions understood this, handing down our great myths and legends from generation to generation. Bill Mooney and David Holt, The Storyteller’s Guide History is nothing but a series of stories, whether it be world history or family history. Bill Mooney and David Holt, The Storyteller’s Guide All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by ... religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need. Harvey Cox, The Seduction of the Spirit Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. Robert McKee The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser I will tell you something about stories, (he said) They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All we have to fight off illness and death Leslie Marmon Silko A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation….Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger. Ben Okri and more and more and more... -M I like all of these quotes (even if I haven't figured out how to "like" them), and I'm a fan of Campbell too, for which I've also taken some sh** from those who don't consider him "political" enough. That said, i partially disagree with this: "It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back." I think you could make a sustained argument that there are many myths that are meant to be divisive or chauvinistic from the get-go. This is a part of human nature that we have to recognize, so I'd favor seeing the "function" of mythology as comprising a spectrum that ranges from the "selfish" myths (We Are the Original People; Everyone Else is Derivative) to the "selfless" ones (We're All Part of a Greater Pattern, etc.) |
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Post by gothos on May 11, 2015 12:17:24 GMT -5
I'll apologize. But my apology doesn't mean he wasn't being relentlessly hounded for absolutely no reason by social justice warriors either. Maybe the people who called him a racist sexist ablest should apologize too. As far as the Black Widow's representation being sexist, have they ever read a Marvel comic before? I think the movie version is toned down quite a bit. If that's not enough, understandable, but don't act surprised that a movie based on that comic shares some of it's characteristics. What I'd go ahead and do, and what I have done, is vote with my wallet. Don't read the comics, don't watch the movie, and instead support creators who write women characters as more than cheesecake in body paint. Whedon's made it clear that he respects and is even friends with many of the feminists attacking him for his portrayal of Black Widow. It's precisely because he generally does portray strong, real female presences in his works that I think they are articulating such disappointment. I've not seen Avengers 2 yet. I LOVE how Black Widow was depicted in the first film, but still, she was only one character on the team, and one without much depth/complexity either. Being bad-ass itself isn't enough when you've got Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Banner all doing serious soul and identity searching in that film. It really is the Smurfette Principal, and I seriously doubt it happened because Whedon didn't care. Rather, Whedon, who's made a habit of fighting producers who hamper his integrity, likely gave in to pressure from studio execs who felt that more than one leading female was too much and that not too much time should be spent on the one. I have a view contrary to the Smurfette Principle. The first is that, to some extent, the two AVENGERS film are victim to the same problem that dogged the earliest issues of the comic book: what do you do when you've got a group with at least four heavy-hitting heroes? We don't know exactly why Stan Lee chose to dispense with the heavy-hitters and try to sell the title with "Cap's Kooky Quartet." But since Lee's bottom line was always to sell more books, I'd speculate that he knew he couldn't really exploit the Marvel Approach to Character Conflict by using the team-up schema that worked so well for DC. Therefore Thor, Hulk and Iron Man were cast out to allow for more latitude in character-conflict, and for a time the group's biggest hitter was Giant-Man/Goliath, who didn't have his own feature any more and so could enjoy all of his dramatic arcs within the sphere of the AVENGERS comic. Unlike Lee, Whedon didn't have a choice: the AVENGERS movie-franchise was always meant to follow the pattern of DC's Justice League, exploiting the big-name heroes in both their own features and as part of a group. So Whedon had to include Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America (who's not precisely a heavy-hitter but does have an impregnable shield). Hawkeye and Black Widow were spotlighted in their first appearances through the connections with SHIELD, so that they would eventually provide, within the AVENGERS film-franchise, a contrast to all the heavy super-powers, in that they were closer to ordinary mortals. This is pretty much the same function that "low-powered" heroes like Hawkeye and the Wasp served in the AVENGERS comic-- or, if you prefer a LEGION parallel, Bouncing Boy and Dream Girl. So if you've got a team of super-gods for which you, the writer, have to provide a credible challenge, you can't take time out to figure, "now how can I come up with something for non-powered Black Widow to do, that allows her to shine?" A single story in a comic can give a low-powered hero a featured position while the big stars are sidelined. A high-FX film like ULTRON can't do that; the low-powered heroes, both Hawkeye and Black Widow were never going to get featured positions. And that's why I become so torqued off at people like Whedon's critics. They're not thinking about whether what they want is do-able within a particular context; they JUST WANT IT. Now if the group had written in She-Hulk and given her nothing to do-- that would be the Smurfette Principle. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,870
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Post by shaxper on May 11, 2015 14:20:23 GMT -5
Whedon's made it clear that he respects and is even friends with many of the feminists attacking him for his portrayal of Black Widow. It's precisely because he generally does portray strong, real female presences in his works that I think they are articulating such disappointment. I've not seen Avengers 2 yet. I LOVE how Black Widow was depicted in the first film, but still, she was only one character on the team, and one without much depth/complexity either. Being bad-ass itself isn't enough when you've got Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Banner all doing serious soul and identity searching in that film. It really is the Smurfette Principal, and I seriously doubt it happened because Whedon didn't care. Rather, Whedon, who's made a habit of fighting producers who hamper his integrity, likely gave in to pressure from studio execs who felt that more than one leading female was too much and that not too much time should be spent on the one. I have a view contrary to the Smurfette Principle. The first is that, to some extent, the two AVENGERS film are victim to the same problem that dogged the earliest issues of the comic book: what do you do when you've got a group with at least four heavy-hitting heroes? We don't know exactly why Stan Lee chose to dispense with the heavy-hitters and try to sell the title with "Cap's Kooky Quartet." But since Lee's bottom line was always to sell more books, I'd speculate that he knew he couldn't really exploit the Marvel Approach to Character Conflict by using the team-up schema that worked so well for DC. Therefore Thor, Hulk and Iron Man were cast out to allow for more latitude in character-conflict, and for a time the group's biggest hitter was Giant-Man/Goliath, who didn't have his own feature any more and so could enjoy all of his dramatic arcs within the sphere of the AVENGERS comic. Unlike Lee, Whedon didn't have a choice: the AVENGERS movie-franchise was always meant to follow the pattern of DC's Justice League, exploiting the big-name heroes in both their own features and as part of a group. So Whedon had to include Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America (who's not precisely a heavy-hitter but does have an impregnable shield). Hawkeye and Black Widow were spotlighted in their first appearances through the connections with SHIELD, so that they would eventually provide, within the AVENGERS film-franchise, a contrast to all the heavy super-powers, in that they were closer to ordinary mortals. This is pretty much the same function that "low-powered" heroes like Hawkeye and the Wasp served in the AVENGERS comic-- or, if you prefer a LEGION parallel, Bouncing Boy and Dream Girl. So if you've got a team of super-gods for which you, the writer, have to provide a credible challenge, you can't take time out to figure, "now how can I come up with something for non-powered Black Widow to do, that allows her to shine?" A single story in a comic can give a low-powered hero a featured position while the big stars are sidelined. A high-FX film like ULTRON can't do that; the low-powered heroes, both Hawkeye and Black Widow were never going to get featured positions. And that's why I become so torqued off at people like Whedon's critics. They're not thinking about whether what they want is do-able within a particular context; they JUST WANT IT. Now if the group had written in She-Hulk and given her nothing to do-- that would be the Smurfette Principle. I don't see why it's un do-able to provide more screen time, internal conflict, and character development for Widow. Producers don't think the viewing audience wants it, but that doesn't mean Whedon couldn't have pushed harder for it. Powerless characters can have defining roles, regardless of the conflict. Heck, Alfred Pennyworth gets deep characterization in the Nolan Verse. And really, if the whole issue is that Widow can't hold her own against a threat like Ultron, then bring in She Hulk or Carol Danvers. |
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2015 16:38:34 GMT -5
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