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Attack of the Trolls

Time to overthrow the superhero bros, billionaire boys, and the Internet gremlins who bully their critics.

Dorothy Woodend 21 Jul 2012TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend writes about film and culture every other weekend for The Tyee. Read her previous articles here.

[Editor's note: This was written by Dorothy Woodend before the Aurora Cineplex shootings on Friday. Dorothy sent this note to The Tyee to be added if we decided to run the piece.

"In light of the horrifying events that took place in Aurora City, Colorado, with 12 people killed and many more wounded at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, I wanted to express my deepest sympathies with and condolences for the families of the victims and the people of Aurora City. I have reservations over whether it is appropriate timing to publish this review given the rawness of current events. Reality shifts so abruptly that what is appropriate one day is entirely not the next day.

"It is not the right time to draw any correlations between cinematic violence and genuine tragedy -- that is a conversation that is best suited for more peaceful times and not a period of grief and mourning."

On reflection, we have decided to publish the piece as Dorothy wrote it, because we think Dorothy's writing touches on themes made if anything more vital for discussion by the events in Colorado, focusing as she does on the volatile psychological terrain in North American society where pop culture and politics intersect. We welcome your views in the comment section.]

The latest version of Batman, AKA the Dark Knish as he is known in my house, has barely been released, and already there is a hullabaloo of a storm swirling around the film. Rotten Tomatoes has suspended its comment boards about the film due to troll attacks. If you don't know what an Internet troll is, lucky you, but a brief summation of them is someone who posts disruptive, inflammatory or plain old ugly comments in online discussions. The nasty little creatures have long hissed and spat and called people names, but now death threats have also been levied at film critics who have written less than glowing reviews of The Dark Knight Rises.

Huh?

First off, the idea that anyone would care enough to issue death threats to film critics about a Batman movie boggles my brain. Aren't there bigger things to get incensed over perhaps? Maybe the notion that Syria is still busily tearing itself to pieces, or the fact than a chunk of ice twice the size of Manhattan just broke off from a glacier in Greenland? If Western civilization is locked in a death spiral and choking on its own sourness, who should we blame for such a state of affairs? My beloved Louis C.K. sums it up perfectly when he describes this current crop of humans as the worst generation of people in the history of the world. 

Washington Post film critic Christy Lemire was one of the first critics to be been metaphorically burned at the stake for her levelheaded assessment of the film. Despite the fact that Lemire has a pretty established track record as a film critic, the trolls crowed for her blood in increasing hordes of tiny demented voices. Such a tempest over a trifle would be silly, if it weren't quite so creepy, or if it were only one isolated incident.

Fanboy smackdown

Increasingly, if you are a woman and you write something that fanboys don't like, prepare yourself for a virtual smackdown.

A few weeks back a woman named Anita Sarkeesian incited the wrath of another troll gang by having the temerity to launch an Indigogo campaign about a documentary she planned to make about how video games portray women. In response to Sarkeesian's campaign a Canadian man, and I use that term with some reservation since it is should be applied to people who actually behave like humans, created a video game called Beat Up Anita. The ensuing drama played out on the digital playground, where all the kids be hanging out talking shit.

The upside of the story is that Sarkeesian ended up with way more money than she had initially targeted for her film, and people stood up in droves to defend not only her right to make the film, but more importantly her right not to be assaulted either metaphorically or literally. The man who designed the game was forced to slink away. I picture him curled up in a cave somewhere, dripping and dank and filled with beetles (the man and the cave both).

But for every step forward, there's also an insidious lurch backwards. Comic-Con, the annual four-day symposium of geek culture, wrapped up this week with sneak peeks of films slated for the movie theatres this year, everything from The Hobbit to Godzilla. This year there was the largest ever representation of women at the event. But despite the increasing numbers of women attendees, there were fewer than ever actually contributing content, be that directing or producing films, or any role with actual genuine power and not just a skintight suit. Curiously enough, in this Comic-Con and the Cannes Film Festival had something in common this year, since both events shared a dearth of films made by women. A statement issued by Women and Hollywood to the jurors of the 2012 Cannes Festival contained the following cri de coeur:

"The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most prestigious festivals in the world. Festival Films including last year's Oscar winner The Artist have gone on to have long and successful lives, and filmmakers' careers have been launched on the Croisette. As we all know, the opportunities to have your film seen on a world stage is invaluable.

"For the 2012 edition, as with the 2010 edition, there are NO FEMALE DIRECTED FILMS in competition, and in the 64 years of the Festival only one woman -- Jane Campion -- has been awarded the Palme D'Or.

"Festival director Thierry Fremaux responded to the recent manifesto from La Barbe -- a French feminist action group -- which decried the lack of women by saying: 'I select work on the basis of its actual qualities. We would never agree to select a film that doesn't deserve it on the basis it was made by a woman… There is no doubt that greater space needs to be given to women within cinema. But it's not at Cannes and in the month of May that this question needs to be raised, but rather all year and everywhere.'"

Dumb women sidekicks

Meanwhile, back in the movie theatre, the battle wages on.

I have not seen the newest Batman movie, so I cannot speak about it just yet, but already this summer, I have seen The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-man, and sat through innumerable films based on comic books including Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, so I feel well versed in the superhero universe. Enough to say the idea that almost every one of these films has been green-lighted for a sequel makes a small spiral of despair begin in my gut. There is simply not very much for women to do in these films, other than make goo-goo faces and scream. There is even less that is of interest to the women sitting in the audience. Or at least this woman. 

The most recent version of Spider-man is a case in point.

Quite frankly, The Amazing Spider-man is so dull and predictable that it didn't warrant much fan boy vitriol, so I feel I can critique it without threat of disembowelment. It is a bad film, sticky in the worst possible sense of the word, also sappy, sucky, silly, dopey, clumsy, and wiener -- the seven dwarfs of dumbness all in a row. You can add sexist in there as well, the eighth dwarf. Emma Stone plays Gwen Stacy, Spiderman's main squeeze, as little more than a bouncing ponytail and batting eyelashes. If she were even a little more dewy-eyed I swear she would slip right off the screen. Reduced to breathy statements and knee socks, the redoubtable Stone has little to do here but wait around for Spiderman to crawl in her window so the pair can smooch. Gross!

I amused myself during the film by imagining what the proceedings would be like if the roles were reversed. What if Gwen Stacy spurted out sticky masses of webbing and flew through the air with the greatest of ease, while poor old Peter Park moped about in his bedroom, writing in his diary and mooning over the amazing Spidery-woman, with her sticky paws and her penchant for wrestling giant lizard men in the sewers of Manhattan. Sounds like a David Icke wet dream come true. Alas, 'tis not to be. Nothing that is even slightly out of lock-step formation happens here. Nothing new is old again or something.

When Dr. William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, talked about the genesis of his character back in the 1940s, he explained the need for a female superhero thusly: "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power... Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." But of course, there is no Wonder Woman movie slated for release, and the only female member of the Avengers, Black Widow, was the only one who didn't get her own movie.  

Where is Wonder Woman?

For every Internet skirmish between the sexes that snags public attention for a moment, the real business of the world often goes unnoticed. Coincidentally enough, this is also the week that the Bohemian Grove billionaires boys club converged to pee and smoke, waving their willies gaily in the open air and donning women's clothing for kicks and giggles.

For many years, the Bohemian Grove operated with little attention from the outside world, but in the days of the 99 per cent groggily looking around, the place has come into the spotlight. Amidst all the penis play, the all-male members of the Bohemian Grove make decisions that affect the rest of the world, everything from who will run in the next U.S. election to the Manhattan Project. This may sound like the plot of a comic book movie, but it is quite real.

Who will disrupt this cabal of bad boys and grown men busily planning world domination? Where is Wonder Woman when you need her, with her Golden Lasso of Truth and her cool boots? Can't you picture her tying Mitt Romney to a tree and forcing him to tell the truth about his tax returns?

Now that is a movie I would like to see.  [Tyee]

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