Posts tagged gender roles

imaginenoheaven:

MILD SPOILERS—although really you wouldn’t be missing much.

There is a scene in The Expendables in which a good guy is hanging off a sea plane, dangling dangerously as it makes its getaway from a dockful of bad guys shooting at them. We can hear the bullets whiz by, but we don’t hear any of them hitting the metal of the plane, and of course none hits the dude—about fifty bad guys, all with automatics, shooting blindly at the plane. He makes it (who would’ve guessed?) just as the plane finally rises of the water, no problem. They turn around boldly, that same guys fits himself into the nose of the plane with sunglasses, and arms himself with an awesome machine gun. They dive and fly over the dock with all the bad guys, and he fires, and they all go “AAHHH!” and most fall  into the water. Flawlessly. BUT WAIT—there’s more. As they did this, the good guy flying the plane drops this powder stuff and spreads it over the dock, and the bad guys left standing on top go, “Huh? What is this?” And then KA-BOOM! Oh, sweet, I totally didn’t see that coming. But of course the main bad guy happened to jump into the water just in time to avoid the flaming ball of what couldn’t only be white powdery stuff.

Pardon me for criticizing. After all, this is an action flick, right? The basic formula is gunfights, explosions, improbable plot, and even more improbably outcomes of action sequences, etc. This movie had all that, plus Sylvester Stallone, plus, Jason Statham, plus Jet Li, and a cameo appearance by—oh my GOSH, no way! Could that really be him? Man, that was the coolest thing, EVER!

This movie is absurd. No, no, I mean more absurd than your regular action thriller. Haven’t we seen enough of the same formula, complete with a 90+% male cast and a couple of vulnerable female love interests. I’ve had enough, but clearly, Stallone, director and star of Expendables, and Hollywood hasn’t. The only thing original here is the melting pot of some of the greatest action movie stars—those who were in actual good movies—new and old.

And I have a problem. This movie is barely watchable. There are more violent and gory films out there, but the ones I think of are the stylized films that are much more worthy of watching, better entertainment, and less predictable, so as to actually keep you on the edge guessing, instead of just waiting out the long fight sequences you can hardly follow because of the half-second cuts, until you get to the anti-climactic and predictable end.

There are good genre flicks out there because of their originality, style, well-organized plots, and entertainment factor. I like thrillers a lot; there have been made some pretty good ones out there. Horror films have their ups and downs. There are movies targeted for only a certain group of people. There are the deep films that make you think. No, I know an action flick doesn’t have to be deep or smart. You can make a good one without that. Not only was this devoid of anything deep, smart, believable (different from probable), it was full of everything their opposite: shallow, dumb, and ultimately unbelievable that it had me laughing my ass off watching it.

I wish there are better movies I could see in the theaters, but, no money. I saw this with my dad, his idea. I knew what I was going to get, so that’s what I saw. He saw a lot of the same things, but I think he was more optimistic that myself. I wish I had gone along with my parents to see Salt, an action thriller praised by critics, along with Roger Ebert, who gave it a perfect score of four stars (out of four), rare when it comes to the genre. But I guess I wanted to see good movies only with my girlfriend…I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore.

Another thing that bothers me: why are female characters always dependent on their male counterparts? A lover beats the shit out of Statham’s girlfriend, so he fights back for her. The Latina love interest walks into a room accompanied with the perfect sudden score of Latino music, lovely sounds. She fights for her life later, has a moment of boldness (only to be judged as a dumb move later), and then ends up getting killed again, but then she is saved by her macho hero, and when he has to leave she is heartbroken.

Bella Swan from Twilight depends on (omg, ROBERT!!!) Edward for her life as well as her virginity, and depends on him to make all the decisions for her. And she is pushed around by that A-hole Jacob.

This only encourages the general public that the way of the world should be that men should make all the decisions for their women, because they obviously can’t take care of themselves. Bullshit. Women can make decisions as good as men can. No gender should be judged as more worthy of decision as the other. We all have equal potential and capabilities, if we are willing to take advantage of them.

The character of Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, has been abused all her life in a world of men, with her constitutional rights taken away, and she doesn’t have enough of the power to overtake those who rule her. But she is a damn good hacker, and completely amoral with the choices she makes, despite all the trouble she’s been in (again, not her fault), and she shows us that girls don’t need guys to protect them; sometimes they are their worst threat.

So this kind of macho movie that praises a male-dominated world, glorifying violence and women’s dependence on men, is just not worth watching.

Oh yeah, and narcissistic female characters isn’t what I’m talking about by the way. That’s completely different. That just makes them look dumb. I haven’t seen Eat Pray Love, and I don’t plan on it.

I guess I had a little too much to write. Oh well, first time on the blog, gotta start with something.

Oh—one more thing—it didn’t help to see guys holding on to their babes like cheap little ragdolls while they trailed by their men as if helplessly, when I walked out of the theater and into the mall.

3/10.