Have you ever heard of the expression ‘catch you on the flip
side’? What is the ‘flip side’? Heaven or Hell? Tonight, or tomorrow? I think
the flip side is more of a matter of bad versus good. Or maybe, even what’s
considered cool. I think that when this expression was trending it was because
of the popularity of the statement. That is how most slang starts. But, is what
is consider cool always good? NO WAY! So, what’s a good a way to determine what
is good and what is cool but possibly bad, you are probably wondering. Well, I am
not sure let us look at the examples!
How cool were the Bee Gees?! Man, they just got a tribute
special with performances by today’s artists such as Panic! At the Disco, Ed
Sheeran and Demi Lovato! There was even a John Legend & Stevie Wonder duet
covering all these Bee Gee hits. They were even inducted in the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame around the same time I was born in 1997. But, they were ridiculed
for such a feat! So, my thoughts on it are, maybe they earned it? Yes, you can
earn haters by trending, in today’s speak. But, what if it is so much deeper
than that? Just take a look at one of their first hits, Lonely Days. Seems
innocent enough as it’s chorus is “Lonely days, lonely nights. Where would I be
without my woman?’” but, maybe that’s not as good as it comes off. Maybe the
lonely days are the ones his wife is working? Then what would that make the
entire song? An affair? I’m just saying, you never know for sure and that is
how quickly the flip side can show you something bad that came off as good. Don't worry I hope they are 3 English angels also.
Noah's ark could not of been this cute
Being
bad or good, can simply boil straight down to your decisions. Don’t think so?
Listen to the flip side of the beloved Noah from the tale of Noah’s ark. The
original tale is that of a biblical fiction. Noah is this man who collects
every animal, saving them by giving entry on his arc. This is because a flood
is coming and he knows damn well every animal is about to be wiped out of
existence. Well what if that man was not so good? That is exactly what Jonathan
Goldstein looks at! This Noah in Goldstein's parody of “Noah and the Ark” is just this no-good guy. He is old man who has
lived his rounds and seems to dish it out on everyone else. The biggest example of
how he is, is when his wife says that he is being to cruel to them he replies
only “… that he was just being honest.”(Pg47). He seems to be blind to his ignorance the entire story. So, who else to trust, but an ‘honest’
man with choosing who survives onto the next generation? That’s right this self-conceited
Noah had the job of saving humanity.
He does the task rounding up the animals, but only the
deserving ones. Once he is done with the work, he prayed and prayed he was correct
about this flood. And what I mean by praying is, he said “I will watch those
stupid dummies drown from the safety of the Lord’s ark and I will say ‘Ha. Look
at you, you dumb stupids who heed not the Lord.’” (Pg 59) Which is pretty much
saying that every living being outside his immediate family was stupid and
should pay for it. And sadly, they do. Goldstein even describes the deaths of
those not on the Ark in one swift kick to the moral “The first hands he heard
banging at the outside walls felt like pushing into his temples. Then there
were more hands. Pounding. Punching. Scratching. Then kicks and shrieking that
even drowned out the sound of the rain.” (pg62) So was this an instance of
humanity itself being saved, like the original tale? Or, one where lives were
lost to a man who believed everyone, but himself, was stupid?
So
is there a line? No one knows for sure because it is never drawn straight. In
the NFL you have football players like Greg Hardy, a very talented man who
ruined his career with several instances of domestic abuse. But, though his
career was ruined for what he did to other human beings, another player named
Josh Gordon cannot even earn the reinstatement into the league that he is
desperately trying to do. Gordon has struggled with failed drug tests due to
marijuana and has several alcohol charges. Hardy’s guilty domestic abuse
charge, as well as the one he got for cocaine, have still not haunted him as
much as Gordon’s mistakes. It seems senseless and do not get me wrong it could
be situational but that sure is one crooked line in place.
When walking this crooked line, keep in mind there’s two
sides to every story, every situation. You will never fully understand another
person’s motives. Whether they’re good…bad…it will not show. There is always
going to be a flip side, so keep an out and your mind open.
In this day and age, it's easy to think that the "damsel in distress" trope has disappeared, and that as a result, so has sexist representation.
For those who don't know the term, you've definitely seen it before: a damsel in distress is a female character in a piece of literature or media in trouble that has a male hero (usually the main protagonist) come to her rescue. It's common in fairytales, like the prince saving Rapunzel from the tower and Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty" waking up from her curse-induced eternal sleep by the prince's kiss.
But movies are guilty of it, too. The conflict in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl all starts with the kidnapping of Elizabeth Swan. At the end of Twilight, Bella lays on the ground injured while Edward fights for her. Spider-Man always comes to Mary Jane's rescue in the original Spider-Man trilogy. Rose in Titanic is saved from her annoying ass rich family and douchebag fiancé when she meets Jack.
I don't disagree that female characters today are far more often represented as heroic and capable of saving themselves than they used to be (I say "more often" because Princess Leia has been around since 1977). There are plenty of examples.
But the damsel is still around. She's just harder to see under her badass mask. I see damsels and other forms of sexism underneath the surface layer of strong female characters a lot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (often abbreviated as "MCU"). So without further ado, it's time for me to go full feminist nerd.
Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, a technology inventing and distributing company owned by Tony Stark a.k.a. Ironman, is always assertive when she needs to be and always on top of her game when it comes to handling business. And in this way, her character is done justice in Ironman and Ironman 2. Ironman 3, which focuses a lot on Tony Stark's PTSD after traveling into a wormhole and falling out of it in The Avengers (boy, that must sound really weird if you haven't seen the movie), Pepper becomes the woman Tony is desperate to protect... even though he sort of gives his address to the terrorist he's up against. I mean, like, straight up says his address on live TV.
Listen, Tony, I know you were pissed off at the reporters and all, nobody likes Paparazzi, but really?
But hey! If he didn't, we wouldn't get to see that he programmed the Ironman suit to fly over to Pepper and cover her body in case of an emergency. Because the terrorist uses the address on live TV given by Tony Stark to blow up his house.
Pepper is also captured by the main antagonist near the end of the movie, whose life he tries to use to bribe Tony Stark into helping him by injecting her with a substance called Extremis that he wants Tony to help him fix the problems with.
Later, after she falls from a high spot it seems like she dies, she comes back temporarily super-powered from the Extremis, and kills the villain. I used to use Tumblr really often, and there are gifs all over the place with this scene, and others with Marvel's women, with feminist captions plastered on them, like "fight like a girl" or "here's to female empowerment." But Pepper coming back and killing the villian doesn't erase the fact that she was used as fuel for the plot and Tony Stark's motivation and despair.
And let's take a look at one of the posters advertising this movie.
Looks like a damsel to me...
Here's a very similar one advertising Thor: The Dark World, another MCU movie.
Jane Foster, the woman Thor is so majestically protecting in this poster, is little more than Thor's love interest in the first two Thor movies.
In the first one, Thor, Thor is banished from his home, a realm called Asgard, by his father for seeking out war with creatures called Frost Giants from the realm of Jotunheim after they interrupt the ceremony crowning him king by attempting to steal a powerful object called the Tesseract (Ugh. Don't you hate it when that happens?). You see, before Thor went over to Jotunheim, his dad was all, "It's cool, man, chill. Don't worry about it, it was just a couple, we have a truce with them, they're not really gonna fuck with us." But then Thor decided it was a good idea to piss them off and attacked. So he was banished, and deemed unworthy of his hammer, a.k.a. his super duper powerful weapon, a.k.a. kind of the thing that makes him Thor.
When he falls to Earth, Jane Foster, a scientist, is driving her van with her intern Darcy and partner Erik chasing this crazy storm signal, even though her partner was like, "We're not storm chasers, we're astronomers." She hits Thor with her van, and Jane, Darcy, and Erik all get out to make sure he's alright. He starts screaming about how they shouldn't attack him because he's Thor! Son of Odin! Jane, Darcy, and Erik think he's crazy, and Darcy tazes him.
They then put Thor in a mental hospital, but he escapes. And then he’s walking around, annnnd Jane backs up in the van and hits him again. So she brings him to the apartment she shares with Darcy and Erik and later on, this spy organization called SHIELD shows up and steals all of Jane’s work because they found the hammer in New Mexico, and nobody could even budge it, so it’s considered a mysterious object that they have to investigate, and Jane has all the data on the storm that happened the night and the place the hammer fell.
But guess who gets all of Jane’s work back? Thor! And then Jane and Thor sit by the fire at night and bond. By the end of the movie, which is after just like, 2 and a half days, Jane is totally in love with Thor. When it comes to fighting the villain at the end of the movie, though, Jane doesn’t do anything.
In the second movie, Thor: The Dark World, the conflict starts all because Jane somehow encounters this powerful substance Aether, and it gets into her body and she’s in pain, and she slowly starts dying… until Thor goes on a journey to get it out, and then save the world from being enveloped in darkness by the dark evles! There’s a bunch of lovey-dovey scenes between Thor and Jane. So she’s used, like Pepper, as fuel for the plot, and to make Thor more heroic.
They then put Thor in a mental hospital, but he escapes. And then he’s walking around, annnnd Jane backs up in the van and hits him again. So she brings him to the apartment she shares with Darcy and Erik and later on, this spy organization called SHIELD shows up and steals all of Jane’s work because they found the hammer in New Mexico, and nobody could even budge it, so it’s considered a mysterious object that they have to investigate, and Jane has all the data on the storm that happened the night and the place the hammer fell.
But guess who gets all of Jane’s work back? Thor! And then Jane and Thor sit by the fire at night and bond. By the end of the movie, which is after just like, 2 and a half days, Jane is totally in love with Thor. When it comes to fighting the villain at the end of the movie, though, Jane doesn’t do anything.
In the second movie, Thor: The Dark World, the conflict starts all because Jane somehow encounters this powerful substance Aether, and it gets into her body and she’s in pain, and she slowly starts dying… until Thor goes on a journey to get it out, and then save the world from being enveloped in darkness by the dark evles! There’s a bunch of lovey-dovey scenes between Thor and Jane. So she’s used, like Pepper, as fuel for the plot, and to make Thor more heroic.
And yet, again, Tumblr users consider Jane a strong female character, because she can do science and stuff!
Now it's time to get into Agents of SHIELD, which I think probably gets the most praise for its strong female characters.
The show is about Phil Coulson and his team of agents taking care of superpowered or alien threats. The team changes every so often over the 4 seasons, with an old member leaving and new ones coming in. But there’s always a good portion of female characters. There are also a lot of characters outside the team praised for being strong women.
As “badass” as all the women are, they all fit the beauty standard. Sure, they kick ass, but they have to look beautiful.
Unlike any of the male characters, for instance, Daisy, the lead character of the show, is often shown mostly or completely nude (even though she’s always covered by something, as the show has a PG-13 rating) – and it’s never necessary.
Before Daisy is an agent, she’s supposed to be assisting SHIELD find the leader of a hacking group she used to be a part of, called “the Rising Tide.”
But she abandons the mission part of the way through to meet up with the leader. It turns out he’s her ex-boyfriend Miles.
There’s a scene of the two kissing, and it cuts to a scene where she’s in her underwear and a bra, looking for her top.
Agent May finds her in the middle of searching, holding the top. At this point, the bond Daisy was beginning to develop with the team of agents had vanished.
Why not just show Daisy having a discussion with Miles, where Agent May overhears her saying she’s considering re-joining the Rising Tide or asking for help in escaping SHIELD? It’d cause the same lack of trust.
Later in the show, she wakes up on an Inhuman (the type of alien she turns out to be) safehaven, undergoing acupuncture, and we get a close-up of her laying in bed nude.
Season 4 opens up with several shots showing Daisy getting dressed. It’s not an unusual or inherently bad way to start the new season, as the end of Season 3 marked her transformation into a vigilante and she has a new look to represent it. But in first shot we see her pull her underwear over a bare butt cheek – and it’s a close up.
In an episode where we are shown an alternate reality, we see separately where each of the major characters are.
Agent Coulson is shown writing on a chalkboard in a classroom. Agent Mack is shown carrying out a child’s bike out of a garage. Agent Fitz is shown wearing sunglasses and an expensive jacket, getting out of a car.
But how does the show introduce the life of Daisy Johnson in this alternate reality? She gets out of the bathtub.
None of the male characters who you could say are attractive (like Ward) have their appearance presented in such a way.
Skye’s mother is also shown in the beginning of Season 2 to be a strong leader, and then her characterization is butchered so she becomes the villain. She tries to kill Daisy, who is saved by her father, who started out as a murderous psychopath.
There’s also a storyline where Ward falls in love with a woman named Kara, brainwashed by HYDRA, and later blames SHIELD for her death, then shoots Kara because he thinks it’s May, but it really turns out to be Kara with a tech mask of May’s face (It’s wild, I know). Then he blames Coulson, and the really strong and badass leader of another agency who he falls in love with, Rosalind Price, is killed by Ward to avenge Kara. And then Coulson gets pissed and kills Ward to avenge the love of his life!
I love Marvel, but let’s stop praising it for its “strong women.”
Have you ever wondered why life was created? or are you to busy on your phone to realize that life is a wonderful thing that we all take for granted. It's ok if you take life for granted everyone does me included I never use to think about the fact that I could die at any minute at any time till I got into a bad car crash were I saw my life flash before my eyes. Ever since that day I've been living life like I'm going to die tomorrow and I won't change a thing about it.
But I bring this point up because in this great book called "FEED" everyone is blind by there feed which is just like are phones. It's crazy how they act they are to busy focusing on what's hit they never focus on what's going on all around them in there environment, or everyday lives.
Let's start with the environment Titus say's on page 179 "We had are suits on so we wouldn't smell it" he also says on the same page "We watched it move around it was dead but colorful." like are you kidding me last time I checked I don't wear a suit so I can't smell the sea, also I know for a fact the sea is alive. But what M.T. Anderson Is trying to get at is that we are blind to what is happening to the environment. All we are concerned about is if we can get the new IPhone or the car we want. As long as we get these things we could care less what we kill along the way. If you think I'm lying lets take the rainforest for a example. The rainforest is getting cut down at a very rapidly rate and we are doing nothing about it, we just turn a check to it and go on with are lives like nothing is happing.
Everyone now of days are so focused on social media they never take the time to go out and do something physical. Kids now are days are the worst with this. My 7 year cousin would rather play on his iPad then going out and playing football with his friends. But I can't act like it's only kids that do this we as a society are so busy on are phones that we never take a break from what we are doing to enjoy life. It's like we are all in the movie matrix and the computers are running are lives. We have to step back from the virtual reality to look at reality.
In "Feed" everyone is so busy trying to have all the up to date crap they never really enjoyed there life. Yes even thought they go to parties and scramble there feeds. They are just doing all that stuff because it's hip and up to date. like on page 158 Calista and Loga show up in torn up clothes just because the corporations made a riot that happened hip.Violet is the only one that actually is living her life not focus on her feed. She try's to tell Titus to open his eye's and look at the world around him. But Titus is to brain washed to his feed and can't wake up from the dream this dream he is living.
In fact Titus doesn't open his eyes for a while after he dumps violet. You can bring up the point that Titus dumped Violet because she's dying and he wants something new like her life is a out dated iPhone. I feel Tittus opens his eyes to the fact, life can end at any time when he comes back to see Violet after getting a massage from her dad saying she's doing very bad. When he see's Violet he's crushed inside and what Violets dad says on page 292 hits him hard when he blames Tittus saying "he's the reason his daughter is dying."
I guess what I'm trying to say here is stop living in this dream that every thing in your life is ok because every dream has to end. I just hope this blog has expanded your mind in the way you look at things in life. If you don't care and you think I'm crazy and your just going to keep living this lie that is your life. That's cool all I have to say is wait till something happens and your whole life flashes before your eyes. To all the people that got a reality check from this blog I'm happy I could change the way you look at things. To all my fans I'm sorry but this will be my last ever blog I'm retiring from the game it's been real.
* Wake's up *
Joe. S
Word count - 821
Work site - M.T. Anderson "Feed"
My uncle died, when my family heard the news it was the first time I ever saw my father cry. It was his older brother, after all. Both my parents were drowning in a sea of grief, my dad more so than my mom. While my older brother and little sister weren't as grief stricken as my parents, they were still devastated by the news. Then there was me, I had to fake being devastated, that my uncle's death actually bothered me. As crazy and harsh as this may sound, I just wanted to continue playing on my DS because I felt absolutely nothing over his death. Though it was a few years ago, that day was forever burned into my memory because that was the first time I realized something wasn't right with me.
Well damn! Is probably your first response to this, but it's true something is wrong with me. I became desensitized. Do you guys know what that means? No? Well, it means the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative, aversive or positive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. In simpler terms, one does not respond emotionally to negative or positive situations after seeing it too many times. For instance, me feeling nothing over the death of my uncle because I was exposed to a lot of deaths in the media. You get it? Okay cool!
So where the hell am I going with this? I’M GOING BACK TO M.T. ANDERSON, THAT’S WHERE! *Real quick M.T Anderson is the author of Feed, it’s a satirical novel placed in a futuristic dystopian society where a computer is implanted into everyone's brain and issues like corporate power, consumerism, data mining, and environmental decay are discussed.* In my last blog, I mentioned how he foreshadowed a lot of shit like technology ruling the world, nature slowly becoming extinct and corporations starting to sell customer information. What I forgot to mention was how he also foreshadowed how people will start to become more desensitized.
Anderson uses Violet and Titus as a prime example of this notion;
“...I’m going to turn in evidence in court and everything. I mean, you are too, but we’re going to have to go to court against that guy….”
She looked at me strangely.
“What?” I said
“No one’s told you?” ….
“No one told me what?”
“We’re not going to court.”
“We got out of it? My dad was trying to get us out of it.”
“He didn’t need to. The guy was dead.”
“What? How?”
“He died a day after we went to the hospital. Contusions. Broken skull.
“What are contusions?” I looked it up. “Oh.”
“He was beaten to death at the club. We saw it. The police remember? The beat him over the head.”
She reached out and took my arm.
(Page 123)
In that scene, Violet didn’t seem all that bothered that the hacker was beaten to death and Titus appeared to lose interest in his death after learning how he died. This just makes you wonder how many people the police had beaten to death for them to not feel anything.
Does this remind you of anything? I’m talking about Police Brutality if you said no. Whenever I hear or read news about the victims of police brutality dying or severely injured, I’m honestly like “What else is new.” I’m not being a heartless bitch or anything, it just gets tiring, hearing the same damn thing every time you turn on the news and learn that another person died and was severely injured by the police, guys. And I have friends and family members who feel the same as me. So don’t judge me guys because you know damn well that deep inside, we’re just like Violet and Titus when it comes violence and death; desensitized.
In childhood, the majority of children are exposed to Disney channel, even children in the third world countries. Disney channel is almost every child’s favorite channel. In an article titledTop TV Channels for kids and teens, Disney Channel was voted as the number ONE Channel. Even for me, as a child, Disney Channel was my favorite channel. After school, everyday I used to go home and watch Disney Channel and imagine about my future prince charming and how great he’d be, but not anymore. As I grew up, I noticed how the Disney corporation would manipulate children through Disney channel and Disney XD. Through these channels, the Disney corporation would instill their views of the world upon innocent children. In their movies, dramas, and cartoons, they would contort reality and make everything have an happy ending.These fairytales manipulate us into believing that there will always be a “ happy ever after” in the end.
One of their fairytale is Cinderella. Disney’s Cinderella is one of the most popular fairy tales worldwide. For the few of us who do not know about Cinderella, it is a story which was adapted from the Grimm brothers. In Disney’s version of Cinderella, Cinderella is a girl who lost her mother at a young age and was then forced to live with a stepmother and two stepsisters after her father remarried. As she grew up, her father died and she was left to live with her stepmother and stepsisters. They abused her and treated her as their slave instead of family. Then one day, they were invited to the Castle for a ball so that the prince could choose his queen. Although everyone was invited, the stepmother and stepsisters did not want Cinderella to attend the ball. Instead of being able to attend the ball, Cinderella was supposed to stay at home and do chores. However, Cinderella meets her fairy godmother, who helps her to attend the ball but with a catch; she must return home at 12am. The Fairy Godmother uses her magic and transforms some rats and pumpkins into a beautiful gown, a pair of glass slippers, and a carriage. Cinderella then attends the ball, and catches the prince’s eyes. They fall inlove with eachother while dancing, but the moment ends when the clock hits 12am. Cinderella leaves him along with her glass shoe and goes back to her normal life, but he couldn’t forget her and searches for her. He uses the glass shoe to find her. When he goes to her house, she is hidden by her stepmother and stepsisters. They try on the shoe first but it did not fit them. He then almost gives up, but then learns of Cinderella. She tries the shoe and it fits her. They then get married and live happily ever after. The end. Pretty cheesy right? Most of Disney’s fairytales are cheesy.
Shockingly, that wasn’t what really happened in the story. In the real Cinderella story by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Cinderella loses her real mother and grows up with her father and stepmother and two stepsisters. They abuse her and use her. In the story, the authors state” They took her beautiful clothes away from her, dressed her in an old gray smock, and gave her wooden shoes. "Just look at the proud princess! How decked out she is!" they shouted and laughed as they led her into the kitchen.There she had to do hard work from morning until evening, get up before daybreak, carry water, make the fires, cook, and wash. Besides this, the sisters did everything imaginable to hurt her. They made fun of her, scattered peas and lentils into the ashes for her, so that she had to sit and pick them out again. In the evening when she had worked herself weary, there was no bed for her. Instead she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes. And because she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella”(Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm). Her life was pretty miserable. One day they get invited to the festival for the prince to chose his bride which lasts three days, but Cinderella is not allowed to go because she is dirty and would disgrace the family. Instead she has to do chores but her pigeon friends help her.They also help her to get a nice dress and shoe. On the first day at the festival, she is the most beautiful woman present and the prince falls for her. She leaves but meets him again on the second day, in which she wears an even more beautiful dress. Similar to the day before, she escapes. On the third day, the prince sets a trap to catch her but it doesn’t work. Instead he gets her shoe of pure gold. He uses this shoe to find her. When he gets to her home, the stepmother makes her daughters try on the shoe but it didn’t fit. In the story, the authors state “ She could not get her big toe into it, for the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, "Cut off your toe. When you are queen you will no longer have to go on foot."The girl cut off her toe, forced her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the prince. He took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her.”( Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm). She made them cut their toes and heels to fit the shoe. However the prince noticed when the pigeons told him so he returned them home. He then meets Cinderella and the shoe fits her. They end up getting married and the stepsisters become blind after the pigeons peck their eyes out as punishment.
Although the two versions are similar, they are also very different. Disney’s version is very trimmed. They cut out many key parts. They took out the part when the step sisters became blind because it did not fit with the image they wanted. It was violent and ruined the “happy ever after” version so they eliminated it and fed people what they thought was good. Because of Disney channel, children do not learn about the harshness of life. Instead, they learn that life is easy and everyone is happy. Growing up with this mindset, many of these children suffer when they are no longer shielded. They end up having a difficult time accepting that the world is not a happy place and that you actually have to work to succeed in life. Bhagwandin A Word count: 1102 words
