The MCU has a Woman Problem

maybe this is the time to address the final solution to the women question none of this is news to you I'm sure my sweet sweet sexy viewer but we've now had several years and several successive MCU installments that collectively amount to a pivot toward the vagina possessed half of the population and to paraphrase H Christian Anderson Where words fail money speaks it has been a complete unmitigated disaster people have on occasion attempted to defend this film on the grounds that the cast were not allowed to promote it this seems to me to be cope the cast were fully available to promote Ant-Man 3 and that film was the mcu's biggest bomb until the Marvels came along of course but those interviews that have taken place since the strike's end only further disprove the idea that cast interviews might have helped in any significant way because we've reached the point of infinite self-referential excuse making when it comes to failing Marvel films no sooner is the strike lifted than camer and Rambo pop up on The View for example and the fact I don't need to tell you what the focus of that interview was is proof that such interviews mean little to a general audience you already know what they're going to be talking about women diversity natural black hairstyles Etc ad nauseum please don't play the clip from The View please don't play The View please don't play The View oh [ __ ] it's the view what do her super sou the Marvels is the number one movie in America and is the latest chapter in the Marvel Universe that's putting female superheroes and super fans in the leag Iman we know how important representation is and you and your character are both Pakistani Muslims what does it mean to you to represent your culture on such a huge platform I mean it's honestly like for me representation wasn't even something that I thought I wanted or needed or needed more of it's good keep going so only until I realized how big of a deal it was when when I read the Miss Marvel Comics and I was like oh my God this comic book is holding mirror in front of me it was I I felt seen in on a whole other level like down to my core and you know like Marvel Universe like these these movies play all over the world it only makes sense they represent people from all over the world they've got like aliens and green people and talking trees like yeah how farfetched are brown people you know oh you made it so far and then you just Tiana you've said that you made a point to wear your natural hair which I love that you do that um as much as ible for your roles throughout your career including in the Marvels now why has that been important for you to do because no nobody cares so this is one of the first interviews the cast were able to do to promote the film but what in that excruciating segment actually counts as promoting the film if you hadn't already seen it and if you hadn't already watched this review what would you now know about the film that you didn't already know because I'm struggling to name a single detail and of those details that were mentioned how many of them are what you might call customer facing how much of the preceding falls under the category why you audience should see this film that I am in the answer is of course next to nothing because the diversity racket isn't about the customer except in so far as it is about soding the customer it is first and foremost about self-aggrandisement when actors come out and preach the importance of diversity and inclusion the reference point is almost invariably themselves I felt it was important that I was seen it's really great that people like me have a character played by me that they can relate to I choose to wear my natural hair because I think it's really important to people like me actors as is by now well established are not normal human beings the original name for actors in ancient Greece was Hypocrites which is apt since it is the root of the modern word hypocrite but it's not quite what I'm getting at actors are not normal human beings actors are highly narcissistic types who believe that they are much more important than they are genuine diverse and inclusion on the screen which is to say a story showing varied peoples in a varied world is no bad thing at all the bigger your world the more it can help but diversity and inclusion as a movement and a slogan is a fundamentally different proposition because it has nothing to do with representing reality and everything to do with projection the actor does not want to uplift others the actor wants to be uplifted there are Sinister in calculating forces at the level of corporate finance and the broader economy that smiles on De I narratives but on the level of the individual and particularly on the level of the actor there really isn't a strong ideological or thought out political position being pushed actors wish to represent because it inflates their ego and their sense of their own importance all brown people can finally see themselves in me is the subtext of Iman villani's comments In that clip from The View entirely admitting that plenty of brown people enjoyed the MCU in the decades before Iman valani was on the scene and for reasons that have nothing to do with color and even less to do with a culture that vian's character M Marvel doesn't even begin to explore the share of the population that nods and claps when an actor preaches diversity and inclusion of this type is vanishingly small these are the people who were never fans of the franchise and never invested in the story plenty of them would have seen the earlier Marvel films as the most casual of casual viewers and not found their experience altered much either way by the composition of the cast because that was never really the point the masses who did see the film and who were invested in the MCU were invested in the various films Timeless and Universal things the quality of story and of character which transcends arbitrary and uninteresting categories of race and of sex the early films had something to say had a narrative to weave they were works of drama defined by their invitation to forget the real world and inhabit the fictional one for a time nobody really cared what Robert Downey Jr might have to say about veganism or climate change or Donald Trump no sane person held Wonder maxim of up as an idol reflecting real world ideals and aspirations because that was not the point of those characters or their stories the suspension of disbelief entails the subjugation of your real world awareness by Art itself you are not a Republican or a Democrat or a communist or a Libertarian sitting in your seat looking for a Marvel character to preach your message at you you are invested in the film on the screen in just the same way as anybody sitting next to you whether they are a republican a Democrat a communist or a Libertarian we've now had several years in which the studios and their mouthpiece actors have been allowed to experiment with a precise opposite approach and the results are not surprising when you sacrifice immersion and drama itself to make political pictures tiny sections of the population you have done away with your film's Universal appeal and alienated the vast majority of people who see art as the most valuable means of escapism the MCU had attained a vast audience of all Races colors and Creeds via precisely this Universalist storytelling approach which makes it perhaps the most useful case study anyone could wish for When comparing the results of artistic and propagandistic appeals they developed one of the largest and most diverse loyal audiences in cinematic history via the artistic approach they switched to the propagandistic approach and they lost their audience even those groups who are supposedly the targets of this new propagandistic style are less inclined to see a new Marvel film than they were before being targeted specifically Millions more women and millions more black people would have watched and enjoyed Iron Man than will ever watch or enjoy the Marvels yet nobody sat around in 2008 extolling Iron Man's Dei credentials the vast majority of the audience knows when they are being being patronized and rejects identitarian appeals for loyalty give them a story and they will come tell them that it's just really great that someone who looks like them is on the screen well they might at best shrug though I have to say I think a fairly healthy skepticism is now abroad when it comes to Modern Hollywood marketing increasing numbers of people have progressed from being merely indifferent to these shallow propagandistic tricks to becoming actively skeptical and even hostile to them you have described this as an all female sci-fi extravaganza extravagan you've got it right Lindsay what would you tell people that they can expect I would say you can expect a really different flavor of Marvel movie this is an all female empowerment Story please stop um and I think it's really rare to see all female Heroes and a female antagonist at the same time well very good reason for that coach there's all these different fantastic dynamics that are at play um which I just don't think people have seen before Oh my God God she's still going you talk about the all female cast also a female director black woman who's directing Nia aasta we've made her St yeah shut up shut up shut up I'm so glad you brought that up Lindsay because for me Nia was kind of the beacon the reason for me doing the film in every single way she is the youngest woman she is the first black woman will you please shut up I wager that crosses all identitarian divides I'm pretty much gay I'd love to see a well-written gay character in a big franchise with a brilliant story who complet completely fits this universe but the minute someone tries to tell me that that film is going to be really good because it's representing the big gay yep I'm almost certain that film is going to be a complete [ __ ] sludge because identity and representation don't matter at all unless the thing you're represented in is good we are probably quite a long way off an explicit appeal of that sort to the big gay anyway because the Fatal conceit amongst those Progressive types who pitch identity and inclusion is that most of the groups they claim to speak for really don't like each other good luck getting black people to endorse gay Miles Morales good luck getting Muslims to back a gay um well a gay anything frankly the two demographics large enough for holwood to consider safe are women and black people or what I think we still euphemistically call the Urban Market he Marvels attempts particular appeals to both women and the Urban Market as indeed does the broader MCU across a number of entries the Falcon in the Winter Soldier aims to represent the Urban Market against evil Whitey politicians Sam Wilson is the Urban Market Captain America and it's about damn time we we got that representation said maybe five or six middleclass white people who really liked the Vulcan and the Winter Soldier but appeals to women have been more common and for much longer even than appeals to the Urban Market in the MCU the term M sheu arose and pisses off all the right people not because it's a right-wing conspiracy but because it's quite a catchy term for a very real and transparent Push by Hollywood generally and by Disney in particular on the face of it you can see why women make up half or more of the global population and yet comic book movies probably do skew towards man so the theory goes a shift toward the vaginal side of the force properly calibrated produces gains that vastly outstrip any potential losses losing even a quarter of your male audience can still make economic sense if you genuinely believe you can exploit the vast untapped potential of women but a problem inevitably arises sacrificing your organic audience in a bid to artificially and deliberately Target a new audience will never work because by definition you are not treating your desired audience with the same honesty care and respect that one new your organic audience men and I must add quite a lot of women as well didn't flock to see Iron Man or Captain America or The Avengers because the studio asked them to none of the mcu's most successful films were supported by ad campaigns extoling the virtues of men or pledging to represent men or preaching the importance of male representation those films were popular because the characters and the stories were well-crafted and they attracted a general audience who wanted to see more there is an arguable exception for the first black panther film since direct and artificial appeals to the Urban Market seem more successful than direct and artificial appeals to women perhaps because there is more that culturally unites the Urban Market than that unites women though the drop off in box office performance between the first black panther and the second black panther film would suggest that even that kind of appeal to the Urban Market as limited durability artificial appeals to women by contrast entirely misunderstand what makes these films popular to begin with they are predicated on the assumption that women will not come unless you ask them to and that asking them to is much more important than giving them a reason to it begins fittingly enough with Captain Marvel herself a financially successful but deeply and deservedly unpopular film decided the MCU needed a god- tier female hero and so it inserted one at the last possible moment causing severe damage to the plot character work and World building the MCU had established over more than a decade but that's that it's fine quite success stol the is is there any competition a sign of things to come by that point the momentum was such that nothing not even Carol danvas could entirely derail Avengers endgame yet her quite literally seen stealing cameos in that film robbed popular and lovingly tended characters of several important payoffs of course it's [ __ ] Carol who saves Tony and nebula whom she's never before met when it could have been Thor or Star-Lord or pretty much any space acquainted member of the cor cast of course it's Carol who takes out thanos's ship and takes on the big fig himself when everything about the Universe cried out for it to be Hulk of course it's Carol who saves Peter and the glove when it could and should have been Tony giving Peter his last glimpse of his mentor in the fullness of his glory it's only because we'd had 10 years of buildup that Carol didn't wreck more of the film than she did but her every scene in that movie counts against the hole takes something away from it aborts the payoff to some creditable piece of setup but those in charge were prepared to risk this damage to the final installment of this generational Enterprise told us a lot about priorities that were already beginning to shift if the plan was as it seems to have been to have Carol danvas emerged to helm the PO Infinity Saga MCU and we can say with some certainty when the current lamentable Trend began and we can say with complete certainty that this was an attempt to elevate real world fashion above the needs of story Captain Marvel was the last film before endgame itself at that time you had the majority of the core cast alive and in place and the script for end game would have been sufficiently Advanced that the creators would have known who would emerge from the final confrontation and who would not meaning in other words that you had a large cast of Legacy characters to take up the mantle and yet at the 11th Hour they introduced [ __ ] Carol this would be like George Lucas running with Lucas's protagonist until the last 20 minutes of Return of the Jedi only then to introduce some bent called Rachel to take on the emperor defeat him and then lead Star Wars into its next iteration the fact Carol in one world and Brie Larson in another turned out to be the fan base's least favorite of all the characters they'd ever seen rather them mucked up the executive plans a fatal mistake was made the public facing response of the idealog is always to blame their enemies because it's much easier to scapegoat than to accept the blame yourself but combine it with the money- seeking motives behind the scenes and the Marvel hierarchy managed to distract themselves twice over well they said we can't continue to run with this woman because people [ __ ] hate her for some reason we might lose some money but that's just because the people who hate Captain Marvel are sexists and they just happened to Focus their ey on her and and yeah maybe Brie Lon being pricker than a porcupine in interviews isn't helping too much so okay maybe it shouldn't be this woman but it must be a woman right guys literally any woman anyone you can think of try enough of them one of them's bound to stick those who bristle when certain YouTubers use terms like MCU are then aiming at the wrong target it's not Gary from nerd rotic who birthed the concept it is Marvel themselves it's not sexism on the part of reactionary commentators it is tokenism on the part of Disney Executives and is evidence then by the very first film of phase 4 Black Widow Natasha Romanov is an incredibly useful character for analyses of this sort because she perfectly demonstrates a number of important points in the first place she was immensely popular during the mcu's greatest run without ever anchoring her own film she became a fan favorite she and Clint Barton together provided a healthy dose of realism proof that mere mortals could hack it in a world of gods with Stakes motives and vulnerabilities that so often prevented the MCU from flying fying up its own superpowered sphincter Natasha Romanov is evidence firstly and most importantly that the same tricks that make male Heroes popular make female Heroes popular as well give them stories characters relationships defined roles and lo and behold the character's popularity Rises with the quality of the writing not in line with the gaining of Jesus status superpowers and other superhuman abilities that we reach the end of phase three lamenting that black widow had never had a film of her own is evidence really that she never needed one the affection in which she was held came from her role in a story we cared about and her role in that story was no more and no less than it needed to be it was understood at the time that no character was more important than the story of which they were a part after Tony Stark Nat Romanov Vis only really with Thor for the emotional impact of her sacrifice and Thor had had three films devoted to him so pound-for-pound Natasha Romanov has a much bigger emotional impact on the events of the infinity Saga we were given a complex compelling and endearing character who could rival her male appears with a mere fraction of their screen time she also benefited from that unique Advantage women have over men most men are catastrophically ugly Scarlett Johansson is not I know men and women who would happily plunder that spider's Lair by contrast I know maybe four people who would willingly [ __ ] Mark Ruffalo and at least three of those are mentally ill one of those is Mark Ruffalo this kind of thing helps all right it's the second reason Black Widow is a useful case study yes she is sex on legs and yes that probably fast trctor in the audience's estimations this is an advantage ladies it is not a disadvantage just as getting Chris Hemsworth's clothes off is seen as an advantage not a disadvantage but for all her natural assets what stands out about Natasha Romanov isn't her looks or isn't just her looks there are plenty of attractive fem fatals in Hollywood there are plenty of Sex Bomb movie Women Who You'd struggle to even name 5 minutes after seeing the film that is not true of nat Romanov what stands out about her then is her character hell her looks were a vital tool of her character they aided her profession but the story made them incidental she is the fourth of the four people I know who would willingly [ __ ] Mark R when she could have gone for and had pretty much anyone at any time because there was depth to her character because she was complex because she was damaged and because her values encompassed something like the full range of human emotion the fundamental irony of feminists and their adjacent who dismissed the mcu's original female cast as gratuitous as being only therefore their sex appeal is that it is they and not the male gay as they decry who look at Black Widow and see only her tits the rest of us really liked her as a character as well but then someone somewhere put two and two together and came up with five not the only time in recent history that Disney accounting has produced a number greater than the sum of its parts allegedly one more women front and center this is a popular Legacy woman well then spank my ass and tickle mlit we're on to a winner let's kick off phase four with a black widow movie but wait sensible people said that's a strange choice she's dead I mean we all loved her but she's definitely absolutely 100% dead that story is finished why would you kick off the post Infinity Saga with a prequel to The Old story what are you trying to achieve here Marvel the answer as is now always the case in Hollywood is that they wanted to hit the right sociopolitical points while putting in the least amount of effort imaginable so rather than begin the Multiverse Saga from the ground up adding a couple of new female characters deserving of the same care and attention as was paid to Tony Stark Steve Rogers Peter Parker and yes Natasha Romanov they instead tried to make Bank off a woman who had already benefited from that treatment and they ended up disgracing her Legacy the Black Widow movie was a comical mess but it completed the foundations Captain Marvel had begun to lay in 2019 a story that didn't need to be told a character who did not need to be there and the only remarkable thing about it besides how cosmically [ __ ] it was was the overt and cliche gender politicking yeah that sure does sound really familiar now doesn't it still at least it gave us Nat smashing her own face into into a desk to get rid of way Winston's overpowering man musk that was very funny well done film again to the MCU point it is not YouTubers like Gary or the Drinker who birthed the concept it wasn't some fobe or is to explain the way the absence of other Avengers In Black Widow by saying how important it was that Nat not have help from any man oh no it was the director of the [ __ ] movie doubtless with the full and complete approval of the studio that hired her we know Tony Stark was originally going to appear in that film writer Eric Pearson confirmed as much telling a comicbook.com podcast I do remember now that one version of the script prior to me literally had written into it the end moment of civil war with Tony and Natasha PE went on to explain that since the footage wouldn't have offered anything new the team ultimately thought it wasn't worth including that's the only time I saw Tony Stark's name in it and he was just kind of a flag planted reminder like Hey we're right at the end of Civil War he said which you know is was already a bit broken since the stakes in the Black Widow movie Evil smelly patriarchal cotney Russian Ray Winston with a giant flying fortress plotting the overthrow of the global order via his army of highly trained and expensive yet disposable girls brainwashed by the power of His scent God I can't believe that was actually a thing anyway you'd think that might demand the presence of other Revengers to help out no it's a pretty big threat to the world and yet no we couldn't have them explaining the absence of recognizable Heroes who'd absolutely be called in to face such a threat the director Kate shortland said at the time initially there was discussions about everything about all the different characters what we decided was and I think Kevin was really great he said she doesn't need the boys we didn't want it to feel like she needs the support we want her to stand alone and she does rarely will you find a more overt confirmation that the needs of story have been subordinated to the needs of real world politics than this folks so a story that didn't need to be told featuring a character who didn't need to be there was deprived of all sense and Reason by the want of Applause from an audience who would never have liked the film anyway well done yeah top work great strategic move Marvel since Black Widow of course pointless women have spread through the MCU like a disease even the Legacy characters have been produced by their gender W maximu had the potential to be a fantastic villain anchoring at least an entire phase of the MCU yet the combination of One Division and Multiverse of Madness established that women are not really allowed to be villains in line with their character or their motive because women are in wonderful magical creatures who can only be motivated to do bad things by the external imposition of patriarch Injustice this despite the fact that some of the greatest characters in cinematic history are themselves villains so by depriving women of the chance to be true villains we are essentially depriving them of the chance to occupy pivotal roles in cinema but no taking a whole town as your mind slaves and torturing them because your sex toy broke oh poor Wonder poor poor Wonder no one will ever know what you sacrificed for them going after the evil book to break the Multiverse because you want to steal the real version of children in Another Universe you magicked into existence in this one and massacring everyone in your quest to do it yeah it's really quite unfair that we think of this as a Bad Thing given it's basically the same as Doctor Strange messing with time to save half the population of the universe that's how this works right still W looks like a brilliant character compared to the various female inserts that have followed her who or what is America Chavez besides female and ethnic who or what is Riri Williams besides being female and ethnic who or what is M Marvel besides being female and ethnic She-Hulk isn't particularly ethnic but my goodness she is most def l a woman you can tell from all the hysterical complaining Monica Rambo shuy Cassie Lang yolina Valkyrie Agatha harness Sylvie Echo Kate Bishop G it was as if a billion dollar franchise side with boredom and was suddenly silenced there are a number of insults being not so tacitly leveled by this approach not the least of which is the insult to normal sane women everywhere the MCU is by far the most profitable film franchise in the history of Cinema Avengers endgame ranks something like third place in the list of alltime highest grossing movies you do not gain in that position if you're not already doing something that appeals to women as well as to men the infinity Saga stood in the best traditions of universal entertainment are comic books a traditionally male medium yeah sure fine did men make up more of the overall MC viewership than women I'm willing to believe that yet I distinctly recall that I went to see the vast majority of older MCU films with my mom my friend his mom boyfriends took girlfriends and vice versa husbands took wives and vice versa fathers took daughters as well as their sons and the proof is in the receipts strive for a universal audience and you've got a good chance of attaining a universal audience strive for a particular Audience by going against all the demands of drama and making very propagandistic appeals to identity-based groups in the real world thereby denying them the chance at escapism and there's a good chance you will Gain No audience at all it has I would say undeniably been the case that the Latter-Day MCU has consciously attempted to shift its target audience for some reason the impression has set in that its incomparable success is due in large part to the wrong composition of audience it is just as undeniable that the conscious attempt to shift has entailed sacrificing story for fashionable female transs and it is absolutely undeniable that the attempted shift has not rejigged the audience composition it has instead nuked the audience as a whole it has to go down as one of the most expensive blunders since the creation of I don't know the the NHS Social Security the military-industrial complex on the alar of fashion Marvel has gone from a multi-billion dollar franchise to one that cannot keep Pace with five nights at [ __ ] Freddy's in a sane world the Marvels would Canadian Healthcare this new Venture it has not worked it has done the precise opposite of Works within 5 years it has turned gold into highly acidic [ __ ] and this being self-evident the Marvel should Mark the end of this Venture but we do not live in a sane world do we because if we did it wouldn't have taken the studio this long to recognize the issue they'd have stopped after Ant-Man 3 or love and thunder or Loki or you know May maybe even Captain [ __ ] Marvel we can of course overstate the point there are bigger and deeper problems than the feminization of the MCU Multiverse of Madness was not a bad film because it adopted feminist Chic it was a bad film because it had no Direction no point and no purpose and it was written by clowns but I'd argue that these are both symptoms of the same underlying cause the MCU lacks a point now nobody involved in it can tell you what they're doing or why they're doing it it has no particular need to exist it has no story to tell and because nobody in charge really gets the point of the thing they're in charge of there is no check on the fish experimentation of those they employ you cannot simultaneously believe that your story and your identity politics are the most important thing in the world the one precludes the other if the MCU still had a story we might still have good female characters the MCU no longer has a story and so we have fashionable gender politics

Channel: LostChord

Views: 364,637

Keywords: The Marvels, The Marvels review, The Marvels critique, The Marvels is Bad, Captain Marvel, Brie Larson, Brie Larson interview, Captain Marvel evil, The Little Platoon, Critical Drinker Marvel, Mauler Marvel, Kree, Skrull, Secret Invasion, Wandavision, MCU, MCU Phase 5, MCU Phase 4, Wanda Maximoff, Scarlet Witch, Multiverse of Madness

Id: E5zepvaa_xI

Length: 26min 51sec (1611 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2023