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chocolatepotI was initially reluctant to watch The Boys because the ads I saw and the pre-release articles I read made it clear that it was a hyperviolent superhero-deconstruction that would probably be unthinkingly sexist, because the attention was on the power differential between powered and non-powered men and would forget that women figure into equations about power differentials too. And yeah, it is that. (This is post-Watchmen, I think - the original comic it's based on, I mean - and you can really feel the fingerprints.)
It starts off with the everyman hero's fiancée dying in front of him as a result of a superhero not looking where he was going, which is ... bad. They could have changed his motivation to, say, a friend dying, or made the character female and had her fiancé die (or change only one character's gender and make them a gay or bi couple, although then you run into the "Kill Your Gays" issue). In 2019, everyone should be well aware that killing off the barely-characterized female love interest to send a "normal guy" into deep waters is A Bad Thing.
Said everyman hero joins up with a group of men who want revenge on the superheroes: Billy Butcher, a cockney who uses the c-word all the time; Frenchy, a French guy; Mother's Milk, a black man who works with kids in a juvenile detention center. (Because only guys are tough.) While doing some fighting I don't fully remember the point of, Frenchy rescues a young Asian woman (Kimiko) being held captive by some dudes. When released, she starts mindlessly kicking ass like River Tam after she watches the Fruity Oaty Bar ad, because of course she does. The others want Frenchy to get rid of her, but he's firm about protecting and helping her. On one level, this is terrible because she's infantilized and never speaks and despite her skills is just a damsel in distress and a plot object for several episodes. On another, this is really not the behavior I'd expect from a dude in a hyperviolent gritty superhero-deconstruction story, and it makes Frenchy a good person in a way that hardly anybody gets to be in these stories. I would have really liked them to genderbend a few of these characters, but Frenchy works better as a man to avoid the "nurturing female" thing we'd get if he'd been a woman. Anyway, Billy is the one who should have been genderbent and played by Lea Delaria, right? Right? God, that would have been so perfect.
The main superhero team is called The Seven: at the beginning of the show, it's made up of Homelander (the blond guy literally wrapped in the American flag, aesthetically Captain America but with Superman's powers), Queen Maeve (a kind of Amazon lady, probably based on Wonder Woman), Translucent (power of invisibility), The Deep (Aquaman), A-Train (the Flash, and the one who killed Hughie's GF), and Black Noir (???? - complete cipher, which is The Joke). Very soon Starlight is added: a beautiful young woman who fights people with light - kind of like Dazzler but she's actually quite powerful, possibly more so than most of the 7. On her first day, she's forced to give The Deep oral sex when he tells her he'll get her fired if she doesn't, and afterward Maeve callously tells her not to let the men see her cry. They're managed by Madelyn, basically the CEO of the superhero corporation. The are constantly concerned with polling, stock points, optics, etc. - it's a trenchant critique of celebrity and corporate culture.
Unfortunately, while it puts a lot of effort into that critique, there's very little attention paid to the specific way that sexism interacts with it. Yes, there is the #MeToo thing for Starlight and The Deep, and the part where Madelyn has Starlight's costume redesigned to be sexy and the following scene where men in a crowd waiting for autographs shout "show us your tits!" at her ... but in comparison to the many, many moments of "look at these gross corporate assholes who don't care about anything but their image" it's nothing. Madelyn is female, the assistant who's involved with managing the 7 directly is female, the costume designer who makes the sexy costume is female - we effectively get more of a critique of how capitalism makes women not support other women than we do how capitalism gives men power over women. (It also reminds me a lot of Westworld's issue of pretending it's about genderless "human nature" when it's about toxic masculinity.) And I should also note that it doesn't even try to talk about how racism factors in: there's one black superhero (A-Train) who's never shown as being at any disadvantage relative to any white superhero, and who has a drug issue to boot. (There's a serum, Compound V, that boosts/gives superpowers.) Nothing about how respectability politics factor in, or that white audiences "can't relate" to him so his poll numbers are always low. In the second-to-last episode, he gets stopped security at a store when out of costume, but that's too little and too late. Kimiko is played very well by the actress, but do I even need to detail why everything about her character plays into old and bad racist clichés?
Another strand at play is that the original comic is from the '00s, and there is a big critique of post-9/11 jingoism. Homelander and Queen Maeve board a plane in flight to fight off the terrorists hijacking it, but in the process the pilot gets killed and the controls destroyed. Maeve wants to do something to save at least some of them, but Homelander convinces her to just go and report that they didn't get there in time. This is a turning point for Maeve in her loyalty to the team - and soon after we learn that she's a closeted lesbian/bi woman, which all comes together to make her really interesting. But in the aftermath, there's a lot of 9/11-style theatrics which just feel dated now.
Haley Joel Osment has a cameo as a superhero who'd been popular as a kid on tv ca. 2000, which was pretty good. The main guy is played by Jack Quaid, ie Marvel from THG, who had an intense fan following for unclear reasons. Simon Pegg also cameos as his dad. Erin Moriarty is Starlight and she's so beautiful. *_* Elizabeth Shue is Madelyn and she reminds me a ton of Alicia Silverstone. Whoever plays Billy's wife is also gorgeous. Just putting some important info out there.
The tl;dr is that it's sexist and racist, but mostly by omission. There are some horrifyingly bloody scenes but there's a lot more talking than violence.
I also watched the new season of GLOW, but I don't have much to say about it because I just loved it to bits. Maybe tomorrow.
It starts off with the everyman hero's fiancée dying in front of him as a result of a superhero not looking where he was going, which is ... bad. They could have changed his motivation to, say, a friend dying, or made the character female and had her fiancé die (or change only one character's gender and make them a gay or bi couple, although then you run into the "Kill Your Gays" issue). In 2019, everyone should be well aware that killing off the barely-characterized female love interest to send a "normal guy" into deep waters is A Bad Thing.
Said everyman hero joins up with a group of men who want revenge on the superheroes: Billy Butcher, a cockney who uses the c-word all the time; Frenchy, a French guy; Mother's Milk, a black man who works with kids in a juvenile detention center. (Because only guys are tough.) While doing some fighting I don't fully remember the point of, Frenchy rescues a young Asian woman (Kimiko) being held captive by some dudes. When released, she starts mindlessly kicking ass like River Tam after she watches the Fruity Oaty Bar ad, because of course she does. The others want Frenchy to get rid of her, but he's firm about protecting and helping her. On one level, this is terrible because she's infantilized and never speaks and despite her skills is just a damsel in distress and a plot object for several episodes. On another, this is really not the behavior I'd expect from a dude in a hyperviolent gritty superhero-deconstruction story, and it makes Frenchy a good person in a way that hardly anybody gets to be in these stories. I would have really liked them to genderbend a few of these characters, but Frenchy works better as a man to avoid the "nurturing female" thing we'd get if he'd been a woman. Anyway, Billy is the one who should have been genderbent and played by Lea Delaria, right? Right? God, that would have been so perfect.
The main superhero team is called The Seven: at the beginning of the show, it's made up of Homelander (the blond guy literally wrapped in the American flag, aesthetically Captain America but with Superman's powers), Queen Maeve (a kind of Amazon lady, probably based on Wonder Woman), Translucent (power of invisibility), The Deep (Aquaman), A-Train (the Flash, and the one who killed Hughie's GF), and Black Noir (???? - complete cipher, which is The Joke). Very soon Starlight is added: a beautiful young woman who fights people with light - kind of like Dazzler but she's actually quite powerful, possibly more so than most of the 7. On her first day, she's forced to give The Deep oral sex when he tells her he'll get her fired if she doesn't, and afterward Maeve callously tells her not to let the men see her cry. They're managed by Madelyn, basically the CEO of the superhero corporation. The are constantly concerned with polling, stock points, optics, etc. - it's a trenchant critique of celebrity and corporate culture.
Unfortunately, while it puts a lot of effort into that critique, there's very little attention paid to the specific way that sexism interacts with it. Yes, there is the #MeToo thing for Starlight and The Deep, and the part where Madelyn has Starlight's costume redesigned to be sexy and the following scene where men in a crowd waiting for autographs shout "show us your tits!" at her ... but in comparison to the many, many moments of "look at these gross corporate assholes who don't care about anything but their image" it's nothing. Madelyn is female, the assistant who's involved with managing the 7 directly is female, the costume designer who makes the sexy costume is female - we effectively get more of a critique of how capitalism makes women not support other women than we do how capitalism gives men power over women. (It also reminds me a lot of Westworld's issue of pretending it's about genderless "human nature" when it's about toxic masculinity.) And I should also note that it doesn't even try to talk about how racism factors in: there's one black superhero (A-Train) who's never shown as being at any disadvantage relative to any white superhero, and who has a drug issue to boot. (There's a serum, Compound V, that boosts/gives superpowers.) Nothing about how respectability politics factor in, or that white audiences "can't relate" to him so his poll numbers are always low. In the second-to-last episode, he gets stopped security at a store when out of costume, but that's too little and too late. Kimiko is played very well by the actress, but do I even need to detail why everything about her character plays into old and bad racist clichés?
Another strand at play is that the original comic is from the '00s, and there is a big critique of post-9/11 jingoism. Homelander and Queen Maeve board a plane in flight to fight off the terrorists hijacking it, but in the process the pilot gets killed and the controls destroyed. Maeve wants to do something to save at least some of them, but Homelander convinces her to just go and report that they didn't get there in time. This is a turning point for Maeve in her loyalty to the team - and soon after we learn that she's a closeted lesbian/bi woman, which all comes together to make her really interesting. But in the aftermath, there's a lot of 9/11-style theatrics which just feel dated now.
Haley Joel Osment has a cameo as a superhero who'd been popular as a kid on tv ca. 2000, which was pretty good. The main guy is played by Jack Quaid, ie Marvel from THG, who had an intense fan following for unclear reasons. Simon Pegg also cameos as his dad. Erin Moriarty is Starlight and she's so beautiful. *_* Elizabeth Shue is Madelyn and she reminds me a ton of Alicia Silverstone. Whoever plays Billy's wife is also gorgeous. Just putting some important info out there.
The tl;dr is that it's sexist and racist, but mostly by omission. There are some horrifyingly bloody scenes but there's a lot more talking than violence.
I also watched the new season of GLOW, but I don't have much to say about it because I just loved it to bits. Maybe tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-12 04:12 pm (UTC)Other reviewers have complained about the anti-christian content, which I think is them projecting, personally, but you are the first person to talk about Queen Maeve.
I agree that A-Train is "a black dude with a drug problem who runs fast", and why couldn't Maeve be a WOC, or A-Train be white? Again, I haven't read the graphic novel and don't know how book-accurate they are but other reviewers have not
neckbeardedcomplained that (XYZ) has changed.In my mind, the show is "realistic" in that suits don't fucking care, they just want their profits, humanity be damned. To "succeed" women have to be uncaring and "masculine" while simultaneously being sexed out, wealthy white men can do what the hell they want, an the press cannot be trusted. We have seen first-hand how privilege begets abuse of power, and imagine how much worse it could be if our current "elite" could fly/shoot lasers/kick ass.
I liked the show, and look forward to season 2. Of course YMMV.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-14 12:06 am (UTC)Other reviewers have complained about the anti-christian content, which I think is them projecting, personally
ashdjkasdjkl I thought that was a great critique of American evangelism, tbh. Although it's also part of the post-9/11 stuff that felt a bit time-capsuley, though it's not like that's gone away from our culture ... if there hadn't been the plane crash I might not connect it that way.
but you are the first person to talk about Queen Maeve.
Tbh again, I suspect she'd get more attention as a male character. It feels like we're conditioned to see male characters who do bad things as in need of a narratively-interesting redemption arc while female characters are just accepted as being good once they decide they're done with whatever was standing in the way of that, and on the whole we get a lot more male characters who are like candy to fandom by being pulled into something bad and getting hardened by life and then turning away from it. Maybe that's a bit cynical of me. I identify with Starlight because I always identify with the Good Girl, but Maeve is so interesting.
I agree that A-Train is "a black dude with a drug problem who runs fast", and why couldn't Maeve be a WOC, or A-Train be white?
Definitely! I feel like half the problem here is that Garth Ennis or the people in charge of the adaptation did a kind of "what's the minimum amount of characters who can be something other than white men?" which is what often leads to problems - when there's only a handful of them, or none of them are just innocuous. (And yeah, I haven't heard a big outcry from the Ennis fanboys, so I assume the casting is basically the same as the comic.)
I'm looking forward to S2, really. I'm a sucker for "what happens next, and how did what just happened change everything?" I've just got to know.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-14 01:31 am (UTC)If Maeve was male, she would ZOMG HAVE TEH GAYZORS and her character would have a totally different arc. It's ok if women are lesbians, as long as they are hot (eyeroll).