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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Heh, sorry for removing the part you were talking about in that paragraph.
I'll look at it this way: He prefers writing stories about male relationships, and there's nothing really wrong with that, but he should try getting out of his comfort zone. I just don't attribute it to any personal malice on his part.
edited 22nd Jul '15 2:09:47 AM by edvedd
Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau ProjectNeither do I, that's what I meant by casual.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Personally, for it to be misogynistic I think there would need to be some sort of active loathing on the part of the misogynist. Not apathy or laziness or refusal/unwillingness to engage but active insults and deliberate minimization of a female role. Which I don't really think can be said of Edgar Wright, he's never come up with any statements to suggest he thinks poorly of women as a gender.
HOWEVER... apathy and his proven total lack of providing any serious female roles in any films he's had personal control of is certainly problematic and not to be lauded. Spaced had Daisy, mostly because Jessica Hynes was co-writer I can't help thinking. Anything else he's done has had minimal female presence of any kind and it's not to his credit frankly.
Hope's role was far from ideal even in the version we got - yes Hank was portrayed as being stubborn/wrong to keep her out of it because of his own issues... but he did it anyway. What with Cross always inviting Hank back to the lab to gloat about new developments even her role as the mole/Pym Tech insider wasn't that important in the end. Her only real contributions were to punch Scott in the face and later on kiss him. But the stinger does give me hope (no pun intended) she will get something do in later films, eventually.
edited 22nd Jul '15 2:34:16 AM by jakobitis
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Yeah I've got no issue with calling it "subtle", "subdued", or even "accidental" misogyny (the last of one probably being the most accurate). But I don't think Wright holds any actual negative attitudes towards women. If anything he seems to avoid giving his protagonists the kind of nasty fratboy attitudes that typify what I consider actual casual misogyny.
Yeah I kind of feel similarly about the use of "misogynistic" and other similarly charged words like "racist" or "homophobic". Though I'd also extend that definition to also include subconscious belief in women's inferiority or that negative stereotypes are true. You can be problematic without actually having a negative opinion of X group either consciously or unconsciously.
edited 22nd Jul '15 2:43:18 AM by AlleyOop
My own perspective is that poor treatment of female CHARACTERS (I know nothing of how he treats real females in day to day life) doesn't make Wright misogynistic. Yes, it's highly problematic and I would go so far as to say damaging, and even wrong. He really does need to either change his attitude or at the very least try and get a co-writer who if not female can at least write active, sympathetic female characters, which men CAN do and have done.
But you compare Wright to someone like Hitchcock (as great an artist as he was) and he's not remotely misogynistic or anti-female. He just doesn't bother to try and give them equality instead of actively repressing them. It's bad, but NOT what I call misogynistic. Non-white leads (heck, characters) don't feature at all in Wright films, doesn't make him racist. He's a white dude who probably doesn't realise/appreciate just what an elevated position that is compared to some.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Are we seriously arguing semantics? I think we can agree that for a movie which has a couple of compelling female characters, Wright wouldn't be first pick for writer or director. (Which brings me back to my opinion that if we want more diversity in the media, we need more diversity in the people being responsible for it).
That's probably fair. On the other hand, Marvel run a very tight ship and keep a considerable degree of executive control, so no matter who the director is there will be an element of standardization. They've branched out a little (heist movies! Space opera!) yet even so those films have followed the same basic formula.
A writer with something particularly personal to say about race or gender is still going to run into that buffer no matter who they are. If they do as Wright did and quit in protest then we're not going to see all that much more diversity in the long run. If they don't, we could (theoretically) have a Black Panther who is another generic protagonist whose race is basically secondary instead of actually being meaningful in any way.
And saying 'this hero is a POC, this one is female, job done, list ticked off' isn't really that progressive, to me. It's just an effort to shut up some critics a bit rather than any actual care.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
For whatever reason Wright quit, it was certainly not because of diversity or representation issues. I have the feeling that Wasp is better off without him in the project.
In the end it depends on what Marvel wants. Apparently they listen and they now want more diversity. So they will look for writers and directors which can deliver.
Oh I am not saying Wright quit over diversity issues, simply that a writer who has a particularly personal perspective on diversity may or may not end up running into the problem of a controlling studio that doesn't want personal perspective and meaningful messages, they want by-the-numbers, proven-formula, popcorn flicks. Which is their right, because it sells and sells well, which is the only thing that they actually NEED to worry about.
Hopefully you are correct and we'll see some more genuine diversity and variation, provided by directors and creators with the vision and integrity to pull it off well. It's just that to me (a white British dude for disclosure) a character like Black Panther, his race is absolutely integral to who he is and it should shape the film appropriately. The colour of his skin is not an incidental detail like it is to the (MCU version) Falcon even. It shapes his identity and his role and I want to see his film show that.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."![]()
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Unfortunately that seems to have been the issue with Duvernay's negotiations. She wanted the freedom to use it as a vehicle for meaningful racial commentary, while Marvel was more interested in telling a good story, probably at the expense of its ability to make a message. The specifics are more ambiguous on exactly what she wanted with that freedom (one rumor is she wanted to create a new origin story from him that didn't match with the comics canon, which if that's the case I can kind of see why Marvel would balk).
edited 22nd Jul '15 4:15:41 AM by AlleyOop
And Marvel is absolutely right. One should confuse picking directors which are able to tell a meaningful message within the MCU with picking directors which will use the MCU as a vehicle for their own personal message. No matter what, the Comic book characters have to come first. Not that all changes are necessarily bad. But let's imagine that Ava wanted to portray Wakanda as a nation which has struggled because of white interference for ages, making a point by showing the poverty in the country...well, then she might have the idea for a movie which is worth to be made, but it has nothing to do with Black Panther. If they do Wakanda, they have to portray it as a reasonable powerful nation, because that's what it is in the comics. It's not South Africa, it's Dubai. It's a comparable small nation which is able to keep a tight grip over its own resources.
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I have something of a problem if the one black African country that gets depicted in a comic blockbuster also happens to have been miraculously spared from all kinds of colonialism. Especially if the solution that was found not to be colonized was to hide somehow. And if your main natural resource comes from mining.
It's like all the advantages of real-life African countries while purposefully ignoring all the issues they faced over history. If the point was to completely change the history of the world, then a wealthy, independent African country with a clean history would work (such as what is depicted in the Temeraire book series). But I don't think the MCU is an Uchronia. If you ignore a major history such as the colonization, you look like you rewrote history to remove the bad from it.
Yinsen was displaced from Vietnam to the Middle East to make Stark's history feel more actual, so they can very well do the same with Wakanda. And still have it be tremendously entertaining.
edited 22nd Jul '15 5:00:41 AM by Julep
That wasn't quite what I meant, but that's naturally an aspect too. Storytelling should come first.
But what I actually meant...well, I am kind of tired of the complains that a Marvel movie is a Marvel movie. That's like complaining that a Pixar movie is more geared towards adults than children (most of them are, they are enjoyable for all but address more the adults while also been accessible for children) or that a Disney Fairy Tale movie has some sort of Princess (that's why I watch them). There is a certain level of expectation in the audience when they see the brand. That's why Disney has the Touchstone label and that's why a Marvel can experiment in the MCU, but they can't suddenly throw a political movie into it while disregarding the comic book element.
In the MCU, the comic book always has to come first. And they should pick directors who understand that.
So, I have thought a little bit about Wakanda...and to be honest, I don't see a problem there. You can very well make the point that western interference screwed up Africa by showing that it could have prospered if they had been allowed to develop on their own. And you can make an additional point about the Us interfering with in foreign states in order to get access to their resources, even if that's more an issue of the middle east.
Yeah, but respecting the source material while acknowledging that its message may be a bit clumsy are not mutually exclusive.
Imagine if Spielberg's Tintin movie, also adapted from a comic book, was Tintin in Congo, which may be one of the most blatantly racist stories ever written. And that he kept all the racist depictions of African people because "I am faithful to the source material". Everyone would have hated the movie.
No, that is definitely not more of an issue of the Middle East. It has plagued Africa for decades or centuries, and keeps doing so as of today.
Trying to positively picture an African country is a good idea, but the writers will have to be more than extra-careful because any mistake will make them look like negationnists. If you care about the message first, then usually, you thought that out first and know where you are going, it may make the whole writing easier.
edited 22nd Jul '15 5:25:58 AM by Julep
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I wasn't aware that Africa is rich on oil.....
And that's totally easy to handle. Character XY tries to convince Black Panther to open the border. He answers: "We have prospered because we don't allow interference on our soil. Look how much poverty it brought to our neighbours. Your help has destroyed their way of life, their farmers are not able to survive because you float the market with cheaper products, and then you turn up and treat them like beggars." Point made, problem solved.
I wouldn't say "above", I would say "first". As in, the first thing they should think about is "how do we depict Wakanda without angelism/negationnism/racism/paternalism/..." Once that is done, the message will be defined, but then you still are free to write whatever story you want. It may or may not enforce the message, but if the message is already here in the lore of the movie, there is less of a need to have it heavily impact the movie.
I think Wakanda is in more danger of being shown as a Mary Suetopia (which HAS happened before) than negationism. Klaw/Klaue's character itself has heavy colonialist undertones, or at least that's how I always viewed him in his "pith helmet safari" style outfit.
Yeah, that is kind of my fear, too. Which is why I hope that they also address the dangers in isolating a society.
Though I admit, I also envision scenes in which someone complains "Those people of Wakanda are dicks because they arrogantly deny us this or that." and someone goes "We deny something similar to "insert random nation", too. Guess we get a taste of our own dickishness".

Simon Pegg's not done much on his own, but given that he's openly attributed Wright with the issue and Wright continues to have this issue left to his own devices, I feel comfortable laying the blame at his feet. Pegg may be complicit, but he's an actor first and foremost, and one working with a close personal friend much of the time. I've done student films, I know what a weird position that is.
edited 22nd Jul '15 2:06:54 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.