All the news that is not fit to print....
Apr. 1st, 2017 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. According to Time Magazine, which tends to be reliable, Joss Whedon has signed on to write and direct the Batgirl movie.
Thoughts?
* It shouldn't be much of a creative stretch considering he didBatman Angel the Series. (Which was basically Batman with fangs.) Also Buffy, which the description of Batgirl sort of resembles..."Barbara Gordon is in graduate school, after undergoing experimental surgery for a spinal injury...think Veronica Mars meets Buffy in a hip Brooklyn version of Gotham" -- (hmmm, hipster Brooklyn is basically Williamsburg. (think trendy, crowded, over-priced, with a lot of people who are mid-20s/early 30s, with beards, tattoos, and white.)
* I read some of the "twitter" criticism embedded in the article. Right now "twitter" is where everyone whinges over things. Which is good, because it's rather easy to avoid. I'm on twitter, I just rarely post or pay attention to it. I find it difficult to follow.
The twitter criticism is basically what you would expect:
1. Why can't Whedon do anything original???
2. Why can't they get a woman director???
3. Batgirl??? What about Batwoman???
Anyhow...twitter criticism is valid.
1. * Whedon hasn't done anything original since Cabin in the Woods. Everything he's done has been an adaptation of another's work, based on another's work, or a continuation of his own or another's work. The only original things he's done were Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Doctor Horrible, Cabin in the Woods, and Dollhouse. (Fray and Buffy Comics were a continuation of previous work.) I think it's a tough business, and he may well have pitched original ideas and they just didn't get grabbed. Of the shows he's previously done, the two I'd like to see rebooted with new casts are Firefly and Dollhouse, both had a lot of potential and with some tweaking and rewiring, could turn into fascinating series. I saw a show done recently that reminded me a great deal of Dollhouse, but am spacing the name of it. That said, I can't fault the man for signing on to do Batgirl. I'd have done it. It's an interesting concept, and he's a comic book geek. Seriously, what comic fanboys and fangirls among you, would have turned down that job???
2. * It is odd that they don't have more women writers/directors do these movies. I remember Marti Noxonwhining commenting on how Whedon got all these gigs she craved, writing big action films. (She was basically the Ginger Rodgers in their relationship, doing twice the work, in heels, with very little accolades or recognition. OR future roles afterwards.) She's also right -- Whedon had it easy. He got jobs easy, because of his gender, who his parents were, his connections, and he had a modicum of talent. Is he more talented than she is? No. Is that his fault? No. It is what it is, or as Vonnegut would state...so it goes.
[That said, Shondra Rhimes has outdone Whedon on the television front and she's black, a single mother, and had it harder than both. So...but she doesn't get action films.Very few women directors get action films. Also there is an odd stereotype that women don't love action films or action comics, and they are only interesting to boys. This is not true. Sort of similar to the marketing fallacy that only teen girls loved Buffy -- truth was that the vast majority of Buffy viewers were over the age of 30, and about 50% were men. Straight men. We really have to learn not buy the traditionalist crap we were taught as kids, experience has taught me that it's completely bogus.]
Very few women get the film directing jobs, and in part because Hollywood is an expression of our sexist culture. I work in a heavy male oriented field, and yes, men talk down to women, push them to the side, don't listen, and treat us like children. Women in power often copy the men in this manner -- it was my difficulty with Hillary, to be honest, I found her to be, ironically, more patronizing and condescending than her husband. (And I voted for her.) Talked to a co-worker, who told me that he could not vote for her...it wasn't because she was a woman, it was because she was the wrong woman. (he couldn't trust her, saw her as a phony, and despised her...why he despised her more than the Doofus is beyond me. But it is what it is or so it goes.) See my issue? Is it shouldn't matter that she's a woman. Same with Barack Obama, it should not matter. But in our racist/gender phobic/traditionalist culture it does.
It's odd, but in male-dominated work places, women bosses can often be worse than male bosses in how they condescend to the women beneath them and expect certain things or traditional behavior. (ie. wear jewelry, dye your hair, pluck the eyebrows, have the fancy nail polish, the high heels, the makeup, the dresses...and the designer handbags. Woe to you, if you are female and despise that crap and refuse to waste money on it.) I've noticed it over time...and it boggles my mind. You'd think it would be the opposite, but no. For some reason we've been cultured to see power or handling power -- as well equaling Donald and Ivanka Trump. It's blowing up in our faces, and that's a good thing. It's needs to blow up in our face. Maybe post-Trump, we'll stop going in that direction?
(Hmmm... after writing all that, I saw something that hadn't occurred to me before, the backlash against Marti Noxon in S6-S7 and after in Buffy is reminiscent of the backlash against Hillary post the Bill Clinton presidency and during her election. Actually the fans who bashed Noxon were saying the same things as the people bashing HRC during the election. It's not like we haven't been seeing this on a pop-culture front for the last twenty years.
Interesting that neither Joss Whedon nor Bill Clinton got much flack for decisions they made, but the women standing behind them did. Nor did Ronald Regan, people attacked Nancy not Ronnie Boy. Sad. That's on us, folks and our sick twisted culture, not them. And our media, movies, entertainment, etc is merely a reflection of that. If you actively bashed Marti and Hillary, without looking at and critiquing Whedon and Bill, you shouldn't be all that surprised Trump is president or men get the big directing gigs or jobs, you helped get them there. Your traditionalist views and values led you to the Doofus -- you are paying the cost for your own ingrained prejudices. I find that ironic. And absurdly funny at the same time. We do create our own reality. We create our own mess. This is the world we made, all of us. Whether we want to admit that or not. It's better that we do. Take a hard look at it and ourselves, and think okay, I fucked up. I admit it. Now how can I change my behavior and my views to make the world and my life better?
Anyhow, the reason Whedon got this gig, is partly name-recognition. And...there aren't many female directors that can sell a movie. He also got it because he'd done similar things and brought in the crowds. I don't blame the studio for picking him -- they want a go-to guy, who can get the job done.
It happens in my work place as well, there's two contract specialists, same background, around the same age, one a black man, one a white woman. Who gets the huge prestigious construction projects? The black man. Or, there were two contract specialists, one a woman who had management experience, done a huge number of projects across the board, been at the organization about 18 years, and one a guy who'd been there about 8 years, and had done major projects but nowhere near what she did -- granted she was ill a lot. They gave the Sr Manager job to him and the manager job to her. I understood there were mitigating factors...but, it is an interesting pattern.
Then, jump industries, in the Library Reference Field -- where the majority of the work force is women, the bosses are all men. Same with the teaching field -- headmasters, men. It's rare to have it otherwise. It happens but not often.
So, is it really surprising that a man is slated to direct "Batgirl"? Any more surprising that her title is "Batgirl" and she is seen as a sidekick or subordinate to "Batman"? Just as "Supergirl" is subordinate and sidekick to "Superman"?
I mean come on, did anyone really expect that they would hire a woman to direct a movie about a super-powered woman who is still called a "girl"?
Which leads to...
*3 - "Why a Batgirl not a Batwoman flick?" See above. That's our culture. We're fucked up. Our culture is an expression of us. We don't know how to handle gender differences. We never have. Our culture is sexually repressed and gender phobic. It deals with sex and gender the way a toddler might, with nervous twitters, giggles and fear. So of course the movie is being called "Batgirl".
On the other hand, it would be interesting to see if anyone involved with the film decides to play with that. Whedon being involved with it -- might do that. He did that with Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the title itself is a commentary on how we view gender and the word "girl". He is making fun of our cultural stereotypes and our view of gender, with that title. It's why many media critics and scholars adore the title, and a lot of people steered away from the series because of it. I think Whedon will embrace the Batgirl title in the same way and make fun of the culture that created it.
2. The national news continues to bewilder and amuse me...it's so absurd, I'm not sure we need April Fool's day.
Yesterday's news headlines...
* The Trump White House has massive Legal Problems even by Trump's standards...
Me: Isn't that by anyone's standards? I mean come on...
* The 2017 Republican Party is most uncaring party in history...
Me: Struggling to remember a time when the Republican Party was caring in my lifetime and I'm drawing a blank. They've always been money grubbing fools, it's just more obvious at the moment.
* President Trump got rattled by a reporter and forgot to sign the executive orders...
Me: Hee hee...and this is a problem because?
* Follow the Dead Russian Corpses to the Truth
ME: Well, if they are dead, you'd hope they'd be corpses. And yes, there has been a plague of Russians leaping out of windows lately, what's up with that? Maybe they spent too many hours bing-watching the Americans?
* Trump decided to declare April - National Sexual Harrassment/Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Which is...uhm...a good thing???
I mentioned this to my mother, who clearly bewildered by it, wondered if he was saying that it was okay to be doing these things during April. Because it makes no sense. The man has more sexual assault charges against him than any other political leader in history at the moment, which is sort of saying something...
It's not funny ha ha, but it is ironically amusing. We live in weird times.
Thoughts?
* It shouldn't be much of a creative stretch considering he did
* I read some of the "twitter" criticism embedded in the article. Right now "twitter" is where everyone whinges over things. Which is good, because it's rather easy to avoid. I'm on twitter, I just rarely post or pay attention to it. I find it difficult to follow.
The twitter criticism is basically what you would expect:
1. Why can't Whedon do anything original???
2. Why can't they get a woman director???
3. Batgirl??? What about Batwoman???
Anyhow...twitter criticism is valid.
1. * Whedon hasn't done anything original since Cabin in the Woods. Everything he's done has been an adaptation of another's work, based on another's work, or a continuation of his own or another's work. The only original things he's done were Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Doctor Horrible, Cabin in the Woods, and Dollhouse. (Fray and Buffy Comics were a continuation of previous work.) I think it's a tough business, and he may well have pitched original ideas and they just didn't get grabbed. Of the shows he's previously done, the two I'd like to see rebooted with new casts are Firefly and Dollhouse, both had a lot of potential and with some tweaking and rewiring, could turn into fascinating series. I saw a show done recently that reminded me a great deal of Dollhouse, but am spacing the name of it. That said, I can't fault the man for signing on to do Batgirl. I'd have done it. It's an interesting concept, and he's a comic book geek. Seriously, what comic fanboys and fangirls among you, would have turned down that job???
2. * It is odd that they don't have more women writers/directors do these movies. I remember Marti Noxon
[That said, Shondra Rhimes has outdone Whedon on the television front and she's black, a single mother, and had it harder than both. So...but she doesn't get action films.Very few women directors get action films. Also there is an odd stereotype that women don't love action films or action comics, and they are only interesting to boys. This is not true. Sort of similar to the marketing fallacy that only teen girls loved Buffy -- truth was that the vast majority of Buffy viewers were over the age of 30, and about 50% were men. Straight men. We really have to learn not buy the traditionalist crap we were taught as kids, experience has taught me that it's completely bogus.]
Very few women get the film directing jobs, and in part because Hollywood is an expression of our sexist culture. I work in a heavy male oriented field, and yes, men talk down to women, push them to the side, don't listen, and treat us like children. Women in power often copy the men in this manner -- it was my difficulty with Hillary, to be honest, I found her to be, ironically, more patronizing and condescending than her husband. (And I voted for her.) Talked to a co-worker, who told me that he could not vote for her...it wasn't because she was a woman, it was because she was the wrong woman. (he couldn't trust her, saw her as a phony, and despised her...why he despised her more than the Doofus is beyond me. But it is what it is or so it goes.) See my issue? Is it shouldn't matter that she's a woman. Same with Barack Obama, it should not matter. But in our racist/gender phobic/traditionalist culture it does.
It's odd, but in male-dominated work places, women bosses can often be worse than male bosses in how they condescend to the women beneath them and expect certain things or traditional behavior. (ie. wear jewelry, dye your hair, pluck the eyebrows, have the fancy nail polish, the high heels, the makeup, the dresses...and the designer handbags. Woe to you, if you are female and despise that crap and refuse to waste money on it.) I've noticed it over time...and it boggles my mind. You'd think it would be the opposite, but no. For some reason we've been cultured to see power or handling power -- as well equaling Donald and Ivanka Trump. It's blowing up in our faces, and that's a good thing. It's needs to blow up in our face. Maybe post-Trump, we'll stop going in that direction?
(Hmmm... after writing all that, I saw something that hadn't occurred to me before, the backlash against Marti Noxon in S6-S7 and after in Buffy is reminiscent of the backlash against Hillary post the Bill Clinton presidency and during her election. Actually the fans who bashed Noxon were saying the same things as the people bashing HRC during the election. It's not like we haven't been seeing this on a pop-culture front for the last twenty years.
Interesting that neither Joss Whedon nor Bill Clinton got much flack for decisions they made, but the women standing behind them did. Nor did Ronald Regan, people attacked Nancy not Ronnie Boy. Sad. That's on us, folks and our sick twisted culture, not them. And our media, movies, entertainment, etc is merely a reflection of that. If you actively bashed Marti and Hillary, without looking at and critiquing Whedon and Bill, you shouldn't be all that surprised Trump is president or men get the big directing gigs or jobs, you helped get them there. Your traditionalist views and values led you to the Doofus -- you are paying the cost for your own ingrained prejudices. I find that ironic. And absurdly funny at the same time. We do create our own reality. We create our own mess. This is the world we made, all of us. Whether we want to admit that or not. It's better that we do. Take a hard look at it and ourselves, and think okay, I fucked up. I admit it. Now how can I change my behavior and my views to make the world and my life better?
Anyhow, the reason Whedon got this gig, is partly name-recognition. And...there aren't many female directors that can sell a movie. He also got it because he'd done similar things and brought in the crowds. I don't blame the studio for picking him -- they want a go-to guy, who can get the job done.
It happens in my work place as well, there's two contract specialists, same background, around the same age, one a black man, one a white woman. Who gets the huge prestigious construction projects? The black man. Or, there were two contract specialists, one a woman who had management experience, done a huge number of projects across the board, been at the organization about 18 years, and one a guy who'd been there about 8 years, and had done major projects but nowhere near what she did -- granted she was ill a lot. They gave the Sr Manager job to him and the manager job to her. I understood there were mitigating factors...but, it is an interesting pattern.
Then, jump industries, in the Library Reference Field -- where the majority of the work force is women, the bosses are all men. Same with the teaching field -- headmasters, men. It's rare to have it otherwise. It happens but not often.
So, is it really surprising that a man is slated to direct "Batgirl"? Any more surprising that her title is "Batgirl" and she is seen as a sidekick or subordinate to "Batman"? Just as "Supergirl" is subordinate and sidekick to "Superman"?
I mean come on, did anyone really expect that they would hire a woman to direct a movie about a super-powered woman who is still called a "girl"?
Which leads to...
*3 - "Why a Batgirl not a Batwoman flick?" See above. That's our culture. We're fucked up. Our culture is an expression of us. We don't know how to handle gender differences. We never have. Our culture is sexually repressed and gender phobic. It deals with sex and gender the way a toddler might, with nervous twitters, giggles and fear. So of course the movie is being called "Batgirl".
On the other hand, it would be interesting to see if anyone involved with the film decides to play with that. Whedon being involved with it -- might do that. He did that with Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the title itself is a commentary on how we view gender and the word "girl". He is making fun of our cultural stereotypes and our view of gender, with that title. It's why many media critics and scholars adore the title, and a lot of people steered away from the series because of it. I think Whedon will embrace the Batgirl title in the same way and make fun of the culture that created it.
2. The national news continues to bewilder and amuse me...it's so absurd, I'm not sure we need April Fool's day.
Yesterday's news headlines...
* The Trump White House has massive Legal Problems even by Trump's standards...
Me: Isn't that by anyone's standards? I mean come on...
* The 2017 Republican Party is most uncaring party in history...
Me: Struggling to remember a time when the Republican Party was caring in my lifetime and I'm drawing a blank. They've always been money grubbing fools, it's just more obvious at the moment.
* President Trump got rattled by a reporter and forgot to sign the executive orders...
Me: Hee hee...and this is a problem because?
* Follow the Dead Russian Corpses to the Truth
ME: Well, if they are dead, you'd hope they'd be corpses. And yes, there has been a plague of Russians leaping out of windows lately, what's up with that? Maybe they spent too many hours bing-watching the Americans?
* Trump decided to declare April - National Sexual Harrassment/Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Which is...uhm...a good thing???
I mentioned this to my mother, who clearly bewildered by it, wondered if he was saying that it was okay to be doing these things during April. Because it makes no sense. The man has more sexual assault charges against him than any other political leader in history at the moment, which is sort of saying something...
It's not funny ha ha, but it is ironically amusing. We live in weird times.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 03:56 am (UTC)Heard similar stories about the library field. Publishing as well. And academia in general. My father calls HR the female gutter and advised me to steer clear of it. I'd worked for library reference company, the men ran the place, all the indexers and middle managers were women, all the higher level roles? Men. It was insanely patriarchial and lots of Bullying. (The company is out of business now...sold to EBSC in or around 2010. It was called The HW Wilson Company, you may or may not know it? )
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 06:15 pm (UTC)I do remember Wilson (as well as EBSCO) -- we used their indexes a lot. The sale happened after I left the field and I don't remember hearing about it but I expect a lot of consolidation has happened across the industry.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 09:36 pm (UTC)Batman...has had an interesting film history...and people are split over it. I preferred the Chris Nolan films to the Burton films, mainly because I found Burton a bit too into style and I liked Frank Miller and Tim Sale's takes on Batman.
Burton didn't go dark enough. But I know people online who feel the exact opposite. And disliked how dark Nolan took the films.
Unfortunately Zack Snyder followed Nolan's example and took the films darker, also Snyder has more in common with Burton, in that he's into style over substance or pretty pictures, and less into character development, plotting and story. Great cinematography, but the dialogue and story fall a bit flat.
So we have campy television series, and dark grim films on DC side.
Marvel is a bit more even...or middle ground. Their television series are gritty, but not grim. And their films have a bouncy or sense of humor that DC's lack. Maybe Whedon will bring back some of that humor for DC?
To be fair, Marvel does have more to play with. Their characters are more well-rounded, and a bit newer. Not as overdone.
We haven't seen fifteen different versions of Captain America and Iron Man, like we have Superman and Batman. The audience is less familiar with Marvel's heroes, they are less iconic in our culture, and that in some respects gives Marvel a bit more room to play with them. We have no expectations in regards to Captain Marvel, while we do with Wonder Woman.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 10:23 pm (UTC)To be fair, Marvel does have more to play with. Their characters are more well-rounded, and a bit newer. Not as overdone. We haven't seen fifteen different versions of Captain America and Iron Man, like we have Superman and Batman.
I think there's something to that, although Spiderman and The Hulk were fairly well known characters if only from TV rather than movies. And we are now seeing the 3rd iteration of each. But one thing that I think served Marvel well is that Sony's debut with Spiderman and Marvel's own with Iron Man utilized some of the most humorous and light hearted of their heroes. Not that Tony Stark isn't a complicated character, but both he and Peter Parker are smart asses and that makes the movies more accessible without having to go all the way into Deadpool territory.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 11:17 pm (UTC)LOL! What you don't know is your talking to the person who was responsible for getting the rights to the journal/magazine content for those Wilson indexes. Why couldn't we get it? We couldn't afford it. After the Napstar case, journals, magazines, and newspapers were afraid of licensing content and would only do it for a high royalty amount or a hefty sum. EBSCO could afford it. I felt like a used car salesman negotiating those agreements. I did manage to land the Time Warner publications. Also quite a few periodicals. And I wrote the contract in such a manner that Wilson kept rights to all content that was scanned into their system, so that when EBSCO bought Wilson any agreement that was written or signed by me, they could keep the content. If it wasn't, the rights to the scanned ASCII text reverted back to the journal publishers. I worked as the Manager of Rights and Permissions, specifically content licensing, from 1996-2002. It was an impossible job. I remember discussing the royalty formula with The Economist, who basically said, wait, we'd only get about $500 a year if that. I got them to agree by pushing the library angle, how libraries still buy the print, but the content was needed for searches and smaller libraries who may never buy it. Also it exposed them to a broader audience.
It worked in some cases. I remember having to work out content licensing contracts with Russian, Chinese, and French journal publishers.
Copyright and Intellectual Property Law in the 1990s to 2002 was a mess, it kept changing. I was on two list-serves at the time, one a copyright listserve with journal publishers/ and copyright lawyers and the other with librarians who didn't understand why the content couldn't be freely distributed. The librarians were busy predicting DVDs, the journal publishers and copyright specialists were busy freaking out and trying to come up with new and exciting ways of protecting their content from being stolen off the net. They had a reason to be terrified. Another part of my job was telling people they couldn't post Wilson content on their sites without permission. If they were in a country that didn't recognize ours or international copyright law -- it was well, futile. Spoilerslayer put his on a German IPO server so Fox couldn't make him remove content. China was fun. In the Time Warner deal -- they insisted that none of their content be on any databases sold in China. Wilson sold databases to China libraries. So I had to write in that caveat, in exchange for the Wilson company to retain rights to any content that they scanned, also we sold Time's content back to them in ASCII under the deal.
It was an impossible field, and gave me a headache. Not helped by a company that refused to invest in content or pay for it. They wanted the content for free or dirt cheap. I had to fight for funds -- and was often evaluated on how cheaply I got the content.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 04:14 pm (UTC)and was often evaluated on how cheaply I got the content
I find myself unsurprised by this. I remember some article this week talking about how most successful people are essentially salesmen, regardless of what their actual position is. I suspect that's largely true.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 11:23 pm (UTC)I agree that Spiderman and the Hulk have been done a lot too, but far less so than Batman and Superman. (Compare third iteration to 20th or more...I've lost count. We've had Superman and Batman films or television shows since the 1930s and 50s. Spiderman didn't pop up until much later.)
I do wish they'd do more with the original five X-men, who haven't really been done at all or minimally. Jean Grey, Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, and Angel. Storm also could use more screen time. To date it's been mostly Wolverine (due to Hugh Jackman) Mystique (due to Jennifer Lawrence), Xaveier and Magneto (also due to casting choices).
Part of it is who you cast in the role.
Spiderman they keep screwing up on...because they feel this need to introduce multiple villains in the sequels. Why, I've no idea. It's the same mistake the Batman movies made.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 11:58 pm (UTC)And the first Garfield film was quite good, better than the previous films, or so I thought. None of the sequels were very good, they went overboard with the villains each round. Why they think they need more than one villain in these films makes no sense to me.