The Pop Tart's 3 Things From 2012

When the thought struck me that I ought to do an end-of-the-year list, I dismissed it at first. I don't really see much point in compiling a "Best of" list (or a "Worst of" list, for that matter), since film, television, books, and pretty much every other medium through which we partake of pop culture are not things with true objective scales by which to measure them. What's a good film or book to me won't be to someone else, and that's fine--it's one of the things that makes life more interesting.

So, I present to you, in no particular order, Three Things in 2012 That I Thought Were Pretty Neat.

* Female-led Successes in Television and Film

I mentioned this in part in my post about Action Women. Film studio Lionsgate this year had two films make over $125 million, and, guess what--both of these films starred female leads (the films are, if you're wondering, The Hunger Games, starring Jennifer Lawrence, and Twilight:Breaking Dawn, Part 2, starring Kristen Stewart). Female led comedies like Pitch Perfect have opened doors for women to lead in movies outside of the typical RomComs. Those things would be great on their own, but let's look also at television: Lena Dunham's Girls has been making news, good and bad, all over the place; Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are set to host the Golden Globes later this month; Pixar gave us Brave, its first film with a female protagonist; we finally got to see Legend of Korra, the female-led sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. These are the sorts of things I can get behind.

*Ensemble Cast Shows

I don't think my love for NBC's Community is any secret, but Community alone isn't why I chose to include this topic.  Let's face it, a larger cast means there's more opportunity for more types of people to appear on television. Shows like Community, Warehouse 13, Alphas, Glee and others show us that casts don't have to include exclusively men or exclusively white people. There are plenty of ensemble-cast shows that are guilty of only showing us more white people, and some of these shows are better at providing the viewer with a diverse cast than others, but the aforementioned shows have seen critical success, if not necessarily commercial success. Which is a step in the right direction, certainly.

*Some Pretty Awesome Talks at TEDx Events

 I've talked about Anita Sarkeesian once or twice before. In case you were unaware, this woman found herself the target of some pretty intense abuse for asking people who were interested--just people who were interested, mind you--to support her attempt to create a series of videos on YouTube to show the types of tropes that female characters fall into in video games. At one of the TEDx events, she discussed her experience.

FOX and Friends anchor Brian Kilmeade said some pretty insulting things about how the female anchors at the conservative news station were hired (it's all in the linked article, but the short of it is he said they just tried to find Victoria's Secret models who were capable of speech). Maybe if he had heard Cameron Russell's TEDx talk about the power of image, he would realize that beautiful women can easily be smart women also.

These were a few of the things that caught my attention in 2012. Use the comments section to share some of yours.

Action Girl

I love a good action series. Sometimes I love a bad action series.

Even the most gentle among us wants to see a good ass-kicking now and then. Part of the draw, I think, is getting to see people like us--people that we can relate to--doing crazy, amazing things and taking charge. It's part of why characters like John McClane and Batman and Hercules are so lasting in pop culture as a whole and American pop culture, specifically.

There's no shortage of male action heroes. They're plentiful and varied--though, admittedly, over time many of them start looking the same (compare video game heroes--the same scarred, angry, bald white guy shows up over and over, but that's a post for another day). The female version of this character type, The Action Girl, while it's being seen more and more in various media, does not saturate the market in the same way.

There are a lot of reasons for this--maybe you remember Warner Brothers making waves in 2007 by saying they would no longer produce films with female leads? -- and this year, editor Frank Parlato, Jr. of the Niagara Falls Reporter made it pretty clear what he thinks of female-led movies when he was approached by a writer who had reviewed Snow White and the Huntsman and, in spite of the eyebrow-raising content of his response to the reviewer, it's depressingly not hard to image that there are plenty who share his views.

Then there's the perception that action films that star women can't succeed; people tend to back this up by citing films like Catwoman and Suckerpunch (which, if we're being honest here, are indeed lousy films, and both, incidentally, are great examples of Male Gaze in effect), and that's sort of like judging every Sean Connery film by League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--which is to say that it's unfair and only provides a narrow view of the subject,only looking at one not-so-great example, and it doesn't take into account things like the marketing the movies get, the writing, the star-power behind the film, and other factors in what makes a movie sell.

But sometimes, action movies that star women as the hero and not the victim in need of rescuing do get made. And they do sell.


Consider two of the twenty highest-grossing female-led action films: 1979's Alien starring Sigourney Weaver as Ripley and 2010's Salt starring Angelina Jolie as the title character. Ripley and Evelyn Salt are two very different and interesting characters that share an unusual trait: neither character was written for a woman.

When Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett wrote the early drafts of the script for Alien, the characters that comprised the crew were to be "unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women. Ripley's gender wasn't decided until Sigourney Weaver was cast in the role.

Gender is not a factor in Ripley's actions at all--even in scenes in which she's clad only in underwear and a t-shirt, Ripley's not played for sexuality. Issues of femininity never come up. The actions demanded by the situation are the beginning and end of Ripley's motivation.

And then there's Evelyn Salt.

As the story goes, Tom Cruise was approached to play the title role in Salt--Edwin W. Salt. Cruise, not wanting to play a role so similar to the one he played in the Mission: Impossible films, declined the part, and Edwin became Evelyn, a vehicle for Angeline Jolie, who had already seen some success with the Tomb Raider franchise. Rather than trying to rewrite the script with a female in mind, the minds behind the film changed the character's name and left almost everything else untouched. In fact, the only major change was removing the children that Edwin was written to have (which does give the message that a woman can be an action woman or a mom, but not both, and that's kind of crappy any way you look at it).

But a female action hero doesn't have to be portrayed with masculinity or without gender at all to be successful.

The top-earning female-led action film came out earlier this year, and set sales records for movies with a spring release.

The Hunger Games, the first movie in a trilogy based on the books by Suzanne Collins, was wildly successful. The second film in the series, Catching Fire, is already in production and looking towards a November 2013 release. Judging from the buzz about the movie online and the success of the book series, the second film will be just as popular. And this is with a female character that was written to be female. Katniss's gender, while never a focal point in the story, is not ignored. She dresses up (though, granted, it's not because she wants to), she thinks about boys--at least, when she's not focused on surviving, which isn't often, but her understanding of her more romantic emotions does play a part in her character development--she's a girl. She just happens to be a girl who can fight.

There are plenty of examples from other media--Buffy, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, the Abhorsen trilogy, Charmed, Warehouse 13, Lost Girl, and tons of female-led anime.

One of the most shining examples of strong, action women on television has been Avatar: The Last Airbender and it's follow-up/sister series, The Legend of Korra. Both of these series are among the most popular animated shows of all time, with fans of all ages and all genders. And these two shows have some of the greatest female characters on television.

 Okay, Pema may not actually fight much, but she's definitely a tough lady.

(And these are just the good guys.)

So, what's the secret, then? How can we get more characters like these?

It's in the writing, really, when all is said and done. In his essay "Why I Write 'Strong Female Characters,'" novelist and comic book writer Greg Rucka, says this about writing strong women:

Writers don't write Men or Women or Dogs or Salmon. Writers write characters, and at our best, if we do it well and with care and with thought, we invest in those characters a spark of life, a realism and nuance that makes them believable and relatable. We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy, characters our audience will care for, and as a result, will care about what happens to them, and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey. No character - no well-created character, at least - is defined by only one trait, by one aspect.

 That's why characters like Ripley, Katniss, Salt, Katara, Buffy, and so many others are so popular--it's the same reason why so many male characters are popular.

They're characters. They have flaws, passions, motives, and interests that make viewers and readers care about them.

So, how do you write a great female action character? It's like Greg Rucka says.

"The Quick Answer goes like this:
Q: How do you write such strong/well-realized/positively portrayed women?
A: I don't. I write characters. Some of those characters are women."

Girl Wonder

Carrie Kelly’s been getting a lot of attention lately.

Websites like Super Hero Hype and Toon Zone have run interviews with Ariel Winters, the actress who provides Carrie’s voice in the latest DC direct-to-DVD feature. Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress wrote a short piece about how exciting it is to see this” self-made superhero in glasses and with moxie to burn.” And artist Noelle Stevenson, better known as Ginger Haze is clearly a fan, too. She’s everywhere.

With The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 hitting stores a couple weeks ago, it’s really not surprising that so many people are talking about Carrie Kelly. I mean, Robin is an undeniably important part of the Batman mythos, and Carrie is the first female Robin to get airtime in any film incarnation, animated or otherwise, of Batman.

Female Robins are hardly ever met by cheering crowds and sparkling praise, but the response to Carrie has been, from what I can tell, at best, optimism and enthusiasm and, at worst, apathy.

Helena Wayne, too, only recently retconned into holding the Robin mantel, hasn’t inspired the fury with which some comic book fans are quick to meet continuity changes and new heroes in old identities.

The same cannot be said for the third Girl Wonder.

Stephanie Brown may be one of the most polarizing characters in comics. She inspires a lot of fan love and fan action on her behalf, especially after Bryan Q. Miller’s take on her.

But, boy, do people hate her—fans, creators, and executives alike.

Why, though? Objectively, she’s not that different from the other two ladies who’ve donned the red and green. Like both of the others, she was Robin briefly before moving on to another identity. Like Carrie, she was selected to take the place of a Robin that could no longer perform his duties, and, like Carrie, she’s the child of neglectful parents. And she and Helena were both removed abruptly from the role of Robin, though the circumstances were certainly different.

What is it, then, about Stephanie that gets people so worked up? There are a few things that I can think of.

First, Stephanie took the place of an active Robin. Tim Drake didn’t get killed, he just retired, and he only did that because his father forced him. And Batman appointed Stephanie to the job in the hopes of getting Tim to return. Tim Drake is a popular character—I got into comics in the first place through the Robin and Young Justice books; Tim was the first character I cared about, so I get the attachment people have to him. Whoever replaced him was bound to meet with some resentment; Damian was met with his fair share of hate when he was introduced to take the Robin mantle from Tim (and in a much more literal sense than Stephanie). And Stephanie, who was Tim’s girlfriend at that time in comics, went behind his back to take up the role. It didn’t go over well.

Then, there’s the fact that Stephanie got fired. Stephanie was not the best hero before— as Spoiler, she was reckless and sloppy and frequently got into more trouble than she could handle-- and her appointment as Robin didn’t really improve her all that much. The deal from the beginning was that she’d only be Robin as long as she followed all of Batman’s orders. She doesn’t, though she’s hardly the only Robin to disobey (rebellion was Jason’s M.O., and Carrie was known to go against the Bat more than once, Dick and Tim both struck out on their own after a while, and Damian…well, is Damian), and she gets canned pretty quickly; the mantle is taken away from her, and the way is paved to restore the status quo—it surprises no one when Tim becomes Robin again.

So, Stephanie takes the mantle from someone else, and she gets it taken away from her by the Bat himself.  Neither of the other female Robins share those characteristics—Carrie becomes Robin years after Jason’s death and chooses to move on to her Catgirl identity, and Helena is raised to be Robin and only abandons that title after being tossed from her world. But I think there’s a third factor that plays into the harsh reactions to Stephanie as Robin.

Carrie and Helena are both Robins on alternate Earths. The two of them can have as many adventures as they want for as long as they want, and it will have no effect on Dick, Jason, Tim, or Damian. Stephanie, however, was Robin on the main Earth. Paired with the way that she became Robin, the fact that every issue in which she appears as Robin means that one of the guys is booted from the role, Stephanie had a lot working against her. It would’ve taken time and some pretty fantastic writers to allow her to win over fans that were (a) devoted to the Robin(s) already in place and/or (b) not used to a girl in the Robin suit.

And Stephanie wasn’t given that time. She only spends about three issues of Robin as the Girl Wonder—seventy-one days in Gotham-time, according to her narration. And while there may be nothing wrong with Bill Willingham as a writer, his writing of Stephanie didn’t endear her to the longtime fans of Tim Drake who had been reading the series for years. Then Stephanie was seemingly killed off and disappeared from comics for years.

There’s a lot working against Stephanie getting respect as a Robin—and, really, against her getting respect as a character, in some cases, though her fanbase is a loyal one, and if they have anything to say about it, we haven’t seen the last of her.

But at least it can be said that the vehement dislike for Stephanie-as-Robin is not a case of “people hate all girl Robins.” It is nice to see Carrie Kelly getting attention in a positive way. Not many women of the Bat Family have made it to the screen—big or small—and while Steph fans will probably be fighting the “was she a real Robin” battle forever, the popularity that Carrie seems to be gaining proves that there is room in the DC Universe for a female Robin.

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THERE WILL BE NO NEW POSTS UNTIL SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20. See you guys then.

A Break in Our Scheduled Programming

I know I said that today's post would be about June Cleaver and the traditional family, but there's been a lot on my mind lately, so I'm afraid television's classic mom will have to wait a few days.

Also, as a warning, this post is going to be a downer. And there'll be some potential trigger words and situations and a fair bit of NSFW language--both in the body of the post and in the links. If you'd rather avoid these things, skip this post. Come back on Tuesday when I'll be talking about television again.

Those of you who keep up with the comic world, comics creators, and comic bloggers on Twitter may have heard this past week about a campaign to ban a guy who was using, among others, the Twitter ID @JonVeee (this and his other IDs have, to my knowledge, been suspended, thanks to the flood of people marking his tweets as offensive) to verbally attack women who write and women who write about comics. His tirades eventually started turning towards men in the comics industry, but the main focus of his rage was women.

And we're not talking a little ribbing here. We're not even talking about some jackass who trolls you until you block him and then moves on to torment someone else. If you want to know what exactly was going on with this guy, take a look at this piece by Heidi MacDonald at The Beat. Or this one by Sue over at DC Women Kicking Ass where she details how she spent well over a year dealing with this guy.

But I warn you, these are both rough reads that include this man's threats of rape and stalking, not to mention one charming incident in which he goes after a woman's children. Seriously.

This is an extreme case. Most people aren't trolls, and even most trolls don't do go this far--creating multiple IDs and using proxy servers to get back to sites that have banned or blocked him.

But he's hardly the only one out there giving women who talk about traditionally male dominated media a hard time. Remember Anita Sarkeesain from Feminist Frequency? Earlier this year, when she announced a Kickstarter for a video series exploring tropes and female characters in video games, she was met with a reaction that... well, just click here to look through some of the comments that got left on the video for the project.

And that's aside from the vandalism to her Wikipedia page and the creation of an online game in which the player punches Sarkeesian in the face, complete with visible bruising effects after each swing.

So, yeah, trolls are out there. They don't always attack women, and they don't always attack the well-known, but they're out there, and they target anyone that they feel is encroaching on their territory. They're just a fact of the Internet.

Something in the DCWKA post, though, caught my eye, and pretty much captures a cruel reality of the Internet.

Frankly if you are a woman on the internet you might as well have a sign on your back that says, “Troll me”.  If you have an opinion or focus on commenting in a male dominated field, you probably double your chances.

It's horrible, isn't it? It's also true.

Worse than that, it happens to women who are just trying to enjoy things.

In a conversation with one of my female gamer friends, she told me the story of when she explained her gamertag to some guys she with whom she was playing a game. She had recently changed her tag. When they asked her why, she explained that the one she had been using was feminine--it was pretty obviously the tag of either a female or gay man--and she didn't want to put up with the harassment that a feminine tag invites.

Or, as she put it to me, "I didn't want to be called 'cunt' or 'faggot' every time I played."

This happens, guys. This is a thing that happens to people. All the time.

I have been very fortunate--in my experience, the men I've met in the geek community have been great. Aside from a couple of jerky exceptions, I've never been made to feel unwelcome or treated like a lesser member of the community. 

But I'm an exception.

And the fact that is the case really sucks.

I'm not saying that I think all guys in geek culture treat women in their interests as though they don't belong. I don't even think that most men in geek culture are that way--I think the majority of guys in the geek world think it's cool when women develop enthusiasm of the stuff that they like.

The problem isn't the number of guys who are jerks. The problem is that they're louder than the ones who aren't. And that's something to think about.

So, I'm sorry for the serious and depressing post. But this sort of verbal assault and these threats being tossed around are a troubling thing to me, and it didn't seem right for me to ignore what's been going on.

I just wanted to join the people who are spreading news like this in saying, "This is not okay."

It's Cool if You Have A Beginner Skill Tree, Just Don't Call it "Girlfriend Mode"

   Video games aren't often my first choice when it comes to recreational activity. I play sometimes, passingly, but I'm not a gamer. If I'm playing a video game, it's because I want to play that game specifically.

  Which explains why I'm not that great at video games in general. I love easy mode, and I appreciate it when a game gives some options for the less-skilled player to figure out the workings of the game so that it's easier for people like me to ease their way into the more difficult settings.

  But I'm a rarity among my female friends. For a lot of them, video games are how they relax. They follow games series; they go to midnight releases. They play to the end (multiple times, in many cases--alternate endings, and all), do all the side quests, and rack up achievement after achievement.

  They're good at them, is what I'm saying.

  Maybe it's because of this that I was so shocked to see comments from John Hemingway regarding a beginners' skill tree Borderlands 2 called "Best Friends Forever."

If you missed it, here's part of the story (linked above) from Eurogamer.

The skill tree is called Best Friends Forever, what lead designer John Hemingway dubbed the "girlfriend mode".

"The design team was looking at the concept art and thought, you know what, this is actually the cutest character we've ever had. I want to make, for the lack of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree. This is, I love Borderlands and I want to share it with someone, but they suck at first-person shooters. Can we make a skill tree that actually allows them to understand the game and to play the game? That's what our attempt with the Best Friends Forever skill tree is."

One of the first skills available in the BFF tree is called Close Enough. This means your bullets that hit walls or other objects, that is, miss their target, have a chance to ricochet off towards the enemy.

Let's get this out of the way: there are plenty of "better terms" that Hemingway could have used. Beginner Mode. Newbie Mode. First-Timers mode. This was not a case of "that was the clearest way to make his point."

Let's also get this out of the way: Hemingway, for all we know, could be a really nice guy who generally likes and respects ladies.

Basically, Hemingway may not be a sexist. But his statement here definitely is.

Having an easy mode on a game for beginning players is totally great. It's a fantastic stepping stone for people who are new to that game in particular or to video games on the whole.

Calling the easy mode "girlfriend mode," though, is bad.

From a female perspective, this title implies that women a) have no interest in video games beyond pleasing their male significant other or b) are way too bad at video games to play for no other reason than because they're girls (I don't know, because boobs make it hard to use a controller or something ), and they will be unable to play the harder modes of the game. To be fair, there are some women for whom this is true. But a quick search of the numbers will show you that female gamers make up from nearly half to the majority of the gaming community. You'll find articles about how female gamers are "more hardcore" or log more hours of playtime than their male counterparts.

Also, it's worth noting that the character that this skill tree is for is a female character, described mainly as "cute" (a patronizing term that, I, personally, hate with a flaming passion), again perpetuating the idea that easy modes are "for girls"and more challenging modes are "for boys." It's no wonder that female gamers aren't taking kindly to this.

But what about the guys? No one's really talked about it, but this whole "girlfriend mode" thing isn't good for them, either. It makes a very clear and potentially damaging statement to guys: if you're bad at video games, you might as well be a girl. And, as all boys in our heteronormative society know, it's bad for boys to be like girls.

While this whole debacle is an offensive mess, it's not terribly surprising-- video games have always seemed like something of a boys' club. Though, if  you ask me, the two main sources of this problem are pretty simple.

Back in 1975, Laura Mulvey developed a theory called "Male Gaze." This is that thing that happens in movies, television, and video games when the viewer see the events unfolding from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Generally, this is thought to happen because most creators in these media are male, so their vision is from a male perspective. Guys make most video games, so guys decide what stories get told and how. Which explains why the women in video games look and act the way they do (and that's a post for another day). The easy mode's designed for girls because that's who these guys believe will need and want to play it.

In addition to Male Gaze, there's another problem: men, in general, don't notice sexism in the same way that women do. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, men don't share women's view of sexism because men don't experience sexism in the same way. Perpetuating a stereotype by calling the easy skill tree "girlfriend mode" might not strike a guy as being sexist, because he's not on the receiving end of a lot of the negative implications. This doesn't make sexism okay, but it is something that needs to be kept in mind before vilifying a guy for accepting terms like this without a fuss.

Hemingway's comments weren't the first instance of sexism in the gaming community, and they certainly won't be the last. There will always be some people that think that video games are for guys. Women are gaining a voice in the industry, but they're a long way from being on equal footing as far as representation and respect goes.  Until women reach the same level in the larger video game community, there's an easy way to avoid raising the ire of the girl gamers around you: stop and think. By trying to put oneself in the shoes of a female gamer (or, really, anyone to whom one is talking), controversies like this can be avoided. A little perspective can fix a lot of these problems.

In the meantime, just don't call it "girlfriend mode."

Waffles For Stephanie (REPOST) (Also a few days late)

Not too long ago, David Willis over at Shortpacked! drew a particularly powerful and popular comic featuring Bruce Wayne and his multiple adopted sons. In this comic, Bruce Wayne calls all of his “tiny clones” to him; his Robins approach him one by one and they are scrutinized by their mentor. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are all approved, with Bruce applauding each boy’s black hair and blue eyes—even pointing out that he approves of Jason altering his appearance to look the same as his fellows.

 And then Stephanie Brown shows up. The lone female Robin in the former main DC Universe. She’s bright and smiling when she meets Bruce; he frowns as he surveys her—she doesn’t have black hair and blue eyes. Her eyes are green. Her hair’s blonde. And she is not a man.

Willis doesn’t write any dialogue. He just draws Bruce pointing Stephanie towards the door.

 In a few panels, Willis illustrated DC’s treatment of Stephanie Brown, a female character with no shortage of fan support and a loyal following. But, more than that—and this may not have been Willis’s intent—it illustrates DC’s treatment of their female readers.

 The saga of Stephanie Brown, particularly the recent issues with the New 52, really is an excellent parallel for the struggles of female comic book fans.

 Stephanie was Robin. It was a brief tenure, but she wore the suit. She worked with Batman. She trained with the other members of the Batfamily. The mantle was taken away from her—which doesn’t erase the face that she once held it. She died, came back, and kept fighting as an ally of the Bat. And through all this, she received no respect from her fellow heroes.

 And then she became Batgirl. There was an outcry of rage from Cassandra Cain fans, and rightfully so—Cass is another great female character that’s been horribly treated by DC. But the book went on, and it introduced new readers to Stephanie Brown and convinced skeptics that a character introduced mainly as a tool for incorporating after school special-type teen issues and a character that had been sloppily handled for years could lead a successful and delightful Batgirl book.

 In spite of this success, the coming of the New 52 ended her book and, it seems, removed her entirely from the DC Universe so that she could be replaced by Barbara Gordon, a fine character in her own right, but that’s neither here nor there.

 The point is Stephanie was something different. Different and good, and her book, thanks in no small part to Bryan Q. Miller’s spot on writing, could have done a great deal for broadening DC’s readership.

 But DC didn’t want her. They wanted to return to the classic Batgirl, the classic Batman, so on, so forth.

There’s no way to guess what DC’s true motivations were for the New 52. Theories abound on the whys, and there are plenty of official reasons. But one thing is clear: things that are new, things that are not what is expected, are not cherished or nourished at DC.

 And, it certainly seems, female readers are among those things that are not welcomed. We’re shouted down on the internet. We’re openly mocked at panels. We’re berated and pushed aside and told that, because of our sex, we shouldn’t even like comic books to begin with.

 We’re different from the expected male readers, so they don’t want us.

 Change is scary; no one can argue that. But for an industry that claims it wants to adapt to new technologies, branch into other media, and reach more readers, it’s necessary.

 When DC embraced Stephanie Brown, they had a trade paperback that made it onto a USA Today list of Essential Reading in Graphic Novels. They had an on ramp for new readers. Good things came from it.

 This is not to say that there hasn’t been success with the New 52, or that there haven’t been some books or issues of books that have been both appealing to female readers and successful in that demographic. But there’s definitely some food for thought here.

 DC embraced something different, and there were positive results. Maybe, then, they should try to embrace different readers.

 Maybe good things could come from that as well.