Sunday, December 15, 2019

Have A Go (A Let It Snow parody)

If I might borrow a phrase...

Hello Internet


It's December. It's the holiday season for many people around the world. And as the year closes, it is tradition to look back at the year gone and try to process all that has happened. I don't know about you, but I have personally had one of the shittest years of my life. But I'm trying very hard to process the world through the lens of positivity. I have been looking for all the good in the world this year.

And I have been failing.

Because there is a lot... Just so much shit going on in the world right now. I can barely get past the bullshit around me in Australia to begin to comprehend how bad it is everywhere else. And so to help me process this, I wrote a song. Well, a song parody. I shared it on Facebook and Twitter this morning, and now I'm sharing it here. I present the new holiday anthem for Australia

"Have A Go (A Let It Snow parody)"

Oh the fires outside are frightful
But the cricket is so delightful
In the Land Of The Fair Go
Have a go
Get a go
A fair go

The police show no sign of stopping
So children's pants will keep on dropping
Everyone fear the Popo
Have a go
Get a go
A fair go

Now the bosses are all in awe
Because the workers walked off of the job
But the unions will be declawed
Because there's so many wages to rob

Human rights are slowly dying
And MedVac is no longer flying
But we gave LNP a go
Have a go
Get a go
A fair go

And now, like any good joke, I intend to kill this one by explaining all the shit I've been sifting through in my search for joy and good vibes.

Australia is on fire

Australia is a hot place. It's also a place with a lot of bushland and rain forests. And right now it's on fire. Australia is on fire for a decent chunk of every year, but this year we're approaching record levels of damage from bush fires and a major problem is that it has been hot and dry on unprecedented levels. These fires spread across multiple states, have claimed people's lives and homes and have caused the air to become dangerously toxic. It's bad, yo.

Meanwhile, our federal government has spent an awful lot of time twiddling its thumbs. The prime minister thinks the cricket season should be enough to cheer up those who have lost their homes to fires. At the suggestion that volunteer firefighters who are taking time off work to fight fires should be compensated for their bravery, our head of state also suggested that's a silly idea since the volunteers want to be out there fighting fires.

Oh, they're also under-equipped for this ongoing disaster and so the fire service has begun crowdfunding for replacement gear. Important things like face masks. Sources below.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/16/nsw-braces-for-severe-heatwave-as-bushfire-threatens-blue-mountains-homes
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/22/australia-bushfires-factcheck-are-this-years-fires-unprecedented
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/10/sydneys-air-11-times-worse-than-hazardous-levels-as-australias-bushfires-rage
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/something-to-cheer-about-scott-morrison-slammed-over-bushfire-cricket-tweet
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/12/firies-and-fury-exhausted-volunteers-decry-pms-claim-they-want-to-be-there
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-11/nsw-bushfires-firefighters-raise-money-to-buy-face-masks/11790096


Police Strip Searching Minors

The New South Wales police force has faced harsh criticism recently for a series of full body strip searches conducted at a music festival. This particular music festival is an event run exclusively for teenagers (age 13 to 17), so these strip searches were conducted on minors. Regulations for police require that any minor being strip searched by police must have a guardian present. In more than 20 cases, this didn't happen. Strip searches also shouldn't be happening outside a police station unless there is an imminent and serious threat. These searches were conducted on site. Oh, and they didn't find any drugs or weapons or anything at all that would be a threat or, you know, illegal.

The state commissioner of police defended these searches, despite them appearing to be in obvious violation of regulations. He also said that people should be afraid of the police. That's a thing that happened. I could spend more time unpacking this but it's kind of sickening and I don't want to think about it much more. Sources below. Look for yourself to see the depth of this insanity.


Job Walk-Offs and Union Busting

In Sydney, port workers, construction workers, and electrical workers have walked off job sites and refused to work while exposed to the dangerous levels of smoke in the air because it is hazardous to their health. Obviously. That's just how it works when the air has become poison. Obviously employers are not happy with workers putting their health and life ahead of profits.

Meanwhile, the federal government has been trying to pass a bill that gives more power to the courts to interfere with workers unions. These powers include terminating the employment of union officials or de-registering a union as a union. What horrible crimes would a union need commit for these punishments? Poor administration. Errors of paperwork. You know, the big issues. The bill is called the "Ensuring Integrity Bill" but basically everybody recognises it is about trying to weaken union power.

But that's not the only front on which our government wants to empower business owners over workers. While the coalition says it will come down hard on wage theft and introduce harsher penalties, they're making sure those penalties won't apply in situations where it was just a mistake. Of course it just so happens that "We accidentally underpaid our staff millions of dollars" is the favourite go to excuse for people like George Colambaris whose company was found to have failed to pay more than 7 million dollars earlier this years. Apparently it was a mistake because paying people is so hard to figure out. Anyway, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has described wage theft as a systemic problem in this country. Sources below.


Medvac Repeal

Sigh. I don't even want to talk about this. But anyway, the federal government has just repealed the 2018 medical evacuation laws that empowered doctors to arrange for immigrants in off-shore mandatory detention centres to be transferred to hospitals in Australia if they need care. At this stage, the government holds the power to universally and without question veto any such suggested treatment.

Only last year, the UN addressed Australia and called for a revision of its laws after ruling that the country had breached several international human rights laws. That is obviously not happening. In fact, CIVICUS has reported that civil rights in Australia shrank this year. This fact may come as a shock to any white people in the audience and probably nobody else. Sources below.


The fuck is a "fair go"?

The concept of "a fair go" is meaningless nationalist rhetoric used to talk about how fair Australia is. It's the concept that in Australia, in anything you do, you will get out what you put in and everybody is on a level playing field if you're willing to work hard for reward. Everyone is treated fairly. 

It's obviously not true, but it's a trope our Prime Minister wheeled out in his first press conference as head of government. There's really not much to say on it and no point to explore just how hollow and vapid a concept it is. Especially not when the below satire comic has done it fine without me.

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Ramble Review: Murder Party (2007)

You know what I love? Horror movies. Also Halloween. Also October. And I really love watching horror movies through October in the lead up to Halloween, at which time I... Well, I just watch more horror movies. And since I'm still of a mind to ramble about movies, let's ramble about movies. Let's start with Murder Party.

Murder Party is a 2007 horror comedy film by auteur Jeremy Sauliner. It stars Chris Sharp, Aandy Barnett, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, William Lacy, Stacy Rock, and Skei Saulnier. It premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. It is currently available on Netflix.


Sharp stars as a lonely young man named Chris who finds himself without any plans on Halloween. But on his way home, he stumbles upon an invitation to a costume "Murder Party" let on the ground. Chris decides to attend and is taken hostage by the party's hosts, a group of art students, whom reveal their intention to murder Chris for art. Shortly after announcing their plans, the group's patron Alexander (Barnett) arrives to witness the murder and decide whom he will offer a grant for their art. But the group decides to wait until the witching hour before committing the crime, so Alexander and the art students kill time with pizza, sex, video games, and a game of truth or dare aided by sodium pentothal. Chris, tied to a chair and gagged, watches their debaucherous shenanagins as he awaits his inevitable artistic murder.

The small cast play the roll of self-absorbed and vapid artists convincingly, each one a desperate sycophant hanging off Alexander, who is every bit as vapid but twice as slimy. Sharp does a commendable job performing through mumbles and facial expression, making the most out of a mostly still and silent roll.

The narrative unfolds in small selection of cramped locations that bespeak the low budget of the film more than they do any mood, theme, or style. As a whole the film is distinctly lacking in style, which is surprising for an auteur production. It is what one might describe as a journeyman effort in film craft: competent but no more. The exception to this is in the exterior shots of the New York residential neighbourhood where Chris lives. The establishing shots capture the beauty of late October superbly, and the dressing of cheap Halloween decorations evoke an authentic seasonal charm that is enough to win over any Halloween fan.

But despite so much working in favour of the film, it was ultimately a disappointment. As a comedy, the film really only has one joke: look at how vapid all these art students are. Aren't they pretentious and asinine? This joke is dragged out in various forms through the entire second act of the film and it wears thin quickly. I suspect this would make for decent catharsis if you went in with a pre-existing hatred for the art student stereotype it's using. But if, like me, you're lacking that need to see straw men suffer, it is a lot of mean spirited tedium as you watch unlikable characters be unlikable as you wait for them to die.

Beyond its premise, the horror part of "horror comedy" doesn't kick in until the end. I imagine most people will be able to predict how the film climaxes before the halfway mark and it's a promising idea: a satisfying and humorous payoff that sees the art students' debauchery and narcissism give way to violence, leaving poor Chris to watch from his place in the chair. But the film doesn't even commit to the obvious choice, and halfway through it abandons this idea for an even more generic murderer-chases-victim ending that works in a few more jabs at pretentious artists before winding up with Chris returning home.

If you watch enough indie horror films, you start to notice a few problematic trends. One trend is that the film makers seem to go out of their way to make their characters unlikable. I can only hazard a guess at saying this is to make it all the more satisfying when they meet their bloody demise. But the cost for this cynical pandering to a gore-hungry audience leaves us with 90 minutes of watching people we don't like and that's not enjoyable. Murder Party goes out of its way, knowing its characters are awful people, but offers zero reprieve. Chris is not developped enough to be a hero we can root for or sympathise with. For all Sharp's effort to make the most of his role, there just isn't enough character for him to work with.

The second trend is that the auteur will come up with one interesting idea but have no idea how to execute that in a feature length format. Long time readers might remember that this was basically the problem I had with The Human Centipede. One idea, stretched thin into tedium. Similarly, Murder Party's one gag is not nearly enough to sustain it. When it isn't unpleasant, it's boring. The premise itself earns little more than a chuckle, meaning you can get pretty much the entire enjoyment of the film by reading the synopsis.

If what you want is to watch unpleasant people be unpleasant before meeting a bloody but uninteresting death; if you have a particular hated of young vapid and narcissistic artists and want to see them make fools of themselves before suffering, then this film might offer something like catharsis, but I'm not sure it will offer anybody real enjoyment. Ultimately, it's just a boring film. Not even bad in an interesting way.

Monday, September 9, 2019

We Need To Talk About Avengers: Endgame

Internet, friends, we need to have a discussion. It's a discussion that I'm not seeing many people - or anybody, really - have, and we need to have it.

Because frankly, I'm pissed off.

I've been sitting on this for a long time because Avengers: Endgame is a big pop culture event with big implications for a big franchise and I didn't want to put any spoilers out there. If you still haven't seen it, beware that spoilers lay ahead for this and a few other pieces of media, but they're all old enough that you have had plenty of time to get caught up. Okay? Okay.

Internet, friends, we need to talk about Avengers: Endgame.



But before that, let's talk about Arrow.

I fucking love Arrow. Arrow is my all time favourite TV show. Ever. Serious. No hyperbole. It is amazing and if you don't like it you are, frankly, wrong. Don't @ me.

In season 4 of Arrow, leading lady, hacker, tech genius, and everybody's favourite gal in the chair, Felicity Smoak, is paralysed from the waist down in a shooting and becomes wheelchair bound. There had long been parallels between Felicity and the comic book character Oracle, and this was just one more delightful nod to the character.

Felicity lived with her disability for less than a season. By the end of season 4, another member of Team Arrow, the tragically named Mr Terrific, has invented a sciencey cure for her paralysis that gets her up and walking again. They revisit this once in season 5, and then it is never mentioned again. Her disability is a subplot that basically goes nowhere and does nothing. She is miraculously cured by comic-book-science and it is a joyous day for her and everybody. And, you know, why not? Superhero stories are power fantasies, and why not explore the fantasy of living with a disability and then being miraculously cured and never having to worry about it again?

Why not, indeed.

Internet, friends, we need to talk about Avengers: Endgame.

But before that, let's talk about Batgirl.

I never cared much for the OG Batgirl, Barbara Gordon. I mean, I had nothing against her, I just wasn't interested. No, the first Batgirl I was interested in was Casandra Cain. For those who don't read comics, Cassandra Cain (who you may see in the upcoming Birds of Prey movie) was a girl raised by an assassin to be a living weapon. And because... Well, because comic book reasons, this meant she was mute. The only way she understood communicating was fighting.

Cassandra Cain, aka The Best Batgirl, was introduced in a big event called No Man's Land in which she left her adoptive assassin father and joined up with Batman & Friends and became the second Batgirl. So awesome was she, that after No Man's Land, she was given her own series. In less than a year of comics, through the magic of comic-book-magic, her muteness was cured. And for a couple of issues, she struggled to fight, but then she relearned how to fight. Now she could talk and fight. Huzzah for Cassandra, right? Another power fantasy wish fulfilment. Your psychological scarring can be miraculously cured by touching a random metahuman with random metahuman brain powers. I mean, sure, it was a defining trait of Cassandra Cain, her muteness, a major part of who she was and her backstory, but now she can have speech bubbles. Yay!

Yaaaay...

Oh, and the reason we needed a replacement Batgirl is because Barbara Gordon, aka OG Batgirl, aka The Second Best Batgirl I guess, aka Babs was shot by the Joker and paralysed from the waist down in an over-rated comic that way too many people love and not nearly enough of them seem to understand called The Killing Joke. This is going to sound weird but stay with me: literally the only good thing to come out of The Killing Joke is that Barbara Gordon's paralysis. Because shortly after this, she headlined a new comic series called Birds of Prey, and Babs took on the name Oracle and became everybody's other favourite gal in the chair. And now she was always in a chair. A wheel chair. And she did tech things. And gave guidance and intel to other heroes. And helped train the second and third Batgirls. Oh, and she still kicked arse.

For real, there's this scene very early in the Birds of Prey run where Babs is attacked by some throw-away thugs and still in her wheelchair, armed with a pair of batons, beats the shit out of them all. It's great. Oracle is great. Birds of Prey was great. I fucking love it and it's on comixology and you should go read it.

Ahem.

So you might remember that in my history of the Flash I talked about a big DC Comics event and relaunch called the New 52. It basically sucked. And one of the biggest suckages of them all was that Barbara Gordon was restored to being Batgirl. In the confusion that was the vague editing of Batman canon, Babs had still been shot, still been Oracle, and then been cured through some kind of comic book science-magic. This was important because the DC powers that be couldn't just erase The Killing Joke from the Batman history. It's a Big Deal Comic (for some reason). But they also wanted Babs back in her Batgirl cowl and to be the one true only Batgirl. And because the retconning was all a bit vague, exactly what parts of the Oracle story remained were vague, essentially now unseen, off-panel events. For all intents and purposes, Oracle, the biggest and most recognisable disable character, who had remained a significant part of both the Batman & Friends story and the wider DC Universe story, had been erased.

Because, you know, it's a power fantasy, isn't it? Yaaay. Superman can fly. And Oracle gets cured. Power...

Right?

Because that's the power fantasy that people with a disability must have, right? That they be cured. Regular folks without any disability, their power fantasy is flying, or having robot armour, or shooting lasers from their butt. But the gal in the chair, always in the chair, what more could she possibly want than to be able to walk? Surely she wouldn't want to, say, imagine herself being in the wheelchair and still kicking arse. Surely...

Internet, friends, we need to talk about Avengers: Endgame.

But first, let's talk about Me Before You.

Me Before You is a novel written in 2012 and then adapted to a film released in 2016. There's only two things you need to know about this story:
1. 'Me Before You' is a love story between a man with a disability, Will Traynor, (it's paralysis again) and an able-bodied woman. The man has decided, before meeting, that he would rather be dead than wheelchair bound, and even after falling in love, he decides that he would still rather be dead and now it would not only be better for him, it would be better for his lover, because as long as he is in a wheel chair, he can't live a full life, and as long as she is with him in a wheel chair, she can't live a full life.
2. FUCK THIS WHOLE THING. FUCK ALL OF IT. IT NEEDS TO DIE IN A FIRE.

Why do I bring this up?

Because - and this shouldn't be a stunning or controversial statement - there aren't a lot of roles in our media for people with disabilities. When they do come up, they tend to be... narrow. People with disabilities are the stars of inspiring stories about how even though they have an impairment, they can do things regular people do. Or they're stories of how they miraculously overcome their disability and are cured. Or they're villains. For realz, there are a shocking number of villains who have disabilities. And a shocking number of them are faking it because nobody would suspect a person with a disability of being a villain.

People with disabilities don't get to be heroes. They are society's inspiration porn and their disability is all they are. Or they are our villains. Or their story of disability is temporary. Temporary because they are cured, or they die. This is such a recognised trend that it has its own Bechdal like tool of examination. The Fries Test. I recently learned about this in preparing to write this blog, it was invented by the author Kenny Fries. The Fries Test asks the questions: "Does the work in question include more than one disabled character? Do they talk to each other? Do they talk about anything other than their disabilities? Are the characters killed or cured by the end of the story?"

For a long time, Babs - Oracle - stood alone as a successful character who lived with her disability and who was the hero of the story. No issue of Birds of Prey I've read passes the Fries Test, but that obviously doesn't negate how significant Oracle was or mean her stories were bad, or even weren't about her. Birds of Prey might have been a team up title, but Babs had just as much - maybe more - focus than the other characters. And because of this, Oracle was important to people. Nobody else had her success, were as important as she was. And look, I can't say for certain, but I suspect that part of her appeal is that unlike similarly impaired characters like Dr Mid-Nite or Daredevil, nothing about the Oracle superhero persona negated her disability. It was always there, and it didn't stop her being awesome, being a hero, kicking arse and taking names.

But then something happened.

Suddenly, Babs wasn't alone.

Internet, Friends, we need to talk about Avengers: Endgame.

But first we need to talk about Iron Man. MCU Iron Man. We're not going to talk about the comics. They're not relevant right now.

If you haven't read it, go back a few posts and read my review of Iron Man 3 for why that movie is important. But to supplement that, let's quickly recap the Marvel Cinematic Universe Iron Man story.

Iron Man 1 & 2: The big theme here is Tony Stark, Iron Man, crawling out from the shadow of his father, making himself something distinct, something more, atoning for the crimes he has been complicit in through his company and his family name. In Iron Man 1, this means becoming Iron Man, ceasing his company's production of arms, and using the Iron Man identity to undo the harm those weapons have done in the name of profit. He completes this journey in Iron Man 2 when he finally accomplishes something his father could not, and defeats a villain who is motivated by the actions of Tony's father.

Avengers: Iron Man nearly dies. He flies into space, carrying a nuke, saving New York and all his buddies, and in doing so nearly dies. And in his final moments, he's unable to get a call through to Pepper, the woman he loves, and he sees the threat waiting beyond Earth, the invasion force coming for Earth, a foe far beyond what the Avengers have faced so far. He survives, but he is scared by the experience, and he is scarred by it. This sets up the rest of Iron Man's story.

Iron Man 3: Tony Stark is suffering PTSD after the events of the Avengers. It causes him nightmares, it causes him panic attacks and heightened anxiety, it causes him to fixate on his Iron Man suit and to cope by building more suits as a distraction. And in the end he learns to find some measure of peace through his relationships, and through being Tony Stark and not Iron Man.

Avengers: Age of Ultron: Still suffering, Tony Stark decides he wants to build an AI controlled robot army to fight the coming invasion. It goes poorly. Not much development for Tony because it's an ensemble film but he does make it clear that he knows the Avengers won't be enough, and he is still frightened.

Tony Stark is not cured at the end of Iron Man 3, he just learns to cope. Let's make something abundantly clear here: as of the end of Avengers, Iron Man has a disability. His PTSD is severe and it cripples him.  He lives with this disability. And make no mistake, just because he's not in a wheel chair, just because he doesn't have a prosthetic, just because it is invisible, does not make it not a disability. But he learns to live with it, to manage it, even though he is not cured of it.

And sometimes there is no cure. There is no cure for people who have been paralysed. There is no cure for severe mental illness like bi-polar or schizophrenia. For people with depression, they will spend their whole lives with depression. It might be treated and managed, but it is not gone. It's not a virus or an infection you can kill. There is no cure for Tony's PTSD. And even though he is living with it, managing it, it haunts him, it drives him, it's the reason much of Age of Ultron happens.

And all of this is awesome. This is the kind of power fantasy everybody else gets, so why not people living with disability and severe - one might say disabling - mental illness? Finally, some representation. Finally, a hero they can see themselves in.

Civil War: I can't even. Look, I can't. Not right now. This blog is already massive and dealing with a big topic. Civil War is a whole other thing, part of another big narrative problem with the MCU that needs its own blog to dissect. As far as Iron Man goes, it's a Captain America film, it's an ensemble piece, Iron Man doesn't move or develop much from where we left off in Age of Ultron, he's still trying to prepare for the worst, still trying to live as the best and most heroic version of himself, still motivated by his PTSD and the whole arms manufacturing thing.

Avengers: Infinity War: Oh look, Tony Stark was right. The Avengers weren't enough. Everything goes to shit.

And finally...

Internet, Friends, we need to talk about Avengers: Endgame.

So let's talk about it.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is big. I don't mean that in the sense that it includes many individual pieces of media, I mean that in the sense that it is an unstoppable monolithic franchise that looms over all pop culture, commanding our attention like almost nothing in cinema before it. No amounts of Harry Potters and Lords of The Rings and Batmans and Hunger Games can compete. The MCU is popular with basically every demographic and its audience satisfaction rate makes it immune to basically all professional criticism. It has made an unfathomable amount of money.

And right at the centre, from the very beginning, the character who started it all, the character everybody recognised, the character everybody loved, the character who proved it could all work was Iron Man. He showed up in the most movies, he had the biggest and most developed character arc, and even though more and more beloved characters, he remained the face of the franchise. Doubt me? Go look at the posters for the Avengers films. You will find him near the centre of every one. You will find he takes up a decent chunk of the poster. The only character who comes close to getting his level of focus is Captain America, except in the first Avengers film where Cap is quietly tucked away at the back. And on the Captain America: Civil War poster where he shares equal space with Iron Man.

In a big deal franchise, Iron Man is THE big deal character.

And he's a hero.

And he's a person with a disability.

And. They. Fucking. Killed. Him.

If you read my Iron Man 3 review, you'll understand why I consider Iron Man 3 to be a hugely important film not just in the franchise but in the genre itself. Iron Man the character is important for much the same reason, for the same reason Oracle was important. Representation matters, and there is nowhere near enough representation for people with disabilities in media, especially in superhero power fantasy stories.

But there's only one happy ending available to characters with disabilities. They get cured. But Tony Stark didn't get cured. His anxiety, his fear, was proven true, and then he died. He almost had a happy ending, but he gave it up for everybody. It was him before them. He gave his life so that the rest of the Avengers, the whole world, could live their life.

In 'Me Before You' this idea of disability being a burden is very much textual. It's there on the screen. You can't get around it. In Avengers: Endgame, it's meta-textual. You need to understand that nothing exists in a vacuum. Iron Man's death, within the text, has nothing to do with his disability, but in the wider landscape of our culture, he is one more character, one more person with a disability, who meets one of very few resolutions available to such people. It's all connected.

And Iron Man is the kind of character we're tragically short of in our pop culture. He's a hero, he's a power fantasy, and his disability, his mental illness was part of him, and was a part of him to the end, without being cured by comic-book-science-magic, without being compensated-for by powers. For all those nerds who want their super hero power fantasy, he's a character that an under-represented and poorly-represented group could identify with. We needed PTSD Iron Man. And for a few years, we had him. But in the end, he doesn't get a happy ending. He doesn't even get an original ending. He gets to sacrifice himself for other people's happy ending. This is why I brought up 'Me Before You' amongst a bunch of super hero stories, Iron Man and Will Traynor meet the same fate.

Captain America gets a happy ending.

Thor's story continues.

Hawkeye's story continues.

Gamora returns to the Guardians.

Iron Man, the hero with a disability, dies.

And he dies pointlessly.

Seriously. Let's look at that scene. Iron Man gets the gauntlet, all the infinity stones, and he snaps his fingers to erase Thanos and his army from the universe, but the strain on his mortal body is too much and he dies. Look, there's nothing out of character about Tony Stark taking a risk or show boating, but he has a family, a home, a CHILD that he plans to return to, something he says he'd choose over the whole world without a second thought. Also, he's a pretty smart guy. Would it really not have occured to him to say, give the gauntlet to The Hulk, who we know can use it? Or to the super powerful, Thanos-butt-kicking Captain Marvel who has proven more powerful than all of them? Or to Thor who is pretty sure he can do it? Tony has a genius solution to every problem except how to hand a weapon to somebody else.

That's why he never shared his weapons with anybody else. Nobody else got an Iron Man suit.

Oh wait... No, he does do that. Nevermind.

But let's say, for argument's sake, that this wasn't an option. It was now or never. He had to use the stones.

Why doesn't Doctor Strange, who is an actual medical doctor, who is standing less than a stone's throw away, rush in and try to do some doctoring? Maybe, I don't know, use his time control powers to reverse the damage. He has the time stone, again.

In fact, they have a complete set of infinity stones, and two or three people able to use them safely. Are you telling me the stones can erase half the living creatures in the universe from existence but can't fix up some third degree burns and internal bleeding? Is that beyond their infinite power?

Look, what's important here is that his death is not justified. It's cheap drama. The narrative of his death falls apart under any scrutiny unless you're willing to twist yourself in knots to justify it, but I'm not willing. I'm pissed off that for a while, we got a person with a disability as the face of the modern era's biggest multi-media franchise, and they couldn't come up with a better ending for him than 'Me Before You'.

Oh wait, they did come up with a better ending. It was him retiring and living out his days with his family in peace, at last finding the solace he craved. You know, the happy ending Captain America is inexplicably handed in the stupidest most clumsy way possible - but again, another digression we don't have time for.

So Tony Stark did have a better ending, a worthy ending, but it was taken away in favour of that same tragic ending so many of our characters with disabilities get. What a fucking waste.

We can do better representing people with disabilities.

We owe them better.

They deserve better.

And, now I think about it, so did Iron Man.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Stop Telling Mentally Ill People They're Dangerous

According to the above data, in 1959, 60% of people believed that there should be a law that banned the general public from owning handguns. In 2016, less than 25% of people hold that opinion.

Have I talked about gun violence before? I don't think so. Either way, I'm not going to talk about it now.

I'm not going to talk about how Scotland and Australia introduced strict gun laws and firearm buyback schemes and since then, Scotland has had one mass shooting and Australia has had zero. I'm not going to talk about how, in August 2019, the USA has had well over 200 mass shootings. I'm not going to talk about how the number of mass shootings stopped by a good guy with a gun in recorded history is zero.

I'm not going to talk about gun culture and what that looks like in various countries, about interpretations of laws, of history, about politics, or about the scare campaigns and misinformation spread by lobbyist groups. There is zero point to me talking about any of that. You want my opinion, here it is: people should not own guns. But I'm not going to go into that. That's a waste of my time and yours. The USA it seems, has decided, in large, that the right to own a gun is more valuable than the lives of its citizens. There's nothing more to say.

But people with far greater fortitude than I are going to keep having that debate and more power to you guys. Have your say. Maybe one day you'll be heard. But I'm done with that discussion. What I want to discuss is this chart:


What we see here, from a poll taken of adults taken in 2017, is that 89% of Republican and Democrat supporters (not politicians) agree that people with mental illness should not be allowed to buy guns. Only 82% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats believe that people on a no-fly or watch list should be banned from purchasing a firearm. That means more people are concerned about people with mental illness buying a gun than people who are deemed unsafe to have on a plane or are suspected of criminal activity.

Exactly what is it about the anxious and depressed that you're so afraid of?

Oh, but it's not people with depression that you're worried about getting a gun. After all, one in four people have a mental illness, according to the World Health Organisation, so if mental illness made people into killers, surely one in four people would be buying a gun and going on a killing spree. No, those people might shoot themselves, sure, and we shouldn't let that happen, but the ones we really have to watch out for are those people with mania, the sociopaths, the sadists, the delusional paranoid voice hearing schizophrenics. People with "serious" mental illness.

They're the ones doing all the killing, right?

Well, here's some more numbers: only about 5% of gun related killings are committed by people with mental illness. That's not mass shootings, that's all gun killings. The MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study found that, once accounting for substance abuse, only 18% of those studied had committed a violent act in the past year. But when they compared those results to the violence rates in the neighbourhoods and mentally healthy people in a similar environment (such as siblings) it evened out. The violence rates became statistically insignificant.

On the other hand, a study conducted by the Australian government found that 18% of people suffering a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia were a victim of violent and 17% reported self-harm.

The evidence for a causative link between mental illness of any kind and violent crime, particularly firearm related killings, does not exist. Laws that restrict mentally ill people from having firearms is at best going to reduce gun crime by 5%. That's slightly more impact on the homicide rate than a law banning the bogeyman from owning a gun.

The majority of mentally ill people are no more dangerous to you than anybody else. Mental Illness is not the reason for these mass shootings, is not the reason for gun violence. Hate is not a mental illness. Bigotry is not a mental illness. Ethno-nationalism is not a mental illness. But these are the things you should be concerned about.

Okay. So, I actually wrote this blog more than a year ago, but by the time I had finished getting the data, the zeitgeist had tragically moved on. But here we are again, so now is the time to say something. And there's one more thing I would like to say.

I don't talk much about my personal life, but I have been open about suffering from mental illness. I have lived the majority of my life with severe mental illness. And at times, if I had a gun, I would have used it. But the only person I would have shot is myself. Australia's firearms restrictions have saved lives.

But we're not going to talk about that. After all, the decision has been made. Y'all prefer having a gun than not having a gun violence pandemic. So own it. Stop putting the blame on people who are already marginalised.

Thursday, June 20, 2019

A Quick (and Confusing) History of The Flash

To borrow a phrase: Comics are weird.

I've been reading DC comics for a long time and that means a long time getting my head around DC's long and messy continuity. You've probably heard that DC occasionally does a "reboot" of its continuity but that's not entirely true. That would be too simple. One of the best ways to understand the history of DC Comics' fictional universe is by following a character through it from inception to modern incarnation. Many people have done this before and often they seem to focus on Supergirl. It makes sense. The history of Supergirl is like a fever dream.

But for my money, the history of DC continuity is easier to explore through The Flash, and when I say easier, I mean simple in the least simple way imaginable. And for no other reason than I feel like it, let's examine the history of The Flash and the DC Universe.

Jay Garrick
The first character call himself The Flash is Jay Garrick. Garrick was created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert in 1940. Jay Garrick is a university student who gets his powers from inhaling hard water while taking a smoke break in a chemistry lab. An origin story that could only come from the 1940s.

Jay Garrick joins the original super hero team, the Justice Society of America, and uses his super speed and blue jeans to be a classic hero of his era. Perhaps his most distinct trait is his hat, a World War I helmet that he modified to resemble the hat worn by Mercury in ancient depictions.

Jay Garrick appeared in an anthology series called Flash Comics, then a solo title called All-Flash. At the height of his popularity, Jay Garrick appeared in three regular publications: Flash Comics, All-Flash, and All Star Comics (the title that featured the JSA). But after the end of the second world war, super hero comics began to decline in popularity and between 1948 and 1951, all three of his book were cancelled.

Barry Allen

As the version of the character featured in numerous live action and animated TV shows, a plethora of straight to DVD animated features, and now a couple of major movies, Barry Allen is the version of the character most people are familiar with. Barry Allen was created in 1956 by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino.

Barry Allen is one of a number of characters who, during what is known as the Silver Age of Comics, was an updated recreation of an earlier character. Barry Allen is a forensic scientist who is doused by lightning-struck chemicals and develops super speed. Barry Allen would also be the first Flash to become associated with the Speed Force, a... Well, what exactly the Speed Force is changes depending on who's writing and what they need, so let's just call it the true source of Barry Allen's power and move on.

Barry Allen becomes a member of the Justice League, a staple of the DC universe, gets a side kick called Kid Flash. But before we talk about Kid Flash, we need to talk about how things get confusing. The creation of Barry Allen acted as a retcon for the DC universe. Barry Allen calls himself the Flash and dresses in red with a lightning bolt motif because he is inspired to become a hero by his favourite comic book super hero: Jay Garrick.

Jay Garrick was removed from the continuity of the DC universe as an actual hero and all his comic books became in-universe comic books. While characters he teamed up with like Superman and Batman remained real. And then...

Flash of Two Worlds

In 1961, Gardner Fox wrote a story called 'Flash of Two Worlds' which introduced to DC Comics the idea of a multiverse. In this story, Barry Allen meets Jay Garrick by travelling to an alternate dimension in which all the events of the comics featuring Jay Garrick were real and had happened around the time of their publication but Jay Garrick had since grown old and retired.

The idea of the multiverse is one reason DC Comics can be so hard to keep up with and it all began with this comic. After 'Flash of Two Worlds', many other writers took the opportunity to use the multiverse for team ups with older characters that had not been featured in comics for some time. Characters that had been in print constantly, like Batman and Superman, were given doubles from Jay Garrick's world - called Earth Two - as a way to explain why they had not aged in the decades since their creation. They were not the same characters, and the Earth Two Batman and Superman had grown older, like Garrick.

Crisis On Infinite Earths
While the multiverse thing was great for explaining how characters seemed to be immortal and gave writers opportunities to come up with interesting new versions of characters, it also made DC Comics hard to understand for new readers. Everybody knows who Superman is. He's the guy in movies and cartoons and old serials, but why are there so many Supermen in the comics?

The solution to this was a universe spanning event called Crisis On Infinite Earths which ran in 1985. The even is frequently called the first reboot of the DC universe, but that term isn't quite right. It was an in universe simplification and the short version is that a new all powerful villain was destroying all the realities of the DC universe one at a time, and a collection of heroes from across the multiverse team up to stop him but by the time they do, only one universe remains, a universe recreated from five universes with a combined history and cast of characters.

In this new, multiverse free, single Earth called New Earth, some characters like Supergirl simply ceased to exist, while others, like Jay Garrick, had their history retconned. This is why Crisis on Infinite Earths is not really a reboot. Many of Jay Garrick's original stories remained canon to this new universe, but no longer occurred on Earth Two.

Jay Garrick in this era became my favourite version of the character. A semi-retired old man superhero, and a mentor to the younger super heroes, and an occasional team mate of the younger Flashes. But mostly the grey haired Garrick hung out in his home in Keystone City with his wife Joan. He becomes retroactively connected to the Speed Force and that helps keep him physically younger than his actual age, but he's old enough that he's considered the slowest of all the Flashes. 

But what became of Barry Allen in this New Earth? Well, he died in the crisis. Again, it's not really a reboot because Barry Allen remained a character who lived and died, and his death inspired his Kid Flash to take up the mantle of The Flash.


Wally West
The first Kid Flash was introduced to comics in 1959, created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. He is the nephew of Barry Allen's wife, Iris West. Wally received his powers the same way Barry did and in the same place. While visiting the police station Barry worked at, lightning strikes a selection of chemicals that wash over Wally West and give him the same connection to the Speed Force.

Wally West was a member of the Teen Titans in its various incarnations up until he took over the title of The Flash from Barry during 'Crisis On Infinite Earths'. He not only takes the name, but also dons Barry's costume. Wally West became the third character to go by the name The Flash and keeps that name into the modern day.

Bart Allen
 The character Bart Allen was created by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo in 1994. He first appears with the super hero name Impulse and a white and red costume. Bart Allen is a character who I just don't have time to explain in full, but what you need to know is he's Barry Allen's grandson from the distant future travelled back in time. He was raised in virtual reality because the Speed Force made him physically age at super speed. Also, after travelling back in time, he lives with Jay Garrick. He joins Young Justice, then the Teen Titans and becomes the second Kid Flash and the side kick of Wally West.

And then later on he decides he'd also like to become The Flash and spends a while in a remarkably similar costume to his predecessors and with the same name.


Let's Stop and Recap
We have four characters called the Flash, the first is Jay Garrick who has a distinct costume and existed as a comic book character within the comic book universe, then in an alternate universe, then in the main universe as an old man. Barry Allen is the second character called The Flash who died when the multiverse was recreated as one universe. Wally West is the third The Flash, taking over for Barry and initially putting on Barry's costume. Finally, Bart Allen, who is the second Flash's grandson from the future, becomes The Flash. The Flash is aided by two versions of a side kick called Kid Flash, one is Wally West prior to becoming The Flash and the other is Bart Allen prior to becoming The Flash. Oh, and eventually the multiverse is recreated, including an Earth Two (That is not the same as Earth Two from pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths) but Jay Garrick remains on New Earth and as a part of its history.

Final Crisis
Final Crisis is... A bad comic full of good ideas that don't pay off nearly as well as they should because it is largely an incomprehensible incoherent mess and the whole thing is overshadowed by the presence of a vampire Superman that might have been the stupidest thing in DC Comics history if not for the death and return of Batman that occurred a little later. All you need to know about it is that Barry Allen comes back to life and resumes being The Flash.

Also Bart Allen, who was dead, comes back to life at this point but as Kid Flash again. He joins the Legion of Super Heroes in the future.

And for a little while, you have Jay Garrick as old retired Flash, Barry Allen and Wally West operating as The Flash independently, and Kid Flash in the future. And a multiverse with other versions of the Flash running around. And then Barry ruins it.

Flashpoint and The New 52
Speaking of bad comics. Flashpoint is a not that good comic that is about the Flash running so fast that he breaks time and stops being the Flash, but remembers being the Flash and what the world was like before he broke it. Then he becomes the Flash again, runs so fast that he fixes time only he fixes it wrong. The new remade and not quite the same universe was called The New 52 and it is a period of DC history where basically everything sucked for about 5 years.

The New 52 and Flashpoint is often called a reboot, but again it's not really a reboot because while it makes a lot of changes - specifically reducing all of DC comics history to 5 years of in-universe time - a lot of the pre-Flashpoint events are still considered to have happened. While many characters received completely new origin stories divorced from the pre-Flashpoint timeline, some, like Batman, kept a condensed version of their history where all the major plot points still happened in some similar fashion and resulted in a similar character.

As pertains to our friend The Flash, Barry Allen became the one true Flash, the first Flash of his world, created in the same lightning bolt chemical bath. But his origin is only just being explored now, and I haven't read it yet. But what's important is Barry Allen still exists and has never died and has had some adventures like he did pre-Flashpoint but the specifics are unclear.

Our old friend Jay Garrick was removed from existence and recreated on the new Earth 2 (that's three versions of Earth Two now). This new Jay Garrick is the only Flash of his earth and is given his power by the god Mercury before Mercury dies. He appears with a variety of other characters from the Golden Age of comics re-imagined as modern heroes and the comic was one of the better books in the New 52... For about a year or so. Then it too sucked. But all you need to know is Jay Garrick exists but he is entirely unrelated to any of the other Jay Garricks despite having the same name and same home dimension.

Bart Allen also gets recreated in The New 52 as part of the new Teen Titans group but that comic pretty much sucked from beginning to end and it's the worst version of Bart Allen and it's not worth talking about. But he's still a fast running kid from the future.

Wally West Again
And in case you were worried this was getting too easy, let's talk about Wallace "Wally" West. This version of Wally West was created in 2014 and is the latest character to take the name Kid Flash. Wally is also a nephew of Iris West and gets his powers through some time travel shenanigans that involve a future Wally absorbing some Speed Force off a future Barry Allen, but then dying and in his moment of death sending his power through the Speed Force back in time to empower his younger self. This Barry Allen joins the Teen Titans formed by Damian Wayne and, tragically, is a pretty dull character.

Since the Bart Allen of the New 52 is Impulse and the old Wally West was written out of continuity following Flashpoint, Wallace West is the now the only canonical Kid Flash in present DC Continuity. 

Rebirth
In 2016, DC Comics had a company wide relaunch, not at all a reboot, but an announcement that they were positioning all their titles in a new editorial direction focused on character stories rather than world building stories. Also, they stopped trying to be edgy and mature and started being fun again. In general, it was a not-quite-admission that the New 52 sucked and they were going to try and go back to how things were before without rebuilding their universe again.

Once again, this story was focused on The Flash (since Barry Allen was responsible, in universe, for the New 52 timeline*) and specifically on the original Wally West emerging from the Speed Force with knowledge of the pre-Flashpoint timeline that nobody else had. Wally West convinces Barry and the Justice League and the Titans (a group made up of the grown up original Teen Titans) that he is telling the truth and a friend and resumes being The Flash in this new continuity.

Once More With Feeling
Okay, so that more or less brings us up to speed on The Flash and the history of the DC Universe. Just so you understand, let me recap these characters.

Jay Garrick was the first Flash who received his powers from inhaling hard water. He was a member of the first super hero team, the Justice Society, and a member of the first shared superhero universe. Right up until he wasn't. Then he was a comic book character appearing in in-universe comic books. Until he wasn't, and he was a super hero in an alternate reality called Earth Two, one of many earths in a multiverse. Until he wasn't, and he was an old super hero who began his career in the 1940s but retired and became a mentor to younger characters from the 50s onward. Then this Jay Garrick stopped existing entirely** and Jay Garrick became a new young character empower by the god Mercury and a hero on Earth-2, contemporary with the rest of the DC Universe.

Barry Allen was the second Flash, getting his powers from lightning charged chemicals. He is inspired by comic books about Jay Garrick, then meets the real Jay Garrick on Earth Two, then history is rewritten and he's inspired by the old Jay Garrick. He takes Wally West as a side kick and then dies. Then he comes back to life. Then he rewrites history by running so fast he breaks reality then running so fast he puts it back together. Then he is the sole Flash of Prime Earth until he isn't when the old Wally West pops back into reality after being removed from it for a few years.

Wally West is the third Flash and the first Kid Flash and also gets his powers from an accidental electrified chemical shower. After Barry dies, he becomes The Flash. Then he sort of dies. Then he comes back to life. Then he stops existing. Then he exists again. He might be the only person who has remained one person from pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths and pre-Flashpoint to the present.

Bart Allen is from the future and he was Impulse, then the second Kid Flash, then the fourth Flash but only for a little while until he sort of died. Then he came back to life as a teenager and became Kid Flash again. He was raised in virtual reality because his super speed made him age to a teenager in a couple of years, but then they fixed that and he was raised by Jay Garrick. Then he was a whole new Bart Allen and a terrorist from the future with his mind wiped but that comic sucked so bad that everyone decided to pretend it doesn't exist and he hasn't been seen since*** so let's not talk about it.

Wallace West is the third Kid Flash and the second Wally West and he has only been around in comics for a few years. He has never been The Flash and isn't very interesting in general. He's the only person to be called Kid Flash after Flashpoint, even though the old Wally West is still around as The Flash.

And that's it! Now you know the history of The Flash and how he has changed as the DC Universe has changed and continuity has adjusted through in universe major events.

I will now take questions.

*Actually, it was Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen editing the timeline because... Reasons.
**Old man Garrick, Grandpa Flash as I like to call him, does make a brief appearance after Rebirth, inside the Speed Force like Wally did, with full memories of the pre-Flashpoint timeline, but he doesn't hang around.
***I'm told Bart Allen is back to being Impulse in current Young Justice comics but they probably take place on a different Earth to the rest of the DC Universe... But not Earth 2. And not Earth One. Oh, and Earth One is different to Prime Earth. Look, nobody said this was simple.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Is Cyberpunk Transphobic and Ableist?

There has been a lot of talk about the cyberpunk genre, lately, and its more troubling aspects, all stemming from a series of problematic revelations about the 'Cyberpunk 2077' video game being developped by 'CD Projekt Red'. What particularly caught my attention is an accusation that cyberpunk, a largely techno-phobic genre, is ableist in its condemnation of people using cybernetics to enhance themselves, and potentially transphobic for similar views on gender reassignment surgery. That is a great observation worth exploring.

Note that I am not talking about the video game 'Cyberpunk 2077'. The video game has some very troubling elements that read as transphobic and racist. But, come on, this is from the same studio that created a "collect women as sex trading cards" minigame in one of their titles. We shouldn't be this surprised and we certainly shouldn't be treating them as if they've earned the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway. I am henceforth talking about cyberpunk as a genre of fiction.

And I am going to explore it through Shadowrun, because it is the expression of cyberpunk I like the most and can speak the most about. It is also a super popular version of cyberpunk, having been around for 30 years in RPGs, novels, and video games. It's big enough and has been around long enough that I feel it's safe to call it an influential franchise within the genre. So, for the purpose of discussion, let's examine Shadowrun as a stand-in for cyberpunk more broadly, while ignoring the fantasy elements that are not applicable to the genre as a whole.

Is cyberpunk technophobic? Yes.

More broadly, cyberpunk is future-phobic. The conditions that birthed the cyberpunk genre are 1980s counter-culture that looked with trepidation at the economic and political reality of the world: a dawning digital age of right wing (read: socially conservative, economically liberal) economics and politics in which the global power was shifting to east Asia. And all of that meant alienation. Corporate domination would alienate us from our personal lives, an Asia dominated economy would alienate us from our national (read: western) roots, and technology would alienate us from our humanity. Thus was born the tropes of wage slaves corp drones, Japanese mega-corporations (or megacorps), and cybernetic augmentation. Cyberpunk does not want you to put pieces of metal into your body.

Is that ableist? Is its view of surgical transformation transphobic?

Well, let's begin with gender expression. How does the cyberpunk genre feel about your gender expression, or, for that matter, however else you want to express yourself? Well, as a genre that takes half its name from a counter-culture and aesthetic (punk) that was big at the time, and on the whole radical and transgressive, it should come as no surprise that cyberpunk does not care how you dress, what colour your hair is, how you style it, whether you've got piercings, and it sure as hell doesn't care what pronouns you go by (in fact, cyberpunk thinks gendered pronouns are boring and you should be using slick street slang like "chummer" to address people) or your sexual preferences. The only thing it does care about is your coming down on others and trying to force conformity on them. That's the punk in cyberpunk. Its identity politics are radically liberal.

Now let's hone in on the question of cybernetics. In the 5th edition rules of Shadowrun, the alienation that comes from altering your body with technology is represented in a mechanic called essence. You start with 6, and every augment takes it down a bit. Computer in your head? Maybe 0.5 essence. Flamethrower implanted in your arm? Maybe 1 whole essence. Replace your nervous system with wires? Like, 3 essence.

Gender reassignment surgery? None. In fact, most simple cosmetic surgery (basically anything you can get done today) is 0. Even metatype reassignment, essentially race change surgery, is 0 cost to your essence. If all you're doing is trying to make the human you feel like become the human you look like, cyberpunk doesn't care.

What about a new heart? A new arm? A replacement foot? So, it's a little less clear but again, if what you want is a replacement functioning piece of yourself, that's also 0 cost. If you're in an accident and lose your arm, you can have a genetic copy custom made to replace it and you lose none of your "humanity" score. What we would just call medicine gets really no judgement from cyberpunk. Cyberpunk does not think you should die because you have a bad heart or failing liver. Oh, and modern prosthetic are basically not mentioned, nor are external assistant devices like wheelchairs. They are not relevant.

(Quick aside: within Shadowrun, you can get cheaper medical surgeries done to fix or replace limbs and organs with universal "off the shelf" bioware and this does cost essence which does cloud the issue a little. This is arguably because class warfare is of more interest to Shadowrun than transhumanist questions, especially in its most recent years. Either way, nobody is saying it's perfect.)

Where cyberpunk takes issue is in the technology of enhancement. You don't lose essence for seeking medical treatment, you lose essence for saying "Hey, I'd like to have somebody chop my arm off and replace it with a metal arm with gold plates and neon lights and transforms into a machine gun because that'd be awesome and fashion means more to me than my humanaity." Cyberpunk sees that as alienating you from your humanity because you are, in the genre's terms, literally transforming yourself into something inhuman. This is frequently compounded with the notion that augmentations will make you more valuable to corporations because they make you a better worker. And again, those megacorps are alienating you from yourself. Johnny Mneumonic (to use a non-shadowrun example) cuts out a piece of his head and his memories of childhood for his job as a data courier. Technology meets corporate greed and destroys the human individual, deprives him of a part of himself.

The trope of "cyberpsychosis" where you replace so much of yourself with machine that you go crazy is the extreme expression of this anxiety at the heart of the genre.

So, on examination, I'm not sure the argument that cyberpunk is an inherently transphobic or ableist genre pans out. Cyberpunk has no interest in condemning you for trying to be the best version of you, the version of you that you are comfortable being, the version of you that can live the most fulfilling life you can, but that's on the basis that if you go beyond what is human to become part meat, part super advanced machine, you're no longer being you. Be complete, just be completely human, says Shadowrun.

And you can disagree with that. You can be in favour of transhumanism and think "human" means a lot more than flesh. That's not really cyberpunk, though. It might look cyberpunk, but cyberpunk is more than an aesthetic. Star Trek sometimes includes transhumanist elements and it is even positive on them, but it's not cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk questions transhumanism, it is cautious of it, it sees the potential of abuse and alienation in technology. To be critical of cyberpunk and to be fair about your critical analysis, I argue that you need to engage with cyberpunk beyond individual pieces. And in that way, I'm not convinced that cyberpunk, as a genre, when looked at as a whole, has anything much to say at at all about gender or medical prosthesis, let alone condemnation.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Ramble Review: Iron Man 3

I had originally planned to do ramble reviews of all the Iron Man films because they're all pretty good and it'd be an excuse to watch them. But I don't need a reason to watch good movies and the only one I really want to talk about is Iron Man 3, so here we go, ramble review of Iron Man 3.



Iron Man 3 is a 2013 sci-fi superhero film directed by Shane Black. It stars Robert Downey Jr as the titular hero Iron Man, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, and Ben Kingsley co-star. It's based on the comic book hero of the same name from Marvel Comics.

This is my preferred poster

Iron Man 3 follows on from the events of the Avengers film and sees Tony Stark, the superhero known as Iron Man, suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after nearly dying in the climax of that film. He's dealing with the associated anxiety and insomnia by building new suit after new suit.

Meanwhile, a new terrorist calling himself The Mandarin has claimed responsibility for a series of explosive attacks across the US. After Tony's friend Happy Hogan is injured in one such attack, Tony publicly challenges the Mandarin. The ensuing conflict at first sees Iron Man defeated and stranded in Tennesee, presumed dead, and with a non-functioning suit. But with some help from a local boy, he's able to repair his suit, track down the Mandarin and face his own demons.

Robert Downy Jr continues to be the perfect Tony Stark - eccentric, supremely charismatic, manic even in his expression of anxiety, and charming even in his most obnoxiously narcissistic moments. Gwyneth Paltrow's sassy, self-assured, and much put-upon portrayal of Pepper Potts is still the best version of that character we've ever seen. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce both play villains and both do great jobs, but Ben Kingsley steals the show and plays into the dramatic reveal of his character perfectly.

As an action movie, Iron Man 3 is easily the greatest in the series. The action beats are creative and varied, Robert Downy Jr is given the occasional opportunity to show off his actual skills as a martial artist, and the climax in particular takes the possibilities of Iron Man and his super suits to their full potential. Even Gwenyth Paltrow gets in on the action and it's great to see Pepper finally let loose.

Okay, that's all that surface level, standard movie review praise done. The movie is six years old and its part of one of the biggest media franchise ever; everybody should have seen it by now. You already know it's good and if the fact that it's well acted, well directed, well choreographed, well written, and just all around a technically proficient entry into the MCU hasn't convinced you it's a good movie worth your time, I don't know what to tell you. But if you're on board with me so far, let's get into the meat of Iron Man 3.

Because Iron Man 3 isn't just a good action movie and an enjoyable super hero film, it's a legitimately great movie. Iron Man 3 is the kind of film that justifies the entire genre. And not just that, Iron Man 3 is culturally significant in the same way Black Panther and Wonder Woman are culturally significant.

But let's begin the proper rambling with the Mandarin, because this is - or at least was when it came out - somehow controversial. If you're not familiar with the Mandarin as a comic book character, all you need to know is he's Fu Manchu with super science rings. He's a racist caricature that has no place in modern pop culture. Iron Man 3's decision to divorce him of that origin and instead re-imagine him as a kind of global villain was nothing short of genius. He's a cyber terrorist able to hack national broadcasts, his name, lair and clothing evoke a vague Orientalism, but his tactics and his video messages are distinctly Al Qaeda. He is an amalgam of various foreigner nightmares the US media has conjured up in the last fifty years. There's even a touch of the domestic: he sermonises like an extremist southern preacher, speaking with an un-placeable drawl. Oh, and he's also genuinely terrifying as a villain. Seriously, Ben Kingsley is amazing.

Not Featured: A Racist Caricature

But it's all fake. Ben Kingsley's Mandarin is an act, a character he puts on to cover for the real mastermind, Aldrich Killian (Pearce) and the terrorist attacks aren't attacks at all, they're accidents caused by Killian's research. The Mandarin is non-specific foreign fear, but is all American made. And while that's a great twist in the narrative, it's entirely consistent with the world of the Iron Man films.

Let's look back: The first Iron Man film begins with the Ten Rings as a pretty generic terrorist group in the Middle East kidnapping Tony Stark so he can build them a weapon, but we find out that it was American Obadiah Stane who hired them to kill Tony, and who has been selling them weapons.

Iron Man 2's villain Ivan Vanko is motivated by the wrongs committed against his father by Tony's father, but he's quickly defeated and imprisoned by Iron Man. He only becomes a real threat once the American villain Justin Hammer recruits him and puts him to work in his own vendetta against Tony Stark.

In every Iron Man movie, the villain is a foreigner or foreign organisation that on the surface reflects America's anxieties, they are the enemies created by a historically militant foreign policy, they are the ghosts of its global conflicts (IVan Vanko is the ghost of the cold war, in case you missed it) but in reality they are all backed by corporate America.

And this is especially true in Iron Man 3 where it plays into the central theme of the movie.

A good story will, in general, establish everything from the main characters to the main conflict to the central themes in the early parts of the story. Iron Man 3 establishes its core theme in the opening moments of the film, via monologue. "We create our own demons." The threats to America in the Iron Man films are made by America. They are its home grown demons.

And the threats to Tony Stark are made by Tony Stark. The major villains in Iron Man 3 exist because of Tony Stark's mistreatment of people in his earlier life. That much is clear in the text. But there's another demon Tony Stark has to confront in Iron Man 3 and that's Iron Man.

Nothing demonic about this imagery
No sir, no symbolism here.

Tony Stark projects all his anxiety and his trauma onto the Iron Man suits. He sees them as his protection, and his salvation, but they are at best a dependency and at worst a literal dead weight. Despite the Iron Man being a literal part of him (by way of the arc reactor and magnet in his chest), Tony Stark is so out of sync with the suits (and thus himself) that at one point his latest suit attacks Pepper in her sleep. The Iron Man suits are a false salvation, and at Tony Stark's lowest point, the film provides us with a beautiful visual metaphor of a cold and isolated Tony Stark literally dragging his Iron Man suit through the snow and darkness. This is the perfect synthesis of narrative, sound, visuals, and subtext that makes film such a unique art form.

This right here, this is art.
And the resolution of all this is just as great. If you scroll up to my synopsis, you might notice that I don't at any point mention Iron Man saves the world or saves anybody specific. He doesn't. The climax of Iron Man 3 sees Tony Stark and all his new suits fighting to beat Killian, save Pepper (who Killian has captured) and save the President. But it's Rhodey (Cheadle) who saves the president, and Pepper saves herself. It's also Pepper who defeats Killian and saves Tony. She saves him physically, and she becomes his emotional salvation, doing what the Iron Man suits could not, and on realising this, Tony destroys all his new suits, letting go of that false security.

It's nothing new or revolutionary for a woman, particularly a love interest, to help the manly hero of a story with the power of love and emotional support. But how often do you see that play out on screen as the female lead being the actual physical hero of the story's climax? How often does the superhero's girlfriend get to be that awesome in general, whether or not its a visual action packed metaphor for the development of the relationship between her and the main character? Why aren't we talking about this more? Why hasn't Gwyneth Paltrow got her own MCU film yet? Where's my Rescue* film, Marvel? Huh? Where's my Rescue film? (I believe the answer to this is in part because she doesn't want her own solo film, and the world is worse off for it.)

Action Hero Pepper needs to be a thing!
Iron Man 3's thematic depth isn't anything hard to uncover, but it plays out magnificently as a visual subtext running through the film that blends with the action and physical drama as well as the inter-character drama across the length of the film. The central theme is established in the opening and it underpins everything that happens until the closing moments of the film. This is just incredible story telling. This is what movies should be.

Way back there near the top, I said that Iron Man 3 is significant in the way that Black Panther and Wonder Woman are significant and now that I've talked at length about how well written and how well made Iron Man is, let's look at that old hobby horse of mine: diverse representation in fiction.

Iron Man 3 is the best portrayal of mental illness in a super hero film. Ever.

Okay, so, there's nothing new in pairing super heroes and mental illness. That's basically the 80 year story of Batman. That's basically the story of every modern incarnation of Batman's super villains. It's the largely unspoken defining trait of every character in Watchmen. But Iron Man 3 is different.

Tony Stark isn't Iron Man because of some unresolved mental illness or emotional turmoil. I mean, arguably that's still part of his origin, but he works through it pretty quick and while it might still be part of him, it doesn't define him. He's comfortable working off the sins of his past as a super hero, and he clearly enjoys it most of the time. No, the mental illness that eventually afflicts Tony Stark is a result of being Iron Man. And it's a problem.

And let's be clear: without any disrespect to people who live with mental illness, mental illness is a problem. That's kind of what defines it. And for many people, it will always be a part of who they are and how they live, and it's important to be sensitive to that and realise those people can live with it and have full, productive, even happy lives. But mental illness is a problem that a lot of people must manage every day.

And that's where we come into Tony Stark's life in Iron Man 3. He's suffering a mental illness: PTSD. And it is a problem, and he's managing it poorly, and not only does it guide many of his bad or misguided decisions, it actively manifests as panic attacks through the film, as insomnia, as a compulsion to build. There's some argument to be made about how realistic this portrayal is relative to the lived experience of real people in the real world, but I don't see that as significant to this discussion. What's important is that it is internally consistent with the world and the character of Tony Stark.

And Iron Man 3 doesn't glorify it like we so often see with Batman's trauma, nor does it demonise it as we often see with comic book villains written as mentally ill. And perhaps most importantly: it doesn't stop Tony Stark being a hero who fights badguys and is, with a lot of help, ultimately victorious in broad terms. And when we leave Iron Man 3 and go into the later MCU films where he appears, his PTSD is down played but it is clear he's not suddenly "cured" at the end of Iron Man 3, he's just managing it a lot better now that he has faced it, owned it, and found salvation in his relationships instead of his machines.

Diversity and representation of more people with more life experiences is important. I'm not going to say that seeing a mentally ill hero is as important or significant as seeing people of colour, LGBTQI+ people, or women in those roles and being welcome into a space they have traditionally been excluded from or marginalised within. That is not for me to decide and I'm not interested in deciding it.

But what I can say without hesitation is that people with mental illness have existed in a similar place and far too often mental illness is presented as being the reason for villainy in the worst forms. To see a hero suffer but still live as themself, still be a hero, and not find a magical cure like "Hey, you should just decide to be better and get over it," is incredibly meaningful.

There's a lot that goes into making a film, and a lot of ways to measure its quality. Iron Man 3's plot has a few twists, but it's nothing special. But as I've said, it's not about being something we've never seen before, it's about doing something unique and special with what you've got. It's the difference between a jacket off the rack and a tailor made jacket. They're both just jackets, the same general shape and purpose, but one is made with a lot more skill, care and purpose. That's Iron Man 3. In my opinion, there hasn't been a film as good as Iron Man 3 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since. And maybe you won't feel so strongly about it, but it's kind of weird how often it gets overlooked when it's genuinely fantastic.

If nothing else, it's a fun, exciting, technically proficient film with some outstanding action scenes and almost perfect casting. It's also saddled with the task of being the end of a trilogy, the halfway point of a character arc (Tony continues to develop right up until Endgame), and the sequel to two different movies. The fact that it accomplishes all that without being a total mess is kind of amazing in itself. There's no argument it's one of the greats in the ever expanding and ever improving super hero film genre.

But it's also a damned fine film in its own right, apart from what it accomplishes in the wider view of the MCU. It is what super hero movies as a whole should aspire to be in quality and significance. I suspect it is overlooked because sequels, as a rule, are considered inherently lesser, and the super hero genre has saturated the cinema landscape for over a decade now and most of them are enjoyable but unremarkable, middle of the road films.

But Iron Man 3 deserves a whole lot more because it is a whole lot more.

Grab a buddy and go watch it again!
*Rescue is the name Pepper uses in the comics when she gets her own super suit and becomes a hero.