It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's an Overanalysis of Man of Steel!

So today’s blog is about Man of Steel. It doesn’t contain spoilers, as such, but if you haven’t seen it and you want to go in without my opinions bouncing around your head, maybe save reading this for later. Alternatively, my opinions are pretty good, so definitely take that into consideration.

The problem with overanalysing this film is that I decided to do so ten minutes into it, and also I’ve only seen it once. When I did Mulan last week, I stopped and started it, took screenshots, and wrote notes. Not having that luxury yesterday, I mostly spent the film leaning over to Boyfriend and making “witty” comments in an attempt to remember them. I’m sure this really enhanced his viewing experience. It certainly improved mine.

Here’s what you need to know about Man of Steel: it’s not a Superman movie. “Oh but Lizzy!” you cry, “I’ve seen the trailer, I’ve seen the poster, it has a dude in blue and red punching the air while flying. He has a cape. I know what is what.” Yeah, well, sure it has Superman themes and ideas but because the film focuses on Superman’s origin story, it’s actually an alien movie. More than that, it’s an alien invasion movie. . It follows a bunch of the same tropes as other alien invasion films, the first act of the movie is set on Krypton and there’s a bunch of dudes in suits talking about the importance of protecting earth. I love alien movies that are set in America. They always vaguely reference how other countries react (usually in front of well-known landmarks), but it still comes down to the CIA or FBI to sort that shit out.

...and this guy

The aliens look exactly like humans, except they have cooler clothes. Kryptonians are big on skintight suits and armour, and after seeing the film; I must admit I’m a convert. What a badass way to dress. We should all incorporate a little more armour into our wardrobes. But I’m less inclined to adopt their architecture… the major theme of which is genitalia. I know I’m not alone in thinking this because Boyfriend definitely nodded at one point when I whispered “are they living in a giant penis?” And when a bunch of Kryptonians got incarcerated in sarcophagi-like things, Boyfriend said, “You’ve been sentenced to dildo prison, sorry”. Given that a large part of the film is about how babies are made, and (SPOILERS, select to read) how great it would be to make them on the ashes of earth, the phalluses are more than a little off putting.

                                                                             

Now, I must come clean here and say that my Superman knowledge is limited. In fact, all of it comes from the TV show Smallville (please, don’t judge me). Perhaps I’m not the best person for this job, but hey, I’m the boss at Hum Drum Plum and I just seemed like I had a good head on my shoulders, I gave me a shot despite my initial misgivings. My Smallville watching did prep me for noticing the little references to the Superman source material. I particularly enjoyed that lots of trucks and buildings are branded with “LexCorp”. Also Clark lives in a town called Smallville and the nearby city is called Metropolis. Look, I understand the metaphorical nature of these place names but they are kind of awkward in the context of serious film called Man of Steel.

but 100% fine on the show that thought this was a good promo image

Speaking of Metropolis, you know that scene in The Avengers where they fight in New York? It’s a great, action packed ending but I spent most of it being distracted by the overwhelming concern that they were breaking New York. Yeah, well if you felt anything similar while watching that film, be prepared to be weeping for humanity as you watch Man of Steel. Sure, Metropolis is a metaphor for some other city (not New York, as Boyfriend reliably informed me, Gotham is New York), but they BREAK IT INTO A THOUSAND PIECES. I don’t think it’s spoilers to say that the day gets saved (it’s a Superman/alien film after all), but an entire city gets smashed up in order to do it. What are the repercussions of this? The American economy would be significantly effected, hundreds of thousands of people would be refugees, there’d be disease, crime, looting. How could they begin to rebuild? Would Clark Kent be held accountable? Where the hell is the Daily Planet situated now given that the entire city just burnt to the ground? These are the important questions people. I have no doubt there will be a sequel, and I really hope that the writers and directors endeavour to answer my questions in due time. I am confident they read my blog religiously.

What did you think about Man of Steel? Got some shit to say? I am happy to provide you with a platform to do so here in the comments, on facebook and on twitter. Get involved!

I'll Make a Man Out of You - Overanalysing Disney's Mulan

So it begins, after having a small crisis about what I’m doing with this blog, I’ve decided to overanalyse stuff on a regular-ish basis. After a vote on the facebook page, the people have spoken, and today’s film for brutal decimation rigorous discussion is Disney’s Mulan. If you haven’t seen it, or if it’s been a while, the basic plot is this: 

Ancient China. Mulan steals her dad’s armour and pretends to be a dude called Ping in order to join the army in her father’s place. She trains with men, “assisted” by a small dragon, Mushu and a cricket (because Disney) and goes to war. She saves the day, but is revealed as a woman, so she is scorned and kicked out of the army. But she is the only one who knows the Hun are still coming! So she saves the friggin day AGAIN and then goes home to her family. It is implied that the handsome commander man who has thus far been a dick to her marries her. The end.

I liked Mulan as a kid. I really did. I was a tomboy, and I liked the idea of a Disney Princess who did her own dirty work. No one saves Mulan, she does it all herself. She wields a sword, rides a horse, sings good songs and is quite funny. The film came out when I was 10, and I can say with absolute certainty that I admired her. In many ways I still do, but having watched the film twice this year, one of those times being this morning, I have a few bones to pick with Disney.

First of all, who approved the racism? A number of the artists working on the animation are Asian or of Asian decent, a number of the voice actors are Asian Americans. George Fucking Takei is in this film. I cannot believe that not a single one of them was like “uhhh… guys?” at some point. But nope, Disney you just went right ahead with cringe worthy racial stereotypes and shitting all over Chinese religious practises.

"A single grain of rice can tip the scale" - geez thanks Confucius, I mean Emperor

This is nothing to the fact that the basic premise of this film is “even Asians think all Asians look alike to the point where they don’t notice a girl dressed in her dad’s armour.” Raaaaaacism.

Ok, so I think we can all accept that Mulan isn’t exactly racially sensitive. In fact, it’s pretty well known that Disney regularly shits all over “other” cultures. May we never forget Pocahontas. But at least Mulan is a better role model for girls than the other princesses, right? Finally we have a female protagonist who looks after herself, who beats people up, who isn’t a damsel? Lizzy, I can practically hear you thinking, please don’t ruin this film by going on a feminist rant. Well, first of all, you’re in the wrong place my friend, and second of all, I am a big advocate for enjoying things in spite of the fact that they may be ‘problematic’. Given that I feel more knowledgeable and more comfortable talking about sexism rather than racism... 

Yeah. I’m about to tear Mulan to shreds.

In the matchmaker scene, Mulan is meant to be all demure and a “good woman” in order to impress the match maker (Miriam Margoyles by the way! Omg!). If impressed, the matchmaker will set Mulan up with a nice husband and she’ll “bring honour to us all”.  But it goes horribly wrong. In a rather hilarious, Disney style way. Stuff breaks, things spill, there’s a fire… it's fun for the whole family. But it doesn’t go wrong because Mulan isn’t a good woman, it goes wrong because the cricket Mulan’s grandma shoved up her dress gets out and causes a fire on the matchmaker’s butt. I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say here Disney. In my memory, I always thought Mulan was too tomboyish and adventurous to be a good, little demure woman. But in reality the problem is that she has a crazy grandma who shoves insects in people’s clothes? WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE? I’M SO CONFUSED.

In fact most of the things that go wrong in this movie aren’t Mulan’s fault.  When she first arrives at training camp she gets blamed for a brawl that her dragon friend, Mushu, started, she is then singled out for the rest of the training montage.  The other soldiers sabotage her at every turn, putting scorpions down her shirt, tripping her, throwing rocks at her… you know generally being jerks. Once she’s left alone, she works hard and is the only one to climb to the top of the pole and retrieve the arrow. And then she suddenly gets good at all the other stuff. Except that’s not it, is it? She always had the potential but she was just being held back by jerks who didn’t think she could do it. I know they don’t know she’s a girl but um this looks EXACTLY LIKE INSTITUTIONALISED MYSOGINY.

So anyway, she goes on to be the best at army and they set off to defeat the Hun. Mulan uses her cleverness to save them all during a battle and in particular, saves Shang, the guy in charge who she has a slight crush on, from certain falling-off-a-giant-cliff-death. Unfortunately, she gets injured, and when they are patching her up, they discover boobs!

I am not kidding, the music literally goes "Dun Dun Dunnnn" at this moment.

So even though she’s awesome (and also quite injured by the way), she gets thrown to the ground and Cunning, Sneaky Administrator says, “I knew there was something wrong with you! A woman!! Treacherous snake! High treason! Ultimate dishonour!” Are we talking about impersonating a man here dude, or just being a lady in general, I’m not 100% sure. Sexy Shang doesn’t kill her (so generous!) because he owes her his life, but they leave her in the snow. While watching this I made the following note: 

Hello you just saved all our lives and were gravely injured in the attempt. But unfortunately, you have boobs, so we’re going to leave you to freeze to death, bye!

Of course that’s when Mulan realises that the Hun are, somehow, impervious to snow? I don’t know, she destroyed them all with a giant avalanche but even though some of them are shirtless, this seems to have no effect, and they go off on their quest to destroy the Emperor some more. Being the only person who knows this, Mulan heads off to tell everyone. Of course, Sexy Shang doesn’t care that she has vitally important information, only that she insists on still being a girl. “You said you’d trust Ping, why is Mulan any different?” God Mulan, haven’t you got it yet, it’s because of your treacherous anatomy!

It’s all ok though, because Mulan saves the day yet again. And this time, she does it wearing a dress. She’s not the only one either. Three of the men dress as concubines for no real reason to distract the guards. Of course, only the comedic male characters dress as women, not the heroic love interest, because dressing as a woman is both shameful and comedic. Yay. The Emperor is super duper grateful and offers Mulan a place on his council. She turns it down though, because she misses home. Sexy Shang follows her because all of a sudden he’s decided he’s in love with the woman he has been cruel to since the moment he discovered she wasn’t a dude named Ping.

I think what’s most upsetting about Mulan is that it presents as a feminist Disney film. Or at least, it promises a strong female lead, a complex interesting person who is looking for more than just Prince Charming. But it ultimately disappoints, because there’s no real challenge of any status quo. She could only do all those amazing things by being a man, and the second she was found out, she was despised. Mulan marries the handsome man even though he was a dick to her because… why? Because Disney films don’t seem to be able to conceive of a woman who doesn’t want to get married. She can’t just be happy because you know… she saved China, she also has to get a husband, otherwise she’ll be unfulfilled.

Which is exactly how I feel after saving large Asian countries too.

If you liked this, please tell me about it! You can click the reaction buttons below, or write a comment, or like and comment on Facebook. Also available below are sharing buttons: if you liked this, your friends might too. Or they might not. Maybe you are really different to your friends, maybe you struggle to relate to anyone. Maybe you don't have any friends. Oh god I'm sorry... I'm not very good at this. 

The Ghost of Mathsmas Past

I have an exam tomorrow morning. It will be the first exam I’ve sat since 2008 or 2009, probably. And it’s for maths. Ok, no, it’s not a “maths exam” as such; it’s for a course about how to teach maths to primary school students. In case you missed the memo, I am in fact studying primary education, so suddenly I have to know about easy things like addition and subtraction, and less easy things like algebra and how to teach children to count. Can you even conceive of a time when you didn’t know how to count? That was a thing. That’s a thing lots of people are good at teaching to small children. That’s a thing I’m being examined on tomorrow morning. So given that my brain is completely consumed with studying, I’m not really in a place to write a blog about anything else. NO DON’T LEAVE. This isn’t a post about maths, honest, it’s a post about changing your opinons, and how weird that shit is.

To give you some context, I’d like to take you on a little journey back in time. The year is 2005, and yours truly is standing in a jewellery shop in Indooroopilly Shopping Centre, Brisbane. Teen Lizzy is wearing a school uniform and is excitedly looking at a pink love heart pendant. The shop assistant asks if it’s a gift or for Teen Lizzy. “It’s for me,” she says, “it’s a present to myself for finishing maths forever”. That’s right, I had just come from my Grade 12 Maths A exam, and I had walked up to the shops and bought myself a necklace because I deserved it, apparently, for having survived 12 years of mathematical torture. And because I genuinely thought that 1. pink love heart pendants were cool and 2. I’d never have to do maths again. Bless.

I mean... to look at me... it's actually quite surprising I wasn't any good at maths. #nerd4lyf

Skip forward a couple of years, we’re in a university exam hall, and I’m feverishly writing answers that look remarkably like maths onto an exam paper. Having chosen a minor in Psychology, I had accepted that yes, unfortunately I would have to endure one semester of first year statistics. I regurgitated as much as I could onto the exam paper before walking out and promptly forgetting everything. As I continued through my psych minor, I fudged and guessed my way through any statistics part of my essays and hoped no one would notice.

I was one of those people who bitched and moaned about mathematics, who claimed it had no use beyond the basics, who behaved like I had some kind of number-based dyslexia (which is actually a thing by the way, but I don’t have it). But the reality, of course, is that I have used maths every day of my life. The day I bought that pink love heart necklace I would have mentally calculated if I had enough money to cover it, would have thought about how long I had until my bus left, or how many marks I had hopefully gotten on the exam to get the overall grade I wanted.

But now, I am enamoured with it. One semester studying this course has completely changed my mind about maths. I see now that it is a universal language, that is important, even that it can be beautiful. And I also am coming to understand why I have struggled with it for so long. The main focus of this course is on teaching maths for understanding. Not just teaching the multiplication table, but actually teaching strategies for multiplying, for making sure kids actually understand what they are doing when they multiply, or divide, or find common denominators or translate equivalent fractions. Some of my teachers taught like this, but most didn’t. So once maths got beyond the realm of basic concepts and memorising, I had zero skills in my arsenal to cope with the bigger stuff.

I think *because* I have struggled for so long with the subject, I feel really empowered to do better by my future, hypothetical students. Because I know how embarrassing it is to stand at the checkout and have no idea how much your third of the share house groceries should be, I want to make sure that no student of mine has to experience that. And because I have so drastically changed my mind on this topic, I want to empower young’uns to feel good about maths, to feel like it is just as fun as science, just as interesting as English or history. I want them to feel like that always, so that instead of struggling through maths education, they’ll flourish. I want to give students the most positive maths foundation possible, so that they can be much, much better at it than I ever will be.

Ms. King out. 

Poor Old Judas

I’ve always had a certain sympathy Judas. Even when I was a Christian, I felt like Judas got such a raw deal. Yes, he is the betrayer, but Jesus needed someone to betray him so that he could die for all our sins and all that. That’s so cruel; it’s as though Judas could never have done anything else, like he had no free will. And then, he kills himself, another sin, and according to some texts is then eternally damned. I mean, sheesh, the guy literally facilitated the saving of all humanity, but because he betrayed Jesus he’s the worst? Un.fair.

There were lots of things that contributed to my becoming an atheist. It happened gradually, and I would never be able to pinpoint an exact moment where I decided I no longer believed, but Judas was always one of my problem points. How could a loving God allow that? No, it’s worse than that, Judas’ betrayal wasn’t something that just happened on God’s watch, it was God’s plan. And even if you want to go with the sort of Vengeful God/ Loving Jesus dichotomy, it’s not like Jesus let Judas off the hook either. He was all “ONE OF YOU WILL BETRAY ME LOL JOKES I KNOW IT’S YOU JUDAS YOU GIT.” That was exceptionally problematic for me as a young, questioning Christian, and not one that the Church ever seemed to have a ready answer for.

One of you will literally stab me in the back with a poorly concealed knife.

When I was 16 we watched Jesus Christ Superstar in Study of Religion at school. The 70s film version, the one in the dessert, the famous one, you know it. Dancers appear out of thin air and leap off stuff, it’s great.

like this

I remember being mostly bemused on my first watching. I thought Herod was hilarious and I couldn’t quite work out if it the film meant to be taking the piss or not, but I also was so taken with the interpretation of Judas. He doesn’t betray for money, he betrays because he thinks Jesus needs to be stopped, because he’s taken it too far. He unwittingly sends Jesus to his death; never believing it will go that far. Poor old Judas indeed.

I’m not really a musical theatre kind of person. I usually find musicals to be over long and bizarre. My exceptions to this rule are Avenue Q, because puppets, Chicago, because it’s amazing, and Jesus Christ Superstar because Judas. Also, JCS is a continuous musical, which makes a lot more sense to me than musicals where there’s a scene that adequately tells the story, but then the characters break out into song anyway, just to drive the point home, just in case you missed it. I’m not obsessive about JCS by any means; I haven’t even seen that many version of it or anything. But I like the songs, and I know lots of the lyrics, and you’re damn right when it was announced that the most recent Arena tour version was touring Australia I signed up for the presale.

Boyfriend and I just got back from a super quick weekend trip to Sydney where we watched Tim Minchin absolutely rock it as Judas Iscariot. Also, obviously, Mel C (The Spice Girls Reigneth!) as Mary Magdalene and new blood Ben Forster as the Man Himself. The entire production is 100% mind-blowing and if you didn’t get a chance to see it fear not, because there’s a DVD and you absolutely must watch it. It. Is. SO. Good. We were in the eleventh row, smack bang in the centre, and I had tears in my eyes from the second it started.

Our view

Tim Minchin is a renowned Atheist and I have seen many Internet commenters reacting very surprised to learn he is in a show about Jesus. It’s possible that some of them are offended Christians, maybe, or bewildered atheists, but I just feel like they are missing the point. Yes, it’s called Jesus Christ Superstar but it’s never been about Jesus for me. It’s Judas’ story. And Judas, despite being devoted to Jesus (you know, before he betrayed him and sent him to his death) was the first person to question Him. And that’s what Atheism is, in my opinion. It’s questioning, it’s doubting, it’s saying “hey wait a second why are we pouring expensive perfume on Jesus, he’s just a guy, can’t we sell it and give the money to the poor?” Minchin himself calls JCSan “atheist musical” and if I was ever going to follow someone blindly (irony intended), it would probably be him.

Can you blame me?

P.S. Sorry the blog is late, it's because of the aforementioned Sydney trip.