Is "Avengers: Age of Ultron" sexist?
 

This is probably one of the more odd current events as of late, and it's definitely not a huge issue, but it's nevertheless something to talk about. I recently heard that people are bashing and boycotting the new Avengers movie for being "sexist", particularly because of a scene with Black Widow where she reveals her past, including when she was sterilized at a young age, and then calling herself a "monster". How do you all feel about this? Are people greatly overreacting? Has the character of Black Widow and that specific scene been misinterpreted?

Here are some opinions online:

It's Sexist: An Open Letter to Joss Whedon from a Disappointed Feminis | Women and Hollywood , ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’s’ Black Widow Disgrace - The Daily Beast

It's Not Sexist: Avengers: Age of Ultron, Sexism and Hollywood , Ruffalo defends 'Avengers' director over sexism complaints - NY Daily News

It was made by a male therefore sexist.

Frownland out.

/thread :bowdown:

I don't really know if it's sexist or not but it is a kind of annoying continuation of the trend of female characters wherein their only two story points seem to be "who is she sleeping with" and "would she make a good mom". I think it's also compounded by the fact that there are no toys of her for younger female fans or a solo movie in the works. Personally though, I think Black Widow works better as a supporting character and I'd be far more interested in a She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Misty Knight/ Colleen Wing movie or TV series.

I think there's also the fact that Avengers: Age of Ultron is the biggest movie of the year right now and it's an easy way to get eyes on your thoughts if you relate them together. Then of course there's just the people that seem to be nothing but professionally outraged on the internet. I wonder if there's a site where you can buy package deals, like for $100 you get 1000 people making angry rants on Twitter about something you don't like, because if I might need to get in on the ground floor of that...

That's pretty much my view of the situation as well. And I agree, a She-Hulk movie has been a long time coming. :D

Suggested title change:

Is 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Based on Tired Cliches?

You know, thinking back on it, maybe Black Widow wasn't calling herself a "monster" specifically because she couldn't have babies, but more because she was basically raised to be a ruthless killer with no sense of identity or humanity.

Another interpretation is that maybe she's just more of a flawed character than people realize. People keep assuming that just because a character says something, it automatically reflects the beliefs of the person who wrote the dialogue, when it could just be to reflect the flawed beliefs of the character rather than some general statement regarding every single person belonging to a group/gender. Black Widow basically hates herself, so it makes sense that she would degrade herself even in irrational ways and with irrational thoughts. She thinks less of herself for her past, for things that happened to her that were out of her control, and maybe even don't really matter all that much. For example, there are plenty of guys in real life who are sterile, and who think of themselves as being "less of a man" for their condition, and it's a very complicated thing to have to deal with. But if I made a movie that featured a character that deals with that same feeling, to give depth to their personality, it wouldn't be fair for people to just assume that I as a movie maker think all men who can't make babies aren't really men, you know?

Or maybe it was just some spotty dialogue, and i'm overthinking things. :laughing:

God damn it, Sansa. She's clearly gone off the rails after getting banned. She is our Ultron.

I would laugh my ass off if she was secretly behind the outrage. :laughing:

Obviously the star of the movie is going to defend it. I don't think it's misogynistic but it is objectively sexist. I don't think it deserves outrage. Like there are women being raped and beaten and used and you're going to go into a tumblr outrage because the avengers movie subconsciously enforces gender stereotyping? That's the problem with SJW culture -- they are more keen on addressing things like this as opposed to much more serious, life threatening and expression destroying oppression and systematic gender control.

This is so meaningless in the grand scheme of things but I think people are mad because it's yet another casual example of how ****ed up and ingrained the patriarchal mindset is.

TL;DR it's stupid and ****ed up but there are bigger fish to fry. That being said I appreciate that we live in a society where things like this are paid attention to. I think it shows a sense of progression because 30 years ago noone would have cared.

^ Welcome back!

Thank you. I have no idea why I was banned. The reason said "trolling." So I have no idea. So I don't plan on changing my behavior even remotely, which means another ban is likely in the forseeable future. :band:

Going back to your thoughts on the topic, that seems to be the general consensus to far, and it looks like we're all pretty much in agreement; that Black Widow was poorly written in that scene, and it enforced old stereotypes, but it wasn't necessarily insanely "sexist" or at least not to the level that would justify people being outraged.

http://i.imgur.com/hsy43wB.gif

What's wrong with :band:?

I also agree with the general feelings expressed in this thread.

Whataboutism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can have problems with multiple things at once - there's no way that me saying that the movie is sexist keeps me from saying that more "meaningful" things are too.

ETA: I guess this Wikipedia page would've made more sense: Fallacy of Relative Privation - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

^I didn't know there was a name for that. :thumb:

It killed my family, leaving me as the sole survivor and arbiter of the vengeance that I shall one day claim.

You're a regular Batlord wearing down jokes that were lame to begin with to death.

And you're a walking stereotype with nary an original thought in your head, which is the prime reason for why you overcompensate by trying so desperately to fulfill what you perceive to be the archetype of "the scholar". We're all flawed. :finger:

So we both have things we can work on then.

Doesn't everyone? I'll try to be less annoying, and you can try to wear fedoras less often.

I wear bowlers but I won't go full fedora. Never go full fedora. Never grow full neck beard.

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone out there who doesn't agree with everything that has been said so far about the movie? Because if there isn't, then this was a pretty short debate.

:laughing:

That it's sexist because it's cliched? I think tumblr sjws need to be reintroduced to the cliche so that they can realize what they've become.

I haven't seen it though so I can't really comment.

I don't think that scene is sexist, though it's written in an awkward way. When I saw it I figured that what she meant by "I'm a monster" was that, you know, she'd been trained to be a killer, not the sterilization thing, but maybe that's too charitable. I think the movie's treatment of Black Widow (and women in general?) overall is pretty horribly sexist though. It's just not a very good movie though, and for reasons other than sexism.

Why? I was actually in the bathroom for the majority of this scene, so I wasn't even aware that she was sterile until this thread, but I don't really remember much sexism throughout the rest of the movie.

Many movies/novels are structured around patriarchal ideologies. I don't think they are purposefully sexist. We just haven't "progressed" enough as a society to eliminate traditional gender roles which are sexist in and of themselves (depending on your point of view).

What does that have to do with this movie?

There was kinda also a rape joke, when Stark says that he'll reintroduce Prima Nocta as the leader of Asgard (if he can lift Thor's hammer). Prima Nocta is popularly known as a law that allowed noblemen to have sex with any local bride before she consummated her marriage with her husband (but I have to mention that historians often debate whether it actually existed or not).

Didn't you say something earlier about not mistaking a character's lines for the mentality of the filmmaker? That sounds exactly like something Tony Stark would say, so why must we assume that it makes the movie itself sexist?

I never said that it should be ignored. I just don't think it warrants outrage.

I agree, it's totally something he'd say, and it shouldn't necessarily reflect the views of the filmmakers. But you asked for other scenes in the movie besides the Black Widow thing that people took issue with and/or found "sexist", and so I gave you an example.

I get the feeling that the people who took issue with things like that probably weren't into the movie to begin with, so they weren't in the mindset of interpreting the dialogue in the context of the movie, and instead took it at face value.

I'm kind of ok with sexist comic book movies.

That could very well be the truth. We need to get a new Sansa, so we can have someone around for us to ask these things.

We already do. That's what grtwhtgrvty is for.

Well even though she wasn't calling herself a monster for being sterile, clearly she is sad about her sterility (so I guess I worded that last post wrong because I think the scene was sexist but not in the way people are saying), and the movie does sort of reduce her to not much more than a (not) mother and a love interest.

Honestly though the sexism isn't a huge deal to me, although it does exist. If it were a better movie, period, I'd probably care more about it, but as it is there are so many problems with the storytelling and the plot and the characters that the sexism just seems like kind of an awkward byproduct of those bigger problems? I don't know.

It is a big deal though. It's not a big deal when you look at it as a singular thing, but sexism isn't singular. It's representative of an ingrained, subconscious, gender ideology.

The problem isn't that this character is a sexist, patriarchal depiction of a woman (assuming she is for the sake of argument, I'm not arguing whether or not she is because I haven't seen the movie). The problem is the conditioning our society undergoes in order for sexism overall to be so casually placed in our media, which is what continues the cycle. Sexism is different than homophobia or racism because it is usually more subtle and underlying. It's also the next frontier of social revolution for progressives. It's way easier for the common person to spot homophobia over sexism because sexism is very subconscious and very ingrained and we are conditioned to be sexist because this innate perception of normality is rooted in literally every form of media that we have. It's not any particular person's fault, but it is something that has to change if we wish to progress as a society.

Really? I think she had much more of a part than Bruce Banner, making him more the love interest than her. When you think about it, it's actually kind of sexist to automatically view the female as the sex interest rather than the dude.

Weren't you just saying that you were against people caring about this specific instance of sexism? In the future, know that it helps to pick a position and stick with it instead of just disagreeing with everyone for the hell of it.

Anyway of course nothing you say is wrong, but it doesn't really apply and you're missing the point: that most of the sexism that I see in the movie would have been prevented if the movie had in general been made better. Like if it didn't have a billion characters, then maybe it would have had time to give Black Widow the depth she's had in previous movies. Maybe it wouldn't have focused so much on just the mother/love interest aspects, which it largely did because that's what's easy to do with a female character. Stuff like that.
Not seeing it for two reasons (in addition to "you're the real sexist!" being kind of a lazy argument). First, it really comes out of nowhere for Black Widow. It's kind of a letdown because she hasn't been very romance-focused in the series so far, and changing that leaves us with no female Avengers who aren't defined by a guy (it's also telling that her non-romantic role is largely reduced to "Hulk whisperer"). Second, this was a movie written by a man in a society in which women often are objectified and reduced to child-bearers and romantic interests. Based on that I think it's more likely that the intent was not to make Hulk more the love interest than her, and I also think that the people writing the movie should've recognized that, because we live in a society like I just described, the way I saw it was how it was going to look to a lot of people and they should've tried very hard to keep people from having that impression.

ETA: And GWG is gone again. Whatever.