tron and narnia: tumty-tumty-tumty-tum i slew him! tumty-tum

tron: movie starring jeff bridges as tom hanks from the polar express (cuz he was cgi'd...you're welcome)
voyage of the dawn treader: new-breed narnia movie starring someone as someone else (it's called acting)

the subtitle to this post is sexism: not just for sexist stuff anymore.

it was a product of seeing the tempest, tron, and narnia within the space of a week that really did the damage: i first became conscious that sexism isn't just for people who are concerned with the size of a lady's paycheck anymore.  it's out there in the movies, and it's ANNOYING THE CRAP out of me.

now, narnia couldn't help it, even if it had wanted to.  as i tried to explain in coked-out detail to my friends*, c.s. lewis was a sexist barstard.  i haven't read everything he wrote, but i did get through his theolo-sci-fi trilogy.  i enjoyed the third one (i can't remember the names) in part because i thought he painted a realistic and interesting character for the woman in the overly-modern marriage. i found his solution to the marital issues of the couple to be quite modern, if by modern one is referring to the philoso-critical stylings of dr. laura schlessinger (so, about 15 years out of date).  what i'm trying to say is, he was sexist.  like dr. laura.  lewis's lady-characters are sympathetic in themselves (i mean, excepting the white queen, who's just sexy), but the solutions he derives for the problem of their femininity are recockulous.  he really takes the idea of separate spheres to a new plane of fairness.  aslan, in narnia, rebukes everyone with the same unpredictability and gentleness, male, female, and reepicheep alike.  but it's still separate spheres; susan still gets kicked out of narnia for liking make-up and nylons, because apparently you can't like boys and god at the same time (which sounds, frankly, like a bit of over-identification on c.s.'s part [actually, i don't get a gay vibe from lewis, but i should probably wikipedia him for solid evidence as to his sexual preferences.  that's a joke.  i'm not going to do that]).  and lucy still has to wander around a bit like an idiot, because a lady's sexual awakening is much less acceptable in the scheme of things than a man's.  after all, did adam pluck the apple?  no sir!  i mean, it's not even an illogical sort of sexism, considering the intellectual power lewis was bringing to bear on the conundrae (probably not a word) of christianity.  but it is annoying.  the spice girls would have something to say to it, if he were writing in modern (or my current particular frame of modern, apparently) times.

so disney can't help but make lucy a bit ineffectual and wander-around-y.  she is a sweetheart, and legitimately so.  but as a role model she's not going to make a ceo out of your daughter.

the same, unfortunately, can be said for the chick in tron.  props to disney if they were making a kora in hell-frame kind of reference--according to online, they weren't; it's spelled quorra, and i can't figure out what it's supposed to refer to, but i'd like to know.  anyway, she's useless.  as usual, no shame to olivia wilde, who i thought was as good as possible under the circumstances, not to mention super cute.  but that meme of the strong pretty girl is just ballooning into something ridiculously impossible.  it's like "hey, this female character has fight scenes, so she must be an individual.  you're welcome, feminists everywhere!"  yeah.  shove it, disney.  i understand that quorra had to be female, not only to provide young flynn with a love interest, but also so that the final third of the movie could literally turn into star wars (for which operation one clearly needs a princess leia surrogate, not to mention a moody bishounen [sp?] with an improbable haircut for luke).  but did she have to be so "teach me, you man-god!  for i am your creation!" about it?  why was she always crouching subordinately whenever one of the flynns was around?  according to her account, old flynn earned her self-erasing, accolyte-like devotion by standing over her when she woke up.  i mean, a rescue was implied, but literally, that's how she said it in the film.  the whole character is just ridiculous.  her whole race was destroyed and she's a super-human manifestation of god in the machine, but don't worry about any messy emotional reactions to either of these things, unless if you count her outburst about liking jules verne, certainly the emotional center of the film.  i could be cautious and go with "underwritten," but i'm choosing to go with "ridiculously misogynist skipping the point in favor of the haircut bastard filmmakers."

moral of the story: standing over a woman when she wakes will make her all kinds of haircut.

or possibly, sexism annoys me.  which is what i opened with.  disregard all the in-between.  it's like a newman-o but with filling from chernobyl.


*coked-out due both to the quality and quantity of the detail, and the fact that i had imbibed a great deal of diet coke during the movie (i'm not actually familiar with the type of detail that people on coke [the drug] tend to produce.  i am a nice girl from a suburb, which would actually argue for the non-veracity of that statement but for the fact that i am, and always have been, a nerd [see every post on this blog]).