Big Hero 6 & Innovation

In praising Zootopia recently while discussing movies’ wider metaphors, allegories, and moral messages, Laci Green (on MTV’s Braless) mentioned that Big Hero 6 demonstrates the importance of non-violence.

And it’s true, the movie does push for the main character Hiro not to murder a man responsible for the death of his brother, Tadashi. But that’s buried in the story arc of Hiro grieving in a healthy way. Instead of seeking revenge for Tadashi’s death, Hiro, his classmates, and his robot stumble onto a nefarious plot and set out to undo it. Major kudo points go to the film for having Hiro actually report the initial incident to the police instead of setting his heart on revenge from the get-go , which is normal in revenge plots.

The rest of the movie, however, is simply a superhero movie. A more strangely plotted superhero movie than is normal, but after discovering his brother’s death was not an accident, Hiro follows the superhero path remarkably closely. He even creates a whole group of six superheroes made up of his friends.

Which is what really annoys me.

Superhero movies are nothing new and they’ll be around for ages to come, so the fact Disney created an animated superhero film is par for the course (although the Fall Out boy song montage was a nice touch). What bothered me was that the film did preach about helping others, but only allowed the characters to do so as superheroes. Before Hiro enlists his friends’ help to “catch the man in the mask,” they’re all in an elite science/engineering program at an impressive college. There’s a casual walk through their lab in the film, and it’s like every scientist’s dream. Impressive advancements in chemistry, engineering, and robotics are what the main characters are working on as school projects.

They inspire Hiro to do more with his life than bot-fighting, and he comes up with some pretty impressive tech himself. But that’s exactly when the catalyst death happens, and through various plot moves it’s suddenly vengeance time. Except Hiro’s tech has been stolen and co-opted by the bad guy, so his first act is to transform Baymax.

Baymax is a robot designed to help people, he has a “non-threatening, huggable” look, is programmed with over ten-thousand medical procedures, and can lift up to a thousand pounds. A robot like that could revolutionize the medical field – which already has problems with understaffing (or general nurse fatigue) and the general public not understanding what nurses do or how integral and important they are – but he also sounds like a godsend for disaster areas. A robot that can be programmed to speak multiple languages, scan for injuries or health levels without prejudice or bias, can lift debris safely, and administer treatment? I’m sure the National Guard, Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders would love to get Baymax robots for their endeavors.

But that’s not cool enough to put in a superhero movie – Hiro has to program Baymax with karate, give him wings to fly with, and teach him to fist bump. Similarly, all of Hiro’s friends’ inventions aren’t cool enough for Hiro’s revenge superhero plan. So he remakes all of their inventions into crime fighting gear complete with costumes. And none of them want it – he does it all for them after basically ignoring their wishes and using the “my brother just died” guilt card.

Some more plot stuff happens, and they succeed in taking down the bad guy and in the fight a whole lot of property is damaged, and it’s likely a few people are hurt. But instead of using their awesome gear to help clean up and help people, the gang disappears into the city to officially become superheroes with secret identities.

Of course, they all end up continuing to take classes at their elite school, but considering the title, the merchandise, and that Disney’s producing a TV series about their superhero adventures – no one is supposed to remember that. The focus is on superheroes saving the day, and in doing so ignoring the genius, ingenuity, and real-life super work people do every day – creating a better world for us all.

Imagine if that’s what Disney made a heart-warming movie about? Nerds who create innovative and life-saving tech celebrated just as they are. I want Big Hero 6 to be that movie every time I watch it – and unfortunately it never is.

Dangerous Expectations of Pregnancy & Drug Use

A few weeks ago, I saw the same tumblr post brought up at least twice on twitter in a screenshot that was derided as “tumblr SJWs have gone too far/ these social justice warriors are off the deep end.” In a nutshell – calling the idea stupid, as if it was written by someone with no common sense.

Here is the screenshot:

I read this and immediately realized that the post, and not the people ridiculing it on a different social media platform, was correct. Sure, the original poster (OP) is using tumblr-specific language, which doesn’t translate very well into non-tumblr forms. And the OP is generalizing a lot of things and using “disabilities” as a catch-all term to include mental illnesses, addiction, and birth defects – which in a general sense might be true, but in my opinion is still too much generalization.

Regardless – OP makes a good point! It is incredibly dangerous to insist that all pregnant people must immediately stop drinking or taking whatever drugs they’re on for a number of reasons.

1. If a pregnant person is dependent on drugs or alcohol and stops cold turkey, the fetus can go into shock and the person can miscarry.
2. Persons who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are just that – addicted. Expecting anyone to simply not do drugs anymore is ableist, and particularly cruel to expect that of someone also dealing with normal stresses of a pregnancy. They need help, not judgement.
3. The data available on babies born with drugs in their system (neonatal abstinence syndrome) is not widely researched, using bias test groups, and there haven’t even been that many studies done overall.
4. The process of getting clean while pregnant is an expensive one, and treatment centers with limited space is the norm.

 

The other dangerous part of this line of thinking “don’t do drugs/drink while pregnant” is that it bleeds into criminalizing people more harshly because they’re pregnant. The idea that pregnant people are not allowed to have mental issues that require medication, suicidal thoughts or tendencies, substance abuse problems, or anything less than a perfect life is a dangerous one that leads to criminalizing people for so-called child abuse or fetal neglect while they’re pregnant. It’s something that’s happening now, as children born with drugs in their system are taken into custody, and their parent arrested.

I could paint you a picture of the many ways this impacts poor working people and their families, but I don’t need to – other accomplished journalists have already done that.

This is an article published in December of 2014, and was the first I read on the subject.

Here is another article that was published in November of 2015 on the same issue.

 

I’m not saying that anyone should do drugs while they’re pregnant (unless it’s medication for mental illness in which case, yes, you really should continue taking those, just communicate with your OB and therapist about it), but I’m not going to get mad at anyone who does. Life is hard. Addiction is hard. Pregnancy is difficult in even the best circumstances.

My point is that the focus should be on supporting pregnant people in whatever decisions they make. Don’t be condescending. Have compassion.

The Little Mermaid & Teen Choice

In the course of watching small children, you watch a lot of children’s movies. Right now it’s a lot of watching Big Hero 6 and Frozen (and my nephew’s favorite: Despicable Me). Recently, however, I was able to convince them to watch The Little Mermaid. As a movie I grew up with, my feelings on Ariel and her choices have changed drastically over the years. From admiration, to judgment, and back to respect and love.

There’s a weird trend where, once you’re done being a teenage girl and transition into a college-aged young adult, you look back on your teenage years with embarrassment and try to rise above, making more informed decisions. The Little Mermaid plays into this because when these girls (myself included) watch it they latch onto the fact Ariel is 16. She falls in love with a human she just met, and runs away to try and be with him. There’s even a Tumblr text post floating around somewhere that says “Daddy I love him!” “Bitch you don’t even know him!” Then a separate user added on, “You know you’re an adult when you agree with the adults in a Disney movie!”

I’ve reblogged the post more than once, but on my most recent viewing of the movie, I realized there’s nothing wrong with Ariel’s actions. A sixteen year old’s desires and interests are just as valid as anyone else’s. A lot of Disney Princess defenders point out how she wanted to visit the human world that fascinated her before she ‘met’ Eric, and that’s a good point. Her father was initially upset about that, but Ariel falling in love at sixteen with a near-stranger isn’t a big deal. (If we’re being critical, let’s not forget that Eric falls in love with a voice and is determined to marry a girl he’s never seen.) It only ends up being a problem when King Triton destroys her collection and forbids her to go to the surface again.

Her father’s outrage and violent outburst are what cause Ariel to run away and make a dangerous deal with the sea witch. If her father had listened to what she was saying, he could have given her legs – avoiding all dealings with an evil witch bent on controlling the ocean. Instead, King Triton believes he knows what’s best for Ariel and doesn’t listen, just like fathers everywhere. Just like adults everywhere.

Why do we think teenagers are incapable of making informed decisions? Why do we discredit teenagers’ love and other desires? Sure, we all remember embarrassing things from our teenage years, but I remember some things I discovered or first felt as a teenager that still ring true today. I still have friendships I formed as a teenager, and I’m still a feminist – a value I figured out as a teen. I know quite a few couples who married their teenage sweetheart; they have families and are still going strong. Teen mothers and fathers are out there, parenting successfully as full grown adults, still loving their children as much now as they did then.

Teenagers make their own life decisions, whether adults like it or not. Controlling teens’ lives only ends up hurting them in the long run. Inadequate information and support for teen mothers results in a higher rate of poverty for teen mothers and their children. Not to mention all of the detrimental emotional effects of being told they’re terrible students, parents, and people through all of that.

So why don’t we believe teenagers? We should. Listening to and working with teens to come up with answers is always a better solution (have you watched The Fosters yet? You should). In the case of some teen girls, their reproductive health and fertility can be severely damaged by ignoring them. Teenage girls with endometriosis start having pain when they start having periods, but doctors don’t believe they realize how much pain is normal during menstruation, leaving young women undiagnosed for up to ten years. That’s ten years of pain, internal scarring, possible internal bleeding, and the risk of infertility because we don’t listen to teenagers.

I’m not saying teens don’t make some stupid decisions. They do. But there are teens out there doing good and helping make the world a better place, too. And all teens, no matter how irrational they might be acting, or how little you want to believe them – it’s worth listening to them. They can have babies, recognize what is too much pain, and fall deeply in love. We all need to respect that.

Book Review: The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet

I just finished an Advanced Reader’s Copy of The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, and it was fantastic.

The book, like the corresponding web series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, is a modern Pride & Prejudice story. And even though the web series follows the original novel, and the book follows the web series, the book has its own surprises and unique quirks you won’t find anywhere else.

Lizzie’s journal entries tell all the secrets she doesn’t let the camera see, and it makes all of her real life problems that much more prominent. Instead of focusing on how the modern story-line follows Austen’s plot, readers can get pulled into the reality of it. Lizzie’s a struggling grad student, Jane’s job doesn’t pay her enough, Lydia’s drunken carelessness and boy-crazy attitude can get her into real trouble, and to top it all off, the Bennet family is going bankrupt. And that’s just the Bennet family. Charlotte, Bing, Darcy, and even Gigi all have very real-world, modern day problems they’re working through – which, as it turns out, makes them extremely endearing.

In The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, readers experience all of the sweeping romance of Austen’s novel, the brilliant quirky humor of the web series, and a unique sincerity, connecting you to Lizzie so well you can’t help but love her and everyone she loves. And in my case, you yell at your book, “You’re such a dork!” or some other variation about adorable dorks who are in love and in denial. (Which I think is the true essence of the Lizzie/Darcy relationship anyway.)

The best part, for me at least, about getting more detail with the modern story-line and connecting so well to Lizzie, is that it really highlights how feminist the story is. For people paying attention, Jane Austen’s works have always been feminist, speaking strongly about patriarchy and class inequality, and Pride & Prejudice is no exception. The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet addresses these issues too, but the happy ending isn’t a marriage. Instead, the true closure of the book comes with true accomplishments: there’s harmony between the sisters, Jane gets a great job, Lizzie has several career opportunities, and Lydia is doing well in therapy and has a set career path. It focuses the whole story-arc on three young women who start as near desperate job seekers/college students living with their parents and transform into financially independent women charting their own course in the world.

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet combines the best of Pride & Prejudice and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and I would recommend it to anyone. Anyone who watched the web series, anyone who loves Austen, any modern feminist looking for a love story, or anyone looking for a fun read – even if they aren’t acquainted with Austen or the web series. Seriously, everyone should read this book. It’s fun, fresh, energizing, and even when you know what happens, you won’t want to put it down.

Why Everyone Needs To Care About Smut

Saved on my computer from long ago, I have an animated icon that types out a sentence, “He eagerly dove into her dripping folds and drank her sweet nectar with his writhing tongue…”  Even re-typing that sentence makes me laugh, because even though the graphic is from a different internet era, the writing is typical of the multitudes of bad porn available on the internet today. At the very least, it illustrates written porn, known as erotica or smut, and how off base most of it is.

In reality, smut’s just written sex – but what makes it appealing for so many people, instead of visual porn, is the variety of ways to tell the story of sex. In visual porn, it’s all about what you see and hear, the bodies, the positions, the moaning. In writing sex scenes though, creativity reigns, and the writer can put emphasis on the attraction felt between the two (three, or more), slow down the action to relish in every touch, focus on the character’s emotional state during the act, or even the character mentally figuring out what to put where when, instead of physical attributes alone.

Smut can be funny, it can be romantic, and more than that – it can be part of something bigger to work through issues or figure out how sex (whether experimental, kinky, or otherwise) can be a normal part of life.

For someone with little or no sexual education, finding erotica free online is exciting – even liberating. It’s a way to take charge of your sexuality independent of a partner, and with the privacy of your own computer in your own home. And while other kinds of pornography might help someone realize or come to terms with their sexuality, if it has explicit porn, it probably won’t have the character working through those feelings, and vice versa. With erotica, people can explore out of curiosity, whether it’s rooted in sexual desire or not – and the intensity of the sex can even be controlled by the reader, because by reading the sex, you’re required to imagine those explicit moments, and you can censor what you aren’t interested in (or are unable to process for whatever reason).

Once people find the stories that interest them the most, whether they actually become sexually aroused or not, they keep reading and reading and reading, and this is what sex is to them. Depending on the person, they might also start writing erotica that other people read as a way of expressing themselves both creatively and sexually. Which is all fantastic, really. A free, individual based opportunity for sexual learning, exploration, and expression that can be passed down from one group of writers and readers to the next.

Except it’s not fantastic when the writing is bad. It’s not fantastic when body parts are largely misrepresented. It’s not fantastic when characters don’t use lube, or appropriate lube, or any kinds of protection, or even talk about the sex they’re having. There’s a lot of bad erotica out there – and it’s getting worse. Of course, the annual Bad Sex Awards would have you believe almost anything is bad erotica just because it doesn’t fit the typical setup and mood lighting of visual porn, but it’s just a roundabout way of smut shaming, saying that your version of sex isn’t as good as what society prefers, and are actually well-written.

The bad smut that’s being written today probably isn’t very different from the bad smut that’s always been written, but it matters much more now because it’s managed to be just as popular, if not more so, than regularly published, well-written erotica. When bad smut on the internet, like a fic called Master of the Universe in the Twilight fandom, is picked up by a publisher and explodes in popularity as Fifty Shades of Grey, the sex quality doesn’t improve, but the people reading it believe it’s of a high caliber.

Truthfully, the whole thing drives me crazy. I’ve watched the huge popularity of Harry Potter drive children’s and young adult fantasy literature, and The Hunger Games’ popularity drive teen dystopian novels – and that’s thrilling and wonderful. Except now a bad portrayal of BDSM that jumped from pixels to pages spawned multitudes of similar stories that keep spreading poor sexual practices, skewed images of human bodies, harmful stereotypes, and shame around sex. It’s infuriating that something that could have gone so well for popular erotica spiraled downward before it could even hit a respectable high.

With the growing ease and popularity of e-books and self-publishing, anyone who wants to publish a book can – they don’t need to consult an editor, proofreader, or a sex expert. And just as fantasy and dystopian novels will remain popular, the erotica sector of publishing will stay active. I can only hope that while erotica stays popular, the masses realize they don’t want to read something of low quality when there are stories of high quality available – either printed by publishers or found in the archives of fandom and the internet. I want everyone to read fantastic smut, revel in it, and explore many different sexualities and gender identities in the process.

Until that happens, I’m working on compiling a list of excellent (free) smut, which will be posted publicly as soon as possible. If you know of any terrific smut and want to contribute to the list, please feel free to visit this post.

Smut and fanfiction sometimes prove difficult to explain or understand, so if you have any questions or comments feel free to either leave a comment or contact me!

It’s a Writer’s World: Why Not Make it Equal?

Earlier today I read a very short article about how G.R.R. Martin is a feminist. You know, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, aka the novels HBO’s Game of Thrones is based on. It wasn’t the first article on Martin and his work being feminist that I’ve read, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. 

Martin’s quoted saying: 

To me being a feminist is about treating men and women the same. I regard men and women as all human – yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created by the culture that we live in, whether it’s the medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture.

And I agree with him. 

But then I get to thinking about criticism I’ve seen about an author’s (or creator’s) decision to create an imaginary world where there is such an obvious copy and paste societal discrimination between the sexes. If you can make an imaginary world why can’t it be one with equality between the sexes? Suzanne Collins of The Hunger Games series certainly does it, and while it’s not medieval, it is a dystopian world. 

The problem is that I love Sansa Stark’s (and Arya and Asha and Brienne and Dany and the Sand Snake princesses) and Katniss Everdeen’s plot arcs* equally: as a fan, a reader, a writer, and a feminist. The women in Westeros are strong and powerful in their own ways, mirroring how women in modern day society deal with the demons in our world. It can be brute force, cunning, manipulation, sex appeal, fire power, or making nice to the right people to elevate you – or all of the above. 

I’m hesitant to compare Collins’ and Martin’s writing here too much because they are so different. The first person narrative in The Hunger Games does not lend itself to a broad societal look like A Song of Ice and Fire’s multiple point of views does. But the women in Westeros and the women in Panem operate much the same: playing to their strengths to gain power, shift opinion, or incite change.

The important difference is that Westeros has systematic oppression for women and Panem doesn’t. So why intentionally put your characters in that setting? 

I think it’s an author’s choice about what kind of story they want to tell. Just because we don’t have to put characters into a sexist society doesn’t mean we don’t want to – not because we like that there is a sexist society, but because it creates so many different opportunities for conflict. Overcoming apparently insurmountable obstacles is a great narrative to tell, and I find it can be just as stimulating and inspiring as one about overcoming a corrupt government. 

If this makes no sense to you that’s okay. I’m still parceling it out myself.

Because it also applies to writing LGBT characters, and the constant criticism that writers write them solely for stereotyped or token characters.** Do writers create a major character who is gay and then address their sexuality as a major plot point that affects their character? Or do writers create a gay character whose sexuality does little to affect their plot-line? Is either really a true representation of an LGBT identified person? Sexuality is a large part of any person’s identity one way or another – especially if it causes physical or emotional pain. But there is also always work and school and family to cause drama. 

Is it bad to have a realistic, heart-wrenching story arc about a character coming into their sexuality (or helping a significant other come into theirs?), or to have a female character overcome sexist obstacles?

I don’t know. I really don’t. 

But a part of me says that these struggles are still important to recognize; they’re still stories that need to be told.

 

* I don’t say anything specific but I may be unintentionally spoiling someone? I’ve read Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire through A Feast for Crows and The Hunger Games through to Mockingjay. 

** I get very vague here but I’m actually thinking about a show like Shameless (a drama on Showtime) versus something like a comedy on NBC I haven’t watched (The New Normal, maybe?).