Is ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Marketing Violence Against Women?

When 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: Apocalypse opened over the Memorial Day weekend, controversy arose over billboards featuring the arresting image of a ginormous male Marvel Comics character named Apocalypse gripping the female mutant Mystique by the throat. The image offended some, such as actress Rose McGowan, who wrote that “There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film.” But McGowan’s complaint is off the mark, and only underscores the problematic nature of the demand for onscreen equality of the sexes.

McGowan wasn’t alone; others joined her in protest of the image. Among others, Jay Edidin from the podcast “Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men” called it “gratuitous” and “offensive in ways that serve absolutely no purpose.” Devin Faraci at the blog Birth.Movies.Death agreed: “It’s just an image of a big guy choking out a smaller woman.” Jennifer McCleary-Sills of the International Center for Research on Women says it’s a reminder of how violence against women is used by Hollywood as a default and “seen as sexy for all the wrong reasons.” In a Facebook post to The Hollywood Reporter (THR), McGowan herself wrote that “[t]here is no context in the ad, just a woman getting strangled.”

That’s not so, however. The clear context is that the billboard is promoting a superhero film from a Marvel universe in which super-powered women such as Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow abound. Besides being fictional, Mystique is not merely an ordinary woman being strangled by a much stronger man in the image, which would certainly by disturbing in the context of a different film genre – say, a drama or thriller. Rather, the dramatic tension stems from the fact that she is a kick-ass super-mutant up against an even more powerful supervillain, not that she is the helpless victim of “casual violence against women.”

The ad may arouse shock or indignation in some viewers who innately understand that violence against a woman – even a super-powered one – is morally repugnant, and 20^th Century Fox may be playing on that instinct to stir up an emotional response to the billboard in order to drive up ticket sales for the movie. But the image certainly doesn’t send the message that such violence is acceptable or sexy.

The controversy is reminiscent of the misguided outcry which greeted Pat Benatar’s Top 10 single “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” back in 1980. An anthem of feminine strength, tenacity, and fearlessness, the song ironically sparked a massive backlash from feminists who ludicrously perceived it as encouraging domestic violence against women.

The aforementioned Jennifer McCleary-Sills told THR that “some might not see [the ad] as an issue because it is a film about violence… with male and female characters who are warriors and fighting each other as equals.” Exactly. But McGowan couldn’t accept the politically incorrect message it seemed to be sending. “Imagine if it were a black man being strangled by a white man, or a gay male being strangled by a hetero? The outcry would be enormous.”

Indeed it would, but that outcry, like McGowan’s, would be hypocritical. Yes, violence against women is a serious issue in the real world, and the entertainment industry has been known to sexualize that (horror filmmakers, I’m talking to you); but McGowan’s accusation exposes the hypocrisy of “identity politics,” the proponents of which view everything through the distorted lens of class, gender, and race. For them, it is offensive for Hollywood to show certain demographic groups – women, blacks, gays – as weak or as victims of violence because, the reasoning goes, those groups have been historically oppressed and marginalized. Conversely, then, in the name of justice, fairness, and equality those classes now must be depicted as strong and heroic, and the only acceptable victims are the supposed historical oppressors: straight white men.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that in the real world women generally speaking are not the fighting equals of men, social justice warriors have long demanded to see female characters who are the equal of any male in heroism, strength, courage, and battle skill. Such onscreen equality now exists in films like Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the Hunger Games trilogy, to name just a few, and Hollywood is no doubt just getting started. But controversies like this one prove that equality in the entertainment arena isn’t enough for feminists who want it both ways: they’re fine with a woman character waging casual violence against men and yet want to claim victim status when the tables are turned. Sometimes feminists simply don’t know to quit when they’re ahead.

From Acculturated, 6/8/16

Harambe the Gorilla and Our Disconnect from Nature

Over the Memorial Day weekend dramatic cell phone video emerged of a Cincinnati Zoo gorilla named Harambe getting hold of a 4-year-old boy who had managed to get into the gorilla’s habitat. Harambe dragged the boy through the habitat’s moat like a rag doll and ultimately hauled him up onto the habitat, where the zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team was forced to kill it with a rifle. The boy was in “imminent danger,” as the zoo’s director said. “We are heartbroken about losing Harambe, but a child's life was in danger and a quick decision had to be made.”

Indeed it did. While it is certainly regrettable that the animal had to be put down – and the decision was not made lightly – the situation was volatile and the increasingly agitated animal was unpredictable. It suits our naïveté to think of the 17-year-old Harambe as a gentle giant, but gorillas are enormously strong and classed among the most dangerous creatures in the animal kingdom: tigers, lions, bears, etc. The alternative to killing Harambe might have been a dead 4-year-old. But instead of a collective sigh of relief about the boy’s safety, hysterical outrage over the gorilla’s death roiled the internet.

The social media lynch mob, always at the ready to judge and bully, erupted in anger over what it perceived to be the mother’s negligence. Comedian Ricky Gervais, who has no children himself because they’re “a hassle” and jokes that irresponsible parents should be sterilized, tweeted that some gorillas make better parents than some humans. Comedian DL Hughley and others actually suggested that criminal charges be brought against her. A Change.org petition called – ludicrously – “Justice for Harambe” which urges that the child’s “home environment” be investigated has garnered nearly 360,000 signatures so far. Ostensibly concerned about the safety of the child, the petitioners are in fact pushing for the parents to be harassed by Child Protective Services. This isn’t justice; it’s vindictiveness.

Others blamed the zoo for insufficiently securing the habitat against such accidents and for shooting Harambe rather than tranquilizing him or, as the chairman of The Gorilla Organization suggested, “negotiating” with him using bananas (the zoo ruled out tranquilizer darts because they would not have taken immediate effect and would only have further provoked an already spooked animal).

I can remember a time when zoos were little more than cages; these days most zoo animals are better off pampered in habitats than scraping for survival in the wild. Yet, PETA and many others are up in arms over the very notion of zoo captivity:

maybe this is why we shouldn't PUT ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY CAUSE THEYRE NOT ON THIS EARTH FOR OUR DAMN ENTERTAINMENT #RIPHarambe

— mo lang (@mlangfordx) May 29, 2016

Others simply blame humanity itself:

Humans imprison gorilla. Human enters gorilla prison. Gorilla gets shot dead for being near human. Humanity is a disease.

— daniel (@13forests) May 30, 2016

Aside from the ugly controversy over who is at fault, the broader issue here is what this hysteria over the tragic but necessary killing of a potentially lethal animal to save a child says about us.

We in the First World are normally far removed – thankfully –from the brutal reality of the natural world. Most of us rarely if ever even kill our own food, a state of comfort practically unprecedented in history. Decades of cultural influence from the environmental movement and animal preservation groups have made us irrationally sympathetic to and trusting of nature and, for some, even self-loathing as a species. We anthropomorphize animals whose true nature we don’t understand; thus, the kneejerk misperception of many is to believe not only that Harambe posed no threat, but that he was even being protective of the boy. One wonders if such animal apologists would have responded with as much anguish if the boy had died instead of Harambe.

A month ago tigers at a Florida zoo killed their experienced keeper, a 38-year-old woman. It’s unclear exactly what happened, but Dave Salmoni, a host for Animal Planet, said that regardless of the relationship between trainer and tiger, once she entered the big cats’ enclosure, “the tiger would have looked at her like a ball of yarn to play with. Once she started to struggle or moved quickly, that tiger's primal hunter instinct would have then come into play.”

We are so out of touch with our primal instincts that we think of zoo animals, and perhaps even all animals, as docile and lovable, not deadly predators; indeed, we consider ourselves the most dangerous species and the greedy despoilers of an idyllic nature. While there may be a degree of truth to this, it’s dangerously naïve to downplay the ruthlessness of the natural order or to assume that peace and harmony are the norm rather than survival of the fittest. 

Nature is transcendentally beautiful but also unforgiving. It is most accurately represented not by the bear in The Jungle Book, bouncing along with Mowgli to the tune of “Bare Necessities,” but by the bear in The Revenant: merciless and “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson put it. To lose our visceral connection to that reality is to dangerously detach ourselves further from nature, and to devalue ourselves as human beings.

From Acculturated, 6/1/16

New York Magazine’s War on Men

New York Magazine’s digital fashion blog The Cut announced last week that it is addressing “the gender wars” in a new blog, as well as a column, intended to provide its largely female readership with a greater understanding of men and masculinity. This seemed like an intriguing and positive step toward easing tensions in the war between the sexes; but unfortunately, if the content thus far is any indication, don’t expect a truce to be forthcoming.

The name choices are already a bad sign: the blog is called “Beta Male” and the column is titled “Mansplaining,” both of which are derogatory terms that will simply turn off male readers and open-minded women. It’s as if the editors are signaling from the get-go that they’re not so much sincerely interested in understanding manhood as they are in winking at the man-haters among their readers.

Things don’t get any better from there. Mansplaining, the announcement declares, is “a weeklong series in which men will (finally) explain themselves to women, in any way they want.” That could have resulted in some interesting columns, but instead the editors solicited men’s thoughts on such frivolous topics as guitar solos and blow jobs. Not that men aren’t passionate about those topics, but imagine how sexist and demeaning it would seem if a men’s mag invited women to explain themselves by getting their thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy and the G spot.

As for Beta Male, it promised to “talk about manly kinds of things, only maybe not in the usual manly way.” In other words, don’t expect the blog to feature the traditional perspective of men’s men like, say, Discovery Channel host and skilled trades advocate Mike Rowe, whose easygoing but unapologetic masculinity would probably send The Cut staff scrambling for safe spaces. Instead, the blog so far largely features writers and topics that confirm The Cut’s low opinion of men.

“Beta Male’s premise,” The Cut womansplains, “is that the chiseled altar of virility is looking a little dated; overwrought; kitschy.” I can promise you that this is true only to privileged, young, Third Wave feminist, liberal arts graduates who gravitate toward jobs like fashion editors, because in the real world beyond New York, chiseled virility is a quality still very much valued by women. But the editors at The Cut want you to believe that “the newest iteration of manhood is still very much in beta.”

The Cut’s Stella Bugbee and Beta Male’s Aaron Gell kicked off the series with some light banter which revealed both editors to be uncomfortable with and uninspired by the blog’s concept, and clueless as to how to move it forward. “We’re ready to call a time out” in the gender wars, they wrote, “to do what, we’re not sure.” Bugbee demonstrated just where she stands on the topic (“I want men to be more like women. And vice versa.”) and Gell established himself as a self-confessed beta male who halfheartedly jokes, “I am happy to benefit from the extraordinarily low expectations people have of me.”

Keep in mind that The Cut is a site which recently featured a sneering, openly sexist piece titled, “Oh Good, Now Men Are Trying to Ruin Book Clubs,” in which the female author responded to a New York Times profile of various men’s book clubs. The Cut writer unfairly judged the club members to be sexist and the very concept of such a club ridiculous because men are stupid. Their self-deprecating humor which proved her wrong on both counts sailed right over her head. [For my own response to the Times piece and a defense of men’s book clubs, read more here.]

The Cut’s new Beta Male blog is equally close-minded and sexist, featuring posts with titles like “How America Became Infatuated With a Cartoonish Idea of ‘Alpha Males,’” “How Trump Has Revived the Republican Cult of Manliness,” and “Video of Dads Dancing Badly Goes Viral Because No One Expects Anything From Men.” That last title – about a charming viral video of fathers dancing awkwardly with their babies – was not a lament that men aren’t respected; the male author was genuinely, angrily contemptuous of the hands-on fathers he calls “these uncoordinated goons.”

So The Cut is off to a great start condescending toward the men it purportedly wants to understand better. Mansplaining and Beta Male aren’t providing its readers any sympathetic insight into men; instead, they’re trivializing men’s interests and making men look inept, shallow, pathetic, and confused about their own masculinity.

In all fairness, The Cut is a fashion blog and shouldn’t be expected to dive deep into the issue or resolve the gender war singlehanded; but if it truly wanted to do its small part to bridge the yawning chasm between the sexes in these gender-confused, feminism-ravaged times, it would drop the condescension and show men and its own male contributors as much respect as it would women and its female writers. It would encourage male writers who respect themselves and masculinity itself. It would stop doing what women complain that men do: dismissively ignore the opposite sex.

From Acculturated, 5/25/16

Mark 'Oz' Geist Recounts Harrowing Night in Benghazi

Check out this video (and transcript below) of my onstage interview of Benghazi hero Mark "Oz" Geist at the Horowitz Freedom Center's West Coast Retreat back in April. Geist is a hardcore American warrior and his story is fascinating.








Mark Tapson: I have the distinct privilege tonight to share the stage with one of the heroes of the 2012 Benghazi attacks and the coauthor of the book "Thirteen Hours."  How many people here have either read the book or seen the movie "Thirteen Hours" or both?  Okay, pretty good.  I strongly recommend both.  The book is a page-turning thriller and the movie is one of the best action flicks ever, and I'm a big action movie fan, but both of these have a key difference in them and that’s that the events that they depict were real and they were as serious as a heart attack.  And that adds a very affecting emotional dimension to both reading the book and watching the movie, so I recommend them both. 

I hadn't met Mark Geist until this evening when I came down for dinner, and I spotted someone who looked like he knows 19 different ways to kill you with his bare hands.  And then I realized, "Oh, that's Louie Gohmert." But then I looked slightly to the right and I thought, "Oh, there's a guy who looks like he knows 20 ways to kill you with his bare hands," and that was Mark Geist.

After talking with Mark a little bit beforehand, I realized that he and I have a lot in common, actually.  First of all we're both named Mark, which I consider very significant.  Second, he is a highly trained elite warrior who went from the U.S. military to a clandestine operation protecting American covert intelligence operations in one of the most dangerous hot spots in the world. And I too am named Mark. 

So, that's about the extent of it.  And I say that not to just make a self-deprecating joke, but to highlight something that's very apparent about Mark Geist when you either read the book or watch the movie, and that is that Mark and his brothers in arms are a breed apart.  To paraphrase George Orwell or supposedly George Orwell, they are the rough men who stand ready and enable the rest of us to sleep peacefully in our beds at night.  As much as everyone would like me to continue talking I'm going to bring Mark Geist up now and have a chat with him.  So, please welcome Mark Geist.
  
Let me begin by taking the liberty of speaking for everyone here when I thank you for your service in the Marine Corps.  

Mark Geist: Thank you.

Mark Tapson: Or as our president would call it, the "Marine Corpse."  And thanks also for your courage under fire in Benghazi and for risking your life to do the right thing.  

Mark Geist: Thank you very much.  

Mark Tapson: Thanks also for coming here to talk with us.  

Mark Geist: Thank you. 

Mark Tapson: Let me get started with a question here.  Let's start at the beginning.  How did you wind up in Benghazi and what is your background?  How did that bring you to being in Benghazi in 2012?