Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Redux

I really like the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy (GOTG). I read the run of the GOTG series written by Brian Michael Bendis leading up to and after the movie (ending at 27 before Secret Wars)and it pales in comparison to the characters set up in the film. Other iterations of the Guardians, before and after that run, have had the same problems and particularly those that came before it fall into the unfortunate trap of so many comics from that era, everything centers around the white male experience, and any character that can’t be coerced into that form basically has no character to speak of.

However, when I originally left the theater after GOTG vol. 2 I had a funny feeling and I couldn’t quite figure out why. I liked the movie but didn’t love it the way I had the first movie. What was it? Was it that I didn’t laugh as much? Was it because of the insulting nature of Drax? Was it that almost everything Gamora said started with a No? Was it the soundtrack? Was I hungry during the film?

I let the movie go for the summer though, letting it settle into the back of my mind and not questioning the hesitant positive feeling I had about the film. So when Clara Mae’s article exploring the misuse and abuse of Mantis in the film came out recently, I knew I couldn’t let that rest any longer. I knew I had to re-watch the film and knowing about the twist, and remembering some other low moments of the film, to try to pinpoint what it was exactly that create such a funny feeling.

Upon re-watching, which I did at a theater so I didn’t tweet through the whole thing, I enjoyed it. It was a good movie with a solid theme that someone on twitter put succinctly, its about living with your family. Obvifously, that’s not a hard theme to pick up on. Everyone has their “travel through the Galaxy” buddy and very rarely do we see any of the characters alone at any point in the film. With the exceptions being some great character shots of Starlord and Gamora.

But the movie falls short of fully developing this idea particularly failing in the humor and in the portrayals of relationships that involve women. Gunn has done a fantastic job dealing with issues of fatherhood. Rocket and Groot, the Daddy triangle of Starlord, Yondu, and Ego; and even Yondu’s relationship with Stakar (Sylvester Stallone’s cameo character) but when it comes to relationship with women of the story, it falls flat.

Mae’s article describes the misuse of Mantis and explores the character in relation to her comics inspiration in more detail than I give here but in general it made me ask the question, what, if anything, is actually funny about the interactions between Drax and Mantis? I think they were trying to go with a sort of “tough love” relationship and I appreciate the idea (not the execution) that Drax has a different conception of beauty than the implied “norm”. (Side note: Personally the apparently common beauty standards, gender categories, and romantic relationships in an infinite galaxy in the MCU and elsewhere gets old and for me feels extremely unimaginative but I digress). There’s a difference between being honest and being rude. Drax even acknowledges that Mantis is naïve and yet continues to insult her. He knows what insults are just because he might not understand metaphor. Also while apparently naïve, Mantis knows what she looks like and what she likes to look at, so it’s very unlikely that she has no conception of what “beauty” is. I do appreciate the idea of having a beautiful soul but it comes at odds with other things that Drax says. He talks about how ugly beings know that they are truly loved because people can’t just enjoy their appearance but at another point talks about how beautiful and attractive his own wife was, who he clearly loved but maybe she didn’t trust him to have done so truly.

Other interactions with Drax, who for some reason carries the majority of the comedic load of this movie, are particularly unfunny. The jokes in the film seem to have devolved from amusing and cute non-sequiturs, such as the “I'm Star Lord Man. Legendary Outlaw” line in the beginning of the first film, to literal poop jokes and extremely predictable physical gags. The consistently mediocre humor dragged down the film. I assume Gunn was trying to link such intimate details, the sort of things you only talk about with family, to establish the relationships that the Guardians have built since the previous film. However, there are other ways to do it especially this isn’t a G rated movie where toddlers are looking for fart jokes to giggle to themselves. Also because there are other moments that execute this idea more clearly and more meaningfully. Peter mention that he told Gamora a drunk story and Rockett’s continued references to wanting to listen to “Peter’s Music”. These details build the relationships without the need for cheap laughs or insults and is the sort of meaningful reliance on family that the movie is trying to portray.

Without the jokes, much of the portrayal of family as theme works really well and there’s a lot of good self reflection on the nature of family and what makes beings bond.

I also have to say that the movie does a pretty great job (and sort of in parallel to but also intersecting with) critiquing the idea of white male exceptionalism and superiority. The fact that an exceptionally powerful being when they conceived of what biological life (in general) would look like, he selected a humanoid white male says a lot. While it may have been unintentional on Gunn's part as the character was created in 1966, it says a lot about who has power and who we imagine as powerful in our culture. But acknowledging something isn’t necessarily a critique Paulina! Yes. That is true. BUT that comes with the fact that the character is named EGO, encompassing the essential nature of the character also as the quintessential non-reflective cis-het-white man. This metaphor can extend to all the other characters in the film too, who by the end of it work together defeating their own egos to be successful in defeating the big Ego. This critique is also confirmed when Peter retorts, “What’s so bad about being like everyone else?” directly confronting the idea of the inherent exceptionalism of white men and then Peter rejecting the idea of being divinely special.

This whole thing is great. However, all of it basically centers on the white male perspective and while a critique, it doesn’t back that up by bolstering its use of their none-white male characters. It is a self-critique of the white male perspective rather than an expansion of that critique in application.

This shortfall is of course most evident in the woman characters. (Side note: Michelle Yeoh is the only women of color in the film who is not in make up.) This comes across as most problematic with the two most prominent woman characters, Mantis and Gamora. Specifically Mantis, literally performs the emotional labor for the team, and Gamora, for most of the film acts as a “no” woman.

Empathy powers are not out of the ordinary for Mantis as a Marvel Character however, it means that she literally embodies performing emotional labor. Her job is emotions, changing other beings emotions or using them to transform her own. The entire final battle, to give time for the rest of the Guardians to come up with a plan to defeat Ego rests on her empathic ability. The scene demonstrates how powerful Mantis’ powers are (though it’s undercut by Drax’s unneeded commentary). But it is the physical embodiment of learning to use her emotions and empathy for the benefit of others at the expense of her physical safety, which is also used for a cheap joke. This is also not given as critique, it is demonstrated as a gift, the thing that makes her special and unique. It doubles down on the idea that the emotions of men come down on the shoulders of women.

Gamora, rather than being sympathetic to Mantis essentially treats her as a non-entity, although they both should have a lot in common considering they both (along with Nebula) were manipulated and enslaved by powerful males. This commonality is not explore of course (though I would also love a Guardians with Nebula, Gamora, Mantis, and Michelle Yeoh) and instead the more prominent role Gamora takes in the film is as another stereotype, the “No” woman. If I’m honest, I love Zoë Saldaña particularly as Gamora but the only Marvel product that’s really done anything to give Gamora a full character is Nicole Perlman’s short-run comic entitled Gamora (WHICH TOOK FOREVER TO COME OUT AND THEN ONLY RAN FIVE ISSUES AND I AM SAAAALLLLLLTTTTYYYYYY about this).

Both movies have some great Gamora moments but she rarely comes across as a full character and often she gets relegated to a slightly more emotive Drax. But I digress, the most unfortunate thing that happens with her character is her status as the “no” woman of the group. She’s the Hillary to the Starlord Bernie, shooting down all the male characters ideas and getting to basically mother the group. It is a valid personality choice if it wasn’t such a goddamned trope for smart and capable women. What is a “now” woman? Well they essentially act as the curb to the grand ideas of men. They are practice, realistic, and rarely seem to have inventive ideas on their own. Generally, and what are then figuring is their conservative, interactions with the inventive, impractical (cis-het-white) male character. Gamora, admittedly isn't always a “no” woman in the film, as she is the whole reason Peter takes a chance with Ego but in that she basically only serves to further the white-cis-het-male plot and up until that point almost every one of her lines begins with a “no” or a negative statement.

Paulina after so many paragraphs of critique how could you say that you actually enjoyed this movie? It has so many problems. Well my dear readers, everything I love this problematic, from my dog to my chosen profession. The film has some excellent points, is lusciously shot, and designed. Baby Groot is fantastically cute and the songs fit well with their associated scenes. Also the points that the movie gets right are fantastic. Also needless to say the portrayal of the Sovereign as the embodiment of “whiteness” upon re-watching is fantastic. Yes a couple of the attendants to the High Priestess are people of color but the majority of them were white, and their entire culture screams stuffy white people especially with all their gold and high and mighty attitude. And of course the super creepy “construction” of perfect individuals and their controlling of their entire world. Anyways it was good but because of the unfortunate single-mindedness of the creation wasn't great. It is a fantastic treatise on white-cis-het-male relationships and critiques them but doesn’t take those to the next level. It remains in that world rather than expanding the repercussions of that critique to impact the agency of the other characters. Assuming we get a vol. 3 and on the results of the Infinity War films, we will probably be exploring the idea of losing or living without one’s family and I hope Gunn brings in another pair of eyes to critique the script based on problems like this to give meaning to the myriad characters that are now part of the Guardians team. Yes, there is a lot we can critique cis-het-white-males for, but the real end results of that should be giving agency to those who are not that and letting their diversity and personalities shine through.

Dr. Quinzel, Dr. Moone, and Systems of Oppression

So a while back I watched Suicide Squad. You may have seen my tweets. Now a few months removed I remember it as generic, at points boring, and very poorly constructed, with a cast full of character that did not, in any way, need to be there. It was an ensemble movie for the sake of ensemble movies. However, I was surprised to find myself really enjoying the special effects for Enchantress who, spoilers, turns out to be the villain. Which is as a concept was pretty cool. Ancient deity plays stupid government who thinks they can control it. I can dig it (ha terrible archaeology joke). But beyond that, and the thing that I kept coming back to the longer I’ve been away from the film, was the fact that the Suicide Squad has not one but two women Doctors, Phds in fact, on their team. This of course fascinates me because I too will be a doctor and graduate school has a special fascination for me as someone going through the process.

In relation to the movie, Dr. June Moone’s degree is integral to the plot, as a driver for why she becomes Enchantress, while Dr. Quinzel’s is not. However, they both end up on the wrong side of the law, or at least Enchantress does. Side note: There is some debate about whether Dr. Moone has any say in the issue. Personally, I think she does and for the same reason I dislike the idea that all bad people are necessarily mentally ill or unstable or for a more “biblical” explanation are possessed by evil spirits, in some people it comes down to choice and some people do choose to do bad things and we can’t always blame it on things out of their control. In this case though, I don’t think it’s clear that Enchantress is necessarily doing anything wrong, how would you react to being trapped in a ceramic totem for thousands of years, and I don’t like the idea that Dr. Moone is just a vessel as that removes all of her agency. I don’t know how they play it in the comics, as honestly DC hasn’t sold me a on a floppy in years, if ever and her origin story there is actually as an artist, but I think Dr. Moone is there and pissed too.

Anyways, regardless of how important their particular degrees were to the plot, this is a team that consists of very educated women with essentially “common criminal” dudes. Why is it that, at least in this case, smart women and uneducated men are the villains? What does that tell us about gender in the world of DC? This is not to say that all men villains, or women heroes, are dumb or uneducated, merely that when you have a fully formed woman villain (in character) she is often smart and there is diversity in the portray of good and bad men and good women.

For me, that then becomes a question of why. Why are women villains so smart? One explanation is that these are metaphors to undermine smart women. That essentially at one point a woman learns too much to be considered a “good” or “heroic” woman and then necessarily becomes bad because women cannot be naturally bad in the same way that men can. There is also a clear history in many cultures of perpetuating the idea that smart women are not good women so it’s not surprising that this comes across in fiction.

For me, regardless of where this concept came from, if we accept the premise that being smart, or becoming educated, has something to do with becoming villains there are a couple of different roads that can lead down. There is of course, liked explored above, the idea that smart women are naturally bad, regardless of if they were inherently smart or received education. But this “essential” quality doesn’t do anything to inform characters and while not all fiction has to be an in-depth examination of the psyche, well-developed characters often come from something and this is particularly true of villains. So if we look at the idea that it is not essential or innate but instead that there is something about being smart or becoming educated that transforms smart women into villains, what systems of oppression or bigotry or misogyny compel smart women to believe that lawful actions are not the just ones or at least not ones that lead to their desired outcomes.

This runs into an issue plaguing many comics and because of DC’s growth from Detective Comics, "heroes" beating up people doing petty crimes, they seem to have suffered the most. Many people still believe in the idea that most criminals do “bad” things because they just do or are inherently bad. However, as we have learned more about the causes of poverty and criminality, de-coupling them from culturally assumed ideas about predispositions or heredity, most smash and grab criminals, like those presented in Suicide Squad, and particularly if they didn’t have powers, become less “evil” and more clearly products of structural violence. In some ways, understanding that makes one feel like there are no real villains that didn’t have a good reason for doing so, at least when it comes to the street criminals that are in many comics. With one exception in Suicide Squad, that being the Australian Bank Robber dude whose name I forgot. All the other men characters are products, to greater or lesser degrees, of structural violence and any heroes that we see *cough* Batman *cough* end up playing the role of the white-status-quo-bourgeoisie savior. He’s not saving Gotham, he’s saving an idea of a system that helps to oppress minorities and thrives on their exploitation. If those are the systems that created villains like Deadshot then what systems of oppression may have pushed women like June and Harley?

Obviously they are not the victims of race-based structural violence, being white women, and they probably had quite a bit of power in their lives to be able to pursue PhDs at all all, so what changed? What shifts an affluent white woman from the cogs of the wheel of oppression to being squashed or feeling squashed under that wheel?

Is it, in fact, the academy? I think it is and particularly because academia is in a unique situation where it both perpetuates systems of oppression and gives people the tools and knowledge to dismantle them.

How does the academy perpetuate systems of oppression? Well, almost everyone who has done graduate work will not need me to tell you. But I will because this is a blog. We can look at the fact that most academic departments are still comprised of cis-het-white-men most likely from middle-to-upper-middle class backgrounds meaning they dominate what we can call the “academy” and essentially are the academy. This is not to suggest that such people cannot promote diversity, many of the people who pushed me into graduate school were such dudes, but when you see incoming classes of graduate students who continue to reflect what came before them you, begin to wonder if they are actually doing that. Also while college education helps to level the educational playing field, studies demonstrate that college makes the field less lumpy but it is by no means flat. Those with privilege tend to be more aware of the resources available to them and continue to succeed even more, standing on the shoulders of giants. While those who do not enter with that privileged knowledge, do not enjoy additional resources and don’t get anymore help.

However, something that the academy, and education in general, are also good at doing is opening the eyes of students, at least with good professors and teachers, to witness and recognize systems of oppression. In many cases, giving students the tools to recognize what is wrong in society and the hope of being able to fix it. Education is how you learned about systems of oppression, structural violence, and issues of intersectionality. Or at least you can, it is an option. Not everyone takes that option, which is probably why changes in academia have not been as fast as they should be.

Ok So how does this create white women villains with PhDs? Well it creates a system that will oppress them, a la institutional sexism if they want to pursue work beyond their PhDs or just even conduct their PhD research, and the knowledge about that system to want to fight back. It removes them from the Ivory Tower and places them at odds with the things that created their knowledge and impacts their abilities to succeed as much as their white-male colleagues.

For me that transition is the most interesting part of the stories of Harley and June, outside of current cannon and Suicide Squad as a film. Particularly in the case of Dr. Quinzel. What in your life as a psychologist happens that makes the thoughts of a known psychopath, or obviously bad dude, seem to make sense? I don’t assume that she didn’t already have issues going in, as the show Hannibal likes to portray all therapists have their own therapists, but she knows all about psychological issues, manipulation, and had to go through extensive training for these things. So what changes, what makes the ideas of a patient seem like the sanest perspective. Personally, I don’t find the “she fell in love with him” aspect to really mean anything or allow for much discussion but even if that were the case it still follows this path. Dr. Moone’s path is more complicated because of the issue of, at least in the movie, her possession, which does crazy things with her agency. But if we assume that she has at least some choice in the matter, what changes in her where the ideas of an ancient deity wanting to reign havoc seem like the best possible option.

I have some ideas but I’m not a comics writer. I’m just someone going through a PhD and I can definitely see where any of us might run off the rails, in a world where supervillainy is a thing. Regardless, these titles are not just aesthetic. They imply something about the characters and about our society. They help us to understand their motivations and create richer stories for the public to consume and it does the dual duty, like many comics and science fiction did in the past, of exploring serious social issues in a detached world allowing those who don’t have the eyes to see them in our world explore them in a different one.