Yelling at (Doctor) Strange(rs): An long unbridled reaction to Marvel’s Doctor Strange

The complaints about Doctor Strange are probably much more eloquently put somewhere else but after waiting so long to watch a Marvel movie, which admittedly I really wanted to see, all of my critiques come back to one thing: Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. Overall, the movie had a strangely large amount of white women in the background, set things in Asia with only one speaking part for a person of Asian descent, and overall attempted to avoid orientalism and instead fell into a mire of first-world problems, colonialism, and whitewashing.

Having all the main plot moving characters (you could have cut Mordo and Wong no problem) be white (Doctor Strange, The Ancient One, and Mads Mikkelson’s character whose name honestly does not matter) came off as super “white people problems”-y. OH NO BUT I WANT TO LIVE FOREVER, why? BECAUSE THE WHITE LADY DID……mk. Therefore the who situation comes off as super paternalistic for the many sorcery students who are not involved with this. One white man wants to save them this way, a white lady wants to save them this way, and in the end the white man saves them. Mads had minimal motivation, the Ancient One came off as super paternalistic (I’M OLD I MADE A LOT OF TOUGH DECISIONS FOR ALL THE LITTLE PEOPLE), and Doctor Strange was honestly fine. He comes across as that guy in high school who you always want to punch in the face, but he has a great dog-cape and most of his annoyance could be overlooked if it wasn’t for the Bald-For-No-Reason-We-Say-We-Are-Celtic-Without-Using-Celtic-Imagery Ancient One.

The plot is the typical Doctor Strange origin story, which can be found in any number of various comics reboots, many are good, and Benedict is the best white-male fit for the character that exists. Enough Sherlock without it being Sherlock and with a sense of humor. Downside is the fact that Marvel could do with a couple fewer Arrogant-Smart-White-Dudes-Who-Love-Showing-They-Know-More-Than-Others, he’s sort of rogue-ish, you sort of like him, but you sort of also just want to punch his smug-ass face over and over until he shuts up. Lots of white-people problems happen (expensive car crash, followed by smug comments about expensive surgery, there are only white doctors, followed by entitled yelling), then he goes to Kathmandu which of course he can still afford to do. Though honestly, it could have been Chinatown in Kansas considering how much it as a setting and the people from there mattered.

This is the crux of many critiques of the character. It was first conceived of in the 1960s when generic “Eastern” mysticism was all the rage. They wanted to incorporate that into the Marvel Universe, so they create a mystical superhero. I get it, it was a product of its time. Now? Not so much. But at least then they claimed ignorance though they actually used some semblance of internal pseudo-Asian logic to move things along. That aside from that we get to Kathmandu, Strange acts like he has no idea how to Google places before he has to travel and wanders around like a stereotypical tourist asking random people where they mystical temple is. No Asian People Are Heard Speaking To Him Until Wong Shows Up Half Way Through The Training Montage.

Seriously, Marvel, what in the actual fuck. We meet the Ancient One, there is a non-speaking older Asian man in the room who then leaves. We get no explanation as to why she is bald (there are no hair length/style requirements at her temple), we are told outright by Baron Mordo that she is Celtic (HEY GUYS SHE’S CELTIC ITS FINE) which is just awful storytelling, and a good portion of the background “help” are white women even in Kathmandu (why?). Also the evil women with Mads are also white but with heavy make-up to show they are bad! We have some training scenes with Paternalistic white woman showing the Asian people how to do body movements that are derived from martial arts started in their own cultures, none of them speak and most of them are light-skinned Asians so no locals from Kathmandu train there. Though, for a good five minutes they are better than the white dude who just arrived. But you know after about a month he’s surpassed everyone who has lived and trained there for years because he’s just that kind of guy. Also you see him read more than you see him practice movement and for the amount of mind-body-united talk there is not much demonstration of that.

We’re introduced to Wong. When the director said they were going to make Wong a “master” this was like 99% talk, we never see him fight or show mastery of anything really. He’s either being outsmarted by the white-guy who’s already better at the thing Wong has trained for his whole life/his librarian job or dead. He is a one-dimensional sidekick but they call him a master and he likes Beyonce so it’s fine guys. He leads a group of students, many in this shot are Asian-descent, into an epic battle where apparently they are all useless and just die because we see none of their skills or anything more of them than a group shot. So is Tilda even that good of a teacher guys? I think not.

Mk. Where are we…Ah Yes Tilda as metaphor. So, they tried to avoid 1960s orientalism and came off as colonialist. Basic rule of drama: you put a gun on the wall, it’s fired by the last act. You set a story in Asia and it kind of has to matter. Instead, at one, point you LITERALLY FREEZE ALL THE ASIAN PEOPLE AND THEY ARE LITERAL SET PIECES. Antarctica would have also been an OK place for this movie. Also would have looked cool, mirrored glaciers, penguins, the whole shebang. Plus their design team, for the costumes primarily and some of the sets, did lots of looking cool and very little thinking about where styles come from. Have you ever played a JRPG and they use European Armor and you’re like, no guys, that’s not how that armor works. That’s what the design in this came off as. Shape, form, and zero substance. Each martial art has it’s own uniform for a specific purpose that comes from somewhere. At Ms. Tilda’s school for the mystical arts, nah brah, that don’t mean a thing. If even in the design they didn’t draw more than aesthetics for their Asian influences (or heaven forbid hire an Asian designer to think about this shit) why even keep the setting in Asia. Marvel if you are so worried about the Chinese market, higher some Chinese actors and designers to design your shit and at least have it make sense. They basically cafeteria’d it up with generic mystical Asian symbolism and styles and didn’t even do a great job at that. Mine the continent for its mystical substance then distill it into emptiness.

OH best part. The Ancient One telling Doctor Strange the secret is that that he’s not important, demonstrating that he can’t be that smart if he didn’t figure out that blatantly obvious point that most meditation arts cover on day one

THEN

PROCEEDS TO TELL HIM THAT WITH OUT HIM THE WORLD IS ALL DYING

Ok Tilda, think about it, if it’s not all about him why does the fate of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE REST ON HIM? Please think about this Tilda, think long and hard about the mix-signals you are telling the arrogant white man. Honestly, he also doesn’t do that much to curb his arrogance and his saving the world came off as sort of “I’ma do this because I’m THE hero guys, mk”. Ok he hands Nick a scalpel but there was no progression toward that symbol of sacrifice. Also rather than concerned, Tilda comes off about as sincerely caring as when she played Gabriel in Constantine. Ethereal and unattached and basically “Oh but you can’t argue with me, I’m being polite, and I did what was right, and it’s hard to be a white woman”.

Other minor gripes:

- Why are all the sanctuaries in the Northern Hemisphere?

     o If Agamotto built them thousands of years ago why would he have picked the areas that are now New York or London? Why not put them in places that had large populations back in the day?

    o Also if the Ancient one is Celtic why is it in London and not Dublin, Glasgow, Bilbao, or another ACTUALLY CELTIC CITY? Did you pick these at random for the architecture Marvel? BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE YOU DID

    o Also lots of African-descent students at the Temple (cool diversity!) but no sanctuary in Africa…that’s super ummm…colonialist of you….thanks guys because only whites/Asians have large cities as symbols for spiritual knowledge, A+

    o Also Mexico City wasn’t an option for you? Just checking that there are zero latino Mystics…because that’s you know….cool too, except maybe the “selfish” guy

- There should have been more Rachel McAdams, Christine was great and I want more of her awesome ACTUAL GOOD DOCTOR SKILLS to come through

- Fuck photographic memory, people sometimes just WORK HARD AND READ ALL THE THINGS TO GAIN INTELLIGENCE

- They could have milked the time-loop thing for some better landed jokes but not bad

Things I loved:

- The mystical world dimensions where just as crazy amaze balls absurd as in the comics. I love them, I would live in a weird perpendicular clock cathedral thing 100%

- The CGI was amazing, all green screen but felt like a real expanding world for the most part

- Dog-cape

- There was a good amount of snark

- Rachel McAdams

- Wong’s dead pan reaction to Strange’s humor was greatly appreciate, because honestly in a movie filled with extraneous white people how else would you respond

Honestly, I liked good chunks and there were parts that I could forgive if they hadn’t so blatantly whitewashed everything about the core of the story. Part of Stephen’s development is the conflict between scientific methods and mysticism. He truly doesn’t believe but we don’t get that development. We get no real feeling that Strange is actually trying an Eastern/Generic mystical approach because we get no evidence that what he is doing is different from what he did in New York. He basically just quips, reads, and tries hard. There’s less yelling and one trip to Everest but one incident does not change behavior. Also a big part of many mystic approaches is meditation, which we see absolutely none of, and should be at the core of why an embodied mystical approach works.

On top of that, Tilda was just distracting and a reminder of how poorly they dealt with Asian culture. Their design felt like the “Asian” section at a Pier 1. She looked a step up from Marlon Brando as a Japanese guy. They did not do anything to demonstrate her “Celticness” or give her motivations for her being there. Why is she bald? Why Kathmandu? Why is she Celtic? How did she become a sorcerer? How the hell did she get to Kathmandu in the first place without dying HUNDREDS of years ago? Why does she speak like a modern English woman? Why are her mannerisms detached from the culture she’s spent hundreds of years surrounded by? Why is there only one generic sorcerer type that uniformly exoticizes Asian culture? Why are all your “masters” white dudes? Why do you have no imagery of the founder of your cult? WHY IS THERE NO MEDITATION?

Doctor Strange should have just dealt with its orientalist foundations and improved them instead of pretending that it didn’t exist. Own your source material and then do better.

I wrote my way out: An unnecessary reference for an unnecessary review of the year

I have a lot to write about and a backlog of blog-posts that should have written months ago but we’re at the end of the year and my once-a week, a month, a every few months blog has changed it’s rhythm but I happy with that as this was, and still is supposed to be, for me and for fun. I re-started this blog for a number of reasons, which I covered in the initial re-viving blog post, and foremost of those has been to write more. Being in academia writing for classes, my dissertation, or something for publication makes me forget that I do enjoy putting words down for fun. This blog has been there for me to write the things that do not fall into those categories and try to write what comes to mind and on things that are less data driven in relation to science fiction, community, and anthropology/archaeology.

One of the good things to come out of this year, this blog, and twitter was the forum I moderated at Geek Girl Con. That forum was a great learning experience, wrangling amazingly creative people that I had never met before. It was extremely gratifying to facilitate a conversation that involved critiquing things that I love and at the same time help others understand a serious issue. Overall, Geek Girl Con was great and introduced me to an amazing group of people who are fascinated by the same media and social issues that I am. To me it showed that as much as there are tropes in science fiction media, there are also people who want to consume and produced better, higher quality, and more thoughtful media than currently exists. Seeing that enthusiasm was amazing and I hope to continue attending such great events or to bring such ideas to events that lack them.

Another positive to come out of this year was submitting my first chapter for publication based on my dissertation research. It’s in an edited volume rather than a scientific journal, and it’s currently being reviewed so hopefully people are kind and constructive so it actually gets published, but it was great to see something that I worked on go out into the world. It also happened to fall on a strangely appropriate anniversary, the day I decided to start writing about children and landscape in archaeology. That hilarious happenstance made me feel better about the work I have done in the last year, and last few years, demonstrating how sometimes you randomly decide something, stick with it, and for some reason it keeps giving back to you enough to continue doing it for the rest of your life.

Both of these demonstrated to me how individual moments create awesome and enduring events. The split second choice to do, act, say, or write can define important things tomorrow, in a year, or in several years and while there are an infinite number of possible things that can and will happen in 2017 it’s impossible to know immediately which will be the most important.

We are not things,or wait, are we?: Cosplaying as objects

I love cosplay. It is one of the best parts of attending cons: seeing it, doing it, and thinking about what I might sew or adapt next. Cosplay has also been central to the increasing numbers of women attending conventions . It makes cons a more welcoming environment for women because it highlights the combination of geek culture with the creation of costumes, an activity associated with women.

However, there are certain types of cosplay that bother me. While many people find revealing costumes uncomfortable, the ones that give me pause are more subtle. Specifically, I get uncomfortable when women cosplay as objects. My discomfort with this stems from the fact that I haven’t seen any discussion of this, which suggests complacency with seeing women dressed as objects and the gendering of the non-humanoid as female, including robots, objects, and even ideas such as the Nation state. Most often, these cosplays are robots, which have personalities and agency, but for every 100 woman dressed in an awesome TARDIS dress or costume you have only one male doing the same.

This also bothers me because as a possible replacement for revealing costumes, some women have turned to dressing as objects and that seems awkward. Obviously, dressing as an object does not mean you will be objectified but it seems an odd choice when one could cosplay as a women character. Additionally, the lack of representation of such adapted attire for men and the fact that it is more common for them to be the human male counterpoint or owner of the robot or object in question adds another layer of discomfort.

It reminds me that as much as cosplay has allowed cons to be more inviting for women the type of cosplay one does matters just as much. It reminds me about how important it is to think about who/what you are signifying when you cosplay. It is true that robots and other semi-sentient things, like the TARDIS, are awesome but are you choosing to be an object over an active woman character? If so, why does that appeal to you over the female character? How does this inspire or make others more comfortable? Or does your cosplay accidentally play into an agenda that does not support women?

Captain Marvel: Excited for Brie Larson, Disappointed in Marvel

I want to preface this by saying I am very excited for Brie Larson. She is an amazing actor and is going to make amazing movies as Captain Marvel. She will be awesome and play the part well, inspiring young girls to follow their dreams and go higher, further, faster, and more. The problem I have with her casting is not anything that she could control. Who I’m disappointed in is Marvel Studios for not taking the chance to fight a very real and very simple problem in Hollywood, ageism.

This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last but casting Captain Marvel as someone so young has character drawbacks and bothers me for some specific reasons. As a mixed race woman there were quite a few things I would never be. I would never be white, I would never be tall, and I would never be a natural blonde. These are three rather essential things for the Carol Danvers they are portraying in the Captain Marvel movie. However, one of the things that the comic book hero Carol Danvers had that I didn’t, but I could attain, was experience. Unlike teenage X-men or other young white woman superheroes, Carol Danvers was older and only became a superhero after she became a Major in the Air Force and had become the head editor at a magazine. She was a woman who had already had a full career, was starting a second and then picking up a third as a superhero.

That aspect of her character was something that someone who could not even come close to resembling Carol Danvers could identify with. By casting someone as young as Brie Larson, Marvel takes the one thing about that character almost any person could attain away from myself and many others who are looking for women heroes who are not crones, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, immortal twenty-somethings, or girl geniuses but women who become extraordinary at any age.

Specific to the character of Carol Danvers, having cast a young actor there are three things that Marvel could do with her to deal with her youth, all of which are problematic:

Marvel writes her to be the youngest Major in US history

While this isn’t the worst choice, she would be referenced as some sort of wunderkind for quite a while in the series. Amazingly smart and able to be promoted so quickly, this choice would undercut Carol Danvers normalness. What I liked about Carol Danvers when I first read her character in Alias and then after reading the original Ms. Marvel series was that yes, she was an amazing super hero, but she was also a woman who liked to go shopping and wrote a book about her experience in the Air Force. She was already on her second career by the time she became a superhero and was leading an adult life that was not bound to her military service. Being the youngest major in history will not allow her to have that development and focus her life on her Air Force time rather than what she did afterwards.

Marvel takes away or changes her rank away from Major

So the character that Marvel is writing is Captain Marvel and not Ms. Marvel, although she is still, to my knowledge, portraying the woman Carol Danvers. If Marvel chooses to make her a Captain in the Air Force instead of a Major that’s fine. Brie Larson is old enough to be a Captain. However, by demoting her they are removing some of the agency and uniqueness from Carol. They would demote her for the sake of the movie, simplifying the moniker, and undercut the awesomeness as a character. She was also a high-ranking female officer that chose to step away from the game before coming a superhero. That’s awesome and they shouldn’t take that away from her because they chose to cast a younger actor.

Marvel writes her character to be between 30-40 anyways

Marvel doesn’t change anything about Carol and have Brie play a typically aged Major, as if Brie Larson is 35+. Inadvertently, or purposefully, Marvel supports the ageist practice having 20-year-olds play 40-year-olds showing women who are that age that they will never be young-looking enough. For younger woman, as we get through our twenties we’re supposed to have everything sorted out in our lives and be able to shoulder the world before 30. We’re supposed to be experts in anything we pick up by the time we are 24 and experienced aged professionals by 27. Then remain timeless in age until we reach 60 where we all become Meryl Streep.

BONUS PROBLEM: Keeping the current love interest

In the comics, Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers current love interest is Colonel James Rhodes, currently played by Don Cheadle who was born in 1964. Brie Larson was born in 1989. He’s old enough to be her father but if they choose to play her as a 35+ woman she could be a perfectly fine love interest according to Hollywood logic.

The point here is that a lot of the things that make Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel cool involve her age-ency. AKA She had the time to develop skills at a regular pace. She wasn’t the best of the best before she became Captain Marvel, she grew into it after she had established a non-superhero life. I know Brie Larson can play that woman. But I also know that there were many other amazing actresses in their thirties would have done just as great of a job and Marvel could have done more to challenge ageist Hollywood casting practices.