But I absolutely loved these ones:
Guardian: Star Trek: warp factor sex
All in all, what we're getting this summer is Star Trek in the (younger, handsomer, CGI-enhanced) flesh, but not in spirit: to live up to the aspirations of the series, the movie would have to boldly go a lot further than its source ever did.
Global Comment: In praise of Joanne Rowling’s Hermione Granger series
It’s the end of an era. The entertainment which has stretched across books, movies, and countless marketing tie-ins, which has captivated children and adults for well over a decade and which has, for better or worse, managed to become the defining myth for an entire generation, is winding to its close. I speak, of course, of the Hermione Granger series, by Joanne Rowling.
And finally, the best one of them all:
Tiger Beatdown: Enter Ye Myne Mystic World of Gayng-Raype: What the “R” Stands for in “George R.R. Martin”
Because here’s how it goes, when you criticize beloved nerd entertainments: You can try to be nuanced. You can try to be thoughtful. You can lay out your arguments in careful, extravagant, obsessive detail. And at the end of the day, here is what the people in the “fandom” are going to take away: You don’t like my toys? I hate you!
Yeah. To be scrupulously fair, I think that at times she slightly exaggerates in that last one. But having read the series, except for the latest book that I didn't even think would ever come out, I agree with 99% of what she's saying. When I briefly reviewed A Song of Ice and Fire earlier this year, it was to answer someone who asked me if they should read it, so I concentrated on its literary merits. When it comes to the politics of it, though, I'm with Sady. Her post is simply brilliant.
**
On the topic of feminism and popular culture, I'd be remiss if I didn't link to this excellent post:
Comics Alliance: The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their 'Liberated Sexuality'
Since pointing out my issues with Starfire yesterday, I have received numerous e-mails -- from men -- accusing me of slut-shaming. Since there are a lot of people who don't understand the sexual dynamics that are in play here both creatively and culturally, I'd like to dissect this a little bit and explain why these scenes don't support sexually liberated women; they undermine them, and why after nearly 20 years of reading superhero books, these may finally have been the comics that broke me.
Yeah. For me, what I can't get over is how many of the poses the female characters are drawn in are straight out of porn. I just read Avengers Prime, and it felt like the comic was being occasionally interrupted for something that, frankly, looks like a latex porn shoot more than a superhero comic. Every time we meet the Enchantress, we specifically meet her ass; when she's not contorting herself into positively liefeldian porn star poses, she's on all fours, with her behind facing the reader. In fact, she's in that exact same position in every scene she's in bar the first (and brief last), making me think that her superpowers are magic and doggystyle. As for the main villain, Hela, she's wearing a rubber porn outfit throughout:
"Now you see". I do indeed.
To echo the point made in the blog I linked to above, what makes this intolerable is the double standard. For the majority of the book, the male characters are decently dressed and engaged in an epic comic book adventure; the two principal female characters, on the other hand, look like they're in a porno. That's pretty bleak.
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