N.B. Film and TV reviews on this site are limited to identifying and analysing the degree of misandry and Feminist ideology they contain. They are not full reviews of plot, content and quality as are found elsewhere.
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Terminator Salvation (2009) is the fourth film in the Terminator series. Films 1 and 2 were great, film 3 was a disaster and film 4… well, it’s interesting, I suppose. However, as stated above, this is not about how good films are, but how much misandry and Feminism permeates the narrative.
As films go, Terminator Salvation holds off on many of the typical anti-male story elements such as male domestic violence or child sexual abuse, but couldn’t quite resist sticking it to men with a scene of attempted rape. This is to be expected as it does go without saying that the unwritten rule in Hollywood is that there must be at least one scene per film, and preferably several, depicting men in the worst light possible.
Other than that woefully pointless bit of misandry, the another element of the film that caught my attention is the prevalence of Tough Women.
She’s Bad
Tough Women is an aspect of Hollywood films that I explore in some depth in my film Misogyny 1 (yet to be released). Tough women are unfeasibly strong and tough, usually military or police, usually doing a job which men are generally far better at than women, and most importantly of all, doing things better than the men around her. She is basically, at least as tough if not tougher, than any man you’ve ever seen or heard of. And then some.
In this film, during the opening sequence, we have a Tough Woman leaping to the ground from a helicopter, assault rifle in hand shouting “Let’s go! Let’s go! Move it!”. To be sure that we all know it’s a woman, the leaping female has very long hair – at least waist long – billowing around her head in the downdraft from the helicopter rotors. Hollywood really, really wants us all to know that we have a female in the front line of the attack.
Yeah, right.
The front line is where women love to be.
That’s why they protest so strenuously to be put in the front lines and are to be seen marching down our streets, complaining loudly, that it’s discrimination that so few women are coming home in body bags from x, y or z conflict. Why should it be exclusively men who have the privilege of death by artillery shell or death by rifleshot to the head?
Women have been demanding equal rights to death for decades, right?
Have you seen these women?
Or maybe not.
We also have a Tough Woman fighter pilot who ejects from her plane (suffering no ill-effects from the spine-compressing trauma of an ejector seat) and proceeds to immediately embark on a 2-day hike through the desert (cocking her pistol professionally as she sets forth) and then later, bravely leads the way through a minefield while a man hesitates. Did I forget to mention she’s hot, too?
As tough as can be, is she
Technical She
Last but not least, we have that increasingly common breed, the Technical Woman. This woman is the equivalent of the Tough Woman except in matters technical rather than physical. The Technical Woman is a genius with electronics or engineering or is most typically, a computing expert (because there are so many of those, right?). If not one of these, then she is a devastatingly bright and accomplished physicist or astronomer, and the millions of men in those fields, down the ages and up to the present day, could only dream of being as smart as she.
In this film, the Technical Woman (a black chick, no less) seems to be playing a part similar to that of Q, the gadget man in James Bond films. I suppose it would make sense to portray women in roles like this if they had an obvious and proven propensity for inventing, creating, discovering and designing.
But they don’t.
As it is, this female character is just a jarring improbability, shoe-horned into the screenplay to make Feminists and the gormless smile (although they tend to be one and the same).
A Commendation
It must be said that as this is a film about the battle between men and machines, the male body count is thankfully low or at least hidden. Men don’t die graphically in this film and it could be described as a homage to the days when graphic death on screen didn’t happen and instead we had the discretion shot. I commend this decision to treat men’s deaths with dignity rather than gratuity. I would go so far as to say that men’s deaths actually mean something in this film and are not simply incidental happenings. That is rare from Hollywood.
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Almost all the films that are being made have the usual man hating, man slapping, man bad & woman morally superior crap message in them.
Resident Evil Afterlife 2010 & Predators 2010 have exactly the same message.
I have stopped going to the cinema for a while now, as I have decided why should I pay to get insulted.
I download all my films and as soon as I see any of the usual man bad / woman good message pop up, I just delete the film.
I would like to recommend a couple of films for the men.
1: After Innocence. A gripping, emotionally charged film that follows wrongfully convicted men freed by DNA evidence after decades in prison as they struggle to transition back into society.
2: Diary of a Tired Black Man. In recent years, numerous revenge-themed Hollywood adventures have seemed to take a certain delight in portraying black men as unreliable womanizers undeserving of any respect, like the sort of losers always airing their dirty linen any day of the week on The Jerry Springer Show. From Waiting to Exhale to Two Can Play That Game to Diary of a Mad Black Woman, these female empowerment flicks have generally left brothers not only brow-beaten but in need of an image overhaul.
Now, help has arrived in Diary of a Tired Black Man, a fascinating half-documentary-half melodrama which marks the directorial debut of Tim Alexander. A little over a year ago, you may remember how Alexander generated a phenomenal air of anticipation about this controversial picture merely by making the trailer available over the internet.
That three-minute teaser captured the explosion of James (Jimmy Jean-Louis) who was frustrated about being dogged by his ex-wife, Tanya (Paula Lema), and her girlfriends because he showed up with a white woman to pick up his daughter during a custody exchange. Without reacting to their attack, he calmly pauses to address Tanya and her Amen chorus of supporters. Speaking in a measured tone of voice, he gets the last word, letting them know that he had been, and still is, an excellent though unappreciated provider.
The full-length feature opens with this same scene, but rather than proceed with the rest of the modern morality play immediately thereafter, the ingenious director came up with a brilliant cinematic device which only heightens the already palpable tension. He freezes the action after this point of departure (and again periodically throughout the picture) for revealing man-in-the-street interviews featuring fan reaction to the commercial, comments culled from footage he shot while crisscrossing the country with a hand-held camera.
So, essentially half of what we see on screen is an intriguing documentary of everyday folks from all walks of life, both male and female, weighing-in on the battle-of-the-sexes. And these remarks, ranging from the profane to the profound and from the silly to the sobering, prove to be every bit as telling as the fictional front story.
For instance, a young woman quick to question whether there are any good black men out there refers to the married guy she dated for two years as �typical �and an �effed-up, trifling-ass Negro.� Yet, when asked why she even entered such an ill-fated, illicit liaison in the first place, her only answer is that she �fell in love,� leaving the audience to conclude that she’s just as much to blame for her lot in life as all the black men she’s just dissed.
To the director’s credit, he does also include conversations with some sisters who don�t absolutely go berserk when questioned about the behavior of brothers, like the one who forcefully makes the case that, �Not every black woman walking the face of this Earth is angry. There are plenty of sweet, sugary, syrupy sisters that I know that brothers don�t want.�
Overall, the movie does come down rather hard on sisters, even though it doesn�t let brothers off the hook entirely. Cleverly-edited to keep the audience on the edge of its seat, the movie flits back and forth between this sort of frank dialogue and the riveting tug-of-war between James and Tanya. With both the factual and fictional parts of the picture equally absorbing, expect to emerge from theater emotionally drained yet inspired to discuss the degree of dysfunction permeating African-American relationships among your friends and family.
Tim Alexander is quick to say that �Diary of a Tired Black Man is not a movie, It’s a message.� Well, I�d say it’s both, and if his aim with this message movie is to kick-start an overdue dialogue for change, I�d say congrats for more than meeting that challenge.
I hear you about no longer going to the cinema to actually pay good money for Hollywood misandry. I also find that I can only make it through about a quarter of films I start to watch without blowing the misandry-fuse.
Can we please have a Man Positive Film Section (about good, courageous & loyal men), so real men & our sons, will not waste their time or money on the garbage that is being churned out by the mainstream cinema?
Well, the Reviews on this site all have a “man-friendly” rating and as the section grows, this might be sufficient to achieve what you suggest. I might create a category of “Man Positive” so that it is easy to find this type of film. I doubt it will be a very large category, though.
Well I would like to start with a Man’s Action Film:
Go Tell Spartans (1978) In 480BCE 300 Spartan Hoplites held a pass for the better part of 3 days against a Persian force that may have numbered over 200,000 men. The Spartans were aided by around 7,000 coalition troops during the first 2 days. However, they were dismissed on the 3rd day. The Spartans, their Helots and the Thespians allies died to a last man. It was one of the most gallant stands in all of military history.
To this day there is an inscription on the funeral mound @ Thermopylae that serves as a memorial to their sacrifice. An English translation is as follows:
GO TELL THE SPARTANS, STRANGER PASSING BY
THAT HERE OBEDIENT TO THEIR LAWS WE LIE.
The title of this movie is an allusion to Thermopylae. However, the film itself is about the earliest days of Vietnam. It recounts a time not long after the fall of Dien Bien Pu; an epoch when the U.S. did not have a commitment of a significant number of troops. During the period covered in this movie all that we had over there were a handful of military advisors.
The film details an obscure event at a Vietnam village known as Muc Wa. Although the battle itself will not likely even find its way into the footnotes of history, it nevertheless serves as an excellent “premonition” of what was to come. It narrates how much the U.S. underestimated the fighting prowess and resolve of the Viet Cong. In fact, Muc Wa can be said to be a microcosm of how the entire Vietnam War went for the United States.
The cast of the film is fairly impressive. The lead is taken by Burt Lancaster who portrays a Major who is asked to do the impossible with almost no resources at all. A very young Marc Singer plays his XO. Craig Wasson (best known for his leading role in Brian Depalma’s BODY DOUBLE) plays a shy young corporal.
This is a terrific Vietnam movie that encapsulates just about everything that went wrong for the U.S. in the ill-fated conflict. It’s a must see for all who seek to learn and understand the facts of the early stages and how it all went downhill from there.
What I find interesting is the really obvious hypocrisy in movies and television regarding the whole “kick ass chick” phenomenon.
Basically these women are depicted in a positive way. Men on the other hand, are stereotyped in a negative way, as aggressive, violent and macho. Standard issue PC dogma would call it “testosterone overload” or something to that effect, or “boys own immature adolescent violence”, etc. When women are depicted as being better than men at exactly the same thing, it is not seen as more mindless and violent, but more heroic and virtuous, “a woman proving herself in a man’s world, etc”.
Another glaring inconsistency is that most of the violence that is depicted as positive is violence against men. So “equality” in hollywood is generally showing women commiting violence against men as well as men commiting violence against men. A woman character usually has to be pretty vile to justify violence, men just walk on set and fall down by the dozens, anonymously.
Inevitably a male character shows his sexism and is taught a lesson by the woman, or a male character concedes that the female is better than him at something traditionally masculine.
It’s the ultimate put down, the apex of emasculation, but that’s entertainment these days.
Awesome observation! And note how it is that when women are violent and combative, they’re are acting sensibly, and nobly.
“Did I forget to mention she’s hot, too?” duh, if she wasn’t, the effect would be ruined.
no one wants to see a fat or fugly chick doing this shit, being “tough,” or “manly.”
i wait to see the day where we have a fat fugly female “action hero,” that’s the day when feminism has really arrived, when it finally truly lives up to its’ ideals. heh, then we’d be in a real feminist dreamland. ‘cuz we all know all the important feminists, the politicans and philosophers are all fat and fugly spinster-types that no man would desire even in her prime, or or were germaine greers.
ever wonder why she wrote the “female eunuch” ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH2eyftdBac