. . . whether I’m offended by this upcoming movie or not. I suspect it’s going to make waves like those Jodi Foster’s role in Taxi Driver created, but I need to see at least more trailers, and probably the movie, before I truly weigh in.
I know I’m not crazy about the language, and I’m not a language prude. I know I saw the trailer twice, and then I went off to make tea before it even occurred to me that men tend to absurdly sexualize women who carry guns—but that may be because it’s refreshing, in a society full of gun-grabbers, to meet women who share that interest, and not something that on its own would sexualize a preadolescent. (That is, a history geek might be fascinated by a female historian, and it would add to her sex appeal. The same history geek would also be capable of encouraging his niece in her studies of the past, but he’s not sexualizing her: he’s sharing his passion, which requires a grownup woman to become an element of eroticism.)
I think a lot of young teenagers/pre-teens will get a kick out of the idea of a girl beating men out in these types of contests-of-will. Which is why I’m not crazy about the language in the trailer. (I was okay with “fuck,” but “cunt” bothered me—and I’m usually the one who’s arguing that I need that word in my fiction, even after my writer’s group tarred and feathered me for it. [Do you know how many baths it takes to get tar and feathers off? The feathers come off the first time, but the tar takes a good five baths, and one still smells like tar the rest of the week.])
It looks like an oddball comedy, and I can’t tell from the trailer how they are playing this. It looks like it might simply be played for laughs—but very, very dark.
Yet if the girl is sexualized I will likely hit the ceiling when I see it.
See it, however, I will. So they have me—and they know it.
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The language didn’t bother me as much as the cold-blooded killing. The girl seemed to savor the violence she delivered. And from the trailer it seems the movie has a sick, black comedy angle to it.
Heh. Those Japanese and their manga are destroying the world. Hit Girl is a comic book character explicitly intended to hit Aaaaaaall those buttons. Mark Miller’s character, but the manga influence is all over it, from the schoolgirl outfit to her love of hello Kitty.
Nope, nope, nope. That’s just wrong.
Sean H., I know I shouldn’t, but . . . does she kill any good guys? That would be bad. Killing bad guys is good. Movies are more like video games than like real life, sometimes.
Cold cream helps with the tar – if that fails, Crisco. Srsly.
Lanolin hand cleaner–the kind you can buy in an auto part’s stores–takes off tar like it was never there, in seconds. Works on clothes, too, when you do roofing.
Who does she say the “c” word to? Looks like a roomful of guys. From what I saw, all I can say is that I always wanted a daughter. It’s from Lionsgate which means it’s intended to destroy society and give work to Nick Cage.
First Pearl Harbor. Then Manga.
(Yes: she used “cunt” in that gender-fuck, British Isles way. You know how they are over there: afternoon tea and liberal use of “cunt.” Which is the new form of calling men “ladies,” an insult that rests, let’s face it, on sexist foundations. Unless the Brits also call women “dicks” when they misbehave.
But I’m not bothered by that, so much as I am by the fact that women are rarely ever called “assholes,” despite the fact that it is a gender-neutral term, and we are never called “bastards,” irrespective of same.
Perhaps that is the reason some of us faint when we hear the word “cunt”–women should ideally be above criticism, and terms like “bitch” and “cunt” imply feminine fallibility.)
Mostly, I’m shocked that I care about the language issue whatsoever. I mean, I used to be amused when my cousin made a point of renting the cleaned-up versions of movies like Lethal Weapon–“they are already going around killing people, so who cares about the language issue?”
But now that I have a Church sponsee, I’ve come to personify the muddled thinking I once disdained in parents.
As for the movie, I still hold out plenty of hope that it will turn out to be the right kind of twisted (twisted that Ilike, which helps society) rather than the wrong kind of twisted (twisted that I don’t like, which is a moral cancer upon popular culture and should be condemned).
I agree with you 100%, but the men who call other men ladies or girls are just trying to present themselves as the alpha. And they would say that there is nothing wrong with being feminine if you are female. Now that western men have been castrated by feminists, we have to rely on little girls to be the men in our culture
and do the rough work that must be done. Works for me as long as foreigners fear our little girls.