{"id":7320,"date":"2015-05-13T09:16:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T16:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=7320"},"modified":"2015-05-13T09:16:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T16:16:47","slug":"the-love-interests-of-ultron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/13\/the-love-interests-of-ultron\/","title":{"rendered":"the love interests of ultron"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a little about <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.angelahighland.com\/2015\/05\/11\/more-on-black-widow-in-avengers-2-age-of-ultron\/\">Anna&#8217;s post about Black Widow in <i>Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/i><\/a> and about Black Widow as &#8220;love interest&#8221; and the &#8220;monster&#8221; comment and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themarysue.com\/oh-ffs-disney\/\">Disney\/Marvel&#8217;s rather hideous sexism in merchandising<\/a> and trying to separate out all those bits and pieces into a coherent thought.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;ve got various things to say about various parts, but I think want to talk about this one tweet. It gets spoilery below here, so consider yourself warned now.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thordinsons\">@thordinsons<\/a> @josswhedon Weird I thought he turned Banner into a love interest that needed saving.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MarkRuffalo\/status\/594628147187949568\">May 2, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Now, I heard the anger over some of the scenes in that film before seeing it, but I also saw this tweet before seeing it, so I had both of those in my head going in. And one question I had in my head was whether this was Mark Ruffalo doing damage control.<\/p>\n<p>And having seen the movie &#8211; <eM>I don&#8217;t think it was<\/em>. I&#8217;m watching that film, and I&#8217;m seeing Mark Ruffalo playing Bruce Banner <em>and<\/em> The Incredible Hulk as the biggest, greenest, most muscle-bound love-interest ever. Leaving everything else &#8211; text, intent, things we don&#8217;t know &#8211; aside: that&#8217;s how I see Mark Ruffalo playing it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, let me take a moment here before I go any further, and say that <em>wow I totally get the other response<\/em>. I <em>truly<\/em> get it. It&#8217;s not a reach to get to the &#8220;monster&#8221; reading, <em>or<\/em> a reach to get to the Widow-is-the-love-interest reading. It&#8217;s sad that it&#8217;s not, but it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s not because of the text, not directly, but because that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re so very very used to getting when there&#8217;s any sort of romantic involvement in these sorts of films. Of course Black Widow has been made The Love Interest, because that&#8217;s what they (almost) always do. Of course any discussion of sterilisation and &#8220;monster&#8221; are going to be linked, because <em>that&#8217;s<\/em> the kind of horrible sexist bullshit you keep getting thrown in your face over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>These are tropes. They&#8217;re long-lasting tropes, the fertility\/monster one is a misogynist trope, and it&#8217;s all so dominant a pattern that it&#8217;s hard <em>not<\/em> to see&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;even when the text doesn&#8217;t support it. I was listening close, because I knew this was coming, and I honestly don&#8217;t think the text supports it.<\/p>\n<p>But if I hadn&#8217;t been listening closely, I wouldn&#8217;t have got that. I might&#8217;ve reacted the same way many other people did. So believe me when I say I understand the reaction. In this atmosphere, it&#8217;d almost be surprising if one <em>didn&#8217;t<\/em> have that takeaway, hitting the scene unprepared.<\/p>\n<p>And I will go further and say that given the historical pervasiveness of the fertility trope &#8211; that horrible &#8220;you&#8217;re not a woman if you don&#8217;t\/can&#8217;t have kids, you&#8217;re some sort of monster&#8221; trope &#8211; that this particular angle shouldn&#8217;t&#8217;ve been touched, because even if you get it right in the text, there&#8217;s no way to get it right in the milieu. Not in the now. I think that was a mistake.<\/p>\n<p>But I <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> carry that same opinion about having Bruce\/the Hulk in the role of Black Widow&#8217;s love interest, even if a lot of people are going to reverse-read it, because I think the actual intent is up there on screen.<\/p>\n<p>I am in fact again going further and saying this reading isn&#8217;t just in Mark&#8217;s performance; I say it&#8217;s supported in the text. I think it&#8217;s author&#8217;s intent.<\/p>\n<p>I cite two scenes in particular.<\/p>\n<p>First scene: Bruce tries to talk Natasha into running away. They&#8217;re done, he says; they&#8217;ve done their bit, they can get out. <em>Let&#8217;s go.<\/em> Some people have read that as Bruce &#8220;saving&#8221; Black Widow, as Bruce seeing Natasha as someone who <em>needs<\/em> to be saved, thus reducing her to &#8220;love interest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Replay that scene in your head and play it against the hundreds of other emotionally-identical scenes from other action\/hero films. <em>Ruffalo has the love-interest&#8217;s side of that conversation.<\/em> Not the hero&#8217;s side. It&#8217;s the &#8220;you could have a normal life&#8221; speech, a speech usually given by &#8220;the girlfriend&#8221; who doesn&#8217;t want to see &#8220;the hero&#8221; get hurt and\/or die.<\/p>\n<p>Also, notice, it&#8217;s <eM>Banner<\/eM> leading with the emotional exposure, it&#8217;s him being the emotional one, baring his fears and his hopes, which <em>allows<\/em> Romanoff to let her guard down and respond. Romantic interest, and hero, in that order.<\/p>\n<p>In short, this <em>is<\/eM> a scene between love-interest and action-hero &#8211; but with Ruffalo playing the love interest, and Johansson playing the hero. Not the other way around.<\/p>\n<p>Second scene: The Hulk flying away in the (effectively unpiloted) jet, at the end of the film, turning off the comms. It&#8217;s easy to make a comparison to the end of <i>Captain America: The First Avenger<\/i>, but that&#8217;s wrong, because what Hulk is doing is completely different. What&#8217;s going on <em>here?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bruce\/the Hulk is leaving&#8230; <em>so that Natasha can be the hero she needs to be<\/em>, co-leading the next generation of Avengers. It&#8217;s the &#8220;I must leave you, and sacrifice my love for you, so you can do what must be done&#8221; scene. You&#8217;ve seen it before. It is <em>also<\/em> a fixture of these films, particularly older ones.<\/p>\n<p>And again: Ruffalo has the love-interest side of it. His actions are the noble sacrifice of the love interest. <em>He&#8217;s<\/em> not going off to be a hero; he&#8217;s going off to the middle of nowhere, removing himself from the board, so that <em>Black Widow<\/em> can <em>stay<\/em> and be the hero <em>she<\/em> needs to be.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s exactly what happens, which means that&#8217;s the <em>text<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So in the end&#8230; I don&#8217;t think that tweet was damage control. I think it was real; I think it was text; I think it was intent.<\/p>\n<p>And I think they&#8217;re both really easy to read the other way because I also think you can make some pretty good arguments about fairly straight-up inversion of tropes being a little lazy. It&#8217;s a little too easy to flip &#8217;round who is who in those roles when the patterns are so clear. And that&#8217;s at the foot of the writer.<\/p>\n<p>Which means I think Joss Whedon is smart to walk way from these films at this point. I think he&#8217;s done, and it showed. But that&#8217;s a different discussion entirely.<\/p>\n<p>So there are certainly things to be unhappy about here. The Whedon snappy patter being a bit too by-the-book this time around. (Or maybe I&#8217;ve heard too much of it and am starting to see the, heh, <em>strings?<\/em>) The whitewashing of The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. (I get that they can&#8217;t have the same origin, because of who owns what, but still.)  <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/05\/05\/jeremy_renner_wont_stop_calling_black_widow_a_slut_i\u2019m_unapologetic_about_a_lot_of_things\/\">Jeremy Renner horribly going on about Black Widow being a &#8220;slut&#8221;<\/a>, which others have talked about in both terms of slut-shaming sexism and falling out of how if you only have one lead woman character and want hints of romance in a heterosexist environment, you&#8217;re going to be moving her around all the time. All those are reasons to be unhappy with it.<\/p>\n<p>But this &#8211; this relationship &#8211; isn&#8217;t. Not for <em>this<\/em> reason, at least.<\/p>\n<p>Hell, we finally have another one of these things <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/bechdeltest.com\/view\/6217\/avengers:_age_of_ultron\/\">passing the Bechdel test<\/a>. We have <em>six<\/em> named women with speaking roles &#8211; Black Widow, The Scarlet Witch, Maria Hill, Dr. Helen Cho, Laura Barton, and Madame B.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not good enough, I&#8217;m not saying that. But for all my problems with this film &#8211; and I had several, including the &#8220;huh, hard-takeoff AI, this show&#8217;s over in 20 minutes but oh for no good reason it&#8217;s not&#8221; problem &#8211; I felt like I could breathe. It was nice.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themarysue.com\/invisible-women\/\">Now if we could get Disney to stop erasing their own damn women from their own damn merchandise<\/a>, maybe we could get another step, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a little about Anna&#8217;s post about Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron and about Black Widow as &#8220;love interest&#8221; and the &#8220;monster&#8221; comment and Disney\/Marvel&#8217;s rather hideous sexism in merchandising and trying to separate out all those bits and pieces into a coherent thought. And I&#8217;ve got various things to say [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-peoples-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}