Loki and the Language of Sexual Violence

[Trigger warning: discussion of sexual violence, consent issues, and rape. NSFW language]

All this talk of Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World (2013) inspired me to break out my Blu-ray edition of Marvel’s Thor (2011) last night. By all accounts, it’s my favorite film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since it taught me to love Thor and Marvel, which then inspired me to apply for an internship there and the rest is geeky history. So I love this movie. I love Thor. And like most in the Marvel fandom, I love Loki.

But there’s a moment in Thor that I always found troubling and I often try to forget it happens. When it does occur, I find myself incredibly uncomfortable, especially for a movie that I thoroughly enjoy as both a feminist and a geek.

Frigga, Loki, and Magic in Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World

I recently wrote an essay exploring Loki and Frigga’s relationship and the use of magic and the feminine in Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World. Please check it out here at The Discriminating Fangirl! Beware, SPOILERS.  

 

The Erasure of Officer Anne Lewis and Women in Action

Officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen)

The new trailer for the RoboCop remake was released yesterday, bringing us a vaguely closer look at the origins of OmniCorp’s program to bring robots to the American home front.

Whatever.

As a massive fan of the original 1987 RoboCop, I have yet to see anything in the trailers for the remake that is as fresh and clever as the entire original film. I’m also still angry over the apparent lack of Officer Anne Lewis: a dynamic and engaging secondary character in 1987’s RoboCop and one of my favorite examples of a woman in an action film.

According to the cast list of the 2014 version, there is no Officer Anne Lewis, simply an Officer Jack Lewis, played by the awesome Michael K. Williams. Great, he’s an amazing actor. But the removal of Anne Lewis is highly troubling to me.

Nancy Thompson, Freddy Krueger, and feminism

Tomorrow is Halloween and that means I will be doing several things:

-       Handing out candy

-       Playing spooky music all day

-       Dressing up

-       Watching A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

I’ve written about A Nightmare on Elm Street before and how much I love this film. At the risk of repeating myself, I want to discuss the original Nightmare on Elm Street again if only because of how important this film was to me as a young teenager and now, as an adult feminist.

It may seem strange for a feminist to love a film in which a deformed child murderer stalks and kills teenagers, most famously after sex. When I first saw this film as a fourteen year old, however, I was astonished by the originality of the premise. I had already seen a masked and typically silent killer slash his way through sexually promiscuous teenagers but I had never seen a killer with a personality. And I had never seen any death scenes as unsettling as the disquieting dreamscapes in which Freddy Krueger tormented and killed his victims.

"So why shouldn't I write of monsters?" A feminist considers the horror genre

Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

It’s the week of the Halloween.

It’s my favorite time of year if only for the reason that I love horror. Truly and desperately love horror in all its forms, especially horror films.

This often surprises people because I am a feminist. I have a very clear memory of a college professor being totally aghast that I was a women and gender’s studies student and a horror fan. This annoyed me.

Because for me, horror is freeing. As a quiet, bookish, and all-around weird kid, horror films opened up a world of empowerment for me. It is only in horror that the Other has, if only momentarily, true power.