Dr. Doom: Misogynist Pig

Left: the frame that started it all, Marvel comics' Mighty Avengers #11. (Written by Brian Michael Bendis, illustrated by Mark Bagley, based on originals by Frank Cho.)

As comics fans know, Dr Victor von Doom is a menacing and evil presence. How can we complain that he's a misogynist? Of course he is.

And further, shouldn't the bad guy sound like a bad guy? And isn't some good-ole random, nasty woman-hating (in this case, directed at Ms. Marvel) an easy, all-purpose way to establish that he is indeed a villain?

Considering these and many other related questions, great conversations are taking place on Myriad Issues, The All-New, All-Different Howling Curmudgeons, and links aplenty on the invaluable When Fangirls Attack.

At Newsarama, Lisa Fortuner writes:

Now, is it INAPPROPRIATELY misogynistic? There is such a thing as characterization, after all. And Dr. Doom is a bad guy. So the attitude is proper. And I’ve heard, in even darker corners of the internet, that the “Feminists are overreacting here, because Doom is a dick.”

Valerie D'Orazio writes, at Occasional Superheroine:

I know Doctor Doom is a dick -- I get it. But, I still don't want to read stuff like this. And from the standpoint of Doom being a Marvel character that is licensed across a wide range of products, both for adults and children, it's just not smart. There were other ways to show Doctor Doom is a bad guy besides calling Ms. Marvel a whore. Ask Stan Lee when you have the chance.

And the prize goes to Kali at Possibly Irrelevant Information:

I haven't even begun to address the fact that in almost forty five years of delivering verbal smackdowns that would make Oscar Wilde turn bilious green with jealousy, Doom has never, EVER resorted to sounding juvenile and grossly desperate. Doom is the lord and master of the putting-you-in-your-place-and-making-you-feel-two-millimeters-tall verbal lashing, but he does it with regality and elegance. Doom is never base.

That's not Doom. That's a SKRULL that watches too much Bill O'Reilly filtered through Frank Miller. Wait, I take that back. The Skrull aren't sexist. That's Otto Weininger filtered through Bill O'Reilly filtered through Ann Coulter filtered through Norman Mailer filtered through Frank Miller.

Conflating an insult by attacking the size and shape of a woman's body and accusing her of being a slattern? Oh, Bendis. Is that the best you can do? Exporting Western misogynistic cultural perceptions of a woman's worth being tied to her physical attractiveness and templating that onto Victor Von Doom? If Bendis is trying to show us that Doom is a villain, he's failing, because it's such a typical pattern for Bendis that I don't hear Doom speaking in this issue, I hear BENDIS speaking through Doom's mouth. That's not the mark of a good writer.

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Listening to: The Replacements - Alex Chilton
via FoxyTunes

Borrowing and appropriating

Left: The CREEM magazine logo, which I loved and have been waiting for an excuse to use on my blog!



The newest scuffle in Blogdonia concerns Big Blogger Amanda Marcotte liberally ummm, borrowing from another blogger, notably a Woman of Color. And blogging about issues she usually doesn't know much about, that Brownfemipower has been blogging about since day one and in fact, presented in a recent speech (about feminism and immigration) at the Women, Action and Media conference. It's Led Zeppelin all over again!!!

Background: As a fresh-faced hippie tyke, I wrote record reviews for underground/alternative publications nobody remembers. (The most famous of these would be CREEM, where I only got three paragraphs.) Lots of these were leftist publications such as Detroit's RED TIDE and New York City's OVERTHROW. Imagine my shock when hard-core lefties jumped me over my blues-ignorance. Didn't I know that Led Zeppelin, Spooky Tooth (does ANYONE remember Spooky Tooth?), Humble Pie, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Cream, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, et. al. were doing OLD BLUES MUSIC, written and first performed by southern black delta folk?

My reaction: Huh?

And in fairness, this was the 70s, way before the internet. Nowadays, one could simply type in PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND and learn all you needed to know about the early influences of these bands. But at the time, I actually had to study and go to the library. I felt like a fool; these were bands and musicians I idolized, and I didn't know squat about the actual roots of the music they were playing. Yet, I felt qualified to opine about the quality and the musicianship of their records. And I was published, too, as countless other clueless white rock critics were.

Paul Butterfield went to Woodstock and appeared in the subsequent hit movie. Albert King did not.

I am pleased to report that I learned from my study. I am one of the few people who have heard the original recording of When the Levee Breaks by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. And you know what? I prefer LZ's. But I always refer to it as "the Led Zeppelin remake of the Memphis Minnie/Joe McCoy recording"--I never refer to it as a Led Zeppelin song. Ditto Whole Lotta Love--a morph of Willie Dixon's You need love.

Of course, they aren't exact replicas. Zeppelin was trying something novel--a sort of psychedelic bombastic blues. They succeeded, but they also 'forgot' to put the names of the original authors of the songs on their work, and that's why they ended up in court. The operative term is BLUES, which was invented by a certain group of people in a certain cultural moment and location. Yes, you get credit for the psychedelic bombast, but the blues came from someone else. (As much as you have, can't you give credit where it is due without going to freakin COURT????)

Unfortunately, we now have Amanda, doing what I would call a Led Zeppelin: What, me, worry? And let me make it very clear: I love Led Zeppelin. I refer to a whole process of cultural and racial appropriation, and how deep and insidious it is. As white people, we ARE largely unconscious of it, at first. That is how people like Amanda get by with the innocent routine, just like me at RED TIDE and Jimmy Page in court: Huh?

Hopefully, that time has passed. Huh don't cut it anymore. Huh is extremely fucked up. You have the ease, comfort and availability of the internet; you don't have to traipse across town to the library or earnestly trek to the local blues-hound's apartment and beg for copies of tapes, the way I did, and for that matter, the way Jimmy Page did. IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS.

And giving credit, too, is just as easy. You might try it.

Charlton Heston 1923-2008

Left: This is the exact movie poster we have on the wall of our spare room, which inspired me to write this.

~*~

There is this indescribable expression on Charlton Heston's face, somewhere in the screamingly bad film NUMBER ONE ("You have nowhere to go but down!"). Ex-wide receiver Bruce Dern is talking to aging quarterback Heston about what it's like in the used car business, or whatever business he transitioned to after his football career was over.

"But what do you do?" asked Heston.

Bruce looks stunned that Heston doesn't get it: "I smile at all the people!" he says, in that trademark oily-nasty way he has.

Heston looks... disgusted, indignant.

I realized, as a teenager, that was a real expression I had seen. I thought, "He is disgusted. He doesn't want to sell cars, either."

And Chuck Heston never sold cars. He worked with the likes of Orson Welles, he was Moses and Ben-Hur, he wrote books, he campaigned for Ronald Reagan, he was president of the NRA. But he never sold cars. Whenever I read or heard of his many exploits, I always came back to the disgusted expression on his face in NUMBER ONE; his open contempt for the ordinary life. He would be a star, or nothing.

Cleaning up the spare room yesterday, I saw the old PLANET OF THE APES movie poster we've had hanging on the wall since forever. I realized I needed to blog about Charlton Heston, if only to bid my fond and affectionate farewell to one who has given me so many hours of entertainment and memories. After all, my first trip to the drive-in that I can remember, was to see Heston and Anne Baxter chew the scenery together in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. I was maybe four years old? It was the 4th of July, and there were fireworks. God and Country; Chuck certainly would have approved.

Rena at Peace Arena, reminds of us Heston's Civil Rights record, and recounts his march against segregation in Oklahoma in 1961, when few actors had any interest in anti-racist politics.

Resquiat in Pace.

~*~

Charlton Heston reminded us, most importantly, that Soylent Green is people!!!!!!

Dead Air Church: A Quick One While He's Away

We! Have a remedy!

Why am I choosing this for Dead Air Church, you ask? Because of the moral of the story: you are forgiven. And don't forget it!

This was recorded in 1968 for Rock and Roll Circus. If you like rock music, even 40 years gone, this is one of the best live performances on TV that you'll ever see. Enjoy!

(And even though it's incredibly difficult to choose, it might be my favorite song.)

~*~

The Who - A Quick One While He's Away

[via FoxyTunes / The Who]

April 4th

Left: In 1968 MEMPHIS, Tenn "Before" by Ernest Lee.



Excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 1963:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.


I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

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Listening to: U2 - Pride (In the Name of Love)
via FoxyTunes