Marvel's Agent Mary Sue

In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it is said that drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is similar in effect to having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

Watching Marvel's Agent Carter was like having your brains smashed in by a large gold brick inscribed with the words "PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION! WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE!"

I really wish it were different. I really wanted this series to be good. But alas and alack.

My first warning was upon reading the series synopsis: "It’s 1946, and peace has dealt Peggy Carter a serious blow as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad."

Uh-oh. "Marginalized" is a leftist buzzword, I thought. But perhaps it's just a quirk of word choice, I thought. Or perhaps that will be a minor point in character development. Hopefully, it won't be that bad.

It was not that bad. It was a hundred times worse.

The marginalization was not just a character development point. It was not even a theme. Instead, Marxist-feminist gender theory was the premise, point, and purpose of the entire show. It was not a comic book TV show about secret agents fighting bad guys. It was actually thinly-veiled agitprop about the evils of The Patriarchy™. In this way, the show violates the cardinal rule of the storyteller: art serves the muse, not the agenda.

Perhaps you think I'm exaggerating. I really wish I was. But upon reflection and discussion, I become more and more convinced that the show creators did not just include Marxist-feminist themes because it was their world view, but they deliberately and specifically made numerous plot, story, character, and dialog choices to browbeat the audience into accepting the Marxist-feminist narrative, from the first scene of the first hour to the last scene of the second. Come along with me and I will explain all.

Ripped from the Headlines

Seen in the (Canadian) National Post today:

Story #1 (front page in the print edition): "Birth of the 'Baby Factory'"

The film, House of Surrogates, tells the story of Dr. Nayna Patel, who is building a clinic to house hundreds of poverty-stricken Indian women making babies for childless Westerners. 

The one-stop surrogacy shop — complete with a gift shop and hotel rooms — is under construction as part of India’s multi-billion-dollar commercial surrogacy industry. 

Dr. Patel already runs the Akanksha clinic, which currently accommodates around 100 pregnant women in a single house.

Story #2 (page A4): "Protesters Expose Quebec Charter"

Julie-Anne Beaulac, a 19-year-old college student, wrote the slogan “Crucifix décâlisse” (Crucifix, get the hell out) across her chest and bared her breasts as Question Period began in the Quebec City chamber Tuesday. 

“We find it completely aberrant that bills such as the charter, which are supposed to be promoting secularism in Quebec, are voted on beneath a crucifix,” she said in a phone interview after being released by the constables. 

Morgane Mary-Pouliot, another Femen Québec member, said that far from being a cultural artifact to cherish, the crucifix is a reminder of a time when women in Quebec were told by the Catholic Church that their chief role was to produce children.

Um... are you sure you're protesting in the right place?

Aside: if the Church tells women that their chief role is to produce children, why are there so many virgins on the universal calendar?

In a Parallel Universe Somewhere...

...a Vancouver police officer, speaking to college students about a recent crime wave, has suggested that, to avoid mugging, people shouldn't go walking through bad neighborhoods at night, flashing around large wads of cash. This has caused quite a stir, and many people are now accusing the officer of perpetuating a "blame the victim" mentality. In Europe and a few American cities, people have organized protests, called "cash flashes", where they stuff their pockets with large denomination bills, and walk through high-crime areas. Some have been seen carrying signs that say things like "Don't tell me not to flash my cash. Tell thieves not to steal."

* * *

I wonder how much of the controversy has been caused because society has lost the concept of temptation. John C. Wright once wrote about how difficult he found it to adjust to the Christian lifestyle because, prior to his conversion from atheism, his code of ethics was basically defined such that anything he wanted to do was morally allowable. Once he realized that certain things he really, really wanted to do were not OK, he struggled with keeping his passions in check. (I may be mis-quoting him. I don't have time to find the story.)

In today's society, where "anything goes", I suppose that many people simply are unaware that it can be difficult to order your appetites and passions to your intellect. The prevailing attitude is "I can do what I want, and it's your job to not let that affect you." Much of this attitude might simply be due to ignorance of human nature.

Of course, it could also be because the police officer violated the 1st commandment of the Post-Christian West: "Thou shalt not tell me what to do."

* * *

The interesting thing about the "Slut Walks" that have been going on, and the attitude "I can dress however I want" is that, in a perfect, unfallen world, that would be true. If there were no original sin, then there would be no sexual predation, and no need to protect yourself from it. Of course, in this fallen, sinful world we live in, prudence (and charity) demands that we take measures to protect ourselves from the weak-willed, as well as take reasonable measures not to tempt them.

Like all philosophies that deny God and original sin (Marxism and Nietzsche-ism come to mind), these ideas fall apart in their belief that man can be perfected in this life.

Preach it, John, Preach it!

This:

Only a modern thinker, by which I mean ‘only a morally retarded one-dimensional thinker’ could regard both the Eve by whose proud disobedience all mankind was condemned, and the New Eve by whose humble obedience all mankind was saved as ‘weak.’ Heroines and villainesses on whose decisions turn the fates of worlds can be called a lot of things, but the Marxist and feminist interpretation of life only has two words for life in all its complexity: strong and weak. Whatever is strong is an oppressor, an exploiter, and guilty, and whatever is weak is oppressed, exploited, and innocent.

Being feminine does not mean being weak. That is a Marxist lie, produced by the morally retarded one-dimensional and therefore stupid idea that all human relationships are mutually hostile power struggles about power. Being feminine means being not masculine. 

Male pride is brittle. I am sorry, fellow guys, but we have weaknesses particular to our sex, and a woman can shatter us with word, if it is the right woman and the right word. Women, at least old fashioned & old school women, seem to have more endurance and more stick-to-itiveness and more Christian charity than men, by and large. 

They go through pregnancy, and THEN look forward to doing it again. Sheesh! Who says feminine girls are weak? 

It is the masculine girls who are weak, the Buffy Vampireslayers. They have the brittleness and pride of touchy male pride — feminists are as sensitive to any trifling slights against their honor as a Spanish Grandee — but they do not have the corresponding masculine virtues of chivalry, generosity, and honor for the fallen foe that Christianity introduced to ameliorate the savage pagan attitude that glorifies strength and despises the weak.

...is the point I was trying to make in clunky fashion here.

Also, this:

Of course, I also agree with St. Paul that men should love their wives as Christ loves his bride the Church, which is to say, men should regard marriage as crucifixion. It is not fun and games, loverboy. You think joining the army demands total commitment from you? Marriage, you do not get R&R, do not get leave, and you are never off duty. You are husband and father forever and aye, till death do you part, amen. 

You might come to marriage for the sake of Eros, romantic love, or for the sake of Philos, because you seek the companionship and friendship of the beloved, because you like her as well as love her. But marriage is Agape, self-emptying, self-denying, self-sacrificing love. So do not rejoice if St. Paul crowns you with the crown of marriage, husbands, and asks your wives to submit to your leadership and rule, because the crown is a crown of thorns, and the rulership is like that Christ refused of the devil when offered the kingdoms of this world. Your task, husbands, is to take second place in your wife’s affections once children arrive. You live for them, not they for you.

...is probably the best exegeses of Saint Paul's letter to the Ephesians that I've read.

The Power of the Feminine

So babby's aunt/godmother is staying with us this weekend, which provided the Murloc and meself with free babbysitting. We took the opportunity to go out to the movies (the first time since we saw Half-Blood Prince!) and went to see the non-Imax, non-3D Alice in Wonderland.

The movie was entertaining and visually splendid, but suffered from the same thing every Tim Burton movie I've ever seen; that is, it's formulaic and the characters didn't engage me. With the possibility of Victor Van Dort, I can't think of a single Tim Burton character that I cared for enough that I would have been emotionally moved by the character's death. I think part of it stems from an unclear character dramatic need and motivation. (So what's Alice's dramatic goal, upon reaching Wonderland? How does Charlie's deep-seated want influence his actions once he's in the chocolate factory?) Also, within ten minutes of the start of Alice, I predicted how it was going to end and even what her final speech was going to be, with a great degree of accuracy (and I'm talking more than just general "the good guys win" prediction).

About the time Alice donned the silver armor and rode into battle with the Vorpal sword to slay the Jabberwocky (that's really not that big of a spoiler; see: predictability), I realized why my co-worker liked the movie so much, and why she urged me to see it, to the point of offering to babysit. Alice is definitely the strong female character, but as I watched, I began to wonder whether she was in fact a strong female character, or a strong character, who just happened to be female. When I thought about it, I realized that she didn't have a single pronounced feminine trait, and had the movie been Bob in Wonderland, it would not have been significantly different or fundamentally changed.

(And we have seen this movie staring a man before. It's called Harry Skywalker and the Dragon of Narnia. In the only-six-plots-in-the-world school of thought, this movie is "boy destined to destroy evil; boy resists destiny; boy finally fulfills destiny," except replace "boy" with "girl". Not that this is a bad thing. I happen to like this plot, thank you very much. But in this particular movie, it's hampered by the fact that Alice's dramatic need is that she wants to be the master of her destiny, and not have to live to other's expectations of her. Her arc of change (learning to forge her own destiny) is kind of incongruous with the movie's events (fulfill other's expectations of her destiny).)

One might argue that everyone expecting her to marry and be a good wife is a part of the movie that only works if Alice is a woman. But this would still work even if the main character was male. The expectation could have been for him to take a wife and follow into his father's business when he wanted to do his own thing.

This is something I've been aware of for a while. Where are the strong female characters? I mean the characters who are strong because of their femininity, instead of in spite of it? This was something that bugged me all the way through "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". After seven seasons, she still didn't have a single trait that required she be a woman. And in fact the other strong "female" character, by which I mean strong character who was female (Willow), had some distinctively masculine traits, i.e., being in love with a woman. This is a problem with all of Joss' shows. Typically speaking, his strong women are usually strong men who happen to have two X chromosomes.

(And this flows directly from my issues with modern pseudo-feminism: that is, women become strong by becoming just like men. "The basic flaw is that feminists start by seeking equality," writes John C. Wright in a recent post, "but finish by seeking androgyny." Women are told that in order to find equality, they need to be like men. Of course, this goal is in direct conflict with biological, psychological, and spiritual realities, in which women are not men. The end result of this philosophy has women rejecting there bodies, and becoming both physically and psychologically sterile.)

I started thinking about female characters who I liked, who were actually strong women, not strong humans. Princess Leia sprung to mind almost immediately. But how is she feminine? I mean, she's good with a blaster, strong leader of her people... y'know, masculine traits. But then I realized that's not what makes her strong. She's a strong character primarily because of how she influences the other characters, namely the men, and namely Han Solo. Luke (a character with an extremely clear dramatic need, as opposed to Burton's characters; he states it outright: "I want to become a Jedi like my father before me") joins the rebellion because of Leia. Han sticks around and changes from scoundrel to noble because of Leia. She really shows the true power of femininity; that is, women have power over men.

A man's power over a woman is purely physical. He can beat her up and take what he wants, but if he is civilized and taught that women are not men (an idea the pseudo-feminists are rapidly trying to expunge), he won't. But a woman's power is so much more than that. If she wants something, all she need do is bat her eyelashes and smile sweetly.

Understanding this relationship also throws St. Paul's teachings into clarity. He puts as head of the family the member who is most easily swayed by the needs of the other, then tells him to love his family as part of his own body. Any guy can understand this, because we already act as servants of our bodies. If it itches, we scratch. If it's hungry, we feed it. If it wants a beer, we drink. To say that we should server the needs of our wives as we do that of our bodies is language any caveman (and let's face it, men are just barely one step above cavemen, largely due to the efforts of women) can understand.

I think at least on a subconscious level, I understood this. When I started writing Jack Flint: Space Pirate (you knew this was coming!) I wanted to write the anti-Joss woman (understandably, because JF:SP is partly my rebuttal to "Firefly.") (Of course, you write what you know, and since I don't know what it's like to be a woman, that sort of leaves out writing a realistic female character, so I did what I assume every other male author does and wrote my fantasy of a woman.)

Regina Burke is my idea of the strong female character. While she is certainly a strong character who happens to be a woman—Jack of all trades, master of many; she's the best pilot Redemptrix has ever had, a good engineer, can handle the guns, and even helps the ship's cook—that's not what makes her a strong female character. Instead, her real strength comes from the one quality she has as a woman that no man can have: her influence on Jack. She, and she alone can stand up to Jack, change his mind, and push him to do good. Not even Jack's long time friend and first mate can manage that. I mean, how could he? Male-male relationships are won by strength alone, and Jack has superior strength over Damian, by virtue of rank. Regina, even though she is the lowest ranking member of the crew, has a power no one else has.

And this is a similar trait that, I realize, all my heroines—written and un-written—have. Father Max's assistant (when I write her), and the heroine of the story I will write when I finish Father Max. </toot my own horn>

This is only what I intend, of course. Whether or not I am good enough to translate the thoughts in my head to words on a page is left as an exercise for the reader.

* * *

"Miss Burke," Jack finally started after a long deliberation. "When I give an order on me ship to me crew, I am accustomed to having it followed."


"Excuse me, sir?"

"Back on the fluyt, you disobeyed me direct order to await me return before leaving. Now, I find this a disgusting display of insubordinate behavior."

"Your order reeked, Captain," Burke retorted. "It would have gotten us all killed. Had I stayed for your arrival, you wouldn't have had a ship to come back to."

"Well that is most certainly your opinion, but your reckless actions nearly got you killed anyways, or have you forgotten the EMP you flew me ship into?"

Burke narrowed her eyes and pointed at Jack. "You are not blaming that on me! Your junk heap of a ship failed on me. I saved her at every turn and came up with the plan to defend her without power."

"Me 'junk heap' was working just fine when I left her. Me engine mate could have fixed any problems you had. Maybe if you had waited for him, instead of rashly running off to battle, we wouldn't have even needed your defense plan—which I might point out only worked because of the stupidity of your enemy and not any cleverness on your part. Or perhaps you're too busy trying to do every job yourself, except those I give you."

She made a noise of disgust and rolled her eyes. He continued. "I am the captain of this ship and as such, you will show me the respect me position deserves. And as captain, me orders are final and should be obeyed without question."

"Well, Captain," Burke said snidely, "you're only such because you stole this ship from Lord knows who, not because of some merit-based promotion. Now, judging by your crew's unwavering loyalty, I'd guess that normally your orders warrant respect, but when you're giving orders that will result in the death of your crew, I'm very disinclined to follow them."

"Miss Burke, you are completely out of line. Now as far as disciplinary action—"

"Cut the crap, Jack," she blurted out. "I know your attitude towards me is just part of your 'breaking-in' process. You want to learn if I work under pressure. That's fine. I can deal with it. I served in the armed forces. But I've bled for you." She pointed at the crusted blood on her forehead. "And this marks the second time I've saved your skin without so much as a 'thank you.' I think I've demonstrated my trustworthiness, so you can back off a little."

She stared at him, arms akimbo, her blue eyes looked as if lasers might shoot out of them. Jack returned her glare. She was a good six inches shorter than he, and stared up at him, but didn't back down one bit. He felt the fury boil under his skin. "Miss Burke, you're dismissed," he said coldly, not able to think of anything else to say.

She didn't move. She didn't even shift her gaze.

"That means 'get out'," he explained. But she remained rooted in place. After a few moments he sighed and asked, "Is there something else, Miss Burke?"

"Yes," she replied, with a certain sharpness in her tone. "I think you owe me an explanation."

Jack could feel his ire rising. This was too much. "I do, do I? About what?"

"I think I deserve to know what I've gotten myself into."

"What's your meaning?" Jack said, feigning ignorance. He was afraid he might know the direction she was heading.

"You had been on that fluyt before." Jack was about to raise an objection but she beat him to it. "And don't try to deny it. You knew the layout. You knew which quarters were which. You knew exactly where to find the disk."

"Aye, so I did. Were you going somewhere with this?"

"Yes. It's not a hard jump to make from realizing you were on that ship to realizing you attacked that ship. Which means that, apparently, I'm now the pilot on what's probably the most wanted ship in the system. So I wonder, Captain, what other sorts of jobs am I going to have to perform? Anything that could get me thrown in prison for life or strung up by my neck?"

Jack chortled dismissively. "Miss Burke, you may have only just now noticed, but we're privateers. And since the laws of space change depending on the whims of lawmen and the alignment of the planets, we, almost by definition, do jobs of questionable legality. We're not in the US Navy, so we don't have the luxury of making up the laws by which we want to abide. So if you're suddenly concerned or are getting cold feet that you might have to steal—"
 
Burke cut him off. "Stealing's not my concern here, Captain. I understand I'll have to do a bit of that. I'm more concerned about murder. I saw at least one dead man on that ship, and I can only imagine what happened to the rest."


And with that, she had hit on something that had been nagging at Jack for almost a month now. As much as he tried to avoid killing, as much as he tried to blame the man with the case, Jack was the one who attacked the fluyt. He was the aggressor and therefore, he was at least partially responsible for spilling their blood. He tried to suppress the sudden guilt he felt. He couldn't understand why he was feeling it so strongly. He'd been dealing in questionable ethics for years now, and hadn't had any trouble sleeping at night. But suddenly, with Burke giving him that accusatory stare, he could no longer suppress his—what did other people call it?—his conscience.

He couldn't bring himself to look back at her, so instead as he spoke, he stared out the windows at the back of his quarters, at the dreadnought, now small in the distance. "Those deaths... were regrettable."

"Oh, regrettable. Is that it? Is that how you see it? Captain, I wonder how regrettable it really was for you. Did you enjoy it? Is that how you get a thrill in this job? Tie a man up, then starve him of air?"

"Regina," he said, looking back at her. 

Something softened in her expression. She seemed to notice that it was the very first time he had addressed her by her first name. 

He continued. "I know you have no reason to believe me, but I need to tell you anyways. I took every step I could to keep those sailors alive. Didn't you see the marks on the hull? Three clean shots through the sails and one through the cannons. We could have more easily punched a hole through their quarters and killed half the crew before even boarding. I mean, for God's sake, we left their communications untouched so they could call for help."

She relaxed her body language, and while she still looked doubtful, something told Jack that she believed, or at least wanted to. "So then how did those sailors die?"

"The man we were after, the man with the disk, killed them." Jack told her about his near-death experience and how he only just barely managed to get onto his ship before it was stolen.

Regina uncrossed her arms and, but for scowl she was still giving him, seemed at ease. "But you still could have saved them, couldn't you?"

A memory flashed across Jack's eyes. He felt the shudder of his corvette as she powered up; the adrenaline he had felt, fearing his ship was about to be hijacked. He remembered diving into the hold and slamming the aft hatch shut mere moments before she pulled away. And he remember watching through the aft portal as the bodies and cargo were flushed out into the vacuum of space.

"Yes," he finally said. And he felt that a weight had been removed, finally admitting it to himself. "Yes, we could have. But I didn't. All I could think of was meself."

QFT.

"Here is the paradox: The modern attitude toward guns is that they are scary and dangerous and no one should use them. The modern attitude toward the fairer sex is that it is a bigotry akin to racism to suggest that women tend to be smaller and weaker than men physically, and that, psychologically, men are far more likely to be violent toward women than women toward men .To suggest that men should protect their womenfolk from other men is "sexist" (whatever that newspeak nonword is supposed to mean). And at the same time, it is modern dogma that all difference of power between men and women in society is due to rape or the threat of rape, and that all members of the phallusocracy are rapists, or whatnot. And at the same time, the modern attitude is against hanging rapists, or sending them to the electric chair. (By modern here, I mean 'Leftist')

"Now, if I am not mistaken, each one of these dogmas is a direct or indirect contradiction of the next. 

"A woman who claimed equality with men, and armed herself, and served a term in the military, would be acting in a self-consistent fashion. A woman who claimed to be old-fashioned, and wanted her brothers or her husband to protect her in time of combat, who was afraid of guns and relied on the men around her to avenge insults against her, again, would be acting in a self-consistent fashion. But a women who, in the name of equality, thought it was condescending for men to protect her, but who also thought protecting herself with a firearm was too violent, scary or immoral to countenance, she is merely setting herself up to be an easy victim."

From, of course, the ever-brilliant John C. Wright. He also, in the same article, states in his usual eloquent fashion what I have been trying to put into words for a while.

"The whole sexual revolution promised the fairer sex that as a matter of equality, of equal stature with men, they should act like harlots, have sex out of marriage, approve of pornography, and kill any of their own children in the womb whose life might prove inconvenient to them. This strips away the normal protections society evolved to shield women from male sexual predation, or even unwanted attentions, it put women in situations where it was easier to rape them -- getting a college girl into your dorm room, where there is no witness to say whether she actually said 'no' or not is much easier these days. You would be scorned as a prude, or as something more sinister, for even suggesting that nubile young women should be chaperoned, or dormitories have curfews, or colleges not be co-ed. 

"In the name of freedom and free speech, we are drenched with pornography, hammered with it, and no message of chastity is ever uttered anywhere a young man's ear might lightly brush against it. At the same time, young ladies are told that true freedom, true liberation, not to mention being cool, consist of dressing like a streetwalker and having several lovers at once. I can point to a number of music videos carrying that message. So men are much more willing and able to exploit, abuse, and abandon women than ever before in history, and women, paradoxically, are meant to regard their newfound defenselessness as a type of freedom. Ushering back in old standards of reserve and chastity under the color of laws against sexual "harassment" in the workplace make, for obvious reasons, a poor substitute.

"Female equality has somehow been redefined from giving women the vote and the right to own property, to urging women to be as licentious and sexually-aggressive as men, without pointing out that the cost-benefit ratio should something go wrong (such as a pregnancy) simply cannot be made the same between men and women. Don Juan as a deadbeat dad can walk away from the mothers of his bastard children with relatively little emotional scarring. A single mother cannot walk away from the child in her womb. She can commit the crime of Medea, and murder the babe, perhaps, but that carries scars of its own which Don Juan need not bear."

And let the claim that there is no emotional scar that accompanies abortion, or that the guilt of it is something artificial, created by men who scare and guilt-trip women into regretting abortion be forever exposed for the bald-faced lie that it is.

Also, the story that the esteemed Mr. Wright, Esq. links is a good read. Makes me wonder why I haven't gone out and bought a gun, if that poor girl was able to buck up the courage!

When PC Language Goes Too Far.

From the BBC:

"More than 90% of weapons used by the cartels originate in the US and there is evidence US citizens are joining the gangs to act as hitmen and women."

I like how they take special care to avoid discrimination against the female hit-persons. Score one for the feminist revolution! They have removed the glass ceiling from the previously man-dominated career path of professional assassin. You go girls!