How Not to Open the Refrigerator Door

Oblivion: Movie Review

Jason and I recently watched the relatively new Tom Cruise movie, Oblivion. I can only assume the title refers to the writer's utter obliviousness to the necessity of putting agency into the hands of women. Many little things bothered me. Victoria (whose name was shortened to Vika) was absolutely nothing more than window dressing. Supposedly Vika and Jack (I'll get back to his name in a minute) are an "effective team," but in reality, Vika does nothing. Even her computer interface could be effectively operated by either of my two-year-old nephews. I am not exaggerating. It is all drag and drop, and appears to require very little thought. Ostensibly, Vika is the boss of where Jack goes, but in reality, he pretty much ignores her suggestions whenever he feels like it. Which is often. Spoilers follow. Not that I think this movie could stink much worse. Even Morgan Freeman couldn't save it.

I assume Julia was intended to be a Strong Female Character, but she's not. Jack saves her life on their very first encounter. Then we find out she's a pilot, and theoretically his equal. Yay, right? But if she's a pilot, why does she scream and freak out when he drives a little enthusiastically in the futuristic looking jet-ship thing? I mean... seriously. SERIOUSLY?! I can't even. Ugh. The WordNerd is driven to silence. Yes, it's that bad.

And then, Vika dies. She is killed by a drone. Her death is the event, (I think it's supposed to be the climax of the story) that tips Jack to the side of definitely believing that the Tet in the sky is bad, mmkay. That's basically the definition of the Women in Refrigerators trope. Except he never really loved her, even though he was living with her for three years, he was always dreaming of Julia, but that's totally okay because she's actually his wife. (Totally having Total Recall flashbacks here, are you? Except, despite the original being made TWENTY FOUR years ago -- do you feel old? I do-- the happy little wifey character turns out to be a badass agent who tracks down the man to whom she was assigned.)

Where was I? Oh right. So Vika dies. Five seconds later (I didn't count, but it felt like this), Julia gets Mortally Injured, (theoretically while saving Jack, but not really, because he's gonna save her much more impressively) and Jack has to save her AGAIN. Which he does, by finding out that ... umm... basically the world revolves around Tom Cruise and we're all just along for the ride, okay?

Tom, I say this with love. I have been a fan of your movies since Top Gun. Even in that your female co-star had more power and autonomy than the women in Oblivion, and I don't even want to LOOK UP how long ago that was, because it will make me sad. Why are you taking roles that move you backwards? I loved the Mission: Impossible movies. And that was in no small part due to your female co-stars possessing spines. Playing off of women who are just set pieces cheapens you. You can do better. Don't you have a little girl? Don't you want her to be an action star if she so chooses? Or do you want her to be relegated to the refrigerator?

Ahem.

This movie even manages to fail the Bechdel Test despite the fact that three out of four characters with significant speaking roles are women. When Vika talks to Sally (wonderfully portrayed by Melissa Leo, but still not enough to save the movie), all they talk about is Jack.

My husband pointed out as I was about to hit publish, that I had not finished watching the movie. I guess it was wishful thinking on my part that it was over. In an effort to be fair, I'm now going to watch the rest and give it a chance to redeem itself.

Let's see. Drones attack Rebels. Random gunner guy dies. Don't care. Never saw him before this shot. Morgan Freeman utters probably the must banal line he's ever uttered. Julia and a bunch of kids and people I'm supposed to care about but whose names I don't even know get targeted by shiny white lights from a drone. Its probably not about to shoot rainbows and butterflies. Don't worry, a man saves them. This time it's blonde-man-Jaime-Lannister-who-doesn't-believe-in-Jack-but-later-they'll-have-a-moment instead of Tom Cruise. I mean Jack. Why does Julia assigned to the "get the women and children below" job and the manly men get to defend the colony?

So. Morgan Freeman is maybe dying, tells them to send the drone with the Big Bomb up to the Bad Thing (Tek? Tesla? I don't care. I may have been mistaken about my ability to remain open-minded.) Jack says the drone is gone. But he'll deliver the bomb himself. Oh, so heroic! So selfless! But wait! Julia says she will go with him. Open minded. Julia MIGHT get to do something. Oh god, he just gently lowered her into her seat in the pod with both hands like she's a frakkin' china doll. I just puked popcorn all over my couch. Oh, my bad, it's her SLEEP POD. He tells her to "dream of us." And we get to watch her gasp her way to sleep. UGH. You guys... I kid you not... he is dragging her frelling sleep pod to his spacy-jet. Why couldn't she WALK to the jet and then go to sleep, if she's gonna go to sleep? Because women are dainty and walking is hard.

Oh boy, a flashback of a scene in a ship while we're in a ship. Real Vika is his co-pilot. In the world we have seen, Vika never even leaves their Condo. SO... MAYBE... the bad bad aliens are to blame for all the male chauvinism exhibited in this film, and Julia is about to take them out with a BFG. You see? The benefit of the doubt... I am generously bestowing it all over the place.

Oooh Oooh, Real Jack gave Real Vika an order and she DEFIED him, because they're a team.

Jack goes into the Tet. BUt wait! It's not Julia in the pod at all, it's Morgan Freeman. How sweet of Jack to do a switcheroo so that Julia doesn't have to die. I mean... sure, she said she wanted to come with him, so he put her to sleep and didn't take her. Am I... I mean, that is what happened, right?

Happy happy, little fragile Julia lives, and oh, what a shock, 3 years later there's a little girl hanging out with Julia at their house by the lake. Cool. Jack left her to be pregnant and raise an infant by herself in a cabin in the wilderness. AWESOME. I bet that ROCKED.

You know, I like happy endings. I do. I wanted that ending to be touching. But the whole movie has just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Yes, I watched all the way to the end, but I'm not going to detail it because A)It's pretty predictable and B)there might be people who want to see this movie, so I've tried to dance around a couple of the major Darth-Vader-is-Luke's-Father type revelations. I'm not counting Julia being his wife as one of those, because it's also incredibly predictable.

I will say this for Oblivion. It is pretty. The special effects are outstanding, and the scenery, both barren and lush, is fantastic. And maybe that's kind of my point. Vika and Julia just feel like more scenery for Jack to chew up and spit out.

And speaking of being chewed up and spit out... Oblivion was billed as being based on a graphic novel, assumedly to cash in on the recent successes of comic book movies as a genre, but it was never actually a graphic novel.

In contrast, I watched The Avengers this morning, and was immediately struck by how beautifully and effortlessly Joss and the team smash not only the Big Important gender roles but also pay attention to the little details. More on that tomorrow. I know you guys won't read more than this, your notifications are flashing, your phone is dinging, and you need to harvest your crops in Farmville. It's all good. Thanks for staying with me. See you tomorrow.

Watching the Hugo Awards from the Best Seat in the House

Worldcon (Lonestarcon 3) from behind the curtain

This morning I finally got around to watching Amanda Palmer's TED talk. I liked it so much that I shared AFP's TEDtalk on Google+ even though I know many of my friends there have already seen it.

My friend Bob Lai said:

It's not just asking for help. It's asking for opportunities to learn.
I started as a intern/production assistant and taught myself Chyron by reading the manual (a daunting and thick binder), asked the techs installing the newsroom computer system how to resolve crashes/freezes, etc.
In contrast, I've seen interns/PA's who seem daunted by the challenge of asking to learn things.

This reminded me that I have been meaning to blog about many parts of Worldcon, not least my experience working for the tech team. You see, there is a whole sub-group of fandom, and they are the people who run the shows. The actual shows, not the metaphorical shows. They are the ones who make sure the panelists have working microphones, projectors, and whatever other technical gadgetry they may require for their presentations. In the case of Worldcon, they are also the people who produce the Masquerade and the Hugo Awards. They are the camera people, the script writers, the directors, the sound engineers, the graphics creators, and a bunch of other things you'd never think about that someone has to do for the show to run smoothly.

Informational Aside: the stage crew are called ninjas, and are a different entity (though of course the two groups work together).

Tell the story already, Katey

On Saturday morning, I picked up the update sheet. I don't know if there is a special name for it in con-lingo, but a few times a day, a piece of paper is produced that has schedule changes and general announcements. At Lonestarcon it was called, "La Estrella Solitaria," which I'm pretty sure is just Spanish for Lone Star. Lonestarcon 3 also had an excellent app, but my phone didn't always want to load it, so I liked having the hard copies. Call me a Luddite, I don't care.

Anyway, the Saturday morning La Estrella Solitaria had a "Volunteers Needed" section. In it, there was a request for people with experience handling cameras. Since I ran the camera for the news show produced by the Journalism school where I studied, I figured it couldn't hurt to poke my head in, just in case they were really desperate. After all, I haven't handled a professional camera in longer than I care to contemplate, but surely I'd be better than no camera person.

There began my Unexpected Journey, wherein I felt very much like I had to go north to Rivendell in order to go south to Gondor before I could finally divest myself of superfluous jewelry. Thankfully, I met no orcs along the way. I went first to Conference Room 11, as directed by La Estrella. A myriad of technical equipment lay arranged around the periphery of the room, in stacks and piles. There was a dry erase board with job descriptions in cryptic short hand, but I could see well enough that the "camera" positions all had names next to them. Still, I was there, so I pressed on. There was one person in the room. I don't remember if his name was Chuck, but I gamely informed him that I was there to volunteer.

He said, "Well, what do you know about tech?"

"Well..." I prevaricated. I didn't want to oversell myself and get stuck doing something I had no idea how to do, but I also didn't want to be immediately booted out. "I have a Master's in broadcast Journalism, so I kind of know how to use a camera."

"And, what are you doing with that now?"

"Now? I'm freelance editing and raising my children."

He nodded, seeming to think that that was a reasonable choice for a person to make, and told me that I should go to the Ballroom, where everyone was preparing for the Masquerade that night. Ballroom. Certainly I can find the Ballroom, right? I have no sense of direction, and that my saving grace is my ability to read a map. I was in desperate need of a good Ranger. Eventually I found the Ballroom, and walked in. Anyone who has ever been involved in any kind of show can tell you that bothering people on the day of is an even worse idea than four hobbits looking for a wizard in a bar.

I walked up to the people standing at the front of the stage (one of them had purple hair, a slightly different shade than mine, but still, it put me somewhat more at ease). I told them that the guy in Room 11 told me to come here, to volunteer. They looked distracted, but not overly annoyed, and pointed me towards someone sitting back at the sound engineer's station. I took a deep breath, and walked down the aisle to my next point of contact. It was not Hugo Weaving, though that would have been cool.

I went through my whole story again.

"Oh," he said, "You need to go talk to John. You see that door under the EXIT sign? Go through there, down the hall... just follow the cables... and back into the control room."

I raised an eyebrow. "And you're sure that if I manage to find this room, there will be someone in there who can tell me how I can help? You're not just sending me out the Exit to get me out of your hair?" I wasn't trying to be a smart ass, sometimes it just slips out. I mean, if you were going to make up a name on the spot, it would be John or Joe, right? Out the Exit? Come on, now... I really was starting to wonder if I'd ever see the black gates of Mordor. Er. I mean the control room.

Book Review: My Life as a White Trash Zombie

My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland is funny, clever, and just the right amount of heart warming. I grabbed this book from the freebie table at Worldcon, thinking it would be good piece of pulp to read on the plane when they make me turn off my devices.

I'm also the type of person who must read something to turn off my brain before I can fall asleep. My phone needing to charge every night precluded me from working on the ebook I was in the middle of (and am still- Reamde by Neal Stephenson. It's good, but loooong). So, I started reading White Trash Zombie at night (okay, technically in the wee hours of the morning) during Worldcon. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much it drew me in. I was expecting something that was easy to read, not too brainy, and maybe decently plotted as well. And while that was mostly true, I also found a good story, with interesting, three dimensional characters. It even managed to take a few plot twists that I wasn't fully expecting.

The writing is comfortably colloquial without sliding into unnecessarily distracting vernacular. The narrator's voice is believable and easy to read.

"Yeah, right. I'm finally getting my life together. Too bad I had to die first."

Angel wakes up in the hospital after an overdose, to find that she's been given a job as part of her probation. A job at a morgue. A little grossed out, but determined to make the best of her second chance in life, she doggedly shows up for work, despite the deprecation of her alcoholic father, who tells her she'll never amount to anything. Given the title of the book, the reader knows that Angel has woken up a zombie, and yet watching as she realizes what has happened to her is still enjoyable.

This book treats being a zombie as a condition more similar to what we've come to associate with vampires, and it's an interesting mash-up of two of my favorite sub-genres. Angel retains her ability to think cognitively, but is still subject to the basic drive of generic zombies. And after all, if vampires can sparkle, who says zombies can't think? (For the record, this book is a much better piece of writing than the one where the vampires sparkle.)

At its core, this is your basic hero's journey. I for one maintain that there's a reason archetypes become archetypal. They work. And I will be picking up the rest of the books in this series... as soon as I finish reading Reamde.

Supplemental Viewing: This book mentioned on GXG

Youtube is giving me fits with trying to link right to the appropriate part- it should be at around 1:15:08

Additional Reading: Types of Zombies