| X-Men 3 and V for Vendetta: supreme male sacrifice for the love of women |
[18 Jun 2006|06:49pm] |
Don't ask why the fuck I went to see these two pieces of trash. I do really stupid things sometimes. But I found it interesting that they both had virtually identical scenarios whereby a man kills the woman he loves in order to prove that he loves her. In V for Vendetta it is a metaphorical death in X-Men 3 a very literal, penetrative death.
V for Vendetta the current poster movie for the Australian 'left', a brilliant example of the strength and scope of patriarchy. Here we have Evie, 'rescued' by a psychopathic father in a mask who later on becomes her warden and torturer. Evie is not willing to risk death to change the world so she must be psychologically killed. Imprisoned in concrete, starved and mentally slaughtered by the man who 'loves' her until her thoughts are his. Eventually, she chooses physical death rather than compromise her new patriarchally manufactured and implanted morality and with this death of mind she wins her 'freedom'. She frees herself into her torturer's waiting arms and in this freedom she finds another cage. She is bound by his love for her and together they paint a beautiful heteronormative picture. Torturer and tortured. Binder and bound. Slaughterer and slaughtered.
So V is locked in a cell and tortured and experimented on and we are sorry. We demand vengeance which is exacted in brutal detail onscreen for our satisfaction. V kills every one of the people who were responsible for his torture. But what vengeance does Evie give to the one that maims her, the one who wipes out every trace of her and remakes her in his own image? A kiss, a promise, her heart. She pays her torturer back in roses and makes his dreams come true. Oh, but V did pay for his crime against Evie... he felt guilty.
And X-Men 3? The message: Powerful women are ultimately evil. Power in the hands of men is natural and should be left untamed. If a woman has power, however, a man must put mental blocks into her mind, without her consent, to keep her from realising that power. If a woman with power does realise her potential she goes crazy and kills the men that keep her from that power (what's wrong with that, you ask? heh, I have no idea but X-Men 3 says it's wrong so it must be). The first and primary sign that a woman is crazy is that she experiences sexual desire. Horny women? Mental blocks and straight jackets immediately please.
But it's ok because even powerful women know deep down that it is unnatural for them to have power. And so they beg the men that love them to make the ultimate sacrifice and stick their phallic claws deep into their gut. A man must preface this proof of love with the words themselves 'I love you' and then wham, bham thank you ma'am, was it as good for you as it was for me? What, oh you're dead now and you can't answer. Too bloody bad. Poor Wolverine, it must have been so hard for him to enact this pornographic sadistic sex ritual, a powerful, lusty woman staked on the end of his claws.
It is hard to come to the conclusion that feminism is dead. When I see these movies all I can think is that feminism may as well never have existed. Power to the patriarchally possessed. Power to the phallic obsessed.
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
_allecto_'s journal