A little more pie-in-the-sky than I would have been, but accurate

[trinityvixen]

The morning after we saw Kick-Ass, I finally sat down to read Roger Ebert's review, selecting his most hyperbolically low rating as a good indication of what the general temperature was among the people who didn't like the film. For the record, I loved it, but not so dearly as I can't admit it has flaws, or that it was, at times, rather uneven. So I wanted to see what he and others thought that kept them from enjoying the movie. That was Sunday.

Today is Wednesday, and I still do not understand why this film provoked such an negative reaction from him. I not only find fault his rather conservative approach to the film, I was a little horrified at how he spoils the end of the movie. This is not a review. This is a critique. People expecting a review get a polemic on what is and is not okay to show in film, and how people who watch what is not okay are bleating idiots who accuse him of "not getting it" when, in fact, they're the ones not getting that it's morally reprehensible to want to see this stuff.

This is a critique that does not mince words--"morally reprehensible" is a direct quote--and it seems as though it is penned by some other Roger Ebert, one who clutches at his pearls and shrieks about how nobody is thinking of the children! Specifically, he's twisting panties over Hit Girl. Another direct quote:

"This isn't comic violence. These men, and many others in the film, are really stone-cold dead. And the 11-year-old apparently experiences no emotions about this. Many children that age would be, I dunno, affected somehow, don't you think, after killing eight or 12 men who were trying to kill her?"

This may be the part that makes me as uncomfortable with his critique as he was with the movie. There's a real freakish conservatism to that statement, a blurring of the line between fantasy and reality that surprises me coming from someone who seems otherwise smart enough to know the difference between the two. The men Hit Girl kills are "really" dead? What kind of nonsense statement is that? So are the men killed by Big Daddy. So are the ones killed by Kick-Ass. So are the people killed by kids and teens in movies and television since, well, forever. What bug is up his ass about how these guys are killed by Hit Girl and why is it not okay? Has he never seen Battle Royale? He definitely saw Kill Bill. Did he despise Go-Go to the same level? She gets the shit knocked out of her, too, and she's barely older. Is there an invisible line below which women cannot kick ass? And below which any violence done to them--of their own reckoning, because, let's face it, Hit Girl got beaten up because she was trying to kill a bitch--is automatically Not Cool? Do we change the rules if it's a boy?

Pink Raygun has an article up about how disingenuous is the furor over Hit Girl. I think the most brilliant portion is this, which touches directly on the parts of Ebert's review that actively squicked me out:

Ebert goes on to say that “Big Daddy and Mindy never have a chat about, you know, stuff like how when you kill people, they are really dead.” You know what? That’s a conversation that real daddies should be having with their real children. That’s not the film’s job.

That's just it. Whatever else you might think about the premise of that post (about how the outrage would not exist were this a foul-mouthed little boy killing people), that much she gets exactly right. It's not a film's responsibility to teach your kids that what they're seeing is meant to be over-the-top and, therefore, comedic. (I must stress here that I'm not attacking people for not finding it funny. There's a difference between being unamused and being affronted.) It's such a bizarre demand from a reviewer that a film espouse within its diegetic space a morality of which you approve. Dirty pool, Ebert, my lad.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Having not seen either Kick-Ass or Kill Bill, I would hazard that Ebert's objection isn't the girl part but the little part. I don't know--are there eleven year olds killing in Kill Bill? I can't begin to explain why this movie really upset him and others didn't, but I think he does have a point about a movie showing children commiting acts of violence not being as funny when children do do that.

I don't think movies have a responsibility to uphold good values, but I don't think that they can completely ignore the impact they might have, either. I don't know. I'm just glad I didn't go. I'm sure I would have hated it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are eleven-year-olds (or younger) killing people in Kill Bill. Go-Go, as I mentioned, is a little older, but there's an entire scene in which an 8-to-11-year-old version of Lucy Liu's character is not only killing shit up, but she commits the first murder while being sexually assaulted by her target. It's an animated, so I'm sure that means there are different rules or something, which? Bullshit.

As for the general violence of the movie, I think it was very like Kill Bill, especially when Hit Girl was involved. That's the issue I had with the unevenness of the film. With Kick-Ass, it's all about how, realistically, someone trying to be a superhero with no skill or practice or experience with martial arts or fighting of any kind would be whomped in a fight. And Kick-Ass is. Even when he "wins," it's sort of by default, and his popularity has more to do with his zaniness and less with his actual skill.

All that realism flies right out the window with Hit Girl, who, let's face it, has to be a superhero or else the punches of an 11-year-old wouldn't do the damage they do. (Her arms would also be broken from all the guns she shoots.) Since her scenes were the most violent and most cartoonishly ridiculous, I have a hard time seeing them as being disturbing. I don't know that it would have been all that upsetting for you, though I'm sure it wouldn't have been your favorite part.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I mentioned this at the time, but Hit Girl's attitude did bug me. And no, not because she was a girl. I'd have felt the same way watching an eleven-year-old boy kill so callously. I don't expect the film to have a statement about how killing is wrong and all that--kids shouldn't be watching this movie anyway. And I did generally enjoy the movie, and like Hit Girl. But seeing a child that young be that coldblooded was uncomfortable.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Well, it's better to be uncomfortable than judgmental. I am with you on not letting kids watch the movie unless, as the Pink Raygun review points out, they're with parents who can explain what they should take away from that.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

You know, I have to admit that I have been watching Ebert tweet about the movie and thinking "Weird, I didn't know he was conservative" - I think you have explained this feeling.

I thought the movie was fun. Over the top, yes. Uncomfortable to watch in a few scenes, definitely (though I found Cage's odd performance to be the most uncomfortable thing). And why shouldn't a girl be entitled to vengeance? And her seeming indifference is pretty clearly explained. And there ARE people in the film who comment on the fact that she's a child. I was much more uncomfortable with the fact that some asshole brought a six year old to see the movie (and I spent a chunk of the film worried about that kid since he was frightened during the Iron Man 2 trailer, and since I have a child the same age who would have been terrified) than the fact than an eleven year old was wiping out bad guys.

Not to mention, I know there is a big to-do about the language the girl uses in the film, but I can say with authority that I regularly hear eleven-year-olds use much more consistently terrible language at our local playground and the schoolyard. I actually got into an argument with a real live 11 year old about a month ago after he scared the crap out of a woman and her kids and she left the playground in tears. It really does just seem to be shock that it's a pretty little girl saying these things instead of a sneering little boy. Ugh.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You know, I have to admit that I have been watching Ebert tweet about the movie and thinking "Weird, I didn't know he was conservative" - I think you have explained this feeling.

He's not conservative, normally, which is why his vitriol is so confusing and astounding for me. It's weird.

And why shouldn't a girl be entitled to vengeance? And her seeming indifference is pretty clearly explained. And there ARE people in the film who comment on the fact that she's a child.

There's a real tide of sentiment in this country that we need to "protect the children," by which they mean "sanitize everything they see, hear, or do." I think you protect the children better by giving them information than by hiding it. Doesn't mean I advocate training little girls to be killers, obviously, but it also doesn't mean that I agree with the "you can't do that to/with children!" screamie-meamies either. They had someone in the film to say, "This isn't right!" and you know what? The little girl in question disagreed. Of course, she settled into a normal life (normal-ish), but she got her revenge first. Why is that bad when we have umpteen-million stories about revenge with male characters that go through to completion without half so much fuss?

It really is because she's a girl. We protect the children all the time, but we also have this idealized notion of women and girl children such that they are conceptualized as being especially delicate, fragile. They're not just supposed to be protected, they must also self-police and dumb themselves down to china doll status because as much as we're uncomfortable with powerful women, we're even more uncomfortable with female minors expressing themselves, their desires, and their problems. We just are, as a society, less tolerant of women talking up. A group that is essentially powerless, like children, makes us even less tolerant of their breaching social norms.

The language police are laughable at this point. Kids shouldn't say bad things! I agree, but they do. I walk by kids playing basketball in the afternoon and they drop the N-word every other word.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

He's not conservative, normally, which is why his vitriol is so confusing and astounding for me. It's weird.

Token conservative says "Concern about movies corrupting children with graphic violence isn't particularly conservative", at least in a political sense--or are Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore now conservatives? I get the sense that the libertarian-right tends to be very pro-Kick Ass; e.g., see Kyle Smith's glowing review in the NY Post.

I agree with pretty much everything else you've written here. Still think it's more about age than gender, though--I can't think of any films where a pre-pubescent boy goes on a graphic, justified, revenge killing spree either. It's perhaps more outrageous because Hit Girl's a girl, but not by that much.

Of course, I heartily approve of Hit Girl in the failed state New York shown here slaughtering the drug dealers responsible for her father's imprisonment and her mother's death. Maybe we could set her on the Crips next time they try to terrorize Times Square (says the tough-on-crime libertarian...)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Conservative might not be the word you agree on, but it is the word that fits the feeling I get from his critique. As in, he feels that what's "good" is being threatened, where what's "good" is a sort of sexist status quo. You're right that there are prominent liberals who also pearl-clutch over the children! the children!, though.

The Pink Raygun link had a few examples of boys-looking-for-revenge/boys-tearing-the-shit-out-of-stuff tales, btw. I can think of a few, mostly anime, but I hesitate to bring them up because people still are dismissive of cartoons as being as effective (narratively, etc.).

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

You can't really count the Pink Raygun examples because they're not comparable--a foreign language Japanese movie that very few Americans saw, and the current Batman & Robin comic. Very few people in public had heard about Kick Ass when it was nothing more than a comic, and so people like Ebert weren't bothering to criticize it--the same is true of the examples Pink Raygun brings up. The same would go for anime.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I can see you being unconvinced at the double-standard where it comes to violence, and I admit I am not thinking right now of stuff to prove the point. But the hand-wringing that is very demonstrably going on over Hit Girl's language is at least one, I think, we can agree is subject to a double-standard. Little boys curse bloody streaks in movies (right now, I keep thinking of the kid in Role Models, but he's far from the only foul-mouthed boy onscreen). I mean, people are up in arms, and the NYT is writing about the woes of this actress saying dirty language. This is definitely not SOP for actors of that age.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Token conservative says "Concern about movies corrupting children with graphic violence isn't particularly conservative", at least in a political sense--or are Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore now conservatives?

No, although it's worth pointing out that they were DLC Democrats, and this has been a signature issue for Joe Lieberman for decades. Most genuine liberals are free-speech absolutists (except when it comes to campaign finance), finding this sort of thing distasteful and faintly demagogic.

I don't think this pertains to Ebert's review, though, since he wasn't calling for government action. He just hated the movie.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Most genuine liberals are free-speech absolutists (except when it comes to campaign finance), finding this sort of thing distasteful and faintly demagogic.

Getting into a bit of a "No true Scotsman" fallacy here--are we leaving out the liberals who support hate speech laws? Are we also neglecting the conservatives like those at FIRE who are free speech absolutists? I'll grant that it's conservative in a sense, but it's sloppy language in a country where conservative and liberal have more definite political meanings.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I don't think the "no true Scotsman" critique applies here. Al and Tipper were not always liberal heroes -- see Gore's 1988 Presidential campaign, for example -- and the same can be said about the Clintons. They were moderate Democrats before 2000, not part of the party's liberal wing. Anti-video game crusading was one of the issues (along with the death penalty, the first Iraqi war, and others) where the deviated from the liberal line.

Hate-crime laws may be more of a genuinely liberal cause, and an exception to their free-speech bona fides, although such laws are controversial even in liberal circles.

[avram]

it's sloppy language in a country where conservative and liberal have more definite political meanings.

What country would that be? I'm pretty sure that at least 75% of Americans have no idea whatsoever what either of those words mean.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

"It really is because she's a girl."

For some people, perhaps. But you can't make a blanket statement about the world's attitudes. I, for one, would have been just as bothered by a boy the same age expressing the same sociopathic behavior. It's entirely an age issue for me. If she was sixteen, I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. Same with a boy. But a child, a pre-teen, acting in that way? Yeah, it's a problem

And not the gun scenes. Those are justifiable, if extreme. It's the car-crushing scene that bugged me the most. Because that was completely and utterly in cold blood. I would in fact take issue with an ADULT doing that in a "realistic" movie, if the character was supposedly just committing violence out of revenge. Because reacting to violence with violence is one thing, as is enacting violence on someone directly responsible for your own misery. But that guy? No way.

And as I said below (and after the movie, in fact), if they'd made it clear from the start that this was NOT reality or even close to reality, a la Sin City, I'd have had no problems with it at all. But when you go for realistic characters in a realistic setting you've got to show a clearer disconnect or risk violating the audience's expectations and comfort levels.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed Kiss-Ass, but I sympathize with Ebert here. I recall that Ebert is a Batman fan, and Batman would undoubtedly toss Big Daddy and Hit Girl off to jail for being a pair of thieves and killers (even if they're "on the right side").

I don't know if Ebert would object as strongly if Hit Girl was a boy -- I can't read the man's mind -- but let's face it, turning your kids into assassins is, y'know, wrong and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that fact. So I disagree with Ebert's conclusion -- obviously, since I liked the movie -- but respect the review nonetheless.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The thing that keeps stopping me up on Ebert's response is the fact that he hasn't gotten so uptight about other movies with the same basic premise. He liked Wanted way more, which is not to say he liked it, but he was able to suspend his disbelief for a movie he thought was mindless and heartless. He liked Kill Bill, which had more than one scene of heartless, sociopathic little girl killing people. It's just weird that he's so stuck on this movie.

And I cannot extend him the same respect for this "review" if for nothing else than he let his personal dislike prevent him from actually writing anything like a review. It's a polemic, a critique if you're feeling generous, but not a review. It barely skims the plot and focuses mostly on issues around the film instead of within it. He also spoils the end of the bloody movie. There's no call for that. That's just spiteful.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Well I can't defend Ebert on the spoiler grounds. As for him being uptight, I'll note Kimberly's comment after the movie: She felt Kick-Ass couldn't decide if its violence was realistic or satirical, and that made it hard to defend on the "it's just a cartoon" or the "it's demystifying violence by showing what it's really like" grounds. (Kim still liked the movie, mind you.)

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely--Kick-Ass was far more "realistic" for most of the movie than Kill Bill or Wanted. If the reloading-mid-air trick had occurred near the start of the film, it would have clearly shown that this was not meant to be reality in any way, and I would have been far less concerned about Hit Girl.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

He claimed in a comment-response that there is not much likelihood that Hit Girl (much less any hero of a movie) is not victorious at the end. To that end, I say fair enough, I guess, and I suppose it's at least a partial explanation for his doing so, but he didn't just allude to her being all right, he actually explained what happened at the end, which is where it becomes problematic.

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

I had pretty much no interest in seeing this movie until I read all the reviews and realized there was an eleven-year-old girl shooting things up in it. Awesome! (I will probably have to cover my eyes during a big chunk of it, though.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

How did you miss the Hit Girl ads? I was sure she'd stolen the show from the lead just from the ads, and, sure enough, she does steal the movie away from him, too.

You will have to cover your eyes for a few things, yes, but I had a friend come to see it who is usually squeamish (she still hasn't quite forgiven me for Sin City) and she laughed throughout (though she covered her eyes for one part).

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

I, um, don't really watch TV, so I don't see ads -- other than subway posters, which were just the name of the movie with someone's face for the A.

I had to cover my eyes several times during Zombieland. That said, I've seen 3/5 of Tarantino's oeuvre and survived!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't watch TV either, I'm just a nerd on the internet, which fairly exploded when these trailers came out. Mostly because they released red band trailers with Hit Girl in all her foul-mouthed glory, which is red meat to fans. Not only do you give them a comic book movie in which an 11-year-old says things you still giggle trying to saying seriously, but you put the FOR ADULTS ONLY label on the trailer, and no one can stay away. I couldn't!

That said, go see the movie without seeing the trailers. I think too many of the best parts were in them. Don't want to be spoiled!

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Weird that he objects to this and not to kid version of Lucy Liu becoming a child prostitute to get to her murder victim.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's the example I cited as being contradictory to his outrage here, though there's some debate about whether animating such things makes it less bad. (I think it's just as bad, thematically, morally, if you're going to pick that bone, others do not.)

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I was staying out of this one because I didn't see the movie, thought Ebert's review was meh but didn't necessary agree with the specific argument. Then I got around to reading his latest diatribe about how video games are not and can never be art because, uh, Ebert said so.

Man, screw him.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I take issue with this. I think people who feel that video games are art should read his piece again. Does he really sound all that hateful, or does he sound conversational? He clearly explains his definitions and explains why video games as such do not meet the criteria, in a way that I think is friendly and open to people disagreeing with him, yet I see people getting up in arms about the very notion that someone could think video games aren't art, and a lot of "f that guy!" opinions.

I mean, obviously you're entitled to think that anyway, but I think people are reading a level of hatred or contempt into that piece that aren't there. Side note: as I commented on that very blog entry, the woman whose presentation he was talking about really did have terrible examples, which didn't help any.

Spoiling Kick-Ass, though...that's pretty lame.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't think he's wrong to read a lot of contempt in Ebert's dismissal of video games. Not hatred, no, but contempt? Yes, sort of. He's being very prissy about it on his Twitter feed in a way that's self-congratulatory. If I had a dog in this fight, that's how I'd read it.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I was also, admittedly, playing it up for effect.

[lithoglyphic.livejournal.com]

I like this point:

"Is Kick-Ass violent? Sure. But TOO violent? In the era of Rob Zombie? Of Eli Roth? Of Edgar Wright? Of Tarantino, Rodriguez, and Blomkamp? Really? Because a little girl gets punched in the face a few times? In a pivotal scene expressing the theme and ultimate satire of the film? Hardly. This film is only offensive when you begin to question the making of an R-rated superhero film at all -- in the way many people question R-rated animated films or high school comedies. People are worried about younger kids seeing it and not understanding the satire of it. And that's not critique. That's social concern."

http://www.seattlepi.com/movies/418733_film33130355.html

(Caveat: I haven't seen it yet, but spoilers don't usually bug me so I jumped into the fray.)