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

[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.