If that scene didn’t do anything for you, we can’t be friends.
Tom Hiddleston referencing Chris Evans’ arms in the helicopter sequence from Captain America: Civil War. (via captainevans)
I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.
There’s nothing new about the consideration of male superheroes as icons of masculinity. Superman representing the pinnacle of wholesome, idealised masculine power, or The Hulk as an allegory for the angry, repressed male id. And these types of masculinity are not innate or inevitable. Masculinity, like all gender roles is a socially constructed performance.
But performative masculinity has a tension to it that performative femininity does not, because performing itself is seen as innately unmasculine. You cannot learn to be a real man, you are or you are not. You can’t make one or learn to be one. Because our story about masculinity is that it just is. It is an ur state of being. The most natural way for a human to be.
Steve Rogers came out of a bottle.
And Steve Rogers’s weapon is a shield. Steve does not attack, he defends. Steve Rogers is the only Avenger who does not thrust forward with a phallic weapon. From Loki’s staff to Clint’s arrows, Black Widow (who pairs so well with Steve because she is a phallic woman) has guns, Tony essentially is a giant penis (sorry, friends, that’s all I see), and of course no one would even pretend that Thor’s hammer isn’t Thor’s penis.
But Steve has a shield. And a shield isn’t particularly feminine. It is not a cup or a sheath or a hole. It is just anti-phallic.
And that is Steve. the non-phallic man. Because you can’t make a man in a machine. Only a strange kind of monster.
“I came here from Romania when I was 12
years old. I had an accent. High school was tough a little bit for a few
years. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be
good-looking. I wanted to be popular. I spent a lot of time thinking,
‘What are these people going to think of me?”
The design of Bucky’s muzzle in the film is so aesthetically/symbolically pleasing because of how much it tells you. I mean, there’s posts and posts going around about how expressive The Winter Soldier managed to be while having like 6-7 lines totaly, but it’s also what he doesn’t say and what he can’t say that’s telling.
What seemed so startling to me was that the mask wasn’t cloth or leather or something that is easily taken off, but hard and confining and tight on his face. Bucky isn’t supposed talk. He’s supposed to carry out his orders like good little attack dog that he is.
The mask- or muzzle- keeps him tight on a leash and anonymous. He’s not supposed to say much, because he’s not supposed to be there. He’s the ghost story, he doesn’t have a voice he has a legacy and a trigger finger.
The rest of his face is uncovered (Unless you count the war paint, but you can still see everything there), because none of that’s a threat to the people who own Bucky. They don’t care about his looks and they don’t care about how safehe is, they just don’t want him to have a voice (consent) or to spill their heinous secrets. They want to keep him tight to them and dependent.
I mean, there’s a reason he was okay with taking the goggles off on the bridge, but didn’t even think to touch the mask. Didn’t take it off. It was Steve who took it off.
Which. It was Steve who gave him a voice again. Steve removes Bucky’s mask and we have a face to point to the figure, we have more than just a shadow and a ghost, but a person, something that can show the audience and the world his autonomy. We see his emotions more clearly when his mouth is open in slack-jawed confusion, when his jaw is set and furious in the bank.
The first thing he learns after his mask is removed is his name. Bucky has a name, and the next thing he says is asking about Steve.
Steve removes Bucky’s muzzle- removes some of his shackles and restraints- and we already see a man- albeit a shell of one- rather than the vicious brutal attack dog that Hydra molded and forged from Russian winters and blood.
Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole – oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms)was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905.
The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Got that?
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece – ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.
I’d like for them to say: He took a few cups of love. He took one tablespoon of patience, one teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern. And then, he mixed willingness with happiness. He added lots of faith, and he stirred it up well. Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime, and he served it to each and every deserving person he met.
Marvel
seems adamant not to change with the times. Coming under fire for a
lack of diversity, the treatment of female characters, the failure to
deliver films that push the boundaries, The Powers That Be at Marvel
have done the minimal to try and placate fans. But it’s not good enough,
and people are really starting to notice.
Finally an article discussing the true face of Marvel Studios and their executive decisions. No fan pleasing platitudes here, just a pull of the curtain to face some hard truths: They need to do better.
Honestly one of the most important scenes in the entire Harry Potter series is when nine-year-old Severus Snape uses magic to cause a tree branch to fall on Petunia. Even at nine he had no qualms about hurting people Lily loved. This really serves to underscore the idea that while Snape loved Lily, he was not truly invested in her happiness or well-being because he did not care about the people she loved. At age nine he didn’t care about hurting her sister and at age twenty he didn’t care about the imminent deaths of her husband and infant son. So I will always stand by my opinion that while Snape no doubt loved Lily, it was not a healthy love and he really never deserved to have it reciprocated.
ealdor 