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Breastfeeding and the Male Gaze

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Gender relations return, with a vengeance! The core basis of this post has literally been sitting in my drafts list for around a year and a half now as a single point-form statement, but I never got around to doing anything with it – I liked the observation enough that I didn’t want to just delete it, but I also didn’t want to go on yet another feminism rant. However, a TV commercial of all things caused this idea to bubble back to the surface and set my imagination running wild. So here we go: we’re going to examine the concept of the male gaze.

As I have probably alluded to in the past, I grew up in a fairly conservative family. My father instituted (and still does whenever he’s around) some pretty strict rules about what media content we were allowed to consume.* We were generally restricted to PG-13 movies and Teen-rated video games: violence was largely permitted, as long as it wasn’t too bloody or gory and swearing had to be kept to a minimal level… but nudity was basically 100% off-limits. Honestly, of all the restrictions he instituted, I think this one screwed up my psyche the most… but I might get into that another day.

It took me 14 freaking years to finally see this movie…

In any case, this blanket restriction eventually occurred to me as having a couple blind spots. First off, is this including male nudity? I’m pretty sure this never really occurred to my dad, although he’d probably be questioning why the hell we were watching a movie with naked men in it. When I came across this issue though, it made it pretty damn obvious that the whole point of the restriction was because of the classic conservative hysteria about preventing boys from touching themselves, in which case, male nudity wasn’t a big deal (although now that I think about it, I imagine that my dad would argue that God told us to cover our nakedness). The other blind spot I noticed was that, since this was restriction was obviously intended to keep us from temptation, what were we supposed to think about intentionally un-sexy nudity? This was the more important issue as far as I’m concerned, and the one which ties into this post the best. Schindler’s List, for example, has a fair bit of nudity, but the majority of it is unsettling and very un-arousing. Or what about The Impossible, where a breast gets exposed, but it’s pretty horrifically shredded from a very nasty wound and the woman is in a state of utter shock? However, I can pretty much guarantee that this would have been also considered “off-limits” as well, because my father (and much of society for that matter) consider the naked female form to be something that is always subject to the male gaze.

In case you aren’t aware of what the male gaze refers to, it is basically the idea that, in media, the camera tends to “see” and portray women as men see/fantasize them, focusing on their curves and doing their best to make them look sexy, seductive and passive. Possibly one of the most egregious and idiotic uses of this in practice are in regards to Miranda in Mass Effect 2, where the camera constantly frames the scene emphasizes her ass, sometimes dedicating up a third of the screen to it (which, of course, is further emphasized by her skintight bodysuit).

Notice the extremely subtle framing difference here?

When I first heard about the male gaze in school, I wasn’t sure that I believed it was a real thing, or at least that it could affect society outside of the media. However, I believe I have stumbled upon a perfect example which was this whole article: the bafflingly touchy subject of public breastfeeding. I hadn’t really understood why this was considered so controversial to so many people: babies have to eat, moms have the means to do it, and babies aren’t known for their timeliness or consideration for others. It occurred to me about a year and a half ago that the reason that people get so uncomfortable around breastfeeding women is likely because we have been taught as a society that female nudity is supposed to be sexy and something for men to enjoy, but when it is used to feed a baby, then it suddenly becomes socially confusing, awkward and decidedly un-sexy.

I mentioned that a recent commercial brought this thought bubbling back to my consciousness. In the commercial, they were showing serene images, and then suddenly cut to a close-up of a child breastfeeding. I was kind of taken aback by it, because I don’t think I have ever seen a commercial flirt so flagrantly with a supposedly controversial subject (not to mention that there was like 90% of a boob on screen, which is unheard of in any commercial I have seen). A lot of women who campaign for public breastfeeding like to say that it is something that is “beautiful”, but I never really understood that position until right now: I have been looking at that sort of thing through my own lens, the male gaze. If I had imagined it from the female perspective, the female gaze if you will, I’d have pictured a mother sustaining and comforting the soul that she brought into this world and loves with all of her heart… and, you know what, that actually is an extremely beautiful way to look at it.

So hopefully that all made sense, and demonstrated how the concept of the male gaze has applications outside of media. Public breastfeeding seems to be becoming more and more of a non-issue every year, so hopefully soon mothers will be allowed to actually do what they have to won’t have to worry about some dickheaded prude calling them out for making them feel awkward.

*Don’t get me wrong though, letting kids watch whatever the hell they want to is not something I condone. I don’t think it’ll turn them into a psychotic murderer by any means, but kids should probably avoid some subjects until they have reached a certain level of maturity to begin to understand it.

Christian Media Industry

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

I consider this blog to be one largely about current events and popular culture, but occasionally I like to write about religion (or, let’s be honest, Christianity). Don’t worry – I’m not going to use this blog to try to shove the Bible down anyone’s throats, because I know that I HATE getting preached to. In fact, today’s post isn’t so much about the Christian religion itself, as it is about the chaff that surrounds the Christian community. I have touched on my thoughts on the Christian music industry in the past with my post on Ozzy Osbourne, but this post will expand on that to cover my thoughts on the entire Christian media industry.

First, I’ll lay a little groundwork on how businesses can compete with each other, to provide a context for what the Christian industry is and how it operates. The most visible and familiar kind of business is the one which is directed at the mass audience. This category would include stores like Wal-Mart (easily the best exemplar of this principle), major blockbuster films, pop musicians, etc. These kinds of businesses tend to have high overheads, but because their appeal is so wide, the potential for profit can be extremely high if they can capture that mass audience. This also means that their services and marketing will be tailored towards the lowest common denominator.

Attempting to compete with a mass market provider means that you’re going to have to go all-out, because if you can’t offer service as well as your competition, then you’re going to get left in the dust. The obvious example here is the mom-and-pop stores that Wal-Mart just annihilates when it moves into an area. However, it also applies to other big chains, such as Blockbuster. Another great example of this is Target, which recently was involved in a sudden and high-profile bankruptcy in Canada. They made an aggressive expansion into the country, opening around 150 locations and spending billions to get a major foothold. However, this was still not enough to allow it to compete with the Wal-Marts and other retail chains present in the country (not to mention that their service here was distinctly worse).

So what is a small business supposed to do to try to compete with the Wal-Marts of the world? The solution to this problem is actually quite simple and becoming increasingly popular: ignore the mass market, and focus all your efforts on marketing to a niche audience and foster brand loyalty. Some good examples of this philosophy would be vinyl record or health food stores, metal bands, low budget horror movies, etc. The thought process behind this approach is that there are a practically unlimited number of niches out there which the mass market cannot cater towards, so by providing their specialized service, they basically eliminate the need to compete with the mass marketers. In addition, there is a smaller overhead compared to the mass marketers, the individuals in the audience will typically spend more money than the individuals in a mass audience, and it increases the likelihood of repeat purchases and brand loyalty.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the Christian entertainment industries are in the niche market category and live or die by these principles. This can probably best be evidenced by how the money spent on Christian media seems to be tied into their rate of success (in order of their prominence, Christian media is dominated first by books/magazines, then music, then movies and finally video games being by far the weakest of the lot). This highlights the first issue I have with Christian media, and that’s the ethics of it. One of the more famous passages in the gospels is when Jesus comes to the Jewish temple and sees people selling sacrifices and creating booths for money changers (people who exchange currency basically, and who almost certainly would have been charging for this service). He drives them out in anger, claiming that they have turned God’s residence into a den of robbers. I’m torn on this particular issue. At its basis, the Christian media industry is either commodifying worship and teaching, or it is cynically preying on Christians’ beliefs to sell a product that wouldn’t be able to stand on its own otherwise. However, at the same time, this is how our society works. If we did not pay Christian artists for their work, then they wouldn’t be able to make a living (and for most Christian artists, it’s a modest living at that)… with that in mind, I think the bigger ethical issue is the use of the “Christian” label in the use of marketing them, especially when it is used in a particularly cynical manner. While there are obviously a lot of people within the industry who are actually looking to enrich the Christian faith, I think it’s fair enough to state that the primary drive of the Christian industry is to market products and make money.

Also, before I go any further, I really want to stress that I am by no means making a blanket statement that artists in the Christian industry suck or are worse than the mainstream media (except for the Christian film and video game industries, which just plain suck in general due to a lack of funding and talent, or because they are produced by “Christian” subsidiaries of major companies in order to make a quick and cynical buck). There are many who are extremely talented, but whose lyrical/writing focus does not appeal to a mass market, or because they have been trapped in the Christian label (which I will also cover soon). I should also mention that I believe that Christians probably have a disproportionately high number of talented musicians and singers, because the church system tends to foster and provide access these talents due to choirs, youth bands, worship services, etc. In contrast, someone growing up outside the church would have to find these talents through school, extra-curricular activities and adult encouragement – obviously not impossible by any means, but there’s just less access and fostering.

While the niche market approach may be what is keeping the Christian industry alive, it is also a major weakness in many ways. Probably the most obvious reason is because many Christian artists actually want to reach out to the broader culture, but their message doesn’t get the needed reach. This is because of prejudice towards Christian media in general, but also because the Christian industry only really caters towards the Christian market, leaving any further promotion for the aritsts to deal with themselves, or for the consumers to create word-of-mouth. In Christian music especially, when an artist does cross over into the mainstream, the Christian label continues to haunt them. Anberlin, Switchfoot, P.O.D. (especially), and countless other bands that have crossed over have been stuck forever with the label of “Christian” rock, which always remains a part of the dialogue surrounding them. As I Lay Dying has perhaps the most extreme example of this problem, as their lead singer, Tim Lambesis, ended up slowly finding himself renouncing Christianity. However, he was the head of a Christian band during this whole process, and he couldn’t exactly turn away from his Christian audience, or he would lose a huge portion of his audience. He ended up sticking around and pretending to still be devout, until he tried to have his wife killed, at which point all of this came to light. Of course, this led to the inevitable retroactive questions of “Can we really consider As I Lay Dying to be Christian anymore?”, even though Lambesis was the only member who had recanted.

Moving beyond these thoughts and onto more personal concerns, I have been wondering recently why it seems like the Christian industry seems to cater towards conservative Evangelicalism*. This should seem quite strange, since Catholicism remains the largest Christian denomination worldwide, with an estimated 1.2 billion adherents. I have come up with a few probable explanations to this question. For one thing, the USA is a cultural juggernaut and is the source of most of the Christian media. Of course, socially conservative Protestantism is the majority in the States, and so the producers will naturally cater towards their own understanding of Christianity (hell, as someone who grew up in an Evangelical church, I wouldn’t even be surprised if many of them were only dimly aware of other Christian traditions, or didn’t bother to acknowledge them with any legitimacy). Beyond that though, the majority of Catholics are based in Latin America and Africa, and which don’t tend to be priority markets. Another possible explanation is that the Christian media industries’ emergence as something distinct from the rest of culture correlates with the rise of Christian revival movements in the 60s-80s, such as the so-called “Moral Majority”, and the growing political power of right-wing evangelicals starting in the Reagan era. Naturally, this sudden surge to prominence and growing political important would require the market to cater towards them, and for the artists amongst them to express their faith to others.

It seems to me though that it makes sense for the Christian industry to market towards the social Evangelicals from a purely-economic mindset. A socially conservative Christian is more likely to consume Christian media, since they will be more opposed to mainstream culture than a mainline, Progressive or a Catholic. This, unfortunately, creates a bit of an evangelical monopoly in Christian popular culture though, which can have some serious problems… I can’t be the only person who grew up in an Evangelical church, consuming their media, and believing that they were the only ones who were doing things the “proper” way.

If it wasn’t obvious, this virtual monopoly means that, in North America at least, the conservative evangelicals control most of the dialogue on what is and isn’t “Christian”. It scares me when this gets applied to platforms like RightNow Media, which is obviously seeking to be the Netflix of the Christian media industry. If it succeeds in this regard, then the market will become even more monopolized. What are they going to allow/disallow as the gatekeepers of this content? Are they going to decide that it’s only “Christian” to teach young-earth creationism and leave no room for alternate interpretations (and then suffer the inevitable backlash from conservative evangelicals boycotting them if they do not)? Do they let people on who promote Islamophobia in the name of Christianity? Where is the cut-off line, and how is it determined? This isn’t just me seeing

When I was attempting to write my first novel**, I really had to sit down and decide if I was going to market myself towards the Christian industry or if I would risk going for something more mainstream. In the end, I figured I had a better chance of success if I went for the Christian market, but this affected the writing process somewhat: I had to exercise some self-censorship, mostly in regards to swearing and throwing in some arbitrary Bible allusions. The funny thing though is that either way, I’m still a Christian who wrote a book, so isn’t it more than a little arbitrary that it’s only considered a “Christian” work if I submit myself to the market gatekeepers’ standards?

…and as great as that last paragraph would have been to end this one, I can’t write about the Christian media industry without spewing vitrol about perhaps the most cynical corner of it: the prophecy industry. Christian bookstores dedicate multiple shelves to hundreds of books claiming to interpret the many vague prophies in the Bible, predicting what is going to happen in the “end times” and how current events tie into this. Spoiler alert: they’re all routinely bullshit. The people who write these books tend to be either misguided/short-sighted Bible scholars, cynics looking to make easy money by saying whatever they want to without having to have any accountability if it ends up being false, or people who are literally as insane as your average conspiracy theorist.

Let’s get this out of the way: it is frankly idiotic to assume that the so-called “end times” will occur in our lifetime. EVERY generation since the birth of Christianity has believed that they were the ones who were going to be present for Jesus’ return. I think that the Christians being slain by the Roman Emperors, Martin Luther going to war with the Catholic Church, the troops witnessing the horrors of the first and second World Wars and the even the people living under the threat of nuclear annihilation all had better claims to support this assumption than this generation, and yet it is the Christians living in a rich country with practically no Christian persecution who are screaming the loudest that their time is finally coming. It’s little more than human arrogance to believe that the “story” is going to end with us, and thereby contextualize the entire Bible according to our current and limited understanding of the world. For example, at some point during the Cold War, someone decided that the Bible was prophecizing that Russia and Iran would attack Israel based on a reference to a pair of “northern nations” who would do so in Ezekiel and Revelations… oh and what do you know, Russia and Iran happened to be our enemies at the time! With all of the evils that ISIS has been perpetrating for the last year, there is also a renewed sense of Islamophobia which is increasingly being worked into end times narratives (despite the fact that ISIS has been targeting its Muslim neighbours almost exclusively… in fact, I would bet that Israel is actually helping to fund ISIS to attack its enemies).

Anyway, to tie this back into the main thesis of this post, the prophecy industry only is able to exist and shill its toxic bullshit because of the economic realities of the Christian media industry. As a Christian, I enjoy quite a few aspects of the industry (many of my favourite bands are, or were, a part of it, and I quite like some of the authours within it), but I am left conflicted and concerned by the many ethical and ideological issues that plague it. Unfortunately I don’t have the answers to these issues, aside from a hope for some gradual cultural shifts… but I sure as hell can complain in the meantime.

*This is based on personal observation, so this might be just personal biases, but I am confident that this is the case. In general, Christian media will be ambiguously non-denominational, but when a denominational bias is intentionally put forth, it seems that the conservative Evangelical position is the most represented of the lot across all media.

**I never finished it, unfortunately. I got almost 40,000 words in before I grew really dissatisfied with it and shelved it. It was a post-apocalyptic road trip story about four people travelling west across the desolation left in the wake of a nuclear war, with the intent of making it more realistic than your average apocalyptic story. It was very much a therapeutic exercise for me at that point in time, dealing with how to love somebody, communism and some abstract religious philosophy. I started conceptualizing it in November 2010, but by the time I got writing it, post-apocalypse stories were already a really tired genre (and a post-apocalyptic road trip was already very much a thing with The Road). Plus, it was a really serious story, and I don’t really think I write “seriously” well enough. In addition, The Last of Us basically did the best post-apocalyptic road trip story I’ve seen, and covered a lot of the themes I was exploring as well, so the basis of the idea has more-or-less been done better than I could have. Finally, and probably most importantly, the personal issues I was tackling at the time have been resolved for quite some time now, so it just doesn’t feel relevant to me anymore. Who knows, maybe I’ll revisit the incomplete manuscript someday and give it a huge overhaul, but for now I’m going to focus on my efforts elsewhere.

Back From the Dead 2: Electric Boogaloo

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

I’d like to mention a couple other rather major changes that have happened over the last year that I neglected to mention in the previous post, but that I feel are worth mentioning. I was originally going to make this a small post, but it kind of ran away on me so I guess this is what you get for now. Enjoy it.

First of all, my music tastes have been refined a bit more. Work has allowed me to truly discover the joys of internet radio – no longer am I stuck choosing to listen to 3 classic rock stations, 5 pop stations or 1 country station. Now, I can finally listen to my actual interests, namely metal. I really should have sought out internet radio long before now, but… well, eh, whatever. Some of the bands this has introduced me to include A Feast for Kings (I really hope they can recover after the tragic death of their lead singer, because their debut EP was incredible), Impending Doom (if you have a single brutal bone in your body, you owe it to yourself to check out There Will Be Violence, Baptized in Filth and Death Will Reign), Sleeping Romance (kind of like Evanescence, but with more metal and far less angst) and My Heart to Fear (I’m only starting to get into them, but if nothing else then check out “The Sneaking Chair”).

My tastes have also started to shift slightly towards electronic music. This is largely thanks to the Hotline Miami games and John Wick, which have showed me that shooting people looks really freaking cool when you do it to a backdrop of electronic music. It’s not a genre that I’m a huge fan of still, but I can see that potentially changing in the future as I dabble with it. I have already used some of this influence for a Stormrunners compilation video – normally I’d do a straight-up hard rock or metal song to back it, but this time I decided to use an electronic-metal remix of Love & Death’s “Paralyzed” that I realized would be awesome for the task. I’m pretty impressed with the result, so we’ll see where this goes in the future. I was also working on an electronic album a couple years ago that I shelved, but I was actually listening to it again the other day and quite liked what I heard still. This new-found interest might make that album see the light of day after all… 😉

Oh, and on the subject of music, I’d feel awful if I forgot to mention P.O.D.’s The SoCal Sessions. I first saw them advertising this thing as a crowdfunded effort on PledgeMusic. As I have said before, they have been one of my favourite bands for more than a decade now, but I was hesitant about this one: an all-acoustic album where they cover some of their older songs. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely on-board with this when I heard about it. For one thing, they already kind of did this with a live album called the Rhapsody Sessions, which was one of their more boring efforts IMHO. Furthermore, they had already tried a more acoustic sound on When Angels & Serpents Dance, which was a decent album, but felt like they completely ditched their heavy sound to the album’s detriment. The fact that Murdered Love went back to their heavy sound suggested to me that the band was trying to get back to their roots rather than following deviations. So basically, these potential issues were making me hesitant, but I pledged and more or less forgot about the album for months. However, I got a package in the mail a few weeks ago which surprised me, until I opened it and saw some really evocative album art with P.O.D.: The SoCal Sessions emblazoned upon it. I threw it in my computer and my worries about it being a lazy cash grab were blown away from the first song. This album is actually, to my great surprise, really good. Sonny nails it on the vocals, the song selection is excellent and very diverse, and some songs are actually improved by the acoustic transition. In particular, “Panic & Run” has to be one of my least favourite P.O.D. songs, but the acoustic transition takes it from an unfocused, too-fast hard rock song to an apocalyptic reggae track. The band’s reggae influences get played up even more, which is awesome as far as I’m concerned. In fact, the only track I’m not keen on is “Will You”, but that’s mainly because it is the only one that sounds like a “generic” acoustic version of a heavier song. Luckily, the other tracks are adapted far more interestingly.

Anyway, enough about music that probably only I care about, and onto something else that only I care about: theology (I’ll keep this one brief, I swear… if you can’t stand religious talk though, then skip ahead two paragraphs)! I think I have mentioned on the blog before that I am a Christian and grew up in a rather conservative, Evangelical family. However, around 6 or 7 years ago I began to feel paralyzed in my faith and was having trouble reconciling what I believed, what I had been taught, and the increasingly apparent politics of the Evangelical church. Things got worse when I went off to university as the Christian group I was with was pushing on me hard to evangelize to anyone I got a chance to. There was one particular question they were also pushing hard on me to answer their “spiritual conversation starter”, but I could not come up with an adequate answer: “what is it that you crave?” Hell, I still can’t come up with the sort of fundamental answer they’re looking for… knowledge? Certainty maybe? Ugh, thinking about that again is really bugging me.

In any case, the Evangelical monopoly on what it is to be “Christian” has been really bothering me, someone who is rather liberal and who strives to be an intellectual. However, one of my best friends (who happens to be studying for military chaplaincy) introduced me to Progressivism through Benjamin L. Corey’s blog, Formerly Fundie. I have to say, this has really helped turn me around and I feel like I’m actually growing and maturing thanks to my faith once again. I promised to keep this brief, so I’ll just summarize this really quickly: if you grew up in the church, then chances are that you’re going to start to question and start to fall away before you hit twenty. If your teachings were anything like mine, then Evangelicalism will make you feel like you either have to believe the way that they want you to believe or you’re a heretic. They’ll drill their ideology in you and make you feel ashamed (not necessarily for malicious reasons either, but just because religion has been designed this way to be self-perpetuating). If nothing else, just know that there are other understandings which still hold onto the core beliefs and which have just as much (if not more) theological basis than the mainstream church.

Anyway, thanks to Benjamin L. Corey, I have also discovered the joy of podcasts. As much as I’m loving internet radio, it can get a bit stale when they play the same songs on rotation every day. So I started listening to Corey’s That God Show while I worked, and it got me hooked. Listening to podcasts basically feels like learning at work, and keeps it from getting too repetitive. In addition to That God Show, I have been listening to The Cracked Podcast, Unpopular Opinion, Dead Things, Quality Control and Hello Internet. If you get the opportunity to listen at work, have long drives, or just have a fair bit of downtime, I’d recommend checking them out. 🙂

Quick Fix: Paintball Videos!

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

As I implied in last week’s blog post, I definitely was quite busy so that next retrospective series is going to begin on the 22nd. However, in the meantime, you can enjoy some PRZ Fight for Asylum 3 footage and a recap!

Yes, this actually happened.

Myself and 3 other Stormrunners attended the event in Picton, Ontario. It was absolutely perfect paintballing weather – very little wind, sunny weather, not humid, not too wet and not too hot either. We played on Josh Samure’s team, which featured some pretty major teams such as Citrus Connection and the Devil Dogs (humourously, the Stormrunners got a shout out as a fellow TechPB team, even though we aren’t… but hey, I’m not going to complain about the complement). There were about 650 people playing which made for a very exciting event.

…although this guy was easily the coolest of them all.

My only complaint on the day was that the other team got absolutely smoked. They had a poor initial spawn point and were too disorganized at the beginning – they didn’t even leave their spawn point for about a minute after the break and none of their forces were sent to their alternative spawn points (a major issue because it would have delayed our reinforcements as we mopped up their troops, allowing their forces to take up better positions). The organizers did their best to even it up a bit, including a reinsertion and a ton of “air strikes” to clear our forces out, but it was definitely a one-sided day.

On the plus side, the Stormrunners did fantastic. The Stormrunners had a confirmed 116 kills and only 17 deaths, which is just a mind-bogglingly high number. Most of those kills were between two of our members, but I myself got 12 kills and only 1 death – not too shabby if I do say so myself. Images and videos are still trickling in, so if you’re interested then keep an eye on The Stormrunners’ Facebook page and our Youtube playlist. If you want to play with us at some point, we are going to be attending Commando Paintball’s D-Day Big Game on June 14th – if you are, leave a comment and feel free to say hi. Maybe you’ll get to be in our next video!

Quick Fix: Paintball News and Retrospectives

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Hey good readers, I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me! On the 12th, I’m going to be kicking off the paintball season by attending PRZ’s Fight for the Asylum once again. It’s a world-class paintball field and I’m extremely excited to get out and capture plenty of footage of the action. I expect that by my next blog post, there will be lots of new footage of the event on my Youtube channel, so be sure to check it out by then. I’ve been stoked for this event for the last few weeks, upgrading and testing out my marker loadout in preparation – seriously, every time I pre-register for a paintball event, it’s like a mini Christmas to me (with the carols being pump-up rock and metal).

Commando Paintball’s D-Day event has also been recently announced as being on June 14th. The Stormrunners have attended D-Day since 2011, so this will make it our 4th attendance at the event. Most of the guys are still in school and so will be missing out on Fight for the Asylum, but by June 14th they should be all good to attend – D-Day tends to be one of our best events in regards to turnouts, so I’m excited to hang out with the team and kick some ass. It also tends to be my most popular event in terms of video views, with one of last year’s videos just shy of 10,000 views on Youtube (and still growing). You can be sure I’ll be attending D-Day this year and getting even more quality footage for everyone to enjoy.

Also, I’m considering upgrading my helmet cam from the Contour HD to a Contour+2. I’ve got a few reasons for this, so I just want to put them out there. First of all, my Contour HD is in rough shape – a lot of the vital bits which keep the camera’s battery in the unit are broken. It’s still in working order, but there’s only a couple pieces actually keeping it all together, so I’m expecting this to be my last season with the camera anyway (for the record, I bought it used for a half decent price and have been very happy with the camera in all my time with it). Also, my Youtube channel is overwhelmingly paintball-related, so I think I should focus my efforts on improving that part of the channel and making it the best it can be. At present, I can only shoot in 720p (well, I technically can shoot in 1080p, but the field of view is too restricted for my liking). This was fine on my laptop, but now that I have a new computer, I can edit 1080p and 60fps footage with ease. Luckily, the Contour+2 has a much wider FOV for 1080p footage, and I think the video quality is simply better anyway, making it a very attractive option for me. The bells and whistles are also just plain cool: smart phone integration, GPS tracking, plug-in microphones, etc. Anyway, there’s no way in hell I’ll have one by Fight for the Asylum, but I hope to have saved up enough to make the purchase by D-Day – fingers crossed!

In other news, I’m going to start the next Retrospective series within the next couple weeks. I might be too busy this week to get it done, but if so then it will be posted by the 22nd at the latest. In trying to keep things fresh, it’s a very different sort of franchise compared to all the (generally horrible) action/horror/thriller series I’ve covered thus far. I’m sure you’ll like it (and have probably seen at least two of the films in the franchise as well)!

Some Thoughts on Feminism

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I’ve noticed lately that I’ve written quite a lot about feminism in the past few months, kind of like how in my first few months I talked about gun control a lot. It’s a bit odd too, because I wouldn’t have necessarily considered myself a feminist. I mean, I support women’s rights and equality, but just what that means to a more vocal feminist often leaves me confuzzled. However, I’ve been mulling over a few feminist subjects recently and figured I’d work them into one giant feminist theory extravaganza. I’m not promising that all of these thoughts will be positive, but I believe they are fair at the very least.

Let’s smash it, together!

Okay, first of all, this whole line of thought stemmed from this article about rape culture. Women’s rights campaigners have really been pushing the notion of rape culture recently, but I’m not so sure that they’re doing a great job of conveying to the general public exactly what they mean by it (I have a similar critique about the public expression of many women’s rights issues, it’s like they expect us to agree with them without explaining their positions). But anyway, I agree with the article overall, but when I was thinking about it afterwards, I came to the realization that feminists have appropriated rape. What I mean by that is that rape is a major issue and overwhelmingly occurs to women, but in order to push rape culture, feminists have turned rape into a women’s problem. Yeah, that shouldn’t be all that revelatory – really, it’s rather obvious, but the realization of it is almost ironic. Feminists want to eliminate rape (and, well, let’s be honest, every decent human being wants to eliminate it), but in order to do so they have to take it on first.

That said, trivializing rape against men is a byproduct of such a move. Yes, men are raped far less than women, so it’s fair enough, but it occurs just the same. I also wonder if other forms of sexual violence are also taken into account here, because when someone says “molestation”, I think “little choir boys” rather than women. Perhaps that’s why the focus is just on rape though – it is overwhelmingly a women’s issue.

Oh, and I just want to comment on this passage from the article quickly:

“Most women and girls who travel abroad, who take public transportation, or walk to a dimly lit parking lot at night experience that “what if” panicky moment. Women reading this know what I’m talking about. Men, in general, do not. And knowing that most men don’t rape, and that most women will never be victims of rape, is not enough to erase that fear. Because it’s real, and it’s the legacy of a culture where rape (and rape denial) exist in too high numbers.”

I’m not going to trivialize that, because I really don’t understand that sort of daily existence (well, unless I was in prison anyway), but I do have a bit of an analogue. If I walk through city streets late at night, I’m not afraid of getting raped… I’m afraid of getting jumped and robbed and/or stabbed. Sure, I’m not getting jumped, robbed, stabbed and then raped, so it’s not exactly as “bad”, but even men don’t exactly walk the streets 100% securely. I attribute that to the media creating a state of fear, especially since crime rates have been dropping for decades, so such fears should really be unfounded.

…sigh. *Facepalm*

Anyway, next topic. This one has really been confounding me, so if you want to offer some perspective then please leave a comment below. The topic boils down to this question: is objectification inherently wrong, or is it only wrong when it happens to women? I really wonder about this one because a good deal of my posts on feminism have been dealing with my irritation at the objectification of women, whether because they are reduced to plot points or because they’re considered nothing more than a walking pair of T&A. However, I’ve been noticing a rising trend in films in the last few years of men becoming objectified, with nary an outcry. It’s a bit confusing, and it’s what has made me mull over this question. Is objectification the bad thing, or is it that the target of the objectification is women? Is there an acceptable level of objectification? Is objectification of men acceptable because it is counter-cultural? If we’re truly looking for equality for genders, shouldn’t the goal be no objectification for either (or are we settling on equal amounts of objectification then)?

The most obvious example of this in action is the wolf pack from the Twilight movies. They basically only exist to be oogled at and give audience members lady-boners. Hell, the guy on the left is barely even wearing those pants. Even Jakob isn’t much of a character, being about as well-defined as a brick wall. In fact, being prone to fits of rage and violence makes him sort of sexist against men for that matter. Of course, Jakob’s the most egregious example I can think of, but what about Thor in The Dark World or Finnick in Catching Fire? Both appear in their respective films in really pointless topless scenes which clearly only exist to provide female audiences with some fan service. Their characters complicate things a little bit though, because while they’re briefly objectified, they are actually given pretty good characterization in spite of that. Is that the key right there – is objectification not as big a deal if it doesn’t define and overwhelm the character? It should also be noted that these characters may have gotten characterization simply because they were men, whereas objectified women simply aren’t allowed out of the background (such as in any Michael Bay movie ever). It’s a bit of a puzzle and I’m still not sure where I stand on it.

“Hey look! Someone doesn’t understand how feminism works!”

Finally, I’ve been wondering lately whether feminists can be insensitive to cultural differences. For example, I reacted pretty much the same way as the rest of the internet when Quiet from MGS5 was revealed. However, having taken a step back since the reveal, I’m beginning to wonder just how different North American and Japanese culture is. Quiet is obviously designed from a Japanese perspective, and from my understanding, sexualization isn’t equated so much to objectification there as it is here. Perhaps there is something more to her outfit than mere titillation? Kojima seems to suggest that this is the case, although we’ll see when The Phantom Pain is released. Similarly, the Dead or Alive series of game have a reputation as nothing more than softcore porn, but their creators insist that they don’t intend it to be that way. Looking at some of the character models, I have a hard time believing that, but could it be that they see things much more differently than us? I mean sure, it’s possible that they’re lying through their teeth, or are just ignorant of how sexist they really are, but I think there’s at least a certain level of cultural difference clashing here.

Anyway, hopefully you found this article at least a little enlightening. If you want to say anything, please leave a comment below!

My Thoughts on the State of Battlefield 4…

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

If you follow video game news, you might have heard that Battlefield 4 is a broken piece of shit which has essentially tarnished the reputation of one of the biggest franchises in gaming. In spite of that, I’ve logged about 150 hours into the game and have been playing from launch to now (and will continue playing into the future for that matter). I’ve been meaning to write a BF4 guide for quite a while now, but the issues with the game made me postpone that for a long time because I couldn’t be sure how much it was going to change things. However, I think the time has finally come where I can start talking about the game properly, and address some of the claims about it.

First of all, I played the BF4 beta on PS3, and despite being a tad buggy, it controlled fairly well and was a lot of fun (although the draw distance bug on the rooftop of the C flag was pretty egregiously broken). All-in-all, the game seemed to be a clear improvement on the foundation of BF3. At the initial launch, I played BF4 on PS3 for about 2 weeks waiting for the PS4 version to release… and it was buggy as shit at launch. The game would freeze up pretty frequently and I ended up in one server where you couldn’t even kill anyone. Oh, and Defuse mode, the game’s take on a Search & Destroy mode, was absolutely broken. Seriously, there were so many bugs just in that mode that it was insane – players would spawn but couldn’t control their characters, the killcam would randomly appear when you were still alive, the bomb carrier would randomly appear on the enemy team’s radar (LOL), etc. Things were worse on PC, where the game would crash frequently and wouldn’t even play on many systems. In spite of that, I figured this had something to do with a combination of the PS3 hardware and the launch period – the game clearly wasn’t built for last-gen hardware, so they weren’t going to give it as much attention as they were the next gen versions. On top of that, I remember BF3’s launch being very rough as well, freezing very frequently until about 3 months in, when a large patch took care of most of the issues (although Seine Crossing in Rush was still notoriously freeze-prone and never got fixed).

Anyway, come the PS4 launch, the game was in even worse state. For the first day or two, PSN servers crashed and so you couldn’t even play the game online, forcing me to play through the godawful single player campaign… twice. Yes, I got the notorious single-player-game-deletion glitch about 4 hours in. And for some reason, my copy of the game seemed to think someone who had English (UK) as their language meant that they wanted to play the game in Spanish (oddly enough, it was fixed when I changed my language to English [US]). Things actually got worse when PSN got back up because Conquest mode, the main attraction in the series, was broken to the point where DICE had to remove it from the game for weeks. This was especially egregious because my favourite mode in Battlefield games, Rush, was poorly supported by the maps in BF4 – very few of them are fun to play Rush on, whereas every map in BF3 was a viable Rush level. On top of all this, the game still crashed quite frequently. Simply put, it was a bit of a mess, but when it worked, it was a lot of fun.

As time went on, the game kept getting patched and issues started to go away. I can’t really speak for the PC version, which sounds like it had the biggest performance issues, but the PS4 version hasn’t crashed for me since perhaps mid-December, and the game got way more enjoyable when Conquest was reinstated. I also managed to complete the single player campaign without losing my save game again*, so that was nice too. However, for each patch, it would seem that something else would end up getting broken – there have been a few separate patches which have rendered the game damn-near unplayable for me due to horrendous lag and rubber-banding issues, although these have usually been patched yet again within a week. The China Rising DLC added more issues as well at launch, but I didn’t really like it all that much anyway so I can’t really remember everything that was wrong with it. There was also a notorious glitch which was only patched a couple weeks ago, wherein every loading screen a game of Russian roulette – basically, after the load screen for a map completed, a final loading indicator flashes for a second and then you enter the match. However, with the bug, the loading indicator would flash indefinitely, forcing you to return to the home screen and reload the game. That particular glitch was so bad that I’d estimate you had a 1/3, or maybe even 1/2, chance of encountering it the first time you tried to load a map.

That said, significant progress has been made. The game is pretty much playable now, with nearly every major issue now patched (including some stuff which we didn’t expect, such as significantly lowering the time it takes to spawn in and making DMRs better… however, the kill cam is totally broken for some reason). The DLC has also improved since China Rising, with Second Assault being fantastic fun (and bringing back 4 awesome Rush maps in the process). Naval Strike also looks to shake things up and make me happier to have bought a Premium pass at launch. The only real issue right now is that the netcode is probably worse than it was at launch – players seem to lag behind the action by about half a second (I actually spotted a guy before he even showed up on my screen the other day), which is pretty fatal in a fast-paced FPS. DICE is promising to patch this soon, so I hope that they can at least get it to the level that BF3 was at (although even then, BF3’s netcode wasn’t exactly great – if you didn’t die around a corner a half dozen times per match, then you could consider yourself lucky).

All-in-all, BF4 is still a bit of a mess at times, but it is fun in spite of all of its issues. I wish that the game had worked out of the gate, but I don’t regret buying the game (or Premium for that matter). I am pretty annoyed at EA though for forcing the game out of the gate when it was in such a poor state. I wish that game producers would learn to put quality ahead of release dates – Ubisoft seems to understand this, hence why they pushed Watch Dogs back instead of releasing an unpolished game that would just disappoint everyone. Worse still, I fear that EA might try to annualize the Battlefield brand, putting out a new game every year in order to compete with Call of Duty. Please, please do not do this EA – Battlefield: Bad Company 2 won you fans, such as myself, because it was so much more refined than Call of Duty had been for years. Give us another year to enjoy BF4 now that it’s working half decently, and we might even forget this whole launch fiasco ever happened…

Oh, and make the P90 available for the Assault class again. Who the hell wants to run a PDW on the Engineer class anyway?!

*The single player campaign is absolutely horrendous. It’s only about 5 hours long, maybe, and features absolutely no logic. Stuff just happens as you listen to infuriatingly annoying characters banter and then mow down useless mooks one by one. I would never even touch it if I didn’t need to beat it to unlock the P90 and M249…

Quick Fix: International Women’s Day Fails

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I’ve been labouring for quite a while on what to write this particular blog post on. I had pretty much no inspiration, aside from lots of little developments which could make for a half-decent (if scatter-shot) quick fix. However, Saturday just dropped a topic into my lap like a hilarious gift from the heavens. In case you didn’t see the Google doodle, it was International Women’s Day, and the fails were (expectedly) abundant on my Facebook feed.

Anyway, first off was Blood Bowl‘s post. As a bit of background, Blood Bowl‘s a bit of an odd tabletop football spinoff of Warhammer Fantasy. It has also had a couple PC games, a new one which is coming out sometime soon. I’m actually looking forward to the game, but my enthusiasm was tempered a little bit when they posted this picture as a celebration of International Women’s Day:

“Today is March 8th! Be wary when on the Blood Bowl pitch, as the Amazons are fiercer than ever on this precise day! Happy Women’s Day!” – Actual caption

That… uh… wow. Predictably, pretty much every comment on the photo was very angry at the insensitive nature of the post – after all, the picture represents an objectified male fantasy of a woman. On any other day I doubt anyone would have batted an eye at it, but trying to tie this into a celebration of women and women’s liberation was just stupid… that said, I’m still gonna buy the game probably. When I reposted it though, the first commenter said something particularly dumb: “Honestly, it’s lest sexist than another ‘get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich’ joke”… well no shit, but that doesn’t mean it gets a free pass either.

However, the Blood Bowl team has supreme tact compared to the official Morph Suits’ photo celebrating Women’s Day:

Literally, they posted this photo with the caption “Happy International Women’s Day”. This one doesn’t even bother to hide the fact that it’s sexist… in fact, I find it hard to believe that is isn’t an intentional middle finger to the concept since it’s brazenly putting the girl’s breasts on front-and-center. Would you have even noticed there was a morph suit in the picture? Probably not (although maybe that says more about the male brain than anything). Anyway, on behalf of men who aren’t total douchebags, I apologize for how stupid many of us were on March 8th… sorry!

Quick Fix: So, um, about that deadline…

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I know I said I had a firm deadline of February 4th for the next retrospective series, and when I wrote that I actually intended it to be 2 weeks from when I made that post. However, when I released it and realized that it was only a week til then I figured “eh, I can probably get it done”… well, unfortunately I’m caught between a rock and a hard place right now. I haven’t had time to get the damn movie even watched, so I’m basically going to have to delay it for a week to the originally intended date. It was either this or break my “at least one update per week” rule, and I’m not about to do that if I don’t have to.

Anyway, in other news I’ve been working on a fan edit of The Hobbit, and it’s nearly complete. Honestly, I like The Hobbit, but I feel the movie gets dragged down by the overly-lighthearted tone and filler sections. I’ve cut out nearly 40 minutes of footage (from the extended edition anyway) and the movie seems to be far better paced, with much less silliness. When I finish it I’ll probably provide a link (that said, fanedits are a major legal grey area so I might not be able to follow through on that).

I’ve also started a DayZ series on Youtube, part one should be up shortly. I have a lot of trouble even connecting to the damn game, but when I can get a major play session in, it’s a lot of fun… buggy as shit though. Pretty much certain that I lost my character too in the latest update, which just sucks because I’d had him survive over 10 hours. Seriously, I’d only legitimately died twice in all of my time on DayZ, every other time I’ve either had my character randomly wiped or I’ve been killed by lag. Yes, lag is so bad in DayZ that it can literally be fatal to your character. Still, I’m enjoying the game in spite of its major problems.

Oh and I can’t forget Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Holy crap that was unexpected, shocking and tragic. It was a senseless waste of talent, Hoffman was easily one of the most talented actors in Hollywood (and unlike most celebrity eulogies, that is not hyperbole). His death really goes to show how destructive addiction is. I was at work listening to Sixx Sense, and Nikki Sixx was talking about how this event really hit home for him because of his past with drugs. Apparently Hoffman had been sober for almost 20 years, but relapsed and… well, this just shows that if you struggle with addiction, you never are fully over it – that shit can come back and kill you if you don’t fight it every day. RIP Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you will be sorely missed.

Quick Fix: Updates!

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Just a quick post this week with some updates on life and the blog. First of all, I got a new computer finally! For the last couple years, I’ve been operating off of a relatively cheap laptop which I always considered a stop-gap to a longer term solution. It was adequate for school, but when I wanted to do video editing it could barely handle it – rendering would take hours, video clips couldn’t be more than 720p at 30FPS, etc. Plus it couldn’t handle PC gaming beyond the least-intensive titles (thank God for Civilization IV). Anyway, the new computer is doing quite well for me, with my only real complaints being that I think I need a better network card and that Windows 8 is idiotic. Well, I’m also having some troubles with DayZ, but I chalk that up to my Internet connection and the game’s buggy alpha status rather than the computer itself (by the way, get DayZ, it’s addictive).

Related to the new computer is some paintballing news. My team, The Stormrunners, is gearing up for the 2014 season, our fourth as an organized unit. In anticipation for this, I have put together a video of the highlights from the 2013 season, it should be online soon so keep an eye on my Youtube page for it!

Finally, it’s been almost a month since the last retrospectives series ended, so it’s getting pretty close to the time for the next one to start. I’ve been mulling over three possible franchises for this latest series, but I think I’ve finally narrowed it down to a single candidate. I was considering doing something quite different, but I’ll save that for sometime in the future for now… Anyway, I’m going to set a firm start point of February 11th for this series, so be sure to tune in for that.

8 Celebrities Who Have Turned Their Careers Around in Recent Years (For Better or Worse)

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With the Oscar nominees recently announced, one or who names popped out at me as people who, a few years ago, would never have struck me as great actors. On the flip-side of that coin, there are other actors who had promising careers not too long ago, but are now some of the most hated people in Hollywood. Naturally, I’ve compiled a list of these actors for your reading pleasure, although there were quite a few more of them than I expected. Note that this is only listing actors who had major career shifts

Honourable Mentions: Ben Affleck (mostly for directing, although his acting was praised in Argo too… I’ll reserve judgement on this though until Batman/Superman), Adam Sandler (I consider 9 years removed from a decent movie too long ago to be “recent”), Mel Gibson (ditto), Joaquin Phoenix (went nuts for I’m Still Here, but thankfully ended that non-sense and is back to Oscar baiting), Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart (both were major up-and-comers, until Twilight annihilated their long-term careers… however, Pattinson is still in good graces and might just scrape out a career), Liam Neeson (from dramatic actor to action movie badass, although Taken 2 knocked the winds out of those sails).

8) Danny Trejo

Formerly: Ugly/badass extra in every damn movie (especially Robert Rodriguez movies)
Now: Machete, B-movie king

Danny Trejo is a workhorse. Look at his IMDb profile – he appears in dozens of films every year, usually as an extra. However, ever since Robert Rodriguez gave him his first leading man role in Machete, Trejo has suddenly become the go-to bad ass leading man in shlocky, straight-to-DVD B-movies… and honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Danny Trejo seems to be having a blast with his new-found recognition. I remember reading an interview for Machete Kills where Trejo was all giddy because he had to film a (rather tame) sex scene with Amber Heard, and couldn’t believe that he was actually getting paid for that job (which of course had Amber in stiches). And honestly, I’d probably be reacting the same way.

7) Sylvester Stallone

Formerly: Washed up action hero
Now: Modern-day action hero, redeemed actor

The Italian Stallion was one of the biggest names in Hollywood throughout the late 70s and 80s, creating such mammoth franchises as Rocky and Rambo. It should also be noted that he nearly won best actor and best screenwriter for Rocky. However, after a string of terrible Rocky sequels and weak action movies (buoyed only by Cliffhanger), 1995’s Judge Dredd pretty much marked the end of Sly’s career as a legitimate leading hero in the eyes of the public. The movie was an all-round embarrassment and marked the beginning of the low period in his career. So when Rocky Balboa was announced, obviously people were skeptical – Sly was too old, the Rocky sequels generally sucked, etc. Of course, Sly had the last laugh, because by all accounts, Rocky Balboa was extremely well received. After that came Rambo, which was easily the best film in that franchise since the original (and also one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen). Then came the Expendables films, which aren’t exactly amazing, but have helped keep Sly popular. He hasn’t been as successful in his smaller endeavours (eg, Bullet to the Head), but for the moment Stallone is definitely back in the spotlight.

6) Will Smith

Formerly: Will Smith, the most bankable star in Hollywood
Now: Will Smith, annoying Hollywood father

Will Smith has a ton of charisma and is a natural leading man. His IMDb profile reads like a list of major hits of the last two decades, with 2000-2008 probably being the height of his career as the man who could have any role he wanted to, regardless of race. Even somewhat shoddy or butchered material, such as I Am Legend, are elevated by Smith’s presence. Anyway, Smith’s career began to turn around with Seven Pounds, a film which was hyped to be the movie to earn him a Best Actor win at the Oscars. However, the movie fell flat (not due to Smith’s efforts however), and Smith decided to neglect his own career in favour of his son Jayden’s. The results haven’t been too good – since shelving his own career, Jayden has put out such dreck as The Karate Kid remake and After Earth, the latter of which features Will Smith in a cameo (which was clearly done to try to piggy-back Jayden to stardom on his father’s name). As a result, Will Smith’s own popularity has been dropping sharply, and if he’s not careful then he might lose audiences’ goodwill entirely.

5) Bradley Cooper

Formerly: Douchebag from The Hangover, Hollywood pretty-boy
Now: Bradley Cooper, two-time Oscar nominee and David O. Russell darling

Bradley Cooper’s career has been rather interesting. He slowly worked his way up to leading roles over the course of a decade until he gained real recognition in The Hangover as the pretty boy opposite Zach Galifianakis (the real break-out star from that film) and Ed Helms. However, this big break was nearly wasted on films such as All About Steve, Valentine’s Day and The A-Team, all of which didn’t display his talents very well. However, he was saved by the major hit that was Limitless, which displayed his leading-man potential. This drew David O. Russell, a favourite director of the Academy, to Cooper for the one-two punch of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, earning Cooper consecutive acting nominations. At this rate, it seems that Bradley Cooper is like Mark Wahlberg in that he’s as good as the script in front of him, but there’s no denying that he’s a hot property in Hollywood these days.

4) Jonah Hill

Formerly: Fat, juvenile sex comedy star
Now: Legitimate actor (and another two-time Oscar nominee)

Jonah Hill is one of many major Hollywood names to get his big break from Judd Apatow (others including James Franco, Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, Lizzy Caplan and Paul Rudd). For years he was appearing in Apatow sex comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up before starring alongside Michael Cera in Superbad. Of course, this made everyone associate him with juvenile humour and/or sex comedies, meaning he was stuck with films like Accepted on his CV. However, out of nowhere, Jonah Hill decided to stretch his acting chops and got a Best Supporting Actor nod for Moneyball. Everyone was shocked – the Jonah Hill!?! Since then he has starred in the very successful 21 Jump Street remake, made fun of his public persona (and Oscar-nom status) in This Is the End and even bagged a second Supporting Actor nomination with The Wolf of Wall Street. It looks like Jonah Hill’s star is only going to be ascending at this rate.

3) Ryan Gosling

Formerly: Pretty boy from The Notebook
Now: Legitimate, big-name actor and badass action hero with a sensitive side

Did anyone expect that the pretty faced guy from every romantic’s favourite movie, The Notebook, would ever be seen mashing a man’s head on screen with his foot? Ryan Gosling was a bit of a joke for years after The Notebook, hated by a lot of guys for his pretty looks. However, he was building up his acting chops in the meantime, with an acclaimed performance in Blue Valentine (a film which got further exposure due to the MPAA unjustly slapping it with an NC-17 rating). However, it wasn’t until Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive that the public woke up and said “Wait… this guy is awesome!” The public hyped Drive up for Best Picture and Gosling for Best Actor (although neither came to fruition), and suddenly Gosling was getting choice roles, such as Oscar-hopeful The Ides of March and mindless actioner Gangster Squad. He lost some goodwill after Only God Forgives, but Nicholas Winding Refn has taken the brunt of that scorn. Gosling says he might be retiring from acting soon, but we will see how his career shapes up when or if that happens.

2) Shia LaBeouf

Formerly: Big-name child actor and major up-and-coming star for the new millenium
Now: Lindsay Lohan, with a dick

Shia LaBeouf got the break of a lifetime with the TV show Even Stevens, which looked like the springboard to a major Hollywood career. And to be fair, it worked – Shia started landing lead roles in such notable films as Holes and Disturbia. However, his major thrust into the spotlight came from Michael Bay’s Transformers, which surprised everyone by just how entertaining it was. LaBeouf’s performance wasn’t exactly acclaimed, but he was fine for the role. However, then Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull happened and suddenly the public turned on Shia. Pretty much everyone hated Mutt Williams, including Shia himself. Then Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen happened, and suddenly Sam Witwicky was irritating as sin. With the exception of Lawless, everything LaBeouf has done since 2007 has been the recipient of public scorn, and even in his private life he has become an object of ridicule. Really, he has become a waste of the talent and potential that he displayed ten years ago.

1) Matthew McConaughey

Formerly: The guy in every terrible romantic comedy
Now: Major acting powerhouse and probably this year’s Best Actor winner

I was too young to remember it, but apparently Matthew McConaughey was a pretty hot property during the 90s. However, I only really knew him as he appeared in the early-to-mid 2000s: the guy who shows up in every awful romantic comedy and slap-dash blockbuster. I don’t know if he was sleepwalking throughout that period, but I saw Sahara, it was stupid, and McConaughey phoned in his performance. However, legend has it that after seeing one of his romantic comedies (Fool’s Gold possibly? Maybe Ghosts of Girlfriends Past? Failure to Launch? Argh, there’s too many possibilities), he woke up and realized that he was wasting his talents and career. As a result, he decided to shape up with films such as We Are Marshall and his hilarious turn in Tropic Thunder. However, he didn’t move into a truly major performance until The Lincoln Lawyer. Since then he has been an annual Oscar contender for such films as Mud, Killer Joe and Dallas Buyer’s Club, while still entertaining the ladies in Magic Mike. Honestly, his career seems to be only getting better, as he is the lead in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. I never thought it was possible, but I salute you McConaughey – you really turned your career around and saved your reputation.

7 Ways AVP Inspired Recent Alien and Predator Movies

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So when I wasn’t playing the shit out of Battlefield 4 on PS4, the AVP Miniatures Game I’ve been talking about the last two weeks inspired me to go back and revisit Paul W.S. Anderson’s much-maligned 2004 Alien vs Predator movie. It was actually worse than I remember it being, but while watching it I noticed something a bit… odd. Considering that Predators and Prometheus, the most recent Predator and Alien movies respectively seem to draw plot points and details from AVP liberally. This is especially surprising considering that they have done their damnedest to distance themselves from the AVP films. I’ve compiled seven examples of these instances here for examination.

As a note before we begin, I would like to mention that Prometheus and Predators are much better films than either AVP. I also figure that most of these similarities are coincidental, but find the links interesting enough to warrant mentioning. Oh and it should probably go without saying that SPOILERS ARE IN EFFECT.

Honourable Mention: Two expendable goofballs get separated from the main group and have very bad things befall them… (Prometheus)

I didn’t include this one because it seems more like a genre trope than anything, but in AVP… uhhh gimme a second to look up the names of the “characters” in this movie… umm so Miller and Verheiden get separated from the main characters and begin bumbling and freaking out. Neither have really done anything so far but they try to buddy up to get through things since they’re both “dads” and therefore can’t give up. If only they knew they were in a horror film they might have just turned the guns on themselves… Anyway, both end up getting captured by the Aliens and impregnated.

Meanwhile, in Prometheus, scientists Fifield and Milburn have had enough scary alien crap and so head back to the ship… but get lost like dumbasses despite having a digital map on them. They basically scream and hold each other until Milburn tries to pet a hissing serpent (no homo). They are mysteriously killed and/or weaponized soon after.

7) Predators Hunt in Threes (Predators)

I think there’s some precedence for this development in the Predator and AVP comics, hence why I rank it so lowly. However, to be fair, how often do films series respect extended universe stories? Just look at Alien 3, which took a dump on all the Alien comics which had been written as sequels to Aliens. I imagine that the new Star Wars movies will invalidate all the post-ROTJ fiction as well. In that regard, considering that all prior Predator films featured only a single hunter, this is a pretty interesting correlation.

In AVP a trio of Predator teenagers head off to their ritual hunting grounds to kill some xenomorphs (and any foolish humans who get in their way). In Predators, a trio of Super Predators hunt aliens and humans on their game preserve planet. In either case, three isn’t the magic number as they all get killed.

6) Mysterious Temple of Bad Things (aka Human Killing Grounds) (Prometheus)

Considering that both AVP and Prometheus are horror films, it makes sense that the mysterious, alien-built temple of doom that the protagonists come across would turn out to be something bad in the end. However, I think it’s more than a little odd that Prometheus features this trope at all, considering that it is trying to do something unlike the AVP films. If you really wanted to stretch it you could probably try to make an argument that both structures are pyramids, although the Engineer’s weapon facility looks more like a mound to me. There’s other similarities as well, such as the fact that the protagonists are able to conveniently read and translate the glyphs on the walls which are written in an unknown language. The owners of the temples also end up getting defeated by Xenomorphs/proto-Xenomorphs, both during and prior to the events of the films.

In AVP, the humans discover a temple 2000ft beneath Antarctica. It turns out that it is an ancient Predator hunting ground where humans are sacrificed to create Xenomorphs. In Prometheus, the humans travel to the Engineer’s planet to trace back to the origin of life. They end up discovering a weapon’s facility where the Engineers destroyed themselves with biological weapons before they could purge humanity from the stars.

5) Aliens Are Responsible for Civilization on Earth (Prometheus)

What’s with the recent fascination with the belief that humans were created/improved by aliens? I mean, they have a bloody TV show on “The History Channel” for goodness sake. Oh and of course there are people who think that Prometheus is a true story, but covered-up to look fictionalized (because as we all know, the best way to hide the truth is to give it a $130 million dollar budget and a wide release and then expect that absolutely no one will be crazy enough to believe it). Anyway, both AVP and Prometheus have this idea as a central plot point, even if it doesn’t make all that much sense.

In AVP, the Predators established the early civilizations and taught them to build pyramids so they could hunt Xenomorphs in them. They also apparently did a whole Tower of Babel thing too, because apparently the temple in Antarctica has all of the ancient cultures in its architecture and language, but somehow this singular origin didn’t muddy their own cultures, since they still remain unique (…AVP is really dumb). In Prometheus, the Engineers were the origin of life on Earth through a Christ-like sacrifice. They also came back later and helped civilize humanity, being worshiped as gods by us and leaving behind star maps for us to follow.

4) People Inexplicably Bring Weapons on a Scientific Expedition (Prometheus)

Scientific research is to the Alien franchise as archaeology is to Indiana Jones – if it can’t be shot at then it isn’t worth investigating. Supposed “scientists” in both films don’t do their jobs at all, generally acting like stupid tourists gawking about on their field trip. Also worth noting is the fact that the female protagonist in both AVP and Prometheus says that weapons aren’t needed, but are dismissed offhand. Guns are cool, but seriously… they aren’t really justified in either film very well at all. Of course, the weapons end up being useless anyways. In AVP I think a grand total of… two Aliens end up getting shot by the humans (and one of them was with some sort of sci-fi gun which just showed up out of nowhere). In Prometheus, only one creature gets killed by guns, but to be fair it was more because he ended up getting backed over by a huge-ass car.

As for justifications, AVP takes the cake for being more inexcusable. It’s a scientific expedition to a temple 2000ft beneath Antarctica… there’s not going to be anything alive down there. You could argue that they have the guns in case another team comes to investigate the site, but doesn’t that sound excessive? Obviously the only reason they have the guns is so that Paul W.S. Anderson can have his stupid action movie. At least in Prometheus they are venturing into the unknown to meet a potentially hostile alien species face-to-face… but still, considering that they had no reason to believe they harboured us ill-will (considering the Engineers created us and all that), it’s a tad tenuous.

3) The Hero Teams Up With a Predator (Who Gets Killed for His Troubles) (Predators)

LittleJimmy hates this trope, but I don’t have a huge problem with it myself. That said, Predators should not be seen as good guys, but rather as lawfully evil figures. Predators fits that criteria, while AVP ventures too close to making the Predator a hero. Oh and I could have swore to God that Paul W.S. Anderson was going to make Lex and the Predator kiss, it’s probably the most “WTF!?!!” moment in the whole movie. In any case, both Predators end up getting killed shortly after (is it too much to ask that a Predator actually survive a damn Predator film for once? They must have a ridiculous mortality rate).

In AVP, the humans steal the Predators’ weapons, which makes them get picked off easily by the Aliens. In the end, the last remaining human and Predator team up to bring down the temple and kill the escaped Queen. However, right at the end the Predator gets impaled by the Queen’s tail and dies. In Predators, Royce frees a captured Predator who begrudgingly directs Royce to a Predator shuttle in exchange. The Predator ends up getting killed by a Super Predator shortly after though.

2) Weyland (Prometheus)

This is another odd similarity for a series that was trying to move away from the AVP movies. Why is an aged and terminally ill founder of Weyland enterprises a commonality between the two? Even if you dismiss the rest of this article, this one’s pretty damn compelling to me because we get a really similar character and motivation in both films.

In AVP, Charles Bishop Weyland discovers the temple in Antarctica and wants to lay claim to the find. He is dying and wants to leave his mark on history by making the greatest discovery in human history (read: he wants to become immortal in a metaphorical sense). He also seems to have secret agendas and doesn’t heed warnings that he should let go of his hubris. He gets killed for his troubles of course. In Prometheus, Peter Weyland wants to lay claim to Elizabeth Shaw’s discovery of the Engineers. His crew have a secret agenda which hangs over the entire expedition. It turns out that Weyland was secretly in stasis aboard their ship and is close to death. He wants to meet the Engineers and have them make him literally immortal, even though Shaw warns him that they will kill him instead. Predictably, he ends up getting bitch slapped to death by an Engineer.

1) The Opening Briefings are Nearly Identical (Prometheus)

This is the plot point which really kicked off this article because when I watched it in AVP I thought “wait a minute… didn’t I already see this…?” Both scenes follow the same purpose and structure, they’re at similar points in the film, hell even the details are similar. They’re basically the early exposition dump to get the audience up to speed and set up what’s going to happen. Both scenes open with Weyland’s right hand man/woman beginning the presentation before giving the floor to Weyland himself (or a hologram of Weyland at least) to explain the finer details. The briefings are occurring in a wide-open chamber aboard their respective ships, while the attendees are sitting in cheap folding chairs (!).

The nature of the briefing scenes also create their own problems, because from what we’re shown all of these people apparently didn’t know where the hell they were going or doing until this briefing started (especially egregious in Prometheus). At least in AVP they try to create a sense of urgency, in Prometheus it’s just lazy. The whole scientific angle also gets thrown out the window in Prometheus because Shaw says that they’re on this expedition for Engineers is because “that’s what she chooses to believe”. Umm, good thing for you that Weyland’s a crackpot then I guess. Oh and then there’s another problem – why send a manned team at all? Why not send an unmanned drone to investigate first instead of pouring a trillion dollars into searching for Engineers who probably aren’t there in the first place (as the characters state on many occasions)?

Anyway, despite everyone hating AVP, it seems that it has managed to spread its influence to subsequent Alien and Predator films. Sure, it’s probably entirely coincidental, but the connections are interesting at the very least. I hope you enjoyed. Retrospectives should be beginning next week so stay tuned for that!

Quick Fix: Battlefields, Retrospectives, Aliens and Novels

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

A bit of a quick post this week on, coincidentally, the 5th of November. Not that I’m an anarchist or even a huge fan of V For Vendetta, but the date has a bit of pop culture significance so it’s notable in itself.

Anyway as you probably know, Battlefield 4 was released a week ago and (predictably) I’ve been playing the shit out of it. Actually, I rented it for 4 days and have since had to return it, but I’m already jonesing to play again. I’ve only gotten ahold of the PS3 version so far, but I’m stoked to see it in action on the PS4. I’m actually surprised at how BF4 turned out on PS3, the beta had tempered my expectations, but it’s fully-featured and functional. Graphically, it’s muddier and has worse textures than BF3, and I think the maps might have been shrunk, but overall if you can’t get any other platform then the current-gen versions of the game are certainly a lot of fun. When I’m a bit more acclimatized to it I’ll probably make a new “Battlefield Tips” post, but in the meantime you can check out my Battlelog profile. I’m also seriously considering buying an Elgato Game Capture HD to record in-game footage, so keep an eye out for that – my Youtube page might be getting updates in the near future… On the negative side though, the netcode needs some retooling, at the moment it’s extremely frustrating getting killed in what seems like a single shot by everyone. I probably need a bit more practice (it took me about 30 hours to acclimatize to Battlefield 3 from Battlefield: Bad Company 2), but hopefully this issue is rectified in the PS4 version, or a patch comes along soon.

I think I’ve also got the next Retrospective lined up, partially out of convenience since one of my brothers owns the whole series on DVD. I don’t have a firm date on when I’ll begin the series, but it should be before the end of the month… actually, now that I think about it, that’s pretty much perfect and should coincide well with future events… and I won’t say anymore than that. Ho ho ho. In any case, I’m thinking of doing something unconventional for the Retrospective after this one, so be sure to keep an eye on the blog in the new year!

This is a bit of personal excitement here, but there’s an AVP miniatures game coming soon, and based on the sculpts it looks FANTASTIC. I’m seriously stoked beyond belief for this. It’s coming to Kickstarter and traditional retail methods soon, so I’ll post up a link when it becomes available and when more info is released. In the meantime, I need some people to play it with on release…

Finally, a bit of exciting news. I have begun writing a sci-fi novel, which will expand into a series at some point. Of course, this is assuming I finish it – I already have an unfinished manuscript sitting on my computer from an abandoned project so I don’t like to count my chickens before they’re hatched. The novel is largely in the conceptual stage at the moment, but I’ve got the basic trajectory of the story developed and have written first drafts of the prologue and about half of the first chapter already. All-in-all I’m pretty excited about it and sincerely hope I actually take the effort to finish the damn thing!

Feminism in Media

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

In modern North American society, feminists have about as bad a rep as a man goosestepping down the street with a Swastika on his shoulder. That’s not to say that everyone necessarily thinks that women should get back into the kitchen and collectively make us a sandwich. Rather, it would seem to me that both men and women are sick of feminists shoving their agenda down the public’s throat. I’m sure there’s a good deal of failed communication which is at the root of this problem (this is a huge generalization but from my observations, feminists don’t bother to explain their views to the uninitiated and get really angry when anyone goes against them). There’s also the issue that many people think that feminism is beating a dead horse – after all, aren’t women equal to men in society now more or less? I’m not exactly versed in women’s studies so I’ll leave that particular question to someone else to handle.

In any case, despite the stigma which is attached to feminists, I do have to say that I have really noticed considerable sexism and misogyny recently in the media I have been viewing. Three 2013 releases have gotten me thinking about the state of feminism in film today: World War Z, Gangster Squad and (to a much lesser extent) Machete Kills. World War Z is what really kick-started this entire article for me. If you saw the movie, then you probably know what I’m talking about – the entire first half hour of the film features Brad Pitt protecting his useless wife and equally useless daughters who seem to be doing their damnedest to get them all killed. I can guarantee that no one walked out of that film thinking “wow, I really liked Gerry’s wife and kids, they were great characters!” Now I’m not saying that the women should have suddenly picked up machine guns and blown away the zombies while making an obtuse point that women are as good as then men (a la 80s action films). Rather, it would have been nice if they had done… I dunno, anything. Sure, Karen can try to keep her children safe, but she can do that by trying to fight off the zombies sometimes. Or maybe she can not call her husband in the middle of an important life-threatening mission (and subsequently getting a lot of people killed). Oh and when Karen and the kids are holed up on the aircraft carrier, maybe they could try to help out? Hell, read up on the original ending of the film – it was supposed to be even more misogynistic than it ended up being.

Clearly the writers only threw the female characters into World War Z to be plot devices. In a movie like World War Z which feels like it was written and directed by committee, it’s clear that the studio didn’t give a damn about how the women were portrayed in the film or that casual misogyny would affect their bottom-line. In fact, I’m surprised by how well it did and was received in spite of this glaring issue. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Chinua Achebe’s essay “An Image of Africa”, where Achebe decries Joseph Conrad for reducing Africans and the continent of Africa in Heart of Darkness to nothing more than a plot device. While I don’t entirely agree with Achebe on his criticisms, he does make a good point, that reducing people and places to plot devices strips their history and identity away, making them little more than a reflection of the male protagonist.

If World War Z kicked off this article, then Gangster Squad sealed the deal that I was going to have to write about it. I was actually very surprised by how Gangster Squad handled women, although considering that it was a rip-off of The Untouchables I probably shouldn’t have been. I’m not really referring to Emma Stone’s character either, the generic femme fatale love interest (and plot device to add some tension for good measure). Instead, I’m referring to basically the only other female character in the film, O’Mara’s wife, Connie. Like World War Z, the women in the film are reduced to plot devices who the male characters don’t seem to actually be all that invested in. The film tries to be uber-macho, with the protagonist O’Mara dealing with organized crime the only way he knows how – by shooting it in the face. Of course, Connie whines to him that he shouldn’t be risking himself because she can’t live without him. Obviously, the point this puts forth is that violence is a man’s realm and passivity is for women… and according to the film and it’s hilariously hamfisted finale, violence is the only thing that gets results. Of course, the whole movie’s a complete fabrication, although you might have figured that out when you saw some of the over the top action in play. Regardless though, it seems that the whole “action gets results” message the film tries to get across is total bunk, making the entire film even stupider in retrospect. That said, I will acknowledge that Connie does get one surprisingly interesting scene where she actually helps O’Mara pick out his “gangster squad”.

Which brings me to Machete Kills. I actually don’t have a huge beef against it in regards to sexism or feminism or anything like that – it’s a tongue-in-cheek exploitation film and therefore it gets a lot more leeway than a mega-blockbuster like World War Z or “historical” film like Gangster Squad. However, it did remind me of a Cracked article in which the authour stated that women rarely get shot in the head on-screen in American cinema. To sum it up, the article states that “the reason that we so rarely see women getting their brains splattered? Masculine violation of, and domination over, a woman occurs on her body and not her head”. Machete Kills actually seems to subvert this idea, since in the opening minutes a female character is shot graphically in the head, on-screen. However, near the ending a pair of women fight and the more physically domineering of the pair shoots the other in the head, but this is left off-screen. The implications there are interesting, since that character’s actions seem to make her androgynous (not that she’s really overtly feminine anyway). I don’t really have any real profound conclusions to give in regards to that, but it’s certainly an interesting observation that’s worth keeping in mind and mulling over.

Before I close, I’d like to mention another example in a video game I played recently, called Lollipop Chainsaw. Again, it’s a tongue-in-cheek exploitation venture so it gets more leeway, not to mention that video games in general have a pretty big sexism issue. However, while I found the game to be quite fun, there was one annoying aspect which I found very grating and more sexist/misogynist than any of the objectification in the game. This aspect was that the enemy dialogue almost always consisted of gendered insults – seriously, nearly every time an enemy yells at you they call the heroine a “slut” or “whore” and, on one particularly colourful occasion, a zombie declares he’s going to “fist his ass with her face”. Ahem. Maybe if it had happened once it would have been shockingly funny, but when the game barrages you with that sort of dialogue over and over it just becomes annoying (at best).

Anyway, hopefully this little write-up has shown that as much as we love to hate them, feminists do have a purpose in society. Equality is still a work in progress, and media still has a way to go before it is truly adequate. Besides, equality doesn’t have to equal hamfisted morals, it can be an epic and subtle action romp like Dredd (seriously, buy the damn movie already!!!).