Pop Culture...

I'm going to talk about a couple of movies and a couple of books so if you haven't seen the new Superman or Thunderbolts* or read the books Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle or Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton and want to spoiler free you need to back out now.

I'll still try not to spoil too much, but what I want to talk about with them kind of does by default (except Superman, there will be no spoilers there) so really if you want to go in spoiler free you should go ahead and close this out.

Okay?

Okay so we watched Superman a few weeks ago and then Thunderbolts* after that and there were a few things that struck me about them. First off when did DC and Marvel swap places? Like Superman was all candy colored and jokey and Thunderbolts* was all grays and blacks and sure there were a few jokes but still very serious and dark and yes I know James Gunn swapped franchises but still...

It was the most Marvel of DC movies and the most DC of Marvel movies. Though not totally DC because it was still enjoyable. BOOM! I said what I said!

The next thing that struck me about Thunderbolts* (pun not intended but I'm not mad at it) was that Florence Pugh is much like Elizabeth Olsen in those movies. She's just so much better than the material they give her to work with. I mean they both make the most of what they are handed, but they are SO GOOD and you can feel how much better the movies would be if the bones were as good as the work they can do. Like just watching Pugh's face in some scenes will break you. Not even saying a word she's outstanding.

Overall I enjoyed Superman. Which, for those of you who have known me for awhile, know that's somewhat of a miracle. I tend to really not like Superman movies. Especially in the modern era. He's a difficult character to connect to, to humanize. Which as he's not human makes sense. Brent thought it suffered from timing. As in we didn't go see it in the theaters and everyone kept talking about how great it was and it was...okay. It was enjoyable. It wasn't really great. But it was cute. Mostly I wanted to watch it because the new season of Peacemaker was dovetailing off the end of Superman and I didn't want to be lost.

Now onto Thunderbolts*. I am going to say it was a good movie. I enjoyed a lot of it. Like I said, Frances Pugh was outstanding. It suffered a bit from extended Marvel Universitis for sure. Like, who are you again and why should I know you? But it wasn't hard to follow really. You could pick up what you needed. And of course you could wonder where the fuck everyone else was as the city was under attack, but that happens all of the time in those movies. I guess even superheroes get vacations?

But here's where I've not been sure what I really think about it. (And we get really spoilery here on out so...) The basic plot of the movie is what would happen is you gave super soldier serum to someone who is bipolar? Like what does that do? Someone even says, "You give super serum to Steve Rogers and you get Captain America but..." but if you give it to someone with a mental illness oh boy hold onto your hats.

And you get to see the FULL manic depressive swing. From thinking you are godlike all the way to just complete darkness. And...so...wait. What are we saying here? That mental illness makes you a bad guy? Or that we can't trust people who have mental illness? Or...

And I will admit that it hits me because I have manic depression. Now it's mild, my swings aren't wild. And I honestly am not sure at this point if it really is manic depression or a misdiagnosis and my swings are related more to my ADD. It doesn't really matter since I don't medicate for either condition but... To see the extreme version of me on the screen as a bad guy was...

Odd.

Because I like the bad guys. I mean you aren't shocked by that. I identify more with the outcasts and black hats than I do the heros and well, Superman perfection people. But I like the bad guys because of the choices they make. Because of their fashion sense. Because they are typically more fun in movies than the good guys are. But to see someone be the bad guy because of a mental illness. I'm just not sure what I think.

Because they nailed the mental illness. Like I said, my swings aren't that drastic, but even in my swings seeing them represent it as clearly as they did was...moving? insulting? I'm not sure. It's an enjoyable movie, I felt like they captured something about people like me on screen. But... I'm not sure if it was a good thing or a bad one.

Being seen in fiction is important. Lucky Day and Tantrum are both horror novels. And horror is almost always a metaphor for something else. Like that's what makes horror work. Sometimes it's even as direct as Bad Guy is Personification of Manic Depression. Sometimes it's more subtle.

Chuck Tingle horror is queer centric. Camp Damascus was about conversion therapy. Bury Your Gays was about the whole range of the rainbow and how they are portrayed, monetized, but not protected in media. And Lucky Day is about bi erasure. What happens when you are told you don't exist? That you aren't real? Now the story is not just that. There is a lot that happens, alternate dimensions, a completely bonkers second chapter that makes you wonder what the actual fuck is going on, and then government ickiness. But the underlying heartbeat is about bi erasure and what it can do to a person. It was so good. And as subtle as a book that has a monkey in Elizabethan garb beating someone to death with a typewriter can be....

Now Tantrum. Well, there was a good idea in there. Generational trauma. And how it tends to be passed from mother to daughter. How you hold it in your body. How it forms who you are on a basic level. Really good idea for horror honestly. But...here's my issue.

You all probably remember when I went off on the Maleficent movies for using a rape metaphor for why she is the way she is. I FUCKING HATE THAT. So many more interesting things happen to women than sexual violence. So many other reasons for why someone might grow up pissed at the world. But it's used all of the time. To either define why a woman "turns bad" or even why a man who was close to her does. I hate it because it's overused. And I hate it because it's so common in the real world that we can identify with it which should mean I am more forgiving about it being used in movies and books, but I'm not. Constantly being reduced to a potential victim in fiction is infuriating when so many of us were actual victims in real life, use your imagination and come up with something better.

In Tantrum it's abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her mother's parade of boyfriends. Mom is also a narcissist and a gaslighter so they've never dealt with any of it. Mom is also a creature who can unhinge her jaw and swallow people whole. Just like our narrator and our narrator's daughter. They come from a long line of women who are "monsters."

You were beaten over the head with the metaphor. The body remembers. The body doesn't forget. Trauma has lasting damage. Deal with it or pass it along to your own children. But it needed a little more subtly. It needed to give more story and honestly more straight up horror instead of the run of the mill mom brings home bad guys who are abusers. Who get away with it because mom is forcing a "normie" existence on her daughter who could protect herself if she was unleashed.

You can see the story it could have been. And there is nothing more frustrating than the bones of a good story that hasn't been filled in.

But it was set in Albuquerque so the horror was real to me.

Representation in fiction is good. Mental, physical, gender, sexuality, all of it. Seeing aspects of yourself presented in a story is validating. Seeing aspects of other people in stories is what brings understanding. Like piss me off and I might unhinge my jaw and swallow you whole...

Or something like that.

Basically, do it right and it's sublime. Get it wrong and it's torture. Get it somewhere in the middle and it's Thunderbolts*.