Note on the Female Gaze vs. Male Power Fantasy with Steve Rogers/Chris Evans
(Long post ahead.)
I saw someone claiming that all the MCU men with their muscles and general fine asf ness, get objectified by women, too, so women in the MCU being objectified (by men) is okay.
The difference comes down to the female gaze, the male gaze, and the male power fantasy. This is a random thought I had because can only think of one scene in the entire MCU that catered to the female gaze for Steve Rogers. It was with Peggy after Steve comes out of the pod. After that, there wasn’t anything else that adhered to the female gaze in my opinion. I’m looking at you Joss Whedon and that hot ass mess called AoU (and JL if we’re keeping it a buck).
I couldn’t find the gif, but Bruce literally falls on Natasha’s boobs for laughs in AoU. For no reason. Y’all it’s so gross I don’t think I’d want to post it on here if I could find it. Natasha and Scarlet Johansson (our Asian queen) faced the brunt of the MALE gaze, which was catered to via objectification. Whether it was posters or specific shots, Natasha was reduced to just being sexy, rather than a fully realized woman.
Now cut back to the pod scene:
This scene is probably the only scene where Steve is looked at through the FEMALE GAZE. The way Peggy sort unconsciously reaches for his abs is indicative of that. She is showcasing her basic sexual desire for him, because he is fine. That’s all! And on Steve’s side, he is disbelief because he is not used to his new body as a concept or as a reality. Peggy is the stable, more in control character in that frame, not Steve. And shout out to Hayley Atwell for that unscripted blessing.
Now contrast this scene from Civil War:
Here, Steve is holding Bucky’s chopper with one hand, and the landing railing with the other. Super soldier aside, the audience sees Chris Evans’ big muscles, big chest, and thick ass legs pulling an actual chopper down. So Steve is all bulk in this scene.
These moments may also appeal to women in the same way as well, but women are not the main focus with this. Satisfying the male power fantasy is. These men want to be as buff and strong as Steve is.
Here is another example of this in AoU:
The common thread is Steve’s reliance on brute strength to get the job done. Yes, I know his abilities are apart of his character, but one could argue that Steve’s entire character arc was a man out of first his body, then out of time. He was a scrawny, sickly kid that got his ass whooped all the time, and then became superhuman at an instant. Steve works to feel comfortable with himself and that includes excepting his new body, and that he never changed who he was even after the serum. That’s the literal counter to the male power fantasy.
Here is another example from Infinity War:
We see this stuff on dating apps where buffer guys are more likely to get rejected if that’s their profile photo. @talknerdytome25 on TikTok did a great job of diving deeper into that topic.
Anyways, thanks for reading my random thoughts. And I don’t wanna shame women who do find these scenes to be the most attractive, people like what they like and that’s fine. I kinda wanna hear what people have to say about this. Don’t mind my rant lol.
Or how the Russos and Markus & Mcfeely royally fucked up the whole concept of the Soul Stone.
So... I've been hemming and hawing about whether or not to make this post pretty much since I saw ENDGAME in theaters, because the whole thing didn't add up to me. That thing being how the Soul Stone was acquired on Vormir.
Putting aside the very legitimate rage I feel whenever I think about how those four idiots killed off the two original women on either superhero teams we had in the same graphic way just to further the manpain (what's a superhero movie without manpain?), the lack of narrative coherence irked me.
In INFINITY WAR, when we first discover Vormir and learn that the Red Skull is still alive, guarding the stone, he says that the only way to achieve it is with a sacrifice. Whoever wishes to obtain the Soul Stone must be willing to sacrifice that which they love most, thus leading to the bullshit scene where the man who kidnapped and abused a woman for years throws said woman off the cliff because he "loved her like a daughter" and he's rewarded with the stone, despite the narrative not making any sense for that.
Then we have ENDGAME, where Natasha sacrifices herself to get the very same stone at an earlier point in time (and possible alternate timeline) because the Red Skull merely says "a soul for a soul", indicating that you don't have to sacrifice what you love most to gain this stone.
Are you confused? Because I was confused.
For two movies that were made simultaneously, the lack of clarity on this one issue is kind of baffling and makes me think even less of these four clowns then I already did.
Let's just break this down by simple logic, shall we?
Instance #1, with Gamora - Thanos was told to sacrifice that which he loved the most and thus threw Gamora off a cliff and was rewarded with what he sought. I, like many others before me, call bullshit! One of two thing should have happened after that point.
Thanos should have gotten nothing except a lecture about how he didn't actually love Gamora. If he was willing to toss her aside for an idea, then clearly he loved the idea more.
Thanos should have gotten the Soul Stone, but because he didn't "love" Gamora as much as his plan, the stone would be flawed and after the Snap, they could have explored that as a way to best the Mad Titan and get everyone back.
Instance #2, with Natasha - we're just told that someone has to die to claim it. As I said above, for two movies that were written and filmed at the same time by the same people, its alarming how inconsistent everything is. If we had followed to path already laid out in IW, after Nat threw herself from the cliff, just before she hit the ground, we should have had that flash of light and either she, or both of them (since they were both willing to kill themselves) should have awoken in the water, Soul Stone in hand. These two were willing to throw away their own lives, not someone else's, and the chance to see their families again, all to reverse this.
If that's not a sacrifice, especially in comparison to a tyrant throwing one of his kidnapped victims off a cliff, then I don't know what is.
We all know that Loki is alive in the alternate timeline...but I've been struggling for a month to reconcile 2018 Loki's death with his character. This...this may be why he died in such a "stupid" way...
So I know you’ve probably discussed this at length at some point, but the way Loki was dealt in Infinity War... Why do you think he was utilized in that way, to literally be thrown to the side like a broken rag doll? Do you think it just had to do with the Russo’s trying to cram everyone in? Or could it be that he might return in some form and this was there way of including him now without raising questions about his whereabouts? (1/2)
Personally, it all just felt so cheap to me, how it played out. Like if you’re going to kill him off, can it not be in a more realistic way, deserving of his character and all the effort Tom Hiddleston’s put into him? I’d rather have just not seen him at all, really. Well, maybe not, idk. What do you think? (2/2)
I’ve definitely ranted about this before; here are links to some posts where I’ve talked about it: 1 2 3 4
Here are reblogs of other people’s rants: 1 2 3
Anyway, long story short: I think the people who made IW (screenwriters Markus & McFeely, the Russos, Kevin Feige) didn’t give a shit about Loki as a character. The writers/directors who have mostly worked on Captain America movies clearly don’t really care about the Asgardian characters. The Russos basically confirmed that they used his death as “motivation” for Thor, to “strip him down to nothing” (as if that wasn’t something that had been done in every single other movie he’s been in...) and watch him claw his way back up. It also seems to be the case that they had to turn Loki (and Thor!) into an idiot to give Thanos a chance to “prove” how powerful and dangerous he is, which, needless to say, did not prove what they wanted it to prove.
This may be a stretch, but I also suspect that Marvel wanted to distance itself from Loki’s mostly female fanbase. Like much of the rest of the Marvel fandom on here (hello, Thor and Ragnarok stans!), the Powers That Be at Marvel think Loki’s fans are just a bunch of airheaded teenage girls and maybe the occasional sexually frustrated middle-aged woman who are just creaming themselves over Tom Hiddleston. Women weren’t supposed to go for the vaguely effeminate, ambiguously queer-coded, morally gray part-time villain; we’re supposed to be swooning over the muscle-bound, morally self-certain male power fantasies they’re selling (or Tony Stark, if we insist on a little more darkness; wise-cracking billionaires are still within bounds). I felt the “No more resurrections” line and the excessive gruesome brutality of Loki’s death as a deliberate spiteful jab at us.
I do not think Loki will be coming back in the future, relative to the timeline of IW, though we will be seeing him in the past when Tony and whoever else goes time-traveling in A4. I think “No more resurrections” was the creators breaking the fourth wall.
Oh, I also dug up a confirmation from the Russos that Valkyrie and some of the Asgardians got off the ship on escape pods, so there’s that.
After watching Infinity war again, I kind of have the theory that while Thanos did say that The Snappening was meant to be a random killing of half of the whole universe, I don’t think that is entirely true since all the Guardians got snapped out save Rocket.
I think either self-conciously or wishfully he took out the whole set of the guardians, blaming them and punishing them for ‘his’ Gamora running away from him. I mean for 50/50 percent chance, Thanos seem really lucky that he took out the heroes he seem to have a personal grudge against. Rocket was probably only spared because he is technically a raccoon and not from a dominate spieces of a planet
Infinity War was a complete manipulative mess that only existed to get you to come see Part 2, but I am super interested to see if this one thing turns out good.
Almost every time Thanos gets an Infinity Stone, he gets it because the Avengers and friends cared too much about individual people, both long time loved ones and relatively new friends. It portrayed the fact that they cared as a weakness - they surrendered these super powerful weapons even though they understood the stakes, even though they knew it would just make everything worse, because they couldn’t stand to see one person suffering.
I really hope that in the next movie, they manage to turn that around and focus on how compassion can be strength, how love for friends and love for humanity is the best thing we have going for us. We have nothing without our convictions and our relationships. I want the sequel to turn things around and show us that. That wanting to stop suffering isn’t wrong. That winning a war is about more than just gritting your teeth and living through more wrong than the other person is willing to.
And yeah, I get it. Sometimes you have to step back and let something bad happen. Sometimes, Batman should just have let the Joker get killed. But when everything in your movie hinges on compassion making people short sighted, it’s a bad movie, and you need to resolve that ASAP.
I don’t really expect it to actually happen, but it would be so great. Just. Compassion as a strength instead of a weakness. Compassion for the individual, even in the face of horrifying consequences, is something that can be valued. If they manage to get that right...well, I won’t forgive anything, but I’ll acknowledge that the movie at least had a good core.
I can’t stop thinking about the scene where Wanda and Vision are discussing their options with the Mind Stone at the Avengers compound--not because of Wanda and Vision, because fuck Vision, but because the camera is focused on Steve’s face as he listens. And the dude is wrecked but his face is stone cold except for that teeny tiny crinkle in his brow and that hollowness in his eyes because FUCK he’s been on the run, fighting, surviving, losing people close to him, and now genocidal space aliens are coming to earth. And what’s Captain America got? Two fists and a come at me attitude? That’s not gonna cut it. Steve’s outclassed and outgunned. And it’s all right there on his big dumb Captain America face, which the directors chose to focus on even though the conversation is happening offscreen. But he’s Steve fucking Rogers, and he never runs from a fight, and we all know he’s been Down to Die(tm) since 1943, except......
He’s got Friends now, so dying isn’t exactly an option anymore, but maybe it is if he protects said Friends in the process. Well fuck.
My favorite thing about the movie, by far, is the role the Guardians of the Galaxy played in it. They are my favorite, so that’s not surprising, but I honestly expected they’d be more like guest stars. They will probably be benched for most of the second film tho, so I guess this makes up for it.
Everything about meeting Thor is absolutely perfect. The crew’s fawning over him, Peter’s jealousy, “a pirate and an angel had a baby”. Thor assuming Rocket is in command because Peter is being so childish. I was laughing so hard for the whole thing, but my favorite moment was when Rocket goes to leave. Peter has a short aside with him, not unlike their aside when Peter, Gamora and Drax leave Rocket behind on Behar in GOTG2. Except they part on better terms, indicating how much both characters have grown.
Canon Starmora caught me a bit off guard, but then it’s been a couple years since GOTG2, and now the unspoken thing is now spoken. That’s an area rich for fanfic to fill in. I think my main issue was that tonally that seen just careems all over. Gamora’s flashback, begging Peter to kill her, then they’re kissing. Then Drax interrupts. Of all the moments in the film, this one need to breathe a little more to let it happen more naturally.
My favorite part of the movie might be the bit on Knowhere: Gamora’s grief when she thought she killed Thanos, and Peter’s attempt to kill her. The first GOTG shortchanged Gamora’s decision to move against Thanos and why; at that point she’s just made up her mind. So I loved seeing a bit more of their family dynamics. Peter’s attempt to kill her went on a bit too long IMO, but I loved the whole concept. I didn’t think he’d be able to do it, but he tried! My poor baby. He’s grown so much. I can forgive him his ultimate actions, they are understandable and there’s plenty of material to support him.
Gamora’s too make sense. I am most upset about that particular death, as her character arc is REALLY NOT COMPLETE. In my GOTG2 meta I discuss how she’s just barely begun to learn to deal with her emotions. She’s apparent come some distance since then, since she can tell Peter she loves him. But if this is really the end for her, she won’t ever get to complete her arc and I hate that. I assume she’s bound with the soul stone and will be back, but I HATES IT PRECIOUS. FUCK YOU RUSSOS/MARKUS AND MCFEELY IF YOU RUINED THE ARC OF ONE OF MY FAVES. It would be a really poor choice to fridge her like that, for fucking Thanos and Peter. FUCK.
Anyway, all the Guardians are used to absolute perfect effect within the larger story and with perfect characterization so bless James Gunn for co-producing. Mantis and Drax could have been easily sidelined, and while they don’t really have arcs of their own, they are used to great effect.
THOR
Thor is my second favorite part. He zings with everyone, although I didn’t expect the team up of him and Rocket. It makes perfect sense to send him on a quest, which mirrors his quest to be worthy of the hammer in the original Thor. It even requires a trial. And his arrival on Earth with Rocket and Groot is one of the greatest moments ever put on film.
Kinda pissed about Loki tho, even though what we did see of him was perfect.
Other than the Guardians, Thor and Hulk are the only characters who haven’t been in character stasis since Phase 2. Which is thanks to Ragnarok so BLESS TAIKA WAITITI
STARK/STRANGE/PETER
The Facial Hair bros are not my favorite, but I do appreciate the Stark/Strange pair up. Their friction is immediately believable and it works. This is Tony’s worse nightmare - not only was he worried he was going to die in space, but now Peter Parker is there too. It’s really the only climax they could do for Tony at this point, although I’m pretty pissed his character has basically been in neutral since The Avengers. We’ve seen him try to overcome his fears, try to compensate for them, try to protect against them, and he hasn’t really grown much as a character since then. He’s struggled, but it hasn’t gone anywhere and it leads him here anyway. Worse, rather than just be responsible for the Avengers who are at least powerful adults in their own rights, he has Peter who is there because of his actions.
Just cause Tony is a popular character is not a good reason to leave his character spinning until they could get to this movie. BAH.
Thank goodness for Peter. I died at his Aliens references. He lightens up the two Facial Hair bros who would otherwise get too dire. This group gets a lot better when the Guardians show up tho. They all get to zing off each other.
I just want Peter and Peter to talk more pop culture. I really need to write that fucking heist fic for the two of them. SO MUCH. Fuck. Anyway, Tom Holland was pure perfection and also used really, really, really well.
THANOS
I saw praise for developing actual motives for a villain and making him understandable. Overall I feel pretty meh about Thanos though - he works excellently as a foil for both Avengers and GOTG but independently I don’t think he’d be that interesting. He’s certainly no Loki or Ego. It made sense to make this movie his movie, his quest, given where it ended, but I still feel it was a little underdeveloped. Why go after the stones right this second? What’s he been doing since the Avengers, besides having the gauntlet made?
TEAM CAP
If this movie makes one mistake, it’s who they choose to leave on Earth. The problem with sending all your funny people to space is that everything on Earth after that sort of lagged. The only relief was really Bruce reacting to everything he had missed while he was gone, plus whatever lines they could scrounge up for Rhodey and Sam and Oyoke. The sidekicks do all the heavy lifting but the Earth scenes lack the cohesion of the rest of the movie. It’s mostly set up and dreary exposition. If I cut anything out of the movie (besides making every battle shorter) I would cut out Rhodes talking to the Colonel. That whole scene is WAY too long to establish that Cap is still a criminal and Rhodes was on the other side.
Honestly, of the many failures Civil War had, one really evident one here is the lack of my ability to care for Vision and Scarlet Witch. Neither of those characters nor their romance has been developed enough for the importance the plot tries to place on them. It was present in Civil War but never really clicked. I think it’s partially the ridiculousness of the very young-written SW in combination with the ridiculous purple android. The relationship never manages to feel real.
The best part was Black Widow, Scarlet Witch and Oyoke all fighting together, and I want my female Avengers movie.
Cap is given basically nothing to do but show up and look cool. I’m assuming he will therefore have a bigger part in the next movie, but FUCK if I’m not still pissed at the Russos/ M&M for continuing to kick the Stucky can down the road. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve never reached and real emotional catharsis or resolution that was promised in Winter Soldier. Poor Bucky literally keeps getting PUT ON ICE as they used CW to set up this movie, and used this movie to set up Avengers 4. Deeply uncool.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The ending sucked. I hate walking out of a movie theater on a down note. I get where we are in the structure and why they did it and it will ultimately be fine, but it’s not a great place to end the movie. It was almost as bad as walking out at the end of Deathly Hollows 1. It would have been worse, had we not known pretty much everyone that dies has another movie scheduled. I am kind of glad most of the Guardians are gone actually, since if Gamora is gone at least the others aren’t there to mourn her. Pretty harsh to leave poor Rocket alone tho, as he’s the least capable of dealing with it. He’s going to make a good foil for Tony in the next movie.
The stinger at least helped. The nerd boys in the row behind me thought Fury was calling Nova and I had to correct them that it was Captain Marvel. They were like “Oh, her.” Fucking sexist ass nerd boys can’t get excited for Captain Marvel. It will be a great move into Phase 4 to have her show up and work with Gamora in the Soul stone to save all these emotional constipated male superheros who just can’t seem to deal with their issues.
Putting Avengers members with the GOTG crew really just highlights how much of Phase three has been treading water to get here, for every Avengers character but Thor and Hulk. I absolutely blame Markus and McFeely and Civil War for this too. Poor Tony has been stuck since IM 3 but Civil War could have done a lot more than look cool and manufacture conflict to get everyone in the right position for this movie.
TLDR: Infinity War is better than Civil War but suffers for the lacks in CW, just as it’s buoyed by the strengths of the other franchises. And fuck Markus and McFeely.
