I Saw Iron Man!
Published by Lisa Kansas May 3rd, 2008 in Feminism, Movies
…and I have two reviews for you.
Um…why would one person have two reviews…well, as it turned out, I had divided neatly in two by the middle of the movie–I metamorphosized from Lisa the singular healthily integrated human being into two Lisas. Specifically, Lisa the techno-geek engineer science fiction fanatic and Lisa the borderline misanthropic atheist feminist, both of whom immediately locked horns in a battle to the death. Since I wanted to finish enjoying the movie I made them both shut up or at least keep it subliminal so I could finish watching the thing with some semblance of concentration and adrenaline. However, they now both demand their say, so I am presenting them with twin soapboxes and letting them have the floor.
WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS! Of course I’m not gonna do anything like describe the ending in minute detail, but I may give more of an impression of the movie than you might want to receive prior to viewing it yourself. It varies. Some people scream SPOILER! at a broad plot outline, some don’t. The point is, proceed at your own risk, but also keep in mind that I do not get my kicks out of taking the fun out of other people’s moviegoing either and therefore will be trying my best not to reveal too much.
Lisa the Techno-Geek Engineer Science Fiction Fanatic: As fond as I am of fantasy and mutant powers, there’s always a little niggling voice in the back of my head that likes to point out how totally unreal the whole thing usually is; I was able to silence it for this movie and that’s a real feat. The creators avoided the attempt at really explaining the technology presented–they gave you just enough to make it believable without getting into the kind of details that make people with my background start to involuntarily rip gaping holes in the physical/chemical possibility of the situation. (Though I admit to thinking that on at least two occasions, Tony Stark should have died of galloping septicemia.) But the Iron Man suits were amazingly cool and the way they evolved throughout the movie even cooler.
I have a definite weakness for techno-geek heroes. Robert Downey Jr. played Stark with the most amazingly acute grasp of the twin and inextricably intertwined traits that people who are so smart, usually especially mathematically, and know it so often have–a total lack of a grasp of the social dynamics of humanity coupled with a really quick and genuinely funny wit. Fellow gifteds can’t help but empathize–you despair of him but you gotta love him too, and you think you’d probably BE him in the exact same situation. The simplistic way these types flip around 180 degrees and begin to behave once they have actually learned something real and significant about other human beings was dead realistic too–STILL no comprehension of normal human behavior! but the problem is now identified, by God, and all you gotta do with people like that is identify a real problem to them and then best get the hell out of their way. That’s a pretty good synopsis of the second half of the movie, too.
I really liked the subtlety of the movie about Stark’s emotional familial background. They outright told you nothing about it; you were left to deduce it all by the character’s interactions with those few close to him and what he said…or rather, the fact that he never said anything at all really about, for instance, his parents. Others mention them, but not him. It does a masterful job of explaining why and who he is without ever explaining anything at all, and the extreme overexplanation of everything is a big pitfall many science fiction movies do get entrapped in–they either do that or they leave you with a collection of utterly one-dimensional characters. Iron Man managed to avoid both situations nicely. The only jarring note in this was Stark’s apparent age–I’m not sure how old RDJ actually is, but he looked about 45 in the movie, and honestly, that’s a little on the old-and-experienced side for the kind of revelations Stark’s character underwent.
If I was rating the combat/fight scenes and those only, I’d give this movie a 9. Fight scenes, especially between the hero and the main bad guy, usually go on waaaaaaaaaaaay too long–these were just right. The explosives damage was of course unrealistic, but that’s Hollywood, and as that’s my only complaint, I consider myself lucky. As far as action went, this movie really flowed. Smooth!
On a scale of 1 to 10: 7.5
Lisa the Borderline Misanthropic Atheist Feminist: This is the most misogynist comic-book-superhero movie I’ve seen in years. I am not kidding, and I’ve seen most of ‘em, cause I love comic-book-superhero movies. To wit: every single female character was pathetic. Every. Single. One. The only one who had a trace of anything else was a female soldier in the opening scenes, and even she indulgently giggled at Stark’s mocking amazement at her gender, of course joined by the rest of her all-male unit. There were only two other minor female roles that did not exist in the movie solely to give Stark an opportunity to emphasize via witty one-liners what forgettable, disposable whores for money and glitz women are; they were two Afghanistan villagers, a mother and daughter, part of a family of four, that was being dragged off by terrorists. The mother and daughter cringed, wept and moaned; the father of course bravely tried to save them all and the little son bravely tried to save his father.
Oh, but what about Pepper Potts? Well, she certainly was held up and epitomized as the Ideal Female–the main bad guy outright tells her this about three-quarters of the way through the movie: “You’re a rare woman, Pepper. Tony doesn’t know how lucky he is!” And that’s about the sickest part, because what she is is the perfect mistress–not even a wife, because a wife does have some modicum of legal and financial power in a relationship, and the movie makes it absolutely crystal-what Pepper is is the perfect woman. If they’ve never had sex, it’s only because he hadn’t yet gotten around to telling her to strip and spread ‘em, which she would of course passively (and reluctantly, because it was Wrong! but eagerly, because she Loves Him!) obey. He can’t live without her! Because who else would schedule his meetings, get his dry cleaning, fix his coffee, and sweetly flub everything of cinematic importance she is cast to do on except when he’s on the phone with her giving her exact, minute, step-by-step instructions what to do. She never complains, except very passive-aggressively and with the shyest smile. And she validates him not once but twice in his total misogyny–she’s actually the only one who ever outright calls one of his easy conquests a slut and she tells him how he is with “girls” is “fine, of course!” It’s really hard to believe she’s even the model of domestic efficiency she’s painted to be, as she’s clearly dumb as a stump: “I can’t! You’ll die!” she shrieks when he tells her to blow something up, even though it’s clear to a two-year-old that if she does absolutely nothing he’ll die even faster.
As far as religious crap went, it wasn’t as bad as I Am Legend, but not much is, except for maybe Signs. They did at least try to be a little more subtle about it–a guy who helped Stark out at one point is dying and said “I am going to join my family,” who were also dead, but didn’t explicitly describe the Christian Heaven. Stark and Pepper had a discussion where he made the standard remark about “I was saved for a reason,” bleh. Any more of that and I’d have made Techno-grrl up there leave whether she liked it or not. Both the military AND the industrial part of the military-industrial complex were also completely exonerated as real components of the weapons-sales world culture, and the government was presented quite openly as the hero battling the proliferation of deadly resources used against innocents–REALLY, the movie underlines, it’s all the fault of the periodic lone psychopath who happens to find himself in a position of power at some point. REALLY!
BLAAAAAAAARGH! Is a numeric rating even necessary at this point..? oh, fine:
On a scale of 1 to 10: 2
I experienced a similar division of self - but it wasn’t misogyny that got one of me pissed off, it was racism. Specifically this scene you described:
…and then Tony turns up and sorts the brown people into good brown people and bad brown people - or rather, bad brown men - and he protects the nice brown families from the wicked brown men with his super-white-boy powers of superior moral whatsitness. Then, off he flies again!
Of course, it can’t really be racism, because there was a token black guy in a position of power. Did you catch his name at all? I never did.
I confess, I liked Pepper simply because she’s something different from the norm for women in superhero flicks. I like a bit of variety in my misogynistic clichés. One thing you didn’t mention was her threatening to leave Tony halfway through - an empty threat. I read that as a ; not sure if I was justified in that.
oops, that last line didn’t post right - I said ‘I read that as a plus’, but used the plus sign, which does not display
Hee! I like it as “I read that as a semicolon.”
I didn’t catch the racist vibes from the Afghan theme of the movie–I thought they were just trying to bring the conflict up-to-date (I think the original Iron Man intro took place in Vietnam, as that was the war going on at the time). Though as a country we sure are happiest when we’re waging war on the non-white, eh…?
I did catch it big time in terms of Rhodes, le token black character (I don’t even remember SEEING any other black characters, and I only know his name cause my boyfriend knows it from the comic book series). When he’s in the supersecret basement lab after Stark tears off after the main bad guy and looks at the suit…would a white guy have been given a line ending in “baby?” I’m surprised they never had him calling Stark “my brotha” or “homey.” (On a plus note, my boyfriend says that his character gets a suit later, at least in the comic book series he did, and becomes *War Machine.* So maybe we can get some non-hackneyed action from him in a sequel..?
omg, that “Well then I QUIT” thing was so lame…just hysterical female babbling, it was made pretty clear, I thought…
I interpreted it, emoticon-fashion, as “I read it as a [wink]”, which also makes a certain amount of sense,
(I don’t even remember SEEING any other black characters, and I only know his name cause my boyfriend knows it from the comic book series)
…Okay, I dunno what happened this time, but half my comment vanished. I was accusing you of not staying til the end of the credits, and therefore missing the bit with Samuel L Jackson. Shame on you :O
Aw c’mon, I ALWAYS flee as soon as the credits start to roll!!! unless I really like the credit closing song. And it ain’t like I ain’t heard Ozzy’s “Iron Man” a zillion times before already…
‘fess up…what was the bit with Samuel L. Jackson one of my all time favorite actors of the universe pleeeze tell me…
Every time it reaches youtube, Paramount kills it, but yeah, Samuel L Jackson sneaks into Tony’s house and announces that he is Nick Fury. Any plot relevance this may have is entirely destroyed by the win.
As for how the movie glorifies and exonerates the military… You don’t get to do blockbuster-level special effects using lots of real, state-of-the-art military equipment without kissing their ass and making them the good guy. You just don’t. There was a fascinating piece at Tom Dispatch a few weeks ago, on the long-running gentleman’s agreement going on between Hollywood and the U.S. Military (excerpted from Nick Turse’s new book, “The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives” ):
I haven’t seen Iron Man yet, but does that sound about right? I mean, clearly you can make movies critical of the military– they’ve happened before– just not blockbusters. Which Iron Man was clearly intended to be.
I did NOT know that.
I feel kinda disillusioned on a large scale.
Hey, come on! Losing your illusions is a good thing. It just gives you a new lens through which to watch the movies now!
By the way, I’m really digging your writing. You’ve got a knack for teasing out hidden biases in a way that’s both clever and cheerful.
Yeah, in the movie “This film is not yet rated” they talk about the role the military plays in any movie that wants to use any military equipment. Hmm…maybe I should post on that…
Lisa - I’ve been thinking about what you said about Pepper, turning it around and trying to figure out why I didn’t initially read it as outright misogyny, and I’ve got it figured; class. The Pepper/Tony relationship is fucked up because of class first, gender second.
Iron Man is a wish fulfilment flick; a hero with infinite wealth, infinite skills, infinite status objects, infinite access to sex. There are a lot of pulp stories like this, and I can think of only one that has a female hero (and that a not-yet-published thing by a writer I know). For the others, there’s Bruce Wayne, Simon Templar, James Bond, and so on. These people have infinite class privilege, so often have people like Pepper around. But here’s the thing; while the hero’s role is gendered, the underling’s isn’t. Bruce has Alfred, Simon has Orace, and James Bond has Mary Goodnight - that these people are class inferiors who do useful stuff is primary, and gender just gets dragged through after in about 50% of cases.
I’m wondering how much it would be different if you were talking about Bruce and Alfred instead. Not that much, and only because Alfred has a certain personality.
Pepper and Tony began life in 1963. Yes, they should have brought gender relations up to fucking sanity when writing a film set nearly 50 years after that, but I’ve read far too much 1920s-1960s pulp that I was all ready to read her through that lens. (I’m thinking of Peter Wimsey and Bunter now, and their interwar pulp adventures. Bunter is Peter’s ‘man’, it’s a class thing, and I can read it as being gratuitously queer if I want to).
But economic class has changed since then, and the things the underlings of both genders once did have been replaced by the Five Cs. Clerical, caring, children, catering, cashiering - the five things women in the workforce are expected to do, and which are low-paid because of this. I think that’s why Pepper’s role is misogyny; because it’s not the 1960s any more, much less the 1920s, and out in the real world her role is totally fucking gendered; there are too many women just like her, but with even less class privilege and even more workplace harassment.
I am going out again now. To see this film again! I think I’ll drag it over to my blog later tho’.
I’m honestly trying to think of a single superhero movie which isn’t horrifyingly misogynistic. Lesse…Spiderman has the perpetually “need to be saved” MJ who, even when she’s just friends with people, is still a love interest. And that’s all.
There’s Batman, who hasn’t had an even remotely feminist female counterpart. Ever. I mean, for f’s sake, even Catwoman was in need of lots of saving in the second Burton movie.
The closest I’d say is X-Men, but it seems like the male characters are always the center of those movies. Women seem to be there primarily to temper male characters.
I’d like to know how this movie was any more misogynistic than any other Superhero movie, honestly. I mean, it was highly sexist, yes. I just don’t see how it was MORE sexist.
I just saw the movie tonight and I completely agree with everything you just said. Action wise and techno wise it was great…well, except when she pulled up the “ghost” drive entitled “ghost” drive. Because thats what I would name my super secret drive (/eyesroll). And I was completely disappointed with the character of Pepper and that girl reporter. At first I thought the girl reporter was going to be cool, but instead, she jumps right into bed with a guy after he lays some sleazy one liners on her….ugh!! And Pepper, could she be more pathetically in love with him?!
I think I just realized why watching Xena is so fucking awesome. Cringe-inducing, physically embarrassing, but also? Awesome.
Thene - I agree with the classism angle, but only to a point–the sexist dynamic adds a whole new level of disrespect, marginalization and objectification. For example, was Bruce Wayne shown as treating all other menials with dismissive contempt, and did Alfred ever validate him doing so?
Esme - Having female characters be less important/central to the plot with less character development is an expression of the basic misogyny of our culture, not the specific misogyny of any particular movie, I think. Iron Man takes that cultural bias and runs the hell away with it to a ridiculous degree. Definitely not all superhero movies are like that…The League of Extraordinary Gentleman isn’t, for example. I agree that the X-Men isn’t either.
Sabrina - It didn’t bother me that she hopped into bed with Stark (though it was hard to imagine why–they made it clear that she was a rich girl, so she couldn’t have been impressed by that, and he was like waaaaaaay older, so her being overwhelmed by his hotness seemed unlikely, and man, that slice of sex scene–all I could think about his displayed technique was “hyperactive rabbit”). What bothered me was, how Pepper Potts called her “trash” the next morning for doing it, how it was portrayed as soooo cool that Stark treated the girl with utter discourtesy and contempt–what had she done to deserve that that he hadn’t done? and how Pepper validated that by slut-shaming the girl but kissing the man’s ass.
Violet - My mom and sister used to loooove Xena! Sure, it was campy, but it was tongue-in-cheek camp and Xena and Gabrielle rocked.
I agree that your reading of the opening HumVee scene is a plausible one– and even a correct one given the later events of the movie– but when I first saw it, I had a different take:
When Stark realized the driver was female, he didn’t hit on her so much as make fun of the idea that there is anything weird about a woman in a warzone, and then parody the hyper-sexualization of the culture by hitting on her.
I think if the director were trying for that message, he wouldn’t have to change a thing. Given that Stark can’t seem to meet a woman without trying to sleep with her, though, the scene plays out more as self-parody. Pity…
*sniff* Why’d you have to ruin it for me? I LOVED this movie.
I HATED the part with the reporter. I also had some issues with Pepper (if nothing more subtle, running on grated floors in stilletos?!), but I thought it was at least a vague shuffle in the right direction that she *didn’t* fall in love and ZOMG MARRY him in the end. She ALMOST fell for the glitz ‘n’ glamor that is Tony Stark at the benefit, but she totally PWNed him with the pull-back. I can only imagine that if he had actually returned with the dirty Martinis, she would verbally castrate him with all the ways he was completely wrong for her or any woman and how, if she had discovered radical feminism previously, she would’ve left his lazy ass, because no amount of money or pretty dresses is worth losing herself.
Alas, he ran off to be a hero and missed out on being Told.
Re: His age. If you think a 45 year old man can’t also be incredibly toddler-like, you haven’t met my 54 year old ex-step father, who has the emotional maturity of a bullfrog. The only problem I see there is people that smart are too socially inept* (and, I like to think, just too good to be willing) to use people in such a disgusting, degrading manner.
*This coming from one of those socially-inept gifted folks. No harm intended.
Punning Pundit: I totally agree he was never seriously hitting on her. My interpretation of his attitude also did grow less and less charitable as the movie progressed.
zombie: Hey, half of me loved it too!! heh, I had the exact same thought about her shoes…and ya know, she’s far from the first actress to be running around in wildly inappropriate footgear, it was just reeeealllly noticable in this movie…wonder if Gwyneth Paltrow is a bit of a clutz or if she was deliberately stumbling more than your usual actress in that situation, and if no. 2, why?
I agree overall (although I’m not an atheist), although I really did like Pepper. Partly I guess I’m just surprised to see Gwyneth Paltrow cast in a supporting role that could really be kind of limp; but as another reviewer put it, we thought three times she was going to go one way and she went another. The first was when she got away from Obadiah without getting caught and becoming a damsel in distress, the second was immediately after when she bumped into the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and, instead of staying mum and running off alone, she grabbed him and clued him in right away to what was going on–valuing Tony’s life above his anonymity–and then when she called him out for leaving her at the party.
OK, she could have been bitchier, and I’dve liked it if she had been, but she was much better than I expected.
I’m with Mercutia on this one. I actually felt like Potts was adequate (not great, mind you, but adequate) from a feminist perspective. She pulls off corporate espionage under the nose of the main villain, she jacks up the arc reactor to finish Stane, and she rebuffs Tony’s sexist advances at the end of the movie by reminding him he’s still and asshole. Those fit in the plus column, yeah?
Nah…she was only able to do the corporate espionage and the jacking up of the reactor because Tony told her exactly what to do, word for word; she still fumbled around the whole time and STILL managed to nearly flub both (that goes for the “heart transplant” too, exact same MO) and I didn’t notice Tony making sexist advances towards her, ever. Admittedly she is the only woman he has dialogue with in the movie who he DOESN’T make sexist advances to–I would rather characterize his advances, when finally made to her at the end of the movie, as “halfhearted.” I’m sorry, but she was a t-w-i-t, though certainly she was portrayed as having extreme giftedness in all things admin assistant/valet. Right down to the cheesy “Proof Tony Stark Has a Heart” present, I swear to God that reminds me so painfully of “holiday decorating time!!” every damn year at work…
But half of me STILL REALLY thought the movie rawked.
I know I appear to be the only person here interested pursuing the US military propagandistic aspect of the movie. But remember the piece by Nick Turse I linked above, about the way that the military only gives access to their various slick and shiny geegaws to movies with the right message? Well, a follow-up article just appeared, specifically about Iron Man.
Turse points out something really insidious. It’s not just that the movie gives the US government a free pass; it’s that they project the very things the US is guilty of in Afghanistan onto the supervillains.
Waterboarding (in case like me you haven’t seen the movie yet).
The irony is just appalling. The whole article’s worth a read.
Yeah, the waterboarding thing is interesting, now that you mention it. It sounds as though they are trying to promote the idea that tactics like that are common currency among the “enemy”.
The irony is, of course, that even after waterboarding and torture Tony Stark did not do what they were asking. Which is just more proof that not only is torture repellent, it’s not particularly effective either.
Good point. Although torturing to gain intelligence worked on 24 all the time, so it MUST actually be effective after all.
I wonder what the reaction would be if somebody made a well-done superhero movie about, say, a billionaire Iraqi oil magnate who, at the start of the Occupation in Iraq, gets tortured and waterboarded by US neocons in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to give up the master codes to start his fleet of oil refineries or somesuch, then manages to escape, realizes that his previous profits from supplying oil to the West was completely amoral, and uses his superintelligence and vast wealth to create an invincible suit that allows him to fight his old business partner, who is becoming rich by literally fueling the villainous Project for a New American Century.
…Okay, fine, probably wouldn’t play too well in Iowa.