Film Review: Man of Steel

Role of Women: To be honest, it's hard to tell where the portrayals of women in Man of Steel were flat or stereotypical because they were women, and when they were just flat and stereotypical because they were characters in Man of Steel, since one of the main criticisms I have of the film as a whole is the one-dimensional, underdeveloped characters. They had the usual suspects of hardboiled/tough girls-- Captain Farris, Faora, Lois Lane (who claims she gets writer's block if she's not wearing a flak jacket)-- and tender, motherly types-- Martha Kent, Lara-- none of whom ever really did anything to catch you off guard. The angst, suspense, and tension mostly lay between male characters. Clark's human father teaches him to believe in but also hide himself, leading to a relationship with currents of respect and resentment mingled; Clark's human mother gardens and has dogs and believes the best of Clark no matter what. Jor-El gets all the action in challenging the Kryptonians' self-destructive genetic selection and pointing out the end of the world, while Lara gets to be indecisive and mostly passive/background; do you really think she went through a natural pregnancy and childbirth because she was sort of thinking maybe Jor-El had a point about the end of Krypton? I have a feeling she would've needed a lot more courage and conviction than portrayed. It would've been pretty awesome if Lara had've been uploaded onto the ship as well as/instead of Jor-El, and really there's no reason why she needn't have been. Just Hollywood defaults.

Sexualization of Women: Why do filmmakers insist on putting women who need to run in ridiculous platform heels? Don't they realise that in real life either the heel would break, or the character's ankle? Other than that, though, they did fine on this front, with one exception-- when they had Captain Farris remark with a girlish smirk to her commanding officer that she thought Superman was "kinda hot". Considering the grit and dedication she would've had to display to get to her current position, is that really the sort of thing she would be likely to say to an authority figure in her job? Even if she did think that, I humbly suggest she would've had the self-control to keep it to herself. It just made her seem like a silly schoolgirl instead of a hardworking woman. 

Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Iffy. Lois and Jenny have an exchange ("Why is the printer out of toner?" "You have got to come see this...") which is not in the strictest terms a conversation; more just two unrelated sentences tossed at each other. Given the relatively higher number of female characters in this film, you'd think they could've managed to give at least two of them meaningful dialogue that didn't directly involve a male. 

Male:Female Ratio: In terms of presence of women, this film did pretty well (especially compared with its counterparts in the same genre which often feature only one or two token females). Pretty well all the male main characters had a female counterpart-- Zod and his second-in-command Faora, Clark and Lois, Jor-El and Lara, Clark's parents,  Perry and Jenny, General Swanwick and Captain Farris. It is telling, however, that every single male main character holds the role of authority or action, while the females really are 'counterparts': second-in-commands, supporters, love interests, and underlings.

So, overall, not awful like some superhero movies can be (don't get me started on Iron Man 3...) but by now means a shining star either.

Elementary-School Girls and Math Anxiety

Just read a really interesting article in the Smithsonian on how math-anxious, female, early elementary school teachers pass on their math-anxiety to their female students. It's a really short article, so why don't you click through and read it?

I'm particularly interested in this as I begin researching how to homeschool my children. Up until about a year ago, I would've fit the definition of math anxiety given in the article: "When someone has math anxiety, they can master mathematical concepts but tend to avoid the subject and perform more poorly than their abilities allow." I'm a fairly intelligent human being, passed my SATs no problem, and generally was able to find most subjects interesting and engaging, from different types of genetic mutations to how to write a sestina to basic CSS, and everything in between. Why did math feel like such a brick wall to me?

There were probably a lot of things at play, but two points stand out to me as notable:
1) My own math teacher (my mother) was and is pretty math-anxious, while my dad is pretty good at math. Of my siblings and I, only my brother came out of secondary school feeling mathematically adept. I'm not trying to blame my parents at all, but I do think it likely that some of the subconscious stereotyping as described in the Smithsonian article was playing out in our family. Obviously, as with the teachers in the article, there is no intention of raising girls who performed worse in math than the boys, but I think it's reasonable to suppose some of those preconceptions about girls being worse at math than boys were communicated through my own parents' educations (after all, when they were being educated in the seventies and eighties, it was by teachers who would've been educated even earlier-- at a time when girls and STEM studies were pretty well considered totally incompatible.)
2) The other skill-area in my life where I felt that notion of a brick wall and not being able to improve myself was sports. I always thought I was just bad at sports, but that it didn't matter because I was a girl and didn't need to play sports-- that was for boys. As an adult, I am much more able to see the joy and use of using your body well, and once I'm not pregnant/recovering from a pregnancy anymore, I do hope to engage in sports much more. So I definitely think I was self-stereotyping, discouraged in what could've been of great interest and benefit to me by pre-conceived notions of what I could and should be good at.

So coming back to the research I'm doing for homeschooling my own children: even before reading the Smithsonian article, I had come to the conclusion that believing your brain isn't capable of doing a certain skill is a fabulous way to cripple your brain in doing it, so I knew I wanted to pass on to my children the joy of math, logic, and analytical thinking as surely as my own mother did such a wonderful job passing on the love of reading, poetry, and music. I am more sure than ever now that I want to be careful not to let my (potential future) daughters think that math is for boys, and that one way I need to do that is by entering joyfully into math myself.

What about you? How do you think your math teachers affected your ability to learn math? Have you thought about how you will teach math to your kids (real or potential future)?

"Ladies' Man..."

This is another exhortation to think about how the language we use reinforces worldly views of gender versus Scriptural views; a bit of a companion post to my earlier post, "Ladies..."

Ok, well, let's start with some frank, if perhaps somewhat biased, opinions: I think my son is an absolute looker. I mean, he looks like his Daddy, and his Daddy is a babe, so how could he not be, but something about his fluffy blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and miles-long dark eyelashes seem to move other people to agree with me. People are always stopping us in the grocery store and such to tell him what lovely eyes he has. And hey, my mama-heart likes seeing my son praised, although I know his outward appearance is superficial and will in no way determine whether he is a man after God's heart-- which is what really matters. But it's nice to see my son making a favourable impression.

However.

There's something a lot of people (unfortunately, some of them believers) tend to say to him that really troubles me; something along the lines of, "You're going to be quite the ladies' man, aren't you?" or "The girls will just love you." Lest you think I've just misplaced my sense of humour over what people obviously intend as a lighthearted remark, let me unpack why this troubles me.

If this was an isolated cultural incident, maybe it could be shrugged off as 'no big deal' or 'just a joke'. But it's not; far from it. One of the most common ways our culture warps God's ideal of masculinity is by promoting the ladies' man as a paragon of manliness. If you need convincing that this is a culturally-prevalent attitude, check out two places where cultural norms are not usually challenged: superhero movies and TV commercials. Watch an Axe commercial*. Or a beer commercial, or a shaving commercial, or pretty well any commercial that airs during a sporting event. Picture Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark's glamorous millionaire lifestyle, traveling everywhere with a girl on either arm. Alternately, think of Steve Rogers (Captain America) prior to his enhancement: as a runty, unhealthy (i.e. not very masculine) guy, he can't get one girl interested in him, while his handsome, broad-shouldered friend can easily pick up two. The message is clear, and it is everywhere: if you're really manly, you can get lots of girls to sleep with you-- and you'll want to.

Is this what people are thinking when they compliment my son by predicting he'll be sexually appealing lots of women? I hope not-- I hope they're just not thinking at all, not realising that they're predicting my one-year-old will be sexually appealing to lots of women (because if they are thinking in that language, that's thoroughly creepy). But the fact that it's unthinking doesn't change the fact that they're planting those seeds in his mind, adding their weight to a cultural barrage that would push my son into thinking uncommitted, unchecked sleeping around is glamourous and desirable.

Now think of Christ. Think of his singleminded, self-sacrificing pursuit of his one Bride. Think of the sober, committed man of God called to lead the churches and how his faithfulness to his wife is among the first qualifications given in 1 Timothy 3. Think of Proverbs 5, pleadingly praising the blessedness of enjoying one committed relationship and using words like "scattered" "folly" and "led astray" in relation to this "ladies' man" ideal our culture promotes. Do we really believe that following God's statutes is a delight and "riches", as Psalm 119 puts it? Then let us not use the language of rebellious ignorance to God's way in our praise of little children!

What I would love is if people instead said, "You're going to make one woman very happy."** That's a goal I would like him to have. Here's the thing: there is absolutely nothing wrong-- indeed, there's plenty right-- with a godly man who chooses not to pursue any romantic relationship at all until he finds a woman who not only attracts him with her beauty, but also impresses him with her character, nothing wrong with waiting for God's timing, and most of all, nothing wrong with being a guy who just never really interests most girls he meets, until he meets the one woman whom God intended for him, who can see parts of him that others couldn't, and who will appreciate him as a whole man, body, mind, and spirit-- not just a hottie good for a one-night stand.***

I would like to talk at a later point about another harmful cultural warping of masculinity/femininity, in which purity is seen as a more feminine virtue, but for now I think I'll leave you with this plea: next time you bend down to a little boy's level and let him know you think he's great, can you take a second and check that that encouragement will help him think of Christlikeness as more desirable than being liked by lots of women?


*I was going to link an Axe commercial but they are just too offensive, especially coming from the same company who owns Dove and purports to be promoting respect for women and their natural beauty. Basically, picture dozens of stick-thin but busty girls in the tiniest bikinis possible, fighting and racing each other to get to one man. Tagline, "Spray more, get more." Phallic symbol duly included.)
** Or, even better, left his future sex appeal off the table entirely?
***This works the same way for girls, by the way. I wish there was a way to reassure all the single girls I know that it doesn't matter two straws if there's no one interested in them right now. I was never the object of much male attention before I caught Steven's eye, and darned if I can think of one way that has made our love the less sweet or our marriage the less wonderfully fulfilling.