Badgerpod Gamergate 16: This Week In Outrage

Written on May 19, 2015 by Brian Martinez

• About
• Latest Posts

Follow me

Brian Martinez

Concierge, Student, Illustrator at Mercury Theater, Good Guy Comics

Part time student, part time concierge and full time illustrator all wrapped up in one creative package. Looking for opportunities to use my aptitudes, talents and competence to serve a worthy company, or start my own. Dude. Roots in Chicago. Thinker and go-getter.

Follow me

Latest posts by Brian Martinez (see all)

• Badger Pod Nerd Cast 20: It’s Blowjobs, All the Way Down! - January 13, 2015
• Badger Pod Nerd Cast 19: Far Gone Girl - January 6, 2015
• Badger Pod Nerd Cast 18: Disgusting Abhorrent Pencils - December 16, 2014

This week on Badgerpod Gamergate! The addiciton to outrage continues, and this week we look at instances of outrage across entertainment media! From Mad Max’s feminism to Game of Thrones rapism, let us delve into the belly of the SJW beast.

Tune in this Tuesday the 12th at 8pm Eastern!

 DIRECT DOWNLOAD

Mad Max: Fury Road

By Brian Martinez

No doubt many of you have heard the news. Mad Max: Fury Road is the latest in the post-apocalypitic film franchise directed by Max Max veteran George Miller, and two weeks ago, it launched. Set 45 years since the collapse of civilization, resources such as water, food and oil are scarce. Survivors cling to life at the Citadel, a fortress controlled by the tyrannical Immortan Joe. Max, played by Tom “Lady Lips” Hardy teams up with Furiosa, played by Charlize “Why didn’t they just let her speak her South African accent” Theron team up to deliver a very precious cargo while trying to escape the clutches of Immortan Joe, a villain who clearly designed his whole empire and gang aesthetic based on 80s heavy metal album art, which is awesome.

As the film neared release, the only thing people knew was that it looked batshit insane. Custom built war vehicles racing along a desert plain, through mountains and even into a sandstorm with symphonic music and explosions and metal and gears and all manner of things that guys like. Looked like a movie with no brakes and a V-8 engine that was ready to allow it’s audience turn off their brains and enjoy a wild ride. Then articles began to surface, there were rumblings that this film might secretly be a feminist film?! How could that be, I wondered? It turned out that Eve Ensler, proponent of “A Good Rape”, was involved with the film in order to send a subversive and sneaky form of feminism, from now on referred to as Femininjitsu. She was planning to use femininjitsu to send messages about objectification, the enslavement of women, strong female characters, and how toxic masculinity is the reason the world ended in the first place. Enter Aaron Clarey, editor from the website Return of Kings. Aaron was so upset and angry at the thought of this kind of film being made that he wanted to stop it before it hit theaters by calling for a boycott. This of course caused a shitstorm between the folks at RoK and the Feminists defending the film. Shitstorms, like sandstorms, can obfuscate and drag other people into it, and naturally, because main stream media has no interest in telling the difference, MRAs are blamed for Clarey’s statements.

So here we have a film that appears to be a film men would like, and it’s supposedly filled with feminist ideas in order to subvert and get people talking about the themes therein. But is the film especially feminist? Did it succeed at what it’s feminist goals were? I saw the film myself, and watched it through two lenses.

1. As a person who likes good action movies, and loved the Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome.

2. As a person who has taken the red pill and can see the world for what it really is.

The question is, is this film really as feminist as people are saying? I would argue it is just run of the mill Hollywood gynocentrism with a sprinkling of feminism. What’s Hollywood feminism in this case?

1. All the villains and disposable thugs are men. Even the boys.
2. All the women are either victims, heroes, or heroes that began as victims and found “inner strength” to become heroes.
3. Max himself helps out, but takes a back seat in this movie, acting more like a voyeur than a hero. Charlize Theron is the hero, really.
4. There are several road gangs in the film. Only one is a good gang. Guess what? Its the only all female gang. Yep.
5. The male heroes make themselves most useful by putting themselves at risk or sacrificing themselves outright for the strong wimminz.

Aside from the above, it was pretty badass. It could use some help with the above points, but again, I’m not holding my breath, this is the world we live in.
The big question is this: If this film is just mainstream Hollywood feminism, and yet there is all this talk surrounding it for being so subversive and progressive a film, who wins from this controversy? And if Pitch Perfect 2, a film aimed at a female audience, demolished Mad Max the very next week in box office numbers, what did Miller or Ensler or even Clarey prove?