Guardians of the Galaxy Merch: Where’s Gamora???? Sigh.

Posted on August 10, 2014 at 8:00 am

Guardians of the Galaxy is enormous fun and a huge box-office hit, with loveable characters and a refreshing sense of humor about itself. Who wouldn’t want to extend the pleasures of the film with some merch, perhaps an action figure or a backpack?

The answer: anyone who is a fan of Gamora, the green-skinned assassin played by Zoe Saldana and the only female of the group.

Characters Copyright Marvel Studios 2014

Take a look at the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy 16″ Large Backpack School Bag. Four of the five Guardians appear on it. Guess who is missing? (If you need help, read the comments.) Weirdly, Amazon also lists a “boy’s backpack” with all five Guardians on it. I would love to have someone explain what it is that makes it a “boy’s” backpack.

Or take a look at this story of a woman whose children wanted action figures from the film. Star Lord Peter Quill? No problem. Gamora? Problem. Kira Stewart-Watkins writes:

Star-Lord is everywhere but there was not a single Gamora to be seen. Even on the Guardians of the Galaxy t-shirts, no Gamora. Hey Marvel! She is one fifth of the team, what they heck! Even my six-year-old son noticed and passed up a t-shirt because he wanted her on it too. I asked the store if they were out, they said they do not carry her and suggested a Rocket raccoon instead. Not The Same.

Other people say “Well, just order her one online.” Okay, wait, so I get to say to my son “Hey here is your Star-Lord action figurine, we will buy him.” and to my other child “Oh wait, no Gamora, well we can order her online and you will get her in 5 to 6 business days.”

Something is very wrong here. Marvel, 44% of the opening audience of Guardians of the Galaxy were women! I know! I have seen it three times. And this is not just a problem with Gamora. We had this problem with Black Widow. We encounter this problem with her DC favorite, Wonder Woman. (I found her Wonder Woman t-shirt in a thrift store. And my daughter made the crown and bracers herself because she loves Wonder Woman so much.) I understand the politics of it, but a four-year-old does not.

So Marvel, do you know what my daughter thought after not finding yet another superheroine she loves in stores? Do you know what she said to me with her sad green eyes?

“Maybe superheroes aren’t for girls Mom.”

Superheroes are for girls. Bonehead studio and merchandising executives on the other hand, need to get a clue. Many thanks to Jenna Busch for alerting me to this problem.

Lena Dunham on “The Big Chill” Generation

Posted on August 4, 2014 at 3:47 pm

I am a big fan of Lena Dunham, and her essay on “The Big Chill” and its generation — her parents’ generation — is enormously thoughtful and beautifully written. Her insight and her generosity of spirit are very moving. And it reminds us that film can be, at its best, what Roger Ebert called “an empathy machine.” You can never know your parents as they were when they were your age. But, Dunham says, movies like this can remind us that once they were young and certain they would never become like their own parents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O19k-YtwXTg

There is so much you can’t imagine. You can’t imagine your parents on this weekend, dancing around the kitchen to Motown as they cook a big meal, moving their butts jauntily and leading with their shoulders. Many years later, at your bat mitzvah or your cousin Stephanie’s wedding, the way they dance will make you want to kill yourself. But if you could see them over this weekend, all together, if you trained a camera on them and let them dance back and forth, you would understand: they were young once too, and this is how they learned to dance, and now every time they dance that way they feel young again, even if you’re scowling at them from across the room and wishing they would explode.

What if someone found a way to show you? To show you that your father’s friend with the glasses and the nasal voice, someone found him sexy once, held his hand furtively, thought he was the wit of the century. And your mother’s friend with the bouclé jacket who calls a thousand times to ask if you got her email about her son’s wedding invitations? Someone once wanted her badly enough that he chased her into the freezing yard and gnawed on her neck like a lamb shank. And that big lazy drunk who sends money at Christmas, who gets food stuck in his mustache and dates social workers? Well, he did the gnawing. And your aunt who isn’t really technically your aunt, she did want kids of her own. She tried.

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Bob Mondello on the Challenge of Naming Movie Sequels

Posted on August 3, 2014 at 8:01 pm

NPR’s Bob Mondello has a delightful commentary on titles of movie sequels. Somehow he neglected to mention “Sharknado 2: The Second One,” which democratically allowed the fans to pick the title via Twitter votes. That approach could have prevented some of the problems Mondello identifies:

A while back, when producers were abbreviating everything — Mission Impossible 2, for instance, had posters that read M:I-2 — there was a horror flick that wanted to try that: a sequel to Halloween that was supposed to be taking place 20 years after the first one. So the poster had Jamie Lee Curtis staring out from the darkness above great big letters saying H20. It looked like she was selling a really sinister brand of bottled water.

Another title that raised all the wrong questions was for a story about the king from whom we declared our independence in 1776. In Britain, the stage play was called The Madness of George III. But when it was turned into a film, the producers worried that Americans wouldn’t know who George III was, so they added the word “King” — The Madness of King George — while dropping the Roman numeral at the end, for fear that audiences would think they’d missed parts one and two.

Mondello’s piece is a lot of fun — and very true.

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

How Do Movies Show Time Passing?

Posted on July 22, 2014 at 8:00 am

Someone once said that movies are “pieces of time.” A few take place in “real time.” Alfred Hitchcock’s experiment, “Rope,” unfolds in just the time it takes us to watch it, all in what appears to be one seamless shot. But others take place over days, weeks, years, even generations.

Slavko Vorkapich was the Hollywood pioneer who established the cinematic language of the passage of time. Whenever you see calendar pages falling or clock hands turning, that is his influence.

I was honored to be included in Criticwire’s survey asking film critics about their favorite depictions of the passage of time in movies. Watch a year pass in “Notting Hill.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMK3dZ_drvI

I wrote about the clever way they showed each school term passing in Bing Crosby’s 1960 film “High Times,” directed by Black Edwards, in 101 Must-See Movie Moments.

And watch many years go by and a marriage disintegrate in “Citizen Kane.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RamGMa9Sb1U

Guardians of the Galaxy Merch: Where’s Gamora???? Sigh.

Lena Dunham on “The Big Chill” Generation

Bob Mondello on the Challenge of Naming Movie Sequels

Movies’ Greatest Mirror Scenes

How Do Movies Show Time Passing?