Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Sin City: Exalting the Anglobitch
The comic-book and movie Sin City are interesting from the standpoint of the Anglobitch thesis. A kind of ‘hyper-real’ depiction of criminal types, women are simultaneously portrayed as angelic victims or gun-toting super-humans. Realism is nowhere in evidence - as in most Anglo-Saxon depictions of women. Instead, females are placed on pedestals where their moral conduct and martial prowess are absurdly inflated and men vilified and devalued.
In Sin City, when men are not depicted as cannibalistic mass murderers, they are sacrificial victims whose lives are wasted preserving stereotypical Anglo-Saxon women. So ingrained are such misandrist assumptions that even the Anglo-Saxon ‘counterculture’ extols them without demur:
An old man dies… A girl lives. Fair trade (Miller, Rodriguez: 2005).
Of particular interest is the Anglo-American counterculture’s preoccupation with portraying women as embodiments of superhuman martial prowess. Examples are legion: comic books, superhero movies and ‘academic’ feminism all have an obsession with terminally empowered women firing outsized guns, overwhelming (male) opponents with obscure martial arts and generally having their historical and contemporary martial prowess inflated out of all proportion to their abilities.
Even the renowned warrior women of history, such as Boudicca and Joan of Arc, had a largely token role. If we look at the greatest Anglo-Saxon warriors – Edward I, Edward III, Edward IV, Henry V, Marlborough, Wellington, Nelson, Washington, Grant and Lee – all were patrician males. None were female. Archaeological research at battlefield sites such as Towton proves beyond question that all combatants were males in their teens, Twenties and Thirties. Only relatively recently, when technology has obviated the obvious need for physical strength, coordination and aggression have women adopted a military role in any numbers. Even so, they are rarely if ever assigned front-line combat roles and remain absolutely debarred from Special Forces because they cannot pass the rigorous physical selection procedures. In sum, only those with a terrible rage against reality itself could maintain that women nurture martial abilities even remotely comparable to those of males. For example, basic differences in leg anatomy meant that women could not complete basic infantry training in the British Army without massive concessionary alterations to the training programme.
Hence the bazooka-toting females of Sin City and other Anglo-Saxon counter-cultural artefacts are fantastic projections with no referent in reality. Even in those few martial areas where women show comparative talent, such as sniping or terrorism (neither considered especially chivalrous, incidentally), the kind of superhuman strength, agility and courage routinely depicted in these mythopoietic fictions is nowhere displayed. So, where do they draw their inspiration?
Like the Golem for European Jewry, these superhuman women tap deep into the myth-creating root of the Anglo-Saxon mass psyche. Anglo-American men are tutored from infancy to place women on pedestals, beyond reproof or rational criticism. However, feminism has released women into the workplace, politics and other areas, rendering the old eidolon invalid.
Endowing women with superhuman competence is an ongoing attempt to modulate the traditional archetype so that it reconciles the old deference with their new authority. Women with exaggerated strength and martial competence represent a spontaneous, organic attempt to reconfigure the 'Pedestal Syndrome' for a new socio-economic reality.
However, because the dual elements involved are so contradictory, the new eidolon is even more absurd than its predecessor. Also, because the new archetype is improperly developed and embedded, its adherents are obsessively insecure about it, defending it irrationally in the face of all objective evidence. Hence if objective facts are raised about women’s non-existent martial record or abilities, a hysterical crescendo of ad hominem criticism and juvenile irrationalism invariably erupts over the critic.
Nevertheless, the ‘superhuman Anglobitch’ archetype is of enormous significance in cultural terms, as it affords a profound insight into the process of mythopoietic formation. Although women toting 500-pound bazookas might seem far-removed from Saint Paul’s turgid epistles, they are both mythic cultural imagos at their earliest creation.
In passing, we must not forget a certain Anglo-American film genre that likewise extols females as supra-physical paragons of competence, virtue and intellect while portraying men as dupes, morons or, at best, cunning monsters. Sigourney Weaver and Jodie Foster are especially prominent in this lame oeuvre, typified by the vastly overrated Silence of the Lambs. These superhuman females defend society from sick, atavistic males bent on its destruction. Of course, the reader who has followed me thus far knows the exact opposite is true: Anglo-American feminists menace society, with males the last bulwark of effective resistance.
A word on the ‘counterculture’: this limping edifice, which sprang to life sometime in the dreary and discredited Sixties, has done nothing but enhance the problems intrinsic to Anglo-American culture. Conventional Anglo ‘Men’s Studies’ are little more than vagina worship. 'Counter-cultural' films, texts and art have merely placed women on even loftier pedestals. This is because the counter-culture never severed its links with the puritanical preoccupations at the core of Anglo-Saxon civilization; never challenged ‘mainstream’ assumptions about society. Rather, it surpassed them: today, the smart money knows its apologists were just shoe-shine boys for the elite all along. Class distinction, repression and counter-democracy have all worsened as a direct result of their lame ministrations.
Only the Anglobitch Thesis truly has the power to transform society as it represents a conscious break with the sterile Puritanism that defines the Anglosphere.
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Fucking cunts only belong in the kitchen - let's make sure they stay there this time.
ReplyDeleteE' uno schifo di film sessista e puttaniere!
ReplyDeleteAmerican women have been put on a pedistal for centuries now and it has to stop!
ReplyDeleteAgreed, the behavior these women in these movies is 100% fantasy. Reality is women do not behave like this at all. And I am not just talking about the super human feats of strength. The confident, risk taking and warrior mentality is for the most part a male trait and rarely seen in women. Perhaps that is why it is entertaining because it is so far removed from day to day reality. Women are for the most part totally opposite of what is portrayed.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna be the heretic of the group here, but personally, I wouldn't mind all these Badass Super Bitch (BSB) flicks if they actually treated the men with more respect, but they never freaking DO!!!
ReplyDeleteThe best a man can hope for in a BSB flick is to be the heroine's lover, but that prize normally only comes to him after several (brutal and casually cruel) physical and/or psychological humiliations and putdowns at the woman's hands.
And, as always, her maltreatment of the male hero is always justified because he's always an incompetent buffoon she's forced to protect by the plot and/or he's an arrogant jerk who thinks he's God's gift to women and, thus, needs to be taken down several pegs before the audience can safely like him.
Even this movie pulls this shit off. Check out the guy who won the affections of Rosario Dawson. Even though he got the girl, he had to face the wrath of her and her gang before they started working together.
ReplyDeleteAnd so with every other movie. Even when the male is a cool character, he's always forced to start off on the wrong foot with the girl, putting all kinds of animosity between them. And guess who gets the brunt of the humiliation? That's right, the male.
And nine times out of ten, that misunderstanding is always HIS STUPID FAULT, so he pretty much deserves to get crapped on left and right.
Superhuman shopping powers, that is. Oprah moments, food the dog wouldn't eat, inane conversation on fashion I'm too stupid to follow. You'd think some might ease the burdens of life and career just a bit by actually learning how to take care of men and occasionally STFU. The divorce rate would fall markedly.
ReplyDeleteDeep Space Nine totally lost me when I saw an episode where the army from the PC "Federation" was composed of women going into hand to hand combat with these super macho genetically engineered warrior aliens who make Schwarzenegger look like a weakling. It is generally genres for nerdy males who push this "Superbitch" archetype suggesting an innate masochism and detachment from reality. Comic book and Sci-Fi are the genres in particular: The Matrix, Farscape, and the New Battlestar Gallactica pop to mind immediately where the toughest warriors are female. Anyone who is familiar with how weak, catty, bitchy, and cowardly the real women in their everyday lives are has trouble suspending disbelief during such entertainment. Instead my train of thought during an episode of Battlestar Gallactica turns from the plot to wondering what kind of weird masochistic sexual fetishes Ronald D Moore must have to so consistently create these plots where weak males grovel to the warrior bitch and eagerly take their orders. Note these shows are produced and viewed by the upper middle class "wanker" types and don't draw their audience from working class males nor women. It's why Sci-Fi shows frequently get cancelled, not a broad enough audience for advertising dollars to support the high costs production.
ReplyDelete