Watchmen Porn

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For years I avoided seeing the Watchmen superhero movie, because I hated the graphic novel in the 1980s. A friend made me see it as part of our remedial superhero study group and guess what, I really hated the movie. But I was surprised that she would appreciate the rape scenes so much and the sexist representation of women if that is indeed what it is.

For me, it is the latex garter belt that really sells this outfit.  

Maybe there is hope after all.

Introducing Alisa Elega Shevchenko Glamourous Russian Cybercriminal

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We end 2016 on Global Wahrman with a note of hope in a world otherwise diminished by death, war, greed, and hypocrisy.

The Obama Administration, in one of its final acts, has published a list of Soviet, I mean Russian, firms and individuals implicated in the DNC hack. Those of us who are concerned about the lack of women in computing, particularly the important new field of Cybercrime, can take heart by the inclusion of poster child Alisa Elega Shevchenko on this list.

Although she modestly claims to have no idea what people are talking about, adolescent men and some women can be encouraged by her excellent photograph which could have come right out of Soviet Vogue.

Please give a warm welcome to Alisa Elega Shevchenko.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/12/accidental-mastermind-dnc-hack/134266/?oref=d-river

Why is Helena Bonham-Carter Always Falling Out of Bed?

This post is rated X due to comments about the "rubber/latex glove".

I just saw for the first time that epic tome on weird psychology, Fight Club (1999) by David Fincher. There are many theories about what it means, what happened, and so forth and so on. But none of these discussions of theories of masculinity or the lack thereof addressed the issue most important to me. Ms. Bonham-Carter appears to play a character that is always falling off the bed.

Ok, so she isn't always falling out of bed, but she is at least twice, and twice is enough to convince me that it means something.

First we have....

And then we have ...

If we add the great, even famous line, “That was the best sex I have had since grade school”, I think we have some sort of implication that falling out of bed indicates, well, a fallen woman, a woman who gives herself over to sex, or sexual pleasure.  Note for example the subtle use of a latex or rubber glove being worn by Brad Pitt.  Fisting perhaps?  Anal sex? 

Is this the role of women in Fight Club? Is this all that women are good for? Going to 12 step therapy sessions and hopping into (and off of) bed?

_______________________________________________

Biography of Helena Bonham-Carter on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000307/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Hollywood and Natalie Portman Demonstrate Commitment to Fundamental Values

Whenever we see a threatened community in this chaotic world stand fast and united in support of fundamental values I think it is important to celebrate the event. So many of our friends and institutions have thrown away everything that they used to stand for in order to make a fast buck.

Hollywood is not normally considered a shining pillar of integrity but I believe that is a misunderstanding on the part of outsiders.  Hollywood as a loosely-defined creative community has always had and continues to have a set of core values that are shared across the community and evolves with time.  These values have survived mergers and acquisitions,  new distribution technologies, government antitrust lawsuits, drought, war and pestilence. One of these core values is that there is always money to be made by the cheesy exploitation of women. Let us review a particularly creative use of this principle.

A few years ago, a well-known author of "weird fiction", Jeff VanderMeer, published three novels in a series called the "Southern Reach".  The first of those books, Annihilation, was optioned by Scott Rudin to turn into a movie. He hired the director of Ex Machina (2015), Alex Garland, to write the adaptation and direct the film. The book (and presumably the film) is unusual in many ways and one way that is important to us is that all the protagonists are women. The movie is the story of an expedition of scientists to an area where a strange event occurred many years ago that has cut this area off from the rest of the country.  There have been previous expeditions and they did not end well. So what we have here is a film where the four main characters are all strong and interesting women. The movie stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tessa Thompson. The book is told from the point of view of one of the members of the expedition, the Biologist, played by Natalie Portman.

Nice posture, Natalie! 

As you know, Hollywood has often been accused of perpetuating demeaning stereotypes of women, and failing to provide serious roles for actresses who want to get their next academy award nomination.  So this movie provides an excellent opportunity to refute this sadly somewhat valid criticism of Hollywood.

This film, Annihilation (2017), has finished principal photography and still has a long way to go before it is released but Hollywood realizes it is never too early to start marketing a film. One time-honored way to do this is with interviews by various news media of the star(s) of the film.  And since the film is about four intelligent and adventurous women, it would make sense if that marketing also communicated some of these ideas.

And so an article/interview was created and placed in the New York Times Style Magazine.  It is an interview by email (that social media hook!)  with Natalie Portman by a writer in which they discuss the first short film that Natalie has directed.  They discuss many topics including Natalie's upbringing in Israel, the work of various eclectic authors of fiction, and so forth..

Now we get to the heartwarming, even inspirational, part of our story.  Ms. Portman discusses her movie and her childhood in very intelligent ways, certainly combating the stereotype of women in Hollywood. But I had not realized how financially challenged Ms. Portman was. You see, not everyone in Hollywood makes those multi-million dollar salaries.  Apparently, Ms Portman was or is so poor that she did not own any pants. Nevertheless they bravely went ahead and photographed this wonderful and talented person practically bare-assed naked.  Fortunately, Ms. Portman was able to hold up her part as these pictures clearly show.

It would have been easy for Hollywood to turn its back on a core value and portray Ms. Portman as a politically correct, bisexual, blue jean lesbian styled modern feminist and be acclaimed by one and all, but our producers and the studio are made of sterner stuff. The cheap exploitation of women and sex to sell a film is like "Motherhood and Apple Pie" to the rest of us. It is important. Hollywood did not let us down.

See this fabulous article here.

Are you going to just lounge around all day in your underwear?

Fan Service in Space Movies: An Evolving Artform

In his work on Smut, the American poet and philosopher Tom Lehrer once said

    All books can be indecent books

    Though recent books are bolder

    For filth, I'm glad to say, is in

    The mind of the beholder

                  (Lehrer, 1-4)

The sexual exploitation of women in film is a much misunderstood tradition that goes back to the very origins of the filmmaking craft.  What is not normally acknowledged however is the rich variety and subtle nuance of sexist exploitation, from mere "fan service" to plot-motivated actresses in skimpy outfits.  In this post we propose to review some of the details of the myriad forms that cheesy exploitation of women can assume, in particular with reference to movies that take place in what we used to call Outer Space.

One important distinction between the greater and lesser uses of exploitation is whether having scantily clad women (and in a very few cases, men) is whether there is even the most shallow excuse for the exploitation in the story.  Just like in American musical theatre any song is supposed to advance the story, the same should be true for the exploitation of women.  The lowest form of exploitation is that which has no possible reason or justification.

The Japanese term-of-art for the gratuitous insertion of scantily clad women, or men, or aliens, in order to stimulate the viewer is "fan service" which simply provides without reason whatever viewer stimulation the intended audience prefers.

On the higher and more refined part of town, though, one can work elements consisting of women in spandex into the raison d'etre of the film and thus reinforce the important ideas that underlie the film experience.  One film in particular that did this well was Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) in which the sexually active lead, a woman ahead of her time, played by Jane Fonda, causes the Orgasmatron-like Excessive machine to expire after a sex marathon with Ms. Fonda thus demonstrating her superior capacity for pleasure.  No cheap exploitation of women here.

And certainly we can say that the casting and costuming of Ms. Jovavitch in Luc Besson's Fifth Element (1997) was motivated by the highest ideals of the motion picture industry.

Milo Jovovitch from the Fifth Element (1997), above, and an unknown actress from Planet of the Vampires (1965).  

The cinema must move on from these brilliant yet analog expressions of cheesy exploitation and find new ways to demean themselves.  Directors and producers struggle to find appropriate and stylistically valid ways to exploit women of both genders in order to increase the appeal and the box office of their creative works.

We are less than a month away from the release of The Martian (2015) and the material released so far seems to give very little opportunity to exploit women.   This has left many scholars and fans of the cinematic arts worried that Ridley Scott may let down the side.

This film has unusual conventions for a space movie.  Most movies set in space will generally make use of a giant robot or a superhero or two, perhaps an alien race of Amazon Women, or other sophisticated plot elements that naturally provide opportunities for the filmmaker in collaboration with their costume designer. 

But things are not so easy in The Martian as the various female leads are supposed to be serious working professionals, and thus diving into the gutter to pander to the adolescent male of all ages requires some sophistication and sophistication has never been known as a motion-picture industry strong point.  If this were a James Bond movie, it would be straightforward to simply introduce one of the female leads in a scuba outfit, but this is space, the final frontier, sans superheroes, or even Uhura, or other Star Trek rebooted characters, so what is a filmmaker to do?

As you can see from several of the recent Star Treks, the role of women in space cinema has come a long way

Not only is the The Martian a hardcore, mostly scientific man-vs-nature adventure film about an astronaut marooned on Mars, but it is a Mars very explicitly without any Martian Princesses lounging around. At first glance its hard to see where exactly the sexist exploitation of women can be derived.

Nevertheless, a few stills from a viral marketing promo about this upcoming film gives us hope. Its subtle, true, but it makes us optimistic for the future.

Good posture, don't you think?

I want to encourage Ridley Scott and his filmmaking team to grasp this opportunity with both hands and supply the fan service for which he is known.  It is small things like this that can cheer up the otherwise pointless and dreary lives of their audience.

_________________________________________

Notes:

1. Tom Lehrer. Smut can be found at
http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/smut.htm

2. Those interested in reading further should check out the Wikipedia page on
Catsuits and Jumpsuits in Popular Media.

3. The Martian(2015) on IMDB  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/

4. Barbarella (1968) on IMDB  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062711/

5. Planet of the Vampires (1965) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059792/

Fashion Trends in Sexist Exploitation in SF and Fantasy Movies

I have written a poem. Since it does not scan, please consider the following blank verse, that fabulous category that accepts any poetic indignity.

The bodice ripper has ripped her bodices

The bald blue babe makes quite a goddess-es

Secondary sexual characteristic

With body paint and old fashioned lipstick

Its not done yet, that is as far as I have gotten.   Now to our post.

No less an issue than stupid features in smart phones, the display of sexual fitness in women moves forward with dazzling speed, and failure to keep up with styles in sexist exploitation is a clear indication of someone who has not met the challenge posed by these changing times.

As we move swiftly from one exploitative style to the next nevertheless we may look fondly back to simpler times when our sexist exploitation of women merely emphasized such supernormal signals as cup or breast size, or tight spandex, and did not rely on surgical modification and implanted electronics, at least not so much. A puffy lip or two was sufficient back in those days to indicate sexual fitness, now things are so much more complicated.

But I am not complaining, far from it. One of my favorite trends, which originates all the way back in the 1990s and 2000s has come back with a vengeance. Yes, the role of women in science fiction television of the period: stern, even mean, and tightly bound in her spandex or polyethelyne “uniform”. Not exploitative at all, no not at all.

This is old fashioned sexist exploitation.  We are far more sophisticated today.

Mean looking women in spandex, one of my favorites, I thought as I watched Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) only this time hold the spandex, we will just spray the decoration directly on the lithe young actress victim and mating unit with some decoration to simulate ritual scarification or is that embedded electronics? Does anyone care? I just hope it does not smear when handled by suitably energized victim or victimized units of the appropriate non-gender specific gender, whatever that may be.

Subtle, very subtle!  And blue!

Or maybe smearing of surface features is part of successful mating?  These things change you know.  Then there could be a ritual of reapplying the ritual scarification or surface electronics after the main event is over.   These things are culturally as well as biologically determined and who am I to judge or guess what might be involved.  Clearly more research is needed.

But we can certainly applaud these trends in body paint / surface electronics unless of course we are decrying this obvious objectification of women beneath a veneer of plot-driven character to obscure the latent or not so latent exploitation in action adventure comic-derived feature films.

Obviously we need more examples and more hands-on research in order to determine what is going on here.  In the mean time, and in the absence of a certain condemnation, we can provisionally grant our approval and look forward to the future in this subgenre.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2015381/

Fraulein Usage in Modern German and Its Effect on Cinema and Special Effects

[Global Wahrman has had an admittedly ambiguous policy towards comments, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, having its origins with so many spam comments in the early days.  But in a stunning reversal of policy, we wish to encourage user comments on this topic: are these pictures sexist and does it relate to the term "fraulein"?]

There are few more important things to people than what they are called. One person's diminutive is another person's mortal insult. And there are many rules here, culturally specific rules. Eddie Murphy can use the "N-word" but under no circumstances may I use the "N-word", for example.

So fair warning for those of you who are not up on your contemporary German: "fraulein" is a word that is strongly discouraged these days, through a German social process that is the equivalent of our "Mrs/Miss/Ms" dialectic.

When I first heard this, I was not all that impressed.  But I just did a test and it occurs to me that there may be some subtle issues here (sarcasm, sorry).    Just do the following experiment.  Go to Google, type in "fraulein" and then go to images, then stand back.  Holy moly!  See for example:

Is there something sexist about this image?

From a latex couture magazine, yikes, fraulein, please, put some clothes on!

What could be sexist about this?

Click here for the Google image search.

So, to be clear, to the best of my knowledge one may still use "fraulein" in a way that is not insulting when addressing a very young girl, either sternly or genially (e.g. humorously, perhaps, just guessing, one might say "perhaps the fraulein would be so good as to clean up her room" when addressing a six year old gal, perhaps, and that might still be OK). But otherwise, one uses the term "frau" so far as I can tell.

Now I have a few friends who are far more knowledgeable about both feminism and modern German, so they will enlighten us all, I hope, but in the meantime, a word to the wise is hopefully sufficient.

Now does this mean that we should go back and change all our World War II movies and television shows? That is a question with no single answer, I think. If one were going for authenticity in the movie/show, then the answer would be no, it would still be correct to use "fraulein" in that time period. But if one were doing a new show, today, about the period, then one might think about using the modern usage if one did not intend to provoke a reaction. It could go either way, depending on what you wanted to achieve.

Now to get to our final topic: the potential effect this language change will have on the practice and art of special visual effects.  To the best of our knowledge, this change will have absolutely no effect on special effects, now or in the future.   Just wanted to reassure those of you who may have been concerned.

For a wild screaming match on the topic, see the Wikipedia discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AFr%C3%A4ulein

For a more balanced discussion and presentation of the issue(s), see:

http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/966/why-is-fraulein-considered-offensive-as-opposed-to-frau

Introducing the Female Lead with Visual Effects: Three Case Studies

Even though we acknowledge the central importance of conflict between giant robots, the choreography of spaceship battles, and the sheer awe inspiring triumph of the hordes of zombies at the end of humanity, it does not diminish these vitally important tasks to suggest that there are other, perhaps peripheral, roles for visual effects which nevertheless can contribute to the film.  

To that end, we will present three examples here of visual effects used to introduce the female lead.

I can just see my reader's lips curl in disgust. The female lead? A girl? In a movie with giant robots or zombie hordes?    Yes, in spite of Hollywood's best efforts to diminish the role of women in film, they do linger on, if for no other reason than to provide a cheesy lust object for the adolescent male audience, as well as other, minor dramatic roles from time to time.  Thus it is reasonable to consider how special photographic effects might be used to help facilitate such story points as introduction of the character, death of the character, and so forth.

Just as in a musical, where a song must contribute to the story, in a visual effects film we would hope that there might be a way to use the same ideas that are featured in the dramatic sections of the film to introduce major or minor characters of the narrative.    If we have a film about giant robots, then perhaps the lead female can be born from the forehead of a giant robot, perhaps Optimus Prime, as Minerva was born from the forehead of Zeus. Or in a sensitive drama about zombies, we might first meet our female lead eating brains at lunch and worried about keeping her girlish figure.

Here are three examples where the female lead is introduced to the audience in a way that is (a) spectacular, (b) tells us something about the character, and (c) communicates something to us that will be useful in developing the story, or in the third example, to the (somewhat) surprising climax of the story.

The three case studies are from Roger Rabbit (1988), The Matrix (1999) and Shaolin Soccer (2001).

In Roger Rabbit (1998), our protagonist, a private detective, Eddie Valiant, is hired to see if Jessica Rabbit is involved with another rabbit, or person, as the rumors suggest. As part of his investigation, Valiant goes to see Ms. Rabbit perform at a fancy nightclub where he learns she is not a cartoon rabbit, but a cartoon femme fatale. This is a famous scene so I am sure you know all about the tone mattes and optical compositing done at ILM.  One could not ask for a better introduction of this character. The song also advances the story, helping to establish Jessica as a sex goddess who breaks the hearts of both men and rabbits.

Why does Valiant keep his overcoat on in this scene?   It feels inappropriate to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy5THitqPBw

In our second example, we have everyone's favorite polyethelyne poster child, Carrie Anne Moss, known as Trinity in her landmark film The Matrix because she perfectly expresses the three values of sex, violence and shiny catsuits in women. We meet this woman typing happily on her laptop in a decrepit room of some sort, when suddenly she is the target of a police raid. There are several interesting things in this scene beyond the first use of so-called "bullet time", which is an extension of the Brigham morphing technology of years ago. First, we learn that she can take on two "units" of policemen without too much trouble (a unit is probably either 3 or 4 policemen). Second, we learn, when this is all done, that this incredible woman is terrified to hear that there are "agents" in the area, thus telling us something about the world we are in. Third, we learn that properly applying traditional analog techniques of lighting can bring out the best of Ms. Moss in a tight jumpsuit. Notice the subtle use of lighting below, which carefully accents her formidable attributes as perceived by many adolescents.

A careful use of key lights can add specular highlights to shiny contours

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPtk7mweahY

In our final scene, we have a film that is well known in the far east, but got very little distribution in North America to the best of my knowledge, Shaolin Soccer (2001). In this intellectual drama, good is pitted against evil in the form of a soccer contest, and good is enhanced through the power of the secret techniques from the Shaolin monastery of China. This movie makes extensive use of the rather obvious in retrospect idea that some of the most important things in sports can be made trivial through using CG to create the soccer balls (or whatever the sport in question uses, ping pongs, basketballs, etc) and just having the actors / players mime performing the sport. But in this scene, our hero spies his future love, the poor and acne challenged Mui making bread. If you havent seen this scene before you should watch it, it is pretty great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtBebT-rKeM\

Roger Rabbit on imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/

Shaolin Soccer on imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286112/

The Matrix on imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286112/

Orion Slave Girls, Makeup Effects, Sexism and Color Timing

Color timing has always been a part of the film making process, from the earliest days of color technology.  It is the process used to see to it that the final film has a consistent look from shot to shot and the color palette of the film overall matches the vision and goals of the director and cinematographer, to the extent the technology, budget and schedule allows.

In recent years, the extremely arcane early forms of color timing has been replaced by digital processes, including the "digital intermediate" and the uses and abuses of the 3D color lookup table, a tool that can be used for both good and evil, which is true for pretty much all tools.

But in earlier, more primitive days, the process of color timing was less exact and had more issues because it generally involved sending tests and film to the lab and seeing the results the next day.  But the system worked, it worked well, and some of the most fabulous films in the history of cinema used these now archaic processes.

There are some funny stories, however, and this is one of my favorites.  To understand the story, you have to know something about makeup effects, some of the reasons they are so helpful to the film making process, and also something about the difficult schedules associated with episodic television.

Makeup effects are a form of special effects that are based on the theatrical art of makeup.  Although the technologies behind it continue to advance with new materials and new approaches, it has a history that goes back directly to the earliest days of stage.  Most of the use of makeup is not for special effects however.   All actors seen on stage or on film wear makeup to make them look natural under the very unnatural lighting and to achieve certain effects depending on the distance of the audience and, for film, the effects of photography on the end results.   An actor that did not wear makeup would often look incorrect and take away from the story.  This is a very important part of the normal film making process.

Less often used, although it seems to be used a lot these days, are makeup effects which attempt to achieve something outside the normal process of makeup.  The classic examples are vampires, with their teeth, or Vulcan's with their pointy ears, and so forth.  Pretty much all of the classic villains of Batman have used makeup effects of one type or another to achieve what is special about their character.  One of my favorite characters in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy is a young actress whose outfit seems to be blue makeup. One of the great advantages of makeup effects is that once they have been photographed, and then color timed, you are (hopefully) done.  No more post production necessary or that is the idea.

Makeup effects in the service of the creation of character from Guardians of the Galaxy

But films and television did not always have so many green or blue women, and people were not always so used to seeing them, and this is my favorite story about such things.

A long time ago, episodic television was shot, and still may be shot, on a brutal schedule.  Each hour long episode needed to go into production with a script, and be completed in one month, on film, which was then broadcast.   There were usually four episodes in production at any one time.  This usually meant that each episode had one week on the stage with the actors for shooting and three weeks for post production.  There were exceptions to this rule, and the process made allowances for special episodes and special problems.  But it could not do so indefinitely, and when they screwed up they had to repeat an episode or do something else they did not want to do, and it was a big deal.

An episode in the third season of the first incarnation of Star Trek involved a very well known young actress and dancer, Yvonne Craig.  Although best known for her role as Batgirl in the original TV series, she was also an alumnus of the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo, and among other things, the famous green exotic dancer and slave girl in an episode of Star Trek.  This story comes from what happened when they shot that episode.

Presumably they would get her in early, spend hours putting on her makeup, shoot her few scenes, and then move on.  But when they got dailies back the next day, to their dismay they came back wrong.  She was not green, she was some kind of weird yellow.  Unusable.   So they called her in the next day, went through the makeup process, shot her scenes and sent her home.  And it came back from the lab a weird yellow.

Now at this point we are nearing disaster.  The episode can not keep on just shooting as long as it wants, it pretty much has to wrap within a day or two.  But someone got the bright idea to call the lab and ask if anything unusual was going on that might have caused this.  Perhaps that is the first thing they should have done, in hindsight, but it did not occur to them, or so the story goes.

And it turned out that the lab was convinced that the green dancer they were seeing was some sort of mistake they had made in processing, that of course the show would not have shot a nearly naked woman in full-body green makeup, and so they color timed the result to make it looks as much like flesh tones as they could and hoped it would be good enough. Today of course we would not blink an eye at green exotic dancers who are also Orion slave girls, but those were a more innocent time.

Anyway, the problem was solved, and one of the more famous sequences involving Star Trek's sexist exploitation of women was famously born.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Craig

revised 6/8/2015