Blood Rayne 2
This evening's terrible Amazon Prime movie is dedicated to the Twitter person who yelled at me for doing these. Last night's BLOODRAYNE was pretty bad, but there's a 2 and a 3 and I'm a completionist PLUS sometimes sequels are better than the first shitty movie. We call this "Dungeons&Dragons sequel syndrome". The entire description is...the shortest description we've done so far. "Blood Rayne is back! This time, the sexy heroine battles a gang of merciless vampire cowboys led by Billy the Kid."
That sounds kinda awful, but on the other hand I liked PRIEST (2011) and that was basically the same thing but with Paul Bettany. Paul is doing god's work by keeping me bi, though, so he can carry a pretty weak premise. We're opening with theme music that makes me want to bust out HE RODE A BLAZING SADDLE!!!! I never played these games; are the movies anything like the game plot?
Shut Up!
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Blood Rayne
Ok, we're on a zombie roll so let's try ATTACK OF THE SOUTHERN FRIED ZOMBIES. "Lonnie, a crop duster pilot, must lead a mismatched group of survivors to escape the deadly zombie horde after an experimental chemical intended to control the invasive kudzu vine--" Oh no. Why wouldn't you test it first if you're going to SPRAY IT OUT OF AIRPLANES. Ok, it's a test field and not downtown Charleston, but there's kids in the field drinking illicit beers. Zombism ensues.
The duster pilot is telling the scientists that southerners LOVE kudzu and "we even cook with it". I-- Like, I'm sure kudzu is edible but please be careful where you pick because anything, like, growing ROADSIDE isn't great for you, I'm pretty sure. They're cooking goats who eat the kudzu and feeding people at a festival, so I'm assuming that'll be a disease vector. There's some kind of weird jingoism where the scientists are a Japanese woman and a German man, and they don't understand the rich cultural ways of The Great American Sith.* (*autocorrect, and it stays.)
Shut Up!
Daylight's End
Depression sucks and so do I but maybe a movie will help. This is called DAYLIGHT'S END and I assume it's going to be about vampires. My autocorrect wanted to turn that into babies, which is honestly more scary. Has anyone done a hoard of zombie toddlers. "Years after a mysterious plague has devastated the planet and turned most of humanity into blood-hungry creatures, a rogue drifter on a vengeful hunt stumbles across a band of survivors in a police station."
That sounds fine, but it won't live up to the idea of an army of toddler vampires. Think of the natural advantage they'd have!! No one would be able to hurt them just because human psychology is a real bitch about babies, and they'd be able to fit into any hiding space. Oh wow, someone actually put some thought into the premise. The car windows are all covered with fencing and the car handle is plated over for safety.
Shut Up!
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Ariel is absolutely the most important Disney Princess to me, and absolutely no one needs her to be white in order to identify with her story. The live-action casting decision is excellent. The Disney Princess decision you ought to be mad about is giving Belle to an actress who couldn't sing Belle's range.
IF* white Danes feel they are lacking in representation, I am reliably informed by 90% of cis people that you can just make your own movie if you don't feel like mainstream media has you covered. (*"IF", I said.)
Anyway, none of the Disney princesses NEED to be white. Their stories don't hinge on them being white in the same way that being, for example, Black is a literal plot point for Tiana. (It's why they try to refuse to sell her the building for her restaurant!!) We've spent so long using whiteness as a default for any character who didn't *need* to be non-white and that should be changed. This is a good step.
We've reached the point of the discussion where people who don't remember the movie tell me that TLM is antifeminist so: ARIEL IS A SCIENTIST WHO FLEES AN ABUSIVE FAMILY TO LIVE OUT HER DREAMS. SHE GIVES UP THE THING HER FATHER VALUED HER FOR IN ORDER TO BE HER OWN PERSON. And, yes, a boy is also there. Women don't become antifeminist for liking boys, sorry. Eric is an ally.
P.S. The weird insistence that life without a voice is a joyless nightmare is ableist as fuck. Stop it, and go learn sign language. It's a good thing to know, period.
The really interesting thing to me about The Little Mermaid discourse is that no one thinks it's weird for Cinderella and Rapunzel to leave their abusive mothers. Yet people completely forget Triton is abusive. I think it's a combination of misogyny and toxic masculinity: a father who violently "protects" his daughter's sexuality--even to the point of terrifying her and destroying her possessions--is normalized and even lionized in our culture.
I think, too, there's the problem that most of us want to be mermaids so we think Ariel left paradise. If she were a human leaving a human family to be a mermaid and wed a merman/maid, we'd be fully supportive. There's also a tremendous amount of ableism: that giving up a voice to be free is worse than death. Yet very few people think Rapunzel trading her hair and magic to be free was a bad trade. FREEDOM IS IMPORTANT.
I grew up in a household where my dad was the scary angry one when punishments were being handed out. I completely understood why Ariel was leaving. Eric isn't incidental, of course, but he's an anchor to hold onto: she wants to be human and he's a safe human who can help. There's also some bioessentialism: Cinderella and Rapunzel are being abused by non-bio-parents**. Triton, the redeemable abusive parent, is biologically related to Ariel. There's a strong implication that this is WHY he's "redeemable" at the end. We value bio parents most. (**I hesitate to call Gothel a parent because she's Rapunzel's kidnapper and captor, but for purposes of this discussion I believe it's worth analogizing to Triton.)
It's also worth noting that URSULA is the one that places and keeps the focus on Eric, because she thinks he's an Impossible Goal that Ariel won't be able to attain. I don't agree that Ariel left the sea "for a man", but even if she did that would really just make her...a mermaid Cinderella. The deal for her voice isn't fair. It's not *supposed* to be fair. Ursula is a villain, even though people seem to forget that, too. She's trying to set Ariel up to lose a bet. Ariel agrees because the alternative is an abusive situation she can't remain in. She can't run. Triton rules all the seas. Her only escape is land--and Ursula knows that. She's the devil, offering a bargain that seems too good to be true and which she intends to be impossible to win.
The reading of TLM where Ariel is a silly girl who gives up her voice on a whim for a boy is one that erases Triton's abuse, Ursula's scheming, and Ariel's agency as she attempts to wrest her freedom from her father and from his political enemies (Ursula).
@JanetteKirchner. My dad never destroyed my stuff (until I moved out) but the rage and the shouting *cringes* If memory serves, Triton was also patronizing "oh, her new found interest will pass in a week because teen girl" Which was used on me a lot.
Yeah, the bit where Triton is *thrilled* Ariel is in love until he realizes it's a human was VERY FAMILIAR to me as a queer girl being raised in a Christian cult who was only allowed to date male members of same. Yes, it would've been more subversive if Eric were Erin, and the queer subtext of their forbidden love had been textual. Sure. I'd LOVE to see that in the reboot. But the idea that girls dating boys is inherently not queer feels kinda bi-erasurey. And there's a whole conversation to be had about how everyone assumes a m/f pairing is straight, but I'm tired.
Shut Up!
