With Avengers: Age of Ultron set to premiere in the United States in just over a week, the press tour has gone into overdrive, and the headlining stories have been… unfortunate. They’re anything but the movie, for one thing.
Yesterday, Robert Downey Jr. suffered an extremely uncomfortable interview that prompted him to awkwardly walk out with tears in his eyes. It was a heartbreaking, sobering moment for a man we’ve seen as a titan in armor. Today, stars Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner are facing backlash for some questionable comments.
By questionable, I mean totally random and kind of bad.
“She’s a slut,” Jeremy Renner refers to fictional character Black Widow, the lone woman of the blockbuster super team.
“She has a prosthetic leg anyway,” says Chris Evans. (We’ll get to this one in a little bit.)
Let’s get this on the table first: They were jokes. Coming off an exhaustive shoot for a multi-million dollar movie, going on endless press tours answering the same, numbing, corporate-approved questions over and over again while struggling just to stay awake thanks to jet lag and constant media attention, Renner and Evans probably were just looking to have some fun and kick back.
However, that doesn’t excuse it from being bad jokes.
First, they’re a bit out of context. Defenders of these comments will argue that we’re taking their remarks out of context, but I question whether they actually have the ability to follow a conversation.The subject that prompted the remarks was about shipping Black Widow with some of the other Avengers (which I’d normally also stamp as sexist, but it’s such a popular topic amongst fans, particularly the female fans, there isn’t much negative baggage associated with it), and it would have just been harmless, if pointless babble.
Then Jeremy Renner called Black Widow a slut.
I mean, it’s jarring. Yeah, it’s about a fictional character, and that’s just what I’d even point out: she’s a fictional character. What the fuck is the point even mentioning her sex life? This isn’t Nymphomaniac either where sex is a major theme. This is Avengers where the goal is to sell t-shirts and toys.
It’s unfortunate this had to happen the same week Marvel — often the exemplars of progressive, inclusive storytelling and representation — are still reflecting some dumb boy’s club attitudes. In one major example, they’ve come under fire for not selling Black Widow merchandise at the same volume of her male counterparts. Being sold and marketed to isn’t exactly the pinnacle of diversity in my eyes, but it’s certainly reflective of larger attitudes at work.
More toys means more kids can grow up enjoying this stuff. It ensures the things you loved will live on for generations long after you’re rotting in the ground. Besides, pretend you’re a kid again and think about it: You don’t want others to play toys with? I was pretty lonely playing Power Rangers toys by myself as a kid, I would have been happy if anyone else, whoever they were, wanted to join me.
Black Widow, however problematic her character may be (not sure if a cold-hearted killer is a great role model for anybody) has become something of a spirit animal for much of the female Marvel fans, who are literally half the movie-going audience. The slut-shaming comments by two of the film’s stars against the one female character has caused quite the dissonance and vitriol from fans — and defenders of comedy or some kind of bullshit alike.
https://twitter.com/julietaube/status/591121136240431104
https://twitter.com/TrancewithMe/status/591111886999048192
https://twitter.com/ItsAshRush/status/590893729243734016
(I only pulled these four tweets just to illustrate, you can find far more with a simple search on Twitter or any comment on every article about this story on every other online outlet. Go nuts.)
I can’t quite subscribe to the “she’s a fictional character” argument. Not only are we in this kinda fucked up era where weirdos in Japan try to marry anime characters and you can’t surf Tumblr without readiNG CAPS-LOCK LADEN POSTS ABOUT THE FEELS AND REALNESS OF fiction, but we also project pieces of ourselves onto the inanimate figures who live only on paper and binary codes. How we treat and view those characters can be telling, because in some weird way it’s kind of how we treat ourselves. Ever took up martial arts because of your favorite Power Ranger? There’s a whole sect of ’90s kids who did.
If I really wanted to push buttons I’d say there’s a whole population of people who worship fictional characters and that I attended school for eighteen years devoted to said fictional characters, but I’m not in that kind of mood right now.
All of this is just unfortunate. Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner are humans and they deserve to fuck up, whether they think they were or not.
But they’ve also demonstrated themselves to be exemplary role models, and their fame in portraying superheroes have elevated them into a unique position where once only sports athletes occupied. They literally act out acts of heroism, and to an 8-year-old kid it doesn’t matter how much CGI and rendering it took because Captain America just saved people from falling wreckage! We can debate the merits and responsibilities of celebrities as a whole all day, but that won’t change the fact that people like Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner do have young eyes watching their every move and will imitate them in every way they can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEgzt9FP9gI
I’m happy “slut-shaming” and other types of body-shaming actually have names and that more and more people are speaking out against them. It’s insidious discrimination, to categorize people as lesser than you without actually assigning them a specific water fountain they can drink from. It’s blatant sexism, and I can’t defend that kind of casual hate speech — and make no mistake, casual, everyday, “we’re just joking” speech does as much damage as any major protest or discriminatory law can. I can speak from experience.
These are jokes, but they’re bad jokes and they shouldn’t just be “let go.” Let’s not crucify Renner and Evans and acknowledge that we’re all hella stoked for Avengers: Age of Ultron next week. But after this and Trevor Noah,* can we finally talk about what actually constitutes as comedy and what doesn’t? Can we finally accept that “harmless” sexism is anything but harmless?
Can we just not accept people being a bunch of fucking douchebags for once?
As far as the “she’s got a prosthetic leg” comment goes, allow me to dip a toe into the misogyny pool and introduce you to someone who I’d totally take in a manly fashion.
If there’s one thing sexier than a nice pair of legs, it’s strength.
*Not sure where this belongs, but it’s necessary that we not forget that unlike Trevor Noah neither Evans or Renner have earned a paycheck doing stand-up. Arguments about defending comedy go out the window in this situation.