This might ruin a movie for you. Consider yourself warned...

Yes my friends, I am going to use my blog to write what could be construed as a movie review. If you are one of those people like me who prefers to see the movie before completely judging it, stop now, go see Batman Begins, which is not a total waste of money, and THEN come back here and read my blog. However, if you are unaffected by reading about movies before seeing them (and I don't think I will really be able to give anything away about this one...) then read on. Consider yourself warned...

So yes, I went to see the new Batman movie tonight. I would like to state as a disclaimer that yes, this was my first Batman movie I've ever seen so that might skew my opinion a little bit. I wasn't even planning on going to see this one until I read some really great reviews in the NYTimes and the LA paper. Even Lawrence Topman, our deranged movie review in Charlotte thought it was good. And now, listen closely because this is important, I will admit what my first reaction was to the movie. I'm sure you all have had that moment during the movie where you go "wow, this movie is better than..." or "man, i can't wait to see this again" or I suppose sometimes "kill me now." With all the build up, i'm sure you are thinking that the third option is what I thought. But in reality, about halfway through the movie, after yet another witty line of dialogue and flashy stunts, I said to myself "this might even be a better movie than either of the X-Men movies! Michael Caine sure is funnier!"

So if you didn't heed my warning about reading this before seeing the movie, now would be a good time to stop before I point out some things which have soured the whole experience for me.

Yes, movies are an experience. We pay money to sit in a dark room with strangers and watch people do brave things or fall in love or do things to make us laugh or cry. And in the midst of these actions, we often find reason to relate to the images on screen in a way we have trouble doing in our day to day lives. At the end, we either sit and watch all the names scroll down the screen or else stand up immediately to talk to our friends about "what we thought." So tonight I paid money (well, Matt the bank did but I'm going to pay him back...) to see a movie which reviewers promised would be entertaining and truly it was. But at that moment when I left, all I could think about was how messed up our society is. I would say corrupt but that would imply it has been better in the past.

I'm talking about women and the role of women in society. Yes, I'm going to get on my feminism soapbox now. I've been thinking a lot lately about movies and plays and the role of female energy within various productions. I've recently figured out that the reason I don't like movies such as Gladiater, Troy, or Master and Commander, to name a few, is that we are supposed to cheer at the heroics men, who make up only half of the world we live in. The women are always "supporting characters," added to the story to get a wider audience and I suppose in some cases to "enrich the story." These epic tales are hard for me to relate to because my experience as a woman is not even acknowledged. I don't know if I am making much sense at the moment because I'm basing this all on some performance theory I studied last fall in my class, "Theory, Performance, and Social Justice" which illustrates the dichotomy of masculine and feminine characters.

The basic idea, which I will go back and read about later and find the citations for it, is that although women can be fully entertained by watching characters in the typically "male" roles, men are often only entertained by those characters playing masculine roles. This means they can be entertained by women playing roles traditionally defined as being "male" roles, pretty much doing what a man would do. Have you noticed in war movies or police movies, the female characters are often hyper masculine (I'm thinking Demi Moore in GI Jane or the female police officer in SWAT). These characters are a far cry from what I would like to see more of which is women being women on screen, playing strong roles which do not necessitate an association with masculine stereotypes. Most movies with women in the lead role are considered "chick flicks," especially if there is a love interest involved. Batman Begins, however, has only one female character. In addition, the only "ethnic" characters are Morgan Freeman (who is absent for most of the movie because he's too busy working in the "dungeons") and the multitude of Kung Fu bad guys! I just want to point out that a whole other diatribe could be written on race and the movies but right now, I'm going to concentrate on women.

So there is one female, Rachel, who is the whiny assistant DA who is, of course, a beautiful idealist. She is not in a position of power, seeing as she has a male boss and when she says something "out of line," the men in the movie call her on it and she gets reprimanded. Like all female love interests in superhero stories, she constantly needs rescuing, and when she does get to fight a bad guy, it is with a tazer (don't know the spelling exactly) against a wimpy villian who has a defective "mask." In other words, the "weak" villain who, I hate to say it, might stereotypically be called the "girly" villain. He even had big lips like Angelina Jolie. There were a few white women sitting around at the Wayne Corp board meetings and I think I might have seen a female cop somewhere. But other than that, it was as if the "fairer" sex did not exist. There were several blatently sexist remarks in the movie which I will leave for you to discover.

So here's what i want to do. I am going to go to blockbuster and rent a bunch of movies I've never seen as part of my summer "research." Lara Croft, Elektra, and Catwomen, here I come! I want to watch "action" movies this summer so I can see if I"m really imagining how lopsided the market is. I want to see women kick ass, to be honest! One of the reasons I love the TV show Alias is the fact that Sydney kicks bad guy butt. Performance theory would probably say her role is appealing because she is playing a masculine role but that is where I think that article i read (which I will cite later) is wrong. She uses what she knows and feels as a women to combat evil unabashedly. She is not afraid to take help from men but it does not mean she necessarily "needs" it. As far as stereotypes go, she is not hyper-masculine, she is not afraid to use her "feminine intuition" aka emotions to fight world crime, and she can still have romance without sacrificing who she is and what she does. So where is her character in the movies? Are there movies with characters like her which are just passed off as bad movies? Or is it something we still need more of in the film world. I know Lara Croft had a large male fan base but was that because she was a woman kicking ass or just a nice ass to look at while on screen in very tight clothes. I'll have to see the movie and judge for myself. And you know I'm a fan of judging movies, after this long post.

So to end on a positive not, Bruce Wayne has the best sidekicks ever. The only thing that would have made his sidekicks of Morgan Freedman and Michael Caine better would have been if they were female.

That's all I have to say. Thank you for reading this far and I hope I don't want to take back everything I said above tomorrow. I literally came home from the movie, without talking about it with my friends, and spilled what I thought here. I think its going to occupy my mind for a while so there may be more posts. I hope you'll still read on! Leave a comment if you have an opinion about what I said or the movie in general. I want to know what other people think because that will have an impact on how I form my own opinion. Thanks!