Thor: The Dark World, Part 2: Female characters & representation.

Previously: Part 1, Heroes & Villains.

I was extremely careful not to read any spoilers before I saw this movie, which is just as well because it's VERY spoilery. The one thing I did see beforehand was part of a review that said Jane's role was mostly to "faint on cue", which made me rather apprehensive. There's probably going to be a lot of debate over this among fans, but I personally thought the depiction of women in Thor: TDW was very good. If Jane had been the only female character, I wouldn't have been pleased by the fact that she fainted a lot, but there are four women in this movie (one more than in The Avengers, which had a far larger ensemble cast), and each of them has an important role in their own right. On the simplest level, this is how representation works: the more women you have in your movie, the more leeway you have to let one of them be "weak" -- whatever that means.
Jane's characterisation is very solid thanks to the first movie, and I appreciate the number of publicity interviews Natalie Portman has done where she talks about strength of character vs. the concept of "strong female characters". Sif is a warrior. Frigga is an witch and a diplomat and a mother, who can fight if she has to. Jane is brave and curious and smart, but she's not a fighter. Darcy is independent and fun and "normal". All four of those characters are "emotional", but not in a way that's coded to make them seem hysterical/weepy/stupid, which is often how some people interpret "emotional" female characters. A female character who faints a lot sets off alarm bells because we associate it with swooning damsels in distress, but a female character who has no weaknesses is a more insidious problem. I suppose they probably could've done better than Jane being Maguffinised for half the movie, but I think it worked in the context of her being the mortal girlfriend of a near-indestructable alien, which I can only assume will be the primary conflict in the Thor/Jane romance storyline in any potential sequels.

Dolce and Gabbana, Fall 2013.

Entirely by accident, this season's Dolce & Gabbana turned out to be incredibly topical. Inspired by the Vatican and showing at Fashion Week just after the news broke about the Pope's retirement, this collection was guaranteed to appear prominently on the pages of every fashion magazine in the known universe. The only thing better than tall thin ladies wearing sparkly clothes is tall thin ladies wearing sparkly clothes in a newsworthy context. For this reason, I'm going to take a few moments to consider the implications of our briefly Popeless world. NEWS.

photos from Style.com

You know in movies when there's a retired cop (probably played by Bruce Willis) who is brought back for One Last Job? Well, I'm kinda wondering if it's the same with popes. Like, if in the next couple of weeks there's an unexpected demonic armaggedon, can we call Pope Benedict XVI out of retirement to lead the faithful into holy war? Ignoring the fact that it's kind of illogical already to be able to hand in your resignation from being the earthly voice of god, I'm curious about the Pope Emergency issue. Hopefully we can still rely on Ratzinger to come to our aid in times of Biblical disaster.

The Hollow Crown, Part 1: Richard II.

Caveat: I am no Shakespeare scholar. I come at Shakespeare from the perspective of a pop-culture nerd, meaning that when I lived in London I was the person getting weird looks from the ushers at the Globe Theatre because I'd be all like, "No, don't give me a programme! I don't want spoilers!" Spoilers for King Lear, that is. I get why some people like to read plays before they see them, but I wouldn't read the script of The Avengers before seeing that so why should Richard II be any different? Usually this works out fine as long as I pay attention to the performance, although I did have some trouble the other week when I went to see Alan Cumming's one-man Macbeth, which was kinda hard to follow because, you know, he was playing all the roles. Fortunately I'm Scottish, and all Scottish people are forced to memorise the plot of Macbeth while being beaten with birch twigs and standing on a blasted heath at midnight as a rite of passage, which certainly comes in very useful in situations like this.

The other problem facing me when embarking upon the first installment of the BBC's Hollow Crown series was a complete lack of knowledge about the Wars of the Roses. I'm pretty sure that the Wars of the Roses are a History class staple in England, but Scottish education system tends to concentrate more on the Reformation, mostly for practical reasons because people in Scotland still get into barfights on a semi-regular basis about things that happened during the Reformation. I watched Richard II with a group of Scots and even though we had at least one History degree among us, we still weren't 100% certain whether Richard II took place in the 14th or 15th century until we wikipedia'd it afterwards. (N.B. Watching Shakespeare's English History plays in a roomful of Scots is ideal because the entire plot revolves around English people killing each other, which gives us all a schadenfreude thrill.)
As soon as Richard showed up I knew I was going to love him. I'd never seen Ben Whishaw in anything before, but I can now go on record to say that he's my new #1 casting choice for any roles that require a slimy, effeminate dweeb to Gaius Baltar his way around all the other characters while flopping onto furniture and sobbing about how misunderstood he is. A+ KINGING, BEN WHISHAW.