As for Alita: Battle Angel…
Moviegoers give this film 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, while critics give it 52%... Does anyone see the problem here?
My problem? I am remembering how as youths we said, “Don’t trust anybody over thirty.” I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe in the establishment right now, be it film critics or Washington, and I can’t believe in social justice warriors, either.
Sean Crawford
Hello Reader,
Got human nature?
Not me, I still don’t get it.
Extreme rightists might say that because I’m a university graduate, who had written for the student newspaper, and am still a writer today, then I would be a leftist or a snowflake or something. And sure, I have twice been asked to join the (socialist) New Democratic Party, and once was asked to join the Liberals. That’s while up in Canada. Supposedly then, if I went down into the US, I would think of joining the democratic party—No! Not this week!
Down on Democrats
I never thought I would lump US democrats with racists and sexists, at least in terms of functioning: Well, I live and learn.
Since racism hurts so badly, let’s start with sexism. In the 1940’s and 50’s there were the (slang term) Sad Sack comic books—he was in the non-glorious army: Because war-time was so recent, the humor of those years was non-glorious. In one old issue from my boyhood, Sad Sack and a buddy daydream about what would happen if the softer sex were in charge of the army, instead of the ladies being off in the Women’s Army Corps. It was silly, as you may well imagine, with the soldiers being gently allowed to sleep in, and take it easy.
In the 1950’s there was a science fiction short story where a fellow lands in the future, in a time and place where women have taken over. I recall a scene of a man with a beard and cotton dress on his knees scrubbing the corridor. All the 1950’s roles of women are performed by men—but at least there’s no war.
(Let’s by-pass the 1960’s where male activists, or social justice warriors, had the ladies, in their liberated slacks and jeans, fetching coffee. And let’s bypass the ongoing years where many Yankees thought that allowing Gays in the peace-time army would mean some men on parade wearing dresses. (This despite the leadership by example of nearby Canada, and Europe too))
In the 1970’s there was that movie about the southern union organizer, Norma Rae. An illustrative scene showed Blacks being beaten up by their White fellow workers, right after a rumour claimed Blacks were going to be in charge of the proposed new union, meaning: in charge of Whites…
What we are talking about here, in three different settings—army, civil and union—is an inability to imagine equal rights. Easier to imagine a “flip flop,” where the underdogs are not raised to equality, but raised up over top. Call it a poverty of imagination. Until this week, I would not have thought democrats would be as equally impoverished as racists.
But this very week I read a news story where folks thought that President Trump’s wall was to keep out not just illegal immigrants, but legal honest folks too. Reading this, I call “Flip flop!” I heard on the radio an angry chant to the effect that we will always allow refugees. Again I call “flip flop!” because the US, Trump included, has always allowed refugee folks in broad daylight, especially from communist nations, folks who honestly admit who they are. Not like illegals who don’t claim anything but slink in the shadows. So yes, I call flip flop.
I don’t get it: Do democrats confuse illegals with refugees, and with legals too, out of some strange emotional impairment or hatred or racism? I don’t know. Sadly, I’ll never be a writer of classic English literature because I don’t know people. Until this week, I would not have guessed democrats were—I dunno, hatred challenged?
Could their hatred of their government—and yes, I know democrats hold the majority of seats—be causing toxins in the blood going to the brain or something? There’s my new lesson: Rightist or leftist, army, civil or democrat, “hatred hurts the brain.”
As for me, I was once told “Sean, you out-liberal the liberals.” Maybe so, but if tomorrow I went down south I wouldn’t join the democrats. Not this week. Easier to just stay home and watch movies. Which reminds me: People who should be natural allies for Women’s Liberation are bashing the show about the battle angel, Alita.
Liking Alita: Battle Angel
I was on Youtube, viewing one person’s defence of the above live action science fiction feature film: Specifically, he was replying to various tweets by social justice warriors. The Youtube commenters? All were on his side. I was amused: It seemed like every second commenter was concluding: “From now on, every movie the social justice warriors disparage, is a movie I will rush to go see.”
The comments under the OST soundtrack are full of people who disagree with professional film reviewers. For example:
Phil Anderson
Saw it over the weekend with my daughter and we BOTH loved it. The action was amazing and watching Alita learn and grow and adapt to her instincts was wonderful to watch.
And i think that EVERYONE in her world underestimated her.
Many paid movie critics have a low opinion of the flic; the one on the Roger Ebert site gives it 2 and 1/2 stars out of 5. I like what a commenter on Ebert’s site experienced, after the reviewer had lowered his expectations of the (PG13) show: (Note: the review was not by Roger, may he rest in peace)
- Sam Mills Sam Mills • a day ago
Saw the film last night. I loved it! More than the people I went with who were expecting to love it and said it was "okay". I was expecting "okay" and I loved it.
There’s a lesson: If you keep in mind the show is just normal Hollywood, based on a normal (but above-average) Japanese comic book series, then you won’t expect it to be better than any other James Cameron strong-female-lead movie. (He co-wrote the script and produced it) While the comic was good enough to be one of the first to be translated, back when Dark Horse comics pioneered bringing over Japanese works, the film is not intended to be Hamlet, or Interstellar, or Arrival. On its own terms? I liked it. I’d see it again.
Movie Appreciation
In a sense, it’s a coming of age show, about a feisty heroine determined to have agency, to learn and grow. In the first minute of the film, in a world where cyborgs are common, Alita is mysteriously discovered by Doctor Ido (Eedo) on a scrap heap, being only a head and part of a spine. When activated, she has no memory of her past. Feisty, she wants to find out. Her new body, originally intended for Doctor Ido’s young daughter, is symbolically young. Not romantic, but still pretty.
Remember youth? I do, maybe because I left home for the big city as a minor, giving me vivid memories. “Naive” means “unexposed” to life: You find out the hard way how long food lasts in the refrigerator; your uncle Polonius may advise you to “neither a lender nor a borrower be,” but chances are you learn that the hard way too; and you find out about friends. So often on TV a group of young people shows someone at some point joyfully saying, “We’re like family!” In youth we all “want to believe,” and all too soon we discover “only the good die young.”
All this time we are wanting to know who am I… am I normal… and even, am I human?
Young Alita’s “love interest,” therefore, is not meant as a breathless kiss-kiss romance but as being what freelance journalists call a composite character, standing in for a newly arrived youth’s friends, including best girlfriend and a platonic male friend too. Hence Alita’s keen selfless interest is better likened not to romantic passion but to a naive teen crush. Remember? Quite believable to me, even if other critics frown.
I read a professional critic’s report that the whole theatre laughed when the boy looks past her mechanical arms and answers Alita fearful question: Yes, she is human, “the most human” to him. Well, sure, that’s exactly how the youth I remember talked. Corny but earnest. Nobody in the theatre I attended laughed just then. Perhaps the critic who heard that laughter was at a film festival among old establishment people too sophisticated for their own good.
Later in the movie Alita does her cyborg thing and upgrades to a new body, one which she “subconsciously” envisions as older and prettier, in both color and shape, but not precisely as plain as the average full-grown teenager’s body would be, according to the precise insurance actuarial tables. And here is where the social justice warriors get their knickers in a twist. I would say to them: Relax!
If Alita envisions herself as full-grown then maybe, centuries ago, before she went to the scrap heap, she did indeed have a full-grown body. As Alita does in the comics. As Greta Garbo did in the 1940’s, Marilyn Monroe in the 1950’s, and Rachel Welch in the 1960’s. As it happens, Alita isn’t half as curvy and stacked as Marilyn, but still pretty.
Hollywood fantasies are sexist, and so is Alita, say the critics who might be feminist wannabes, but surely lack perspective. Well, I see Hollywood beauty as inevitable, as surely as Fabio replaces me on the cover of every Harlequin romance. You might as well say it’s sexist when the actor who played Luke Skywalker, one day in a toy store, picked up an action figure of himself, widened his eyes and said, “They’ve got me on steroids!” Of course the pre-teen boys who play with toys don’t even know the word “sexist.” But I wish more adults did: They tell me the average social activist does NOT self-describe as feminist. Such a pity.
Alita is feisty, and so of course she will figuratively and literally (new body) grow beyond what her uncle-figure, Doctor Ido, wants her to do. In a fast two hour movie, a single disagreement is enough to symbolize this.
On the Internet I read much talk about Alita’s big eyes being controversial. But I don’t think the average movie goer sees anything wrong. Like sitting off to the far side of the screen, you quickly adjust. Japanese big eyes go back to the black-and-white years of an old scientist’s Astro Boy, back to when animators in Japan were inspired by the eyes of Bambi and other Disney characters. If I lived in a fantasy future I would tell any girl who fearfully asked me about her eyes, “All the better to enjoy you, my dear.”
I like calling people “dear.” I should do so more often. Quite unlike social justice warriors and democrats, I would rather softly sing Kume by yah, or even, God forbid at my age, savour the howling of a loud heavy metal band, anything rather than squish my brain by indulging in hatred and outrage, and rushing off and stumbling to worship at the altar of the latest flakey ephemeral tweets.
Sean Crawford
Calgary
February
2019
Q: How many Social Justice Warriors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, they rush in to help as soon as you tweet—but you end up changing a lot of brand new bulbs.
Footnotes:
~Coincidentally, as regards Hollywood’s moving pictures versus the written word, today I am getting hits on my archived August 2015 essay on Plain sf and Media sci-fi.
~Link to current BBC article on Why so many young women don’t call themselves feminists
~LATE BREAKING NEWS ON CANADA HAVING “DEMOCRATS” TOO as the establishment in Ottawa seizes on distractions, such as calling Albertans "white supremacists" to avoid dealing with the issues of oil development and pipelines.
This morning’s column by Licia Corbella, in both of Calgary’s daily papers begins,
“The bigotry against western Canada just keeps on rollin’. How else to describe the commentary on Twitter and in some other media coverage in Ottawa on Tuesday over the United We Roll convoy of some 200 trucks filled with people from across Canada protesting against federal government policies that harm Canada’s resource sector—particularly oil and gas.
…
On CBC TV’s Power and Politics, the reporter who was invited to the show to talk about the rally on Parliament Hill following an almost five-day, 3,200-km drive didn’t even mention the carbon tax, or Bills C-69 or C-48, which are the main causes of concern and reason behind this convoy. It’s troubling and, again, so very bigoted.
...”
NOTE: Bill C-69 is the one that will make it impossible to ever build new pipelines, and to ever get Canadian oil and gas to non-North American markets. It’s an open secret, documented in the newspaper but not officially “news,” that Yankee imperialism, i.e. big oil, is funding the anti-pipeline efforts in Canada.
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