I finally got around to watching Iron Man over the weekend, and I liked it a lot. Definitely the best superhero origin movie I can remember, and considering how much of the movie Robert Downey, Jr. has to spend talking to himself, that’s pretty impressive. But there has been something nagging at me since I finished the movie and started looking at some of the deleted scenes: there’s a really ugly attitude toward women present. I know Tony Stark has the whole playboy lifestyle, but we’re going beyond a guy who dates a lot of women to a guy who employs flight attendants whose job appears to be to double as strippers who are willing to sleep with Stark and anyone he’s flying on his jet. And almost every woman in the movie appears prepared to drop whatever they’re doing to hop into bed with Stark. Even the reporter who antagonizes Tony, confronts him with evidence of his company’s wrongdoing, and questions his cover story sleeps with him. And after she does, she gets catty with Pepper Potts – seemingly the only woman who has avoided sleeping with Tony – and Pepper returns the favor. My sense is that this is all supposed to be a joke – that Tony is an irresponsible hedonist ramped up to the nth degree and the movie wants to showcase that excess. But I can’t help but be a little worried about people who don’t pick up on the joke, or who think Tony has it right in the first place.
Author Archive
Man of Iron, Women of No Substance?
Posted December 2, 2008 By Dave ThomerNew Coat of Paint
Posted November 29, 2008 By Dave ThomerI’ve changed the WordPress theme that Not News uses in order to use a theme that’s compatible with the upgraded version of WordPress. Other than adding the Amazon widget to the sidebar I haven’t tweaked it yet, but I’m going to be tinkering over the next month or so. So please excuse any dust.
Blogging Dewey: Politics vs. Philosophy
Posted November 29, 2008 By Dave ThomerI managed to get sucked into a discussion of pragmatism as it’s understood politically vs. how it’s understood philosophically. There are some things I want some time to chew on, especially regarding the political weakness of Dewey’s pragmatism. But it’s a pretty good discussion as it stands.
Best. Week. Ever.
Posted November 9, 2008 By Dave ThomerI would just like to take a moment to review a recent seven-day period:
Wednesday, October 29: The Philadelphia Phillies win the World Series at home, ending a 25-year drought for the city’s four major sports teams.
Friday, October 31: I take my daughter trick-or-treating. She has chosen to go out as Princess Leia. This occurs on the same day as the parade honoring the 2008 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies.
Sunday, November 2: My birthday. To celebrate, several members of my family come by to visit, including my two cousins from Georgia. (This site also celebrates its eighth anniversary.)
Tuesday, November 4: The country elects Barack Obama – who had previously announced that he would be cheering for the 2008 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies – as the next President of the United States.
Seriously – 1996 is the year Pattie and I started going out, and 2002 is the year my daughter was born. Those are the only two years I can think of that 2008 does not blow right out of the water on the basis of that week alone. Stephen Colbert joked that the Large Hadron Collider had thrown us into a parallel universe exactly like our own, except Obama was president and the Phillies are world champions. If so, I really need to buy those Collider folks a beer. I like it here.
And now that my brain is not overloaded with campaign stuff, and now that I harbor some hope that smart policies might actually have a chance to be implemented, I’m hoping to have some more brain space to devote to the site here.
It’s Outta Here!
Posted October 30, 2008 By Dave ThomerMy roommate from college called me a few hours ago. We met fifteen years ago, hanging out in a lounge in our dorm at Fordham. There were several baseball fans from Philadelphia and South Jersey, and we gathered to watch the Phillies beat the Braves in the NL Championship Series. I can remember watching the Blue Jays win that World Series.
As my roommate said tonight: “This is much better.”
I gave my wife my credit card, ’cause you could probably convince me to buy just about any old thing right now as long as it has “2008 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies” on it.
Some Days It’s the Little Things
Posted October 14, 2008 By Dave ThomerLast night I was doing some searches for music – mostly because I was trying to psych myself up to buy The National’s album Boxer (I did) and because I wanted to see if Matthew Sweet’s new album was as disappointing as his last one (it’s not, but that doesn’t mean it rises to the level of “good,” unfortunately). But while I was at it, I decided to check if The Jayhawks’ Rainy Day Music was back in print – and lo and behold, it’s been reissued. One dollar later, “Save It for a Rainy Day” is in my iTunes library, and the sun is shining a little bit brighter, metaphorically speaking.
A Superstition Resolved: Obama in Mayfair
Posted October 13, 2008 By Dave ThomerSixteen years ago, on my seventeenth birthday, I stood outside the Mayfair Diner in Northeast Philadelphia at 5:30 in the morning to see the man I hoped would be the next president of the United States. Bill Clinton’s voice was long gone during that campaign marathon right before Election Day, but it was still quite a moment to be that close to a man running for the highest office in the land – especially since he won. Not that I thought I had anything to do with it, of course, but I never did make it to a Gore rally in 2000 or a Kerry rally in 2004. Four years ago I resolved that I wasn’t going to let myself feel like there was something else I could’ve done to support my preferred candidate, and come hell or high water that meant I was going to go to a rally in 2008.
See that little flash of maroon cap in the lower left hand corner? Mission accomplished. Saturday morning, I was outside the Mayfair Diner at 5:30 in the morning once again. This time, I was a volunteer for the campaign, assigned to ushering duties. This meant that I had the increasingly impossible job of asking a crowd of thousands to please not push forward to get closer to the stage. The upside is that by the time the crowd finished converging on me, I had a damn good spot close to the podium. You can see some of the pictures I was able to grab over on Flickr. At this point I can’t say Obama’s speech surprised me – I’ve seen versions of it so many times by now. But it felt good to be part of the energy of the crowd, to see all the people for whom this election is so important.
What a Difference Four Years Makes
Posted October 8, 2008 By Dave ThomerI’m here at my PC doing some data entry and iTunes has pulled up “I Wanted to Be Wrong” from R.E.M.’s 2004 album Around the Sun. Now, this is one of the songs from Around the Sun that I like, which is why it’s still in my iTunes library. But there’s probably an interesting commentary on the way the mood of the country has changed over the last four years in the contrast between this quiet, haunted, perplexed song and the mad-as-hell intensity of the tunes from Accelerate. And I find it oddly difficult to pull up the 2004 mood in my own emotional memory.
We Gotta Believe
Posted September 23, 2008 By Dave ThomerFollowing up a little bit on the thought from my Letter to the Editor:
I am well aware of the fact that Bill Clinton and many of his financial advisers went along with the deregulation push, and I don’t absolve them of that. I do think that the overall Clinton economic record of rising income and declining inequality is a goal worth re-attaining, but it sure does look like revising and re-instituting some regulation and oversight of the financial industry is gong to be vital. This is especially true since it seems to me like finance and investment is very dependent on belief creating reality – there has to be something to keep everyone’s faith intact.
In that light, I’m heartened to see that it looks like NY Times writer Paul Krugman believes that Senator Chris Dodd’s proposal has some real teeth in it to make corporate behavior more accountable to the country at large. I’ve already called one senator’s office to voice my support – although the staffer I spoke to seemed pretty disinterested; I’ll probably follow up with an e-mail after the hearings close today.
We Only Get 150 Words in the Sun
Posted September 18, 2008 By Dave ThomerHad a letter to the editor printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer today. The paper cut out a line I had blasting Phil Gramm’s nation of whiners comment, but them’s the breaks. Since I allowed the paper to publish my e-mail address, I’ve gotten about a dozen responses, most of which are criticisms. I’m debating whether to reply or post more on the blog or what. But I do think it was a nice bit of placement that the letter showed up n the same editorial section as this unsigned editorial and an op-ed (which I can’t yet see online) that discusses Gramm’s role in 90s-era deregulation.