I’m not calling it objectification because I’m skeptical of the concept in the first place. It’s a handy tool for some to denounce presentations of sexuality and beauty they dislike by reducing it to the mechanical and nonhuman. But the same thing surrounded by different window dressing is a-ok. Right.
I think I made it pretty clear that what I was doing was calling out the reviewer for saying objectification does not exist when he/she would have labeled those same elements objectification if there wasn’t a few warrior females lurking around the background. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. It’s either objectification or it isn’t - you don’t get to pick and choose based on what you think about other elements of the flick.
And there is ALWAYS a plot reason for the nekkid wimmin to be there - maybe they’re squirming around in the pagan temple of a debauched religion the hero must oppose, or to heighten the eroticism of a romantic encounter between two characters.
Besides, nekkid warrior wimmin are one of the oldest and most threadbare themes in kinky fantasy lit and comics. And you’re using THAT as a basis to claim objectification is not present? No, you’re just giving it a pass because you like the pseudo-feminist elements they surround it with in this movie - but they don’t change what it is. If you believe that objectification is a thing in the first place, then you have to identify it in this movie. Otherwise, you’re just being a hypocrite.
Agreed. The story and character development was non-existent. It was a car chase in the desert with explosions for 2 hours. The movie was awful! I guess if you enjoy fast and furious movies…this is for you. If you enjoy movies for a real story instead of cgi nonsense, this one is for you.
If they can make gasoline from crude, they can surely make synthetic rubber!
These criticisms were very apt for the second movie, where it was just a wasteland full of biker gangs inexplicably well-supplied with gasoline and parts.
3 and Fury Road depict “recovery” scenarios, though, where there are (at least ostensibly) functioning economies.
Fury Road’s world feels a lot like Borderlands, to me. I can’t help but see the warboys as a tip of the hat.
You’re contradicting yourself. So you don’t think wet t-shirt contests and naked valkyries in towers aren’t usually considered objectification? Because you certainly implied that you think objectification is common in movies of this sort. And it sounds like you’re the one who didn’t watch the movie, if you missed the warrior women lurking around.
You also seem to have missed the fact this was one of the dumbest flicks of the past 10 years.
I know this is an Appeal to Authority - but I am smarter than you and I didn’t think the film was dumb.
World War Z was a dumb movie, full of people making horrible decisions.
While simple, the plot didn’t have any real plot holes (and trust me, I obsess about bad plot holes). The character motivations were clear and stayed true to character. The action was a bit over the top in places, but compared to something like Michael Bay it was refreshingly realistic.
Objectification is not a function of scantily cladness (though that is often a factor). It’s treating people like objects. That’s why it’s called that. A fully dressed woman might be objectified, and a nude woman might not be. Would she still be naked if there were no horny dudes in the audience? If the answer is yes, then it’s probably not objectification.
Since you don’t believe objectification is a thing, perhaps you’re not the one best suited to defining it? You can’t seem to imagine a woman in a wet T-shirt in any context other than a contest for male attention, so maybe you have issues with the idea of agency?
So you don’t think the wet t-shirt contest and nekkid Valkyrie were there for the horny dudes in the audience? Seriously? The purpose was titillation - I don’t see how you can deny that.
And yes, because I’ve given quite a bit of thought to concepts like objectification and how it’s basically a subjective notion used to object to expressions of sexuality the speaker personally dislikes, I think I am quite qualified to address the topic.
To be fair, the second movie was all about fighting over gasoline and a refinery. I don’t look for a whole lot of verisimilitude in a movie wherein three of the four named settlements are named after their chief contributions to this word’s economy (i.e., Gas Town, the Bullet Farm, and the Green Place… they might as well have named the Citadel something like Joe’s Hydrant instead). But that’s okay; none of these movies are supposed to be realistic depictions of what might happen in a plausibly real postapocalyptic future, and in fact each movie since the first has strayed farther and farther from reality and deeper into comic-book land. If I were to care about believability, I might wonder lots of things: how were the enormous steel chains and gears forged to make the Citadel’s giant elevator, if it still needs pedal-power to propel it? How does such a bountiful spring of fresh water emerge only a couple hundred feet up a mesa, while the valley floor below remains parched and arid? Why does Immortan Joe think that clear plastic armor is even a little bit useful? What exactly is he breathing? What combination of available resources and tactical need convinced him that this rig right here:
…was an appropriate military allocation of material resources and personnel?
Obviously, none of that stuff matters. The internal logic is sturdy enough for my purposes, and so none of these issues bother me in the slightest. This stuff works for the only reason that matters to Fury Road’s audience: because it’s awesome.
I still haven’t played Borderlands, but if you detect a fair amount of its influence in Fury Road, I’m gonna have to check it out.
I can deny it, because I cannot confirm whether or not the purpose was titillation. My insight into the motivations behind this story suggests that it might not be. All we can be sure of is the effects, which are naturally going to be more diverse than the artists intentions are.
If it’s completely subjective, then anybody is qualified to address the topic. But without any commonality, there is no point to doing so. I agree with you that there are a lot of sex-negative attitudes out there - but as I understand it, “objectification” is mostly about agency, rather than sex or nudity in themselves. YMMV
Pretty easy to deny, especially in an R-rated movie wherein every last woman on-screen could have been completely naked and presented with moistened lips and come-hither eyes for the delectation of its troglodyte teenage audience without altering the movie’s MPAA rating. You’re weirdly hung up on Zoe Kravitz’s nipples, which were the only pair detectable in the whole movie (unless you count Mr Gold-Nosed Elephant-Foot, whose exposed nipple-clamps I missed until the second viewing, and boy was that titillating). Wet t-shirt presentation is an art of intent, if you ask me, otherwise they’re just nipples poking through cloth whether you get off by staring at them or not. You should remember that Ms Kravitz was one of the least-soaked women in the scene, and the only one with discernable nipples. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was the most-drenched, and her transparently wet clothing merely served to show off her quite-pregnant belly. And that was a plot point, as is the scarcity of water. And who could get titillated by the woman on the tower? I saw the movie in 3D IMAX, on the third-largest movie screen in North America, and you could barely tell that she was naked. Nary a nipple was shown, not a hint of pubic region, perhaps a fleeting glimpse of buttcrack. She was acting as bait for a trap, and a more tasteful and discreet expression of female nudity you’ll never find in an exploitation/action flick of this kind. Her nudity was almost literally as G-rated as the frost fairies in Disney’s Fantasia.
Apologies if you find this image excessively titillating.
