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The Misogynistic Backlash Against
Women-Strong Films
This book is an exploration of the political struggle for visibility engendered by

the growing number of women-centered popular films and a critical analysis of
the intensifying misogynistic backlash that have accompanied such advances in the
depiction of women on screen.
The book draws from a variety of theoretical and methodological tools to pro-
vide critical cultural analysis and alternative readings of women-strong films and
their important role in society. The authors engage with popular culture and the
popular press, media studies, and rhetorical criticism examining new modes of
communication while providing historical context to help make sense of these
oppositional readings. The book includes case studies on Mad Max: Fury Road,
Wonder Woman, Atomic Blonde, Star Wars, and Ghostbusters to analyze critical
responses, men’s-rights activist boycotting campaigns, online harassment, and the
political economy that precede and accompany the creation and presentation of
these films.
This is an accessible and timely analysis of the rise of feminist-friendly and women-
led films and the inevitable counterculture of misogyny. It is suitable for students
and researchers in Media and Communication Studies, Gender and Media, and
Cultural Studies.
Dana Schowalter is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Western

Oregon University. Her research interests include feminist media studies, feminist
political economy, and global philanthropy. Her work has been published in
Neoliberalism in the Media, Women and Language, and Communication Review.
Shannon Stevens, Associate Professor of Journalism in the Department of English at

California State University, Stanislaus, advises the student newspaper. A former jour-
nalist, she is a feminist rhetorician who researches media, popular culture, and pol-
icy. “The Rhetorical Significance of Gojira: Equipment for Living Through Trauma”
appeared in The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema: Critical Essays (2015).
Daniel L. Horvath is a Part-Time Faculty in Communication Studies at California

State University, Stanislaus. His research focuses on the way representation warps
around critical categories of gender, race, class, etc. He published research on Mi-
chael Moore documentaries in Michael Moore and the Rhetoric of Documentary
(2015) and on the rhetorical conditions of whistleblowing as a public act of parrhe-
sia in Whistleblowing, Communication and Consequences (2021).
Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics

Interpreting Gender in Graphic Narratives
Edited by Sandra Cox
Caffie Greene and Black Women Activists

Unsung Women of the Black Liberation Movement
Kofi-Charu Nat Turner
Forced Migration in the Feminist Imagination

Transcultural Movements
Anna Ball
The Misogynistic Backlash Against Women-Strong Films

Dana Schowalter, Shannon Stevens, and Daniel L. Horvath
Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a

Time of Bad Health
Talia Welsh
The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia

Intersectional, Feminist, and Non-Binary Approaches in 21st Century
Speculative Literature and Culture
Edited by Tomasz Fisiak and Katarzyna Ostalska
https://www.routledge.com/Interdisciplinary-Research-in-Gender/
book-series/IRG
The Misogynistic Backlash
Against Women-Strong Films
Dana Schowalter
Shannon Stevens
Daniel L. Horvath
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Dana Schowalter, Shannon Stevens, and Daniel L. Horvath
The right of Dana Schowalter, Shannon Stevens, and Daniel L.
Horvath to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted
by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-26201-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-12310-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29197-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429291975
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
To the girls who want to grow up to be superheroes, and the
women who already are
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: women’s cultural production engenders

misogyny— A historical overview 1
2 Misogyny and the missive of mediocrity: disparaging

women-strong films in movie reviews 22
3 The economics of misogyny and the “surprising”

success of woman-strong films 50
4 “None of us asked for this”: Ghostbusters, online

harassment, and mechanized misogyny 83
5 “Why You Should Not Go See ‘Mad Max: Feminist

Road’”: parasitic film criticism and (post) apocalyptic
fears of feminist propaganda 106
6 Star Wars (toxic) nostalgia and the looming end of man 136
7 Atomic Blonde and her critics: disciplining of a

pre-patriarchal feminine archetype 161
8 Conclusion: counter-publics, patriarchal (reel)realism,

and a call to action 180
Index 197
Acknowledgments
Dana Schowalter: First and foremost, I am eternally grateful to my co-

authors for their support through the many iterations of this project and,
more generally, for years of showing me the power of feminist friendship.
I would like to thank Western Oregon University’s Faculty Development
Fund for their generous financial support of this project and to the fac-
ulty union for continuing to advocate for this important resource. And, of
course, I thank my colleagues, mentors, and friends for teaching me and
learning with me.
Writing the chapter of this book that includes research on the nearly
insurmountable pressures facing mothers who work outside the home was
among the most emotionally challenging aspects of this writing experi-
ence for me. That research so perfectly encapsulates my own experience
of striving—and often failing—to achieve balance as a mother working in
academia. Watching Harvey thrive and knowing the often-invisible work
of motherhood has made him into the confident, caring person he is makes
me so proud. In turn, I hope he and Jeremy are proud of this work, despite
the ways it pulled me away from the family, for the ways it nourishes my
feminist self.
And I thank my Oregon and Wisconsin families for providing the sup-
port I needed, even when I didn’t have the words to say I needed help. I am
forever in your debt.
Shannon Stevens: I thank my co-authors on this project who—with their
brilliance, good humor, and endless patience—have driven me to find the
best in myself as I strive to match their insights and productivity. Their
bravery kept me going as we together sifted through mountains of unfet-
tered misogyny. The joyous times we spent together writing, watching mov-
ies, and laughing with our families are among my most precious memories.
I also wish to thank California State University, Stanislaus–in particular,
the Department of English; the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social
Sciences; and Dean Jim Tuedio—for the ongoing support including funded
travel to conferences, research grants for student assistants, and course re-
leases to allow time for my research.
x Acknowledgments
The research and writing of this book has made me even more grateful
for the women in my life, especially those who have provided me with a
buffer to the patriarchy. I thank my grandmas and aunties who helped me
find truth in my own voice and strength in my own success. I thank the
second-wave feminists and scholars who gave me the language to fight the
patriarchy with them. And I also thank the dulas and teachers, sisters and
cousins, students and nieces who helped me connect with the Goddess each
day through the shared sustenance of food, love, dogs, and storytelling.
Finally, I thank my loving spouse for giving me hope for humanity, and
our precious Malcolm for always being on call to hug the sorrow away.
Daniel L. Horvath: To my co-authors, I owe my sanity and happiness,
academic and otherwise, to your feminist generosity and patience. I am for-
ever in your debt for giving me the opportunity to grow, write, and think
alongside extraordinary people about vital issues that impact all our lives.
I would also like to thank California State University Stanislaus and the
College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences for their financial sup-
port of this project.
To my family—Shannon, Malcom, and Margret—you are as much a part
of this book as I am.
1 Introduction
Women’s cultural production
engenders misogyny—
A historical overview
On her way to the theater to see Ghostbusters, one of the authors stopped
to take a selfie in front of a large cardboard cutout of the film’s star charac-
ters. Seeing that image of four women, fully dressed in baggy work suits, as
the stars of a film that would paint them as heroes, felt so significant against
the backdrop of over three decades of watching films in which women were
trivialized and objectified, if they were even included at all. She quickly
typed a Facebook post to that effect, but before pressing the publish button,
she deleted the post and instead opted to send the photo to her friends, the
coauthors of this book. She wanted to be the type of person who decided
against posting it because selfies announcing you are watching a movie are
uninteresting at best, but the real reason was the dread of the potential
backlash leveled against anyone who dared to announce that they saw the
film and liked it. In short, she feared what might happen online while she
was inside that dark theater watching one of the most profound action
sequences she had viewed to date. To this day, she still thinks about that
moment when she hit the X, wondering how a person who has studied
women in film for many years was so decisively deterred from even so small
a statement as posting about their excitement to watch this movie.
As it turns out, she was not alone in feeling that way, and more so, this
experience was not limited to Ghostbusters. Each time we presented ver-
sions of this work—formally at academic conferences or informally in our
everyday conversations—we heard similar stories about people (mostly
women) finding an immense cinematic pleasure at seeing representations of
strong, dynamic women characters on screen, but hearing over and over in
overt and subtle ways that their experiences were invalid or wrong. Those
dismissals ranged from the mild (tepid critical reviews) to the outrageous
(rape and murder threats leveled at the women starring in these films or at
anyone claiming to enjoy them or daring to defend publicly).
Undoubtedly, if you are reading this, you are familiar with many of them:
Ghostbusters trolled online relentlessly before it had even been released,
including particularly vicious and racist abuse of Leslie Jones; outrage that
Mad Max: Fury Road would dare to privilege a woman’s positionality in a
fictional post-apocalyptic realm; the “shame on you, you can do so much
DOI: 10.4324/9780429291975-1
2 Introduction
better” dashing of Melissa McCarthy’s The Boss and Aubrey Plaza/Mag-
gie Carey’s The To-Do List; the fury over casting of a woman as a central
character in the new Star Wars films; and so many more. It was, frankly,
disconcerting to experience these films in such radically different ways than
the mainstream arbiters of taste deemed appropriate. When we watched
these films, we laughed, we cheered, we took pleasure in seeing versions
of ourselves (and fantasies of ourselves) doing really cool things, and our
allies rejoiced with us. It was, ultimately, that disconnect between our lived
experience of women-strong films and the widespread maligning of that
same work that opened the space for our shared critical analysis of the
misogynistic backlash and patriarchal norms that can have devastating ef-
fects on women in the creative cultural realm and simultaneously devalue
their contributions to such a degree that promotion and distribution of
even major studio films is hampered. This feeling of disconnect—and the
variations we have experienced, heard of, and read about—has been the
driving force behind this book project.
Disparaging women’s voices

The backlash against women-strong films and the relentless public devalu-
ation of art that centers women’s perspectives has a far longer history than
the few movie titles of the ‘10–’20 decade invoked here would suggest. In
fact, the devaluation begins when women simply try to speak up in public.
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell1 discusses this systematic disaffirmation of wom-
en’s voices at length in her Man Cannot Speak for Her volumes, highlight-
ing how early feminist rhetors, speaking on important issues—such as the
links between excessive alcohol consumption and gendered violence, voting
rights for women, and the abolition of slavery—were and continue to be
disparaged and discredited. Not only were many of these women met with
verbal abuse and physical violence (including state-sanctioned violence and
policies of brutality women faced while incarcerated for the crime of speak-
ing up), but they also faced systematic silencing that included a conscious
refusal to enter their testimony into the congressional record, newspapers’
decisions to not include their speeches and events in their coverage, and
over a century of rhetorical scholars refusing to see their speeches as public
address worthy of critical interrogation.
Campbell argues that it is precisely their role as women, and not any
other stylistic rhetorical choices they make, that aids in this systematic dis-
missal. 2 She writes, “The potential to engage another is the aesthetic or
symbolic power of a piece of persuasive discourse…However, many rhetor-
ical works fail to achieve their ends for reasons that have little to do with
their style or content.”3 The very fact that women were entering the public
sphere and speaking about experiences that were felt most deeply in the
private sphere created a barrier to understanding the depth and breadth of
their words. In essence, for early women activists, their ability to influence
Introduction 3
others was hampered by a cultural understanding of traditional wom-
anhood that made it difficult for listeners to recognize the quality of the
speakers’ arguments and presentation. Further, even the best constructed
argument, when advocated by a woman, was unlikely to be persuasive as
it encountered audiences steeped in a deeply held sexist ideologies, the very
rigid mores early feminists were rallying against.
This inability to appreciate women’s discourse is not limited to overt
activist speakers. The inability of reviewers and audiences to connect with
women as entertainers has a long, storied history as well. Perhaps, the most
infamous example is that of The Cherry Sisters, who were at one time
among the highest paid groups on the vaudeville circuit4 and a favorite
target of theater critics in the late 19th century. Their act and critical re-
ception combine to provide an early glimpse of what is now a centuries-old
sport—male critics maligning women in the entertainment industry for a
multitude of “reasons,” from their unpleasant voices to their inappropriate
choices of content.
One such review merits further discussion for the legal and critical prec-
edent it set in how reviewers can discuss the work of all performers, and
in this case, the work of women whose act was popular enough to merit
an appearance on Broadway. 5 The Des Moines Leader published a review
describing the Cherry Sisters as “three creatures surpassing the witches
in Macbeth in general hideousness,” and goes on to critique each of their
physical appearances thusly:
Effie is an old jade of 50 summers, Jessie a frisky filly of 40, and Ad-
die, the flower of the family, a capering monstrosity of 35. Their long,
skinny arms, equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechani-
cally, and soon were waved frantically at the suffering spectators. The
mouths of their rancid features opened like caverns and sounds like the
wailings of damned souls issued therefrom…. Effie is spavined, Addie
is knock-kneed and stringhalt, and Jessie, the only one who showed
her stockings, has legs without calves, as classic in their outlines as the
curves of a broom handle. The misguided fellows who came to see a
leg show got their money’s worth, for they never saw such limbs before
and never will again--outside of a boneyard…. Not even in the woods
around Sac City, nor in the wilds of Monona county, could three such
raw and rank specimens of womanhood be found. … Their personal
characters are above reproach; they are virtuous both from necessity
and choice, as any one will conclude at sight of them.6
The Cherry Sisters filed a lawsuit against the paper, claiming the inaccurate
description of their bodies as malicious and libelous. In reaching its verdict
in favor of the reviewer, the judge referenced two primary points of law:
truth and malice.7 First, the judge ruled that the essence of what the critic
wrote was truthful (the judge himself insulted the performance during the
4 Introduction
legal proceedings); and second, the judge said that the critic was without
malicious intent when doing his job of reviewing the performance, which
he must be able to do without restraint. The case is widely cited among
the most important free speech protections for journalists, cementing their
right to engage in critical analysis.
While the judge was embracing journalistic freedom and making an im-
portant move to limit efforts at silencing the press under the guise of libel
claims, the way he gets there is troubling. The idea that there can be an
objective truth about the quality of a comedic art form is flawed logic as is
the judge’s failure to see as malicious a review that includes a description
of the performers using adjectives normally applied to aging and decrepit
horses (spavined, stringhalt) as well as language intended to invoke the
sexist accusations of witches, even going so far as to say that the root of
the sisters’ messages of chastity and morality came of necessity (as in they
are too ugly to get laid).8 This insult is, of course, a permanent fixture of
the discourse of violent misogyny as evidenced most prominently by former
president Donald Trump’s frequent use of the trope—“She’s not my type”
or “Believe me, she would not be my first choice”— when responding to
accusations of rape.9 For the Iowa judge deciding this case in 1901, though,
the malicious nature of the misogynistic review was almost certainly a cul-
tural blind spot. It is not uncommon for judges in free speech rulings to
make clear that they do not like the speech they are reading, but that the
speaker nonetheless has the right to say it—that did not happen here. In-
stead, he penned:
the editor of a newspaper has the right, if not the duty, of publish-
ing, for the information of the public, fair and reasonable comments,
however severe in terms, upon anything which is made by its owner a
subject of public exhibition, as upon any other matter of public interest.
To say that the performers opened themselves to such criticism (they had
it coming!) and that it is the critic’s duty to report it as he sees fit shows an
acceptance of this hateful, gendered rhetoric.
Of course, we cannot go back in time to watch the Cherry Sisters perform
one of their variety shows to make arguments about quality or style. But
here’s the thing—we don’t have to do that as ultimately the “truth” about
their appearance and skill is neither relevant nor objective. What matters is
that their disparagement became the critical norm, so much so that more
than a century later, the critical commentary on the poor quality of their
work lives on in free speech textbooks and essays as an important shift
in thinking about what constitutes libel.10 Additionally, the case opens up
space for discussions about how quality assessments shape and are shaped
by cultural norms, including the norm of gender inequality, as we move
into our media analysis framed in terms of production, promotion, and
perception.
Introduction 5
Scholar Mark Jancovich ties the influence of these cultural norms to the
ideas of taste, writing, “reviews are products of specific taste formations,
and also function specifically as gate-keepers or guardians of specific taste
formations, mediating between texts and audiences and specifying particu-
lar ways of appropriating and consuming texts.”11 In short, assessments
of film mediate between having good taste or bad taste in film, helping to
create boundaries around these two concepts that define which films are
worthy of our attention and which films are not: thumbs up or thumbs
down. It is this definitional power that makes reviews consequential as they
are wrapped up in larger debates about representation and power while
simultaneously serving as a prescription about which films are good for us
and which are not. Or, as film scholar Lisa Bode writes, assessments about
which films are good also reveal “the dynamics of power in classification of
films and their audiences, and the ways in which such things as gender, age
and class are linked in this process of classification.”12 Within that classifi-
cation system, the white man in his prime always wins.
Bode goes on to highlight the ways that gender serves as a useful cate-
gory of analysis for how categorizing film audiences also shapes perceptions
about film quality.13 Here, she draws on the work of Andrea Huyssen14 and
Barbara Klinger15, who show that defining the audience of genres such as
soap operas and melodramas as “for women” aided reviewers in painting
both the genre and the audience in decidedly negative ways. For example,
melodrama audiences were presumed to be women whose tastes “signi-
fied a debasement of art into sentimentality and cliche.”16 This audience’s
irrational and amateurish preferences were consistently contrasted with the
rational, veritable, true, and proper tastes of a male audience, whose inter-
ests were categorized as much more sophisticated.17 Bode’s work adds to
this discussion, highlighting the ways that the imagined teen girl audience
of Twilight served to help reviewers denigrate the film as less serious and
suggest the girls needed guidance from (mostly male) cult media fans to
really understand what makes a vampire film “good.”18
This type of gendering and disparaging of audience and art is not lim-
ited to film, but instead, seems to follow women’s cultural production to
a plethora of genres. For example, poet and novelist Sylvia Plath used a
confessional writing style that was considered vastly different than the
more detached and “objective” prose of men in her field. Her confessional
writing style was often dismissed in ways that denigrated both her work
and any audience that would find it valuable or informative. At the time
of her writing, (male) critics characterized Plath’s work as “ill-informed”
and without “intellectual sophistication” that “will impress those unable
or disciplined to read with care.”19 Plath was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
poetry posthumously in 1982.
Janet Badia, a gender studies scholar, focusing on women as writers and
audience members, ties this type of criticisms of Plath’s work to more gen-
eral anxieties about women creatives and women readers. More specifically,
6 Introduction
she argues that criticism of Plath is similar to many other types of criticism
leveled against women who dare to speak with authority, especially women
who are also outspoken feminists. Plath’s readers were said to be “glutton-
ous consumers” and “spiritual worshipers,”20 “self-absorbed and morbidly
obsessed,”21 and ultimately, “dissatisfied, family-hating shrews,”22 further-
ing stereotypes that have mired women’s work, women’s speech, and the
women’s movement throughout history.
Constructing women readers as “uncritical, misguided, even patho-
logical”23 can also be found in studies of women’s reading in 18th and
19th-century Britain, where Jacqueline Pearson notes that “women were
deemed vulnerable to excessively identificatory reading practices … which
might endanger their fragile sense of rational selfhood,’”24 or in Susan
Ashworth’s analysis of women’s reading, which notes that “the majority
of women habitually read themselves into fallen stances; their habits of
reading were thoughtless, intemperate, self-indulgent, and consequently,
self-perverting.”25 Indeed, there is a long history of “pathologizing wom-
en’s reading practices” evidenced by the concern of medical authorities
in Victorian British and American culture linking “‘excessive and unsu-
pervised reading of popular fiction’ to ‘early menstruation, painful men-
ses, and infertility, as well as nervousness, insanity, and even premature
death.’”26 Badia, citing Kate Flint’s study, states that “reading was central
to the diagnosis and treatment of hysteria: the wrong reading practices, it
was argued, could incline one to the disease while the right reading could
contribute to its cure or prevention.”27
Early women journalists, too, often were relegated to the role of “sob
sister,” writing “tear-jerking tales” in the sensationalist style—their only
option if they wanted to be employed in this masculinist realm. 28 At the
same time, the “denigration of female sentimental writing” in the late 18th
and early 19th century (despite its wild popularity in novel and magazine
form) ultimately became a limiting factor for early American male writers
who sought “canonical remembrance” as
the masculine fear of sentimental writing in the United States was so

great that it could not produce a male writer such as Charles Dick-
ens, whose work centered on home, but it produced Herman Melville,
whose work notably did not. 29
The scathing response to so-called sensational writing (that which brings to

life in the reader smells, sights, sounds, and emotions), because of its forced
association with the feminine, created barriers for writers and readers, as
no self-respecting reader would admit to consuming the work of the sob
sisters, even as the masses had an insatiable desire for more.
Herein lies the dual function of criticism (the vast majority of which comes
from male critics):30 to both aesthetically disparage women’s cultural pro-
duction and to denigrate the audiences who would actually experience and
Introduction 7
enjoy such works. Together, these two tropes work to damage the aesthetic
value, sabotage the economic success, and spoil the experience and enjoy-
ment of women-centered and centering art. In this light, our anxieties about
publicly declaring our support for Ghostbusters, then, is deeply rooted in
historical aesthetic trauma and centuries of disciplinary practices directed
at reading, watching, and enjoying women-centered cultural production.
This failure also works on a systemic level, when critics fail to consider
the important political work that undergirds Fatal Attraction and The
Stepford Wives to discuss the importance of feminist film and television
analysis, especially given the large number of male reviewers who glossed
over the patriarchal motivations behind key plot points and character de-
velopments.31 Of particular import here is Bonnie Dow’s description of
movie reviewers who disliked the original The Stepford Wives because they
did not understand that sexism and patriarchy could be strong enough rea-
sons for a seemingly decent man like character Walter Eberhart to want “to
turn his wife into a robot…and the film doesn’t tell us, therefore it is a bad
film.”32 There seems to be an inability—or refusal—to see that “men, as
a group, oppress women, as a group, because they can, because it benefits
them,” and that it is this understanding of the patriarchal system in which
women live that makes this film an important political one for women.
Its political nature and its refusal to attach “personal motivations” to the
characters, Dow argues, is what ultimately leads to the “bad film” label. 33
This refusal to understand the ways systemic sexism and misogyny im-
pacts women’s daily lives is perhaps unsurprising, given the deep tensions
around any meaningful discussions of gender equity. This is perhaps best
espoused in Susan Faludi’s Backlash. In a comprehensive study of the social,
political, and cultural conditions of American women in the 1980s, Faludi
defined “backlash” as a “powerful counterassault on women’s rights.”34 In
mapping the manifold ways in which patriarchy reasserts control, follow-
ing “the handful of small and hard-won victories”35 of feminism, Faludi
devotes considerable time to popular culture—from news, to movies, TV
shows, and fashion—as important sites and as particular manifestations
of backlash discourse. Specifically, about film, Faludi notes that “efforts to
hush the female voice in American films have been a perennial feature of
cinema in backlash periods.”36 We might be tempted to improve Faludi’s
pronouncement, by way of subtraction, and argue that the pressure exerted
on women in film has been “a perennial feature of cinema” period.
Perhaps, nothing tells the story of backlash in the 1980s, in a way that
brings all the same elements, discourses, and institutions together in an
eerily similar way with the kinds of pressures we are charting in this book
against women-strong films, almost 30 years later, than the story Faludi
tells about Fatal Attraction. The transformation of the film from its initial
script and short festival film as the story of a man who betrays his wife and
has to deal with the consequences of those actions, “a moral tale about a
man who transgresses and pays the penalty,” in the words of its author, to
8 Introduction
a Hollywood blockbuster mangled by prevailing backlash ideas about fem-
inism, institutionalized sexism, and studio pressure, complete with a 1.3
million dollar reshoot of the final scene. Alex Forrest’s suicide did not test
well with audiences as they had “grown to hate this woman by this time, to
the degree that they actually wanted him to have some retribution,” accord-
ing to the writer.37 “Suicide,” quips Faludi, “apparently, was insufficient
punishment.”38 For us, it is the violently misogynistic comments—Beat that
bitch! Kill her off now!—Faludi reports being heard from male audience
members coming to see the movie in droves that brings it all together: the
entrenched patriarchy, the institutionalized sexism of film production that
reshaped the original project, the critical praise for the backlash film, and
the misogynistic terror exulted by the anonymous male audiences scream-
ing in a dark movie theater.
While “backlash” provides a powerful conceptual vocabulary to speak
about misogyny, it might not be entirely accurate or, rather, might be a
placeholder term for flare-ups and intensifications of patriarchal (symbolic)
violence. Indeed, Faludi herself notes that “if fear and loathing of feminism
is a sort of perpetual viral condition in our culture, it is not always in an
acute stage,” and it is precisely these moments of “resurgence … that can
accurately be termed ‘backlashes’ to women’s advancement.”39 Backlash is
the label for the resurgence of misogyny in renewed, reinvented, or simply
reinvigorated ways making use of the same trite arguments deployed on new
platforms of engagement. So, to speak of backlash is not to speak of some-
thing new. While charting specific manifestations (backlashes), what we are
in fact discussing is a chronic condition of a perpetually self-naturalizing
patriarchy which deploys a debilitating cocktail of violent misogyny and
“polite” institutionalized sexism whose ratio and mixture change in rap-
port with the site of its deployment (from the “civil” critical circles to the
gutter of anonymous internet comments), the (perceived) intensity of femi-
nist revolt, and the norms of decorum operative at that time and place.
Backlash defines itself as backlash as it imagines itself as a reaction to
something. However, as Faludi and many others have shown, that is not
true as “the antifeminist backlash has been set off not by women’s achieve-
ment of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win
it.”40 In other words, paradoxically, backlash is preemptive not retributive.
The so-called “Bush doctrine” as the use of preventative war means that
violence can be deployed as a result of the rhetorical construction of an
enemy and a state of imminent danger. Like the Bush doctrine, misogynistic
backlash discourse constructs an enemy—feminism—and, to use Faludi’s
astute observation, “charges feminists with all the crimes it (patriarchy)
perpetrates.”41 Backlash no longer defends patriarchy and male supremacy
as much as creating the (discursive) conditions for the failure of feminism.
So, when we talk about backlash, we talk about a fantasy that enables
violence and furthers oppression, we are talking about the visible flash-
points of a perpetual war against women’s liberation, equality, and dignity.
Introduction 9
Such violent reactions make a movie with a woman superhero feel radical,
make a movie with two women speaking to each other about something
other than a man—The Bechdel Test—an enduring academic concept, and
a movie with a black Stormtrooper or a women Jedi the subject of interna-
tional press coverage and academic books (wink). Ultimately, this kind of
discursive, social, cultural, and political environment make small, incre-
mental changes seem revolutionary. It is a discursive environment whose
ultimate goal is to drag on the fight for equality forever. These discourses
are there to provide friction for anything even remotely resembling some-
thing other than the (white supremacist) patriarchal status quo.
Faludi wrote Backlash before the release of Thelma and Louise, but, in
many ways, the book perfectly predicted the polemic response to the film’s
groundbreaking representations of women’s power—a response that, like
in many of the films we discuss in this book, was already in full swing
before the film even came out.42 Though film reviews tended to be posi-
tive, opinion pieces about the film were decidedly more negative in tone,
often playing into fears about the role of the strong women characters and
the way they encouraged a culture of “male-bashing” and violence against
men.43 Chief among them was John Leo’s “Toxic Feminism on the Big
Screen” op-ed for U.S. News & World Report, one of the most widely
read and most negative assessments of the film. He wrote that the problem
wasn’t the film’s relentless male-bashing nor that women were “invading
the male-buddy genre.”44 Instead, he says, the problem is that film is emo-
tionally manipulative, and women just aren’t complex enough critics to be
able to overcome this manipulation. In his words:
Once we identify with the likable Thelma and Louise and the legiti-
macy of their complaints about men, we are led to step by step accept
the nihilistic and self-destructive values they come to embody. By the
time this becomes clear it is very difficult for moviegoers, particularly
women, to bail out emotionally and distance themselves from the apoc-
alyptic craziness that the script is hurtling toward.45
In this and similar opinion pieces, the film audience is painted as feminine
and emotional, and the danger in the film thus lies in the film’s ability to
manipulate emotionally driven women (but not rational men) into believing
in a violent feminist vision of the future. Because the more objective male
viewer sees through this “cynical propaganda,” he proudly proclaims that
this film is not “art” and is, therefore, not a “good” film.
Lost in these critical responses is how women viewed the film. As Leo
notes, women seemed “dazed” when leaving the theater. We are not entirely
surprised by this observation, given the way this film centralized women’s
experiences of trauma, friendship, transformation, and power. To fully un-
derstand why women might feel complex emotions during the viewing also
would be to acknowledge their lived experiences as women in a patriarchal
10 Introduction
society, experiences that likely involved a range of emotional and sexual
traumas that went unpunished. In other words, to fully understand wom-
en’s responses, we would first have to fully understand and acknowledge
the trauma of patriarchal living. To see it represented in such a transforma-
tive, powerful way on screen might leave even the strongest women feeling
“dazed.”
It is within this context of backlash as a predictable event, as a punish-
ment for daring to show strong transformative women on screen, that we
begin our book on the backlash facing women in film today. Though some
of our arguments rest on the familiar roots discussed in this introduction,
many chart new paths as the backlash becomes simultaneously more visible
(such as the expected backlash from online trolls and men’s rights groups)
and less pronounced (such as the ways that even seemingly positive assess-
ments of strong women in film are wrought with sexist, belittling language).
We might think that Wonder Woman’s $821 million box office haul
spells gender progress in film, that the introduction of Captain Marvel af-
ter more than 20 Marvel male superhero films is evidence of a new era for
women superheroes, or that the inclusion of a woman as a main charac-
ter in Star Wars: The Last Jedi shows that representations of women are
becoming more inclusive. Indeed, these representations are significant, as
evidenced by the affective response they create among moviegoers. Women
reported crying during action sequences of Wonder Woman and looking
with a new sense of possibility at the visual of an Asian woman fighting
an intergalactic battle. These images are, indeed, powerful and important.
However, the success of Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Black Pan-
ther, and other wildly popular films starring people from nondominant
groups serves to obscure a more stagnant reality. Of the 1,100 films re-
leased between 2007 and 2017, only 13% portrayed a gender-balanced
cast, and there were not substantial increases in representations of women
as the lead or co-lead, in women who had speaking roles, or in the number
of people of color who appeared on screen in a major role. Additionally,
women directed only 4.3% of the films in the 1,100-film sample, and the
number of women directors was actually highest in 2008, having decreased
in the ensuing years.46
These meager gains—gender swap remakes, female superheroes, or sim-
ply women as central characters—are, nonetheless, resisted and provide the
impetus for critical disparagement, coordinated online campaigns designed
to lower Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb scores, economic boycotts, and ter-
ror campaigns against movie stars, like Leslie Jones or Kelly Marie Tran.
These forms of coordinated backlash work in concert to diminish the aes-
thetic value, cripple the economic performance, and as discussed through-
out this book, to fundamentally spoil the cultural and public enjoyment of
women-centered films. Beyond representations, or rather before and after
representations, lie circuits of productions controlled by male- dominated
boardrooms, a sexist critical apparatus, and online armies of jilted male
Introduction 11
fans that both prefigure and extend the problems of representation. These
concerns about production, representation, and reception assemble around
specific projects—what we dubbed women-strong films—that seem to
bring all these issues together. Our book, then, participates in the politi-
cal struggle for visibility understood as waged across not just screens but
across production and promotion rooms, critical circles and Rotten Toma-
toes scores, chat rooms, blogs, and YouTube comments. In other words,
once a strong woman is on screen, the issues of gender representation have
already started long before the first screening and are far from over after
the end credits.
We aim to chart the discursive environment that has allowed truisms
such as “men don’t go see movies starring women” to govern decisions
about which movie projects get to see the light of day, and once they do,
which projects deserve massive promotion budgets. We aim to chart the
discursive environments that afford critics, under the seemingly objective
cloak of aesthetic judgments, to denigrate women-centered production from
within a patriarchal system of aesthetic values. We aim to chart the discur-
sive environments that proliferate online and, under the guise of rational
argument, assemble militant affective communities to disrupt the economic
(box-office) and critical (Rotten Tomatoes) success of women-centered cul-
tural production. It is in this arena of enduring, insidious, and mundane
ubiquity of (rhetorically) violent misogyny that we begin our analysis.
From this vantage point, our book asks readers to explore with the au-
thors questions such as: Why is it such a struggle to create and celebrate
women-centered films? How does the long history of women’s oppression
and the silencing of women’s work contribute to a misogynistic film envi-
ronment? Why do women-strong films fuel controversy? What is it about
women-strong films that lead to studios and critics taking a “make-or-
break” attitude toward them, even as failures of films featuring men are
shrugged off? What lies behind the violence of the attacks on women crea-
tives, and what can we learn from how they are deployed? How do people
(critics, reviewers, commenters, trolls, etc.) construct their arguments, and
why do they gain traction?
Perhaps, the most similar phenomenon to our inquiry into virulent reac-
tion to women-strong film is the infamous Gamergate incident, a scandal,
allegedly about “ethics in game journalism,” that manifested as a coor-
dinated harassment campaign against women in the gaming industry, a
violent and virulent defense of public, purportedly male, spaces. Zoe Quin,
an indie game developer, was accused by an ex-boyfriend of having cheated
on him to advance her career. While the allegations, following the familiar
misogynistic narrative theme of women’s self-serving promiscuity, designed
to police gender boundaries and women’s sexuality, were not true, “out-
raged gamers” flooded Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan to protests “ethical
breaches in gaming journalism.”47 Adrienne Massanari, in her analysis of
Gamergate and The Fappening (distribution of celebrity nudes), called these
12 Introduction
incidents “emblematic of an ongoing backlash against women and their use
of technology and participation in public life” evidence of “toxic technocul-
tures,” made possible by “platform and algorithmic politics of Reddit.”48
The violent misogynistic Gamergate campaign, featuring rape, death,
mass-shooting, and bomb threats in “highly graphic, disturbing” details,
“the stuff of ‘SVU’ episodes,” extended to many other women speaking in
support of diversity in gaming.49 Many were bullied offline while the prac-
tice of doxing—publishing someone’s private information with malicious
intent—forced many of them to flee their houses and cancel speaking events
as a result of credible death and bomb threats.
Reactions to films that center women disturbingly echo such past “con-
troversies” about male-owned media and trod on familiar ground: resisting
an oppressive encroachment into male (media) spaces, the sense of loss, of
sacrilege, feeling victimized by the feminists/leftist cabal, expressing out-
rage, and manifesting violent anger in the form of death and rape threats.
We are not turning to these texts because YouTube comments, boardroom
conversations about financing women-centered films, and manosphere re-
views are somehow extra-ordinary, or because the arguments they rehearse
and amplify are new or unique, or because their authors, from producers
and critics to the recognizable figures of the manosphere or to the anony-
mous trolls, are noteworthy spokespersons for this ideology; we are turning
to these texts precisely because of their ordinary status, because of their
frightening ubiquity and the astonishing similarity of topics, disturbing
language, argument structure, and evidence.
There is virtually no discursive difference between the reactions to the
campaign for women’s vote, expressed in 1910s postcards depicting men at
home engaged in child care and house cleaning, images visualizing the fear
that “men (and the nation) would become feminized by woman suffrage,”50
Charlton Heston’s 1999 NRA speech “Winning the Cultural War,” about
the victimization of the white gun owner whose freedom is taken away by
political correctness, 51 the Gamergate “defense” of “independent gaming
journalism” with graphic rape and death threats, and the late 2010’s argu-
ments, analyzed in this book, on the feminist takeover of Hollywood and
on why should we boycott Mad Max, Ghostbusters, Atomic Blonde, or
Star Wars. The ordinary, mundane, ubiquitous, and banal nature of these
arguments, evidenced by their historical endurance, makes them more, not
less, dangerous.
To disqualify these trite white supremacist and misogynistic expositions,
replete with false equivalences—Like Heston’s lament about being called
and anti-Semite when making an analogy “between singling out the inno-
cent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners”52 —and accusations of
reverse-oppression leveled against women and people of color for stealing
“our” votes/jobs/country/films, and thus, power is to misunderstand white/
male anxiety as a feeling, anger as its improper expression, and women
and people of color as the misguided targets rather than what white/male
Introduction 13
anxiety and the fear of emasculation really is: a discursively performed
ideological affect designed as a recruitment tool for misogynistic and racist
publics, as a mechanism of generating outrage as a prerequisite for oppres-
sion as political action, as a way to perpetually generate adherence to white
supremacist patriarchy, and as a mode of policing, a way to violently and
sadistically silence would-be opponents. Policies, games, movies, and elec-
tions as well as any other site of similar controversy are simply opportune
flashpoints, the next stage for its performance.
Critical orientation and method

Methodologically, we find ourselves at home at the intersection of media
studies, rhetoric, and feminism. Our disciplinary homes and theoretical
orientations connect to a various set of methodologies from close textual
analysis to critical/discourse analysis and from rhetorical criticism and crit-
ical rhetoric to political economy. All these perspectives share a common
“lineage” that can be traced to the work of historian of thought, Michel
Foucault. Foucauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis
begin from the perspective that within a given society, some categories of
thinking become normalized and unquestioned (i.e. they become an ac-
cepted discourse about a particular subject) while others are marginalized.
Scholars engaging in methods inspired by this perspective must then ask
what is normalized as “truth,” how truth acquires its status, and how this
truth is constructed and mobilized within a particular cultural and his-
torical moment—what Foucault calls a “regime of truth.”53 What counts
as “truth” or “knowledge” about a particular subject is intimately tied to
notions of power, whereby those with greater access to resources such as
money, knowledge, or communication media have a greater ability to shape
the conversation. 54 The systems of language and meanings used to describe
a particular truth “do not neutrally reflect our world, identities, and social
relations but, rather, play an active role in creating and changing them.”55
Although Foucault was hesitant to delineate an exact research method, the
tradition of discourse analysis now associated with him generally involves
historical inquiry, analysis of power, and a commitment to resisting social
inequality.56
Foucault’s work highlights the importance of historical inquiry, argu-
ing that “truth” is a historically and culturally situated category. 57 In this
method, discourse is analyzed and contextualized historically in order to
unmask how ever-changing relations of power create a “tangled knot of
shifting meanings, definitions and interested parties over periods of time.”58
Once unmasked, these shifts in meaning threaten to denaturalize the taken-
for-granted discourses in a given society by showing what once was and
possibilities for additional changes in the future. In the same Foucauld-
ian vein, Critical Rhetoric “seeks to unmask or demystify the discourse
of power”59 with a shift from issues of the truth or falsity of discourses
14 Introduction
the way discourses are “mobilized to legitimate the sectional interests of
hegemonic groups.”60
What counts as knowledge “is always shaped by political, social and
historical factors,” so discourse analysis must “examine the relationship
between knowledge and the factors that produce and constrain it.”61 Such
factors include not only discursive practices that govern how cultures com-
municate about particular issues but also institutional constraints that
result from the structure of political and media systems.62 For example,
political and media elites have greater access to communicative resources,
which often translates into greater power to shape the discourse around
a particular issue.63 Critical discourse analysis thus asks questions about
whose access to power resources and how unequal access leads to broader
forms of inequality.
Scholars engaging in this method study “the way social power abuse,
dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text
and talk in the social and political context.”64 Here, critical discourse
analysts echo Foucault who views power and what counts as knowledge
in a given society as necessarily connected. He argues that “no form of
knowledge emerges independently of complex networks of power and that
the exercise of power produces certain types of knowledge.”65 The goal of
discourse analysis, then, is to expose the regimes of truth and power that
circulate within a given society and around a particular discursive forma-
tion and to attempt to map how these regimes of power are connected to
the discourse circulating in a given historical moment.
Critical discourse analysis is an engaged form of scholarship that makes
an intervention in discursive practices by unmasking the power relations
that produce particular forms of knowledge. By denaturalizing the dis-
cursive formation and asking what other practices might be possible or
desirable, the work of discourse analysis potentially reshapes what counts
as knowledge around a particular issue. Social justice is one goal of this
method, as scholars engaging in this work attempt to challenge unequal
power relations that construct and are constructed by asymmetrical rela-
tionships within and between cultures.
Using this interdisciplinary methodological framework, we have con-
ducted a discourse analysis of a vast trove of documents from public
statements, hundreds of movie reviews, blog post, and tens of thousands
of YouTube comments. It is essential to note that we do not take these
discourses, under review here, as the statements expressing the thoughts
and feelings of specific individuals. While particular speaking subjects bear
responsibility for such statements and are ethically bound to the violence
their words summon, we are rather interested in the themes of their ar-
guments and public statements that circulate, crisscross, and span sites of
deployment that do not always overlap (production boardrooms, critical
circles, and YouTube anonymous comments); we are interested in the lines
of domination these themes rehearse and reinforce; we are interested in the
Introduction 15
world that these arguments imagine, try to resuscitate, or attempt create;
and we are interested in what kind of subjects these discourses intend to
call into being.
In the next six chapters, we examine different aspects of women-strong
films in the systemic cinematic sexism into which they are born. Chapter 2
offers rhetorical analysis of the mainstream critical review summaries ag-
gregated on the website Rotten Tomatoes while providing historical con-
text to show that these comments are part of larger system of sexism in and
around women-strong films. Recurring themes that often use aesthetics as a
means of disparaging these films and their stars are analyzed, showing that
even in the relatively civilized world of “Top Critics,” women’s work is un-
dervalued. Chapter 3 uses a feminist political economy analysis to explore
the question of why it took decades before Wonder Woman appeared in a
standalone film despite a consistent groundswell of support for the charac-
ter. It also assesses how sexist cinematic practices combined to impact the
way the women behind and in front of the camera engaged in their work.
In Chapter 4, we do the unpleasant work of reading the comment sec-
tion of the YouTube trailer for the 2016 all-female remake of Ghostbusters.
Our critical discourse analysis of the online campaign to get 1 million dis-
likes on the movie’s YouTube trailer before the film was released in theaters
shows that while much media attention was given to the vulgar nature of
the attacks, the response was both predictable and familiar. This chapter
dives deep into online trolling to provide a more accurate picture of the
ways that (mostly men) harassers use the words of everyday sexism in real
life to engage in homosocial bonding in online spaces. Along a similar line,
Chapter 5 uses a critical rhetoric lens to explore the manosphere’s backlash
to the post-apocalyptic movie Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that “dares” to
center a woman while seemingly “displacing” the male central character of
Max. This chapter provides a road map for understanding the parasitic na-
ture of misogynistic film criticism, laying bare the trite blend of misogyny
and sexism that, under the call of a seemingly new form of masculinity, ad-
vocates for a very old and dusty form of patriarchy. In Chapter 6, we engage
in discourse analysis of the racist and misogynistic commentary surround-
ing the expanding (and more inclusive) Star Wars Universe, unveiling the
ways (mostly) men in the online manosphere embrace toxic nostalgia, using
a jeremiad rhetorical strategy, to launch an assault on improved representa-
tion while claiming the positionality of victim. This cultural flashpoint il-
lustrates an ongoing vicious defense of white supremacist patriarchy that
offers a blend of toxic nostalgia and 21st-century male anxieties as they
reveal fear of a perceived end of real men and a (white) male-dominated
society.
Chapter 7 focuses on the film Atomic Blonde, which was largely criticized
as “all style, no substance,” just one of the sexist tropes that infected the
critical dismissal of this Hollywood spy movie. Here, we use that criticism
as a jumping off point as we offer a psychoanalytic analysis of the film,
16 Introduction
simultaneously arguing that Atomic Blonde showcases a uniquely pow-
erful fictional character, one who goes unrecognized because of systemic
cinematic sexism, while providing a blueprint for alternative reading and re-
sponse to feminist filmic artifacts. And, finally, in our concluding Chapter 8,
we build on the prior chapters, asking readers to consider the many ways
that political counter-publics can be marshalled to sabotage women–strong
films. Embracing the Foucauldian concept of apparatus, in this case, func-
tioning as patriarchal realism, our conclusion connects diverse institutional
sites and communities that push back against women-strong films and
women-centered cultural production, providing a theoretical blue-print for
additional studies in this area. And, finally, at the end of Chapter 8, we an-
swer some hard questions about aesthetic criticism of women-strong films
and offer some concluding thoughts, asking readers to explore the failures
and possibilities of women-strong films, reflecting upon what it would mean
to look at women’s experiences of pleasure as a radical act.
To invoke critical rhetoric once more, McKerrow’s “critique of freedom,”
the companion to the “critique of domination,” refers to a “self-reflexive
critique that turns back on itself even as it promotes a realignment in the
forces of power that construct social relations.”66 In other words, as we
talk about sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy affecting the production, pro-
motion, and reception of women-strong films, we must turn a critical eye
inward, on our own endeavor, in order to, at the very least, note its blind
spots, shortcomings, and, consequently, the directions of future research
opened by what is said as much as it is by what is left unsaid. Before we
jump into these ideas, then, we want to make an important note about
language and inclusion.
Much of the work quoted in the ensuing pages is part of discursive anal-
yses of mainstream cultural artifacts, which are unpacked using the lens of
feminist theory and feminist academic explorations of film. Many of these
artifacts—films, popular reviews, blogs, tweets, and the like—are centered
in or revolve around the idea of “woman” as understood binarily in oppo-
sition to “man.” While we recognize (and, in fact, teach, write, and engage
in activism about) the dangers in reproducing this problematic language,
we are nonetheless trying to make sense of mediated texts in a world in
which most of the participants (writers, readers, creators, and viewers) still
see the world largely through a gender binary. That is to say, we often talk
about the category of “woman” as it is discussed in secondary coverage of
popular films, but we in no way intend to imply that there is such a binary
in real life or that people can, do, or should ascribe to it in their own lives.
Our goal in these pages is not simply to reproduce this language, but to
highlight this language in service of creating change. Feminist film scholar
E. Ann Kaplan discusses the possibility inherent in this endeavor, stating
that film offers the possibility of creating representations that break the
norm of patriarchal understandings of womanhood and, in doing so, can
help create new understandings of gender possibility.67 In this vein, we hope
Introduction 17
to better understand both the negative impacts of this language (including
the white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist ideas meant to dismiss, anni-
hilate, belittle, and capitalize on denigrating the feminine) and the positive
opportunities of highlighting images of strong women, support for women,
and pleasure in women-centered media.
We are also deeply conscious of the ways focusing on this language pre-
cludes other possibilities. Our pleasure at seeing strong women represented
is a pleasure not often granted people whose intersectional identities in-
clude nondominant markers not privileged in Hollywood blockbuster films.
The films we have selected, the big-budget films starring strong woman
leads, are also films that showcase primarily wealthy, white, stereotypically
attractive, able-bodied, straight women. While we have engaged in an anal-
ysis of the production, distribution, reception, and perception of these films
in this book, we are hopeful that the films starring women of color, nonbi-
nary people, and people of additional underrepresented identities that are
currently in production will offer us opportunities to further expand the
scope of this project in future studies. We look forward to that opportunity.
Notes
1 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her (New York: Praeger,
1989).
2 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation: An Oxymo-
ron,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59, no. 1 (February 1973): 74–86, https://
doi.org/10.1080/00335637309383155. Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her.
3 Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2.
4 Darryl W. Bullock, The Infamous Cherry Sisters: The Worst Act in Vaudeville
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 2019), Kindle.
5 Bullock, The Infamous Cherry Sisters: The Worst Act in Vaudeville, chap. 10.
6 Articles on the Cherry Sisters from The Odebolt Chronicle, 1898–1901,” ac-
cessed June 26, 2019, http://sites.rootsweb.com/~iaohms/cherry_articles.html.
7 Cherry v. Des Moines Leader et al., No. 114 Iowa, 298, 86 N.W. 323 (Supreme
Court of Iowa May 28, 1901).
8 Bullock, The Infamous Cherry Sisters: The Worst Act in Vaudeville,
Introduction.
9 Nolan D. Mccaskill, Trump Suggests His Accusers are Too Unattractive to
Assault, Politico, 10/14/2016, accessed January 7, 2021, https://www.politico.
com/story/2016/10/trump-jessica-leeds-accusations-229805
10 Thomas L. Tedford and Dale A. Herbeck, Freedom of Speech in the United
States, 8th ed. (State College, PA: Strata Publishing, 2017), 83.
11 Mark Jancovich, “Genre and the Audience: Genre Classifications and Cultural
Distinctions in the Mediation of The Silence of the Lambs,” in Hollywood
Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences, ed. Melvyn Stokes
and Richard Maltby (London: British Film Institute, 2001), 38.
12 Lisa Bode, “Transitional Tastes: Teen Girls and Genre in the Critical Reception
of Twilight,” Continuum 24, no. 5 (October 2010): 707–719, https://doi.org/
10.1080/10304312.2010.505327, 708–709.
13 Bode, Transitional Tastes.
14 Andrea Huyssen, “Mass Culture as Women: Modernism’s Other,” in Studies
in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, ed. Tania Modleski,
18 Introduction
Theories of Contemporary Culture, vol. 7 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986), 188–207.
15 Barbara Klinger, “Tastemaking: Reviews, Popular Canons, and Soap Operas,”
in Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader, ed. Paul Grainge, Mark Jan-
covich, and Sharon Monteith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007),
351–370.
16 Klinger, “Tastemaking,” 353.
17 Huyssen, “Mass Culture as Women.” Bode, “Transitional Tastes.”
18 Bode, “Transitional Tastes.”
19 Janet Badia, “‘Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers and Sylvia
Plath’s Literary Reception,” Literature Interpretation Theory 19, no. 2 (2008):
190.
20 Badia, Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers,” 202.
23 Badia, Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers,” 205
24 Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain 1750–1835: A Dangerous
Recreation (New York: Cambridge UP, 1999), 83, quoted in Janet Badia, “‘Dis-
satisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers and Sylvia Plath’s Literary
Reception,” Literature Interpretation Theory 19, no. 2 (2008): 207.
25 Suzanne Ashworth, “Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World, Conduct Litera-
ture, and Protocols of Female Reading in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,”
Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 17, no. 2 (2000), 83, quoted
in Janet Badia, “‘Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers and
Sylvia Plath’s Literary Reception,” Literature Interpretation Theory 19, no. 2
(2008): 207.
26 Catharine J. Golden, Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and
American Fiction (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2003), 3, quoted in Janet Badia,
“‘Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers and Sylvia Plath’s Lit-
erary Reception,” Literature Interpretation Theory 19, no. 2 (2008): 207.
27 KateFlint, The Woman Reader 1837–1914 (New York: Oxford UP, 2003), 58,
quoted in Janet Badia, “‘Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers
and Sylvia Plath’s Literary Reception,” Literature Interpretation Theory 19,
no. 2 (2008): 207.
28 Christopher B. Daly, Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s
Journalism, Kindle (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), loca-
tion 2809, Kindle.
29 Patricia Bradley, Women and the Press: The Struggle for Equality, Medill
School of Journalism: Visions of the American Press (Evanston, IL: Northwest-
ern University Press, 2005), 23–25.
30 Marc Choueiti, Stacy L. Smith, and Katherine Pieper, “Critic’s Choice 2: Gen-
der and Race/Ethnicity of Film Reviewers Across 300 Top Films from 2015–
2017,” Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (Los Angeles, CA: USC Annenberg,
September 2018).
31 Bonnie J. Dow, “The Traffic in Men and the Fatal Attraction of Postfeminist
Masculinity,” Women’s Studies in Communication; Laramie 29, no. 1 (Spring
2006): 113–131.
32 Dow, 119.
33 Dow, 119.
34 Susan Faludi, Backlash. The Undeclared War Against American Women (New
York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), 9.
35 Faludi, Backlash, 9.
Introduction 19
42 Bernie Cook, ed., Thelma & Louise Live! The Cultural Afterlife of an Ameri-
can Film, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).
43 Cook, Thelma & Louise Live.
44 John Leo, “Toxic Feminism on the Big Screen,” U.S. News & World Report,
June 10, 1991, par. 2.
45 Leo, “Toxic Feminism,” par. 3.
46 Stacy L. Smith et al., “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair: Gender, Race, & Age
of Directors Across 1,200 Top Films from 2007–2018” (Los Angeles, CA: USC
Annenberg, January 2019).
47 Caitlin Dewey, “The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to
Read,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2014, accessed July 29, 2020,
https://w w w.washingtonpost.com /news/the-intersect /wp/2014/10/14/
the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/
48 Adrienne Massanari, “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algo-
rithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures,” New Media
& Society, 19 (2017): 330.
49 Caitlin Dewey, “The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to
Read,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2014, accessed July 29, 2020,
https://w w w.washingtonpost.com /news/the-intersect /wp/2014/10/14/
the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/
50 Catherine H. Palczewski, “The Male Madonna and the Feminine Uncle
Sam: Visual Argument, Icons, and Ideographs in 1909 Anti-Woman Suf-
frage Postcards,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91, no. 4 (November 2005):
365–394.
51 Charlton Heston, “Winning the Cultural War,” American Rhetoric online
Speech Bank, accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/
speeches/charltonhestonculturalwar.htm
52 Charlton Heston, “Winning the Cultural War,” American Rhetoric online
Speech Bank, accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/
speeches/charltonhestonculturalwar.htm
53 Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books,
1972); Michel Foucault, “The Political Function of the Intellectual,” Radical
Philosophy 17 (1977): 126–133; Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault, (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005).
54 Teun A. van Dijk. “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, ed. D. Tannen, D. Schiffrin, and H. Hamilton (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001), 352–371.
55 Marianne Jorgensen and Louise Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and
Method (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 2.
56 Micheal Arribas-Ayllon and Valerie Walkerdine, “Foucauldian Discourse
Analysis” (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2008).
57 Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005).
58 Penny Powers, “The Philosophical Foundations of Foucaultian Discourse Anal-
ysis,” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 1, no. 2
(2007): 26.
59 Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communica-
tion Monographs 56 (1989): 91.
61 Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 54.
20 Introduction
62 Marianne Jorgensen and Louise Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and
Method (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002).
63 Teun A. van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis” (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
64 Teun A. van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis” (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001),
352.
65 Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 101.
67 E. Ann Kaplan, ed., Feminism and Film, Oxford Readings in Feminism (Ox-
ford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
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sis.” In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology, edited by
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“Articles on the Cherry Sisters from The Odebolt Chronicle, 1898–1901.” Accessed
June 26, 2019. http://sites.rootsweb.com/~iaohms/cherry_articles.html.
Ashworth, Suzanne. “Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World, Conduct Literature,
and Protocols of Female Reading in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.” Legacy:
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187–213.
Badia, Janet. “‘Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers and Sylvia
Plath’s Literary Reception.” Literature Interpretation Theory 19, no. 2 (2008):
187–213.
Badia, Janet. Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers. Amherst: Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press, 2011.
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1080/10304312.2010.505327.
Bradley, Patricia. Women and the Press: The Sturggle for Equality. Medill School
of Journalism: Visions of the American Press. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Uni-
versity Press, 2005.
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. Man Cannot Speak for Her. New York: Praeger, 1989.
———. “The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation: An Oxymoron.” Quarterly
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2018.
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Film. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
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nalism. Kindle. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
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satisfied, Family-Hating Shrews:” Women Readers and Sylvia Plath’s Literary
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ysis.” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 1, no. 2
(2007): 18–34.
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the Director’s Chair: Gender, Race, & Age of Directors Across 1,200 Top Films
from 2007–2018.” Los Angeles, CA: USC Annenberg, January 2019.
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8th ed. State College, PA: Strata Publishing, 2017.
2 Misogyny and the missive of
mediocrity
Disparaging women-strong
films in movie reviews
One author (Stevens) had a conversation with a film critic once about
women in popular culture; he wanted to know what she thought of Katniss
Everdeen. It was a great chat and fun catching up with an old colleague, she
waxing poetic about the power of fictional role models for girls, he asking
what movies she thought his young daughter should see. At some point in
the far-ranging conversation about women-strong films, the movie critic
commented in his usual jovial, well-meaning, and quite likeable style, “but
that’s just a BAD movie!” And *snap!* that sensation emerged, telling us
that how we feel and what we have to say somehow fails to meet some elu-
sive criteria for what makes a movie good or bad—like we showed up at a
business lunch meeting in a dress suit only to find all the men in their golf
clothes, obviously amused at our cultural misunderstanding of the event. In
this moment, we realized that when critics assign the label “bad,” when the
“Tomatometer” goes splat, we viewers who experience the film differently
find ourselves at odds with a larger cultural force. To say we like, or love,
or even enjoy a film that critics agree is terrible must mean—what? We have
no taste? We don’t know enough about film to get what’s wrong with it? We
are somehow less than?
Actually, it turns out, the problem isn’t ours. The problem is a cultural
practice that enables primarily white men to dictate what counts as qual-
ity, often apparently without awareness of their own biases and blind
spots when it comes to women-strong films and those that include under-
represented groups doing anything other than behaving badly. It is not
much of an exaggeration to say that this patriarchal policing of quality has
always been true from the time the first women tried to take to pulpits to
speak out for suffrage or early vaudevillians took to the stage to showcase
any talent other than sexiness. As women creatives and their audiences
gain ground in popular culture, we often find that the patriarchal system in
which we function fails to align with our own desire to express and appre-
ciate the expression of others.
Jill Dolan in The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for the
Stage & Screen reminds us that we can certainly judge films to some degree
by taking into account agreed to markers of quality in terms “that consider
DOI: 10.4324/9780429291975-2
Misogyny and the missive of mediocrity 23
cinematography, plot, atmosphere and other cinematic elements.”1 How-
ever, she argues that she wouldn’t necessarily recommend a film that fails
to meet “gender, race, sexuality, and other intersecting identity vectors,”2
regardless of its other qualities.
The simplistic good or bad binary, based on a glib, unthinking model of

consumer reporting, drives too much film reviewing and consumption.
The ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’ paradigm established by Gene Siskel
and Roger Ebert essentially tells people how to spend their entertain-
ment dollars based on only two choices – yes or no.3
Yet, so much more goes into our responses to art—popular or otherwise.
Analyzing discursive claims of quality

As a society, we continue our decades of arguments about what should—or
should not—be included as a canonical text taught to all students as we be-
come increasingly aware of the ways gender, race, and sexuality made some
authors visible and fueled active efforts to erase others. Class comes into
play when arguing about what art is worthy of the label and what is not, an
age-old debate that extends now to blockbuster movies versus independent
films, Netflix series versus Sundance shorts, and painter versus street artist
to name a few. The very idea of appreciation is often caught up in our abil-
ity to take pleasure in what we are seeing or hearing—the stories we watch
and read and, sometimes, incorporate into our worldview. For example,
Dolan talks about Mamma Mia! and how “few critics noted the joy of
watching middle aged women – and such a luscious mix of theatre stars,
film stars, and London-based actors – cavort with full throats in a silly
summer comedy.”4 For Dolan, that pleasure led her to appreciate the film in
a way that others apparently could not. She points out the opposite in the
critical acclaim of The Social Network, acclaim in which most critics chose
not to point out what Dolan describes as “its appalling gender politics.”5
This chapter uses discourse and framing analysis grounded in feminist
rhetorical theory to enter into the larger conversation about why some texts
are accepted and promoted and others rejected or maligned. In essence,
when it comes to film criticism, gender and race play outsized roles in deter-
mining what earns the “good” label versus that which is dismissed as “bad.”
While critics across the board tend to give positive reviews to “well-made”
films that fall within the traditional bounds of being white male-centric,6
when it comes to women-centered films, the majority white male critics
seem to become blinded to anything but the women’s presence, leading to
the publishing of “…stinging reviews that seem personal. Addressing plays
or films they perceive as feminist especially provokes venomous disdain
and disregard.”7 So, the majority of critics on the one hand are blind to the
representational flaws in male-focused films, yet perversely unable to see
24 Misogyny and the missive of mediocrity
quality in women-centered films as the very presence of women in strong
roles is repulsive to them.
In describing this repulse response to women, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
goes even further back, all the way to studies of Sappho and Quintillian, to
illustrate that “what is pleasing and beautiful in discourse is socially con-
structed and gendered.”8 Ultimately, since the earliest days of performance,
gender has been a limiting factor as any behavior or affect viewed as out-
side idealized norms often goes unrecognized or is disparaged in aesthetic
terms—regardless of its merit. “Women who excel in producing what is
beautiful and pleasing in masculine terms will not be praised for their skill
but condemned on grounds of aesthetics or for a kind of ‘feminine’ incom-
petence,”9 Campbell correctly asserts. Further, in drawing from the literary
scholarship of Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Gerda Lemer, among oth-
ers, Campbell writes of art forms that have been culturally coded for the
male gender—functionally excluding women while simultaneously leaving
them with only male models of creative output. This often puts women in
the position of working within the (male-dominated) genres that exist or
inventing new spaces through which to express their voices. This bind, not
surprisingly, has often led to an “undercurrent of rage and alienation that
ran through women’s works of fiction.”10 It also sets women up for a per-
ceived aesthetic failure as they transgress gender and form—as if women
creators have taken a popular melody and by changing it to a minor key
and revising its tempo, they have destroyed something beloved rather than
created something new. Only when experienced by others with similar
identities or an ability to read past their own boundaries of self can this
new creation be appreciated.
Because of a gender imbalance in the realm of film criticism, there are few
opportunities for woman-strong work to be valued fully. According to An-
nenberg’s Critic’s Choice 2: Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Film Reviewers
Across 300 Top Films from 2015–2017, released in September 2018, the de-
mographic disparity among film critics is substantial. The report, based on
data from critiques of the 300 top-grossing films in the period, shows that
65.6% of those reviews are written by white male critics, 17.6% by white
female critics, 13.1% by underrepresented male critics, and 3.7% by under-
represented female critics. A full 77.3% of top critics are male, 22.7% fe-
male; that means in excess of three reviews are written by men for every one
review written by a woman—a statistic that remains virtually unchanged in
the three years of the study. Looking at the pool of critics themselves, it is
clear that the disparity is not a result of lesser output but a matter of access:
52.6% of critics are white males, 24.2% are white females, 14.2% are un-
derrepresented males, and 8.9% are underrepresented females.
Brie Larson, whose growing power on screen as Captain Marvel is ar-
guably rivaled by her real-life persona, has been working to make this dis-
parity visible since the summer of 2018 when she famously said, “I do not
need a 40 year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work for him about
A Wrinkle in Time.”11 While surely a meme-worthy comment, Larson was
calling public attention to the Annenberg Report’s initial findings as she
announced that both the Sundance and Toronto film festivals would be
working to rectify a systemic problem: lack of access. Or, as Larson put it,
“Female and underrepresented critics can’t review what they don’t see.” The
film festivals’ pledge to reserve 20% of press passes for underrepresented
critics was a step in the right direction, though the need for activist inter-
vention continues as organizations such as the Critics Groups for Equality
in Media press forward with efforts to open film criticism to a wider range
of writers and critics—a range that better reflects society’s makeup.12
It is advocacy for change that matters. For women who want to work as
critics, their options and potential for economic success are limited; news
organizations across genres, from notable daily papers to entertainment
outlets, consistently maintain a ratio of more than three male critics for
every one female,13 reinforcing a boys-club atmosphere among movie re-
viewers that is demoralizing at best. And from a quantitative perspective,
gender matters. When assessing reviews of the same 300 top-grossing films,
the Annenberg Report shows that, when films are led by women, there is a
significant downtick in positive critiques among the white male reviewers
who make up the majority of the pool. While every other category of re-
viewer listed (white female, underrepresented male, and underrepresented
female) rank white male-led films similar to white male reviewers, the same
does not hold when the tables are turned. Annenberg has shown us that the
intersections of critic identity with leading character identity will “affect
standardized review scores, particularly for white male and underrepre-
sented female critics.”14
The biggest disparity is between white male reviewers and underrepre-
sented female reviewers: when the white male group evaluates films led by
underrepresented female leads, only 59.2% of the critics ranked the film
as “fresh,” while 81.1% of underrepresented female critics gave the film a
“fresh” rating.15 Though Annenberg cautions that the sample size is low
(because so few films feature underrepresented female leads), their quanti-
tative data is supported by our own rhetorical analysis of reviews by Top
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
Rotten Tomatoes was chosen for analysis here both for its “omnipres-
ence” online, thanks to its many corporate partnerships,16 and its reach of
more than 50 million visitors per month.17 The review aggregator website
is considered a dominant influencer by Hollywood insiders, is a household
name, and its film rankings are often suggested to anyone looking up films
on Google, imbd.com, or Rotten Tomatoes parent company, Flixster. In
other words, Rotten Tomatoes is the go-to resource for anyone looking for
a critical take on a movie.
Throwing tomatoes
After repeatedly encountering terrible reviews of many women-strong films
that we found absolutely delightful to watch, we decided to do some analysis
to figure out how it was possible that we could see a film so differently than
“the critics.” To make the data-set manageable, we chose the Rotten Toma-
toes website’s “Top Critic” blurbs to analyze, looking for common themes
as well as ratios of male to female reviewers. A total of five themes emerged,
two of them dominant: dismissive judgment and paternalistic pedantics.
In a thematic analysis of 459 Top Critic blurbs on Rotten Tomatoes for 11
women-strong films released between 2013 and 2019, those two themes
were repeated more than any other, appearing in 42% of the pull quotes
used by aggregator Rotten Tomatoes to represent the full review, providing
a rhetorical richness to the aggregation beyond just the numeric value that
ultimately leads to a film getting a “rotten tomato” or “fresh.” What we
label the dismissive judgment theme shows itself almost 120 times (27%
of the blurbs) in any number of ways, with everything from sentiments
such as “is that all there is?” all the way to “What a waste of time” and
everything in between: “All style, no substance,”18 “feels more obligatory
than inspired,”19 or “doesn’t reinvent any wheels.”20 The next most com-
mon theme, recurring more than 60 times (15% of the blurbs), is pater-
nalistic pedantics shown in phrases like “you could have been more,”21 or
“[she] is capable of much more,”22 or “it had a chance to be great.”23
To be sure, movie criticism itself is a field rife with, well, critical phrasing.
It is the job, after all, as the judge way back in the Cherry Sisters case elab-
orated, to inform the public about the quality of performances before the
masses spend their money to see these artistic expressions. In essence, the
very existence of the film critic who has access to a movie before the rest of
us do is to act as a cultural gatekeeper. However, a cursory examination of
similar genres of films starring men or with male-centric themes does not
show the same dismissive attitude so common in the reviews of women-
strong films, a fact further supported by the Annenberg Report’s find-
ings illustrating the consistently lower ratings white male reviewers (who
make up a wide majority of all reviewers) give to women-centered films. In
the case of the Top Critic Blurbs examined here, 70% were attributed to
male reviewers and 30% to female reviewers, a ratio that holds for most of
the films. Looking at the “Rotten Tomato” versus “Certified Fresh” results
alone, male reviewers gave women-strong films a splat 38% of the time,
5 percentage points more than female reviewers who gave a splat 33% of
the time. Conversely, female reviewers offered a “Certified Fresh” tomato
66% of the time, 4 points more than male reviewers who gave the fresh seal
only 62% of the time. So, even in this relatively small sample size, we can
observe a gender bias that tracks with the Annenberg Report, and we can
see how significant the potential is for elevated reviews if the reviewer pool
were to better reflect society and the protagonists of the films reviewed.
That said, in our rhetorical analysis of the blurbs, the language of crit-
icism itself does not necessarily track along strict gender lines, as some
women reviewers, well established in the reviewer’s “boys’ club,” incor-
porate misogynistic worldviews into their work, while some men write
positive and nuanced reviews in favor of women-strong films. Regardless,
by analyzing the language of critics of women-strong films, as we have done
here, a pattern emerges in the work of these cultural gatekeepers as they set
a tone that sets up women-strong films to be viewed with suspicion or as
“just OK – for a chick flick.”
While the dismissive judgment theme is present to some degree in the
reviews of all women-strong films examined (even those certified “fresh”),
we will focus here on three:24 The To Do List (2013), 25 Captain Marvel
(2019), 26 and The Hustle (2019). 27 These films span a range of genres—
The To Do List (TDL) is a sexual coming-of-age buddy film, Captain
Marvel a classic superhero blockbuster, and The Hustle a comedic con/
heist remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), itself a remake of Bedtime
Story (1964). TDL is a natural starting point here for two reasons—first,
it has a 54% “Tomatometer” score, earning it the visual splat of a rotten
tomato. Second, it is one of the films that got us started on this research
project. When TDL hit theaters in July 2013, we went to see it at the AMC
in Roseville, Minnesota, one afternoon knowing little about it except that
we had laughed aloud, repeatedly, at a trailer for the film that showcased
its sex-based humor—namely some unsuspecting young men, targeted for
helping the main character check “blow job” off her list, were given copious
quantities of pineapple juice to drink. The men thought that it was because
the young women feeding it to them were Mormon, unaware that it was
an enactment of the sex myth 28 that pineapple makes ejaculate taste better.
The theater was small and nearly empty that day—we didn’t realize at the
time that we were lucky to be able to see it at all as its widest release hit
only 591 theaters. Compare that with the big weekend release at the time,
Wolverine, which was released in 3,924 theaters and ran for some 19 weeks
(compared with 3 weeks for TDL). 29 In fairness, no coming-of-age com-
edy is likely to be able to stand up to a Marvel superhero title, but a quick
peek at the July 1999 release of American Pie, a similar (but male-focused)
coming-of-age comedy, ran in 2,544 theaters. 30 Back to that day in Minne-
sota watching TDL—we laughed so hard we cried, most of us remember-
ing the joy, the shame, the awkwardness of early sex—discussing how we
wished we’d had someone like Connie Britton to teach us about lube right
after high school like Aubrey Plaza’s character did. We were so delighted
by the film that we got together some half dozen women from grad school
to go see it with us a second time—they, too, laughed, and we roamed the
Roseville Mall afterward for a bit, rejoicing in the representations, sharing
our own coming-of-age stories, and being vexed that this was the first time
we’d seen a movie like this AND that none of them even knew this film
existed before we took them to see it. In other words, seeing TDL was a
joyful, freeing, bonding experience.
So imagine our surprise when we looked at the Rotten Tomatoes Top
Critic blurbs and saw the dismissive judgment theme so visible, the mes-
sage that this is a film that is hardly worth the reader’s time or money made
all the more clear with the blurbs married to the nauseating green splat
assigned a movie for which “less than 60% of reviews…are positive.”31 It
takes only one swipe on a phone or “page down” on a computer to get to
the “Critic Reviews” for the film, a graphic compilation of pull-quotes cho-
sen by Rotten Tomatoes “curators” (or sometimes by the critics themselves)
as representative of the overall tenor of the entire review. Set in quote boxes
like you might see in a comic strip, along with the representative splat or
ripe tomato to reflect a culturally accepted “good or bad,” “thumbs up,
thumbs down” dichotomy, the affective quality of the landing page is pow-
erful. And, in the case of TDL, negative. While there are ripe tomatoes,
of course, and while a complete reading of individual reviews might give a
more nuanced evaluation of the film being reviewed, that first impression
is key. And in an era when heavy app and phone users are known to be
more likely to skim and skip around for data rather than spend time and
energy comparing Entertainment Weekly’s take with that of The New York
Times, it is easy to see how influential the movie landing page for Rotten
Tomatoes can be.
Dismissive judgment and paternalistic pedantics32

The Top Critic blurbs for TDL 33 include blanket dismissals such as “It is
to comedy what an abstinence pledge is to sex” and “Even when the film
connects, I can’t help feel that it’s mostly because it’s set the target too low.”
In other words, this film is not funny, or is only so rarely and only for those
who might be amused by base humor. Another key message tells readers
that this film is awkward and adds little to nothing to the summer line-up,
with pull-quotes such as “Like the fumbling around of first-time sex, TDL
has its enjoyable moments but doesn’t exactly feel like a peak experience,”
and “Neither supergood nor superbad, but passable doesn’t exactly raise
the bar.” Even its unique woman-focused place among coming-of-age films
is dismissed with statements like, “Don’t go to TDL expecting a comedy
genre-buster like Bridesmaids. Rather it’s more of a one-joke repeater set
in the hot Boise, Idaho, summer of 1993.” And then, there is the all-too-
familiar insult to women and their endeavors in this blurb: “Many of The To
Do List’s jokes have this first-draft, is-that-all-there-is? quality.” Reminis-
cent of the second-wave observation that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred
Astaire did—but backwards and in high heels—the general critical attitude
is that if a film-featuring women isn’t the very best, in every possible way,
it really isn’t worth your time or money, a message examined more fully
in Chapter 4. The problem with that approach, especially with a film like
TDL, is that the film is, intentionally, a raunchy summer comedy about a
young woman (and her friends) coming of age sexually. Aesthetically speak-
ing, a comedy situated squarely in the life experience of women, even when
its treatment of men is not unkind, seems destined for disparagement unless
it meets some classic heteronormative, patriarchal litmus test. Bridesmaids,
for example, while undoubtedly a raunchy comedy, is ultimately focused on
marriage and finding the right man making it more legible in the critical mi-
lieu. Ultimately, TDL is a political film that uses comedy to show its women
viewers that they are not alone, and it uses shock value to call attention to
the double standard faced by women regarding sexuality in their personal
lives as well as representations of sexuality in popular culture.
A more recent and arguably less political comedy to consider is The Hus-
tle (2019). Visitors to its Rotten Tomatoes page are greeted with a splat, a
dismal 14% on the Tomatometer, and all but one landing-page pull-quote
from critics featuring the green splat. 34 Even the one “fresh” pull-quote on
the landing page offers not encouragement to potential viewers, but this:
“It’s the irony of all ironies that one walks away from The Hustle feeling
a little, well, hustled.” Along a similar line, many of the comments seem
focused primarily on the audience as victim of a poorly executed conjob. 35
Comments such as, “Who’s conning who here? In The Hustle, everyone’s
a sucker, most of all the audience;” and “The Hustle will fail to seduce the
most important mark in any heist movie: the audience” tell readers that to
pay to see this film is to set oneself up for a manipulative cash grab with
no payoff. Other comments seem focused on the film as a painful waste of
time: “Even with a running time of 93 minutes, The Hustle felt about an
hour too long,” offers one, while another says “When the end finally ar-
rives, it brings no sense of completion, just a sort of numb awareness that
the pain has stopped.” And in several of the comments, the takedown feels
particularly misogynistic, be it to tell us how dumb women ensembles are
as in this one: “Whatever I said about Ocean’s Eight (sic), I take it back;
that was a paragon of wit compared to this movie” or to focus our atten-
tion on the lack of skill of this woman-led farce: “It’s not terrible. It’s not
anything, really, except an excuse for Hathaway to swan about in a series
of clingy dresses and fake accents and Wilson to pratfall and deadpan her
way from one outlandish scheme to the next.” One seems to bring together
elements from all the rest, offering this take:
Even with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as con artists, the set-
ups are flat, the jokes don’t land and the actors strain for laughs that
never come. Be warned about this femcentric spin on Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels – it’s the audience that gets hustled.
In the culture of movie reviews, it appears to be just too much to take pleas-
ure in something as silly as a con movie or a heist flick if it headlines women
instead of men. The Dirty Rotten Scoundrels of 1988 (also a remake, re-
member), featuring Steve Martin and Michael Caine, holds an 89% rating
with blurbs that rejoice in seeing the stars being silly in the “exuberant
comedy,” a “joy to watch,” “eloquent” with “big belly laughs.”36 In truth,
both versions of the film are silly—intentionally and delightfully so—and
in both cases, the stars are cast for what they bring to the table: slapstick
in the case of Rebel Wilson and Steve Martin and sexy poise in the case of
Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine. Yet, under the protective garb of aes-
thetics, the male version is lauded, while the Hathaway and Wilson version
is eviscerated by critics. The theater we watched it in (in Modesto, Califor-
nia) on its second Friday in theaters was well attended, and the audience,
ourselves included, heartily engaged in the end-of-the-school-year escap-
ism. We were not alone as a look at the numbers shows The Hustle turned a
hefty profit domestically and abroad (easily clearing its $21 million budget,
grossing $90.7 million worldwide)37 despite the cultural gatekeepers advis-
ing us against such foolishness.
To round out the variety of women-strong films in this section, let’s take
a look at Captain Marvel, 38 another box-office success that on its opening
weekend landed as the sixth-highest ever at that point, grossing $455 mil-
lion globally.39 Then the film marked a milestone when it exceeded gross
sales of $1 billion globally a month later.40 While “Certified Fresh,”41 and
arguably as part of the Superhero genre, it is bound to have greater appeal
than a comedy, the film is not immune to the same kind of dismissive judg-
ment that is rampant in responses to TDL and The Hustle. One variation
on the theme reads not unlike a textual eye roll indicating the film is defi-
cient, unnecessary, and really nothing new with comments including these:
“Lacking the wit and graphic oomph that sometimes rescues the Marvel
franchise from terminal fatigue, Captain Marvel is yet another origin story
for yet another superhero;” “This plays like the kind of generic comic book
movie that was in vogue 15 years ago;” and “Captain Marvel ultimately
feels more obligatory than inspired, a movie that basically gets the job done
and little more.” And then, there is this exceptionally bored eye-roll that
really drives home the critical dismissal of the film’s very existence: “Nei-
ther a blast from the past, nor an inspiring glimpse into the future, at the
end of the day it’s just another Marvel movie. And not a particularly good
one, at that.”
In addition to the blasé takedowns, there is a variant that tells readers
what a waste it is to have a whole movie about such a second-rate char-
acter as Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers. For those unfamiliar with
the Marvel Universe in comic book form, the character stands among the
most powerful of all the characters—a natural leader of the Avengers and
inspiration to so many that a whole real-life fan club called Carol Corps
exists.42 Yet, this Top Critic sampling harkens back to the Cult of True
Womanhood, when women should know their place as silent supporters of
their households: “In the grand scheme of the Marvel Universe, however,
Captain Marvel feels like a supporting player, not a featured attraction;”
“More of a solid building block for future endeavors than a must-see solo
adventure;” and “The character, even when kicking ass, is a total bore”
make clear that this strongest of women has no business taking the spot-
light. And this blurb, “It succeeds more as an amusing fill-in-the-blanks
Marvel backstory provider than a confident, stand-alone tale of a woman
discovering her fierceness,” not only snarks at Captain Marvel as “back-
story” but also seems to have missed the entire flow of the film that shows
with passion and clarity the ways misogyny hurts us as girls and women
and illustrates in fantasy the empowerment of embracing our whole selves
even in the face of the most toxic oppression.
Still more blurbs show critics so confident in their reading that this is a
terrible movie that they make blanket statements about its poor quality on
all fronts: “The picture is not dull, exactly, just mundane, marked by unim-
aginative plotting, cut-rate villains, a bland visual style and a lack of élan in
every department.” Some even go so far as to offer predictions for the film’s
failure with profoundly incorrect expectations such as: “Good thing it’s
still March. Captain Marvel would have made a weak start to the summer
blockbuster season,” and “Only the most dedicated Marvel fans will follow
this Captain.” While reading such dismissive language might be somewhat
amusing as we relish in the blockbuster power of this film that has been
watched by millions around the world, the schadenfreude of critics so miss-
ing the mark is difficult to maintain as it exists with the knowledge that
even the strongest of women-led films is likely to be disparaged.
As we move on to the second-most-common critical theme, paternalistic
pedantics, there is a move toward disciplining some of the most power-
ful women in the industry: Angelina Jolie, Melissa McCarthy, and Amy
Schumer. A range of critic blurbs related to Jolie’s Maleficent (2014),43
Schumer’s Trainwreck (2015),44 and McCarthy’s The Boss (2016)45 often
share a tone suggesting that, even though these women may indeed be quite
talented, or because they are so talented, their films should have been better
in any number of ways.46
Let’s begin with Maleficent, a film that took over the #1 slot on its open-
ing the last weekend in May of 2014, displacing the one-week-old X-Men:
Days of Future Past. We initially attended Maleficent for many reasons,
including a desire to support Jolie’s political and women’s health activism
(one year earlier The New York Times had published her op-ed about her
double mastectomy)47 as well as our enjoyment of Jolie films generally—
even though we’re not usually too keen on fairy tales. We had no regrets
and were completely taken by the warmth of the relationship between the
titular character and that of Aurora, played by Elle Fanning, as well as
the focus on women’s relationships and love for one another as plot driv-
ers. We remember reading of the kind support Jolie provided to Fanning,
a relationship that has reportedly continued to grow,48 and how Fanning
enjoyed having Jolie’s young children on set while learning from Jolie’s pro-
fessionalism.49 We wished we had been able to watch that fairy tale when
we were children.
Yet, Maleficent has a 54% rating on the Tomatometer, and a visit to
its Rotten Tomatoes page shows the big green splat along with a majority
of pull-quotes featuring the accompanying mini-splats. 50 Clear among the
blurbs is the idea that Jolie is either just too much or a distraction: “As a
cameo, Jolie’s performance might have proven spectacular; but as a pro-
tagonist, she doesn’t give us enough to hold onto. For all her efforts, she
remains yet another special effect, however spectacular,” offers one, seem-
ing to at once claim that Jolie is “spectacular,” like some sort of planetary
body, making her somehow inappropriate to hold an important speaking
role. Another also focuses on Jolie’s fame with: “It’s a technological marvel
starring the world’s biggest celebrity: the full weight of Hollywood specta-
cle incarnate,” again suggesting that her power is problematic as anything
more than “spectacle.” Still more suggest that, by her very presence, and
her decision to star in such a second-rate film, the movie lets down its au-
dience and Jolie’s costars: “Jolie’s performance so overshadows the rest of
the cast (and the rest of the movie) that you sometimes feel as if the other
characters are, like us, just standing around watching her,” says one, while
another offers this strange sideswipe: “Jolie’s commitment to the part is
admirable: She gives this Maleficent a real emotional urgency. But the rest
of the movie lets her down.” Still more blurbs focus on chastising Jolie for
not doing more with her talent with comments including, “Jolie’s skills and
range as an actress are barely tapped into in this undemanding role” and
“I’d forgotten what a fierce screen presence Jolie is: she is becoming the So-
phia Loren of our age. Now I want to see her in a grownup film.” That last
one is a particularly odd comment to make about a film most likely to be
attended by mothers and their young daughters—essentially the comment
not only implies that Jolie could do better but also that she should do so
while staying in her lane as “sex symbol” rather than powerful leader and
mother figure.
Of course, when we move on to The Boss, the focus on McCarthy’s fail-
ure to meet the expectations of the critical pool has a slightly different tenor
as she is more likely to be insulted for her appearance than scolded for not
staying sexy. Yet another film we found enjoyable because of its focus on
the relationships between women as well as the mentorship roles women
can take with girls—be it for good or absurdly bad as showcased in this
comedy. Mostly, it was a pleasure to see Kristen Bell (of “Veronica Mars”
fame) working with McCarthy and a whole cast of girls—this is not the
horribly racist, sexist Bad News Bears51 of our youth with its token female
character.52 At 22% on the Tomatometer, 53 The Boss again showcases a
landing page on Rotten Tomatoes featuring all but one critic blurb with the
mini-splat.
The paternalistic pedantics letting us know that McCarthy could do so
much better is clear. Among the slams on the quality of the movie are:
“I persist in believing that Melissa McCarthy is capable of starring in a
movie that not only makes a (sic) scads of money but is – you know – good.
The latest refutation of my belief is The Boss,” and “McCarthy is a national
slapstick treasure, but The Boss is a weak-kneed comedy that would topple
without her,” saying at once that these films are beneath McCarthy and,
of course, that she should have better taste. That chastising tone recurs
frequently, with comments including: “Although her charisma is still un-
deniable, there’s also no denying that McCarthy is capable of much more
than she’s allowing herself to do here. There comes a point when every
force of nature starts to look just plain forced” and “As in McCarthy’s slip-
shod road movies Identity Thief and Tammy, the material here isn’t on her
level, the laughs are largely cheap and once again, the hall-of-fame comic
actress is stuck in a minor-league movie.” Further linking The Boss to what
the critic pool agrees is a series of bad choices with, “The gifted Melissa
McCarthy has spent the bulk of her post-Bridesmaids career elevating
so-so material. Add this raunchy comedy to the pile of mediocrity,” and
“McCarthy remains one of the funniest actors alive – a truth that frequently
rescues, but doesn’t really redeem, a sloppy comedy.”
Some critics try to couch their scathing comments as being not about
McCarthy’s skills, but rather about the poor script:
The Boss provides the talented Melissa McCarthy plenty of scenery to

comically chew on – she is very funny at times – but the story is paper-
thin, and the script gives much of the supporting cast the proverbial
pink slip.
Still others take aim at the supporting cast in a double-edged insult; “[Pe-
ter] Dinklage is awful as the foppish villain, and aside from one uproarious,
ad-libbed riff, McCarthy seems to be on autopilot,” and “The Boss gives
its star few, if any, hitting partners. It’s a baffling decision.” One thing is
certain—the “hitting partners” in the world of movie critics are not in short
supply. Once again, a film that features women in a variety of roles, one
that features growth through woman-to-woman relationships, and one that
features foundational women’s issues (raising children, especially girls), is
demeaned by the cultural gatekeepers.
Interestingly, as with the last section’s Captain Marvel rating, even when
a film has a “Certified Fresh” rank as in Trainwreck’s 85% on Rotten To-
matoes, 54 it is not immune from the paternalistic pendantics of Top Critics.
While it can be argued that Trainwreck is perhaps less transgressive than
some films examined here as its core plot revolves around recognizing the
right man (Bill Hader’s importance to the plot is visually queued in not
one but two images on the Rotten Tomatoes landing page), it is considered
a fairly classic example of director Judd Apatow’s work. It is nonetheless
a straight-up gender swap starring a culturally transgressive comedian of
import; although we generally find Apatow’s films tedious, we thoroughly
enjoyed this one as it was meaningful to see the traditional “boy becomes
man” played out by Schumer as “girl becomes woman,” a shift that gives
the film a power it might not have otherwise (and also helped us to under-
stand why so many men like Apatow’s hit movies).
When looking at the Top Critic blurbs for Trainwreck, though, the
paternalistic pedantics show through even with the love of Apatow as a
stabilizing influence.55 Some are quite clear that Schumer should have made
a better film, at once insulting the movie and tsk-tsking Schumer for not
being true to her radical public persona: “Apatow and Schumer probably
believe they’ve made a feminist picture, but the reality is something dif-
ferent. This is a conventional movie dressed as a progressive one” offers
one, “Ultimately comes down in favor of mainstream girl-gets-boy in a
way that ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ might find a little dubious, but it never
feels like Schumer is aggressively watering down her uniquely prickly brand
of comedy for a mass audience” says another. Others seem disappointed
that the film follows an expected trajectory with comments like “Despite
Schumer’s subversive instincts, the romantic comedy remains unchanged”
and “A deeply lazy and sentimental raunch comedy from director Judd Ap-
atow and writer-star Amy Schumer. Basically, a marshmallow covered with
bodily fluids.” Even those blurbs that seem positive at first blush have a
tone smacking of disappointment, such as these: “Trainwreck is not very
good, but Schumer is frequently amazing in it. Officially, her fans will not
be disappointed; not far below the surface, it’s a bummer” and “If you’re
looking for something radical, you’d be best to stick with Schumer’s televi-
sion show. Trainwreck is just good fun, and a lot of it at that” are two that
seem let down.
And still more drive home the idea that, even though it’s a fun movie,
Schumer ought to be producing something better:
There’s nothing remotely fresh about this plotline (or the way Apatow,
true to form, makes the movie 20 minutes longer than it should be), but
Trainwreck works as a comedy more often than it doesn’t - and that’s
rare enough;
and “There’s a funny movie in Trainwreck, but you may have to sift
through a lot of debris to find it.” Ultimately, although a blockbuster-style
Apatow comedy surely ought to have a different feel than the streamed,
cutting-edge feminist repertoire that made Schumer famous, critics are dis-
satisfied that Schumer doesn’t live up to her radical roots: “Often extremely
funny, even if it never approaches the radicalness of [Schumer’s] greatest,
most dangerous work.”
The critical jabs aimed at Jolie, McCarthy, and Schumer, taken together,
show a pedantic paternalism that mashes up “Why, aren’t you a talented
gal – such potential!” with “What a shame, you could have done so much
more!” In Captain Marvel, this commonplace disciplining of powerful
women is illustrated in many scenes, perhaps none as satisfying as the end
when her Cree “mentor,” played by Jude Law, recognizes the full scope of
Marvel’s power. The mentor who has literally contained her power—yet
repeatedly told Marvel that she could be so much more, a message repeated
through years of training and manipulation—recognizes that she has come
into her own. As he tries to keep her in check and save his own place in
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
VIII.
Ruusunpunainen puku.
Eikö ole kummallista, että Polle tanssii eikä Pyry, villikissa? Pyry
sanoo, joutuessaan tanssitilaisuuksiin: "Nyt minä en tanssi, vaikka
keisari pyytäisi!"
Mutta Polle, hiljainen ja ujo, tanssii. Ja hän väittää, että tanssi on

kokonainen elämä hänelle. Tässä maailmassa on niin paljon
merkillistä.
Pahinta on, että Polle pääsee niin harvoin tanssimaan, —

ensinnäkin koulu, ja sitten koti. Ne eivät kotona ollenkaan käsitä, että
tanssi voi olla kokonainen elämä. Ja kun hän sitten joskus pääsee ja
istuu pieneksi käyneessä valkoisessaan arkana ja hämillään, niin
kukapa häntä viitsisi tanssittaa montakaan kertaa! Siellä on niin
paljon hilpeitä tyttöjä, rohkeapuheisia ja muodikkaasti puettuja, niitä
on ilo pyöritellä.
Mutta nyt on Polle saanut syntymäpäiväkseen puvun, sellaisen

soman, ilmavan ruusunpunaisen, jota hän joskus oli toivonut. Ja
samanväriset silkkisukat ja sirot kiiltonahkakengät. Eipä hän suotta
uneksinut prinsessa Ruususesta! Jo seitsemäntoista, ja
ruusunpunainen puku! Hyväinen aika, kuinka elämä saattoi olla
ihanaa!
Kaiken tämän ihanuuden antaja oli Pyry. Arkipäiväinen, tuulihattu

Pyry melkein jumaloi Polle-siskoaan. Hän selvemmin kuin muut näki
sen sisäisen hienouden, sen sielun kirkkauden, mikä muodosti
Pollen aran olemuksen. Hän oli nähnyt Pollen tanssiaisissa. Hän
aavisti, kuinka Pollen kauneudenjanoinen mieli kärsi
epämiellyttävästä puvusta, vaikka hän ei koskaan pyytänyt
parempia. Pyryn sydäntä kirveli. Polte oli liian herkkä. Pieninkin
loukkaus haavoitti häntä. Pyry tahtoi hiukan tasoittaa siskon tietä, nyt
kun hänellä oli niin mainio tilaisuus.
Täti Brink oli lahjoittanut hänelle tuon kaiken. Täti Brinkin vanhat
viisaat silmät näkivät, että Pyryllä harvoin oli mitään uutta, vaikka
hänellä oli jotenkin hyvä palkka. Täti Brink kysyi silloin, että mitenkäs
sen asian laita oli. Ja Pyry tunnusti, että hän lähettää kotiin. Täti
Brink nyökytteli ja hymyili. Ja kun Pyry lähti lomalle, pisti täti Brink
salaperäisen laatikon hänen kainaloonsa. Vanhoissa viisaissa
silmissä loisti veitikka, kun Pyry ylenmäärin yllätettynä kiitteli.
Herttainen täti Brink!
Mitä täti Brink sanoisi, sitä Pyry oli pelännyt luovuttaessaan

lahjansa toiselle. Jos hän sanoisikin: "En luullut sinun niin vähän
arvoa panevan lahjaani!" — Ei! Kun Pyry oikein selittää, kuinka asia
on niin, täti Brink varmaan ymmärtää eikä loukkaannu. Jos ei täti
Brink ymmärrä, ei sitten kukaan muukaan. Hyvällä omallatunnolla
Pyry siis antoi "kaiken soman" Pollelle, ollen viisaasti vaiti lahjan
alkuperästä, sillä Polle ei silloin olisi suostunut ottamaan vastaan. Ja
jos täti Brink olisi nähnyt Pollen silmien säteilyn, olisi hän ollut yhtä
tyytyväinen kuin Pyrykin.
Pollekin oli tyttö vain, ja sitten tanssi ja Aage Rhein! Aage Rhein
oli vain käymäseltä kotonaan Pietarista. Hyvä isä sitä univormua!
Eikö liene jo täysi upseeri! Kaikki tytöt olivat ihan hulluina häneen.
Eikä se ollut mikään ihme. Sellaiset uneksivat mustat silmät ja
mustat pienoiset viikset. Ja hymy, oi voi sitä hymyä. Ja vartalo, se
vasta komeata, pitkä ja solakka ja univormussa, u-ni-vor-mus-sa!
Kaikki tytöt lauloivat:
"Aina uneksinut olen univormusta, aina pitänyt sotilaan

ryhdistä!"
Ja kaikki tytöt hommaavat tanssiaisia, ennenkuin hän ehtii lähteä.

Ja kaikki tytöt toivovat, että hän tanssittaisi juuri häntä ja kannukset
helisisivät. Ja hyväinen aika, kuinka kamalasti kaikki ovat
jännittyneitä. Ja eikö ole aivan hirvittävää, että hän kulkee aina
sysimustalla ratsulla, ihan kuin saduissa!
Sitten Polle oli tavannut hänet. Hän oli juossut postista ja Aage
seisotti ratsuaan, hypähti alas ja tuli kättelemään. Ja siinä samassa
huomasi Polle surkean asunsa: pieneksi käynyt kansallispuku, sen
alta pistävät paljaat, pitkät sääret, ja virttynyt, punainen silkkiliina
sitaistu vinosti päähän. Hän toivoi, että Aage Rhein ei olisi tuntenut.
"Sinä olet kasvanut kovin!" Aage Rhein puristi kapeata, kovaa

kättä ja hymyili sitä hirmuisen ihanaa hymyä.
Se nyt oli juuri pahinta, se kasvaminen, sitä kun koetti käpristyä

kokoon, että olisi sopinut vaatteisiinsa, ja Polle punastui oman
kurjuutensa tunnosta. Mutta Aage Rhein yhä piti kädestä ja
hymyillen katseli päästä jalkoihin. "Arvaan, että sinä tanssit kuin
keijukainen!" — Ah, Polle koetti piilottaa hoikkia nilkkojaan.
"Tehän pidätte tanssit!"
"Pidämme. Tietysti sinä olet kutsuttu?" Tiesihän Polle, että joku

hienoista tytöistä kutsuisi Aage Rheinin.
"Kyllä noin ylimalkaan. Mutta saanhan tulla sinun kutsuttunasi?"
Pollea ihan huimasi. Aage Rhein hänen kanssaan!
"Vai onko sinulla jo toinen?"
"Kukas minulla! Mutta ajattelen, että varmaan moni muu olisi

halukkaasti sinun kanssasi."
"Mutta sinä et olisi? Sinä olet kasvanut kovin, Pollenka!"
"Voi, ei — olen hyvin iloinen, jos sinä minun kanssani!"
"Kiitos! Ja me tanssimme koko illan. Lupaatko minulle kaikki

tanssit?"
"Tietysti!" Pollenhan on niin helppo luvata.
"Kiitos! Näkemiin, pitkä, pieni Pollenka!"
Polle tuli hyppien kotiin. Mutta Aage Rheinistä hän ei puhunut

Pyryllekään. Toisinaan on niin, ettei voikaan puhua. Sitäpaitsi oli
Pyry joskus niin kauhean järkevä, niinkuin siitä "Keltaruusustakin!"
"Pyhyh, joku kauppamatkustaja tai henkivakuutusmies!"
Huomenna, huomenna! Hän ei malttanut illalla olla koettelematta
pukuaan. Mikä onni, että hänellä juuri nyt oli puku! Hän näki itsensä
suloisena peilissä: silmät säteilevinä, huulet hehkuen ja
ruusunpunainen liehuva puku kuin unelma ympärillään.
"Nyt Polle on prinsessa Ruusunen!" ihaili Untuva. Polle on

varmaan somin heistä!
Kreets pyöritti häntä nähdäkseen "kuinka heilui". Ter sanoi häntä

perhoseksi ja Pyry hymyili; nyt oli Pollen sielulla sopiva verho.
Riemua täynnä Polle sukelsi vuoteeseensa. Hän oli nukkuvinaan

saadakseen olla rauhassa ajatuksineen. Oi, kerta hän olisi
onnellinen, täydesti onnellinen. Hän saisi tanssia, tanssia koko illan
siroin kengin ja ruusunpunaisen puvun liehuessa ja Aage Rhein,
Aage Rhein tanssittajana! Jos kuningas olisi käsivartensa tarjonnut,
olisi hän tuskin sitä niin suurena onnena pitänyt. Mitä sanoisivat ne
ylpeät tytöt! Kerran hänkin, Tuhkimo — —. Pollenka! Että Aage
Rhein muisti sanoa niin, kuin lapsenakin!
Huomis-ilta! Kuinka vähän voimmekaan tietää, mitä huominen tuo

mukanaan. Useasti haihtuu se huomaamatta monien mitättömien
päivien joukkoon, toisinaan se tuo tuomisia, iloisen yllätyksen tai
syvän surun. Pollelle se toi jälkimmäisen. Hän oli iltamyöhällä ollut
paljain jaloin kasteisessa ruohossa, saanut hammassäryn, ja toinen
poski — niin, se pyöristyi yhä pahemmin, mitä lähemmäksi ilta tuli.
Ja kun Pollen piti lähteä, pukea päälleen koko ihanuus, oli se niin
hirmuinen, poski nimittäin, että lähtö oli mahdoton.
Jos teistä joku on niin hartaasti kuin Polle toivonut jotakin ja sitten
niin armottomasti pettynyt, niin ymmärrätte, millaista hänen oli. Hän
vain nyyhkytti pää tyynyyn haudattuna. Äiti hieroi ajettunutta poskea
ja siskot ajoivat kipeään hampaaseen mahdollisia ja mahdottomia
rohtoja hiusöljyyn asti. Mutta mitäpä ne auttoivat! Eivät ne voineet
lievittää sydänsärkyä, ja se oli paljon kovempaa kuin hampaan.
Ei mikään lääke voinut auttaa sitä, että hän makasi tässä ja

ruusunpunainen puku ja tanssikengät ja silkkisukat olivat
laatikoissaan, ja Aage Rhein tanssi toisten tyttöjen kanssa. Voi, voi!
Tanssi koko pitkän illan ja hymyili hurmaavaa hymyään.
Elämä oli säälimätön, kurja ja tarkoitukseton. Miksi juuri hänen piti

saada puku ja kaikki ja sitten jäädä sänkyyn! Hän itki niin täysin
sydämin kuin vain seitsentoistavuotiaana voidaan itkeä, ja nukahti
viimein kyyneleihinsä.
IX.
"Synninlukko."
Seuraavana päivänä ei ollut jälkeäkään ajetuksesta eikä särystä.

Ja Polle oikein murjotti. Olisi ollut mukavampi, kun tänäänkin olisi
särkenyt, kun kerta eilenkin, ihan kuin vasite kiusalla.
Pyry houkutteli häntä Myllymäkeen. "Mennään katsomaan, joko on

noussut kangassieniä!"
Polle lähti vastahakoisesti. Pyry lörpötteli ja oli hassunpäiväinen.

Joka kerta, kun hän löysi suuren sienipaikan, niijasi hän ja puheli:
"Päivää, lättänaamat! Ikävä kyllä, että otan teidät vain syötäviksi.

Mutta vakuutan teille, että teidät käristetään oikein voissa eikä
missään rasvassa, ei edes rasvahäntälampaan rasvassa! Voi, voi.
Polle-kulta! Minä suuresti himoitsen nähdä niitä rasvahäntälampaita
siellä jossakin Kaspian kaltahilla. Siellä ne mennä kammertavat, ja
rasvahäntä painaa, jotta pitää olla pienet kärryt alla!"
Hän nauroi omille jutuilleen. "Se vasta mautonta", olisi Kreets

sanonut. Pollea vain harmitti.
"Ja kun kerran Ruotsin kuningas kysyi eräältä suomalais-äijältä —
ei, kun suomalais-äijältä kysyttiin — taikka lappalais-äijältä —"
"Taikka voguli-ostjakki-samojeedi- ja niin edespäin -äijältä!"

keskeytti Polle äreissään.
"Niin, kun häneltä kysyttiin, kuinka hän arveli kuninkaan elävän,

sanoi hän: hätäkös sillä, makaa vällyissä uunilla ja syö voissa
paistettuja rusinoita!"
"Tuo nyt on ikuisen vanha juttu", halveksi Polle.
"Kyllä, kyllä. Mutta kun ajattelen noita kangassieniä pannussa,

tulivat ne voissapaistetut rusinatkin siihen."
Pyry näytti niin murheelliselta, että Pollen viimein täytyi hänelle

mieliksi vähän hymyillä.
Ropsis, rapsis! Äkillinen pimeys ja vettä kuin kaatamalla.

Ukonpilvi.
He juoksivat suuren kuusen alle ja pysyivät kuivina.
Mutta nyt oli metsä sateen liottama. Läpimärkinä kietoutuivat

hameet piankin pitkin sääriä, ja kengät litsuivat vettä. Päälle
päätteeksi he olivat eksyneet.
Lopulta Pyry huomasi tuskin näkyvän polun kankaalla.
"Seurataan tätä, ehkä se vie kotiin. Jonnekin sen täytyy viedä,

ehkä johonkin torppaan. Siellä saisimme jotakin lämmintä!"
Tie luikersi lepikköön, kulki pitkin vuoren kuvetta, painui

näreikköön, nousi taas rinteelle, sieltä laskeusi laaksoon. Se tuntui
loputtomalta, päättömältä. Tytöt alkoivat väsyä laahatessaan raskaita
sienikorejaan.
Äkkiä he pysähtyivät hämmästyneinä. He olivat tulleet syvään

rotkoon, jota kolmelta taholta piirittivät äkkijyrkät kallioseinät niin
korkeina, että taivas näytti olevan määrättömän kaukana. Alkujaan
ehkä nämä vuoret olivat olleet yhtä, niin toistensa osilta ne näyttivät.
Jonkun mahtavan mullistuksen kautta olivat kai kerran repeytyneet,
ensin halki, jolloin oli syntynyt tämä rotko, sitten poikittain, sillä
oikeanpuolinen seinämä oli kuin jättiläistaltalla katkaistu.
Varmaankin rotkon suu antoi etelään, koska ylen voimakas

kasvullisuus rehoitti siinä. Sananjalkaa monenmoista komeina
pensaina, kuuset kohosivat mustina välkkyvälehtisten raitojen ja
leppien lomitse. Ja missä vain hituisenkin multaa sopii jyrkänteen
koloihin, siinä riippui sammal tai helisi haapa tai kumartui koivu
hentona ja kituisena, varovasti työnnellen juuriaan kiven kovaan
sydämeen.
"Tämähän on kuin rotkot Coloradon Canoneissa", tuumi Pyry

ihastuneena.
He seurasivat polkua. Se vei hetteeseen, jonka hyllyvälle pinnalle

ei uskaltanut mennä. Silmättyään eteensä he huudahtivat saman
kauhun täyttäminä. Hetteen keskellä, aivan vasemmanpuolisen
kallioseinän kupeessa, kiilui mustana ja uhkaavana synkkä
suonsilmä.
"Me olemme 'Synninlukolla'!" kuiskasi Polle. Todellakin, se se oli.

Synninlukoksi sitä sanottiin, tätä salaperäistä lähdettä, josta ei
kukaan tietänyt, mistä sen musta vesi sai alkunsa, eikä sen syvyyttä
ollut kukaan mitannut. Onneton se, joka sinne suistui; ei sen
ruumista siunattuun maahan saatu, ken yritti ottamaan, vajosi itse.
Ainoastaan kerran se oli uhrinsa päästänyt, joskin hengetönnä. Oli
tuolta kalliolta pudonnut siihen lehmä ja pappilan tyköä joesta oli se
ylös saatu. Tahtoi kai näyttää, että on sillä maan alla mahtavat väylät
vallassaan.
Kaikenkaltaisia taruja kerrottiin Synninlukosta. Ehkä siksi, että

paikka oli niin synkkä, nimi niin outo ja lähde niin kumma;
kuivimpanakin kesänä sen vesimäärä oli sama kuin sateisimpana
syksynäkin. Pyry ja Polle katselivat uteliaina luota merkillistä
lamparetta. Kuin portti manalaan se oli tai kuin jonkun salaisen
rikoksen tyyssija — siitäköhän sen nimikin? Oliko tällä paikalla tehty
kaamea tihutyö ammoisina aikoina, vai oliko vain kansan
mielikuvituksessa syntynyt synkkä nimi synkälle paikalle? Kukapa
sen tiesi. Omituisen kaamea tuntu oli kumminkin koko rotkossa ja
eniten tuossa lähteessä. Ei ollut ainuttakaan lintua livertämässä. Ja
tytöistä näytti miltei luonnottomalta, että kimppu kissankelloja oli
kiivennyt kallionkylkeen ja siinä sinisiä tiukujaan hilpeästi helisytti.
Mikään iloinen ei tänne sopinut. He alensivat äänensäkin vain
kuiskeiksi.
Lähteen yläpuolella oli kallioseinässä syvennys, aivan kuin ovi.
"Kas, siinä on kissanreikäkin, kuin metsämökkien porstuanovissa!"

huomautti Pyry, ja hänen hilpeytensä palasi. "Mitähän, jos koputtaisi
ja huutaisi Seesam! Millainen otus tulisi avaamaan?"
"Älä laske leikkiä!" Polle hätääntyi. "Minusta on kuin oudot voimat

täällä peliään pitäisivät. Ihminen pienentyy niin mitättömäksi!"
"Annas kun katson litistyneitä kenkiäsi, joko ovat pienentyneet

kuin
Lagerlöfin Peukaloisen puukengät!"
"Sinun on hyvä olla", sanoi Polle surullisesti. "Mutta minun ei. Olen
ollut häijy." Ja Polle kertoi kaikki. "Tässä nyt tulin ajatelleeksi, että se
oli minulle oikea rangaistus, etten päässytkään. Sillä enkös vain
toivonut, vaikkakin salavihkaa, että toiset tytöt olisivat hiukan
harmissaan. Ja sitten minua ihan repeli, kun kuvittelin, kuinka hän
tanssii muiden kanssa!"
"Rakas Polle!" Pyryllä kimaltelivat kyyneleet silmissä, "sinä olet

pelkkää kultaa! Niinhän ajattelee moni muu, sen verran pahaa. Minä
niin mielelläni olisin suonut sinulle sen ilon ja olin niin pahoillani, kun
et päässyt."
"Minä kyllä tiedän, että jotkut monesti ovat aika häijyjä", sanoi
Polle miettivästi, "enkä käsitä, miksi he eivät saa siitä muistutusta.
Minun on kuitenkin niin, että saan heti palkan, kun ajattelenkin olla
paha. Ei kai minulle ole suotu sellaista onnea kuin muille tytöille."
"Jos nyt kaikkea voi onneksi ottaa. Eiköpähän onnea ole juuri se,
että revitään juurineen pahan idutkin, niin kirvelevältä kuin se silloin
tuntuukin. Oikea onnihan kasvaa sisästä käsin. Usko minua, Polle,
elämässä on suurempiakin arvoja kuin tanssiaiset. Mutta minä olen
huomannut, että ne voi saavuttaa vasta sitten, kun on oppinut
voittamaan oman itsensä."
"Pyry, se sinut tekee niin yllättäväksi, että sinä saatat puhua

tyhmyyksiä ja taas jotakin niin kovin viisasta. Ja sitten sinä osaat
puhaltaa huolet pois."
"Olen oikea sekasotku!" Pyry nauroi kyyneleet kuiviksi. Mutta Polle

vaistosi herkästi, että vallattomuuden alla oli taisteluja, ehkä
ankariakin, vaikka Pyry oli kyllin voimakas kantamaan kaiken yksin,
uskoutumatta kenellekään.
"Usko pois, elämä on suurta ja hyvää aina, kunhan sille vain

kykenemme antamaan oikean arvon!" — Pyry kietoi kätensä Pollen
vyötäisille.
Iloinen elämänrohkeus ja elämänhalu, jota Pyry ikäänkuin kuohui,

terästi ja virkisti Polleakin.
Taivas seestyi. Sininen läikkä näkyi rotkon yllä ja peipponen

lennähti haavan oksalle liverrellen: pink, pink, link, link!
"Ehkä Synninlukko on sellainen, että se sulkee pahan meistä

itseensä!" sanoi Polle keventynein mielin.
"Minusta tämä on komeampi Ljungarsin lähteeksi kuin Topeliuksen

kuvaama", virkkoi Pyry.
"Kun vain ilmestyisi joku valkoinen tyttö meitä johtamaan!"
"Menemme vain takaisin päin, tottapahan viimein tulemme tielle!"
Reippaasti astuen he ennen pitkää joutuivatkin maantielle.
"Heipparallaa! Tuollapäin on Myllymäki!" He alkoivat juosta,

kunnes kasvot hehkuivat ja märät jalat olivat kuumina liikkeestä.
"Liike synnyttää lämpöä!" luki Pyry, innokas voimistelija.
Kaukaa karahutti ratsastaja. Aage Rhein oli tuokiossa maassa.

"Täältäkö sinut viimeinkin löydän, metsänneito!"
Polle antoi kättä rehellisenä ja nöyränä. Ei ollut hiventäkään

turhamaisuutta hänen sielussaan tällä hetkellä. Ei hän yrittänyt
kätkeä litiseviä kenkiään eikä märkää hamettaan, joka joka
askeleella kietoutui ilkeästi ympäri vartalon, eikä hän ajatellut
auennutta tukkaansa, vaikka se oli kosteana sateesta ja täynnä
lehtiä ja havunneuloja.
Mutta Aage Rhein ajatteli kaikkea tuota ja hän taputti ruskeata

kättä hellävaroen kysyessään: "Miksi sinä et tullutkaan eilen?"
"Minä — minun särki hammasta ja luulen, että se oli oikein."
"Miksi?"
"Kun minä niin kovasti toivoin pääseväni!"
"Sinä pieni, hyvä metsänneito! Minä kiitän sinua, että sinä kovasti
toivoit!"
"Tanssitko sinä — kenen kanssa — kokoillan?"
"Kuinka minä olisin voinut, kun joka ainoan tanssin sinä lupasit
minulle, eikä sinua ollutkaan!"
"Kuinka sinä —?"
"Minä lähdin pois, kun hetken olin odotellut sinua."
"Voi sinua!" Suuri ilo säteili viattomasta silmäparista.
Aage Rhein hymyili.
"Mutta", sanoi Polle katuvana, "olisit sinä saanut tanssia heidän

kanssaan!"
"Pollenka! Pysy sinä aina samana, semmoisena kuin olet,
kirkkaana! Minä lähden nyt. Hyvästi!" Hän teki kunniaa Pyrylle,
hypähti ratsulleen ja katsahti vielä kerran Polleen. Ja, hyvä isä, hän
ei hymyillyt yhtään. Silmät olivat totiset. Ja sitten hän meni. Hirveän
kiire hänellä oli.
"Melkein luulen", sanoi Polle, kun he kotvan äänettöminä olivat

kulkeneet, "että ellemme olisi käyneet Synninlukolla, emme olisikaan
tavanneet häntä."
Pyry vain nyökäytti päätään ja auttoi toisella kädellään Pollea

tämän sienikorin kantamisessa.
X.
Kreets käy maailmalla.
Kreets istui junassa, joka läheni Tamperetta. Sydän sykki ja posket

paloivat. Nyt hän pääsisi kiihkeästi haluamaansa maailmaan.
"Aina ja ikuisesti saan minä olla kotona", oli hän ruikuttanut. Ja koti
oli tuntunut vankilalta ja hän itse elinkautiselta vangilta, joka ei ikinä
saisi kurkistaa avaraan, ihanaan maailmaan. Semmoiseksi oli
kasvanut hänessä maailmallelähtökuume, että koko kotiväki oli siitä
kiusaantunut. Ja viimein hänet oli pakattu hevoseen ja käsketty
kyytimiehen hommata hänet junaan. Ja siinä hän nyt körötti junan
pysähtyessä Tampereen asemalla. Oli keskiyö, Kreets ensi kertaa
matkalla, eikä ketään vastassa. Se oli Kreetsin oma syy. Hänen oli
pitänyt kirjoittaa veljelle, mutta kotiväen tietämättä hän oli sen
jättänyt tekemättä toimittaakseen yllätyksen. Hiukan häntä pökerrytti
turvattomuuden tunne. Matkustajia tunkeutui vaunuista ja vaunuihin.
Kaikilla oli kiire, eikä kukaan välittänyt Kreetsistä. Kreets työntyi
toisten mukana läpi asemahuoneen.
Elokuun yö oli jo tumma, mutta katuvalot olivat sytyttämättä, ja

hämäränä hupeni Hämeenkatu etäisyyteen. Kreets tiesi, että veli
asuu juuri tämän kadun varrella. Olisipa ihme, ettei iso ihminen
osaisi, kun tietää kadun ja numeron! Varmuuden vuoksi hän meni
vielä tarkastamaan kadun nimeä. Oikea se oli. Hän laahasi suurta
matkalaukkuaan ja asteli eteenpäin. Hänestä oli hauskaa, vaikka
vähän peloittavaakin, olla näin yksin vieraassa kaupungissa.
Tietäisivätpä ne kotona, niin ei niitä nukuttaisi! Liikkeitten suuret
näyteakkunat loistivat peileinä hämärässä, ja katukivityksellä kaikui
ajurin hevosen kapse.
Kreets joutui Hämeensillalle. Tammerkoski kohisi. Sen molemmin

puolin jyrisivät monikerroksiset tehtaat. Valaistuina ne näyttivät
satulinnoilta. Eivätkö sitä olleetkin! Kuinka monta ihmiskohtaloa
kätkeekään tuollainen tehdas! Ja eikö se samalla jyrise jännittävintä
satua: keksintöjen mahtia, maan vaurastumista.
"Tampere, Tammerkosken varrella, kauniilla paikalla, maamme

suurin tehdaskaupunki…" — lörpötti Kreets, maantiedetunteja
muistellen. Kiusallista on lukea maantiedettä, toista olisi nähdä sitä.
Sillankorvassa on teatteri. Sen hän tunsi kuvien mukaan. Siellä oli

valoa, soittoa, ja verannalla riippui kukkia ja värilyhtyjä. Kreetsin
päätä huimasi maailman ihanuus. Siinä vieressä on vanha kirkko.
Olipa sen puisto pimeä! Vanha aaveitten pelko valtasi Kreetsin, ja
puolijuoksua hän tuli poikki torin. Raatihuoneen kello oli jo tulossa
kaksi. Jopa olisi aika päästä sänkyyn.
Vihdoinkin Kreets löysi oikean numeron alituisesti juostessaan

kurkoittamaan puolelta toiselle. Mutta — portti oli lukittu. Kreets jyristi
kaikin voimin, vaan siitä ei apua. Siinä hän nyt seisoi raskaine
kantamuksineen ypö-yksin sydän-yöllä, keskellä tehdaskaupungin
pääkatua. Alkoi miltei itkettää. Tässäköhän hänen oli seistävä
aamuun asti? Ja niin tuiki väsyneenä.
Joku yksinäinen herrasmies tulla toikkaroi kadun poikki. Kreets
ilostui. Ehkäpä tuo keksii keinon.
"Minä en saa porttia auki!" huudahti hän.
"Oo, pikku ystävä, se ei tee mitään", soperteli tämä, "minä kyllä

saan portin auki".
"Saatteko!" Kreets unhotti kyyneleensä.
"Saan, minun porttini, mennään yhdessä, serkku!" Hän tarttui

Kreetsin matkalaukkuun. Mutta Kreets riuhtasi sen reippaasti pois.
"Serkku!" huudahti hän, "minulla ei täällä päin voisi olla muita

serkkuja kuin Bir…"
"Minä juuri Bir!"
Kreets nauroi että katu kaikui. "Kylläpä Birin naama venyisi, kun
hän kuulisi itseään verrattavan tuommoiseen vanhaan
ukonkänttyrään!"
"Minäkö vanha ukkokänttyrä!" Herrasmies astui loukkaantuneena

lähemmäksi.
Samalla Kreetsin naurun houkuttamana lähestyi poliisikin. "Mitäs

täällä on?"
"Niin, kun tuo sanoo itseään Biriksi ja tahtoo kantaa laukkuani…"

Kreet lopetti kummissaan. "Mihin hän joutui?"
"Piti parhaimpana kadota. Mutta mitenkäs te tässä, keskiyöllä?"

"Minä vain…" Kreets kertoi koko matkansa ja nykyisen
toivottomuutensa.
"Mennään nyt aluksi poliisikamariin. Tuumitaan siellä sitten." Ja

niin Kreets astui keskelle puoli-unista poliisiparvea, joka uteliaana
katseli häntä. "Mitenkäs tämmöinen tänne?"
Mutta kun he kuulivat asian, olivat he kilvassa kohteliaita. "Neiti

istuu tähän, neuvotellaan yhdessä!"
Kreets istui helpoittuneena, pyyhki hikeä kasvoiltaan ja katseli

kaihoten topattuja penkkejä. "Voisipa täälläkin nukkua", virkkoi hän.
"Niinpä kyllä", myöntelivät miehet. Heidän tuli sääli. Kreets oli niin
turvaton honteloine vartaloineen, ruskeine palmikkoineen ja unisine
lapsensilmineen.
"Enhän minä osannut arvata, että pannaan portit lukkoon, vaikka

on poliisit ja kaikki. Jos minulla vain ei olisi ollut matkalaukkua, olisin
kiivennyt yli."
"Tokkohan sentään!"
"Olisin. Kotona minä kiipeän vaikka mihin!" Kreetsin uni haihtui ja

poliiseilla oli hauskaa.
"Meneeköhän sinne telefoonia?" huomasi joku kysyä.
"Menee!" Kreets muisti numeronkin, ja niin siitä pulma selvisi.

Veljelle soitettiin, ja hän lupasi tulla heti, kun saa vaatteet ylleen.
"No, miten sinä täällä olet?" Veli oli uninen ja äreä.

"Niin, kun sinun porttisi oli lukossa, ja eräs herra sanoi minua
serkukseen."
"Mikä herra?"
Poliisi selitti asian. Veli suuttui. "Kuinka sinä sillä tavoin tulet!
Olisit joutunut vielä jonkun roiston kynsiin!"
Kreetsiä suloisesti pöyristi. Sehän oli kuin parhaimmissa

salapoliisiromaaneissa. Entäs jos täälläkin olisi oikea rosvoliiga,
kuten esimerkiksi Sisiliassa! Ja ne olisivat pidättäneet hänet ja
vaatineet lunnaita, ja häntä olisi kauheasti kammottanut.
"Mutta kylläpä ne olisivat saaneet pitkän nenän", sanoi hän

ylpeästi.
"Minun rahani ovat kaikki sukassani!"
"Oletko sinä yksin raahannut tätä laukkua? Miksi et ottanut ajuria

asemalta?"
"Ettäkös vain minä maksamaan ajurille, kun minulla kerran on jalat

ja kädet! Ja äiti käski minun valvoa laukkua, siellä kun on sinulle
kaikkea, voita ja kotona leivottua pullaa ja…
"Tule nyt jo!"
"Kiitoksia paljon kaikesta ja hyvää yötä!" hyvästeli Kreets uusia

tuttujaan.
"Hyvää yötä ja kiitos seurasta!" vastasivat he iloisesti.
Kreets tahtoi heti peseytyä, vaikka olikin yö, sillä äiti oli sanonut,
että rautatiellä pölyttyi ja sai vaikka mitä. Veli neuvoi hänelle
kylpyhuoneen salaisuudet. Kreets loiskutteli hirveästi ja nautti
"ihmistymisestään".
Mutta aamulla veli heräsi ennen aikojaan epämääräiseen

solinaan. Kylpyhuoneen oven alitse tihkui vesi. Kreets oli jättänyt
johdot auki. Veli ärtyi aika lailla, sillä hän sai itse tehdä siivoojan
virkaa. Kreets ei avannut edes silmiään, vaikka veli kävi häntä
herättelemässä. Hän nukkui makeasti puoleen päivään ja oli
onnellinen, kun ei kuulunut tuota tuttua: "Kreets, sinä ikuinen
unikeko, etkö sinä milloinkaan opi heräämään!"
"Pyhyh!" tuumi Kreets, kun veli vähän happamana kertoi

uhanneesta tulvasta. "Mahdotontahan on heti muistaa kaikkea. Ja
sitten sanookin Pyry, että parempi on turvautua vieraisiin herroihin
kuin veljeensä; sillä veljet ovat aina epäkohteliaita sisarilleen!"
"Ohoo! Hämmästyttävä totuus, neitiseni. Mutta minä tahdon nyt

olla kohtelias ja tarjoudun käytettäväksesi!"
"Kiitän sekä kumarran! Lähdet siis näyttämään minulle kaupungin

merkillisyyksiä!"
He kulkivat pitkin puistoa Mustanlahden kallioille, jonka rinteellä

taiteilija Vikströmin muovailema suihkukaivo päättää esplanaadin.
Ylevänä istuu kaarellaan Pohjan neito, ja somasti kimalsivat suihkut
päivänpaisteessa. Kreets haltioitui.
"Ajatteles, että voi luoda jotakin niin elävää! — Ihan kuin meidän
Missukka!" ilostui hän huomatessaan kissan mummon liepeissä.
Altaasta kohoilevat vesisuihkut olivat kuin hentoja kukkavihkoja,
helmistä koottuja. Kreets nautti vilpittömästi.

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Full Ebook of The Misogynistic Backlash Against Women Strong Films 1St Edition Dana Schowalter Online PDF All Chapter

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Copyright:

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The Misogynistic Backlash Against

Women Strong Films 1st Edition Dana

Women in Marvel Films 1st Edition Miriam Kent

The Arab Spring Abroad Diaspora Activism against

Violence against Women in Politics Mona Lena Krook

Exploring Language Aggression against Women 1st Edition

Gendered Modernity and Indian Cinema The Women in

The Incel Rebellion The Rise of the Manosphere and the

Violence Against Women Criminological perspectives on

Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence

This book is an exploration of the political struggle for visibility engendered by

Dana Schowalter is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Western

Shannon Stevens, Associate Professor of Journalism in the Department of English at

Daniel L. Horvath is a Part-Time Faculty in Communication Studies at California

Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics

Caffie Greene and Black Women Activists

Forced Migration in the Feminist Imagination

The Misogynistic Backlash Against Women-Strong Films

Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a

The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia

ISBN: 978-0-367-26201-3 (hbk)

1 Introduction: women’s cultural production engenders

2 Misogyny and the missive of mediocrity: disparaging

3 The economics of misogyny and the “surprising”

4 “None of us asked for this”: Ghostbusters, online

5 “Why You Should Not Go See ‘Mad Max: Feminist

7 Atomic Blonde and her critics: disciplining of a

8 Conclusion: counter-publics, patriarchal (reel)realism,

Dana Schowalter: First and foremost, I am eternally grateful to my co-

Disparaging women’s voices

the masculine fear of sentimental writing in the United States was so

The scathing response to so-called sensational writing (that which brings to

Critical orientation and method

The simplistic good or bad binary, based on a glib, unthinking model of

Yet, so much more goes into our responses to art—popular or otherwise.

Analyzing discursive claims of quality

Dismissive judgment and paternalistic pedantics32

The Boss provides the talented Melissa McCarthy plenty of scenery to

Mutta Polle, hiljainen ja ujo, tanssii. Ja hän väittää, että tanssi on

Pahinta on, että Polle pääsee niin harvoin tanssimaan, —

Mutta nyt on Polle saanut syntymäpäiväkseen puvun, sellaisen

Kaiken tämän ihanuuden antaja oli Pyry. Arkipäiväinen, tuulihattu

Mitä täti Brink sanoisi, sitä Pyry oli pelännyt luovuttaessaan

"Aina uneksinut olen univormusta, aina pitänyt sotilaan

Ja kaikki tytöt hommaavat tanssiaisia, ennenkuin hän ehtii lähteä.

"Sinä olet kasvanut kovin!" Aage Rhein puristi kapeata, kovaa

Se nyt oli juuri pahinta, se kasvaminen, sitä kun koetti käpristyä

"Tehän pidätte tanssit!"

"Pidämme. Tietysti sinä olet kutsuttu?" Tiesihän Polle, että joku

"Kyllä noin ylimalkaan. Mutta saanhan tulla sinun kutsuttunasi?"

Pollea ihan huimasi. Aage Rhein hänen kanssaan!

"Vai onko sinulla jo toinen?"

"Kukas minulla! Mutta ajattelen, että varmaan moni muu olisi

"Mutta sinä et olisi? Sinä olet kasvanut kovin, Pollenka!"

"Voi, ei — olen hyvin iloinen, jos sinä minun kanssani!"

"Kiitos! Ja me tanssimme koko illan. Lupaatko minulle kaikki

"Tietysti!" Pollenhan on niin helppo luvata.

"Kiitos! Näkemiin, pitkä, pieni Pollenka!"

Polle tuli hyppien kotiin. Mutta Aage Rheinistä hän ei puhunut

"Nyt Polle on prinsessa Ruusunen!" ihaili Untuva. Polle on

Kreets pyöritti häntä nähdäkseen "kuinka heilui". Ter sanoi häntä

Riemua täynnä Polle sukelsi vuoteeseensa. Hän oli nukkuvinaan

Huomis-ilta! Kuinka vähän voimmekaan tietää, mitä huominen tuo