Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-06-15 03:44 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-06-15 03:44 pm
[ SECRET POST #2356 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2356 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 134 secrets from Secret Submission Post #336.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2013-06-16 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)Yes, but... There's a huge difference between historical accuracy and validating a historically racist/sexist/etc. perspective.
Just one example from XMFC that really bugged me is Moira's debriefing at the end when she says she doesn't remember much, just vague impressions, "a kiss," and all of the men at the table share a manly laugh and one of them makes a disparaging comment about how that only showed that women have no business becoming CIA agents. Annoying from a modern perspective to see a strong female character (in the non-pejorative sense of the phrase) torn down like that, but historically accurate, right? Because 1960s America was more sexist, and women weren't accepted in positions of power, and men really talked and acted and thought like that.
Only that scene's actually not at all accurate because the men might be in character, but Moira very much isn't. She's a smart, ambitious woman who became a CIA agent in an era when all of her superiors and coworkers would've been hyper-attuned to the possibility of her failure, for no other reason than her sex. She would've been incredibly vigilant about how she presented herself, especially with regard to behavior that might be considered "feminine weakness." That joke should never have been written into the movie, not because men from the 1960s wouldn't have made it, but because Moira wouldn't have given them the opportunity if she'd been IC.
The end result is that that scene feels more like an homage to 1960s film rather than like a historically accurate representation of the 1960s. You could easily find a movie or TV show produced in the '60s that contained a scene almost exactly that one; while those scenes and images might be what most of us think of when we consider the past, however, that doesn't make them historically accurate, only iconic.
(You could formulate theories as to how Moira might reference the kiss in that debriefing without being OOC--telepathic suggestion by Charles, an incompletely mindwiped Moira who remembers just enough that she knows she needs to misdirect her interviewers' interest, etc.--but none of those theories is even hinted at in the film, so I think they have to be relegated to fanwank rather than being considered a serious defense of that scene.)
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2013-06-16 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)In short. You are talking bullshit.
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2013-06-17 12:37 am (UTC)(link)AYRT
Whoops, you seem to have splooged your own issues all over this nice discussion. How uncouth of you!
Re: the substantive part of your comment, you're grasping at straws if you think that the theory of an implanted suggestion as explanation for Moira's behavior is "well set up." That scenario's a level of complexity far above Charles's other feats, which, despite being less complex, tend to be telegraphed to the viewer by Charles's putting his fingers to his temple and/or by cutting rapidly between Charles and the person he's affecting telepathically. (i.e. They're made really fucking obvious.) If the film wanted to imply that not only Moira's amnesia (which is similarly telegraphed as having been effected by Charles) but also that one OOC line was the result of telepathic tampering, then it should've made that at least as clear as it does those other events.
At a bare minimum, Charles should've demonstrated his ability to implant a delayed telepathic suggestion earlier in the film, making it into one of his signature moves, so to speak. In the absence of any of those narrative techniques: sorry, that theory's total fanwank.
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2013-06-17 01:06 am (UTC)(link)Oh, and the other thing this theory lacks is sufficient in-text rationale for Charles's implanting such a telepathic suggestion. No doubt Charles could implant such a suggestion if he wanted to (perhaps after a bit of practice), but why would he want to gratuitously damage the career of one of his friends like that? He's already protected the X-Men by removing her memories; forcing her to say that ridiculous line, as well, would be pointless.
You could fanwank the already fanwanked theory to try to create a plausible justification for Charles wanting to do such a thing, but that only brings us back to the fact that this film is not that subtle. (Though, really, your average pretentious arthouse flick isn't as subtle as the layers of hidden motivations I've detailed here.) If any of this were what the film intended to convey, it would've shown it.