February 2014OPiNiON 11

Heidi MyersStaff Writer

Feminism was originally built on the idea of equality. It focused on women’s suffrage and political equality. It later ex-panded to include societal and cultural equality as well. Now feminism has very murky and at times completely unclear goals. Feminists have multiple com-plaints, some very valid, but the laundry list of things that are being fought against has become unbearable and at times, totally ridiculous. There are certainly legitimate and reputable feminists and feminist organizations out there, but they are overshadowed by the callous and, for lack of a better word, whiny ones. One of the most frequent com-plaints heard across the internet and media is women being objectified and stereotyped in video games. This is seen on numerous websites such as Feminist Frequency, which had backlash after posting a feminist video about “damsels in distress” in video games. The basis of the complaint is that there aren’t strong female characters in games, and video games always hyper-sexualize the female figure. The biggest problem with this argu-ment is that many people making the claims don’t play video games because there are some hardcore female charac-ters. Lollipop Chainsaw was a game with a singular lead character named Juliet, a zombie-killing cheerleader. Not only is she a strong woman, although ditzy at times, but she breaks the stereotype of the helpless cheerleader that cannot do anything for herself. Other games with capable female characters include Mir-ror’s Edge, Tomb Raider, and Metroid. Is the video game world dominated by males? Yes, overwhelmingly so. But that domination stretches farther than just the video game console. Associating this issue so largely with gaming is mis-leading when it is a media-wide norm. Hyper-sexualizing is almost guar-anteed in video games. But what would one expect in a world where everything is over exaggerated and fantastical? The boobs are bigger, the blood is redder, and the explosions are louder. In games where realism is the goal, the bodies are proportionate. Feminist irritation has covered out-rage at specific commercials, products, magazines, politicians, bloggers, and celebrities, to name a few. The strangest areas of irritation are aimed at product advertising, generally with the view that products being sold to women (deodor-ant, shampoo, razors, makeup, shoes) are being marketed as if women must have X or Y to be considered attractive. Personal-ly, I buy the shampoo that gives me shiny hair because I want to have shiny hair. To assume all women are so naïve as to buy every item they see based on a commer-cial and the opinion of men completely discredits the very gender they are trying to validate. An extension of this issue is that feminism has a tendency to exclude a huge number of women. Females that are homemakers, extremely beauty ori-ented, or uneducated get nearly socially banished from the movement. The idea that a woman might choose to be a wife

Burning bras or burning bridges?and mother and be completely satisfied seems foreign. Enjoying the benefits of products available and catered to women (some of which make life easier or more enjoyable) is almost frowned upon. I find it more insulting that the very people fighting to get female stereotypes erased have such specific ideas as to what makes an acceptable woman. The most outrageous part of the ac-cusations of sexism is how hypocritical some are. Numerous songs have been highlighted as blatantly sexual, most of which are always attributed to a male art-ist. Yet on the popular feminist website Jezebel, there is an entire article dedicat-ed to sexual euphemisms and metaphors on Katy Perry’s new “filthy awesome album” as the title states. It’s apparently empowering for a woman to write songs exclusively about her genitalia or about seeing someone’s “peacock,” but if a man refers to himself as say, being well-hung or interested in sleeping with a woman, he is automatically a sexist pig. The line between empowering women and de-grading men has been blurred. Feminists cannot be so one-sided with their anger if they intend to be taken seriously. This is just one of many examples of prejudice and wrongful assumptions against men that exist. To clarify, not everyone that identifies as a feminist has voiced these grievances or agrees with any of this. The outright truth is that soci-ety has plenty of issues, some gender re-lated, but there comes a point when one must choose her battles. Movies, video games, comic books and the like are a business, plain and simple. Businesses cater to demographics, and if someone isn’t the primary demographic, they are not the first to be appeased. The bottom line is that feminism has long wandered away from its once admi-rable goals. Perhaps one day we can get back to original ideals the movement’s foundation was based on- pure, simple gender equality.

T.J. TaylorStaff Writer

What necessitates a remake? Was the original bad? Has it been a long time, so the original may look terribly dated? Is the original in a different language? Sad-ly, that last reason seems to be the cause for more and more remakes lately. Someone scared of subtitles thought it would be a good idea to remake the South Korean revenge thriller, "Oldboy" (which is an adaptation of a Japanese manga of the same name), even though there aren't many improvements to be made on the original. Spike Lee, direc-tor of such movies like "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever," takes the reins from Chan-Wook Park and doesn't re-ally change much. The American remake replaces Min-Sik Choi with Josh Brolin as the protagonist, and Ji-Tae Yoo with Sharlto Copley as his nemesis. The film follows a man who is kidnapped and im-prisoned in a hotel room for twenty years for reasons unknown, who upon release hunts down his captors in search of truth and revenge. A lot of visual elements of the origi-nal remain in this movie, probably be-cause Spike Lee knew he couldn't top Chan-Wook Park's brilliant direction. There are at least two scenes ripped di-rectly from the original, which was a good idea on Lee's part because doing them any other way would pale in com-parison to the original (though it still manages to be disappointing). This is not to say that Lee doesn't put his own voice into the movie (his trademark close-up dolly shot makes an appearance, along with a lot of his recurring actors), but it

"Oldboy" reviewjust doesn't quite live up to Park's. One of the scenes Lee copies in the remake is the famous hallway fight sequence, prob-ably the most well-known sequence of the original. Even though it is necessarily the same scene, it is ruined in this version by bad sound mixing. Many scenes in the remake could be good but are hindered by minor mistakes like that. Another major element that seemed to be lacking in the English version was the raw emotional brutality of Park's ver-sion. Hits don't seem to land as hard, both physical, and emotional, hits. Co-pley's take on the villain, while actually being closer to the manga version than in Park's movie (which is strange since everything else in the remake is noth-ing like the manga), just doesn't seem as ruthless or as unforgiving as Ji-Tae Yoo's performance. The same thing goes for Josh Brolin's performance. This is not to say that he (or Copley for that matter) is a bad actor; he just can't capture the insanity of the protagonist that Min-Sik Choi brought to the screen so wonder-fully. Not all remakes are bad ideas. David Fincher's remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is superior to the original in virtually every way, from the cast to the script to the soundtrack and especially to the direction. Even the remake of the cult classic "The Evil Dead," a personal favor-ite since as far as I can remember, was an amazing achievement and a much better movie by far (though I still love the origi-nal more in a different way). The reason that those work and this one doesn't? Those movies respected the originals and weave in some elements of them, but they had originality that hit all the right marks as well. In the case of "Old-boy", save your money and just watch the original on Netflix.