Tag Archives: feminism

Review of Quantum Leap S2E1 “This Took Too Long!”

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QUANTUM LEAP — “This Took Too Long!” Episode 201 — Pictured: (l-r) P.J. Byrn as Sgt. Enock Abrams, Aaron Abram as Sgt. Ronny Abrams, Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song, Melissa Roxburgh as Lt. Ellen Grier, Francois Arnaud as Sergeant Curtis Bailey — (Photo by:NBC)

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So, against my better judgment, I decided to watch the season 2 opener of the current Quantum Leap television show titled This Took Too Long!

For S1, I tended to “soft soap” my reviews, giving the show the benefit of the doubt, even though I knew it’s stated intent was to completely highlight representation as it’s top priority, even above entertaining the broadest possible audience.

All of those episodes piled on top of each other had pretty much convinced me to abandon the show at the end of season one’s run. It wouldn’t be the first time. I watched the first seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (and boy am I glad I missed season 2).

For “Quantum Leap” I think I was just curious about why Ben didn’t leap home when Ziggy’s programming said he really should. Of course the real reason is that the show won a second season so Ben (Raymond Lee) needs to keep leaping.

I was also curious after the nature and character of S1 plus the recent writer’s strike, if the tone and content of the show might try to be more egalitarian. That is, would the showrunners stop trying to alienate large numbers of old school television viewers, science fiction fans, and time travel buffs like me. Never mind that I’m too old, too male, and too white to come anywhere near their target demographic.

Okay, that’s probably too much to ask for, but I thought at least the season opener should be pretty safe. After all, you want to re-engage the audience and pull them in again before blasting them with controversial content. Right? Am I right?

Let’s find out.

Oh, it goes without saying that this is a Spoiler Alert so if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know all about it beforehand, stop reading now.

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Book Review of “End of Men” by Suzanne Strobel

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Cover art for the book “End of Men”

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First of all, after writing The “End of Men” Challenge, I owe Suzanne Strobel an apology. I was expecting a very different book than the one she wrote (click HERE to find it on Amazon).

Part of what gave me that particular expectation was the blog post of hers describing her novel and, quite frankly, her fears of violent men. I can only believe that the book’s protagonist Charley Tennyson is her alter-ego, at least in terms of the depth of her anxiety over “mass shootings.”

However, Tennyson never gives in to the “anti-male” sentiment that many of the other characters embrace and even manages to find love with a man.

Oh, there were flaws to be sure. This is set in a dystopian near future, but the technology is all so perfect and for the most part free. Money is only mentioned once when discussing the activation fees for what is essentially a personal force bubble. Other than that, living in luxurious “havens,” riding around in iCars which carry over your personal settings from your home, and having wrist Surges (think a way amped up smartphone with holographic filming and projecting capacities), seem to be cost free.

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The “End of Men” Challenge

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© James Pyles

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I get an email from Bookbub every morning. I initially signed up and indicated my book preferences to see if I could get a line on reading material I otherwise wouldn’t know about. I’ve even considered promoting some of my works on Bookbub, but according to Jericho Writers, it’s astonishingly expensive.

After a while, I stopped opening the emails. Most of the books looked really boring, and the few I did buy because of seeing them on the app weren’t particularly worth it.

Today, on impulse, I clicked the link and found End of Men by Suzanne Strobel (that’s her Amazon Author’s page).

The Bookbub blurb says:

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Not the Comic Books I Grew Up With

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Images from “Uncanny X-Men #7,” “Uncanny X-Men #52,” and “All-New X-Men #40” found at “Bounding into Comics.”

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I received quite a bit of feedback on my last blog post, mainly in social media. So when insomnia seized me by the throat tonight, I re-read some other “controversial” material I’d sampled earlier and figured, why not? I need to kill some time and let being sleepy overwhelm my anxiety (long story).

I follow the blog Bounding into Comics and yes it does come from a somewhat conservative place socially. While I periodically complain that the entertainment industry has forgotten how to entertain, they/it does have other characteristics. One can be found in the “Bounding” article Every Single Comic Book Character That Has Been Retconned To LGBTQ+.

No, I’m not going to rant about LGBTQ representation in comic books or anything else. The world is a diverse place and that will naturally be reflected in what we watch, read, and listen to. Any form of entertainment is a product of its times which is why making and then remaking a movie or TV show decades apart will yield two different products. Compare the original 1960s Lost in Space with the much more recent Netflix remake (which admittedly I’ve never watched, but I’m convinced the two shows must be very different from each other). It’s also why it’s reasonable to have gay characters in comic books today when you would never have found even one when I was growing up.

Getting back to the article, there are only six DC and Marvel characters listed out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of superheroes, so it’s not like it is a big deal. The complaint that author John F. Trent makes is that each and every one of these fictional people started out as totally straight characters. Every single one.

And every one was retconned to become bi or gay.

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Charlie’s Angels 2019: A Brief Commentary

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Promotional photo from the 2019 film “Charlie’s Angels”

First of all, I haven’t seen the 2019 version of the movie Charlie’s Angels in theaters now, so this isn’t a review. I might have seen the 2000 movie, or some part of it, starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu, but I don’t have a clear memory. I definitely saw multiple episodes of the television series in the 1970s and 80s, originally starring Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett (then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors), and Jaclyn Smith. I don’t remember the show being terrifically good, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen an episode.

The current incarnation stars  “angels” Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinksa along side a plethora of “Bosleys” including Patrick Stewart.

The main reason I’m writing this is that I came across a scathing review called Why ‘feminist’ films flop on what appears to be a pretty conservative news outlet. I mean the author Maren Thom really pulled out all the stops. That made me curious about the movie (I wasn’t before and in fact, I didn’t even know it was in the theaters until I looked it up), so I started doing some reading.

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Girl Power and the Role (or lack thereof) of Men

© James Pyles

My 3 1/2 (closer to 4 actually) year old granddaughter loves books and she loves being read to. She knows her alphabet really well and can spell her first and last name. She’s a smart kid.

I love reading to her and my wife often takes our granddaughter to the local public library to check out books, lots and lots of books. The other day, I came home from work, and after my granddaughter woke up from her nap, she wanted me to read to her. Two of the library books she chose were Ladybug Girl and the Rescue Dogs by Jacky Davis and Red Riding Hood Superhero: A Graphic Novel by Otis Frampton.

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Why is Reviewing the “Captain Marvel” Movie So Hard?

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Promotional image for the movie “Captain Marvel” (2019).

I didn’t want to do this. I still don’t have to, but then again, there’s more hype about this movie than even last year’s Black Panther. When I was anticipating watching and reviewing that film, I was “irrationally” afraid that if I didn’t like something about it, I’d be forever labeled a “racist.” Fortunately I thought it was one of the better Marvel films, and that although it told a story of significant meaning to African-Americans, it also transcended race as the epic tale of a Prince confronting the realities of becoming a King.

However, Captain Marvel (2019) which will have its general release to theaters this coming Friday (March 8th), seems to be getting a lot more press than Black Panther, at least to the best of my recollection.

First of all, according to The Mary Sue (which leans pretty far to the left), the movie is getting tons of bad reviews pre-release, but it’s only being reviewed by misogynistic white males who hate the idea not only of powerful women, but of Captain Marvel (played by Brie Larson) being the most powerful hero in the Marvel Universe, even more so than Thor or the Hulk (okay, I’m exaggerating slightly).

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Jason Reitman and the new Ghostbusters: Respecting the Fans isn’t Misogynistic

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From the teaser/trailer to “Ghostbusters 3”

Apparently, the whole “Ghostbusters” thing, the next movie in the franchise scheduled to hit the theaters in 2020 isn’t over yet. In fact, the controversy seems to be just warming up.

As you may recall, a little over a month ago, I wrote about the upcoming sequel to be directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, director of the original 1984 film starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Sigourney Weaver.

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Screen capture from twitter

But the announcement that the 2020 film would be a direct sequel to the original, essentially bypassing the very badly received 2016 remake, made a few people angry, as if the younger Reitman’s vision was somehow a slight to that movie’s all-female cast in particular and feminism in general. In fact, actress Leslie Jones, who played Patty Tolan in the 2016 film, got on twitter to express her extreme displeasure (to put it mildly).

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Out of the Ashes of Avalon

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Cover art for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel “The Mists of Avalon

I’m aware of the name Marion Zimmer Bradley because, if you read science fiction and fantasy at all, that name comes up quite a bit. That said, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t believe I’ve read any of her works, including her arguably best known novel The Mists of Avalon. Although rumors of her being a perpetrator of child sexual abuse in one manner or another have come into my awareness over the past year or two, I never paid much attention to them.

Then I found an interview published at Life Site News with Bradley’s daughter Moira Greyland titled INTERVIEW: Daughter of famed sci-fi author explains mother’s gay pedophile worldview published last May 2018, which discussed Greyland’s book The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.

This is the book’s description at Amazon:

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More on Masculinity and Femininity

I follow the blog of African-American author Steven Barnes, largely because his commentaries on writing were recommended by another author. Mr. Barnes has an an impressive set of credentials and has written novels with such Science Fiction luminaries as Larry Niven (look right) and the late Jerry Pournelle. But while I find some of what Barnes presents on his blog interesting and useful, I can’t say I agree with him about everything (although to be fair, I’m sure he wouldn’t agree with me on a lot of things as well).

However, in a recent blog post of his called What Are You Offering the World?, he made two seemingly unrelated points that I found highly useful. I’ll present them over two blog posts here because each topic deserves individual attention.

The first is about masculinity. Now, given many of the topics upon which Barnes writes, I can reasonably assume he leans more left on the social and political scale than I do, probably quite a bit more, but here’s the important part. The important part is that we shouldn’t stereotype (and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone) and here’s why.

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