Asexual Sighting: Jughead Jones (Archie)

The last (possible) Asexual Sighting I did was Arthur Martin on Six Feet Under, ages ago.  Fortunately, I stumbled across this brand-new (old) discovery at The Mary Sue.  Jughead.  Canonically asexual (and aromantic.)  That happened.

Okay, background information:  Archie comics have been around since 1941, and Jughead, Archie’s best friend, has been a key member of the Riverdale gang from the start.  Like any comic series, Archie has changed and evolved a lot over its long history.  It’s taken different iterations and acquired offshoots, one of which is the new Jughead comic that began last fall.  Penned by comic writer Chip Zdarsky, it’s here that we get an ace Jughead.

Jughead’s asexuality was revealed in the comic’s most recent issue, which came out last month.  I love the issue’s handling of it for several reasons.  First, it’s not a coming-out narrative.  Within the context, it’s clear that Jughead’s friends already know about his aceness, and it’s brought up casually in conversation.  Second, his character doesn’t revolve around his sexuality.  In fact, it’s just a handful of lines on one page, the epitome of “no big deal” representation.  Third, Jughead is a 100% contented aro-ace.  He doesn’t mind being asexual at all.  Quite the reverse – he claims he’s the only one in school who “can think clearly” because he’s “not hobbled by these hormonal impulses.”  (I can relate to that; while I don’t argue that being ace is “better” or anything, I absolutely love being who I am and really wouldn’t have it any other way.)  Fourth, it fits surprisingly well into his characterization from the last 75 years.  This is no retcon situation.  Jughead has never been a big dater, and while he doesn’t hate girls or think they’re gross, he’s not into them (or boys) in “that way,” and he’d rather think about cheeseburgers than cheerleaders.  It’s just that there was no name for it in the ‘40s, and now there is.

I’ve only read the ace-reveal issue (No. 4) so far, but Jughead is enjoyable enough that I’ve ordered the back issues and plan to keep buying the comic.  Jughead himself is a fun, unlikely hero.  A bit of a slacker, a bit of a slob, but also smarter than he looks and something of a daydreamer.  He’s chill and smart-alecky, and in moments of stress (like dodgeball games,) he evidently imagines himself as a pirate named Captain Slackbeard – who doesn’t love that?  He doesn’t have the typical social-awkwardness quirks that frequency accompany suspected aceness (see Sherlock, The Big Bang Theory, and Six Feet Under.)  Rather, the only thing that signals him out as ace is simply that:  his lack of sexual attraction.  Very refreshing, and I’m looking forward to reading more.

On a personal note, this is a represention coup that feels really personal to me.  I know that comics tend to play around a bit more with the LGBTQ alphabet soup than other media do, so I wouldn’t have necessarily run out and bought any comic starring an asexual character.  But it’s Jughead.  I still have crystal-clear memories of stretching out on the floor at my grandparents’ house, reading and rereading my mom’s old, crumbling Archie comics, and I remember Jughead the funny sidekick.  This is a character who’s been part of the pop culture lexicon for three-quarters of a century, a familiar, beloved figure, and he’s like me.  That’s huge, and I’m so glad that Chip Zdarsky recognized how Jughead’s history lent itself to incorporating some sexual diversity into his hero’s characterization.  Way to go!

News Satire Roundup: Feburary 28th-March 3rd

Sunday, February 28 – Strong out of the gate with Egypt’s president entering on a two-mile-long red carpet before announcing massive cuts.  There was also some side-eying of Obama’s well-intentioned but nonspecific plans to close Guantanamo Bay and a bizarre bit of filibustering from a Kansas congressman.  The main story was on Donald Trump.  However, rather than addressing the racism, xenophobia, or warmongering, John kept it much more basic, systematically dismantling the various non-bigoted reasons people give for supporting Trump.  Under John’s laser-sharp commentary, Trump was given no leg to stand on as being frankly honest, tough, a man of the people, and a self-made success.  Rather, we were shown a serial liar who talks a big game but delivers nothing and is so notoriously changeable that we have no idea what he’d actually do as president.  Masterful takedown.

Monday, February 29 – All-around fantastic show.  A few gems on the Democratic primary in South Carolina, especially the graphic of Clinton as Madea.  The piece on Trump and fascism was perfect, similar to the “Trump is an African Dictator” parallels but with more “oh, crap, I’m not sure this is funny anymore” sentiment mixed with the humor.  The Trump clips chosen to illustrate the various elements of fascism were spot on, and the mini-stories – Trump not backing down on quoting Mussolini, vowing to ensure politicians can slap journalists with libel suits, and going to insane lengths not to denounce the KKK – were all great.  The hackneyed barbs traded by Trump and Rubio in the next story were ridiculous in their immaturity; it must be at least an unwritten rule that presidential candidates don’t make dick jokes.  And while I wasn’t familiar with guest Morris Chestnut, he was a lot of fun, personable and entertaining.

Tuesday, March 1 – In a bizarre twist, a Nation of Islam leader is the latest to endorse Trump.  I loved Trevor’s impression of bewildered Trump supporters no longer sure who to be prejudiced against.  I liked the story about a new law allowing kids in Iowa to use handguns.  There were some excellent lines there, and I loved the montage of tantrums to demonstrate why children might not be the best to trust with guns.  I was glad to see Kristen again, but her piece on body acceptance felt a little lacking.  I liked different parts of it, talking about the new Barbie body types and a plus-size model posing for Sports Illustrated, but it didn't quite come together.  The interview with comedian Neal Brennan, however, was interesting.  I liked that he and Trevor compared notes on having depression, as well as how people react in general to comedians with depression.

Wednesday, March 2 – A lot packed into tonight’s show.  Between the Inside Out-style cold open, Carson’s announcement to announce the date he’ll announce he’s dropping out of the race, and Cruz and Rubio’s desperate attempts to spin their unimpressive showings as successes, Super Tuesday had a lot to offer.  I adored the story comparing Trump to climate change, with GOP leaders denying both the existence of the problem and their culpability in it until it may be too late to stop it.  Trevor also made some good points on the Democratic side, questioning the logic of Sanders supporters accusing Clinton of “stealing” Sanders’s ideas, since smart money says she’ll be the eventual candidate and it’s to their benefit if she shares some of the same views.  The interview with model Chrissy Teigen was kind of all over the place but enjoyable; I’m not even sure I could articulate why I liked it as much as I did.

Thursday, March 3 – Nice finish to the week.  The shine was taken off Romney’s Trump-denunciation apple with a clip of Romney singing Trump’s praises when Tump endorsed him in the last election – whoops!  I really loved the piece on the KKK and how Democrats and Republicans have largely exchanged racial attitudes since the Civil War.  That history has always been interesting to me, and Trevor’s commentary on it was first-rate.  I especially liked the “shit/pizza” analogy (just watch it – it makes perfect sense in context, believe me.)  Jordan had a good field piece on gun violence and the ways the CDC is blocked from researching it; the “odd couple” of the CDC researcher and the reformed opponent of gun research that Jordan interviewed was really fun.  Decent interview New York mayor Bill de Blasio.  I liked his discussion with Trevor on new app services like Uber and AIRBNB.

Coraline (2002)

I’ve seen a few of Neil Gaiman’s TV efforts now – Neverwhere and his Who episodes – and I’ve listened to the radio adaptation of Neverwhere, but this is the first book of his that I’ve read.  As with his TV work, I like Coraline’s slightly off-kilter, somewhat dark, very British fantasy.

Coraline Jones has just moved with her parents into a large old house divided into flats.  She spends her early days exploring, getting to know the eccentric neighbors, and wondering about the door in her living room, the one with the bricked-up passageway that once led to the empty flat next to hers.  One day, though, home alone, Coraline opens the door to find the wall gone.  At the end of the passageway is a twisted through-the-looking-glass world containing Coraline’s Other House and populated by her button-eyed Other Parents.  Gradually realizing that her Other Mother has malevolent intentions, Coraline sets out to defeat the villainess.

This is a really neat book.  It’s definitely pitched for kids but still greatly accessible for adults.  I like Gaiman’s calm, observational prose in the face of all the crazy, scary things that happen to Coraline.  Our heroine is similarly unflappable, though not uncaring.  There are huge stakes in this story and Coraline knows it, but she approaches her challenges with a cool, rational head and bravery that’s more decisive than innate.

I think this quiet, collected attitude, on the part of both author and protagonist, makes the creepiness of the Other World even creepier.  Coraline goes through the door to find a world that’s just a little bit “off,” but the sense of skin-crawling foreboding builds slowly, teasingly, until you can hardly imagine how she’s able to keep her head.  The Other Mother is particularly horrific, no surprise. 

Overall, it’s a fine entry to the “And We Read This to Kids?!?” collection, with lots of menace and scary images.  Those British, I tell you – after all, kids love Doctor Who in Britain, and even before they get to the “exciting” stuff in Harry Potter, he’s being raised by unscrupulous relatives who make him live in a closet.  Then again, I suppose I shouldn’t talk.  The U.S. gave us Lemony Snicket, who killed the Baudelaire children’s parents and destroyed their home in a fire in the first chapter of the first Series of Unfortunate Events book before shipping them off to living with an abusive criminal so covetous of their inheritance that he schemes to marry a 14-year-old.

One of my favorite parts of the book, however, is a secondary character:  the cat who can similarly pass between worlds and sort of ambivalently helps Coraline in her fight against the Other Mother.  (Just “the cat,” by the way.  As it explains to Coraline – in the Other World, it can talk – “Now, you people have names.  That’s because you don’t know who you are.  We know who we are, so we don’t need names.”)  In a way, it’s sort of a more even-keeled version of the Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere:  clever, enigmatic, more than a little imperious, and usually nowhere in sight when Coraline wants it around, but still generally on her side.

Warnings

Some major scariness for kids and disturbing elements.

A Few Notes on Kilgrave (Jessica Jones)

The MCU’s history with villains has been pretty mixed.  Now, I think Loki is a bang-up character, although I’ve yet to see anything that uses him as well as the original Thor, and I adore the Winter Soldier, though his story is obviously changing, and even at his most dangerous, he’s more of a weapon than a villain.  Other movie villains, however, range from middling (Red Skull) to poorly used (Malekith) to over-the-top (Ronan.)  That said, Marvel’s TV outfits have had better luck in that department – I loved the main baddie on Agent Carter last year, and the new one is just as neat in an entirely different way – and in Kilgrave, Jessica Jones has a hugely intriguing, massively creepy foe.

First things first:  Kilgrave’s powers make my skin crawl.  The idea that he can compel anyone to do anything, be it making him their house guest, becoming his “willing” sex slave, or killing on his behalf, is so incredibly freaky!  Other than rendering him unconscious or ensuring that you can’t hear his voice, if you’re in the same room as him, there’s no real defense against it.  He can literally take someone’s power away with a single word.

What I love most about Kilgrave is that he’s not a super villain.  He doesn’t have an evil plan, he’s not after world domination, and his abilities effortlessly give him so much power that he doesn’t have much interest in acquiring more.  He’s just a stunningly-horrific example of what a completely unscrupulous person can do with his powers.  Rather than being specifically out to cause mayhem and destruction, mayhem and destruction are mere side effects of himgetting what he wants.  Because that’s about Kilgrave is about – satisfying his every desire.

He wants what he wants, and anyone who gets in the way is background noise.  Other people can be an afterthought, collateral damage, his playthings, or his means of venting his intense frustrations, depending on his whim.  He’s like a walking id that, until Jessica escaped from him in the events prior to the pilot, has never had something not go his way.

Don’t get me wrong.  Some of his desires are shockingly sick.  The dude is seriously twisted, and after all, we do meet him as Jessica’s superpowered stalker.  (Seriously, how gross is that?  Stalkers are such real-world monsters anyway, and then when you throw in unstoppable powers of persuasion?  Shudder.)  When he’s in a vicious mood, he doesn’t think twice about making someone kill themselves in a truly horrifying way, and I’m pretty sure he actually means it when he says he doesn’t consider himself to have raped Jessica, physically, mentally, or otherwise.  So, while he’s not a plotting super villain, he’s also, at minimum, awfully far down the road to Psychopathville.  I should hope his depraved acts aren’t an accurate representation of what an ordinary person would do with his powers.

At the same time, there’s a question of how much his powers shaped who he’s become, particularly since they manifested at a fairly young age.  While it in no way comes close to excusing any of the horrible things he does, it’s worth wondering what happens to a person’s psyche when everything they want is at their fingertips.  When no one can say no to them.  When they never have to work for anything.  When they can indulge their every caprice, no matter how dark.  With all that at Kilgrave’s disposal, did he have much – or any – chance of turning out “normal?”  (I repeat:  he’s still completely, manifestly awful.  No doubt about it.  Oh my gosh.)

Hard Luck (1921)

Hard Luck is a bit of an odd short for Buster.  Like some of his other midrange work (The Goat comes to mind,) its construction feels haphazard at times, but it has a host of topnotch gags and comic business.  That makes its quality hard to classify.  While it’s not up there with the greats like (for me) Neighbors or The Scarecrow, it’s way too funny to discount.

As the title suggests, Buster plays a down-on-his-luck fellow here.  Everything has been going wrong, and as a result, he’s decided to take matters into his own hands and off himself.  However, his luck isn’t any better when it comes to committing suicide than it is with anything else, and he’s continually thwarted in his efforts.  In time, though, he’s swept up in an adventure involving a beautiful girl who might just have renewed his will to live.

The main detractor here is the meandering plot.  There are four or five major sequences making up this short, and while I see the thin but plausible threads connecting each one, I don’t know why these particular sequences were put together in the first place.  There’s no real reason for a man hellbent on killing himself to end up on a fox hunt, for instance.  Hard Luck isn’t the only Buster short where the story jumps around, but it’s the one where it feels most noticeable to me.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe because the premise is laid out so clearly at the beginning, and it’s almost entirely dropped for at least half of the short?  At the same time, the failed-suicide-plots conceit wouldn’t have been enough to carry the whole short on its own – while darkly funny, it’s not a story in and of itself, so it definitely needed something more.

But although the short is rather a miss in terms of story, its comedy is first-rate.  All the suicide gags are grim but hilarious, from Buster’s “goodbye, cruel world” blown-kiss farewell in his aborted hanging attempt to the sheer refusal of any vehicle to run him over.  Naturally, it’s not until he’s prepared to live that he finds himself in any real danger – he nearly blows himself with his own campfire, and who but Buster could accidentally tied themselves to a bear?  Disaster-prone doesn’t begin to cover it.  And really, the gags are fantastic throughout, even in sequences that feel extraneously to the story.  I’ve mentioned before how much I love the recurring gag of Buster trying to mount his much-too-big horse with faulty stirrups (the fact that he keeps coming up with new ways to mount after he’s already found a method that works is so, so Buster,) and the scene where he somersaults through a window just in time to receive a cup of tea is as funny as it is precisely-executed.  The short’s ending gag is most of Buster’s most famous, perhaps in part because it was thought lost for a number of years.  In Kino Video’s boxed set of Buster’s independent shorts and features, intertitles explain the missing gag and offer a surviving photo for a visual, but the scene has since been recovered and can be found online.

The short also features – who else? – Big Joe Roberts and Virgina Fox.  Roberts’s outlaw villain here is just shy of a mustache-twirler, and it’s the first role that usually comes to mind when I think of his work with Buster.  And Virginia Fox as the latest “girl” actually gets a bit of physical comedy.  It makes me smile when she tumbles headfirst over the back of the couch.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and gunplay, plus an implied lecherous rogue of a villain.

2016 Oscar Awards

Another year, another Oscars.  The awards were a mixed bag for me – some predictable wins and a few upsets, some well-deserved (in my opinion) wins and a few that bugged me – but the ceremony itself had plenty of intriguing moments to keep my interest.

I was thrilled that Mad Max:  Fury Road cleaned up in the design and technical categories, taking home six awards (the most of any film that night.)  Even though it didn’t get any of the “big” stuff, I’m glad the Academy actually recognized how wonderful it is.  The only problem with the sweep was that it got my hopes up that George Miller might beat out Alejandro González Iñárritu for best director.  No luck, sadly.  However, just as I was resigning myself to The Revenant winning best picture, Spotlight swooped in to save the day!  Very happy for Tom McCarthy and everyone behind that movie.  It was a little odd that it only won one other award it was up for (best original screenplay,) but it felt gratifying to me that the film deemed to have the best story was also the film given the top honor.  The Big Short’s win for best adapted screenplay made me happy as well, and as for cinematography, I’m a little bowled over that Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant) got his third Oscar in a row.  When that streak ended, it really ended!

The acting categories went three-for-four as I expected.  Mark Rylance winning best supporting actor for Bridge of Spies shocked me – I’d thought Stallone had it in the bag.  I was most happy for Brie Larson getting the lead actress trophy.  Even though that win was in no way a surprise, it was for very good reason.  Although I anticipated Alicia Vikander taking best supporting actress, I still don’t like the fact that she won for a very obvious co-lead role.  And Leonardo DiCaprio… Good on him for finally nabbing that Oscar, but it’s disappointing to me that it was for The Revenant.  I just didn’t think that film provided him with a good showcase for his talents at all.

I enjoyed Chris Rock as the host, and while I figured he wouldn’t avoid the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, it surprised me how heavily the ceremony centered around it.  It was the focus of the whole monologue (which, for me, veered occasionally into attempts to absolving the Academy on the issue because there are “more important things” to worry about, but which also made some good, cutting points,) and there were numerous bits addressing diversity in Hollywood.  I particularly liked the “Black actors inserted into best picture nominees” clips, an amusing “history lesson” with Angela Bassett, and Rock’s man-on-the-street interviews with theatergoers outside a Compton cinema.  Others onstage, from presenters to winners to the Academy president, also brought up the importance of inclusion, although I don’t recall anyone white taking part in those statements.  One thing that bothered me in the #OscarsSoWhite remarks was how consistently it was framed as #OscarsNotBlack, when no actors of color were recognized.  I realize that most of the specific snubs called out this year were Black actors (or directors, in Ryan Coogler and F. Gary Gray’s cases,) and in general, I think other acting communities of color are at a different stage in their fight for representation in Hollywood, but it still felt weird that hardly anyone recognized it as more than a Black issue.  However, I love that Rock made opportunity a major focus; his rueful comment to Leonardo DiCaprio about Leo being “in a great movie every year” highlighted the imbalance in a pretty striking way.

Also, C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB-8 were made of win.  I “awwed” when Jacob Tremblay from Room stood up in his seat to get a better view of the droids.

A Few Thoughts on “Listen”

As I’ve observed before, new Who’s series 8 episode “Listen” is several neat ideas wrapped in something of a mess.  It often feels like halves of two completely different episodes jammed inelegantly together, and neither one concludes very satisfactorily. Today, there’s one particular thread of the episode I want to look at (spoilers.)

So here’s the set-up:  the Doctor is entrenched in a fair-to-middling obsession with the shared universal nightmare about creatures under the bed, and he links Clara with the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits to find the point in her timeline when she first had that nightmare.  As the TARDIS sifts through her thoughts, she’s distracted by her ringing phone (thinking it might be Danny,) and they’re taken to Danny’s childhood instead.  Clara at first tries to fess up to getting distracted at the critical moment, but when the Doctor dismisses her efforts, she switches gears and denies any knowledge of why they would have ended up with young Danny instead of her. 

The mystery is still puzzling the Doctor, and he picks Clara back up shortly after he drops her off, having followed the telepathic circuit looking for an explanation and having found (presumably) Danny’s descendent, pioneer time traveler Orson Pink.  “Do you have any connection to him?” he eagerly asks Clara, wondering if Orson could be a distant relative from her future.  He tells her that the telepathic circuit brought him right to Orson, “so, he is something to do with your timeline.”  Since Clara has only just finished her disastrous first date with Danny (twice!), this is a huge possibility to contemplate, and Orson’s remarks to her later in the episode seem to confirm that he can trace his lineage back to both Danny and Clara.

Never mind what comes later in the season – goodness knows the show doesn’t revisit this story to address the contradiction – the crux of the matter here is that meeting Orson, and the Doctor’s insistence that Clara is connected to him, suggests to Clara that she and Danny are meant to be together, which helps her to get passed the failure of their first date and give it another try.  But here’s the thing:  the TARDIS was never aligned with Clara’s timeline.  Because her thoughts her were on Danny while it was locking on, it’s his line the TARDIS followed, meaning Orson is a continuation of Danny’s timeline as well.  He doesn’t have to be connected with Clara because it’s not her timeline the TARDIS is moving along; it’s just that the Doctor doesn’t know that.  Since he’s unaware of the distraction issue, he assumes the TARDIS went where he intended it to go, and he can’t figure out how they wound up with a little Black boy with a London accent instead of a little white girl with a Northern accent.  But he still thinks it must fit somehow, so he goes looking for a connection when, in truth, there doesn’t need to be one at all.

This is where it gets messy for me.  The Doctor may not know what happened, but Clara does.  She knows she got distracted, she knows the boy they met was Danny, and she knows the Orson looks just like him.  So why does she get drawn into the idea that she and Orson (and, by extension, Danny) must be connected when the Doctor, who doesn’t have the necessary facts, tells her so?  I could buy her feelings for Danny clouding the issue a bit and then having her snap out of it and remind herself whose timeline they’re in, even as she might hope it’s true anyway, but why does she seem to conclude that it must be true when, no, it really doesn’t have to be?  That’s weird, sloppy writing that feels like it’s trying to make a big point even as it’s forgotten where it’s coming from.  Tsk, tsk, show.