I, for one, welcome our new feminist overlords

This started off as a reply to a comment by Neo in The Elephants in the Room, but kept getting longer, because I'm a mouthy bastard. Deal.

So in DykeWrite: Matrix Revolutions, dkitty writes:

Trinity at least isn't the sniveling damsel in distress she was in the second flick.

And I kind'a raised an eyebrow at that, because the film starts with Trinity kicking ass and taking names. Figured the child who wrote that must not have ever seen (or read about) a genuine sniveling damsel in distress.

And then I figured the child who wrote that couldn't give a shit what a dino like me thinks.

That her standards for what constitutes a decent portrayal of a female character are just so much higher than mine, that something I'd let pass by, or even applaud as groundbreaking, would be disappointing to her.

And that's a good thing.

And hardly an unprecedented thing. There's films from the 60s that feature African American characters that I think are stereotypical and one-dimensional that were seen as seriously pushing the envelope at the time of release. The older black folk who shake their heads at my refusal to accept this no doubt reacted the same way to films from the 40s that had "progressive portrayals" of Negroes, but were seen in the 60s as hopelessly outdated.

Dinos are just willing to accept less. It's why we need to die.

And I don't know enough about the Queer community/ies (no, honest, I don't) or Deaf community/ies to state this for certain, but I'm confident there's a similar dynamic at work there. That there are kids today at Gallaudet who look at Children of a Lesser God and are just disgusted with how Marlee Matlin's character is portrayed.

And that's also a good thing.

Because the kids are going to force changes in pop culture that us dinos wouldn't. And eventually those changes are going to bubble up into the political culture.

Not that I'm thrilled with becoming extinct and being used as fuel for their flying cars (dammit, kids, don't go out like us! Get your fucking flying cars!), but I think they're going to make a better world.

That's a value judgment on my part. Other dinos might see this new world as strange and frightening.

Hell, they might find today's world strange and frightening.

You can toss them in the gas tank now, far as I'm concerned.

Update: Knew it still had to be up somewhere. . . Kevin Smith directs Dante and Randal from CLERKS discussing the flying car.

Randal

It’s times like this it occurs to me that we were lied to by “The Jetsons”.

Dante

What are you talking about?

Randal

According to that show we were suppose to be tooling around in flying cars by now. You see any flying cars lately? That’s the problem with TV, it always lies to us.

Dante

Yeah, well most of us rational thinkers weren’t banking on a cartoon to offer us a viable glimpse into the future of technological development.

ISTR a commercial featuring Avery Brooks also bitching about the lack of flying cars. And I talked about this with Neo yesterday.

Perhaps I should add to my will, "Cremation by means of fuel for flying car."

Perhaps I should make a will. . .