Escape to the Movies: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

[Farther than stars]

So fighting witches is misogynist now?

No, of course not. But to Bob's credit, he's right that you should always remember the context of a story. Otherwise you risk setting a precedent for films being liberal with historic events to the degree that propaganda films glorify war and excuse human suffering.

If Bob did remember the context of the story (which he clearly doesn't) he would never have brought up that witch hunt/trial bullshit, especially when, in the movie, the trials/hunts are portrayed in a negative light.

I mean context in the sense of how those stories came about. And it's true that associating witches with fear is a feeling conjured up by medieval prejudices against individualistic women.

 

[Darken12]

I pretty much agree with Bob here. I am going to give this movie a miss, mainly because I find the idea of watching a movie that glorifies women being killed and beaten up (under the thin veneer that "it's okay because we make them evil") gives me the absolute creeps.

 

[Anchupom]

Gotta say, I'm starting to disagree with Bob more and more recently. Genuinely excited to gear about J.J. Abrams being the new Star Wars director and also not feeling squicked out by the apparent 'misogyny' of Hansel and Gretel.

 

[rees263]

Apparently I was the only one who got weirded out by Bob pronouncing Gemma with a hard 'G'.

It should be soft like a 'J'...

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

You can be damn sure I remember the Brothers Grimm Movie Bob.
I'm pretty sure everyone remembers what the real witch hunts were like Bob, but I don't think anyone really cares in this film's context. I mean, it's not like anyone was going to this movie expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

EDIT: I know I'm supposed to write something so the post won't be erased but it's hard to do so when your post is a joke and you just told the punchline.

 

[Darken12]

I pretty much agree with Bob here. I am going to give this movie a miss, mainly because I find the idea of watching a movie that glorifies women being killed and beaten up (under the thin veneer that "it's okay because we make them evil") gives me the absolute creeps.

So what you are saying is women are too weak? fragile? to get beaten up in movies, while men are ok to beat up in movies and have it glorified because... its is ok to beat up men?

So much for equality folks!

I don't like movies that glorify beating up or killing people, period. I find them distasteful. I don't get an erection or an endorphins rush from watching glorified violence on screen. But it's extra creepy when a movie made primarily by men in a society where sexism still exists is all about beating the shit out of women, and it gets even creepier when the paper-thin context we're given is based on real-life events from our history that were used to perpetuate violence against women by a misogynistic patriarchy.

 

[Darken12]

How is it extra creepy? So sexism exists, big whoop, does that mean for some reason we shouldnt look at women and scoff and say "Psht, they could NEVER be a threat!" Because that just sounds like sexism to me. And as has been pointed out earlier, men were also gone after in witch trials.

There is a difference between "women as equals to men in a combat role" and "an army composed almost entirely of women whose main purpose is to be beaten up and killed for the camera." I heard that argument before when people defended the Hitman trailer. Just because a woman fights back while the male main character beats the shit out of her doesn't mean the camera slowing down so that you can see every bone and cartilage in her nose breaking isn't glorifying violence against her.

The problem isn't a single fact. It's a culmination of them. That the witches are ALL (or almost all) women, that the main character is male (and that his female sidekick, according to Bob, gets beaten up and nursed back to health by a male twice, and experiences more violence than her male counterpart), and that the movie glorifies the main character enacting violence on his targets (and that most, if not all of his characters end up being women), all of this builds up to a feeling of sexism. That this was made by and for men doesn't help matters at all.

And just because a tiny minority of men also got caught up in the violence of the witch hunts doesn't mean it wasn't primarily aimed at women (particularly independent, single women who were seen as threat by the patriarchy).

But so what if it is (very loosely) based on something that happened a while ago? Just because a movie uses (loosely) some themes from it doesnt mean that people are making light of it or belittling it.

Perhaps a few examples can help you understand better:

WWII era, Nazi protagonists, all the Jewish people are evil vampires.
Slavery era, white protagonists, all the people of colour are evil werewolves.
1482 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burning_of_Sodomites.jpg], straight protagonists, all the LGBT people are evil daemons (that must be killed with fire!).

Truly, all these "loosely based" movie ideas are not glorifying effecting violence on any oppressed group at all. Of course not. You cannot possibly see how any of this can be offensive to anybody.

I suppose Games Workshop is also OMG SEXIST because they have a faction of inquisition and witch hunters in Warhammer?

Depends on whether the witches are all-female (or mostly female) or not. If "witch" is a gender-neutral term, then it's not glorifying gender violence, it's just using witch hunting for cheap imagery.

 

[Not Matt]

[obligatory lens flair joker]

i am not sure how i feel about movies like Hansel and Gretel or that little red riding hood meets a werewolf movie. these are stories my gran told me when i was a child and refused to sleep. now it's like Michael bay kicked in my bedroom door, took the book from grandma, and started to read it in his own overly violent way.

EDIT: And that snow white movie with K Stew. that too was a part of my childhood turned in to a (somewhat) action movie

 

[Lovesfool]

I am trying to think of a steampunk movie that did well boxofficewise and having trouble. Van Helsing didn't, although it had Jackman and a Beckinsale going for it, the Brothers Grimm didn't succeed, although it also had an attractive cast going for it and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen didn't perform either, although they had Sean Connery going for it (two of those three are based on comic books, which is no coincidence).

Why is Hollywood still trying to exploit the steampunk potential with one dimensional movies? They are all one-gag-movies that showcase all they have going from the trailer. The weapons look cool, the retromodern world is nice, but they are usually lacking in depth of story and ambition.

If a leather clad Beckinsale at the prime of her popularity couldn't sell the premise, if Terry Gilliam couldn't sell the premise (although I personally enjoyed both of those movies, including the "League", instead of their wasted potential), then it is more than obvious that nobody is buying.

 

[Xelanath]

Perhaps a few examples can help you understand better:

WWII era, Nazi protagonists, all the Jewish people are evil vampires.
Slavery era, white protagonists, all the people of colour are evil werewolves.
1482 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burning_of_Sodomites.jpg], straight protagonists, all the LGBT people are evil daemons (that must be killed with fire!).

Truly, all these "loosely based" movie ideas are not glorifying effecting violence on any oppressed group at all. Of course not. You cannot possibly see how any of this can be offensive to anybody.

The key difference being that vampires aren't inextricably linked with Judaism, werewolves aren't inextricably linked with black people and/or slavery, and daemons aren't inextricably linked with a medieval concept of Sodomites.

And that really is the crux of the argument here. No matter how distasteful you may find it, witchcraft in modern culture is overwhelming associated with the female gender. I don't think I need to list examples.

Now, the film may well still prove to be misogynistic, I'm not ruling out that eventuality. However, I firmly believe that it's a mistake to make such an assertion on the grounds that the antagonists are female witches.

 

[Darken12]

The key difference being that vampires aren't inextricably linked with Judaism, werewolves aren't inextricably linked with black people and/or slavery, and daemons aren't inextricably linked with a medieval concept of Sodomites.

And that really is the crux of the argument here. No matter how distasteful you may find it, witchcraft in modern culture is overwhelming associated with the female gender. I don't think I need to list examples.

Now, the film may well still prove to be misogynistic, I'm not ruling out that eventuality. However, I firmly believe that it's a mistake to make such an assertion on the grounds that the antagonists are female witches.

That's not an excuse, you know. The reason witchcraft has been associated with the female gender is due to the patriarchy seeking to control women and then women clinging on to the idea of witchcraft as one of the scant ways to feel empowered in a patriarchal society. Reinforcing the idea that A) witches are all (or mostly) women and B) that they are evil and deserve to be killed, reinforces the patriarchy's lies that caused the death of so many innocents in the past. A movie about beating the shit out of evil witches is glorifying and validating the crimes committed by powerful men against women who couldn't fight back.

 

[Darken12]

I love how people cry misogyny when women are used as cannon fodder in movies, yet these same people wouldn't dare say a word if it were men who were the bad guys and getting killed.

It's about time a film comes out where women are the bad guys and get punished for their evil ways. The haters can shut up.

This is fallacious because you are ignoring social and historical context. And I don't mean the witch hunt thing, I would probably be crying misogyny as well if the antagonists were evil housewives or evil prostitutes or any other form of non-progressive all-female army (because women as actual soldiers would be sort of progressive, even if might end up being misogynistic anyway).

The context I'm referring to is the oppression of women throughout history, not just via witch hunts. You can't say that it's sexist not to feel a thing when men are killed in droves because men have been (and remain) in possession of most of the sociopolitical and economical power in the world. To wit, it's hard to levy a complain of sexism when movies where men die are made by men and for men (which is also why it's hard to levy a complain of misogyny against 50 Shades of Gray, which is absolutely dripping with abuse apologism and glorification, plus general misogyny, but it was written by a woman for women so the issue becomes quite murky). In short, if men dying in droves is sexist, it is, at best, internalised misandry (though that's just me being generous towards your argument, I honestly doubt the men who write men getting killed genuinely hate their fellow men).

The problem where a marginalised or oppressed group is portrayed like this is that we are not in the state of absolute equality that would allow the portrayal of something like this without consequences. Women are still oppressed around the world and even the most progressive Western society still has plenty of subtle, ingrained sexism leftover from millennia of oppression. Portraying an all female race of bad guys to be beaten up by a man, even if the creators' intentions are completely innocent, can still be seen as misogynistic because it just smacks of men getting off on watching women being beaten up and killed.

Until we reach a point in society where such a notion is unthinkable, people are going to either have to be more careful with the things they put out to the public, or just take all the accusations as the price to pay for cashing on the repressed misogyny of a quietly sexist audience.

 

[HK_01]

Bob, sometimes you get a little too overly "correct". You spend more than a third of the review ranting about real witch hunts, despite it obviously not implying that the witch hunts were somehow a good thing.

Also, why does everyone hate J. J. Abrams? How can he possibly be worse than Lucas?

Edit: Wow, the comments are a mess.

 

[Gentleman Adventurer]

When ever anyone starts to talk about oppression this is the only thing I really think of.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS_1bzaj2fw[/video]

 

[Darken12]

Actually no, there isn't a difference. There is no difference between and army of women meant to be killed by the protagonist, or an army of men meant to be killed by the protagonist. Both are still sexist by your logic. Both still involve glorifying violence. I would expect someone who whishes for equality to call out both and call a spade a spade.

And I said I don't like those movies either. I don't think that killing men just to see them die is okay. If you're going to kill a bunch of men, it should serve a valid narrative purpose. My gripe with this movie is that the violence and murder against these women serves no narrative purpose beyond titillation or gore/violence exploitation. And this takes place in a societal context where violence against women is still pretty damn common.

The creators of the movie are the ones that control all its aspects. They are the ones who decided that the main character was going to be a male, and that the antagonists were going to be primarily women. They are the ones that not only do not shy away from violence against them, but actively go out of their way to glorify it on screen. None of this was beyond their control. All of this was their choice. They could have easily had a gender-equal army of witches to avoid accusations of sexism, but they didn't.

My point is that I don't consider it unreasonable to get a sexism vibe (whether it was intentional or not) from the movie.

Wrong. It's not fallacious.

Whether you like it or not, your excuses here just don't fly. Everything you said is NOT an excuse to justify using men as cannon fodder, while getting upset because you can't handle when it's women in the same position. No, I haven't ignored any social context here. You, however, ignore the context that this is a fantasy movie. A fantasy movie where the antagonists are capable females. I don't know about you, but I want the heroes to win, whether they face an army of men or women.

You're confusing in-universe sexism with out-of-universe sexism. In-universe, there's no sexism when Hansel fights back when a woman tries to kill him, so long as he doesn't go out of his way to be sadistic or excessively violent. There might be sexism if he enjoys hurting women, but I haven't seen the movie so I can't really comment on that. Out-of-universe sexism, on the other hand, is when the movie creators decide to make Hansel's primary antagonists all (or almost all) women when they could have easily kept the "evil magic users" theme and make them equal-gendered. Other forms of out-of-universe sexism include the sexualisation of witches (and Gretel, and the redheaded witch), the glorification of violence against them, and the discrepancy between Hansel and Gretel's fighting competence.

This may come as a shock to you, but men being used as cannon fodder doesn't become okay because it was created by a man. Men and women can be sexist towards their own gender. You clearly don't have an understanding of equality if you think it's okay to accept something like that. By saying these things, you are being rather sexist yourself.

I also doubt that men who write about women getting killed are saying how awesome it is for women to get brutally killed anymore than when it happens to a man.

Yes, we get it. Women have been treated horribly in the past. Movies like Hansel and Gretel is not a movie saying how awesome those days were and how we should go back to it.

It doesn't make it okay, but it doesn't make it clear-cut sexism either. All the isms and prejudice are based on the notion of otherness, they are based on a distinct lack of empathy between the person and the Other. When the isms and prejudices are internalised, they have more to do with accepting the views of the dominant majority and becoming simultaneously Self and Other. This leads to a state of constant cognitive dissonance, low self-esteem and even self-hatred. It's very hard for men to be sexist towards themselves when they are the dominant majority (and have been from the dawn of history), and never saw themselves as Other (unless it's because of a matter of race, religion, sexuality, etc), so the "internalised sexism" you mention is more the result of men considering their own lives as expendable (as part of archaic notions of cavalry, honour and manhood) and less about actual prejudice.

And yes, actually, the movie DOES seem to say "wouldn't it be awesome if witches were real and we were justified in beating the shit out of them???", which, while I would love to assume it is not based in conscious, wilful sexism, it is still probably the result of inadvertent, latent misogyny.

Now you are just grasping at straws trying to justify your own sexist views on this. Yes, there still is ingrained sexism in our society. Funny how you fail to realize that it goes both ways.

It's not the creator's problem how people wish to interpret his work.

See, here's the thing about equality that people like you can't seem to grasp, which is the reason we don't have equality today: You have to practice what you preach. Saying how it seems to be "creepier" to kill women in movies as opposed to men is not a sign of equality. It's the opposite, even if you think you have good intentions. You can bring up the past all you want. The thing is, we don't live in the past. We live in the present. If you want equality, then start denouncing movies where men are used as cannon fodder as well. The gender of the person who created said movie is a moot point. If you want equality, then start treating people as equals and practice what you preach. That includes accepting silly movies where the villains happen to be females. Powerful, capable females, at that. You have yet to do that by your admission of thinking killing wowmen is creepier than killing men. No matter how you try to spin things, that's a sexist commen and it renders your argument obsolete.

What? That makes no sense. How do you know I don't decry action movies elsewhere? Why should I bring up other types of movies when we're talking about this one in particular? This actually sounds more like a "shut up, men have it bad too so stop talking about how bad women have it" argument, which is exactly what always happens whenever someone tries to bring up sexism or any other ism or phobia. It doesn't work like that. Society still hasn't reached perfect equality, so there will still be sexism, and we are still justified in bringing it up. We are never going to reach equality if we keep shushing anybody who raises awareness of society's flaws.

And as for the reason I think it's "extra" creepy, I think that, for as long as society marginalises women, products made by men have to prove that they are trying to go out of their way to avoid being sexist in order to avoid being called sexist. For as long as sexism remains the default, I am going to keep assuming that works made by men are sexist by default.