{"id":63973,"date":"2017-08-02T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=63973"},"modified":"2017-08-01T22:17:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T03:17:31","slug":"zero-sum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=63973","title":{"rendered":"Zero Sum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I caught the movie Dunkirk\u00a0<\/em>the Saturday before last.<\/p>\n

I’ll be reviewing it in a separate piece later this week or early next.<\/p>\n

In the meantime – this “Feminist” review of the movie is enough to make you wonder if we really saved western civilization at the end of WW2, or merely delayed its demise. \u00a0It’s from “Marie Claire”, and it’s as bad as you might expect.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

One extracted bit of foul written effluvia – by no means the worst:<\/p>\n

\n

But my main issue with\u00a0Dunkirk<\/em>\u00a0is that it’s so clearly designed for men to man-out over. And look, it’s not like I need every movie to have “strong female leads.”\u00a0Wonder Woman<\/em>\u00a0can probably tide me over for at least a year, and I understand that this war was dominated by brave male soldiers. I get that. But the packaging of the film, the general vibe, and the tenor of the people applauding it just screams “men-only”\u2014and specifically seems to cater to a certain type of very pretentious man who would love nothing more than to explain to me why I’m wrong about not liking it. If this movie were a dating profile pic, it would be a swole guy at the gym who also goes to Harvard. If it was a drink it would be Stumptown coffee. If it was one of your friends, it would be the one who starts his sentences with “I get what you’re saying, but…”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The “writer” – one Mehera Bonner – is so tied to pop-culture cliches, I was tempted to think the whole thing was a McSweeneys level parody of “feminist” writing. \u00a0Indeed, the title suggests “parody” with all the subtlety of a “Real Housewives” makeover: “I Think ‘Dunkirk’ Was Mediocre at Best, and It’s Not Because I’m Some Naive Woman Who Doesn’t Get It”<\/p>\n

If that’s\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>parody, Ms. Bonner, then yes – your are precisely a naive, cossetted, hot-house flower “feminist” who does not, in fact, “get it”.<\/p>\n

Kyle Smith at NRO simultaneously gives Bonner more respect than she deserves<\/a>, and savages her “writing” even more brutally:<\/p>\n

Feminists have a habit of obsessively dividing the world into teams \u2014 us, them. Ideas and even facts get considered in the light of whether they are good for Team Woman or not. Instead of seeing men and women as close collaborators in the human project, feminists often suppose that the sexes are rivals, opponents. This is sheer tribalism. Bonner looks at Dunkirk and is irritated that men like the film. She sees it as a celebration of manly courage and bravado, or at least manly endurance and grit, and this repulses her. Feminism means constant maintenance of an imaginary set of scales, and she fears Dunkirk adds weight to the masculine side, tipping the culture away from women. If Dunkirk \u2014 \u201cChristopher Nolan\u2019s new directorial gift to men,\u201d she calls it \u2014 shows men at their best, it must therefore be bad for women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a much larger column involved here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I caught the movie Dunkirk\u00a0the Saturday before last. I’ll be reviewing it in a separate piece later this week or early next. In the meantime – this “Feminist” review of the movie is enough to make you wonder if we really saved western civilization at the end of WW2, or merely delayed its demise. \u00a0It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63976,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63973\/revisions\/63976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}