Jurassic World.
While lumpen folk concern themselves with trivial questions like “Is it any good?”, Britain’s premier mediator of correct thinking – the Guardian – has today asked the only question that really matters: “Is it sexist?”
This very important question was, of course, prompted by professional Social Justice Warrior (and occasional Avengers director) Joss Wheedon who, on seeing early footage from Jurassic World, expressed reservations over what he saw as its crude gender stereotyping.
Of a scene where Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), an uptight park manager, is shown having her heart softened by a laid-back “70s-era-sexist” called Bruce, Wheedon observed:
“She’s a stiff, he’s a life-force. Really? Still?”
Just like Wheedon, we at Breitbart have nothing but Olympian, groovily-expressed, Twitter-friendly contempt for anything that smacks of totally uncool misogyny or sexism.
We furthermore believe that avoiding “gender stereotyping” is far, far, FAR more important a goal for any aspiring modern movie director than, say, plausibility, credibility, excitement, narrative drive, verisimilitude, realism, entertainment value, a decent script, and so on.
Here, sparing you the need to read the Guardian, we offer Breitbart’s very own trigger warning guide to the post-feminist pros and cons of the latest in the Jurassic Park series.
Cons
1. The Cretaceous era, when most of the big dinosaurs lived, was not known for its sexual enlightenment. In fact, back then, attitudes to women and gender were frankly prehistoric.
2. Typical of this ingrained sexism was the name used by its top predator Tyrannosaurus Rex. Never – please note – Tyrannosaurus Regina.
3. Homo sapiens did not actually exist at this point. But had S/he done so, we can be certain of one thing: it would have been the women who had to deal with all the tough work staying by the fire in the cave, cuddling baby, and stirring the Pterodactyl stew, while the boys always ended up bunking off to do the easy stuff like being eaten alive or disembowelled by the vicious, fanged predators they were trying to catch for dinner.
4. In the film a powerful woman who has chosen to put career before family is shown to be bitchy, uptight, bossy, difficult, unfeminine, sexually repressed. Really. How likely is that?
Pros
1. Records for the Cretaceous era are sketchy, but it is an uncontestable fact that there was not a single reported case of Campus harassment, date rape, mattress rape, or personal space violation by men against women during the entire period. A period which lasted around 80 million years.
2. The vicious predator for whom we’re all rooting – the Guardian has noticed this too, so we must be on the right track – is a female. Go vicious killer girls! #killallmen.
3. Claire’s sister in the film is weepy and weak. The Guardian sees this as sexist stereotyping. But we prefer to see it as a brilliant – and highly prescient – critique of the patriarcho-neanderthal sexist views on women expressed this week by disgraced scientist and Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt. In fact, as we all know, in real life women never do stuff like worry about their kids or cry.
4. All the real baddies in the film are, of course, men. And they all die. So what’s not to like?