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HENCEFORTH this shall be the OPINION ZONE:
I have strong thoughts and feelings on everything from the legacy of Elizabeth Bathory to annoying portrayals of comic book characters and I must make them known. Expect various pedantic miscellany that I can't be bothered to organize. 
ENTRY #2: House x Cuddy
I'm on season 5 of House MD now, and while it has been always true that the character of House is the worst one on the show because he acts as an excuse for the show to indulge in unrepentant misogyny ("we're adding in another striptease scene because it's reflecting house's objectification of women, it's not like the we chose to make him the POV character for this and also chose to make him objectify women"), to then pull out the #2 cardinal sin* of heterosexual romance ("he's mean to her because he likes her") just made me feel sad for Cuddy. They do have some great moments throughout the show so far, but the way House treats her potential motherhood is quite literally appalling, and to reward THAT with the start of a romance is like another slap in the face added to the giant list of slaps-in-the-face that this show gives its female audience. House/Cuddy could be good, maybe, in a different context; and when you add Wilson to the mix the dynamic gets a lot more bearable. But nah, we're just gonna keep subjecting Cuddy to perpetual torment. The 2000s were a dark, dark time. *the #1 cardinal sin is "she said no but she secretly meant yes". i will drop the show over that.
ENTRY #1: I don't like the Reze arc
I describe myself as "unfortunately Fujimoto-pilled", because I like his work as much as I hate it, and when it gets those bursts of super mainstream popularity it just makes me grit my teeth even harder. The problem with Chainsaw Man (aside from the fact that the last 80 chapters have been repetitive, regressive & mostly annoying) is that it can't resolve its central tension between "using sexism and objectification to advance a story about Denji's negative relationship with intimacy", and "doing sexism and objectification just to titillate the audience". And the Reze arc is a big example of that: when you analyze it, it's a story about an abused teenager who's being manipulated by a girl his own age, who is herself being forced to do this; their relationship counters his relationship with the adult woman grooming him to her own ends, and though Denji can't confront his relationship with Makima yet, his tragic connection with Reze starts undermining Makima's hold on him. But on the surface it's also a story about a love triangle where a horny guy is torn between two babes presented to the audience in leering camera shots of their underwear. And because the average shonen anime fan is 1) a misogynist and 2) dumb as rocks, the only understanding they come away with is the "haha hot babes Denji's horny just like me fr" one. But that reading of the text is unfortunately equally valid because Chainsaw Man actively plays into it 99% of the time, and the leering camera of the anime and the mountains of fanservice merchandise just doubles down on it. Which is why the later chapters of Part 2 get so annoying: by this point Denji has grown and experienced enough to be different, but the manga has to keep doubling down on the sexy-manipulative-women-for-fanservice angle, so they need to Denji to keep falling for it every time, even when he himself knows that he knows better. And it's also why, in a weird way, I prefer Fire Punch, because Fire Punch is from the first volume so off-the-walls gorey and exploitative and sad that you can't come away from it with any genuinely sexy readings; it forces you to actually consider the themes. |
