Batman vs. Superman

Well, here’s the Batman vs. Superman blog post that you’ve all been waiting for.

So, a bit of background on how I saw this movie. Me and my college buddies are wonderfully close; I’ve only been out of the Boston area for a few months, and I already miss them all terribly. Right before we all went our separate ways¹, we did what any self-respecting almost-adults would do with our last bit of time in the same place: popped out to the Cape for a weekend of debauchery. Whereby ‘debauchery’, I mean, we got drunk, played League, brainstormed creative writing ideas, and watched a bunch of dumb shit.^—

Which, of course, brings me to Batman vs. Superman.

Now, we all knew that the movie was terrible, going in. But even so, my god, was I surprised by just how bad it actually was. I mean… There were no words. I ran out of words somewhere midway through the first dream sequence, where Batman apparently gained powers by being bitten by a radioactive bat.

Now hang on, I hear you say. It was bad, but it wasn’t that bad.

No, Batman vs. Superman was actually that bad. And it was that bad for exactly the reason that has lead some people, ironically enough, to defend it.

Batman vs. Superman has such incredible, tantalizing glimpses of what it could be, everywhere through it. It builds you up, and then it lets you down all the harder. You can’t dismiss it as a ‘so bad, it’s good’ film; there’s too much good in it for that. But you can’t take it seriously either: every awesome fight scene is ruined by absurd dialogue; every piece of good dialogue is trapped in a convoluted plot. It is a horrible, ridiculous, and almost irredeemable mess. But, it is the most salvageable horrible, ridiculous, and almost irredeemable mess that I have ever seen.

So what went wrong?

Honestly, where do I even start? The DC Extended Universe, rather than learning from Marvel’s example, decided it wanted to put out Justice League yesterday, and that leg-work was skippable. Fans are still entirely too hung-up about The Dark Knight for studio execs to want to make anything else. Man of Steel left us a Superman with too much un-Superman-like baggage to ever be compelling in the role.

These are all difficult problems with no easy solutions.

But there’s one problem that stands out apart from all that, and that’s that the movie was just desperately in need of a competent screenwriter and director.

Harsh? Yes. True? Also, very much, yes.

Now, I’m not going to speak to Snyder’s other films.³ Every writer has the chance to grow and develop their skills with time, and I’m not about to completely write off a screenwriter or a director for their first ever film, or even their fifth ever film. Man of Steel was a poor Superman film, but Batman vs. Superman did not need to be as bad as it was merely because it was building off of Man of Steel. In a similar vein, Argo was a fairly well-written script, which Chris Terrio certainly deserves credit for, and that’s true regardless of how much of a train-wreck Batman vs. Superman was.

And of course, I understand that Snyder was under a lot of pressure from the his higher ups. When you have Ezra Miller for a cameo, you don’t get to say no to putting him in, no matter how stupid that cameo is. When you only have one movie to establish all of your Justice League tie-ins, you don’t get to cut those tie-ins, even for the sake of the story. You can’t change Superman’s characterization too much, or he no longer fits with Man of Steel. I get that, I really do.

But even given those limitations, Batman vs. Superman was a terrible script. Snyder could have done better. Terrio could have done better. Hell, even I could have done better.

Could I really have, though, I hear you ask?

Yes. Yes I could. And I did.

Ladies and gentlemen and others, may I present Batman vs. Superman: Reimagined.

I stuck to all of the constraints that the writers realistically had. I kept huge swathes of dialogue intact, and retained the overall plot. And yet, I somehow managed to add in a ton of Wonder Woman, give Lex Luthor a motivation, make an actual conflict between Batman and Superman, and cut an estimated 27 minutes off of the film’s runtime⁴. And I wrote it in slightly less that two months. While I was in law school.

Are there issues with my script? Tons! The movie’s still over-bloated with character introductions and shoe-horned plot points. It’s still too early in the DCEU for Superman to die. The Justice League tie-ins still seem tacked on, and the Ezra Miller cameo is still an embarrassingly stilted and ridiculous attempt at foreshadowing. But my point isn’t that Batman vs. Superman could be perfect; my point is that it didn’t need to be terrible. I am not an actual screenwriter. I have never even taken a screenwriting class⁵, and I have definitely never sold a script, to anyone. And even I could do better than the Batman vs. Superman we got.

Next blog post, I’m going to do a detailed analysis of why I made the choices that I did, and get in the weeds of why I think that Batman vs. Superman failed as a movie. But for now, I just want to leave you with this: Batman vs. Superman had enough good in it that even someone like me could pull it out. And that is exactly why all the bad in it is so impossible to ignore.

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1. Well, strictly speaking it was after we had all begun to go our separate ways: one of my friends was headed to Harvard divinity school and needed to sort out housing, and another was too busy getting married. But they were there in spirit.

2. We also trolled the hell out of a couple annoying bigots, watched anime, and came up up with superhero costumes. Did I mention my friends are awesome?

3. Although, for the record, I have yet to see a single one I thought was written well enough to sell the script.

4. That’s just a rough estimate, since I don’t have a professional script reader, but it shouldn’t be too far off.

5. Heck, I’ve never taken any sort of creative writing class. Literally not one.

“Am I supposed to bow to say hello?”

So, it’s been a pretty long time since I made a post here.

There’s a reason for that. Starting things off with the Ford Hall protests seemed like a good idea at the time, but it sort of put me in a corner. On the one hand, I didn’t want my blog to just be about racial inequality, or even about social justice in general. On the other hand, anything else I wrote about seemed so irrelevant by comparison.

I’ve started writing more blog posts than I can name, and finished at least half a dozen of them. But posting them right after the Ford Hall piece just felt… wrong.

Which is why it’s incredibly ironic that the thing that finally convinced me to get over myself and post something is both deeply irrelevant, and also about racism in America.

By now, people are finally getting over Jesse Watters’s ridiculously racist Fox News segment. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s about time. But here’s a quick recap for anyone who lives under a rock: Jesse Watters walked around Chinatown, under the pretense of reporting on our political relations with China. He found a bunch of non-native English speakers, mocked them on camera, and made a bunch of stupidly racist comments about China, Chinese people, and Asia in general.

I am a proud Chinese American, and let me say here and now that I don’t care.

Well, no, that’s not exactly right. See, I care quite a bit about racism in America, and I am intimately familiar with the racism the Asian Americans face on a daily basis. But I don’t much care for the concern and righteous indignation white people have suddenly been laying on my behalf.

What Watters did was repugnant. It’s also nothing new.

So many people stood up after that segment and declared that this, this specifically, was beyond the pale. Tell me, where were those people every single day other day of our lives?

In junior high, my history textbook said that the greatest contribution that Asians made to this country was railroads. Kids picked up on that. I still can’t hear the song “I’ve been working on the railroad” without seeing kids my age singing with their eyes pulled back, and adults standing back and did nothing.

Eyes pulled up: “Chinese~”

Eyes pulled down: “Japanese~”

Pantomiming displaying their breasts: “Look at dees~”

At summer camp, people called me a chink. When I fought back, I was a martial arts master. When I didn’t, I was a submissive Asian girl.

One adult I told carefully explained that it wasn’t really a racism thing. “They’re just jealous because you people are so smart.”

At my synagogue, well-meaning people ask if I’ve ever met my birth-parents, or what nice Jewish boy I’m dating.

I’ve come up with a million biting retorts to the dreaded “So… what are you?” question. I’ve never dared use them on my professors or bosses.

“Ching chong wang wong! ‘Least we don’t name our children by throwing silverware down the stairs!”

I’m American. I’ve always lived in America. I was born in Providence, Rhode Island. I grew up in Chicago. My parents were both born in Boston. My mother was raised in California, and my father was raised in Florida. No, I don’t speak Korean. No, liking anime is not in my blood. Yes, I really am American. Yes, I really am a citizen. I really wish you’d stop asking me… No, of course I understand you meant no offense. Yes, of course I know you’re not racist. I’m sure you do have Asian friends. Oh, and a daughter-in-law? Well, that’s just wonderful.

“Asian food is so exotic.”

“Asian women are so exotic.”

“Meiwen, huh? Can I call you that? Your real name? …Well, I mean, I know Ray’s your English name, but…”

“Asian professors are impossible to understand! I mean, fine, he doesn’t really have an accent, per se, but still…”

“People aren’t actually racist against Asians. If anything, they’re biased in your favor.”

“Wait, here comes Lingling… Oh, hi, Ray!”

Ah, but what Watters said and did crossed a line. We can all agree that it was much worse than just an average day in a random Asian American’s life. After all, white people actually know about it, and that automatically makes it worse.

White people do not get to be righteously indignant on my behalf over this. They have no right; none, whatsoever. You, collectively, never stood up before it was on the news, even when it was right under your noses. You told us our claims of racism were exaggerated, without ever bothering to check. Most of you will still oppose our basic claims to human decency as soon as Watters fades from the public eye.

I don’t care about Watters, because Watters is not the most racist thing I face in my day to day life. Not even close.

What Watters did was not ‘gentle fun’. But, Fox News was right about one thing: it was basically harmless. It was on the mild end of the racism against Asian Americans that I, personally, have experienced. And it was on the very mild end of the racism that Fox News perpetuates on a daily basis.

Tell me, oh great collective internet which is disgusted by Watters, where were you the last time Fox News slanted a police shooting by using racist stereotypes to blame the victim? Where were you the last time you saw kids being kids, but specifically against minority children? Racism does not begin and end with this news piece, and any minority could tell you so. Where are you when we really need you?

Watters’s five minutes of fame are up, and deservedly so. He’s irrelevant. To me, to the world, and hopefully, to you. If you care at all, then care about the systemic problems, not the trending symptom. Forget about Watters, and focus on changing the world.

#FordHall2015

I’d really have liked for my first blog post to be on something a little less controversial and depressing than this, but realistically, I probably wouldn’t have ever gotten around to starting this blog without a push. And this has been pushing my buttons hard. Not all of my blog posts will be related to activism, and hopefully, many of them will have a happier outlook, but it is what it is. Thank you to everyone who’s been pushing me to write this thing!

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Tuesday, November 30, was a great victory for social justice at Brandeis University.

Let me start again.

Tuesday, November 30, was a tiny, minimal, almost pyrrhic victory for basic equality, and the fact that we see it as a triumph speaks worlds for the pitiful state of social justice at Brandeis University, a school that prides itself in its social justice.

I first heard about the Ford Hall 2015 sit-in was on Friday afternoon, when I had more work than I had time for, and no time before Shabbat. It sounded big, and important, and history in the making, and I knew a bunch of people taking part in it… and I was never going to have time to do my work if I went. So I worked until Shabbat, and rested through Shabbat, and worked through the rest of the weekend, and all the time, I was thinking to myself that the sit-in would be over by the time I got down there to show my support. This was Brandeis, the social justice school. These were reasonable demands, and transparent actions, and the students were doing everything right. So the demands would be met, and the protest would be over in a few days.

I finished my essays midway through day four. I sat in on the evening of day five, and brought toilet paper and sticky notes on day six. People were talking all the while of staying over Thanksgiving, and giving up their time with friends and family on the one day that every American should be able to spend with friends and family. And the whole time, I was thinking that the sit-in could end at any moment. Would end at any moment. This was Brandeis, the social justice school. This was the campus that prided itself on diversity; this was the administration which reaffirmed its commitment to equality and truth so often that it was almost a joke.

And then, when I came back to campus after break, and saw that nothing had changed, it was a joke.

Twelve days. For twelve days, these strong, incredible human beings occupied the Bernstein-Marcus Administrative building. For twelve days, they waited on a school that has the gall to use Louis Brandeis’s name. And then, when the negotiators and the administration had finally come to an agreement, and everyone was celebrating, the school stood them up for a few hours, in the cold and in the rain, because it could.

Of course, the administration sent out an email explaining that that wasn’t the case. No, it was just a miscommunication cause by issues with the Brandeis email system. Except… Who do they think they’re fooling with that? After twelve days of negotiations, do they seriously expect people to believe that they didn’t have the phone number of a single person present at the protest? That they were unable to come outside and deliver the message themselves, because, what, they had misplaced their legs?

Brandeis signed, finally, and the chains came off. And then, as the crowds were winding down, someone asked the killer question.

“Will you issue an apology to Khadijah Lynch?”

Andrew Flagel explained that, theoretically, if there was some reason to apologize, he would apologize for anything.

“Ok, so, will you apologize to Khadijah Lynch?”

Well, he wouldn’t want anyone to be targeted by anyone else (wait, what?).

“Will you apologize to her in private?”

No, he wouldn’t want anyone to be targeted by anyone else (seriously, what does that even mean?).

Finally, someone shouted out, “You know she’ll tell us, right?” and Flagel quickly and awkwardly extracted himself from the conversation.

It’s been a week now, and that doesn’t make any of this any better. No amount of time will make what Brandeis did here right, and no amount of time will let me go back to believing that this is the social justice school that I dreamed of as a pre-frosh.

But– I believe that we just won! Cheer, everyone! We won. Brandeis won. Brandeis won by finally giving in to demands that amounted to recognizing that African Americans existed at the school, after being dragged to that realization, kicking and screaming, by its own students. Why should that hurt? Why should anyone feel betrayed or used, now that Brandeis has embraced the protestors that made it see the light? Give it forty-six years and they’ll be showing this protest off on their tours, and claiming the credit for fixing the problems that they created and maintained. Brandeis is so committed to social justice, that, while it’ll waffle on any substantive change when left to its own devices, a twelve day occupation of an administrative building is all it takes to realize that its proud tradition of social justice has been “more limited than desired”.

Basic social justice at The Social Justice School is not a special favor. Students should not need to shut up and just be grateful for what they got, and the administration should not get a pat on the back for finally agreeing to do their job. But we – the students of color, the allies, the faculty and staff – we’ll back off. We’ll thank the school for meeting us halfway and almost honoring its own values. We’ll take a breath, and get some sleep (finally), and celebrate, because what else can we do. And then, maybe, we’ll plan our next move: an Asian American Studies department, divestment from fossil fuels, effective handling of sexual assault, better treatment and better pay for staff… Brandeis has made social justice warriors out of us all, in its own way. It’s given us something to fight.