Ms. Marvel, #2: A Comic Book Review

msmarvel2

Kamala Khan ain’t your average superheroine, and this is an idea that G. Willow Wilson et al. continue to push in the second ever installment of the brand new Ms. Marvel.

Yes, she’s a teenager with problems and responsibilities à la Peter Parker, but one of the many places where she and the New Yorker differ is how much her faith and culture influence her heroic narrative. The webslinger’s path is marred by loss as well as the modern day adage from his dying uncle that “With great power comes great responsibility.” While this is a lesson Kamala will certainly have to learn for herself, the words that spur her on to heroic feats are rooted in a certain religious text.

When she’s faced with the opportunity to save someone she’s reminded by a passage her father likes to quote from the Quran, Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:32- Continue reading

Culture War Correspondence: The Police

EVAN: Rooooooooooxaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnne!

Ladies, gentlemen, and others, Gordon and I have come together today to discuss, you guessed it, The Police. You could argue that there are other greater bands from the late 70s, but you would be wrong.

GORDON: I’d like to start off right now with a story about a recent experience I had with the police, if I may-

EVAN: By all means. What was Sting like in person?

GORDON: I wouldn’t know- I only heard ’em screaming at my next door neighbor through the door.

See, readers, I live in what nobody would describe as “good neighborhood”. It’s certainly not as bad as some places, but it’s definitely not a place that anyone wants to be.

In fact, the police shaking down my neighbor for one of his “Known Associates” stated just that. To quote one of ’em “I f-cking hate this [apartment] complex.”

Needless to say, it didn’t exactly inspire confidence within me that if I ever needed help, the boys-in-blue would have my back… Continue reading

Shame Day: The White Man March

Two nights ago I posted an article to our Facebook page that listed tweets in response to some sort of White Man March. My first reaction upon coming across it for the first time, as I think most most people’s would be, was not so much what is this as why is this. My second was to ascertain that the tweets were in fact funny so that I could share them on social media and use them as a hook to create discussion [which they did not, but what are you going to do].

In coming up with today’s Shame Day post the march came to mind, but it dawned on me that I knew literally nothing about it besides the fact that the internet thought it was ridiculous.

https://twitter.com/Falcc/statuses/444889354838609920

I did what I consider to be the bare amount of research possible and determined that, yes, the White Man March is indeed worthy of its own Shame Day post. Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S3E19 “And the Kilt Trip”: A TV Review

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Right at the end of 2011 Todd VanDerWerff, who I unofficially inherited these reviews from after Pilot Viruet passed the torch, wrote an article on the AV Club discussing how some shows on TV existed as “Nice places to visit”.

While the initial focus was on dramas he turns to sitcoms and describes how he divides them into two categories: “shows that aim for greatness and try to push the boundaries of the form, and shows that just want to create a bunch of characters that are fun to hang out with.” Happy Endings is my personal benchmark for the latter, with Parks and Recreation coming a close second. It’s not to say that neither show exhibits good writing [both do, in their own ways], more that they’re half hours of television in which viewers can relax, content to spend time with characters who are familiar and comfortable to them.

2 Broke Girls appears to want to be one of these shows. Continue reading

Banning Bossy

I’ve leveled the accusation a few times now that the contemporary feminist movement is latching on to every passing cause célèbre in a desperate bid to maintain relevance. Unwilling to advocate for radical change, an increasingly large number of people are questioning whether or not feminism has run its course, and things like “Ban Bossy” aren’t helping.

Continue reading

Farmed and Dangerous, S1E4 “Ends Meat”: A Web Show Review

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We open up with the last Buck Marshall ad we’ll ever see, the IFIB rep. letting us know that shows like the one we’re about to see “worry the public about the dangers of industrial food production.” The issue with this, of course, is that “[their] research shows that worry leads to stress and depression, which is detrimental to your health.” That’s actually great to know, since I was worried going into the season finale.

Last week’s installment was extremely shaky, scoring points for being informative and funny at the same time but ultimately failing when it came to raising the stakes [ironic given the episode title]. Things ended with Chip in jail believing that Sophie had stabbed him in the back, and so things start with him sitting in an interrogation room. A promising enough beginning, I suppose. Continue reading