All my friends are magazines

[stubbleupdate]

I'm now three posts in to a short series on the Luna Bros book Ultra. The first one was all on the covers, the second was about Ultra's date with a lovely gentleman and this one is about the aftermath.

I think that I'm sticking to my idea that Ultra is a positive female character, stuck in a book that has no time for anything like that. My warning is that this post will contain examples of other characters "slut-shaming" and calling women "whores." Like I said at the start, it's a problematic book.


Before Ultra gets in to her office we see her agent. I originally wasn't going to post the first page, but it cranks up the tension for the coming swerve. It also shows Pearl's agent as somebody that actually seems to be interested in her own welfare, as well as the bottom line.



What did we tell you? That guy is a dick.
There's a tiny bit of expressive work on the Agent's eyes as he's showing Pearl the magazine.


Panel 1 - Nobody romps, except in tabloid news
Panel 2 - I hope that this guy's publicist is meant to look like Pagus, Jesus' brother, because he definitely does.
And yes, the agent is being a bit of a dick at the end, but he sorts himself out pretty quickly.
He offers PEarl the day off, but she turns it down and gets to work. In the locker room she lashes out at a green and blonde girl who says that now that Pearl's secret is out, she can stop being fake.

I'll post some more of the public's reaction to the scoop at some point later in the week.

That article in full...

Yes, a superhero analyst says that Pearl "Whored up" And this is Pearl's outfit that shows "coppious amounts of cleavage"



"I did what any other reasonable guy would do."

I realise that I'm complaining about a fictional account that is meant to come across as completely dickish and a distortion of the truth. However, I get hella pissed about the real newspapers that do nonsense like this, so this just pushed one of my angry buttons. If you read any of my stuff on LJ you'll see that I wrote on a hyperlinktastic post about one such example.

This is one of the more obvious times when the character (the magazine is a character too) is clearly portrayed as a baddie in their attitudes towards women. The issue with Ultra is that there's a lot of times when it's not-baddies that are using derogatory words to describe women.

I'd expand on my feelings about tabloids and their horrid attitudes towards women, but it's been a long day and I can't do any more brain... stuff...

Comments

[jaybee3]

The article itself may ring true but I think the reaction to it doesn't - AT ALL. I can't help but think of the Christine O'Donnell/Gawker stuff that happened last election and even though that wasn't as explicit as this and yes even though it got all the publicity Gawker wanted, the guy in question was widely regarded as a dirtbag - even by people who hated Christine O'Donnell and her politics. That guy actually had to go into hiding and he was so reviled that even liberal websites went after him.

So I don't think there's no way that this Jason guy would be be thought of as a "winner" or a hero by the public for dishing on Ultra. In fact the backlash would probably help her.

[mrstatham]

But the article doesn't really ring true at all, since it's full of unsubstantiated facts and ridiculous opinions about Pearl, and Jason actually paints himself as more of a dirtbag by suggesting every guy in his position would take the pictures he did. The article's standard issue gossip garbage. The reaction, to me, does ring true; look at how many people are judgmental over things like nude pictures being leaked - a good portion of people will judge the actress or celebrity involved as if they're at fault.

Another matter entirely, but also look at the initial reaction to the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie relationship. Everyone loves them now, but back when news first broke, the number of people calling Jolie a homewrecker and accusing her of stealing Pitt from Jennifer Aniston was astonishing, given a lot of what we heard was merely tabloid crap. But the amount of scorn that a woman can get in the tabloid press and the reaction to it does seem crazy compared to the usual response to stuff a man does, except in rare cases like the Tiger Woods thing.

[stubbleupdate]

Considering that many papers run stories with facts that are not only unsubstantiated but have also been proven to be false, or that many papers have binned their fact checking departments.

Consider how many times in articles in the tabloid news or tabloid magazines quotes are attributed to "A source close to" or "eyewitnesses said" and consider how much of that is utter bollocks.

Considering that I wrote the first paragraph of this comment before Breaking Bad: Face Off and the second paragraph after, my train of thought is kaput.