This is the third post in a series that began with Part 1. I recommend beginning there, and following the links at the end of each section to work through the following posts in the series (of which there will be five). The third claim embedded in the criticism of Kick-Ass to which I’m responding is found here in the original passage: Goldman would presumably say that it is violence, not sex, that our pre-teen heroine learns, but that is a cowardly distinction—although, to be fair, it is a cowardice shared by everyone from the M.P.A.A. down…. when filmmakers nudge a child into …

This is the second post in a series that began with Part 1. I recommend beginning there, and following the links at the end of each section to work through the following posts in the series (of which there will be five). In my last post, I showed how the claim that Kick-Ass, in its presentation of Mindy/Hit-Girl in a schoolgirl uniform, doesn’t constitute sexualization of children as much as the critic’s claim therein constituted the revelation of a desire to desexualize, infantilize, and otherwise impose degrading and confusing controls both on the depiction of children in media, but also (and more distressingly) …