A response to my post on Kick-Ass showed up on the LJ mirror of this blog, and I decided I wanted to respond to it here, where it could be more widely seen. The comment went like this: You’re the third person I’ve heard or seen recommend this movie (hadn’t looked at any reviews). The others were [my friend] and Peter Watts. What I want to know is your response to criticism like this: “Kick-Ass” is violence’s answer to kiddie porn. You can see it in Hit Girl’s outfit when she cons her way past security guards—white blouse, hair in …

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) …

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 penultimate 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). Here’s the next segment of the criticism to which I’m responding: “Kick-Ass” is rated R, which means that adults are free to take children to watch a child hurting adults: a neatly wrapped package, like “Home Alone” on growth hormones. I’m going to rephrase this, critically, as the following argument: Whatever one thinks of violence in film, children harming adults is, …

[UPDATE: For the first twelve hours this post was online, somehow an earlier draft went live, instead of the final version. I’ve just restored the autosaved final draft. So this post looks different than it did ten minutes (or ten hours) ago.] ORIGINAL POST: This is the final 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). Here we are, at the end of an evisceration. Feels like the end of the …