I also thought that Salt’s line ‘they took everything from me’ was essential to psychological bedrock of her personality. To me, it was obvious that, as much as she loved her husband, she would have fought the russian spies regardless of his death. She simply despised the fact that as a child she was put, without given an option, in a brain-washing system. I think that she would have thought the Russians nonetheless, because it was the lack of freedom they imprinted in her life that she resented. The death of her husband was a kind of ‘add-on factor’.

The scene, where she drives a car with a guy’s body? Priceless.

Hi Miranda

Thanks for the clarification – it’s heartening, and it’s good to hear concerns taken seriously. :) I love my pop culture dissections served with a healthy dose of feminism, so look forward to future posts.

But I wanted to add that killing the husband made the movie for me – normally when a female movie character is widowed she falls to pieces or goes into a blind rage but if anything Salt became more focused and determined to do what she needed to do, avenging both his death and everything that happened to her as a child. The masculine role allowed her to be capable, strong and intelligent. If she had saved the husband she would have had to have held back later on because she still would have had something to come back to.

I liked the movie, Jolie was awesomes, but Milla Jovovich is my favourite action hero

Hey Jo,

Thanks for commenting.

First, I am inclined to agree with you on “lame”, and have edited it out accordingly, and will apologise on behalf of this site for the dropping of the ball in that instance.

On this post, we have added an edit which we hope serves as an apology for the linguistic own-goals. I think that what happened with this post is mainly a case of us all adjusting to public blogging, really – as a team, we started out reading each other’s work in contexts that just aren’t applicable to the world at large.

Going forward, I hope you’ll stick around.

The author would like to make it clear that neither he – nor his boyfriend – hold a negative view of homosexuality. Apologies to readers who felt this piece was written in a way which was open to that interpretation.

This site is a learning experience for all of us, and we hope you’ll keep reading.

***
As this edit did involve some disclosure about a writer, it was only right that we took some time to talk about it first, but now that it’s up, we hope it helps to reassure our readers.

I agree with you – and totally winced, especially at the Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe imagined oral sex bit. Hey, they’re really close male friends… there’s something a bit FRUITY about that! Sigh. Rolleyes.

Another bit of very problematic language: the use of the word “lame” in a pejorative sense. See here for more – http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/10/12/ableist-word-profile-lame/

I think this blog has some good initial posts, and I will subscribe, but I’m a bit wary about the language. The defence of irony only goes so far. Wasn’t there research which showed that people who hear sexist jokes are more likely to make sexist assumptions immediately afterwards? So even when language is used in jest, it can be harmful.

I’m not saying we feminists are all shrinking violets who should avoid naughty words; but the “ironic” hyper-masculine, homophobic and ableist terms in the review really grated.

Argh. That quotation is infuriating!

I’d dispute your ‘so clearly intended to be negative’ here. Markgraf often makes ungrounded assumptions about the sex lives of other people/celebrities/Harry Potter characters/trees/rocks/plants, but he’s not being negative.If anything, I believe it’s more like wishful thinking. (Dear Markgraf, not everyone is having sex ALL THE TIME.)

You’ll never find the idea that ‘that’s gay’ means ‘that’s bad/awful/uncool’ on THIS site. Never.

As for the exclusive language, yes, the phrase ‘have a boner for X’ (to mean someone likes or enjoys X,) IS very exclusive, in the same way as the phrase ‘have the balls’ or ‘man up’ is exclusive. I think Markgraf could analyse his langauge use in this respect!

However I’ve noticed Markgraf will use hyper-hyper-masculinised langauge while mercilessly mocking macho films and culture. In this way I think he draws attention to how ridiculous these concepts of masculinity are. It’s all about the context. That’s just my opinion, though.

Hey there, thanks for commenting!

“He didn’t need saving, thank you very much”

It’s sentences like this that make me despair. If they can do this over male characters getting saved, why in the actual seven hells can’t they ask the same question about women?! WHY. WHAT IS DIFFERENT. HOW IS IT DIFFERENT.

I hadn’t read that they changed the husband’s role as having him saved seemed to castrate him (like pregnancy, I’m not sure this is something you can do just a little bit?) So here we go again, Hollywood – quite happy for for women to be saved by big goddamn hero husbands; but you can’t possibly have a woman saving a man, because it diminishes him.

So much for flag-waving for feminism / gender equality, eh?