Is This Clip Sexist?

[000Ronald]

I don't know if this has been addressed elsewhere on the forums, but anyways, this is a clip from the upcoming Jurassic World.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfZwU24LWIA

Joss Whedon on Twitter called this sexist, and frankly, I just can't see it, and I think he (and others) throw out the word sexist way too casually. I wanted to know what others think, do you think this is sexist? Why or why not?

Well, the man is certainly acting...a little bit sexist, but it might just be to get on the woman's nerves. Is the clip (and perhaps by extension, the entire film) sexist? No. Just because a character has a flaw does not mean the setting and the story share that flaw. Is All in the Family a racist show because Archie Bunker is racist? No, and only someone who hasn't seen the show would suggest that. Hell, let's take it further; is A Song of Ice and Fire sexist? Absolutely not; even if in the setting women are often shown to be objects more than they are people, the story not only shows them to be people with their own desires and motivations, but also shows the profoundly negative (and sometimes horrific) consequences of that way of thinking.

So...yeah. I'm 'a callin' Not Sexist.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Comes off as such, yeah, but since they know each other, and might be comfortable enough to joke like that, it's not meant to be hateful.

It's kinda like black people throwing the n-word at each other casually. If it were a stranger calling them the N-word, they'd flip out, especially if it were not a black person.
At least I imagine.

I know people who fuck with each other in rude ways, and don't hate them over it. They know the other doesn't mean it in a truly hurtful way.

I blame the lack of context. If you saw someone acting like an ass with another person in a hurtful way, and you knew nothing about them, you'd prolly misunderstand, too.

On another note, yeah, they're going to end up going through hardships together, and falling in love. Can't there be a movie where a man and woman bond, or don't bond, both live, and end up not in love with one another?

 

[Abomination]

Don't you know? Absolutely everything that happens to a female character, unless positive, is horribly sexist.

I saw a guy breathing in a room with a woman in it. He was right there, consuming the same oxygen.

The misogyny was as thick as molasses.

As for the OP? This wasn't sexist at all, it was "sexy" banter. Apparently if a male advertises to a female that he is heterosexual it's oppressive, and/or if he mentions any sexual in the presence of a female it's oppressive.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Can we just let people write characters however they effing want for once and analyze the movie as a whole before jumping to conclusions that it, or any parts of it are inherently sexist (or anything -ist?)

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

I'm gonna go ahead and say Chris Pratt's tight, unbuttoned shirt is sexist. They're totally objectifying the male body. They should change the name of the movie to Patriarchy World... or something, I don't know where I was going with this.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

You could probably interpret it that way, but I think he's just supposed to come off as the beloved Sarcastibastard character archetype. O' course, a character exhibiting behaviors that could be interpreted as sexist really doesn't say a whole lot about the attitudes of the person who wrote the script. Or maybe it does, I dunno. That's what I think would really matter.

Overused character tropes are an annoyance, but they're obviously not necessarily sexist. Think we'll just have to see when this movie actually comes out to really give it much of a critical look.

 

[Story]

Nah, I think that guy was just a douche.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Kinda stereotypical, sure, but sexist, no. I guess I can see why he said that, but it's such a stretch; he strikes me as overly-sensitive about "sexist content". As many people seem to be, these days.

 

[Lilani]

http://media.giphy.com/media/vrKUtJNMtB3Y4/giphy.gif

I find this image extremely distressing, because I'm expecting the baby dinosaur to get crushed at any moment :<

 

[Ramzal]

I love Joss Whedon's work but he is really really sensitive to find the scene sexist. And even if it were--and it isn't--who cares? It's a movie. Movies are supposed to take elements that exist in society and blast them right in our faces. There are sexist people in the world as Joss seems to think Pratt's character is. There are also control freaks in the world which is what I think the red headed lady is. There are unappealing aspects to people and society and if you can't even handle that in a movie or you can't go a few seconds without seeing it everywhere, then maybe the problem is in the mirror and how YOU view the world.

 

[mecegirl]

He's being a sexist asshole. She's there to talk about business and he won't stop hounding her over past relationship shit. So they had a bad date, big deal. They will probably get (back?)together in the movie, but in real life his attitude would be a big indication to her that she dodged a bullet by not going on a second date.

Not sure if I'd call it sexist, but it has been done to death. Right now they seem to be setting the female character up as what TV tropes calls a Defrosting Ice Queen. Its been done to death, can she not just simply be a scientist lady that's good at her job? Do we really need to imply that she's emotionless and cold instead of just neat and focused? If she were male they wouldn't be so quick to try and force feed us a romantic subplot. The two characters would just not like each other because their personalities were too different. Not because of unresolved sexual tension or whatever.

What made you think she was emotionless and cold...the only indication of that would be Pratt's character's spiel about her not seeing them as anything more than a scientific advancement. Which honestly is probably true, and it's not like neat and focused are the opposites of that. I mean if she was a bleeding heart, people would be complaining about how she's crap at her job because she wasn't focused enough.

And even then, I didn't see her as cold or emotionless, she just doesn't have the same perspective as he does since she works in a lab(presumably) and he works with them directly. Like, c'mon, how many times have they pulled the "scientist doesn't have the same thinking patterns as the normal guy working with their creations because they don't interact with them" in sci-fi? Or how many times have you run into hardcore book-smart nerds that just don't work as well outside of a controlled environment in real life?

Unless of course this is supposed to be a joke post, in which case, I laugh too.

You answered your own question in your first paragraph. Also, I never said she was cold just that they were implying that she was. But her actually being cold is a non issue. She doesn't have to actually be cold. The character's around her treating her as if she is is enough for the trope to be in place, especially if they actually do try to add in a romance.

 

[FPLOON]

http://media.giphy.com/media/vrKUtJNMtB3Y4/giphy.gif

I find this image extremely distressing, because I'm expecting the baby dinosaur to get crushed at any moment :<

Well, it wasn't suppose to come off that way... That's just the way their dino-characters were portrayed in this particular gif...

#BlameJossWhedon #DinoButts

 

[Lilani]

Well, it wasn't suppose to come off that way... That's just the way their dino-characters were portrayed in this particular gif...

#BlameJossWhedon #DinoButts

I have been on the Internet way too long to trust a whimsical gif drawn in a cartoony style

 

[The Bucket]

I'm gonna go ahead and say Chris Pratt's tight, unbuttoned shirt is sexist. They're totally objectifying the male body. They should change the name of the movie to Patriarchy World... or something, I don't know where I was going with this.

Weirdly that was the first thing I noticed as well. Chris Pratt has come a long way to fill a shirt out like that

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I wouldn't say it's sexist. Although, that guy is an insufferable and obnoxious douche, so if he's the protagonist, then I doubt I'll be able to stomach the movie.

Honestly, comically uptight business woman and "adorable" semi-wild slob who've had a past romantic encounter ...
I'm calling it now, based on this trailer alone, they will both learn from each other over the course of the movie and ultimately get together by the end.

 

[Signa]

I must be missing something, because I didn't see a single line in there that belittled a gender or made it out to be inferior to the opposite.

 

[FPLOON]

Well, it wasn't suppose to come off that way... That's just the way their dino-characters were portrayed in this particular gif...

#BlameJossWhedon #DinoButts

I have been on the Internet way too long to trust a whimsical gif drawn in a cartoony style

Yeah... After the age of the Happy Tree Friends, things have never been the same in the cartoony-verse...

 

[Callate]

Well, he does say "the clip", not the movie.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/joss-whedon-slams-jurassic-world-787998

...But I still think he's wrong. As wrong as, say, the paranoid delusional blogger who called Whedon a misogynist because Mal told Zoe to shut up in one scene of Firefly.

That the scene implies the writers are applying some fairly hoary tropes, I don't disagree. But nothing about the "free spirit who needs to learn to work with others/straight laced stick who needs to loosen up" dynamic is inherently sexist, unless we're going to start saying any cliche applied to a female character is sexist.

(Isn't the dynamic applied the opposite way what got some people bleating about the "manic pixie dream girl" bullshit not that long ago...?)

 

[RedDeadFred]

The character might be a bit sexist, but that doesn't mean the scene is.

Honestly, if anything, the scene is objectifying Chris Pratt. His clothing is more revealing and more designed to appreciate his physique.

I don't think it's doing that though. It's just a character interacting with another character. If Whedon's calling this sexist, I'd hate for him to take a look at his own work.