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thosearentcrimes · 2 years

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Promising Young Woman is a pretty good movie that came out a year ago. I’ve been thinking about it from time to time since I saw it, and while I usually try to resist doing art analysis (I’m not very good at writing it, and it appears that people on this website and all others are not very good at reading it, and it really really doesn’t matter), I just can’t get the movie out of my head. Hopefully this post will help me get rid of it.

Promising Young Woman is, in terms of genre, a mashup of romantic comedy and rape revenge. The genres actually work very well together, and both are executed very skillfully. Now, because the movie wants to be serious and scrupulous about the topics of rape and violence, it feels it has to sideline a lot of the rape revenge stuff, borrow the aesthetic trappings and take advantage of it to make implications, but then cancel those implications to maintain moral rectitude. This is unfortunate, the movie really should just be what it pretends to be, in my opinion. I guess I see why they did it though.

The movie opens on the protagonist, Cassie, apparently intoxicated, in a bar. A nice guy type (played by a handsome romantic lead actor, the casting is extremely deliberate and a clever touch) takes her home, and then attempts to have sex with her, even though he understands full well that she is too intoxicated to consent. Cassie then reveals that she is in fact perfectly sober, cut to credits, cut back to her coming home the next morning, and she makes another mark in a notebook full of such marks, the implication clearly being that she regularly murders rapists like this. Great, perfect, nice short setup, gets the point across.

The movie will, later, repeatedly interrupt itself to make it clear that she didn’t kill the guy, she doesn’t kill people, she’s a perfect little angel. The interruptions themselves are handled very efficiently, but it’s still annoying. We’re all on board here, like every fourth tv show has a serial killer for a protagonist (every other show if you count copaganda), it’s fine.

There’s a fairly basic problem here. When you imply that your protagonist is a serial killer (who preys on rapists), you are making people humor the notion that vigilante violence is an appropriate response to rape. People who do not wish to humor that notion will simply never get on board with the movie, and I don’t think the reveal will help, so it’s fair to say your entire audience is already on board with what Cassie is doing. When you then fall back to “actually she’s not doing vigilante violence she’s doing vigilante spooky consent lecture” you are then disappointing an expectation that you invested a fair amount of time and goodwill into enabling in the first place. Additionally, because the vigilante spooky consent lecture is an even more ridiculous notion than serial killing, it doesn’t even work as a “well if we are serious about challenging rape culture we can’t indulge silly fantasies like rape revenge stories” take because the movie instead indulges a much sillier fantasy.

It’s also really unfortunate for the movie that there’s a manga out there that does many of the same things, but much much better. What are the chances, eh?

Kisshō Tennyo is a manga by Akimi Yoshida, published in the 80s, which also has a playful attitude towards genre, and also uses that to comment on patriarchy. Its particular genre mix is a bit different, but romance manga and supernatural/crime drama are not all that far from romantic comedy and thriller, respectively. It has the audacity to do everything Promising Young Woman won’t. The reason that this post isn’t about Kisshō Tennyo, why it can’t be, is that it’s almost perfect. There’s nothing to talk about with it, no simple analysis I could make, even of any single component because they’re all tied together so well. Read Kisshō Tennyo. It’s on MangaDex, and while I can’t vouch for the faithfulness of the translation, it’s a good read either way.

#cw: rape #media analysis #long post

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mangaredditdotcom · 4 years

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Kisshou Tennyo.

Alternative: 吉祥天女 ; Kisshō Tennyo ; Kisshoh Tennyo

Description : Sayoko is a newly transferred student: gifted with rare beauty and mysterious and magnetic charm, she captures every student's attention. Among them, the introverted Yuiko and the grumpy Mari become friends with Sayoko, while Ryou, a known womanizer, wastes no time and tries to hit on her, unleashing his girlfriend's rage. But this story has countless plot twists, characters and secrets… From Banana Fish and Yasha's author, a manga that won a Shogakukan Award and defined as 'a must' by Matt Thorn, one of the greatest shoujo manga experts. Recently Kisshou Tennyo became popular again thanks to the TV drama and the movie adaptation! Kissh? Tennyo received the 1983 Shogakukan Manga Award for sh?jo manga. #MangaReddit.com, #ReadFreeMangaOnline Read Free Manga Online at MangaReddit.com: https://mangareddit.com/p/kisshou-tennyo_1584390786.html