Seems like there might be enough traction, so here we go!
Our first “book” shall be “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K LeGuin.
It is a short story that is readily available online. If you cannot purchase it, rent it, or find it online please let me know and I will provide more information on how to get it.
Trigger warnings: emotional abuse, grooming, and child abuse
I would like to include some discussion questions that are community specific, and not generic book club questions, so these will likely be questions I ask regarding every work, subject to change of course.
Some things to think about while reading:
- Do you think this work is told from a feminist perspective? Why?
- Do you think the authors gender or gender identity affected their choice of subject, writing style, or perspective character?
- Does the narrators gender or gender identity affect the work? If so, how?
- Did this work change your opinion on anything? If so, what and why?
I don’t know if I’ll start adding generic book club questions, but if you’d like more general discussion questions of the works going forward, please let me know and I can include some. There’s just a lot of discussion available already for this specific piece and I don’t want answers to common questions to overshadow more nuanced discussions that center women which is why we’re all in this community. Also, this is not a homework assignment. You can choose to address any or none of the questions posed here, or talk about your general thoughts or whatever else. Please feel free to pose your own questions in the comments as well. These should serve as a handy springboard if needed, but not a mandatory outline.
Our first movie will be Kpop Demon Hunters. There were some other suggestions, but I wanted to keep it a little lighter considering this months book has some serious trigger warnings and I wanted people to be able to participate in at least one of the two, even if they would rather not engage in heavy topics. This is an animated movie available on Netflix. I know this is a little exclusionary, but there are some other ways to watch it as well.
Trigger warnings: animated violence/gore, discussion of demons and the afterlife
Same as above: I would like to include some discussion questions that are community specific, and not generic movie club questions, so these will likely be questions I ask regarding every work, subject to change of course.
Some things to think about while watching:
- Do you think this work is told from a feminist perspective? Why?
- Do you think the authors gender or gender identity affected their choice of subject, writing style, or perspective character?
- Does the narrators gender or gender identity affect the work? If so, how?
- Did this work change your opinion on anything? If so, what and why?
I don’t know if I’ll start adding generic questions, but if you’d like more general discussion questions of the works going forward, please let me know and I can include some. There’s just a lot of discussion available already for this specific piece and I don’t want answers to common questions to overshadow more nuanced discussions that center women which is why we’re all in this community. Also, this is not a homework assignment. You can choose to address any or none of the questions posed here, or talk about your general thoughts or whatever else. Please feel free to pose your own questions in the comments as well. These should serve as a handy springboard if needed, but not a mandatory outline.
Comments are spoilers territory. If you want to use spoiler tags in the comments, please do, but it is not required. If you venture into the comments please keep in mind this is a discussion thread for media so there will likely be spoilers.
Going forward This is a community project. I would like to get input regarding written works and tv/movies that would be a good fit for this. I will leave a comment on this thread that you can respond to if you’d like to offer a suggestion. One suggestion per comment please. You can comment multiple times though. I’d like to make sure the selections are widely accessible, so please add that information if you know for sure something is in the public domain or available online, as that makes it easier to recommend. Please vote on the other comments you see there. I’d like to pair heavier topics in one media with lighter topics in the other, just in case you’re wondering why a specific piece was not chosen. Things like language or availability may also affect the selection. I’m also open to changing or adding discussion questions.
Thank you all for your interest. Excited to hear your perspectives!
PS: Even if you have seen or read the media before, I would encourage a reread or rewatch to best participate in the discussion!
Not sure why you’re being so hard on yourself, no one is required to enjoy any particular piece of media. Your perspective on the so-called queer metaphor is especially valuable.
I didn’t like it either. To be fair, I am not the right audience for it. I don’t care for cartoons in general, because I don’t like frantic motion or loud/irritating voices. This wasn’t the worst movie for those, but not great. I didn’t realize that Golden song was from this movie. I’ve had to skip it multiple times on Spotify because I hate the singer’s voice.
That creator’s comment about girls with pot-bellies is hilarious given how skinny those girls were drawn. I appreciated that they were enthusiastic eaters, but they have ridiculous proportions. There’s nothing wrong with skinny bodies, but there is zero body diversity among the female characters. We got one fat character, a man who was comic relief.
Did no one find it weird that they were singing about how demons deserve to die, and everyone in that world thought “demons” were a metaphor for lousy romantic partners - and they were all ok with this song about murdering people?
YES!! This really bothered me the whole time, too - there were fat people in the fans / audience characters (and maybe Bobby to a lesser extent, he just wasn’t as skinny and was a bit soft), but wow the main characters were extremely thin and the body normativity in this film felt a bit extreme. Not that every film has to be a perfect representation or that we need to glorify fatness, etc. but for a film by women where they are trying to break stereotypes about women, body positivity would have been a really nice addition to the burping and eating.
It reminds me of Gilmore Girls where the main characters (Lorelai and Rory) are constantly talking about food, constantly eating food, and usually eating junk food (pizza, doughnuts, Chinese takeout, etc.) - yet on screen their bodies are almost dangerously skinny, and they never take more than one bite of their food - they talk about food, but we don’t even get to see them actually enjoying it, even fictionally.
I also felt a bit uncomfortable with the dehumanization of the demons, and I expected more from the new Honmoon as being a revolution and a new way of handling demons so that eternal torture wasn’t on the table - but instead all we get is the cute boy’s soul being given to the protagonist … :-/ I mean, it was cute - but it wasn’t even as consistent with the “good triumphs over evil” narrative … maybe in that way it’s less Christian and Western, leaving an aspect of Eastern dualism in place.
But it also bothered me the way that dualism was so present in the film, and the strange ways the dualism was inverted from typical - in Taoism and Confuscianism for example the yang and yin representing light and dark, sky and earth - usually the dark earth elements are associated with women, while the light and sky elements are associated with men. In the movie, it was flipped - and the men and masculine were the dark demons, and the light demon hunters were women.
In that sense it was a bit like the Barbie movie, where the patriarchy is shown in a flipped fashion, but this feels particularly awful to me as a feminist since the goal isn’t to have women on top, but to empower men and women by eliminating patriarchy and working towards gender egalitarianism … this movie just didn’t feel consistent with that, it felt anti-feminist in a way.
Anyway, sorry - lots of rambling.
As to why I’m hard on myself - I just want to be nice and pleasant and to not always be the grumpy, critical person who can’t enjoy anything. Especially with mainstream media, it can sometimes feel like everyone but me can enjoy things, and that adds to that sense of defectiveness - why can’t I enjoy it? Everyone else enjoys it, so why can’t I? It must be something wrong with me.
I’m trying to find more ways to enjoy things, and to find ways to remain positive, nice, and supportive even when something is otherwise bothering me.
That’s a great goal for yourself. I’ve been trying to do something similar. I keep reminding myself of the Ted Lasso philosophy: be curious, not judgemental. Dont forget to be positive and supportive toward yourself, too.
Thanks for the added perspective on eastern philosophy. I don’t know much about those but it adds a lot of dimension to your critique.
It can be super frustrating to see nothing but praise for something you thought was flawed. Every time I finish a work I don’t like, I immediately go to Storygraph or reviewers on YouTube, trying to find someone who has called out its problems, or already put into beautiful words what i didnt like about it. I don’t think I’ve ever questioned whether something’s wrong with me - only wondered what’s wrong with everyone else.