A Dozen Of Red Flags [part 2]

in which I beg Harry Potter fans to read another book

[CW: sexual assault]

There’s pop culture that’s obviously problematic, then there’s pop culture that’s problematic in a way that’s only clear if you’ve spent your life overthinking intersectional feminism and pop culture. This article is about the second one, because it’s the harder one to pinpoint, and maybe the most important one because of that. See, most leftish (this isn’t a typo) men know better than to tell you that they love Two and a Half Men, because even they know that’s a red flag. But can they tell you why How I Met Your Mother is problematic? (Spoiler alert: it’s not only because of Barney.)

In ‘A Dozen of Red Flags’, I offer you the 21st century pop culture that makes me go ‘hmmmm’ when I’m interviewing a man on a first date, hoping that it’ll now also make you go ‘hmmmm’ when you’re interviewing a man on a first date. (And a second, and third, and fourth. It’s never too late to get the ick.)

Read the bottom six here:

A Dozen Of Red Flags [part 1]

Today, the top six.

6. Death Note (2006-2007)

Death Note is one of those anime that one recommends to a person who wants to get into watching anime: it is short, with a great plot, and characters you love (to hate). It’s the story of Light Yagami, a young high school kid who finds the so-called Death Note, a notebook that allows its user to kill people as long as the user knows the person’s name and face. Light decides to use the Death Note to kill ‘bad’ people, doing so with the arrogance of a teenage boy who thinks he’s a God. He soon befriends Ryuk, the spirit who used to own the book, and dropped it from his world into the human world because he loves chaos. When it becomes clear that there’s a serial killer on the loose, a detective named ‘L’, who’s ridiculously smart, tries to catch him. Death Note is a gripping psychological thriller with a game of cat and mouse that is reminiscent of shows like The Mentalist.

But the women, oh, the women... I could have included Death Note in the list of tv shows and movies about genius men, but Death Note’s form of misogyny is different from the misogyny that you’d find in, say, Inception (2010). While the latter is more about erasing women, and only using them as it suits the storyline, the former commits to having Misa be a main character whose sole purpose is to be obsessed with Light. She’s smart, you know, for a woman (but obviously never smarter than the male characters). Death Note is what’d happen if points 11 (about fascinating genius men) and 10 (about The Big Bang Theory) had a misogyny baby: the woman only exists to worship the genius man in an otherwise really good story, yet she is given a big role, which makes you so very aware of how badly she’s written, which then makes you wish she didn’t exist at all, which makes you despair.

It’s difficult for me to put into words the visceral reaction I get when a man tells me he loves Death Note (an anime I also love). Dating men who are obsessed with the genius white man trope is dating men who are comfortable being in rooms that exclude non-men, dating men who are obsessed with Death Note is dating men who are comfortable having misogynistic male friends. The second group’s misogyny is easier to detect, the latter harder to pinpoint (cfr. my article about Kendrick.), until one day you’re looking at your boyfriend, and you realise that he’s willing to overlook the half-naked, big-boobed one-dimensional incel fantasy female character for the sake of a good story. Or maybe he even enjoys what she represents.

It’s frustrating – if not heartbreaking – to be consistently confronted with how much time and energy these male writers will put into their male characters, and see how little work they’re willing to put into developing their female characters – characters that could be so good if the writers cared even a little bit. May you have male partners who not only understand, but also share in the heartbreak.

5. Atlanta (2016-2022) / The Boondocks (2005-2014)

A friend of mine once voice messaged me asking me if I’d seen Atlanta, because she was really enjoying it. I told her that Atlanta was a brilliant piece of Black male art, you know, in that it did an amazing job at portraying Black men, and a horrible job at portraying Black women, especially the darkskinned ones. “Really?” she asked. She hadn’t noticed that – there weren’t a lot of women, she said, except for the female lead (who’s biracial), and the Black strippers. She stopped as she was saying this, then said: ‘ooooo, I see.’

Atlanta, created by Donald Glover, follows three friends hijinksing through the Atlanta hip hop scene. The main character, Earn (played by Glover) is dating Vanessa (Zazie Beetz), who’s also the mother of his daughter. The show examines race in an incredible way, which is not surprising considering it had an all-Black writing staff. It’s beautifully acted, beautifully written, beautifully directed, and yet it hates Black women so deeply and unapologetically.