I watched the first half of Marvel’s Agent Carter yesterday and I probably won’t bother to follow-up with it. The whole mini-series seems to be written by Gamma males who do not know how to write about women protagonists. This is surprising because these are same guys who wrote both Captain America movies. In both cases, they told a good solid story, but since the protagonists were men with women serving in side roles, I suppose it was easier.
The first problem I have is that most of the men who aren’t villains are portrayed as either a caricature of an Alpha male or total Beta loser. Guess which ones behave sexist?
For one thing, most Alpha males are not sexist, at least not in the absolute definition. They simply are able to make themselves attractive to women much more easily than other men. That is natural selection, not sexism.
Beyond that, there are two minor Beta male characters in the show who help Carter out. The first one is a crippled WW2 vet who stands up for Carter against the sexism of the other agents. Instead of thanking him for his chivalry, Peggy Carter berates stating she can take care of herself. Sadly, this is probably the only thing the writers got right: women can’t stand it when white knights stand up for them.
The other Beta male is Edwin Jarvis who seems to have dedicated his life to cleaning up Howard Stark’s various flings and troublesome women while at the same time cooking for his wife when he’s not working for Stark. I didn’t even see Jarvis’ wife in the half that I watched, but it would not surprise me if his “wife” was a guy. Because the modern stereotype of British gentlemen is that they are actually gay. Also he seemed disturbed by having to deal with Howard Stark’s many flings.
On top of this, any side male characters are portrayed as outright sexist. From some random guy in a diner harassing a waitress (in a show of hypocrisy, Carter stands up for her after berating the cripple for doing the same), to the various men in the office where she works who keep on treating her like a secretary.
This is how modern entertainment dubs the decades long past. Men are ineffective misogynists who require the help of a woman working secretly in order to fix their blunders. That is the gist of the story that I was watching.
Never mind that the men of yester-year built skyscrapers, massive interstate roads, telecommunications networks, cars, ships, airplanes, trains, bridges, etc. When you see many of these impressive structures and think that a man oversaw and had these structures built and then immediately regard him as sexist, you are deranged.
As for the plot of the mini-series, it’s fairly forgettable. Some organization has stolen super-weapons from Howard Stark and Agent Carter has to get them back while avoiding the men who run the agency she works for, even though many of them might actually be competent and know how to handle themselves in combat.
I have no problems with strong female characters. I watch Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and that has plenty of strong female characters to throw around. But the male characters are more complex than just type Alpha and type Beta. In this case, it is more openly misandrist.
You don’t have to bring men down to raise up a woman and vice-versa. But I suppose that is too much to ask in this post-post-modern age of Social Justice Warriors who enjoy drinking their own semen or cutting their own balls off in order to claim victimhood.
In short, I didn’t like Agent Carter. The story was boring, the characters were cookie-cutter, and the overall presentation was openly misandrist. I think I’ll just read for an hour while I wait for Agents of SHIELD to start up again.