The Brie Larson in the Room

If there’s one area I get called out for a lot, it’s being overly-critical of what I love: “Batman’s a boring character”. “I don’t like this, and here’s why”. “This person was wrong because __”. I get it, and it’s somewhat exhausting. So I figured that I’d change it up and defend Brie Larson, who currently seems to be the biggest, most-undeserved punching bag celebrity.

I’m sure Larson needs no introduction. Ever since the age of 12, she’s always been someone to look out for. She even made the acquaintance of film nerds in Scott Pilgrim VS the World in 2010, and her first Oscar win came from 2015’s Room. Her prestige also helped her break into comic book fandom when she was announced to play Captain Marvel, and she hasn’t looked back since. Essentially, Brie Larson’s career has been on-fire.

Sadly, this popularity comes with backlash. In June of 2018, while at the Crystal + Lucy Awards, Larson used the opportunity to make a statement. This is nothing new: Hollywood talents love using their 5 minutes of fame for statements, some of them not the most-educated. But Larson’s address mentioned how underrepresented film criticism was, suggesting that 20% of future film screening passes be handed to minorities. This was followed up in February of this year, when Larson stated that she didn’t only “want to hear interview questions from straight, white dudes.”

I don’t really think this is such a bold statement: film discourse has always been dominated by straight, white men. One need only look Rotten Tomatoes for that. But while Brie Larson’s phrasing could’ve been more refined, I don’t think the backlash from the nerd community was warranted. Movies about women and minorities can’t exist as is without people calling them “an unnecessary political statement”, so why can’t women speak without getting hounded as well? Aren’t they entitled to be unfiltered like their male cohorts?

But yes, people got upset. Like, really upset. They got so upset that there was a “boycott” of Captain Marvel when it came out (even if it didn’t end up mattering). It got so bad that The Daily Stormer, everyone’s favourite Na-I mean, PewDiePie-loving website, wrote an article talking about Larson’s toenail fungus (I’m not linking that, look it up). It even got so bad that when Nintendo Enthusiast published an editorial about how Larson would make a perfect Samus Aran, the comments immediately ripped into it because “Brie Larson hates white men”.

I don’t get it. Not only did Brie Larson never say “I hate white men”, she wasn’t even that offensive compared to other actresses. Even amongst the Marvel ensemble, Scarlett Johansson has put her foot in her mouth more frequently than Larson. When did Larson ever defend her whitewashed casting? And when did she defend Woody Allen’s predatory behaviour? On a scale of one-to-yikes, Larson asking for more unique voices isn’t that big of a deal. If anything, it’s great to hear that from a white woman!

But I guess that’s not enough for insecure nerds, is it? Besides, why’s nerd culture that exclusivist? Why do nerds, who’ve had a history of being picked on, feel so threatened by their hobby being accepted by the mainstream? Have the tables turned so drastically? Because it’s pretty depressing if that’s the case!

I wouldn’t be perturbed if this outrage weren’t selective. Especially since Ronda Rousey, a long-time wrestler with extremely controversial views, managed to snag a role in Mortal Kombat 11. Forget the woman who wanted unique voices at the table, the transphobe receives no backlash? What world are we in where a milquetoast feminist receives more outrage than a TERF? If nerds are mad over anything, it should be that!

I guess it’s asking too much from a group of people who centred a controversy around a games’ developer “cheating” on her ex-boyfriend, though. Or who thought it was “censorship” to change the cover of a Batgirl comic because the original artists didn’t like it. Or who got mad that a director was back at Disney because of his “pedophile behaviour”, even it was simply poor-taste Tweets he’d long-since atoned for. Or-you get my point.

The level of anger arising from Brie Larson wanting diversity is astounding when juxtaposed with celebrities who’ve never experienced backlash for anything. I get that it’s not healthy to be mad at everything all the time, but that’s still an extreme case of selective outrage. If anything were to come from Larson’s words, it’d be an actual desire for change. And not only change, but legitimate, positive and healthy change. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, or that it’ll happen overnight, because it won’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not long-overdue.

I also wish nerd-dom would stop letting paranoia get in the way of real concerns with Larson’s filmography, like Captain Marvel. Regardless of what your stance is on her or that film, there’s no denying certain sections of it have been used as military recruitment porn. Or how the juxtaposition of Veers’s Kree life with Carol Danver’s military life raises more questions than it answers. Or, on a personal level, how the movie’s quality is kneecapped by the audience knowing how it turns out, since it’s a prequel film in The MCU. These are all more troubling than “white girl hates white men”.

But I guess that it’s not worth talking sense online, what with how headache-inducing it is…