The past few years, every time I go to a big concert (which is like, once a year), I think to myself, “Maybe I don’t need to be spending hundreds of dollars to sit really far back in a stadium and watch a performance on a video screen.” I had thought it would be awesome to see Lady Gaga live, but really, we were too far away to feel like we were really seeing her live.

Plus, there’s so much sitting and waiting in uncomfortable bleacher seats. I would love to be able to show up an hour after the scheduled start time and miss the opening act, but there’s always that fear, “What if this is the one concert where the main act hits the stage within an hour of the start time?”

After Lady Gaga, I didn’t have a burning desire to see any concerts until Madonna performed at the Super Bowl last year, and tickets to her show went on sale very soon thereafter.

I’d never seen Madonna live. I still regret never seeing Michael Jackson on tour. What if this is my last chance to see Madonna?

So we got tickets, and months later planned a trip to Italy and Russia leaving the day after the Madonna show in Vancouver. Not the best timing, but these things happen.

Once again, I found myself sitting in very nearly the back row of the arena, waiting for hours for the show to start. HOURS. Madonna herself didn’t hit the stage until 10:30. Perhaps if I ever go to another concert, I should bring my Nook Tablet with me. I would have enjoyed myself more if I’d been able to read during opening act, DJ Martin Solveig.

With these crotchety thoughts running through my head, I started to feel really old. Although, really, the chicks sitting behind us probably weren’t much younger than me. They were drunk and loud, all decked out in their Madonna best, and honestly, they didn’t seem to be having any more fun than me as we waited.

Finally, the show began, and within a few songs, I was horrified. I mean, I’d heard the song “Gang Bang” from her new album, and thought it was pretty tasteless, but I was not prepared to watch her prance around a motel set wielding a shotgun, singing, “Bang Bang, I shot my lover in the head” while projections of blood splattered on the massive screen behind her.

AP photo

The article I link to above describes Madonna using a “fake gun to shoot a masked gunman and images of blood splattering on a large screen behind the stage.” Masked gunman? Uh, no, the lyrics are about shooting her lover in the head. Without doing too careful an analysis of the lyrics, that sounds premeditated to me. Maybe if I understood the story a little better, I’d see the entertainment value? Or is it social commentary?

While all this is going on in front of me, I’m full of self-doubt because I find it so offensive. What’s happened to me? I’ve always loved violence in my entertainment. Wild at Heart was my favorite movie the year I was 14. I loved everything about Inglourious Basterds, including the gratuitously balletic, blood-spattering shooting death of woman. I find everything about Natural Born Killers entertaining.

And yet, I thought The Dark Knight Rises was too dark… Madonna’s gun-slinging dance routine creeped me out.

Am I going soft in my pre-middle age?

The MDNA Tour took a turn for the better after that brutal “Gang Bang” number. I calmed down once she changed into her cheerleader outfit. Overall her dancing was incredible, and she sounded pretty damn good too. I wished she had done more of her “classic” numbers, because I enjoyed those more than the techo-dance tracks of recent years, but again, that’s probably because I’m getting too old for this shit.

In my earlier post, Girls who kick ass, I disclosed my attempts to impersonate female superheroes.

Last year, Rob and I listened to the audio book for The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines, and actually, that’s when I decided to dress up as Wonder Woman for Halloween. But it depressed me, this continued sexism in the world of Superheroes. I rewatched the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and concluded that she’s the greatest girl superhero of all time. As much as I love Wonder Woman, her origin comic has her more concerned with winning Steve Trevor’s heart than saving the world. Buffy had boy problems, but she saved the world a lot.

In recent pop culture, there’s no feminine superhero franchise equivalent to Spider-Man. The Elektra and Catwoman films were considered failures. Most of the boy Avengers got their own movies prior to the upcoming release of The Avengers. Iron Man got two. Where’s Black Widow’s? Guess there’s no hope Scarlett Johansson could open an action flick, since Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry couldn’t.

Angeline Jolie, she can open an action flick, if Salt and Tomb Raider are the best we can hope for… but wait a minute…

A few months ago, Steven Soderbergh released the movie Haywire, written for and starring a beautiful athlete named Gina Carano. I’ve been fixated on Gina Carano for years; she’s the mixed martial artist who inspired the protagonist in my novel in progress. And did I mention she’s gorgeous? I didn’t love Haywire, but I loved Gina in it. The fact that Haywire exists fills me with such excitement about the future of female action heroes. I want Gina to be the female version of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, crossing over into films. She’s not the best actress in the world, but she can do something Angelina Jolie can’t do. Legitimately kick your ass.

Which brings me to the woman of the hour, Katniss Everdeen, in book form and as portrayed by the luminous Jennifer Lawrence. While Twilight sent all the wrong message to the young women of today, The Hunger Games gets it right. Katniss may not have superpowers, but she’s a skilled huntswoman. (archery chick, archeress, is there a word for that?) She’s morally grounded and compassionate, and outcompetes adversaries who are stronger and more ruthless. She’s feminine, and yes, there is a love triangle in the series, but Katniss does not sacrifice anything of herself to win the hearts of her admirers. She earns their love without realizing she’s done it. She doesn’t even want a boyfriend.

So go ahead and buy into all that Hunger Games hype. I am fully on board.

The original Star Wars movies are so firmly enmeshed in my childhood that I cannot write about them objectively. Generations of film geeks already have analyzed the series on so deep a level that nothing I can say could possibly be original. As Luke Skywalker says at the end of Empire, “It’s ImPOSSible!”

Rob and I watched the films in order on Blu-ray, so I’ve been forced to revisit some of my thoughts and memories. I have a different understanding of the politics of the galaxy this time around, which also seems imPOSSible, because I’ve seen them all multiple times. Of course, the first time I saw them in the order they were produced: 4-5-6-1-2-3. I watched Attack of the Clones the most consecutive times in the shortest period of time, because I saw it about three times in the theater when I lived in Prague. And had no idea what the aliens speaking in alien languages were saying, because those subtitles were in Czech.

I bought the whole series on DVD in Thailand (ahem! bootlegs) in 2005, and watched them in order at that point, but over a longer period of time than we watched them this week.

Rob gave up on the franchise after Phantom Menace, so he refused to see Revenge of the Sith with me when it came out. I saw a matinee on opening day in Olympia. After I got the bootlegs, I made him watch Clones and Sith, but he wasn’t into it.

So I was pretty surprised the last time I was in LA without him and he told me he was watching the Empire Strikes Back and explaining it to Leo. (I’m sorry, but every time I think about him explaining the movie to our dog, I just melt inside. I love Rob.) This viewing inspired him to get the Blu-ray set and watch them in order, our first time experiencing the franchise together. We’re separated by 5 years in age, and yet our early Star Wars experiences align. We both had the action figures in the Darth Vader carrying case. Didn’t everyone?

We diverged around the time Lucas rereleased the films in the 1990s with digital alterations. I was in film school at the time and I was, and am, a purist. You don’t get to go back and change your movie 20 years later! If I published a book with a typo, sure I’d want to go back and fix the misspelled word, but I wouldn’t get to go back and use new words that didn’t exist when I originally wrote it. J.D. Salinger didn’t go back and give Holden Caulfield a cell phone so he could text his sister. He didn’t say, “No, you see I wanted to have him text-message her originally, but the technology didn’t exist.” No. You published the book. It’s done. If you want to write about a character text-messaging his sister while having a manic episode in the big city, write another book.

Rob says, “I don’t mind the changes. They’re cool.”

When I say that it’s imPOSSible to write objectively about the films, I mean that I can’t tell you whether or not they’re good. I can’t imagine seeing Star Wars in 1977 as a standalone film. (I didn’t. I’m pretty sure the first time I saw it was upon its rerelease.) I think the films all hold up better as a collective whole.

Watching A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, I was struck by the changes in Yoda and Obi-Wan’s personalities from the prequels. Yoda was a little more wacko than Ben Kenobi, but even so, Ben was known as that crazy old hermit on Tattooine. Clearly, both had gone a little crazy, living in isolation for twenty years. Yoda more than Ben, probably because he had NO contact with other living things except the reptiles on Dagobah.

Obi-Wan is my favorite character in the prequels. My affection for Han, Luke and Leia carries my childish crush and admiration. I can’t “like” Han Solo the way I appreciate Obi-Wan. It’s like I’m not the same girl. I can only look back and remember dreaming about Han.

We watched Return of the Jedi last night, and I did not have the sense of resolution that I hoped I’d feel. Yes, it perfectly ties up the original movies. But it is not a satisfying conclusion for Anakin Skywalker, and he’s the one we’ve been following from the beginning.

Here’s where I say something really outrageous. This time around, Revenge of the Sith was kind of my favorite. Of all six. I found it now, as I found it way back in 2005 when it was in the theatre, to be extremely heart-wrenching and in that way, emotionally satisfying. Anakin’s relationship with Padme, his relationship with Obi-Wan. Destroyed. Everything destroyed. I was affected by it, man. In a way that I was not affected when I watched Return of the Jedi last night. I did like watching Princess Leia choke Jabba, though. And yes, members of Team Luke, now I remember his appeal.

Many years ago, when I was a student of the cinema, I considered a couple of popular films to be litmus tests. You laughed hysterically at Flirting with Disaster? You’re a philanderer with a misogynistic sense of humor. Wept at The English Patient? You’re pretentious. Please, that film was bo-ring!

The other day, we watched Drive, which I’d heard good things about. Let me tell you that I hated it so much I had to get up, find my iPod and tweet about how much I hated it. And it got a 93% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes! What am I missing? I recognize that many women (and men) find Ryan Gosling very appealing. I saw The Notebook; I understand the concept. But in Drive? What a tool. I don’t think he’s mysterious because he doesn’t talk much; I think he’s an idiot.

I didn’t hate the movie because the main guy didn’t have clever dialogue, nor did I mind the stylish film-making. Kinda reminded me of Taxi Driver. I love Taxi Driver. You know why? Travis Bickle is interesting! Jodie Foster plays a child prostitute, and Bickle takes Cybill Shepherd to a porno on a date, yet Taxi Driver does not come close to demeaning women the way Drive does. Carey Mulligan’s character is an idiot, fawning over stupid Ryan Gosling, looking at him with goo-goo eyes after he’s done exactly nothing to earn her desire.

Another female character (and this is a spoiler because there’s only ONE other female character) gets her head blown off in glorious slow-mo spattervision.

Aside: I noted that Quentin Tarantino killed off a female character in Inglourious Basterds (I have to look that one up to spell it INcorrectly) more graphically and with more zeal than he killed off the men. It bothered me there, but I appreciated his violence as an art form. In Drive, it all struck me as gratuitous.

Speaking of gratuitous, what was with the topless girls sitting around Ron Perlman’s character while he takes a phone call? It was a phone call scene! He could have been anywhere!

I can forgive a lot of a film if it’s well-enough performed, written, directed or even scored, but I can’t think of a single redeeming quality about Drive. No wait, I can. I liked the way the title of the film appeared in the opening credits. It was all downhill from there.