There has been a great hullabaloo about the image from the X-Men movie, X-Men: Apocalypse, that depicts Apocalypse choking Mystique, It is a pivotal scene in the movie. Here is the billboard:
"In our enthusiasm to show the villainy of the character Apocalypse, we didn’t immediately recognize the upsetting connotation of this image in print form. Once we realized how insensitive it was, we quickly took steps to remove those materials. We apologize for our actions and would never condone violence against women."
That seemed enough for most of the public. But a reporter, Sabina Ibarra, wrote a piece you can read here. In that story, she latched onto the fact that it was a male villain fighting a female hero. She used this as an indication that we, as a society, have come to look upon violence against women as "normal" or "accepted". She says:
"Mystique leads a charge against Apocalypse after he takes Charles Xavier (Who also gets his ass kicked in a scene too, why wasn’t that used?) and ends up in the position in question."
My answer: Not because it is a woman being beaten by a man, as she clearly wants the reader to infer. The image is visually stunning. It grabs attention. You look at it. It does it's job. Yes, they could have used Professor X getting beaten, but then you would simply complain about "violence against the handicapped" (or Differently Abled People, or whatever PC bullshit you want to insert there).
A followup story was done after the apology that can be read here. This story is more complaints about the actions and apology from the studio not being enough.
I think that the image was in poor taste and their actions to rectify it and the apology WAS enough. They were looking at the image from the contextual view of its place in the entire film and the tension it brings to that story. In print, it comes off very badly.
However, with that being said, I feel the story that was written by Ms. Ibarra was very slanted in its complaints about women being subjected to violence from a man and needing men to rescue them. No one seemed to mind this dynamic in any other films (if they did, I did not hear about it much, if at all). It came across to me that she (the reporter) was using this thoughtless mistake - which is all it was - in marketing to be a gateway to complain about the roles female characters have in the overall story. Using this film as an example, how many times do the male characters get beaten by the forces of evil? Does a female ever save a male? In previous X-Men films, that particular dynamic was established. I have not yet seen this movie, but I have been looking forward with great anticipation to seeing it with my son. I do not feel that the exposure to scenes such as this - with the full context of the movie in its entirety - would give him the idea that violence against women is acceptable under any circumstances.
One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that the villain of the movie is an embodiment of evil. His actions against men AND women alike are expected and a lesson insofar as violence in general is a "bad" thing. He's the bad guy... what were you really expecting?
The print ad and billboard are not acceptable. They saw the error (after it was pointed out) and rectified it. Furthermore, they made a public apology that, to me at least, seemed very sincere. The issue has been resolved. Now we, as a public, need to let it go. If we don't, we are simply teaching the very same people that it is acceptable to hold a grudge and try and get "damages" out of the entity that is guilty of nothing more than poor judgement.
It was an oversight... a mistake. They fixed it. Now we need to move on.
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