Also, I'm sure if you looked up 'Women suck'...you'd get a bunch of pr0n. But if you looked up 'Women are Bitches' you'd get a pile of stuff too.

The piece was created by Julia Vickerman, out of Minneapolis. It's on Atom Film.

Before I respond, I think it's important to make something clear: I consider myself an old-school feminist. That means that women and men deserve equal pay, respect, and opportunity in all things. Period. No gender blaming. Just equality in the things we can make equal in the world.

With that being said, I actually liked the piece. It wasn't politically correct. It dared, in an increasingly misandronystic popular culture, to not have the guy be the obvious villain. Instead, the narrator was a befuddled, vulnerable, and confused mass of impulses who, when confronted by what he considered bewildering behavior, just got scared and angry. Not knowing how to deal with those emotions in a constructive way, he turned inward. Yes, he was resentful. Yes, he was angry. I think that was the point. He's not meant to be a hero, or even a villain. Julia, instead, allowed the narrator to be a confused human male who was a complete slave to his hormones.

I found that unflattering, and refreshingly honest.

I also liked how she dared raise the spectre of a subset of female culture that I've observed over the past few years; the "give-me-everything-I-want-because-I'm-attractive-or-you're-bad" brigade. No, they're nothing new, but -- thanks to an unfortunate (and I believe incorrect) correlation to the concept of "Girl Power" -- they're considered something of an untouchable subject.

That particular character depiction struck a cord for me personally. I've seen really good people -- both men and women -- have their lives literally ruined by that particular personality type. Holding a flashlight up to it was refreshing, IMO, and long overdue.

So I have to disagree. I thought the raw honesty of the piece was refreshing. Add in some terrific hand-drawn animation, and I liked it an awful lot.

Just my two cents.

I never saw an instance where the narrator was "tricked" into love. I saw a guy falling for girls of different types, but who also had absolutely no frame of reference for gender differences. He had no logical understanding of how his objects of desire communicated, whether interest was genuinely shared, or even what their intentions were. In all cases, the narrator felt what he felt, but had no idea how to learn whether the opposite party shared the same interest.

That's a pretty universal experience.

The narrator's confusion really becomes clear when he deals with specific instances His heartbreak when he saw a girl he thought was interested in him playing Chenga with another guy. The uncomfortable feelings brought up by the first girl in class to suddenly be seen as sexually desirable. Heck, even scary superhero girl. Those all struck me as a male experiencing the opposite sex with absolutely no frame of reference. The cognitive dissonance this experience created makes up the short's theme, IMO.

Where I disagree is with the assignment of blame. Yes, he's pretty down on the opposite gender for the entire piece, but in the end he accepts that he's the party responsible for his own actions. Not admirable, but honest, and human. I liked that.

Regarding marking myself as an old-school feminist: When it comes to dealing with gender discussions in the Upper Midwest, my experiences with a woman's studies program in college taught me to be clear in my position long ago. Long story short, it was only when I made it abundantly clear in that class that, yes, I believed in equal rights that I would have my position in a discussion not dismissed out-of-hand as just "another male voice." (No kidding.) Since then, I tend to be very clear in that communication up front when discussing gender.

Bingo. I'm completely with you on your discussion of empathy.

Wanna hear scary? One of the people I had to convince in the discussions in that class was the instructor.

Wow, fifteen years on and I still shudder.

Anyhoo, I enjoyed the discussion. I can't remember the last time I got to deconstruct a piece. Felt good.

Back to animating a happy face. (No, seriously; that's what I'm doing right now. :))