Prince of Persia: Assassin's Creed

Or so my better half calls it. He's not far wrong; the movie is full of the kind of crazy acrobatics that Altair got up to in the game, but in fairness, Prince of Persia did it first.

I personally like to call it Prince of Persia: Look at Jake Gyllenhaal, Isn't He Sexy.


I saw it over the weekend. It's the usual Hollywood fare. The script and dialogue is mostly predictable, and mostly brain-dead. There's this dagger, see, and if you have it and this sand stuff, you can turn back time for about a minute. You can use it to destroy the world. The bad guys want it so they can conquer everything, and the good guys want to stop them.

Yes, yes, seen it a hundred times before. If you didn't figure out that Ben Kingsley plays the bad guy within the first ten minutes, you probably need help getting dressed in the morning. Hijinks ensue as the dagger gets stolen, repeatedly, by everyone who comes into contact with it. The hero and heroine don't trust each other to begin with, but form a bond through crazy life-threatening antics that eventually blossoms into kissing at the worst possible moment, as the bad guy is about to rip reality a new one and maybe you should get over there and kick his ass because it's not like you have anything else to do.

Did I like it? Eh, yes, I did. It was watchable, and didn't do anything to really trigger the deep and unrelenting rage I harbour for most Hollywood films. It was action-filled blandness for the most part.

Ah, but I wouldn't be writing here if it was just another action flick. Oh no, dear reader. A movie has to have something really special - or really rageworthy - for me to elevate it to must-blog-about status. And the reason I have decided to bestow such an honour on Prince of Persia is this: Jake Gyllenhaal is really, really hot.

I don't see enough really good looking Hollywood stars. Look what else is out at the moment - Robin Hood? Russell Crowe, no offense to the man, is no male model. He's an actor, and a good one, but he's not there to be eye candy. Will Smith is not attractive and never has been (no, really, and you're not fooling anyone by saying he is). Other notable top earners are Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler... Orlando Bloom, maybe? Again, not really male models - Ben Stiller in Zoolander doesn't count, as I've seen enough male models to know that he doesn't look like them.

Oh, but Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia. Oh my.

He's playing a rugged, stubbly, muscled warrior. He is very attractive. He is a good actor. And, if I may say so, he has the kind of raw sex appeal in this movie that's so unbelieveably hot it could set things on fire from a great distance. I'm stunned that there weren't more women in the theatre when I saw it, but more than a little relieved as well because otherwise I'd probably have to wade through a river of drool to get out.

I don't know of many other actors who could really pull that off. It's expected for actresses, of course; how many plain female stars are there? Pitifully few, compared to the men, because a leading lady is supposed to set the screen alight in Hollywood Land. Actors seem to do it by accident more than anything else.

Hmm... Jude Law, possibly. He could pull it off in the right role. Elvis Presley, because he's the King and nothing will ever change that. James Dean. Robert Downey Jr., but I'm not sure he's all about the raw sex appeal - Sherlock Holmes notwithstanding. There are icons of the screen going back a while that do come to mind, but not in the same volume as actresses.

Could I even begin to hope that this is a turning point? That Hollywood has finally decided to intentionally add elements to its action flicks to attract female film-goers? On one hand, it's pretty unimaginative ("Hey, we should add something to get women into the cinema... let's cast a sexy man in the lead role! It works the other way around, doesn't it?"), but on the other hand, they're actually making an effort, even if it's pathetically cynical. Baby steps, don'cher'know. It isn't much, but it is progress.

So, in summary: go see this movie. If you like hot sexy men, REALLY go see this movie. If you prefer hot sexy women, Gemma Arterton has a fair chunk of screen time and (like the vast, vast majority of female Hollywood stars) she is both hot and sexy. For everyone else, it's a watchable action flick and it'll entertain you pretty well for a few hours.

Even bad publicity is good?

The Hunky Dory ad campaign running lately has been getting a lot of attention in the news. The Rape Crisis Network of Ireland and the Advertising Authority of Ireland, for example, have voiced their disapproval, and a storm of criticism has drifted around the Irish spheres of social networking and blogs.

Quoth the IRFU marketing director, Pádraig Power: “tasteless and base, and quite simply unacceptable”.

The ads, for those of you interested, were of scantily-clad, well-endowed young women holding rugby balls. And there was a "witty" tagline added, such as, "Are you staring at my crisps?"


Ho hum, I say. I recall seeing these ads around my area, and my immediate reaction was not to level a charge of sexism against them, but to yawn, loudly and at length. The mantra that 'sex sells' is already so old in advertising that it might as well be prehistoric; using sex to sell potato crisps is hardly the worst of what people can see in this modern age. From a marketing perspective, I call this lazy, at best. It's a cynical and rather unimaginative grab for people's attention - or should I say men's attention - with the presumption that the audience will be enticed into buying crisps because they have seen an image of an attractive woman next to said crisps.

Really, this is the best they can do? I honestly hope Largo Foods (makers of Hunky Dorys) didn't pay much for the campaign. If it wasn't for the outrage, this would be largely forgettable.

All other arguments aside, though, yes, this is a sexist ad campaign. (Forget for a moment that the images are objectifying women - some women feel empowered by such a thing, and so demonising it is a slap in the face to them. For that reason, the effects or lack thereof of objectification are not up for consideration here.) What makes it sexist is that there are only attractive women on display; are we to assume that Largo Foods are not interested in getting the female half of the population to buy their products? Where are the attractive men pandering to the female gaze, enticing them to part with their hard earned cash? If sex sells... why are they not using it to sell to women?

Raymond Coyle, the chief executive of Largo Foods, has already responded to the criticism with the usual non-apology: “I don’t think the ads are at all sexist but if people do think that then I apologise to them." If people do... There is no if, Mr. Coyle. People are complaining very loudly, and displaying what sounds like wilful ignorance of that may not be the best strategy.

The biggest problem that I can see here is that the criticism leveled at the campaign makes much of how it's sexist and objectifying and tasteless... but those images are quite tame in comparison to the American TV shows that are routinely piped into every home with a Skybox in Ireland. Has anyone called Sky to demand that they stop showing Desperate Housewifes, for example? How about America's Next Top Model, or Big Brother? How about the ads for Special K, where a woman is seen choosing what to wear and, gasp, the viewer sees her without any pants on? Hunky Dorys hardly have a monopoly on sexist images, and, for all the moral outrage that this is bad for the kiddies, I'm sure the vast majority of children and teenagers with Internet access have already seen this and more. So where are the howls and cries that Google Image Search needs to be banned?

This leads me to consider that the criticism isn't so much about sexism as it is about prudishness. The effects of Catholicism in Ireland die very hard, and the view that sex is taboo dies even harder. Sex sells, but sex is also forbidden; stepping over the constantly shifting line between merely risqué and outright tasteless is easier than you'd think. I believe people are complaining because Hunky Dorys are an easy target, and because they find any hint of sex to be verboten. It strikes me as being hypocritical - and the reinforcement of the idea that men and women should be ashamed of their natural desires is despicable.

Apparently, they've pulled the campaign entirely now. Largo Foods really didn't have a choice there. The campaign has had an impact, and by canceling it, they can play the role of the penitent and gain back some goodwill from the various bodies that have been complaining. It's a great shame, though. I would bet that they would never have gotten the same level of criticism if they had used both male and female models, and they might have generated a whole new debate on the disproportionate use of women vs. men as objects in advertising.

I've said before that ads need to be a lot more sophisticated nowadays - more than another tired iteration of 'sex sells', at least. But much as I didn't especially like this campaign, the fact that it has been pulled bothers me a lot more. It's a clear indication that we still have a ways to go to evolve as a healthy society.

Male and Female

I sometimes wonder how to write believeable characters in books. I'd consider characterisation as being one of my strong points in my work, but like every aspiring author, I do struggle with some aspects of it.

The Novel has two main characters; one male, one female. I've written them in very specific ways, and I know where they are alike and where they are very different. But the biggest problem I have is, predictably, with sex.

Books typically characterise men and women in very different ways when it comes to sex. The virgin-whore paradigm, for example - historical romances make enormous use of it in their characterisation of the heroine, who is almost universally chaste until her encounter with the hero. Those romances get a pass because that's just how it was, back then, but even modern characterisations of women seem to follow the same path - and it's just so boring. Why reduce one half of human sexuality to something so trite and uninteresting? Where are the shades of grey?

Men are frequently characterised as biological whores, their hormones driving them to sleep with the attractive females regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. This is so very, very dull as well, and does men a great disservice - as if they are not rational, not capable of being governed by their heads and not their privates. Am I the only one who thinks this charactetisation is just plain stupid? We are meant to believe that these men are also intelligent and sane enough to save the world or captain a ship or have made millions on their own... No. I don't think so.

I'm playing with a little subversion of these characterisations right now for my main characters. I have a leading lady who views sex as a weakness, and is easily powerful enough to have her opinion respected. She is like a man, neither virgin nor whore, where her sexuality is a tiny and irrelevant part of her life. My leading gentleman is a lover and a worshipper of women, who has sex out of adoration. He is like a woman in that he places a higher value on emotional attachments than the mere physical act.

I could spend hours thinking through the facets of their characters, discovering new nuances and reflections that change how they react in tiny ways. I might make a few alterations as time goes by, but I will never return to the silly clichés that infect so many other well-woven stories. My characters deserve better than that.