RedLetterMedia and the Male Reactionary
Mike and Jay are on your side.
Just a few days ago RedLetterMedia put out the second half of their top 10 horror films of 2024 video (there are a number of disclaimers here, it isn’t actually 10 films, it is excluding films they’ve already covered, some of the films are only arguably horror, and of course, 2024 isn’t over yet, but none of this is relevant). I always look forward to these kinds of videos. Despite the fact they got their start being relentlessly negative, I think that Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman are at their best when they’re talking about movies they actually like. While they are definitely, as they say, hack frauds, at times, their backgrounds in film making and discerning tastes make their opinions and insights interesting and well founded.
People like me (read: transgenders) were delighted to see both of them name I Saw the TV Glow as their shared 2nd best. Here, it is important for me to admit I haven’t seen the film, but that isn’t really what I’m talking about here. What’s important is that I Saw the TV Glow is about being transgender, and Mike and Jay liked it.
This didn’t come as a surprise to me. Jay briefly mentioned Tangerine being one of the best movies of 2015 in the Hateful Eight Half in the Bag, and I distinctly remember hearing him talk in the Pink Flamingos Re:View and saying to myself, “this guy has got to know some trans people” from his comfortable and respectful language. But, these are things you would only pick up on if you have an ear for them, you have to have seen Tangerine to know it’s The Odyssey but with two transgender sex workers.
Mike and Jay’s positive review of I Saw the TV Glow drew a bit of attention from me and my peers, we thought it was funny that Mike didn’t pick up on the extremely obvious trans narrative and that Jay had to inform him, that no, that is actually, undeniably, what it is about.
As all things do, this started an online conversation, most of which is centered around this tweet:
As you can see, I liked the tweet because I agreed! I’ve watched RLM for a number of years but in the past few months I’ve done a full chronological rewatch of both Half in the Bag and Best of the Worst. While their early videos can definitely be victims of the humor of time, the actual film criticism holds up. It is, as the tweet says, around 2016 that things start to get a little muddied.
This guy’s replies are full of exactly the kind of reactionaries he’s alluding to.
I think that the best example of this borderline reactionary phase they went through is their reaction to Ghostbusters (2016). Before you click away, or start writing an angry comment, I am not going to defend this movie, it’s almost impossible to do so. Overall, I agree with pretty much everything they say about it in Half in the Bag, they’re very reasonable, in fact, they both agree that Leslie Jones is the best part of the movie and wasn’t given enough to do, which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you’d say if you were actually a right-wing reactionary. That being said, Mike developed a bit of a preoccupation with the film and makes constant reference, not only to the film itself but the hullabaloo surrounding it. It was a bad film, the conversation surrounding it was self-righteous and annoying on both sides, and Mike could not let that go. He became just as self-righteous and annoying in his crusade against the film and denial of his own misogyny.
I think their most prescient and astute criticism of this ilk and of this era came in their video discussing Captain Marvel. They come to the, correct, conclusion that any and all agitation around the film wasn’t activism but advertising. Telling young girls that Captain Marvel was an ideal role model wasn’t feminism, it was marketing. They asserted that the movie was bad and that the frenzied social media arguments surrounding it didn’t benefit anyone but the studio. This is all true, but the mean spirited tone that they took on was unnecessary and their contribution to the dog-piling on Brie Larson was a rare descent into the internet cesspool that they are normally refreshingly detached from.
I disagree in particular with these tweets’ assertion that it was their dislike of Star Wars that earned them a bit of a negative reputation amongst the SJW crowd. They spoke rather positively of The Force Awakens and it was only as the trilogy developed that they were completely critical, just like all the other sane people who saw those films.
Mike and the rest of the RedLetterMedia crew built the channel on being negative and mean spirited, but they were generally being negative and mean spirited towards George Lucas and other big studio hacks, this continued to be true, the targets of their ire just became more politically relevant.
This isn’t to say that they’ve just been woefully misinterpreted this whole time and have been the secret white knights of YouTube, their fifteen year backlog of rape jokes disproves that. Their contributions to the conversation surrounding feminism and these films were often overly simplistic and pushed a both sides narrative that served the male reactionary argument. They tend to be critical of “identity politics” which is definitely a right-wing buzz word, but it becomes clear when you actually listen to them talk about so called “identity politics” that what they really take issue with is the use of “diversity” as a selling point. A movie or TV show is not automatically good or immune to criticism because it is diverse. I think Mike and Jay actually have a better grasp of this concept than a lot of people. Mike’s coining of the term “passive progressive” in reference to Disney’s transparent and sanitized attempts to incorporate LGBT+ characters as a cash grab, is an excellent example of this.
In the past they have had a lot misplaced criticism for the “girls get it done” genre, which does often warrant criticism, but their Half in the Bag on Prey provides a rebuttal to the tired argument against the so-called “mary-sue” and perhaps best represents their current attitude toward female-led action films. They will always be critical when it comes to big budget action films, and the gender of their leads has little to do with this, their appreciation of more story and message driven movies like Barbarian, Promising Young Woman, and The Assistant proves their ability to engage in good faith with movies about women’s lives and issues.
Mike and Jay have changed with the times and their film criticism has remained steadily entertaining and reliable. They are undoubtedly the same cynical misanthropes they’ve always been, and their work would definitely not fly with the average purity obsessed internet user, still, they tend to come down on the right side of things that matter.