Last Monday, I attended the most interesting lecture about the aesthetics of assistive technology. One of the messages I got was that AT product could be and should be fashionable – beautiful. As I was pondering the conjoining of the two, I was remembered a very interesting movie character I saw in Kingsmen: The Secret Service – Gazelle.
<left image from http://za.ign.com/star-trek-3-1/89901/news/star-trek-3-reportedly-casts-kingsman-the-secret-s>
<right image from http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/gazelle-kingsman-vs-arrow-and-merlyn-1679986/>
Gazelle is a villain, sure, but she is an amazingly beautiful, intelligent, and strong character. She is a very hot villain – with AT.
I understand that Hollywood has a bunch of problems – sexism, ageism, violence, racism, etc., and this movie has varying degrees of all of that, not even mentioning anything about the wishy-washy-ness of the ending and the main character. However, if the movie left you with anything at the end of it, it would be that Colin Firth is still hot and that Gazelle was absolutely stunning. And those shiny prosthetics on her legs couldn’t have been sexier – nor deadlier.
I really approve that the mainstream media portrayed a character with AT so attractively. One might say – “Hey, she was still a villain.” but then what are we – 10-year-olds? (Apologies to actual 10-year-olds reading this blog post. You guys are cool, but you will understand me a few years down the road.) We can fully appreciate a good character well shelled-out – be it a villain or heroes. I wish the trend continues that the media keeps churning out attractive characters with AT.
Haven’t seen the movie- will have to check it out. I fully agree that portrayals of characters with AT as strong and capable, and not just “inspirational” stories, would be great to see coming out of Hollywood.