From Broadway to Box Office, ROCK OF AGES has to slide in just before another blockbuster hits the theaters but can it hold up? Russel Brand talks about that, his new FX talk show and his own favorite rock god plus more with Erica Durance and SAVING HOPE  TV and it seems GAME OF THRONES is a little TOO popular.

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This week’s column is about two things:

1) Video games, about which I know almost nothing, and

2) Sexism in pop culture, about which I know far too much.

My son, the genius, recently sent me a link to a Kickstarter project he supports, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, which will create a series of videos discussing the way women are portrayed in video games. Always delighted to encourage research and intelligent discussion on a subject dear to my heart, I was pleased to contribute (and also, extremely proud of myself for raising such a mensch). The project had already greatly exceeded its initial fundraising goals, but I wanted to be there in solidarity.

If you click the link, you’ll notice that the woman behind the project, Anita Sarkeesian, is articulate, well-informed, and calm. She talks reasonably about her goals, her opinions, and her research. If she rages hysterically in private (and I know I certainly do), you can’t tell from her public face.

She certainly sounds more calm that Val and I did in our somewhat similar critique on women in comics here.

And yet, she inspires a veritable tsunami of rage in people who disagree with her. On YouTube and online forums, men don’t just object to her point of view, but to her very existence. A group even hacked her Wikipedia page in an attempt to dehumanize her.

I’m not talking about the men who say, “But men aren’t portrayed accurately either in video games!” I disagree (men are presented as stereotypes, true, but in much more varied stereotypes), but that is a reasonable level of discourse. I’m talking about the men who say she’s ugly, or she just needs to get laid, or that she is nothing but a stupid female body part.

It’s ridiculous and it’s revealing of the poverty of our discourse. Nobody is forcing any gamer to watch these videos. Nobody is threatening to take away their precious sexist video games. Someone is simply responding to these games with honesty and intelligence. If you don’t like it, don’t listen.

When I was in high school I wrote an editorial about what was then a newly resurgent feminist movement. I took the radical position that calling women “chicks” or “tomatoes” made as much sense as calling men “cocks” or “zucchinis.” In response, I received more than 200 anonymous notes calling me a lesbian, a girl who, in what I’m sure they thought was a clever turn of phrase, “just wanted to be on top.” I didn’t even know what lesbians were, and after someone told me, I still couldn’t figure out what they did (I was a very naïve 16 year old). They didn’t want to refute my argument – they wanted to shut me up.

You can see how well that worked.

“But Martha,” you say. “It’s just video games. It’s just comics. It’s just movies. What difference does it make?” The difference is that the way we talk about women in our society is terrible, and it isn’t limited to popular culture. It affects our political landscape and that limits what we can do for each other. If we describe women as only those-who-are-different-from-men and not as individual humans, we miss out on a lot of talent.

We don’t have talent to spare.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman Fires Back!

BURBANK, Calif. (June 11, 2012) – Walt Disney Animation Studios presents an epic tale of adventure and comedy in “Frozen,” a computer-animated feature film slated for the big screen in November 2013. Directed by Chris Buck (Tarzan, Surf’s Up) and produced by Peter Del Vecho (Winnie the Pooh, The Princess and the Frog), Frozen features the vocal talents of film/TV/stage star Kristen Bell as Anna, a young dreamer about to take the adventure of a lifetime, and Tony Award ®-winning actress Idina Menzel as Elsa the Snow Queen. The movie will feature original songs by Broadway greats Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

In Frozen, a prophecy traps a kingdom in eternal winter, so Anna (voice of Bell) must team up with Kristoff, a daring mountain man, on the grandest of journeys to find the Snow Queen (voice of Menzel) and put an end to the icy spell. Encountering Everest-like extremes, mystical creatures and magic at every turn, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom from destruction.

Bell has starred in a variety of films, including the comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Couples Retreat, and the upcoming films Hit & Run, Some Girls and the Farrelly Brothers’ Movie 43. On the small screen, Bell is currently starring in the Showtime series House of Lies alongside Don Cheadle; she has also starred in Heroes and Veronica Mars. Broadway credits include The Crucible and Tom Sawyer.

Menzel, who won a Tony Award® as Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Elphaba in Broadway’s Wicked (2004), landed her first role on Broadway in 1995 in the Tony Award-winning musical Rent. Film credits include Enchanted and the feature film Rent. She has appeared in a recurring role on TV’s Glee and recently released Idina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Symphony, a live concert with an orchestra led by composer/conductor Marvin Hamlisch. Menzel is currently on a North American concert tour.

Robert Lopez is a three-time Tony Award®-winning writer of the Tony and Grammy® Award-winning musical The Book of Mormon, which was co-written with Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), and the musical Avenue Q, which ran for six years on Broadway and four years in London’s West End.  Lopez teamed with wife Anderson-Lopez, whose Drama Desk-winning show In Transit is Broadway-bound, to write original songs for 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, a stage version of Finding Nemo and a new musical called Up Here.

Steel City Noir returns to Trip City with an all-new Bite-Sized Pulp Story called “Stockholm Syndrome” by writer Vito Delsante with cover art by Julian Lopez.

David recognized him right away. Tall, broad shoulders on a back that seemed to be built like a billboard. Wisps of blonde hair peeked out from under the ski cap, but his blue, steely eyes absolutely penetrated the wool covering. Manicured fingernails on a hand that held a pistol straight and narrow. Muscles that bulged in all the right places. He knew who his captor was, and despite the fact that he was holding a gun to his face, he had to say his name. “Carl?” he asked and cocked his head. The gunman trained his gun on the bank teller.

Want to read more?

Visit Steel City Noir at http://welcometotripcity.com/2012/06/steel-city-noir-stockholm-syndrome

Holy cryin’ commie vomit! The old chrome dome is writing another column? Didn’t he just send one off yesterday?

Matter of fact he…that is, I did. But I’ll be out of town for a while and I’d better get this in before I subject myself to the activity that I’ve done most often of all the activities I truly dislike, which is to get in an airplane and go someplace. (The going someplace is fine. It’s the getting there that’s a bowel-froster.) I’ll be going west and by the time you read, I’ll have already gone to St. Louis and returned therefrom. Not to visit friends and family, though some of that may happen, but to attend a convention.

Last time we were in that area, a hurricane passed within about a half-mile of our hotel, damaging the airport and going on to devastate the suburb Marifran grew up in. We can hope for a more sedate visit this week. (Though I have to admit, the possibility of being blown to Oz is an attention-getter.)

Mari and I are St. Louis natives, of course, but returning to the city hasn’t been exactly going home for a while now. I look at street signs and think, I should recognize this neighborhood. But I don’t. Because I lived in Missouri for maybe 22 years, and I’ve lived in New York for something like 47 years. And St. Louis – can you believe this – has changed! And Tom Wolfe was right: You can’t go home again. Because home isn’t there anymore.

Anyway, I prepared for the trip by reading Comics’ Second City by Missourian Mike Phoenix. Mike makes a good case for his title: St. Louis does have a strong claim to being we funnybookers’ second city and I suppose, using Mike’s book as a guide, you could organize a tour to look at the significant sites, where the destinies of comics and the city intersected. I won’t be doing that, though in a funny way I’m glad they’re there. (Or were there. Damn burg’s changed, remember?)

Much of the book’s latter half is devoted to the St. Louis fan scene over the years. I suppose I shouldn’t be too fascinated by this material, never having been a fan. But I found it to be a snapshot of a time and place and set of activities that I did find interesting,, as any glimpse into other lives can be interesting. And just recently – as I was writing last week’s column, if you must know – I’ve come to realize that without fandom, we might not be here. Would Phil Seuling have thought of the direct sales market if he hadn’t met fans at conventions, some of which he organized? Would he have been confident that he could bypass the distributors and sell comics directly to fans if the fan base didn’t already exist? And I think we can agree that comics as a populist medium might not have survived the wholesale extinction of newsstand product without the direct market?

Meanwhile, I’ll meet you in St. Louie, Louie…Well, I’ll meet somebody in St. Louie.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases