What my pals at The Mary Sue neglect to mention, however, is that O’Dowd almost immediately took back his remarks, making it clear that he wasn’t calling out one of the most sexist directors in Hollywood for being sexist—he wanted to be clear that it’s the mean ol’ press that’s to blame. O’Dowd wrote on his blog:

What I actually said was; ‘The way the Press gleefully dealt with the firing of a young woman was one of the most sexist things I’ve ever seen. People shouldn’t revel in seeing anyone lose a job. The dismissal of an old male actor would never have been welcomed with the same joy and ridicule.’ It was naive of me to assume a remark aimed at the sexism in the entertainment press would reach its target in the entertainment press. I’m new to all this and that was stupid of me.

As Teju Cole writes, “we agree that there is rampant misogyny, but misogynists are nowhere to be found; homophobia is a problem but no one is homophobic.” Particularly not when they’re in charge of billion dollar franchises, and might be in a position to kick some of that money in your direction.

-Game of Thrones Valentines, for all your medieval romantic needs.

-I would like Michael Bay a lot more if he was making the Transformers movies as a way to fund a whole bunch of wacky passion projects.

-How are people feeling about Smash? James Poniewozick sums up some of my concerns.

-This Chinese sci-fi novel sounds fantastic.

-And because it’s that kind of day, George R.R. Martin reads nursery rhymes:

-Something else we can blame Michael Bay for: giving Tyrese Gibson PTSD.

-You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is surprisingly funny, also not in violation of copyright law.

-Rob Thomas, please stop torturing me with promises of a Party Down movie.

-I’d be much more excited for the new Mission Impossible movie if it was about Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg teaming up to take down Tom Cruise:

At the end of the day, Megan Fox may not have been a pro on the Transformers set, and she may have been a jerk in the press. But Alex Pettyfer can behave like a spoiled brat on multiple pictures and in negotiations, and there can be allegations that he’s a slightly scary control freak, and he’s fine to the extent that he’s the star of Steven Soderbergh’s next movie. Fox is not the ideal spokeswoman for feminism in Hollywood, she’s the kind of unideal victim Gloria Allred specializes in. But crying a lack of professionalism is a pretty good way to defang critics who are saying things that cut to the heart of your flaws. Or to distract folks from the likely awfulness of the movie you’re about to foist on American audiences.

Either way, maybe Steven Spielberg should consider using his powers for a greater good than saving Michael Bay from having people say mean things about him in the press.

Let’s examine this line of argument, shall we?

1) LeBeouf says that Fox was overly sensitive about some of the things Bay asked her to do on-set:

Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style. And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it. This is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. There’s no time for ‘I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.

2) He goes on to add how great it is to work with a Victoria’s Secret model who is comfortable being his character’s surrogate mommy/housewifey:

Rosie comes with this Victoria’s Secret background, and she’s comfortable with it, so she can get down with Mike’s way of working and it makes the whole set vibe very different…Sam’s sort of frustrated. He has no purpose in life. When he was with the Autobots, he had purpose. He was needed. But he’s got this very supportive girl who’s having him go to these job interviews and trying to nurture him, get him back on his feet. It’s a different female energy than he experienced with Mikaela, who was a very cold biker chick. This woman’s more of a maternal, loving type. Sam wants a domestic, eggs-in-the-morning kind of a thing.

3) And then declares that Fox’s developing feelings about her sex-symbol status are shallow: “Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael.” One can assume the word subbed out after “this woman-empowerment” is actually “shit,” right?

I just can’t with this nonsense. Shia, a few lessons: Megan Fox has the right to make the difficult decisions that often face actresses trying to get into the industry and get cast by famous directors. She also has the right to decide those decisions were wrong or that she’s retroactively uncomfortable with them and uncomfortable with the work she’s doing now. Directors have a right to fire her or not hire if she doesn’t want to do certain kinds of work, but with that comes the right of everyone else to think they’re gross. You, with all your uber-feminist roles in noted films like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, have the right to make a damn fool of yourself, as well as to show some actual sympathy towards female coworkers who face choices you don’t.

Image used under a creative commons license courtesy Beige Alert.

If you’re stumbling across this blog for the first time, I can imagine you might wonder what a culture critic is doing at ThinkProgress. At the end of Stranger than Fiction, Emma Thompson’s character, Karen Eiffel, reflects back on the book she’s just finished. “Sometimes,” she muses, “when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And…Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives.”

In a world where the average American watches more than 150 hours of television every month; where we’ve already purchased 438,113,677 tickets to the movies, adding up to a billion-odd hours in theaters; where in three months, people hit play almost 55 million times on a pop-science fiction liberation odyssey, these things that our lives consume an awful lot of them. Art might not always be here to save us (though it can), but our movies, books, television shows, music, and video games say a lot about how we want to spend our lives, what we’re willing to accept to escape from them for a while, and what we dream they might be like in the future. If we are what we love, to paraphrase Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, figuring out our pop culture—from action blockbusters to indie gems and from billboard-dominating hits to mixtapes—is an important part of figuring out who we are and what we value.

Public opinion may fluctuate on everything from American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan to offshore drilling, but two of the top-grossing movies of 2010 were an explicitly environmentalist science fiction epic and a movie about government regulation of military technology. The top scripted show on television may be a banal procedural where the government always saves the day—but it’s also an ongoing exploration of America’s relationship with Israel. And the poor in America are as absent from our pop culture as they are from the political agenda. Americans’ political opinions may seem frustratingly impenetrable to pollsters and politicians, but our contradictory views on everything from gender equality to police brutality are front and center in the things we use to entertain ourselves.

And just as pop culture’s a bellwether for our attitudes, it’s also a great way to sell ideas, whether it’s Michael Bay’s love letters to the American military or James Cameron’s fierce heroines who see more clearly and shoot straighter than the men around them. Whether it’s getting romantic comedy heroines to work in industries other than fashion and PR; imagining science-fictional universes where environmentalism is a key value; or simply getting our movies and television shows to have demographics that match America’s, good culture can help sell good politics.

So that’s what I’ll be doing here: asking questions about what pop culture means and how it can work harder and better for a progressive future, as well as taking a look at cultural politics and policy from the National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” program to Gov. Sam Brownback’s decision to dismantle the Kansas Arts Commission. Questions, comments, or requests? Just email AlyssaObserves (at) gmail (dot) com. I’m excited to be here.

Bay’s Aaron Burr “Got Milk” is also a great commercial. Longtime readers know that I’m a Michael Bay apologist, but there’s no doubt that his finest work occurred outside the confines of feature filmmaking.