As is the case with the Bond movies, one needn’t see every entry in the gear-head series to understand what’s happening.

Skipping The World Is Not Enough did not dim my appreciation of Die Another Day. Nor have I seen 2 Fast, 2 Furious, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, or Fast Five, but I was still able to enjoy Fast and Furious 6 without difficulty. And whenever something tricky came up—an old foe resurrected or an old ally returned from the dead—the characters were more than happy to utter expository dialogue and clue me in.

Like the Bond films, the Fast and Furious pictures are lifestyle porn. However, rather than exhibiting symbols of classic elegance such as tuxedos and floor-length gowns and martinis and Aston Martins, the Furious series celebrates aspects of the bro-tastic lifestyle such as tight tees and super-mini-skirts and Budweiser and muscle cars.

Episodes of the two series also have similar structures. Fairly ludicrous plots stitch together fantastic and unbelievable action sequences. Still, while the Bond movies try to remain at least slightly believable, the Fast and Furious movies long ago decided “believability” and “coherence” are trivialities bros and bro-ettes don’t care about.

And yet, aggressively stupid films are often entertaining. So is Fast and Furious 6.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around our beloved crew of gear-heads getting back together to help law enforcement agents Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Riley (Gina Carano) catch Shaw (Luke Evans), a former British special forces soldier who is stealing military equipment to build a weapon that he can sell for billions of dollars to someone. Or something.

Dom (Vin Diesel) pulls together Brian (Paul Walker), Han (Sung Kang), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), and Gisele (Gal Gadot) to help Hobbs and Riley. In addition to receiving pardons for their various crimes, the car enthusiasts have a personal stake in the game. Apparently Dom’s girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is back from the dead—and working for Shaw.

Fast and Furious 6 is in one sense perfect. It delivers exactly what the filmmakers presume their audience wants: big, bold action sequences; hot guys and girls; and a few laughs, prompted by expertly delivered one-liners that ensure the proceedings aren’t taken too seriously.

In another sense, though, Fast and Furious 6 is a poorly plotted mess that makes absolutely no sense. Consider the sequence in which Hobbs and Riley are trying to hold on to a microchip that Shaw wants. The chip is deep within a heavily fortified NATO base. When it’s discovered that Shaw has somehow slipped a spy into the base, Hobbs organizes a mobile convoy to ferry the chip from danger.

To recap: The authorities have decided to protect a priceless weapon from a band of thieves that specializes in hijackings and mobile takedowns by driving the weapon away in a truck.

Right.

When Shaw hijacks the truck, we find out the chip is actually inside a tank. Which Shaw then uses to attack our heroes. Who are, I remind you, driving fancy sports cars. And the fancy sports cars win.

Where did the tank come from? Why was it in the truck? Who thought this was a good idea?

More important: Why am I worked up about it? I need to let it go, bro.

As long as “let it go, bro” is your mantra, you’ll have a fine time at Fast and Furious 6. And make sure to stick around for the film’s final sequence, which sets up the inevitable sequel. I won’t spoil it for you here, but suffice to say: I’m much more excited for 7 Fast, 7 Furious than I was for this film.

Mr. Snyder recognized that “Man of Steel” did not fit neatly into his oeuvre of stylized B-movies like his “Dawn of the Dead” remake and “300,” a retelling of the battle of Thermopylae, but he said he saw overarching connections.

“I feel like my movies have always been very subversive, even when people haven’t perceived how subversive they really are,” he said confidently. “For me, what’s subversive about Superman is that it’s not subversive.”

I find this comment interesting, if only because I’ve recently been thinking about how perfectly the idea of Superman fits into the worldview of Snyder’s oeuvre. He is, in his own weird way, a filmmaker who is relentlessly optimistic about the human condition.

Consider his remake of Dawn of the Dead. In George Romero’s original, the film’s protagonists are holed up in a mall; as the film progresses the group splinters, torn by jealousy and resentment, before being overrun by a marauding band of looters who break in and flood the shopping center with zombies. In Snyder’s film, the opposite happens: the group in the mall pulls together and the mall is only overrun when they make an attempt to rescue a man stranded in a building across the street who has no food. Yes, everything goes wrong and many people die—but it goes wrong because members of society managed to hold onto their humanity, not because they succumbed to inhumanity.

300, meanwhile, is sometimes described as nihilistic, showy violence porn. But it contains a real lesson about society and community: It is a film about martial sacrifice, the need for civilized people to band together and defeat the forces of barbarism, and the importance of doing what’s right, regardless of the cost. It is also an indictment of the corrupt ruling class, those who would betray their people’s ideals for filthy lucre. It is an intensely moral, intensely optimistic film.

His adaptation of Watchmen inverts the message of Alan Moore’s original comic. Whereas Moore wanted us to look upon Ozymandias’ (and Rorschach’s) works and despair, Snyder is more open to the good that can come from the horrific actions the film’s heroes have taken. He respects both Rorschach’s hard-boiled morality and Ozymandias’ deadly vision for a brave new world free of war and fear. Snyder sees all the costumes (with the possible exception of The Comedian) as heroes, whereas Moore saw them as insanely villainous.*

I’m one of the few critics to strongly defend Sucker Punch, which does remarkably interesting things with narrative conventions and point of view (and is extremely entertaining, to boot). While it may be muddled, it ends on a broadly hopeful note: our heroine sacrifices herself in order to save the film’s true protagonist. Sacrifice, shared humanity, the power of community: all of the morals of Snyder’s other works are present here.

Consider all of that in the context of this voiceover from an early Man of Steel teaser trailer:

You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They’ll race behind you. They’ll stumble, they will fall. But in time they will join you in the sun. In time you will help them accomplish wonders.

Jor-el’s words to his son constitute an extremely hopeful, extremely optimistic vision of the character and the role he will play in helping humanity fulfill its potential. It is not only a fine summation of the character we know and love, it also fits perfectly within Snyder’s worldview. That synchronicity is one of the reasons I have high hopes for Man of Steel.

*I have a feeling Snyder would strongly disagree with this interpretation of his film. But that is an argument for another day.

[Steve Wilhite] is proud of the GIF, but remains annoyed that there is still any debate over the pronunciation of the format.

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

Of course, when someone says “end of story” it is never actually the end of the story. If it was the end of the story, you wouldn’t have to announce it; the story would be over, the fight settled, the victor declared, etc. The fight is not over. Wilhite and his ilk are losing. And they should. Because GIF is pronounced with a hard g.

I’m generally a stickler for definitions and spellings. Count me in the Dwight Macdonald* camp in this regard:

It is felt that it is snobbish to insist on making discriminations—the very word has acquired a Jim Crow flavor—about usage. And it is assumed that true democracy means that the majority is right. This feeling seems to me sentimental and this assumption unfounded.

That comes from Macdonald’s classic essay on the third edition of the Webster’s unabridged dictionary, which underwent a massive revision in the early part of the last century and did great damage to the English language. Of course, we’re not talking about a definition—no one is suggesting that a GIF is anything but a file format that displays an image that moves and repeats—but a pronunciation. And pronunciations of words have always varied.

Now, I can already hear you complaining: This isn’t a question of dialect! But it is, kind of. Wilhite’s invention has passed from techies who demand things be done a certain way, all the time, without deviation to the general public. And the general public cares not if he thinks “GIF” should be pronounced “jiff”—just as the general public cares not if the Klingon homeworld should be spelled “Qo’nos” or “Kronos.”

Frankly, I almost think the OED was too generous in its suggestion that “GIF” can also be pronounced “jiff.” No one pronounces it that way except for pedants. So Wilhite? Buddy? I got a gif for you:

*This is, I believe, the third time in the last month or so that I’ve cited Macdonald. If you can’t tell, I’m working my way through this collection and events continue to occur that give me reason to cite the long-dead socialist. The universe is synchronizing in weird ways. I’m not sure I approve.

Veuger writes:

Upholding the rule of law, enforcing property rights, and effectively exercising a monopoly on violence are among [the government's] core functions. Warren Griffin III, or Warren G, and Nathaniel Dwayne Hall, or Nate Dogg, describe what society looks like when those functions fall victim to rampant government expansion in this song from the soundtrack to the movie Above The Rim. More specifically, Mr. Griffin falls victim to a carjacking in his own community. …

Mr. Griffin sees no obvious way out of this — law enforcement is nowhere to be seen — until Mr. Hall appears (“If I had wings I could fly / let me contemplate / I glanced in the cut and I see my homey Nate“). In the absence of a government capable of enforcing the rule of law, a spontaneous order emerges:

Sixteen in the clip and one in the hole

Nate Dogg is about to make some bodies turn cold

Now they droppin’ and yellin’

It’s a tad bit late

Nate Dogg and Warren G had to regulate

Veuger’s argument is based on a misreading of the song. Warren G was not simply driving around his ’hood when he got carjacked; he was attempting to partake in an illegal dice game. Here is the relevant passage:

So I hooks a left on the 21 and Lewis
Some brothas shootin’ dice so I said “Let’s do this”
I jumped out the ride,
And said “What’s up?”
Some brothas pulled some gats so I said “I’m stuck.”

Veuger seems to be misinterpreting the word “jacked.” It is not necessarily short for “carjacked.” Here’s Urban Dictionary’s first definition:

Origin from ‘hijacked’: as the past-progressive meaning stolen in a violent fashion.
Commonly refers to robbery, theft, misuse, seizure, possesion [sic].

The fourth definition is “stolen”; the fifth, “To get robbed, mugged, rolled or beaten up by someone.” You get the idea.

I will be honest: I’m not an expert on the American Enterprise Institute’s stance on illegal gambling. But I have a feeling that it has not yet come out in favor of gangbangers waging warfare on our streets in order to defend their property from being stolen during illegal craps games. This does not strike me as a particularly “conservative” message.

Regardless of whether or not the message is “conservative,” Warren G’s “Regulate” is an amazing song. And, in the end, isn’t that what matters? Why must we go searching for the “conservative message” hidden within random pieces of entertainment? Can’t we just enjoy something even if it’s, gasp, liberal? (Or, as is the case with “Regulate,” entirely apolitical?)

For your listening pleasure:

Mad Men’s creators do this once a season or so. They monkey with the conventions of narrative to give the critical set something they can really sink their teeth into. We critics love this sort of thing; here’s how I defined “interesting” cinema a year or so ago, using Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson as an example:

But Bronson is certainly an interesting movie — the sort of film that might divide critics (it was 70% fresh among top critics on Rotten Tomatoes) but will definitely make them pay attention. “Well, you don’t see that every day” is the cliched reaction, but it’s accurate: stylistically and tonally, it’s different. Ten percent will put it on their top ten list and ten percent will put it on their bottom ten list. Its difference in a sea of bland, unending sameness at the multiplex makes it stand out.

Last night’s episode of Mad Men fits that definition perfectly. Here’s how the AV Club’s Todd VanDerWerff described his reaction to the show:

I think I liked it? An equal part of me hated it. And the largest part of me is sort of blown away by the show’s willingness to just go there and commit.

So interesting! I kind of loved Matt Zoller Seitz’s evolving reaction to the episode:

MAD MEN knocking the cover off the ball tonight

— Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz) May 20, 2013

All right, MAD MEN, you still got it.

— Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz) May 20, 2013

Watching MAD MEN again to quantify the extent to which they were fucking with us. Early money on “considerable.”

— Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz) May 20, 2013

And then, this morning, in his official recap:

After two viewings, and no desire for a third, I’m convinced that metafiction/jazzing around is the only prism through which “The Crash” is anything other than audaciously annoying. More so than any Mad Men episode I can recall, it doesn’t quite feel like a Mad Men episode, but a bunch of half-formed ideas for a Mad Men episode. … Some of the ideas are great, others stunningly bad; still others don’t quite feel like ideas, even if you squint. It feels like the TV-drama version of one of those papers that every halfway-smart student writes when they’re exhausted and can’t come up with an idea, and decides to write about their inability to come up with an idea instead, and hope they’ll be so clever that they’ll get an A anyway.

(Fun fact: VanDerWerff gave last night’s episode of Mad Men an A.)

Over at Slate, Seth Stevenson grasps around to find a method to the show’s madness:

Was the amphetamine clockwork of the episode—skies flickering dark then light, days whirring together—meant to evoke the frightening velocity of the era? It must have felt in summer 1968 like the world was hurtling, spinning frantically out of control.

Why not! The beauty of “interesting” television (and interesting cinema) is that you can find almost any meaning you want. I briefly considered writing a post about Mad Men, the I Ching, and The Man in the High Castle that suggested the episode was about alternate realities and paths untaken. Because, again: why not? That’s the sort of thing that “interesting” television allows you to do when you’re a critic. It’s why we secretly love it even when we proclaim to hate it.

*At this point, it feels as if Mad Men‘s writers are trolling liberal critics of the show who want it to deal with race. “Oh, you want us to ‘tackle’ race? OK. Roger and Joan are going to get mugged by a black guy and Don’s kids are going to be menaced by a mammy. HA!”

It did not go well.

I don’t really feel the need to pile on in that regard; the link above will give you a good sense on just how poorly they handled the situation. I do think it’s worth taking a moment to move beyond the snickering and consider what prompted the meltdown in the first place in order to see what we, the humble viewer, can learn.

First, some background on the show. Kitchen Nightmares is a reality show in which celebrity chef Ramsay visits a failing restaurant in order to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix things. Frequently, many things are messed up all at once: the kitchen is dirty and the menu is too large and the décor is bad and the kitchen staff are lazy and … you get the idea. Almost as frequently, the owners are somewhat clueless, having never owned a restaurant before or having owned a restaurant for so long they are stuck in their old, outdated ways.

But the people who call Ramsay up always understand that something is wrong. They might not know what, specifically, is causing their business to fail. But they know that it’s failing. And they know that Ramsay—one of the most famous, most successful restaurateurs in the world—can help them solve the problem. Sometimes the owners will butt heads with Ramsay for a bit, but they always accede to his wisdom. He is, after all, there to help.

But the owners of Amy’s Baking Company convinced themselves that nothing is wrong. If you watch the episode (and you really should; it’s highly entertaining in that “Dear God, look at the crazy people sort of way”), it’s clear that the duo think their restaurant is amazing, that some random people on the Internet have unfairly singled out their diner for scorn, and that Ramsay will affirm their awesomeness and tell “the haters” to back off.

As a result, when Ramsay pointed out the numerous problems in the restaurant—high employee turnover, pizza that was undercooked, burgers that were overstuffed, frozen ravioli passed off as freshly made, etc.—the owners couldn’t handle it. They shut down entirely, saying they would just ignore Ramsay’s criticisms. He was, apparently, one of “the haters.”

There are few tics more destructive than an inability to accept criticism from people who are trying to help us. I can understand the defensiveness. As Eli Lake knows, some critiques are easily dismissed because the critic does not have your best interest at heart. But when you’re dealing with someone who actually does want to help you—who wants to make you better at what you do, who has more experience than you do, and who is committed to seeing you succeed—a deep-seated urge to reject assistance is self-destructive.

Star Trek Into Darkness is centered on the hunt for a terrorist played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Early on in the film he blows up a large library in London, killing many people, and then launches an assault on the high command of Starfleet, taking out a number of senior officers (including Admiral Pike, James T. Kirk’s mentor). After the attack on the high command, Cumberbatch flees to an uninhabited portion of Kronos, the Klingon homeworld.

Once his location is discovered, Kirk and Spock are given a controversial order: They are to fly into Klingon space, locate Cumberbatch in the uninhabited border areas of Kronos, and kill him with a torpedo from thousands of kilometers away.

Sound like anything America might be currently engaged in?

Anyway. Kirk and Spock decide that this order is immoral—Spock says something* like “There’s no Starfleet regulation about killing a Federation resident without a trial”—and, were it discovered by the Klingons, would likely start an interstellar war. So, Kirk and Spock, the moral center of the film, decide instead to lead a commando mission onto the surface in order to capture Cumberbatch and bring him back to Earth for trial.

Things do not go well for the well-meaning duo: They are tracked by three Klingon warships which, after a brief bit of jabbering, get destroyed by Spock and Kirk’s team (with a huge assist from Cumberbatch).

So, to recap: Instead of firing missiles into an uninhabited area with the intent of taking out a known terrorist, they lead a commando mission that results in the destruction of a trio of Klingon warships and the death of dozens of Klingon warriors who were, we should note, just defending their homeworld.

Please, remind me: Which of these options is more likely to spark war?

So then some more stuff happens that I don’t want to give away. But then, as the movie is drawing to a close, Cumberbatch reappears. He has commandeered a massive “Dreadnought Class” starship that he proceeds to crash into the city of San Francisco, killing what must be tens of thousands of people in the process and destroying Starfleet headquarters. We then cut to a year later, when the city has been rebuilt and Kirk is accepting command of a five-year mission to boldly go blah blah blah. Life has returned to normal!

Like I said in my review, this subplot felt kind of odd. The shallow reading suggests it is an explicit rejection of drone strikes: The moral characters don’t want to do it while the warmongering admiral is gung-ho. On deeper reflection, however, I think it’s pretty clear that the film is pro-drone strike. The non-drone mission goes horribly wrong and, if the series is being honest, will lead to an out-and-out war with the Klingons in the third entry.** Meanwhile, the terrorist they were trying to bring to trial—because justice!—ends up destroying an entire city because Kirk and Spock didn’t pull the trigger on the drone strike.

What Star Trek Into Darkness is asking us to consider, then, is which world would we rather live in? One where we bend our morality every once in a while to take out an immoral, murderous monster? Or one where we accept the deaths of thousands of our fellow citizens at the hands of immoral, murderous monsters as routine because we don’t want to dirty our hands?

Seems like the answer is pretty easy, no?

*This is an approximation; I didn’t grab the line during my screening.

**To repeat: Federation forces destroy three Klingon ships and kill dozens of Klingon warriors. This would lead to war.

First, it had to introduce a new generation of fans to no less than seven main characters (Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty). Second, it had to perform that introduction in a way that would placate long time fans of the show and keep them from getting jittery about their favorite obsession. And third, it had to do what any action flick has to do: tell an interesting, original story that keeps the plot moving.

Abrams nailed it. Star Trek (2009) was clever and funny and action-packed, a perfect reboot that deftly used time travel to deflect the concerns of old fans while creating a new generation of Trekkies ready to boldly go where no man has gone before. Needless to say, expectations were high for the sequel.

Perhaps too high. Star Trek Into Darkness is a high octane but messily plotted romp that relies on excellent performances to paper over plot holes you could pilot a galaxy-class starship through.

Consider the opening sequence.

The film begins with the crew of the Enterprise on a far-off planet, attempting to save a technologically backwards tribe from destruction by a volcano. As Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban) draw the natives away from a temple in the kill-zone, Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) prepares a lava-freezing bomb (oddly referred to as a “cold fusion” device—one wonders if writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof understand what “cold fusion” actually is).

The bomb goes off and the savages are saved. But there is a hitch. To save Spock from death-by-“cold-fusion,” the Enterprise has to buzz the heads of the pre-warp indigenous types. Spock repeatedly describes this as a violation of the famed Prime Directive, which requires Starfleet officers not to interfere with technologically primitive societies.

Maybe you see the problem here, but I’ll spell it out anyway. The crew has already violated the Prime Directive by saving the society from destruction, an act Spock appears to have spearheaded. Glaring logical flaws such as this litter the film, distracting viewers who, as they lurch from scene to scene, may spend more than a few seconds thinking about the plot.

Kirk’s cowboy act saves Spock’s life but gets him in trouble with Starfleet. He loses the Enterprise to Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood), is demoted to first officer, and must learn to “respect the chair” (that is, the captain’s chair) if he’s going to resume command.

Fortunately, the demotion lasts all of 10 minutes, because there’s a mad man on the loose by the name of John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch). He’s a Starfleet officer with an ax to grind, blowing up a secret research base and wiping out the high command in an attack that calls to mind the helicopter assault in Godfather Part III.

Harrison is holding onto a secret, however, and his big reveal will shake Starfleet to its core.

I’m vague here on purpose, as people have requested not to know Harrison’s real game. Cumberbatch’s performance is mesmerizing, and does a good job of distracting viewers from the fact that we actually learn very little of Harrison’s true origins or motivations.

He’s also used as an exposition-delivery device. It’s a good thing Cumberbatch is as skilled as he is, because Harrison just talks and talks and talks.

The two Abrams Treks are at their best when the personalities of the crew are able to bounce off each other—Spock’s playing straight man to Kirk’s womanizing joker, Uhura’s (Zoe Saldana) simmering anger at her Vulcan boyfriend when he fails to show emotion.

And the movies are at their worst when they try to insert a political message into the proceedings. There’s an ill-advised and entirely unresolved subplot that involves war with the Klingons, worry about blowback from what amounts to a drone strike, and the militarization of Starfleet.

The last point is especially odd given that Starfleet is, essentially, a military outfit. It’s the navy, but in space. There’s a reason these ships come with massive weapons arrays.

Star Trek Into Darkness is an entertaining enough film if you don’t bother thinking things through and aren’t bothered by dangling subplots. But it’s a step backwards for the franchise that leapt so boldly back into the spotlight four years ago. 

Listen, you f—ers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum. —Travis Bickle

As you may have heard, Kevin Williamson made the leap from “National Review writer” to “Great American Hero” last night when he decided that enough was enough, that he could no longer idly stand by and watch the shameful state of affairs in our nation’s theaters go unchallenged, that he had to take matters into his own hands. From his account:

The lady seated to my immediate right (very close quarters on bench seating) was fairly insistent about using her phone. I asked her to turn it off. She answered: “So don’t look.” I asked her whether I had missed something during the very pointed announcements to please turn off your phones, perhaps a special exemption granted for her. She suggested that I should mind my own business.

So I minded my own business by utilizing my famously feline agility to deftly snatch the phone out of her hand and toss it across the room, where it would do no more damage. She slapped me and stormed away to seek managerial succor.

Was he rewarded for his exemplary behavior? Was he brought on stage after the proceedings to take a bow with the actors? Of course not. He was escorted from the premises. There is talk of criminal proceedings.

Have we gone mad? Have we forgotten how to treat our heroes with respect and dignity? Where are his garlands, his rewards?

As a film critic, I have to go to a lot of movies. The best are those that take place with only my fellow critics in attendance. The worst are those in which I sit with average audiences. These audiences are often plucked from radio station and newspaper giveaways. They are, and I am not exaggerating here, the worst people in the entire world.

They talk to each other. They send text messages. They check their emails. They yell at the screen. They try to guess the actions of the characters before they happen. They scream F-bombs at the screen as they sit mere feet away from children. They act like degraded animals who don’t understand basic norms of decency. And I’m not even talking about movie theater etiquette; I’m talking about basic, human, societal norms. It’s insane. The whole world has gone crazy.

All of this is to say: I sympathize with Williamson. Deeply. People who use cell phones in a darkened theater might as well pull out flashlights and shine them into the eyes of their fellow patrons of the arts. I had a Williamson-lite reaction the other day during the preview screening of Iron Man 3: a no-account scumbag sitting in front of me pulled his cell phone out and started texting someone. I thought he took the hint when I gently tapped the back of his chair and he turned the device off.

I was wrong.

He pulled it out again minutes later and, I swear to God, started taking photos of the action on the screen. This aggression would not stand. I kicked the back of his seat … well, not as hard as I could, but pretty hard. Hard enough that whatever picture he was taking probably ended up blurry. Hard enough that he certainly took the hint that time.

His phone did not reappear.

Theaters need to do a better job of keeping the savages in line. But theatergoers need to understand that management won’t do it all for us. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.

farrah abraham now thinks she is pregnant from her sex tape. in other news you’re a whore and everyone hates you whoops not other news sorry

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

Needless to say, the scolding scolds came out in full force.

wow. amazed to see the outrage behind calling a staged leaked sex tape chick from teen mom exactly what she is. go on with your bad selves.

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

The feminists were not pleased.

ladies: you aren’t a super feminist for okaying super whores. you don’t need to defend EVERYone with a vagina. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 15, 2013

if you think i am “shaming” her for simply having sex, you are simply a fucking idiot. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 15, 2013

The real reason the scolds were so angry, however, is this tweet:

I believe in shame and having shame and being shamed.

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

So, I understand, if I don’t entirely agree with, the argument against “slut-shaming.” The feminists are angry that there is a double standard between men and women when it comes to sex. I get it. (I tend to think we’d be better off with everyone showing a little more restraint rather than everyone letting loose all the time, but I can’t get too worked up about people hooking up.)

But nobody’s criticizing Teen Mom Porn Star for having sex. They’re criticizing her for being a fame-hungry idiot who capitalized on getting knocked up at an absurdly young age and is now selling her body while simultaneously expecting us to think she’s a victim of some sort.

The problem with the slut-shaming argument, at least as it applies to Teen Mom Porn Star, is that the goal is not necessarily to make Teen Mom Porn Star feel ashamed. Rather, her shame is to serve as a reminder to the rest of society that what she did was wrong and that there are social consequences for terrible behavior. Making fun of Teen Mom Porn Star isn’t the goal; the goal is to avoid the creation of future Teen Mom Porn Stars.

Shame is a powerful tool, one that society should wield more frequently and, frankly, more brutally. We might have nipped all of this in the bud if we had shamed, rather than rewarded with TV shows, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. We, as a society, would be better off with fewer single, pregnant 16-year-olds who dabble in pornography to sate their unquenchable thirst for fame.

But it doesn’t make any sense for us to use the coercive powers of the state to avoid the creation of future Teen Mom Porn Stars—what are we going to do, imprison every knocked up moron teenager? What does make sense is to use the coercive powers of society. And society has few tools more powerful than shame. Pretending that an action is value-neutral to spare the feelings of a miscreant will only create more miscreants. I, for one, would prefer a society with fewer miscreants.

Anyway, Chrissy Teigen is a hero for pointing out that some people deserve to be shamed. Shine on, you crazy diamond!

(Photos from Chrissy Teigen’s Esquire photo shoot.)

Esquire