The Four Color Media Monitor

Variety interviewed actress Kathryn Hahn, who's over 50 years old, about her role as the sorceress Agatha Harkness in another Marvel TV show titled Agatha All Along, which is apparently picking up from where the premise of WandaVision and the Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness film left off, and Hahn is bragging about a nude scene she filmed, which appears to be the first of its kind in a Marvel live action adaptation (via USA Today):

On Wednesday’s premiere of “Agatha All Along” — Marvel Television’s sequel series to the critically acclaimed “WandaVision” — audiences got to see a lot of star Kathryn Hahn, who made a bit of cheeky Marvel history. Although Marvel hasn’t shied away from showing male butt cheeks — Hulk in “Thor: Ragnarok,” Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder” — Hahn is the first woman to show her bare butt in a Marvel Studios project.

“Well, I came up with it,” Hahn explains to Variety. “I thought it was good to see her as stripped down, literally, as we possibly could, which spoke into her powerlessness at the present moment.” [...]

According to showrunner Jac Schaeffer, Hahn went off-script while shooting Agatha’s decision to leave her home while she’s still naked. Hahn was scripted to grab a robe before running outside, but she changed her mind upon reflecting on what Agatha herself would actually do at that moment.

“Kathryn was like, ‘Would she grab the robe? I don’t feel like she would grab the robe. I feel like she would really not care about being naked in front of the neighbors,'” Schaeffer says. “I told her, ‘That is the greatest idea I’ve ever heard.’ Kathryn has done so much work, and she’s done a lot of nudity and other things, and so it also felt very subversive to get Kathryn Hahn’s nudity into the MCU.”

The scene in question was shot with cameras that were strategically placed to hide the bits of Hahn’s body that weren’t meant to be seen, with the coverage provided by her hair doing the rest. Agatha strikes up a conversation with her neighbor, John (played by David A. Payton) and promptly freaks out upon realizing she’s been imprisoned by Wanda. The cameras cut between the two actors while he attempts to make her aware of her nude state and hilariously attempts to convince her to put some clothes on.

Eventually, she goes back inside, puts on her robe and begins to brainstorm her escape.

“It is so true to her character, and it makes me laugh out loud,” Schaeffer says. “And also, I mean, she looks incredible.”

I get the strange feeling they'd never say something like that about Scarlet Witch, no matter how hot artists up to the turn of the century drew Wanda Maximoff, nor would they write her a nude scene for any actress who plays her in live action. But aside from how this new program is apparently written from an appallingly LGBT perspective, this is far too late to matter, and Hahn is kind of old. Would they film a scene like that with a younger actress? Probably not, which makes this even sillier. And if we take the Marvel live action franchise as an example, they sure have gone miles out of their way to depict Wanda very negatively, as somebody who's otherwise not the heroine or anti-heroine Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created her as in the Silver Age, who first appeared in X-Men with her brother Quicksilver and went on with him to become leading members of the Avengers. It's chilling how Brian Bendis' direction became acceptable, and simultaneously, how Hollywood's proven sexism still prevails there.

And since we're on the topic, here's another interview from TV Line with the TV show's executive producer, who says:

Schaeffer then rewinds a bit to explain how in the original script, Agatha emerged naked from the spell Wanda had cast — “She’s taken all of her performative selves off” — but then grabbed a robe. “And Kathryn [Hahn] came to me and was like, ‘Would Agatha stop to get a robe…? I feel like she would go out there naked.'”

Hahn “was so up for it,” says Schaeffer.

Marvel Studios chief Feige’s initial reaction, meanwhile, was one of “Really?” — but ultimately approval, says Schaeffer.

After all, Schaeffer notes, the scene “is so firmly based in character. It is not exploitative, it is not sexual…. It is about this witch and what her priorities are. And in this moment, she needs answers and she doesn’t care if she’s naked or not. So yeah, it’s a point of pride for us.”

I suppose in their viewpoint, it's not exploitative or sexual because of the age of the star? Wow, what a farce. And very sad how under their status quo, Wanda's still depicted as a villainess. Why, if Agatha was stripped naked as a result of Wanda's magics, doesn't that also have the effect of making SW look bad, with one woman belittling another in a tactic that scapegoats women for what one does to another? Well that's what it sounds like, yet even though they changed the script, it still sounds pretty dreadful. And what's this absurdity about a fictional character not having shame in going out nude? Something sounds rather forced about this, maybe because of the star's age, again.

Whether Wanda is redeemed and brought back to the good side in this live action universe that connects both film and TV remains to be seen. But, I won't be waiting up, because this has gotten tiresome already, how these screenplays draw from some of the easiest and most insulting choices of the current century.

Update: and the way Agatha All Along is being heavily promoted based on LGBT ideology is also very disappointing as it's cheap, doesn't equal good storytelling, and only makes clear Marvel/Disney haven't learned any lessons from previous failures that built on the same.

Labels: Avengers, golden calf of LGBT, golden calf of villainy, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence, women of marvel