Prompted by
grav_ity wondering if movieverse Loki was a raging misogynist (re: Natasha and Jane in particular). Just some musings.
Loki and women ...
There's a decent argument that that's not actually a hatred of women for their own sake, but rather a facet of his self-loathing (of which he has bundles). Mythologically speaking, Loki was one of two gods in the Norse pantheon who regularly took roles and abilities the Norse culturally assigned to women (magic, childbirth, wordsmithy, etc) - interestingly enough, the other one was Odin, but howandever. Marvel Loki ... actually has a lot of that as well.
If you look at the group he was part of (Thor, Sif, the W3), he's the one taking the traditionally female roles for his culture: the weakest fighter, the statesman, the illusionist mage. (Odin actually does similar - witness Thor's early-movie opinions on Odin's dealings with the Jotun). Made worse by the fact that the group actually has a woman, and Sif's nearly more stereotypically manly than Thor, never mind Loki. So he's basically the girl of the group, culturally speaking, the swift-talking, illusionist mage, in a culture that is all about the manly warrior type, and he knows it.
Then add in the rather catastrophic-for-his-mental-health discovery that he's a Jotun, a monster. That everything he's ever known about himself is a lie, another illusion. That there was apparently a reason he never fit his culture's ideals (an outside one, anyway), and that reason is basically that he's actually the boogeyman.
All his speeches in Avengers about the freedom from the evils of identity? That wasn't just propaganda for the invasion. That was straight out of Loki's own id, at that point.
If you look at what he actually says to Natasha ... there is not a single thing there that cannot be turned around on him, up to and including, given his culture and his history, the 'mewling quim' line (female-role who relies on words to get out of trouble). And Loki knows it. The two people he goes out of his way to attack amongst the Avengers, in the Helicarrier, are Natasha and Bruce. Basically, the two people there who are most like him. The monster, and the female who uses wiles to get her way. (Also Tony, later, for what seems to be much the same reasons).
In one sense, basically everything Loki does from that moment in Thor where his hand turns blue is attack anything and everything that throws up a reflection of what he now fears he is, what he fears he always was. He tries to outright genocide the Jotun, to get rid of the stain of his lineage. The first person he goes for in the Avengers is Bruce, the man who discovered he was a monster. And when Natasha comes down to try and troll him using his own tricks, to his mind basically flaunting his entire history among his peers at him, he flips his lid at her.
I think it's less that Loki is a raging misogynist, is my point. It's more that he's a bundle of raging identity and self-loathing issues who, like the Beast in Beauty & the Beast, is smashing every mirror that comes his way in an attempt to destroy the external reminders of his sort of catastrophic internal failings (and, at the end of Thor, trying to destroy the internal ones, too, by letting go and commiting suicide, but then he landed on ... who he landed on, which all on its own wouldn't be good for anyone's mental health).
Or, as Bruce puts it, his brain is a bag of cats.
Which is not necessarily better, mind you, but at least makes for a pretty fascinating study in psychosis.
There's a decent argument that that's not actually a hatred of women for their own sake, but rather a facet of his self-loathing (of which he has bundles). Mythologically speaking, Loki was one of two gods in the Norse pantheon who regularly took roles and abilities the Norse culturally assigned to women (magic, childbirth, wordsmithy, etc) - interestingly enough, the other one was Odin, but howandever. Marvel Loki ... actually has a lot of that as well.
If you look at the group he was part of (Thor, Sif, the W3), he's the one taking the traditionally female roles for his culture: the weakest fighter, the statesman, the illusionist mage. (Odin actually does similar - witness Thor's early-movie opinions on Odin's dealings with the Jotun). Made worse by the fact that the group actually has a woman, and Sif's nearly more stereotypically manly than Thor, never mind Loki. So he's basically the girl of the group, culturally speaking, the swift-talking, illusionist mage, in a culture that is all about the manly warrior type, and he knows it.
Then add in the rather catastrophic-for-his-mental-health discovery that he's a Jotun, a monster. That everything he's ever known about himself is a lie, another illusion. That there was apparently a reason he never fit his culture's ideals (an outside one, anyway), and that reason is basically that he's actually the boogeyman.
All his speeches in Avengers about the freedom from the evils of identity? That wasn't just propaganda for the invasion. That was straight out of Loki's own id, at that point.
If you look at what he actually says to Natasha ... there is not a single thing there that cannot be turned around on him, up to and including, given his culture and his history, the 'mewling quim' line (female-role who relies on words to get out of trouble). And Loki knows it. The two people he goes out of his way to attack amongst the Avengers, in the Helicarrier, are Natasha and Bruce. Basically, the two people there who are most like him. The monster, and the female who uses wiles to get her way. (Also Tony, later, for what seems to be much the same reasons).
In one sense, basically everything Loki does from that moment in Thor where his hand turns blue is attack anything and everything that throws up a reflection of what he now fears he is, what he fears he always was. He tries to outright genocide the Jotun, to get rid of the stain of his lineage. The first person he goes for in the Avengers is Bruce, the man who discovered he was a monster. And when Natasha comes down to try and troll him using his own tricks, to his mind basically flaunting his entire history among his peers at him, he flips his lid at her.
I think it's less that Loki is a raging misogynist, is my point. It's more that he's a bundle of raging identity and self-loathing issues who, like the Beast in Beauty & the Beast, is smashing every mirror that comes his way in an attempt to destroy the external reminders of his sort of catastrophic internal failings (and, at the end of Thor, trying to destroy the internal ones, too, by letting go and commiting suicide, but then he landed on ... who he landed on, which all on its own wouldn't be good for anyone's mental health).
Or, as Bruce puts it, his brain is a bag of cats.
Which is not necessarily better, mind you, but at least makes for a pretty fascinating study in psychosis.