Davenport Films: Mutzmag, the Grimm-est of the Grimm & True Female Outlier Behavior

Mutzmag or the Girl Who Killed the Cannibals is impressive precisely because Davenport allows it to be what it is: the vicious little tale of a young girl who successfully and without qualm kills off a couple of serial killers. 

Okay, there you go. 

Seriously, Davenport is the real thing, and despite my dislike of Grimm, it is rather impressive to see a female hero pulling a Judith in the Holofernes tradition (see second to last image). 

Far too often, political feminism feels rather...Victorian. The good girl goes to college and gets good grades and uses the proper terminology and prettily thanks everyone or apologizes and never shows her ankles...oops, got my decades messed up. 

But seriously--when I was asked in a Zoom conference to give my pronouns and politely refused, I couldn't help but notice that none of the male participants supplied their pronouns, not even the young ones. But all the female participants did, almost without exception. I was the outlier. 

And I thought, "How sad." Because, sure, a few of the young women likely did it because they agreed with the idea. But it isn't normal for any "cause" to attract 100% participation, which means that some of them felt that they ought to defend their identities and follow the rules, to avoid making waves and/or to be nice. (Both men and women can get upset when women aren't "nice.")

It doesn't exactly token a willingness to take risks--and when a woman does stand outside the "acceptable" social standard...my, my, my, she doesn't get an invitation to Almack's.

Oops, forgot my decades again. 

In any case, real risk and real danger and real offensiveness--a willingess to truly stop being well-behaved--simply isn't that common. A show or performance of loud questions and supposedly rebellious behavior is not the same as truly breaking away from others' expectations. "No, I'm not going to apologize for existing, not even as a cisgendered person, or use current so-called edgy theoretical terms or agree about my place in the social order" is not the type of push-back young women are supposed to "perform."

In truth, I don't particularly feel like breaking social rules--and didn't feel like breaking rules during the above incident; I simply don't like having to constantly defend myself when I have other things to do. 

In any case, Mutzmag is untamable, being practically sociopathic. For one, she pointedly changes caps from her sisters' heads to the cannibals' children's heads, letting the supposedly innocent brats gets straggled by their own father. 

Eh, they had bad parents. Guess they got what they deserved! 

At the end of the story--after stealing various items and ridding the world of both evil cannibals--she sits on the porch of the house she has inherited, rocking happily without a regret. 

Mutzmag watching the male cannibal drown.