Without comment or emphasis: Why The Avengers may end up this summer's most progressively-feminist blockbuster.

I wasn't going to write about The Avengers again for awhile (other than box office) both because I didn't have much more to offer and because I didn't want this blog to turn into 'all Avengers all the time'.  But I would like to take a moment to single-out a specific element that the film does quite well.  There has been much hand-wringing this week about whether or not The Avengers (and specifically its two major female characters) qualifies as 'feminist'.  Pundits are understandably upset about the lack of more female lead characters, and the fact that the film fails the Bechdel Test.  Merely presenting a couple strong female characters doesn't automatically make your product feminist in nature nor does creating a sausage-fest with a token love interest make your film inherently misogynistic, although the latter does make me roll my eyes a bit more often than not.  But the way Joss Whedon and company present their female superheros merits acknowledgment primarily because of what they don't do. In short, they don't draw one damn bit of attention to it.