Amy Lu's View

“Are you serious?”

I felt defensive as soon as Chad posed the question as we were watching the new Dr. Strange movie, but I quickly realized he wasn’t being snarky. 

Chad was sincerely incredulous. Had I indeed once again mixed up the superheroes The Black Widow and The Scarlet Witch?

Yes, yes I had. 

My confusion became apparent when a quarter of the way into the movie, when I wondered aloud why The Scarlett Witch was on a murderous rampage when she seemed fine at the end of the last Marvel movie. Answer: She wasn’t. I was thinking of an entirely different character, and I’ve mixed up those characters at least once before.

I guess all white, conventionally attractive, female superheroes look the same to me?

(I understand that many people, including some of my dear readers, lead happy lives without any idea of who The Scarlet Witch and The Black Widow. I’m trying to think of an analogy for the non-superhero inclined to illustrate this…it’s like confusing Ringo Starr and George Harrison, or Coke and Pepsi, or Instagram and Twitter). 

I’m not saying that you should know, but I should know. I want to know. I have the means to know–I’ve seen all the Marvel movies and the television show “Wanda Vision.” I’m by no means a Marvel Universe expert, but our dog is named after beloved Marvel creator Stan Lee for goodness sake. 

There’s probably not a great life lesson in my mistake, but it does make me wonder why this is a repeat mix-up for me. My question above was flippant, but I am actually a little distrubed to think I might be so unconsciously dismissive of female characters that I lump them all together. That would definitely tarnish my feminist credentials. 

Or am I simply bad at paying attention, and processing and retaining information? While the consequences in this situation aren’t that dire (I mostly just made poor Chad’s brain hurt), it makes me a little nervous about what else I might be confused or forgetful about. 

Maybe I keep getting tripped up by the semantic similarities of the characters’ names–they both contain a color, and a descriptive noun that starts with a “w” (it could be a similar reason as to why I keep mixing up the bands Dr. Dog and Dinosaur Jr.). 

The answer is probably a combination of all these factors and more. At any rate, I still highly enjoyed the movie, and Chad’s not likely to fire me over my extremely embarrassing Marvel faux paus. (If I get fired for anything super-hero related, it will probably be because I don’t really like Batman). 

I just know that if I ever get a superhero name, it would be really cool if it has “purple” in it.