I’m curious about why 50 Shades of Grey was such a hugely successful phenomenon. I have some ideas, but I would read an actual inquiry into that subject. There’s a copy of the book in my home, and I’ve paged through it-you’d never guess why—and I found the book, sex scenes and all, terrible. So why such did 50 Shades achieve such heights?

I don’t know. But I know that William Giraldi, who wrote recently about this subject for the New Republic, is not interested in answering that question. In his article exploring the success of 50 Shades of Grey, this is the best Giraldi can muster:

It’s pointless to spend much time impugning these books as writing because they really aren’t meant to be considered as actual writing, the same way a Twinkie wasn’t meant to be considered as actual food. Books ejaculated this easily have the inverse effect of being extremely difficult to read. Leonard’s creations are the cartoonishly erotic suppurations of a hamstrung, not terribly bright adult trying to navigate a midlife crisis, and you get the feeling that the sentences arrived on the page as if by osmosis, unaided by even a sub-literate serf.

Okay, so we know Giraldi is not actually interested in 50 Shades of Grey, or even the academic book on the subject of 50 Shades which he purports to write about. What he is interested in his cleverly dismissing the unwashed plebs (women) who might enjoy a book he hates. Perhaps Giraldi would be surprised to learn that his claim, 50 Shades of Grey is not a good book, is not actually controversial. I would wager that a lot of the people who read it didn’t love the book, but found something-escape, sexual fantasy, who knows-that they were looking for. What that might be is a valuable question to write about.

Instead, Giraldi eschews that subject in favor of overzealous insults and contemptuous disregard for the books fans.

Contempt of this kind is not unusual, especially on the internet where click-bait drives more content everyday. As the competition for clicks grows, content grows more contemptuous (or kitten-oriented) every day. That may be a reason, but it’s not an excuse for being an ass. Yet click-bait contempt is the only lens through which I can understand an “otherwise intelligent” novelist like Giraldi writing with such a dismissive, contemptuous attitude.

Such contempt is not limited to the internet, or culture writers. We can find in our storytellers too, like David S. Goyer. Goyer writes superhero movies, good ones like the Dark Knight Trilogy, and not-so-good one’s like Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. If DC has given the cinematic keys to Snyder, David S. Goyer will be riding shotgun.

During a taping of the podcast Sciptnotes (since deleted), this is what Goyer had to say about the Marvel Comics character She-Hulk:

I have a theory about She-Hulk. Which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So the Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It’s like, most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids getting the shit kicked out of them every day… And so then they created She-Huk, right? Who was still smart… I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk, you know what I’m saying? … She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it’s like if I’m going to be this geek who becomes the Hulk then let’s create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck.

These are terribly stupid comments, and for them Goyer has been the focus of much criticism.

What makes Goyer’s ‘She-Hulk is a porn star’ comments so dispiriting (besides the fact Hulk and She-Hulk are cousins and thus unlikely to fuck) is that Goyer is a successful superhero screenwriter, and this is an interesting subject for him to address-sex and male fantasy in comics. Instead, he just goes for contempt.

Real quick: She-Hulk, also known as Jennifer Walters, cousin of Bruce Banner, independent woman, lawyer, and superhero, is great. She’s a great character. And by the way, She-Hulk is green and curvy and sexy and usually single. None of which qualifies her for this kind of porn star nonsense. But if you didn’t know that, I would understand.

She-Hulk has often been portrayed as little more than a sexy green giant, and has at times been marketed by Marvel for these very purposes. And not just in recent years. Here she is on the cover of some 1989 Marvel Age Magazines, doing just that.

I’d love to have hear what Goyer has to say about Jennifer Walters, especially since he will in all likelihood be involved in bringing perhaps the most iconic woman in comics to the big screen for the very first time, Wonder Woman. Goyer’s opinion regarding She-Hulk, Hulk and power fantasies is relevant. Maybe, given the response to his She-Hulk = Porn comments, we’ll get to hear those opinions.

But if all Goyer can muster is contempt, then perhaps I should modify what I said about Snyder last week: “The good news in this announcement, however, is that the first Wonder Woman film remains as of yet outside Snyder’s Goyer’s grasp.”

**note: the new Marvel NOW! She-Hulk is very good and you should read it.