Jeremy Renner Throws Black Widow Under the Quinjet on 'Conan'

Has Jeremy Renner been watching the same Marvel movies as everyone else? Last night on Conan, the Avengers: Age of Ultron star doubled down on his controversial press-tour joke that Black Widow – the superhero played by Scarlett Johannson – is a “slut.” Renner, who plays Hawkeye, said that he was justified using that term, because Black Widow has “slept with four out of the six Avengers.” And when did that happen, exactly? Because in the four movies Black Widow has appeared in so far, we haven’t seen her sleep with anybody. At all. Nevertheless, Renner defended his characterization of Natasha Romanov to host Conan O’Brien.

“Conan, if you slept with four of the six Avengers, no matter how much fun you had – you’d be a slut. Just saying. I’d be a slut,” Renner joked.

The actor first used his “Black Widow is a slut” line during a Q&A with a journalist who’d asked him and co-star Chris Evans a question about shippers – i.e., fans who want Natasha to be in a relationship with one Avengers character or another. When asked how they felt about fans rooting for a Black Widow pair-up with Hawkeye or Captain America, Renner joked, “She’s a slut,” and a laughing Evans added, “She’s a complete whore.”

Following a backlash, the actors both issued apologies. But Renner now insists he was correct in labeling Black Widow, because she slept with “four of the six Avengers.” Setting aside the fact that Black Widow is one of the six Avengers, so Renner’s math makes no sense (did she sleep with herself?), he’s just wrong about this. Sure, in the comics, Nastasha has had a few romantic entanglements with superheroes – but no more than any other Marvel character who’s been around since the 1960s.  In the movies, we’ve seen her flirt with Captain America and the Hulk, but that’s the extent of it. She’s not more sexualized than the other superheroes. She just happens to be the only woman.

And therein lies the problem, doesn’t it? Black Widow is the most prominent female character in Hollywood’s biggest movie franchise, and the lack of respect towards her is dismaying. She’s a role model for girls, but as Mark Ruffalo pointed out last week, she appears on hardly any merchandise for girls. Black Widow is pivotal in the films, but she’s still routinely pigeonholed in interviews and reviews as a love interest for the other characters. And now her co-star is calling her a slut, reducing a nuanced and powerful character to nothing more than her body parts. For female Marvel fans, that’s painful.

Even worse is the studios’s refusal to consider a Black Widow solo film. Never mind that fans are clamoring for it. Never mind that every Marvel movie in which Johansson appears — and pretty much every other movie in which Johansson appears, including Lucy, Chef, and Her – is a massive hit. The idea that women can’t carry a superhero film is deeply embedded in Hollywood’s psyche. We saw further evidence of that this week, when an email from last summer was discovered on Wikileaks from Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter to Sony CEO Michael Lynton, explaining why female-led superhero movies are a bad idea. To prove his point, Perlmutter lists three examples of box office disasters: Elektra, Catwoman, and Supergirl. For context, those first two films were released over 15 years ago; the third, over 30 years ago.

Despite the success of female-led action franchises like The Hunger Games and Divergent, and despite the fact that women are now buying more movie tickets than men, producers are still convinced that female superheroes are a recipe for failure. So: Yes, Jeremy Renner, we get that you were joking. And yes, Black Widow is a fictional character. But Hollywood’s problem with women is real. And you’re not helping.