I think some of this has slightly warped people's understanding of the physical difference on average between men and women, and this has led into some of the mocking you see when people defend women's sports needing their own well defined category. Almost like it's insulting to women that this would be needed. Scarlett Johanssen can beat up guys twice her size with super powers so just try a little harder ladies! I know that's a bit trite but I genuinely think it's seeped into people's thinking.
It started with fantastical wish fulfillment, I think. Watching those we know have a physical disadvantage overcome that and win a fight through superior technique and guile is classic entertainment! It's not gender-specific, even: done well enough to suspend disbelief, everyone loves watching the high-flying babyface get a win against a monster heel who'd be multiple weight classes above him in real MMA.
But at a certain point, it became such a default trope. It went from "this particular female character is able to defeat physically imposing men because she's a wish fulfillment character with style, technique, and/or supernatural powers, and it looks cooler because we understand the unfairness of the fight she's winning" to "women can beat men because feminism, and it's misogynistic to think otherwise".
As an aside, could I, an out-of-shape 30-something code monkey, beat a female MMA fighter? Absolutely fucking not. I am on the low end of my bell curve, and she would be on the high end of hers. She beats my ass three ways to Sunday. But the bell curve still exists, it ain't insignificant, and the women who are at that high end rarely look like Hollywood stars.
Yeah at some point subverting the trope becomes a trope itself, and “waifish girlboss hero straight up beats the bejeebus out of military professionals literally twice her weight” has definitely reached that trope territory.
There’s a way to portray fights won by “technique and guile” where it’s still obvious that the bad guy is a) much stronger physically and b) not a complete mook that is highly accommodating in his own ass beating. In fact this can be much more exciting! But it’s harder, and somehow movies have gotten lazier and less competent even as they’ve gotten much more expensive.
I agree and will add that kids these days (yes, I am old) don’t have experiences with rough-and-tumble free play the way we Gen-Xers and older generations did. The memory of (to take a personal example) never once being able to beat your younger brother in wrestling makes it very clear that boys are much stronger than girls and counteracts the messages of these movies.
I keep joking that all of this is Scarlett Johansson's fault, but actually I do think there's a real problem with this. Just watch that Netflix show where streak of piss Keira Knightley is meant to be a deadly spy who can frogmarch a hightly trained male assassin to a tool shed. And I have now watched so many scenes in TV shows where women successfully beat the crap out of the man trying to sexually assault her that if I were a young person who experienced SA, I might even be convinced it was my fault for not fighting harder.
That Keira Knightly show made me crazy for the same reason. She's like 115 pounds soaking wet and, while a good actress, she's not even very muscled. But somehow able to lay waste to burly, highly trained man after man.
Actually I just read it back and I didn’t actually write any more than that so don’t bother. I had a whole load more stuff but decided it was too late to post it
My wife and I were watching Andor recently and there's a scene where a male character physically attacks a female character (avoiding specifics for spoiler reasons). My wife was surprised the female character didn't fight back, since surely she could have taken him. I had to gently suggest that no, she probably couldn't have beat up the taller, larger, and almost certainly stronger man.
I think Andor did an excellent job of avoiding this issue. All of the characters, men and women, are pretty well and realistically written. And there is a wide variety of both.
My only issue was :: spoiler :: Bix being thrown across a room and still being able to fight so efficiently. But it was still a more realistic imbalance of power than we usually get these days
I mean she does look pretty worse for wear. I thought they did a decent job of making it clear how desperate her situation was and how fortunate she was to escape. At least “unrealistically low damage after smashing into a wall” is a trope they use on everyone, not just invincible girlbosses.
It was certainly better than a lot of fights in terms of showing the danger she was in, but I still think it peddles a dangerous myth that women can resist if they try hard enough. (But I won’t die on that hill. I absolutely LOVED Andor and Bix being raped would have been an awful choice. So they handled it well considering the mess we’ve got ourselves into with women constantly kicking arse)
The thing I hate most about this is along the lines of the point Jeff made about Brienne. Why do the female action stars have to be 100lbs actresses. (Non steroids) jacked women can be hot! Even if the suits aren't willing to go all the way to Brienne of Tarth outside very specific context like Got, can we at least have a lean, 5'8", 150lbs woman who's strong as fuck beating up the 230lbs guy.
Usually these things are presented as both sides are badass experts, but it's not even out of the question that a strong, expert, well trained 150lbs woman could take out a 230lbs man who's strong but not expert and can just throw a decent punch. There's even been a tiny bit of movement towards allowing actresses to have a visible tricep. Why can't we go all the way and help make full on strength and fitness hot for women!
Good point! I'd still like to see above average height women put in that kind of role for even less suspension of disbelief. But yeah she looked strong and totally reasonable as the muscle character in D&D (I never watched F&F). I'm reacting to things like Scarlett Johansson (sp?) as the superpower-free hand to hand combat expert who dominates dudes 2.5x her size. We need more Michelle Rodriguez's!
Michelle Rodriquez was one of the first two things that leaped to mind. Her beating up Rhona Rousey in Fast Seven was the single most absurd thing in that movie, and it included sports cars jumping from skyscraper window to skyscraper window and cars paradropping out of an airplane parachuting down to hit a winding ribbon of a highway one after the other. And still MR beating up RR was sillier. (the other that jumped out in my mind was River Tam).
I wrestled in college. Leaving gender aside, 150 vs. 230 is … very tough. 150 pounds was a weight classes back then. Above that was 158, then 167, then 177, 190, and finally heavyweight. So you are jumping up 5 weight classes.
Add in gender and you need the 150 pound woman to be a professional MMA fighter and the 230 pound guy to be combat-sport naive. Or old. Or just really fat and would weigh 175 if lean. Or something disqualifying. Weight classes exist for a reason.
Of course. But you've seen, for example, pro non-heavyweight MMA guy keeping The Mountain at bay and maybe submitting him if it were a real fight? Or the pro MMA guy absolutely destroying the bodybuilder who outweighs him by 80lbs? I'm just saying it's at least plausible that an elite 150lbs fighter could dance around and win with evasion and strikes, or use superior technique to get a good mount and submission (all of which would be illegal in traditional wrestling!).
Yes, I agree with your larger point. I wrote poorly and failed to express that. It is definitely possible. I am just trying to highlight that it is a real edge case. 80 pounds is a lot of weight to give up.
And with Brienne, it made sense that being a knight in everything but name was her whole thing. She was a trained fighter and was a physically imposing presence. With a lot of other characters, it feels like they didn't even try to match the casting to the physical demands of the role.
George Will, of all people, once described the current president as “a weak person’s idea of a strong person.” There’s some truth in that, mutatis mutandis, (says the dumb person’s idea of a smart person in Latin).
I have repeatedly had to explain to people that when I say I like "strong female characters" I DON'T mean this kind of physically strong, emotionally flat character that we see everywhere - I mean female characters with strong *characterization*, ie, characters written with care and complexity, with layers and contradictions and strengths and weaknesses like any other well-written character. (As a fiction writer since I was a teenager, I definitely know that when I was being lazy and wanted a shorthand for giving a character "personality," I'd just make them abrasive for no good reason. It's a cheat, and writers who say it isn't are either lying or in denial.)
This is what made the first Wonder Woman movie so great to me - her character had so many layers, and took such joy in things that these overcorrected tropey characters never do (eg, her awe at tasting ice cream for the first time and telling the vendor, "You should be very proud!") And the fact that she is strong and competent and driven is great, but coupled with that, we know that she's *wrong* and going after the wrong bad guy, thinking that killing one man will stop a World War that humans clearly need no supervillain to make them fight. But that doesn't make her any less sympathetic; it just makes her a stronger, more complex character. The courage to have heroic characters be wrong and learn from their mistakes is too rare across all genres, but especially in the wave of overcorrection of female characters because writers and studios are too afraid of having them seem "weak."
I feel like sometimes people see something, but don’t understand what they’re seeing or why it works.
I’ll be that manpsplainer to bring up Ripley from alien.
Ripley could be a no nonsense ass hole. But that’s the position of leadership. That’s her duty. When she said in alien “no. You’re not cooing in the ship with that fucking alien inside of you are you fucking nuts?” And then got overruled by emotional men. She wasn’t being mean to show strength. She was following protocol and trying to meet the expectations of leadership she assumed while the captain was off the ship. Sometimes “following the rules” is a way to Show strength of character. She was also terrified the whole time but instead of crumbling she had to hold it all together and make decisions. Being strong and scared at the same time is called vulnerability. Modern female tropes seem to be about invulnerability only.
She wasn’t mean. She was matter of fact and rational. Can we maybe have that? Rational female characters?
As a child of the 80s I never once remember any boys I knew saying “ew no. Alien sucks cus it has a girl in it!” Or on the flip side no one was saying “alien is amazing because it has a girl lead”. No it was basically “holy shit I am fucking terrified. Alien is amazing.” Which is supposed to be the reaction you’re going for as a creator. If I’m watching something I shouldn’t be thinking “oh. They’re making a point about women” not that they can’t. But if I’m thinking about it then that is shitty writing. You can’t say “this movie is about female empowerment” on the poster and then wonder why men aren’t coming to see it. You told them it wasn’t for them up front with a bludgeon. “Finally a hero young girls can look up to” isn’t really building bridges. Circling back to alien. It wasn’t until reflection that I realized “not a lot of women leads in sci fi. We should work on that” but not because alien told me to work on it. They just showed the way. And that’s what makes people change subtlety. You can’t clockwork orange people into “getting with it” by showing them miss marvel or she hulk on a loop. It’s too obvious. The mind will close off.
This is Kamala when you think about it. She’s kind of the end result of the “no nonsense tough lady” trope pulled out of fiction into real life. You could also tell that the narrative around her was that. She was chosen to be a woman from the jump. Immediately undercutting anything she accomplished (which wasn’t much. Outside of sort of having someone commit suicide. Sorry) but it immediately made people suspicious. It felt forced. Because it was. And people recoil from that. Nobody likes being fucking lectured on their perceived ignorance. Especially adults. And she was a walking lecture even if she wasn’t necessarily doing it herself there was a cottage industry ready to sneer at anyone who didn’t hold her up as representative of all women everywhere and a strong model for young girls (who I guess people think should grow up to be insecure puritanical state attorneys who lose to the king of misogynists in an easily winnable election).
We could also use less of this in male
Characters. I miss vulnerable action stars. Riggs from lethal weapon was a bad ass, ex sniper, ex special forces cop cleaning up the streets right? No. He was an emotionally stunted character with a suicidal death wish dealing with his wife’s death in an unhealthy way before friendship and family saved his life (and kicking the shit out of Gary Busey.).
Mr. Miyagi was a bad as martial arts teacher showing a streetwise kid how to beat up his bullies? No! He was a vulnerable man dealing with the loss of his son and wife and just getting by before he found something other than throwing himself into car repair worth living for.
John wick displays more feminine traits on screen than miss marvel does. Let that sink in.
You think Scarlett Johansson trouncing a troupe of post-Soviet heavies is bad? I have seen Moana 2 approximately 417 times, and it suggests that a 90-pound, 5-foot Polynesian theater kid could singlehandedly pilot a canoe with a 200-pound steering oar that requires lifting a 20-foot mast and sliding it across the deck and restepping it in the other end every time you change tack. As a father of daughters, Hollywood propaganda that minimizes the risks and mechanical demands of historical bluewater sailing - to CHILDREN - concerns me, and I humbly submit that it should concern us all.
I had a coworker who acted like this in real life. She had made the early part of her career in the conservative movement, so she felt acting like this was the best way to be taken seriously in conservative institutions in the face of overwhelming sexism. Once she started working outside of the conservative movement, she had trouble adjusting to having male coworkers who were only interested in collaboration instead of dick measuring contests.
This has also been accompanied by a reluctance to ever show the girlboss as flawed, less capable than her male antagonists or partners, and definitely never getting her ass kicked by a guy. See Captain Marvel, who “had it in her all along” but the man was keeping her down, then she instantly became so overpowered they have to put her on a bus for The Avengers.
You can’t really have a hero’s journey if the hero is already practically perfect and never is under serious threat, so in addition to being toxic, these girlbosses are *boring*.
A final obnoxious aspect of the same trend is the diminishment of established male protagonists in favor of their younger, better in every way female replacements (see Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones).
It doesn’t have to be this way! Ripley, Sarah Connor, Furiosa (particularly in Fury Road) - all female action protagonists that kick ass but remain distinctly feminine.
Or a literal girlboss - The Boss from the Metal Gear Solid series. The greatest soldier who ever lived, invented the whole concept of special forces, and *performed a C-section on herself* before going on to more or less single-handedly* ensure the success of the D-Day invasion. Then she became the first American in space, had that mission covered up, assassinated her lover The Sorrow who then became a ghost, and pretended to defect to the Soviet Union in order to steal a massive fortune amassed by the secret conspiracy that rules the world from a man who constantly has 1 million volts flowing through his body before completing her mission by allowing herself to be killed by her mentee / surrogate son / possible also lover (?) Jack / Naked Snake / Big Boss.
Also the phrase "strong female character" needs to be understood to be more than about making a character that Trump would fawn over!
Maybe I am the one who misunderstood the phrase, but I always thought it referred to strong characterization! Make them multidimensional, depth of character, etc.
Samwise Gamgee, is he a "strong" character? Not really (picking up a hobbit doesn't really require that much strength. But I consider him a very strong character.
Strong =/= wins fights. Although, again, maybe I misunderstood, and Buffy is actually a strong female character because she can pick demons up over her head, and not because of her rich inner life.
I’m a lifelong Tolkein fan, and it never occurred to me until you said it: Yes, absolutely, Sam is a wonderful example of “feminine” strength, even though he’s male. LOTR is lacking in female characters, but Sam brings that side of human virtue into the story.
Same goes for Jesus. If you insist on ascribing gender to an omnipotent deity, God is definitely a father, not a mother. Jesus is the feminine energy of the trinity.
In 2015 (or whenever peak “internet feminism” hit), I remember saying that I only take feminists seriously who agree with the statement:“women are just as bad as men.” Anything else is benevolent sexism.
I'll see your toxic female lead and raise you, tough as nails geezer, tropes. Nothing like a 70 year old tough guy pounding out four, twenty something rednecks in defense of the helpless, non-toxic female bit player. Hoooo-haaaa, sets the blood of every delusional red blooded, I-could-beat-a-grizzly-in-a-fight, guy aflame.
I personally liked TLOU2 less than the first because the themes changed to something less compelling. Instead of traumatized people relearning trust and affection, season 2 is about how the cycle of revenge dehumanizes everybody involved, victim and killer alike.
By definition, since Ellie is participating in the tit-for-tat struggle of cruelty and murder, the narrative disapproves of her and must depict her as unreasonable and aggressive. If the narrative FAILED to do so it would undermine the entirety of the story; if this super cool, super badass, super justified chick on a warpath is the Good Guy and her targets are the Bad Guys, why are you even bothering to film this story? Just watch Taken or something.
I find the themes of season 2 less compelling but broadly self-consistent.
People weren't supposed to like McNulty from the Wire. He's a deeply troubled individual trying to "sink into work" when his personal life is deepsixed. The writers were rather disturbed.
It turns out people kind of like assholes. You know, as a general rule. And women watch television for wish fulfillment, and you will have difficulty finding a woman who doesn't want to tell a man to "shove his help where it don't shine" once in a while. (In short, I think you may be overly sensitive to "asshole man" now gender-switched to "woman").
I wish people wrote more "Tough Women" like Ripley from Aliens. It's a better use of our understanding of psychology. (Oh, and the whole "sex after being scared for your life" is totally a real thing, so that Terminator stuff works too...)
I think people do like asshole characters, but it’s important to balance that with other virtues and portray at least some consequences for the assholery. I think they did that with McNulty. He’s fun to watch and maybe relate with as a bit of wish fulfillment, but the showrunners make it pretty clear that McNulty pays a price for his attitude - it’s not a life anyone paying attention would actually want.
Most good shows don’t actually portray “toxic masculinity” as an unalloyed good, even when the heroes have some of those traits. The issue here is when bad writers (or good writers afraid of sensitivity readers) treat toxic masculinity as a straight up virtue as long as a girl is doing it.
In my opinion this is a direct result of the culture that has been built over the last 10-15 years (some may say decades). 12 or so years ago, right around the time woke broke and I wasn’t aware that it had yet, I had bar top conversation with a young woman who responded to my observation that women seem to have embraced the exact behaviors that they endlessly deride in men but expect distilled adulation for doing so with, “BECAUSE WE HAVE TO!”
That interaction is branded into my memory. It was the exact acting like men/asshole men, without the man theme that is ubiquitous today.
There was a scene of Westworld that stuck with me from the wrong reasons. At one point a woman has a man strip out of his uniform, then asks him to drop *everything*, resulting in frontal male nudity. Vilains have long abused female characters in the same way, I've seen that scene well into the 2000s. But the key word is: vilains. Now I was supposed to root for a character who forces someone else naked? Because a woman did it?
I think some of this has slightly warped people's understanding of the physical difference on average between men and women, and this has led into some of the mocking you see when people defend women's sports needing their own well defined category. Almost like it's insulting to women that this would be needed. Scarlett Johanssen can beat up guys twice her size with super powers so just try a little harder ladies! I know that's a bit trite but I genuinely think it's seeped into people's thinking.
It started with fantastical wish fulfillment, I think. Watching those we know have a physical disadvantage overcome that and win a fight through superior technique and guile is classic entertainment! It's not gender-specific, even: done well enough to suspend disbelief, everyone loves watching the high-flying babyface get a win against a monster heel who'd be multiple weight classes above him in real MMA.
But at a certain point, it became such a default trope. It went from "this particular female character is able to defeat physically imposing men because she's a wish fulfillment character with style, technique, and/or supernatural powers, and it looks cooler because we understand the unfairness of the fight she's winning" to "women can beat men because feminism, and it's misogynistic to think otherwise".
As an aside, could I, an out-of-shape 30-something code monkey, beat a female MMA fighter? Absolutely fucking not. I am on the low end of my bell curve, and she would be on the high end of hers. She beats my ass three ways to Sunday. But the bell curve still exists, it ain't insignificant, and the women who are at that high end rarely look like Hollywood stars.
Yeah at some point subverting the trope becomes a trope itself, and “waifish girlboss hero straight up beats the bejeebus out of military professionals literally twice her weight” has definitely reached that trope territory.
There’s a way to portray fights won by “technique and guile” where it’s still obvious that the bad guy is a) much stronger physically and b) not a complete mook that is highly accommodating in his own ass beating. In fact this can be much more exciting! But it’s harder, and somehow movies have gotten lazier and less competent even as they’ve gotten much more expensive.
I agree and will add that kids these days (yes, I am old) don’t have experiences with rough-and-tumble free play the way we Gen-Xers and older generations did. The memory of (to take a personal example) never once being able to beat your younger brother in wrestling makes it very clear that boys are much stronger than girls and counteracts the messages of these movies.
I keep joking that all of this is Scarlett Johansson's fault, but actually I do think there's a real problem with this. Just watch that Netflix show where streak of piss Keira Knightley is meant to be a deadly spy who can frogmarch a hightly trained male assassin to a tool shed. And I have now watched so many scenes in TV shows where women successfully beat the crap out of the man trying to sexually assault her that if I were a young person who experienced SA, I might even be convinced it was my fault for not fighting harder.
That Keira Knightly show made me crazy for the same reason. She's like 115 pounds soaking wet and, while a good actress, she's not even very muscled. But somehow able to lay waste to burly, highly trained man after man.
Oh me too! Thwacking anyone and everyone, pressing her fingers into every surface, tossing dna round like tinsel.
I wrote a little review of it here https://open.substack.com/pub/shinykatie/p/i-reckon-i-could-take-paddington?r=7tgx4&utm_medium=ios
Actually I just read it back and I didn’t actually write any more than that so don’t bother. I had a whole load more stuff but decided it was too late to post it
My wife and I were watching Andor recently and there's a scene where a male character physically attacks a female character (avoiding specifics for spoiler reasons). My wife was surprised the female character didn't fight back, since surely she could have taken him. I had to gently suggest that no, she probably couldn't have beat up the taller, larger, and almost certainly stronger man.
I think Andor did an excellent job of avoiding this issue. All of the characters, men and women, are pretty well and realistically written. And there is a wide variety of both.
My only issue was :: spoiler :: Bix being thrown across a room and still being able to fight so efficiently. But it was still a more realistic imbalance of power than we usually get these days
I mean she does look pretty worse for wear. I thought they did a decent job of making it clear how desperate her situation was and how fortunate she was to escape. At least “unrealistically low damage after smashing into a wall” is a trope they use on everyone, not just invincible girlbosses.
It was certainly better than a lot of fights in terms of showing the danger she was in, but I still think it peddles a dangerous myth that women can resist if they try hard enough. (But I won’t die on that hill. I absolutely LOVED Andor and Bix being raped would have been an awful choice. So they handled it well considering the mess we’ve got ourselves into with women constantly kicking arse)
The thing I hate most about this is along the lines of the point Jeff made about Brienne. Why do the female action stars have to be 100lbs actresses. (Non steroids) jacked women can be hot! Even if the suits aren't willing to go all the way to Brienne of Tarth outside very specific context like Got, can we at least have a lean, 5'8", 150lbs woman who's strong as fuck beating up the 230lbs guy.
Usually these things are presented as both sides are badass experts, but it's not even out of the question that a strong, expert, well trained 150lbs woman could take out a 230lbs man who's strong but not expert and can just throw a decent punch. There's even been a tiny bit of movement towards allowing actresses to have a visible tricep. Why can't we go all the way and help make full on strength and fitness hot for women!
This was Michelle Rodriguez’s role for like 15 years
Good point! I'd still like to see above average height women put in that kind of role for even less suspension of disbelief. But yeah she looked strong and totally reasonable as the muscle character in D&D (I never watched F&F). I'm reacting to things like Scarlett Johansson (sp?) as the superpower-free hand to hand combat expert who dominates dudes 2.5x her size. We need more Michelle Rodriguez's!
Agreed, at least Rodriguez looks like she's taken a boxing class or something!
Michelle Rodriquez was one of the first two things that leaped to mind. Her beating up Rhona Rousey in Fast Seven was the single most absurd thing in that movie, and it included sports cars jumping from skyscraper window to skyscraper window and cars paradropping out of an airplane parachuting down to hit a winding ribbon of a highway one after the other. And still MR beating up RR was sillier. (the other that jumped out in my mind was River Tam).
I wrestled in college. Leaving gender aside, 150 vs. 230 is … very tough. 150 pounds was a weight classes back then. Above that was 158, then 167, then 177, 190, and finally heavyweight. So you are jumping up 5 weight classes.
Add in gender and you need the 150 pound woman to be a professional MMA fighter and the 230 pound guy to be combat-sport naive. Or old. Or just really fat and would weigh 175 if lean. Or something disqualifying. Weight classes exist for a reason.
Of course. But you've seen, for example, pro non-heavyweight MMA guy keeping The Mountain at bay and maybe submitting him if it were a real fight? Or the pro MMA guy absolutely destroying the bodybuilder who outweighs him by 80lbs? I'm just saying it's at least plausible that an elite 150lbs fighter could dance around and win with evasion and strikes, or use superior technique to get a good mount and submission (all of which would be illegal in traditional wrestling!).
Yes, I agree with your larger point. I wrote poorly and failed to express that. It is definitely possible. I am just trying to highlight that it is a real edge case. 80 pounds is a lot of weight to give up.
And with Brienne, it made sense that being a knight in everything but name was her whole thing. She was a trained fighter and was a physically imposing presence. With a lot of other characters, it feels like they didn't even try to match the casting to the physical demands of the role.
She was well slow, though, in her armour. I still reckon most men could take her in the time it took her to raise her heavy sword
Gina Carano was a believable warrior until she got cancelled. I love it when we get a Xena Warrior princess/shield maiden type woman in things.
Unquestionably.
George Will, of all people, once described the current president as “a weak person’s idea of a strong person.” There’s some truth in that, mutatis mutandis, (says the dumb person’s idea of a smart person in Latin).
I have repeatedly had to explain to people that when I say I like "strong female characters" I DON'T mean this kind of physically strong, emotionally flat character that we see everywhere - I mean female characters with strong *characterization*, ie, characters written with care and complexity, with layers and contradictions and strengths and weaknesses like any other well-written character. (As a fiction writer since I was a teenager, I definitely know that when I was being lazy and wanted a shorthand for giving a character "personality," I'd just make them abrasive for no good reason. It's a cheat, and writers who say it isn't are either lying or in denial.)
This is what made the first Wonder Woman movie so great to me - her character had so many layers, and took such joy in things that these overcorrected tropey characters never do (eg, her awe at tasting ice cream for the first time and telling the vendor, "You should be very proud!") And the fact that she is strong and competent and driven is great, but coupled with that, we know that she's *wrong* and going after the wrong bad guy, thinking that killing one man will stop a World War that humans clearly need no supervillain to make them fight. But that doesn't make her any less sympathetic; it just makes her a stronger, more complex character. The courage to have heroic characters be wrong and learn from their mistakes is too rare across all genres, but especially in the wave of overcorrection of female characters because writers and studios are too afraid of having them seem "weak."
I would also add Ellen Ripley from the first two Alien movies to Wonder Woman for these same traits.
I think a lot of the confusion is that a lot of male characters aren't "strong" in the narratively complex way, just strong in the physical way.
I feel like sometimes people see something, but don’t understand what they’re seeing or why it works.
I’ll be that manpsplainer to bring up Ripley from alien.
Ripley could be a no nonsense ass hole. But that’s the position of leadership. That’s her duty. When she said in alien “no. You’re not cooing in the ship with that fucking alien inside of you are you fucking nuts?” And then got overruled by emotional men. She wasn’t being mean to show strength. She was following protocol and trying to meet the expectations of leadership she assumed while the captain was off the ship. Sometimes “following the rules” is a way to Show strength of character. She was also terrified the whole time but instead of crumbling she had to hold it all together and make decisions. Being strong and scared at the same time is called vulnerability. Modern female tropes seem to be about invulnerability only.
She wasn’t mean. She was matter of fact and rational. Can we maybe have that? Rational female characters?
As a child of the 80s I never once remember any boys I knew saying “ew no. Alien sucks cus it has a girl in it!” Or on the flip side no one was saying “alien is amazing because it has a girl lead”. No it was basically “holy shit I am fucking terrified. Alien is amazing.” Which is supposed to be the reaction you’re going for as a creator. If I’m watching something I shouldn’t be thinking “oh. They’re making a point about women” not that they can’t. But if I’m thinking about it then that is shitty writing. You can’t say “this movie is about female empowerment” on the poster and then wonder why men aren’t coming to see it. You told them it wasn’t for them up front with a bludgeon. “Finally a hero young girls can look up to” isn’t really building bridges. Circling back to alien. It wasn’t until reflection that I realized “not a lot of women leads in sci fi. We should work on that” but not because alien told me to work on it. They just showed the way. And that’s what makes people change subtlety. You can’t clockwork orange people into “getting with it” by showing them miss marvel or she hulk on a loop. It’s too obvious. The mind will close off.
This is Kamala when you think about it. She’s kind of the end result of the “no nonsense tough lady” trope pulled out of fiction into real life. You could also tell that the narrative around her was that. She was chosen to be a woman from the jump. Immediately undercutting anything she accomplished (which wasn’t much. Outside of sort of having someone commit suicide. Sorry) but it immediately made people suspicious. It felt forced. Because it was. And people recoil from that. Nobody likes being fucking lectured on their perceived ignorance. Especially adults. And she was a walking lecture even if she wasn’t necessarily doing it herself there was a cottage industry ready to sneer at anyone who didn’t hold her up as representative of all women everywhere and a strong model for young girls (who I guess people think should grow up to be insecure puritanical state attorneys who lose to the king of misogynists in an easily winnable election).
We could also use less of this in male
Characters. I miss vulnerable action stars. Riggs from lethal weapon was a bad ass, ex sniper, ex special forces cop cleaning up the streets right? No. He was an emotionally stunted character with a suicidal death wish dealing with his wife’s death in an unhealthy way before friendship and family saved his life (and kicking the shit out of Gary Busey.).
Mr. Miyagi was a bad as martial arts teacher showing a streetwise kid how to beat up his bullies? No! He was a vulnerable man dealing with the loss of his son and wife and just getting by before he found something other than throwing himself into car repair worth living for.
John wick displays more feminine traits on screen than miss marvel does. Let that sink in.
You think Scarlett Johansson trouncing a troupe of post-Soviet heavies is bad? I have seen Moana 2 approximately 417 times, and it suggests that a 90-pound, 5-foot Polynesian theater kid could singlehandedly pilot a canoe with a 200-pound steering oar that requires lifting a 20-foot mast and sliding it across the deck and restepping it in the other end every time you change tack. As a father of daughters, Hollywood propaganda that minimizes the risks and mechanical demands of historical bluewater sailing - to CHILDREN - concerns me, and I humbly submit that it should concern us all.
I had a coworker who acted like this in real life. She had made the early part of her career in the conservative movement, so she felt acting like this was the best way to be taken seriously in conservative institutions in the face of overwhelming sexism. Once she started working outside of the conservative movement, she had trouble adjusting to having male coworkers who were only interested in collaboration instead of dick measuring contests.
This has also been accompanied by a reluctance to ever show the girlboss as flawed, less capable than her male antagonists or partners, and definitely never getting her ass kicked by a guy. See Captain Marvel, who “had it in her all along” but the man was keeping her down, then she instantly became so overpowered they have to put her on a bus for The Avengers.
You can’t really have a hero’s journey if the hero is already practically perfect and never is under serious threat, so in addition to being toxic, these girlbosses are *boring*.
A final obnoxious aspect of the same trend is the diminishment of established male protagonists in favor of their younger, better in every way female replacements (see Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones).
It doesn’t have to be this way! Ripley, Sarah Connor, Furiosa (particularly in Fury Road) - all female action protagonists that kick ass but remain distinctly feminine.
Or a literal girlboss - The Boss from the Metal Gear Solid series. The greatest soldier who ever lived, invented the whole concept of special forces, and *performed a C-section on herself* before going on to more or less single-handedly* ensure the success of the D-Day invasion. Then she became the first American in space, had that mission covered up, assassinated her lover The Sorrow who then became a ghost, and pretended to defect to the Soviet Union in order to steal a massive fortune amassed by the secret conspiracy that rules the world from a man who constantly has 1 million volts flowing through his body before completing her mission by allowing herself to be killed by her mentee / surrogate son / possible also lover (?) Jack / Naked Snake / Big Boss.
Metal Gear is weird.
*Okay, the Cobra Unit helped too, I guess.
Also the phrase "strong female character" needs to be understood to be more than about making a character that Trump would fawn over!
Maybe I am the one who misunderstood the phrase, but I always thought it referred to strong characterization! Make them multidimensional, depth of character, etc.
Samwise Gamgee, is he a "strong" character? Not really (picking up a hobbit doesn't really require that much strength. But I consider him a very strong character.
Strong =/= wins fights. Although, again, maybe I misunderstood, and Buffy is actually a strong female character because she can pick demons up over her head, and not because of her rich inner life.
I’m a lifelong Tolkein fan, and it never occurred to me until you said it: Yes, absolutely, Sam is a wonderful example of “feminine” strength, even though he’s male. LOTR is lacking in female characters, but Sam brings that side of human virtue into the story.
Same goes for Jesus. If you insist on ascribing gender to an omnipotent deity, God is definitely a father, not a mother. Jesus is the feminine energy of the trinity.
In 2015 (or whenever peak “internet feminism” hit), I remember saying that I only take feminists seriously who agree with the statement:“women are just as bad as men.” Anything else is benevolent sexism.
I'll see your toxic female lead and raise you, tough as nails geezer, tropes. Nothing like a 70 year old tough guy pounding out four, twenty something rednecks in defense of the helpless, non-toxic female bit player. Hoooo-haaaa, sets the blood of every delusional red blooded, I-could-beat-a-grizzly-in-a-fight, guy aflame.
Do you have a specific movie in mind? I first thought of "Gran Torino", but Eastwood's character relies on firepower in that one.
Secondhand Lions with 72 year old Robert Duvall comes to mind as does the Expendables with Stallone at, checks Wikipedia, 76!
I personally liked TLOU2 less than the first because the themes changed to something less compelling. Instead of traumatized people relearning trust and affection, season 2 is about how the cycle of revenge dehumanizes everybody involved, victim and killer alike.
By definition, since Ellie is participating in the tit-for-tat struggle of cruelty and murder, the narrative disapproves of her and must depict her as unreasonable and aggressive. If the narrative FAILED to do so it would undermine the entirety of the story; if this super cool, super badass, super justified chick on a warpath is the Good Guy and her targets are the Bad Guys, why are you even bothering to film this story? Just watch Taken or something.
I find the themes of season 2 less compelling but broadly self-consistent.
Hollywood is in the social engineering business, not the entertainment business.
You remind me of this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-silvia
The left has absolutely zero self-awareness.
People weren't supposed to like McNulty from the Wire. He's a deeply troubled individual trying to "sink into work" when his personal life is deepsixed. The writers were rather disturbed.
It turns out people kind of like assholes. You know, as a general rule. And women watch television for wish fulfillment, and you will have difficulty finding a woman who doesn't want to tell a man to "shove his help where it don't shine" once in a while. (In short, I think you may be overly sensitive to "asshole man" now gender-switched to "woman").
I wish people wrote more "Tough Women" like Ripley from Aliens. It's a better use of our understanding of psychology. (Oh, and the whole "sex after being scared for your life" is totally a real thing, so that Terminator stuff works too...)
I think people do like asshole characters, but it’s important to balance that with other virtues and portray at least some consequences for the assholery. I think they did that with McNulty. He’s fun to watch and maybe relate with as a bit of wish fulfillment, but the showrunners make it pretty clear that McNulty pays a price for his attitude - it’s not a life anyone paying attention would actually want.
Most good shows don’t actually portray “toxic masculinity” as an unalloyed good, even when the heroes have some of those traits. The issue here is when bad writers (or good writers afraid of sensitivity readers) treat toxic masculinity as a straight up virtue as long as a girl is doing it.
In my opinion this is a direct result of the culture that has been built over the last 10-15 years (some may say decades). 12 or so years ago, right around the time woke broke and I wasn’t aware that it had yet, I had bar top conversation with a young woman who responded to my observation that women seem to have embraced the exact behaviors that they endlessly deride in men but expect distilled adulation for doing so with, “BECAUSE WE HAVE TO!”
That interaction is branded into my memory. It was the exact acting like men/asshole men, without the man theme that is ubiquitous today.
I was rooting for the zombie cordyceps by episode 4 of this season.
There was a scene of Westworld that stuck with me from the wrong reasons. At one point a woman has a man strip out of his uniform, then asks him to drop *everything*, resulting in frontal male nudity. Vilains have long abused female characters in the same way, I've seen that scene well into the 2000s. But the key word is: vilains. Now I was supposed to root for a character who forces someone else naked? Because a woman did it?