Valentine] are all quite attractive. But they also DO get beat up and they DO look like they could kick your ass. And they all have their own goals, flaws, and back stories. I am one myself, after all! For instance, Batman saved Rachel Dawes a couple of times, but I never saw her as only a Damsel in Distress, because she was her own person with her own moral code and own heroic goals to clean up Gotham with her Lawyer Powers.
Hey — I partly agree. Poor him. But there was still something wrong. And I think it is the hollywood aesthetic. America has really bad taste in women. If you want to find better female characters then watch anime from Japan.
Here are some examples. Love Live School idol Project. We need to get rid of the Liberal garbage that is destroying American women and the female characters you see in the links I post will help women see them selves in a true feminin light. Complex characters with flaws who get to do interesting things. And your main problem is looking for them, of either gender, in a Michael Bay movie.
That would be a good thing. My major problem was Megan Fox then claiming that Michael Bay had written two fabulous female characters and patting him on the back for it. Come on. Finally someone who got it right! They always gloss over the woman and make her too tough. What bugs me about men and women in general, is the strong type is blemish free. We are forced to watch them writhe in gratuitous, oily, nudity with narry a pimple on them. And we see it ALL. If a person of such behavioural affectations beating up people, etc is to be blemish free, we are an incredibly, retardedly stupid audience.
And yes we are. Everyone stand and take a bow. So, not only is she a supermodel-built nuclear physicist qua adventurer who runs around with James Bond in a series of apparently IAEA-issued tank tops, but her final big character reveal, the thing that the hero and audience discover about her that sums her up as a person?
It was then that I realized that I really cared about this character and was very glad that she got her happy ending. But the focus of this article is on action movies. Yeah, you bring up women from other genres in what you want at the end, but the comparisons you make in the bulk of the piece all have to do with movies where strength in the physical sense is necessary for some of the scenarios that will pop up because of the genre of the film.
What about political dramas, or historical pieces fictional or not? A good character will be able to see the situations they are in and come up with a plan to fix them in the face of whatever opposition comes their way, regardless of gender. Watch that. I think this is more true-to-life than a lot of people realize.
I may be young, but I hardly ever see a good-looking man with an ugly woman. I think some of it comes from the patriarchal society we live in, stemming back to its beginnings.
Women were feared and locked up by men because of the power we have: the power to give birth. To come up to today, skipping a bunch of history, that fear is still lying in there by the men in charge. The fear of their power being taken away by a woman that could, gasp, be independent, frightens them.
Society has encouraged and enabled that since before it was written. So anyway, one other point that relates to another discussion: bad writing. In the movies where the woman is meant to be the central character, the writers often turn in hot steaming piles of whale shit instead of quality writing and actions.
But when a woman is the main character, her love interest usually has much, much more of an influence over her actions and motivations. Yeah, this article was obviously very narrow in scope. I was thinking specifically about women and specifically about women in action movies. The fact is that there are shitty female characters in non-action movies and TV shows, and there are shitty male characters out there, as well. A similar shot of a woman of which there were several in that film, come to think of it would not occasion comment.
Although I will admit that no one really says starlet anymore…. The minor male characters in a rom-com are mostly going to be second-tier SNL alums like Rob Schneider. The minor female characters are mostly — mostly — going to be ridiculously hot. This means that the starlet category is still alive and well, even if the word has been phased out.
So in addition to seeing probably ogling her, we are presented with the fact that he is also ogling her, which serves to normalize the ogling behavior. But shots like that are part of the basic vocabulary of filmmaking, and usually they blend right in. The reverse of that shot, where a guy is ogled, is much rarer.
And note that even here watch the first video on the linked page , the oglers are men. Why do we need a preview button? Just run your comment through spell check etc. I think practice, especially the practice of watching contemporary action movies or, heck, action movies from the last 20 years , shows that the male gaze is a reductive way of looking at things.
Consider that the lingering shots of women in Baywatch occasioned far more comment than the analogous, lingering shots of men that were also heavily featured in the show.
Also, I think you are underestimating the basic attractiveness of certain shlubby male leads, including Mr. Also consider any Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Consider the naked terminator. There is example after example.
Once you enter the theater, you are enter the theater you are already bombarded with images, events and memories that shape your views on gender. It happens in the home, at school, hanging out with friends, and especially with your brothers and sisters if you have any. Quit giving MB and others so much power.
He happened to win 8 gold medals. Athlete first, hottie second. But let me be fair. There are a few male athletes who are more famous for their bodies than for their athleticism:. From my point of view, however, it seems that this sort of thing is more of a phenomenon involving female athletes. And how often to they get a hot guy at the end? Yes, there are unattractive females in movies.
They are the comic relief. They are not protagonists— usually. I have a really hard time thinking of a Hollywood starlet who is also a good actress. I guess Keira Knightly is OK? But, yes, of course there are male actors who are no good and are only there due to their hotness.
Make of that what you will. The big difference here is that everyone is allowed to leer at attractive women openly, whereas everyone but gay men have to make up a context for leering at attractive guys. I will posit that the discovery that the male gaze works both ways or, rather, all ways — that everybody leers at everybody — is pretty recent. People used to think that people checked out women more than men because they were inherently sexist. It turns out they did it because checking out men for overtly sexual purposes was a bigger social tabboo connected with the unfortunate illegitimacy of the importance of female sexual pleasure.
And it is — you have every right to be angry and hurt. I mean, I understand I have biases in this, too.
We all do. But each of our own biases is only part of the larger picture. Which is why reductive male characters like, say, your average Bruce Willis character, even a good one are part of a similar phenomenon to reductive female characters. Although I clearly think if you know me , that these cultural expressions are not made unsalvagable, or even necessarily bad, by their reinforcement of reductive self-image and objectification.
With the lame female characters it tends to be the other way around. If men were just as objectified as women in films and TV, then why do feminist critics always have a hard time finding movies and TV shows that follow the Bechdel rules? In that world, just as it would be nearly impossible to find women developed enough as characters to talk to and about something other than men and romance, it would be just as impossible to find films in which men only talked to or about women and romance.
Male characters tend to be the leads, stories tend to be from their point of view, and their characters tend to be more varied. Can we agree on that, at least? As I said in my original article, I have no problem with attractive people. We all like looking at attractive people. They just can take care of themselves. I think these characters are often written by men, but I think men like them in fiction, but not in real life.
Check out the books discussed in this episode here. To listen to the rest of the episode, as well as the whole archive of Unlikeable Female Characters , subscribe and listen on iTunes , Stitcher , Spotify , or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.
Advertisers: Contact Us. As such, these characters, unlike real people, displayed little to no autonomy. A large problem with strong female characters is that even if the character is underdeveloped, falls into the traps of the trope, or is just plain boring they are usually still praised for inclusion.
There is such a clamour to include strong women that the more important task of having multidimensional characters falls by the wayside. Strong female characters are overpraised. It should not be the case that just because a character can shoot a gun, they are a good character.
We should praise characters who are developed and multifaceted. It is a term applicable to far too many characters to be a good metric for whether a character is worthwhile. Who is producing it? Who is directing? Probably men. And men who do not care about any message but about the current state of society and politics. These Feminist films are trying to appeal to a larger audience and leaves the movie feeling forced and that is the problem: female protagonists have to be forced in Hollywood.
It does not reflect reality and it is not convincing because firstly not enough women are given attention for their work in Hollywood. However I must say even films who were directed by women still seem to be a bit too heavy handed. And the Bechtel test, oh I want to talk about that in a new article.
But here is the gist. The goal of the Bechtel Test is to promote equality in films by having each film have at least two women who talk about anything but the main guy.
But here is the problem. My solution is that these two women or more must be apart of the story in an organic way than just forced to pass a test. For example, Falcon and the Winter Soldier has two males for their leads.
Both of them have a small group of women who help them or go against them. Only three of them interact and two of them would be considered passing the test. Now could the writers may have came up with a better way to incorporate female characters? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Prove you are human, type c a t s in singular form below:. The Paradox of the Strong Female Character Among all the social justices, the fight for gender equality is the one that speaks the loudest.
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