Women are having a moment in film history right now and people aren’t happy about it.
Here's where I disagree with you, even though we're on the same page.
There is absolutely nothing new about these latest batch of female characters, not in their frequency. Not in their presentation. None. At all. As The Talking Heads, "same as it ever was." Here are 10 "strong females/TV shows featuring strong females" I can rattle off the top of my head since Emma Peel: Charlie's Angels, Xena Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Run Lola Run, Alias, Dark Angel, Trinity from The Matrix, Alice from Resident Evil and of course Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley.
What is happening is not a shift in the way that female characters are depicted, but a problem with a demographic/new generation that can't handle something we've had for the longest time and keeps spinning it as something "new", therefore "suspicious" and part of some kind of a sinister conspiracy/agenda.
I'll give you an example having to do with race instead of gender. Last year, someone ranted that she noticed that mass media was "shoving interracial pairings down everyone's throats" (her words). She was particularly irked by black female/white male pairings. *That* was what really angered her (but seemed to have no problem watching Kimye on Keeping Up with the Kardashians). "Ha," she said, "have you noticed all of a sudden, how there are all these black women and white men everywhere? What's up with that? Huh? Huh? You noticed that?"
Now, notice what couple were on The Jeffersons in everyone's living rooms for ten freaking years, once every week and sometimes more during syndication? Helen and Tom Willis. But for this person, seeing black females with white males was a "new thing" and therefore a sign of propaganda/interracial couplings being "shoved down her throat" by Hollywood.
This is what I'm talking about, and why this kind of talk irks me. I've lived through 40 years of "strong female protagonists." There's nothing exceptional about the large number that are coming out today or the way they're being presented, yet Incels are ranting that this is something "new." Well, it's new to them. It's not new to anybody else.
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Wint3rFir3 (7384)
5 years ago
They're definitely not new - Wonder Woman (WW) was written in 1941. But I still feel we're experiencing a lot of firsts for women in film right now, especially film heroines. It's not about the frequency of films or differences in female characters generally. In literature and on TV, we've experienced countless varied badass women. But in film specifically, the volume of heroines has been significantly lower than that of heroes and we haven't seen much variance on these heroines except maybe in the last decade.
For example, in the DC universe, since the 1950s/1960s, we've had something like 8 onscreen iterations of Superman and Batman. Yet, despite the success of the WW TV show in 1975, we got one WW film in 2017 - mostly because, much like Black Widow of the MCU, she is the token woman in a universe of heroes. We got 3 Iron Man movies - Iron Man being a relatively unknown character - before we got one WW film - and she is almost as well known as Superman.
Otherwise, we get versions of Ripley/Sarah Connor, as though they are the archetypes and not simply improvements on what came before, violent sexpots or men played by women in film. Film critic Scott Mendelson made this valid point in 2017, only 2 years ago:
The big-budget action adventure films starring women are few and far between, but the good action-adventure fantasies starring women are almost non-existent. Men get Batman Begins, Iron Man, Blade, and Men in Black. Women get Catwoman, Electra, Tank Girl, and Barb Wire. With the exception of the Alien franchise...and the handful of action pictures starring Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider, Wanted, Salt, etc), there has never been a truly female-driven action franchise, let alone a successful female comic book superhero franchise
This has only shifted in the last two years and people are furious about it.
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FFNogoodnik (778)
5 years ago
There is absolutely nothing new about these latest batch of female characters[/quote]
[quote]yet Incels are ranting that this is something "new." Well, it's new to them. It's not new to anybody else.
I agree 100% with the first quoted statement and your supporting information truly backs it up.
I do think the second statement is false, or at least not complete.
I do not see the incels ranting about it being new, but the feminists talking about it as if it were new. Look at all of the hype around Captain Marvel (a movie I do like quite a bit and disagree with a lot of the criticisms of the character) compared to "Atomic Blonde" and "Anita Battle Angel". The latter two did not have all this hype about them having a female lead but they also did not have much, if any criticism, for daring to have a female lead.
The backlash from people (both male and female) is for the attitude of some people that want to make this recent crop of female lead films and TV series to be only time it has ever happened AND that 'THEY' should somehow get credit for it.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
I think there is also a lot of backlash just from the propaganda overload and general bullshit. Remember Ghostbusters 2016? That was a shit film with poor chemistry among it's leads and yet if you criticize it you are sexist! It's gotten old and it was never fun to begin with.
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