Hollywood's 5 Saddest Attempts at Feminism

[Forkboy]

Hollywood has a dilemma. Its blockbusters are all written by men, but to make the real money, they have to sell some tickets to females, too. What to do? Let a woman write a blockbuster? Ha! Of course not. Just insert a feisty woman into the story who won't take any crap from men in a really formulaic way! That should please the feminists, right?

Well, when you look at the results, you see they probably shouldn't have bothered.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16587_hollywoods-5-saddest-attempts-at-feminism.html

[Warpy]

1. The saddest ones

are when male filmmakers try to do women, at all. I'm thinking of any of the films of Joe Eszterhas--has he ever known a real woman except for the 5 minutes it takes to do whatever he does to them in bed? Or consider the deplorable movie "Closer," a tortured sexual psychodrama where people babble endlessly about things that would have sensible people in the real world just heaving crockery at each other and phoning divorce lawyers.

I remember my mother pooping on my parade when I was a kid and there was finally a TV show or movie featuring a tomboy, "Don't worry, the producers will have her in buttons and bows by the end of the story." She was right, they never let the patriarchy down.

In fact, about the only male moviemaker I've ever known to do a really good job with female characters is Spike Lee.

[bliss_eternal]

9. LMAO at your comments about "Closer."

:rofl:

Interesting comments on Spike Lee, though. He's routinely disussed (by film critics, and feminists) as sexist and glbt insensitive.
What aspect of his portrayals of women did you find positive? (If I may ask).

[bliss_eternal]

10. Correction.

Should be "too" not "though" (in the first sentence after the rolling smiley. Sorry about that. Distracted while typing again. :(

[Warpy]

12. I didn't say they were particularly positive

but some of his films like "Jungle Fever" have shown women as complex characters instead of just virgins or whores. His female characters are totally believable, which puts him way ahead of most male directors out there.

He wasn't trying to create role models, he was just making them fully human.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. I am always struck by how many movies fail the Bechdel Test

Then again, so do e.g. Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet, if I recall correctly (unless you count the witches in Macbeth...)

Incidentally, I think picking "Firefly" as an example of a non-feminist TV series on the grounds that River Tam is not a strong character is missing the point somewhat - she's not meant to be a strong character; she's an abused child, a large part of whose function in the series is to be a Plot Coupon. There are, however, several other extremely strong female characters, most notably Zoe.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Women are just not getting many lines in films today, let alone good roles. nt

[midnight]

4. I always thought the show ,Desinging Women , was progressive

for its time period.

[iverglas]

7. oh, we're old ;)

I loved it. I can harangue right up there with the Dixie whatsername character, but I always enjoy seeing someone else do it. ;)

(For anybody who doesn't know the show, that character had an Alan Shore moment most episodes, only it was Dixie going off on some sexist situation/person generally, although not exclusively.)

It too often slid into mushy liberalism for me -- and in fact the time period was rather more progressive than nowadays, so I wouldn't lower the bar for it. But it was still better than most on offer.

[NashVegas]

5. There's a Little More To It, I Think

First, of the list posted there I'm most familiar with the Eowyn character. Eowyn was the embodiment of feelings a lot of young girls had as teens, in previous eras: we wanted to go out and leave our marks on the world as much as anyone, but all the cool opportunities to do that were handed to boys. We were told, "you can't, you're a girl." So, Eowyn goes out, proves she can, and ends up with Faramir. You may not like that she ended up getting married but the important point was she proved herself on the battlefield first. And this character was written in the 1930s-1950s or so?

Catwoman is an interesting case; Selena Kyle gets killed because she doesn't see that she has power and doesn't realize how power-crazy men react when threatened, and then she comes apart at the seams because doesn't understand how to best wield it to her own benefit.

The rest are negligible, IMO, but these two I have no complaints. I think Tolkien and Burton both did admirable jobs of depicting two very different women who were, in their own way, reaching for power.

Generally speaking, action films are directed towards a young, male audience. Average writers, directors and producers aren't expected to create great female characters for this crowd, only passable ones. And Sci-Fi is almost always plot-driven instead of character-driven so, again, can't ask for much.

[Nobody]

8. In Flatland, I'd like at least 2 dimensions

To respond to your point about sci-fi being primarily plot-driven, all I really want is for the women to have the same number of dimensions as the men, there to be more than token numbers of them, and for their characters not to always have to be the love interest or the wet blanket.

Caper movies: I love them, I don't love how there's only one female and she's the girlfriend of the guy planning the caper. She's there to beg/plead/demand that he quit. He can't quit or there'd be no movie. So why is she there?

Sci-fi/action/adventure: The Rule of Two applies, more than two females outside of crowd scene extras is verboten. It's stupid and not realistic. In sci-fi, you almost never see women in crowd scenes consisting of aliens. I once heard someone I know describe Alien 4 as a chick flick because there were three major female characters.

Fantasy: The Rule of Two applies here, too. You might see a woman warrior queen or a female leader-type. She's a leader, but she's a leader of men, not a leader of men and women. How does one and only one woman rise through the ranks to become a leader-type without scads of girls hero-worshipping her and following in here footsteps?

It doesn't happen in the real world. Once Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, many American and Soviet astro/cosmonauts went into training to follow suit. That none went into space until Sally Ride became the second human female and first American woman into space wasn't for lack of qualifications or lack of interest on the part of the women. They were actually doing better than the men, so the American space program put in that part about requiring all astronauts to be fighter pilots. I don't know what happened to ground the other Soviet women.

And now to explain the title of the response:

Flatland is a classic sci-fi novel and it has a companion novel called Lineland. It's a story about a 2D world and the other novel is about a 1D world and what it would be like to live there. It's more about topography than telling a story, but it's a clever way to describe 3D objects in a 2D world and give a better understanding of dimensions.

In Flatland, the males are 2D shapes, such as triangles, squares, circles. Females are 1D lines. In Lineland, men are 1D short lines, women are 0D points. The females are all one dimension less than the males. Hollywood seems to have read these novels and adopted them as guidelines to writing parts for and directing women. Even the most one dimensional male characters in the most formulaic movie have more depth than the one lone female encountered. The female being interchangeable with any other female character in the same kind of movie.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. TOTALLY off the mark wth Eowyn -- grear character

[Captain Hilts]

11. Please refer to humans as 'women', not 'females' especially if you've just...

referred to 'men'.

[AnnieBW]

13. They totally missed the other women in Serenity...

River as a role model? Yeah, maybe. But I'd rather look up to Zoe - a warrior AND a wife.

[whathehell]

14. Thelma and Louise was one of the most realistic Hollywood portraits of women I've ever seen.

and the screenplay was written by a woman.

[paulsby]

15. Twilight

was both written by a woman and directed by a woman, and stars a woman as the lead character

[laconicsax]

18. Having a female lead does not a feminist movie make.

Nor does being written or directed by a woman make something feminist.

Bella is an anti-feminist character, along with the entire series.

[niyad]

19. you need to read some of the serious reviews of the flaws in that series.

[Captain Hilts]

16. The film previews before seeing The International yesterday featured no women!!!! nt

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. 
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[niyad]

20. the first thing I noticed in this article about "feminsim" was the fact that they referred to the

women as 'girls". not an encouraging start.

[Johnny99percent]

21. Catwoman's outfit..

prevents her from being a feminist icon. A feminist doesn't wear heels like that. Not on a regular basis, anyway.

[socialgirl]

22. Real Life Heroines

Not only should such films be written by women for women, there are countless of real life heroines resulting from all forms of victimization against women and children that they needn't be based on fictitious events.