School is now in session
Oct. 26th, 2009 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenThis woman is spot-on about why women don't go to see so-called "women's movies."
"Amelia" has failed, as it happens. But if you want to know why, it might be more informative to watch the trailer. Every shot is burnished to a monotonous gold, there are period costumes and a booming score, and every other line out of Hilary Swank's mouth is something about freedom or overcoming obstacles or believing in dreams. (“It can't be done!” “Let's change that!” “No one has made it!” “I will!”) No matter how much you like strong female characters, this isn't interesting. And I'm reluctant to see any movie that looks this predictable and obvious out of some kind of womanly obligation. “Strength” can be just as bland as anything else – and just as limiting.
AMEN. I like to see things that are interesting. End of story. I can put up with sausage-fest superhero and action movies because they're about people turning into robots or being able to fly. These are relevant to my interests. Hilary Swank is not relevant to my interests, nor is her rah-rah retelling of Amelia Earhart's story. That biography is interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's been whitewashed to remove all controversy and pumped up with as much artificial girl power as the Spice Girls were. It's malarkey, and women, who--shock!--are human beings with the ability to sense bullshit, know better than to fall for that.
I really like her comment on "strength." I got into this with issues I had with female characters on Battlestar Galactica. I insisted that "toughness" did not a complex female character make, for all that allowing women to be physically or emotionally resilient was (sadly) fairly novel on television. Tough isn't necessarily interesting, and Sady Doyle understands that the "tough" girl is still a girl in a box. She's tough. End of story. It's like how Laura Roslin went from being harsh but human to an uncaring monster at her worst. The second you get lazy about characterization and lose the humanity of your character is the second they become caricatures. Unfortunately, this happens to female characters more often than males because we still write from a male-dominant point of view in most of our fiction. To create conflict for men, women have to be one note. As Hollywood et al. have tried to lure women in with women-centered movies, they've kept women as one-note. That's not an interesting thing to watch as 90% of the focus of a movie. It's not interesting when it's a dude, either, but because they assume women are starved for movies "about them" (like we're aliens or something) the think that women will watch anything where they don't have to be penis-whipped from all sides of the cast list.
What studios need to do is try the Alien experiment: write the story for a character. Then don't be afraid to cast it gender-blind. You'd be amazed at how awesome a female lead can be when you write her as human first, possessor of strange and unknowable girly-bits second.
"Amelia" has failed, as it happens. But if you want to know why, it might be more informative to watch the trailer. Every shot is burnished to a monotonous gold, there are period costumes and a booming score, and every other line out of Hilary Swank's mouth is something about freedom or overcoming obstacles or believing in dreams. (“It can't be done!” “Let's change that!” “No one has made it!” “I will!”) No matter how much you like strong female characters, this isn't interesting. And I'm reluctant to see any movie that looks this predictable and obvious out of some kind of womanly obligation. “Strength” can be just as bland as anything else – and just as limiting.
AMEN. I like to see things that are interesting. End of story. I can put up with sausage-fest superhero and action movies because they're about people turning into robots or being able to fly. These are relevant to my interests. Hilary Swank is not relevant to my interests, nor is her rah-rah retelling of Amelia Earhart's story. That biography is interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's been whitewashed to remove all controversy and pumped up with as much artificial girl power as the Spice Girls were. It's malarkey, and women, who--shock!--are human beings with the ability to sense bullshit, know better than to fall for that.
I really like her comment on "strength." I got into this with issues I had with female characters on Battlestar Galactica. I insisted that "toughness" did not a complex female character make, for all that allowing women to be physically or emotionally resilient was (sadly) fairly novel on television. Tough isn't necessarily interesting, and Sady Doyle understands that the "tough" girl is still a girl in a box. She's tough. End of story. It's like how Laura Roslin went from being harsh but human to an uncaring monster at her worst. The second you get lazy about characterization and lose the humanity of your character is the second they become caricatures. Unfortunately, this happens to female characters more often than males because we still write from a male-dominant point of view in most of our fiction. To create conflict for men, women have to be one note. As Hollywood et al. have tried to lure women in with women-centered movies, they've kept women as one-note. That's not an interesting thing to watch as 90% of the focus of a movie. It's not interesting when it's a dude, either, but because they assume women are starved for movies "about them" (like we're aliens or something) the think that women will watch anything where they don't have to be penis-whipped from all sides of the cast list.
What studios need to do is try the Alien experiment: write the story for a character. Then don't be afraid to cast it gender-blind. You'd be amazed at how awesome a female lead can be when you write her as human first, possessor of strange and unknowable girly-bits second.
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Date: 2009-10-27 02:35 am (UTC)What made Amelia Earhart so enduring as a person was the mystery of her disappearance. No disrespect to her obviously outsized personality for her time, but she would never have been nearly as intriguing had she landed safely. We immortalize mysteries--look at the never-ending fascination with Jack the Ripper--and preference them over people. The mystery of Amelia's disappearance will always loom larger than any large personality she might or might not have had. So making it about her personality is obviously going to bore the crap out of people.