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[trinityvixen]

This 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.

Comments

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

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.

WORD.

I saw the Amelia preview and rolled my eyes so hard, because it looked so BORING. It looked like something that was supposed to be uplifting and good for me and therefore not something I want to spend time and money on.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

On a similar note, we have this week's Extra Punctuation, on the slightly altered version for video games ("girl power" + video game violence = "All women are psychotic bitches!")

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is that Amelia Earhart's story has an unhappy ending. We KNOW she fails. So the trailers feel false.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I didn't spend money to go see The Aviator either, but that doesn't prove that I don't want to see movies with male leads playing ye olde timey people. (Or men in lead roles. Or Leo DiCaprio in particular.) I didn't go see that because it looked dull, end of story.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Wow, that guy managed to front at being mad about female characters in games while simultaneously being sexist. There's a huge surprise. He ruins his good thesis--you can like even awful people if they have something that humanizes them--by saying shit like this:

They act like neurotic feminists who feel that their every action and expression has to illustrate the fact that they're just as capable as the men, and don't like being looked upon amorously (hence why they all dress so conservatively, I suppose).

Wow. So much for that up-with-women vibe he was hoping for. It may seem like a little thing to pick at, but really? If you're saying that you're behind fictional women being portrayed as more than stereotypes, you'd do best not to reduce real women to those same stereotypes.

I also don't find his examples really convincing. The guy from Vice City is "humanized" by liking a shirt? Bullshit. It's not cool or interesting that the girl from Wet kills the shit out of everything instead of interacting with it? That sounds exactly like Riddick, and he's still a badass, not a bitch. The real problem is that women are made into bitches, but it's also the fact that women who do the same things men do are perceived as bitches (and not as badasses). The problem is as much with the user as it is the used.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Didn't stop people from seeing Titanic. Predictability is not a good marker of audience receptivity to a movie. What I think is the problem really is the conflict of what she is culturally--a fascinating mystery--and what she would have to be to sell a movie--a fascinating character. Amelia Earhart's struggle to be a pilot in an age where that sort of thing wasn't done if you were a woman is a rah-rah story that we've seen far too many times. And, as roles for women have dried up, this archetype has been shoe-horned into increasingly anachronistic situations, which makes it a thousand times more irritating. Amelia is just the latest example of it. Think Keira Knightly's role in Pirates of the Caribbean, or her lamentable turn as Elizabeth Bennet, or Guinevere in King Arthur. Keira Knightly is the embodiment of this awful trope.

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.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to forgive shitty obligatory biopics if they did them of actual feminists.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

No one wants to see movie about hairy-legged, braless women. /sarcasm

[jlc.livejournal.com]

What, no Bra Burning: the Musical?

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

The Aviator is actually phenomenal. There is a crash scene in it that is crazy and DiCaprio is really great. You could probably cut 15 minutes from it and it doesn't really have an ending, but...I would say specifically that I find its flaws to be less noticeable than those of The Departed.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The point is The Aviator looked boring, so I didn't go see it. Ditto for Amelia. End of story.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Amelia did look dull as dirt, though.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, both trailers sucked (if I remember The Aviator's correctly). I'm just saying, in that case, the ads were wrong, it's fast-paced and exciting.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Seconded that The Aviator is actually really good.

Regarding this:
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.
I had a sudden thought -- I think it might also be true to say that this happens to female characters more often than males, which is what defines the fact that we write from a male-dominant point of view. Or, like, if it weren't the case that female characters are one-note and flat, then we wouldn't have a male-dominated writing view. Maybe that's nutty...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. You wouldn't get female characters being one-note ninnies without a serious bias against writing actual female characters in the first place, you know?