Why Modern Movies Suck - The Strong Female Character

Sarah Connor Clary Starling Buffy Summers Ellen Ripley Marion Ravenwood Princess Leia Dana Scully Samantha Carter eowin VI Aaron Sun nyota Uhura Beth Harmon Kara Thrace and Rita vertaski these are just a few examples of the many intelligent, complex, compassionate, brave, compelling and well-known

female

character

s. writings that In the last 50 years, film and television

character

s have emerged that have left their mark on entire generations of audiences to the point that they still resonate with people years or even decades after their creation, but then there is a different kind of character, superficial and trivial. made an irritatingly unpleasant facsimile of these fine ladies of the silver screen, a phenomenon known only as the

strong

female

character, honestly it seems like almost every character without a chromosome and these days should automatically be labeled as

strong

, is one of the first words that appear. comes out of the mouths of writers, actors, directors and marketing departments every time they are asked about it and has been overused to the point that it has completely and completely lost its meaning, just another expected buzzword in the Endless salad of corporate-approved words to sprinkle over every new project now, in fact, Emily Blunt said it better than me.

It's the worst thing that has ever happened when you open a script and read the words strong female leads that make me roll my eyes. I am outside already. I'm bored. Those rules are. written as incredibly stoic, you spend all your time acting tough and seeing difficult things, oh stop it Emily, I can only like you to a certain point, although she is absolutely right about this, the cliché of the strong female character is so hollow, simplistic and without sense like all those. Soulless corporations that will happily use social movements as an excuse to sell your most useless tattoo that was probably done in an Indian sweatshop, but why is this happening?

What differentiates a good female character from a strong female character? Well, let's explore this together. The first problem is that of Competition. Let's see that one of the central elements of any character. Arc presents them with a challenge or difficulty that they must overcome, whether it be an opponent to defeat, a goal to achieve, or even a personal sentiment or feeling. weakness that needs to be addressed, all of this requires the character to grow or change in some way to become better than they were before, they will often be given some sort of Mentor figure to guide them on their path and will likely struggle and fail along the way.

It's part of the learning process and the more you see a character suffer setbacks and personal failures, the more you tend to empathize with them. It's basic human nature. Storytellers have known this for thousands of years, and that's why most stories tend to follow the same basic structure, taking the audience on an emotional rollercoaster and delivering a satisfying payoff at the end, but strong female characters They don't work that way. A strong female character will almost always be extremely good at whatever she does. succeed from the beginning or learn on her own with minimal effort are generally not allowed to have older mentors to teach them things, especially not men, because that would send the message that women need men to help them succeed.

The result is a character who doesn't actually face any serious struggles or challenges or suffer any major setbacks from which she has to recover. They are almost never allowed to fail because writers incorrectly associate failure with weakness instead of seeing it as what is actually an unnecessary part of her personal life. Failure to grow in itself does not define the character, what matters is how they react to it and if there is no failure then there is no possibility of growth and development, what strong female characters tend to focus on is self-realization, idea that he already has everything.

She needs to succeed and all that is required is to let go of the limitations placed on her by others. The message to the audience is simple. You are perfect just the way you are and it is the rest of the world that has the pleasant change that one can. I don't see how it's counterproductive for people when they try to apply that to their real lives, when Captain Marvel forcefully removes the control chip that keeps her powers contained, it's a symbolic gesture of the strong, empowered woman removing her shackles and His Society puts them on.

That she can realize her true potential is a good idea that probably made the writers congratulate themselves, but the problem is that when you remove the struggle, the failure, the weakness, and the vulnerability, you don't leave the audience with much to take away. what to empathize. We don't need to get invested in whether a strong female character is going to succeed because the writers don't give us any reason to question or doubt it and instead what you end up with is an empty shell of a character with a superficial semblance of strength. and empowerment. but nothing substantial or significant drives it and it all just seems like wish fulfillment, the desires and angst of the writers to see their character do the things they always wished they could do and if you want an extreme example of this, just watch one episode from She-Hulk, which brings me to my next point.

Physical strength. One of the most tedious and embarrassing aspects of

modern

movies

is watching a hundred-pound actress fight her way through a series of extremely accommodating stuntmen who make her twice her size because the writers mistakenly believe that's the only way. for a character to be strong is through feats of actual dual physical strength because, after all, how can a woman be equal to a man if she is not as physically capable as him? The problem is that you will always find it difficult to sell a fight between a man and a woman on screen for obvious reasons, men are generally bigger, stronger and more robust, with denser and heavier bones, stronger muscles, heavier shoulders. width, longer limbs and superior upper body strength.

Add all that up and you have a huge advantage. When it comes to the application of physical violence, the problem is that this reality does not fit very well with the

modern

Hollywood ideology that men and women are exactly equal in everything, so how do they avoid it? One might ask: do they structure carefully? and choreograph fight scenes between men and women so that the woman makes clever use of her surroundings, the element of surprise or improvised weapons to even the odds, do they hire large, physically imposing actresses who actually look like they could take on a grown man or say?

We'll just pretend that size and strength don't matter anymore. I think you already know the answer, like in this scene from the King woman where Viola Davis, 57 years old and five feet five inches, confronts a 29-year-old woman who is six feet tall. man who is built like a heavyweight boxer, is literally half his age and twice his size, a single blow from these Haymakers would probably break most of the bones in his face, fracture his skull and cause serious brain injuries, and yes, there she is taking them down like Rocky Balboa, no one believes it because they know a real fight like this would be over in like four seconds, but if you want an extremely rare example of how things like this would happen, check out this hitman scene where the main character Kate hits. a CIA officer in the face as hard as she can and barely stops him, then he quickly punches her in the butt in response, this is what actually tends to happen when you try to defeat someone who is bigger, stronger and harder than you. and the thing is, all of this misses the point: actual physical strength is not what makes a character strong.

Someone who chooses to fight even if he is at a huge disadvantage is actually much braver and more convincing than an overpowered superhuman who dominates everything around him, like in this scene from The Lord of the Rings where Eowin faces one of the most powerful enemies. powerful and terrifying in all of Middle Earth, you can see how scared and small she is compared to him, she's basically a fly that he could easily CRUSH and the fact that she doesn't just snap and run says a lot about her strength of character. , which is much more important than the strength of your muscles.

What I'm trying to say here is that all these attempts to push female characters as physical equals to men seem more like envious wish-fulfillment or spiteful revenge fantasies than credible character traits that fit naturally into a complete story, most of them. Sometimes it is the writers who introduce their own desires and personal ideology into the script. Instead of trying to tell a compelling story that will resonate with the audience, none of this is to say that it is impossible for a woman to beat a man in a fight. Of course, the differences between them are not that great, but it has to be that way. . carefully thought out and implemented to look believable on screen Sarah Connor was an incredible Kick-Ass fighter in Terminator 2, but the movie never tries to pretend that she is bigger or stronger than the men around her, instead using weapons, the environment, surprise, ambushes, threats. and taken hostage to even the odds and it works, you believe that she could really achieve the things that she does and the natural result is that you become more accepting of her character.

Another strange aspect of the strong female character is her general lack of human personality traits. and redeeming qualities rather than being altruistic, compassionate, protective, vulnerable or flamboyant, they are almost always written as stoic, emotionally closed off, forceful, dismissive, touchy, domineering or aggressive - the same masculine traits that writers seem to find so toxic and unacceptable. in men who very rarely have any kind of romantic interest in men and are carefully written and dressed to avoid even the slightest hint of sensuality or attractiveness in any way, it all smacks of overcompensation, a kind of knee-jerk reaction to all those overly emotional damsels who get scared easily. hard pressed by previous generations of films, a desire to break away from tropes of women as compassionate mother characters or overly sexualized fantasy figures.

It's fair, there is absolutely nothing wrong with branching out and exploring different ideas, the problem is that if you take all those feminine ideas and remove the elements and replace them with nothing but the most stereotypical masculine traits, then all you really end up with are women who They clumsily pretend to be men like Galadrio of the rings of power, always trying to talk tough, squash their demand for authority and respect, and show it. doesn't ring true because that's not how women tend to act in the real world, the public knows that and if Emily Blunt's comments are innocent to the actress who is trying to play these roles, you also know that again, none of this It means that you cannot have assertive and authoritarian female characters who speak their minds and fight for their own side, but you have to give them something more than the superficial facade of toughness, like her, make them more physically powerful 4, decrease their bravery. and removing their challenges, weaknesses, and failures eat away at their relatability, so removing their emotional complexity and vulnerability makes them less likable, and the end result of all this is strangely bland, sterile, sexless, emotionless, joyless, characters. arrogant, condescending and unattractive.

People may not always be able to put into words what exactly it is. lack in them, but they know instinctively that what they are shown just doesn't feel right and doesn't connect with them and the more Hollywood tries to impose these characters on us, the more people reject them, it's kind of ironic. When you think about it, the strong female character should ultimately become her biggest weakness. That's all I have for today, go now.