I don’t know what the numbers are but there are a good number of publications that have a much bigger female audience than male. Coincidentally guess why the Young Justice animated series was canceled? Because it had a much bigger female audience and the studio felt that made the series less profitable. The “comics is for boys” perception is a self-perpetuated lie, just how in the US cartoons are for kids but everywhere else in the world there’s a healthy market for adult animated series.
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To be fair, that’s mostly because the role wasn’t written as a female lead.
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I had always assumed that Alien was a British movie. It appears I was mistaken, Brandywine Productions is a US company.
A less-often asked question is: If contemporary Hollywood can’t figure it out, why not create media elsewhere? They are very much a bunch of insular cartels, and the values of their culture factor prominently in what they will/won’t do.
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Maybe that’s a potential solution to the problem. Get sci-fi/action/suspense/thriller writers to forget about writing a “strong female character,” just write a character that would work equally well as either gender and tweak as necessary.
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Or, indeed, any gender!
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Fine, bring in the walrus.
(Very well done video, hit extremely salient points while also being funny and self deprecating)
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Fair point!
It will be interesting to see how studios choose to cast Ancillary Justice if that novel or any of its sequels are ever adapted to screen. It’s mostly set in a futuristic human society that doesn’t concern itself with gender and the biological sex of most characters is never revealed in the text.
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Arg! No he hasn’t! Any representation of medieval Europe that doesn’t have the church playing a primary role in every single person’s life is about as close to medieval Europe as “Conan the Barbarian”.
Look, I’m not saying he should try to model medieval Europe, but choosing 10 of maybe 100 important characteristics of life in that period isn’t modelling anything. It’s simply the author deliberately picking and choosing what he or she want to take in order to make the story they want to tell.
It’s not the choice of a strong theme of sexual violence running through ASOIAF that I object to, even if I find it personally distasteful (I’m old and prudish). It’s the idea that the choice to include this theme was anything more than a conscious choice by the author [edit: removed my inappropriate speculation as to author’s personal reasons], is what I object to.
Trying to scrabble for a historical justification for inclusion of those elements is as stupid as trying to come up with a sports justification for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. It sells a lot of copies because a lot of people enjoy looking at scantily clad models. That’s all the justification it needs or should ever have.
GRRM is a masterful writer. He puts the themes he wanted in those books because he wanted to put them in his books. That’s all the justification that’s needed, and more to the point, that’s all the justification it has.
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As someone who enjoyed comics as a kid, and as the mother of a daughter who enjoys comics…
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Lots of comics in the Golden Age were in fact aimed at women:
Which is a largely forgotten history:
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The Faith Militant was pretty influential for a while there.
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In a way, that perfectly describes the problem and a (temporary) solution: they’re unable to write interesting female roles, but they are able to write interesting roles and give them to women.
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As early as 1911, and yes, I know it wasn’t actually in Hollywood then:
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That’s a fair point.
On the other hand, an extraterrestrial visitor reading this post and thread would probably conclude that the film industry began circa 1995.
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Because Hollywood is where the money and connections are.
If gender is a continuum, is there any such thing as an “interesting female role”? or are there just interesting roles?
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I think there are certainly cases where the gender of a character makes a difference and the role can’t be translated into a non-gendered role. I’d guess those are pretty rare cases, though. An action hero doesn’t depend on gender. A pregnant woman does. A man can’t get pregnant, as he doesn’t have a uterus. A woman can most certainly be heroic, though, as can a man.
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Kind of the exception that proves the rule, yeah?
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I’d like to think almost all roles can be played by anyone as long as they are compelling or entertaining. However it’d depend largely on what the filmmaker is trying to achieve, i can see how switching genders around might prove to be confusing or too distracting for movie goers
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