This video perfectly captures Hollywood's problem with "strong female characters"

[Jilly]

The fluidity of gender roles is certainly the ideal. And you’re right, people, in and of themselves, aren’t sexualized – gender is. But the two are currently inextricably intertwined, and it is much too simple to say:

[quote=“popobawa4u, post:60, topic:86733”]
Don’t buy or sell into the notion of the commodification of human experience.
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Just because we recognize the malignacies within our culture doesn’t mean we can escape the insidious and sometimes unforeseen effects of such cancers – and I mean that for every, single person who has ever posted on BBS, ever. I can point my daughter toward as many positive role models as possible, and she’s gonna be Rey this year for Halloween (I spent WAY too much money on the costume, but screw it, it’s awesome). Yet, she will encounter so very many sexualized gender roles over the course of her childhood and adolescence from which I cannot possible shield her. It will affect her notion of body image and female power and on and on. We are currently engaged in the US in a presidential election where the Republican nominee in 2016 just said “grab her pussy.” We must have these types of conversations so that people, not gender roles, understand that our culture affects us whether we like it or not.

[L_Mariachi]

[peregrinus_bis]

Do everyone please stop believing that the media expression of life is representative of life. Do stop permitting it to influence.

I’m a radical on this, right? If you feed the machine with your consumption dollars, it grows stronger.

Males - if you really believe in empowering females, and that sexual portrayal undermines this, then ensure that you discard any materials exposing this in the slightest, and do not participate further.

It’s pretty simple. Break the media machine, and the entire thing falls apart.

[Nelsie]

The Godfather 1 and 2 form a pretty good diptych. It’s been a while since I watched either, so I don’t know that I’d put 2 as equal to 1, but I think it was pretty near. Godfather 3, on the third hand, now that was a precipitous fall in quality.

[MikeTheBard]

@Brainspore

forget about writing a “strong female character,” just write a character that would work equally well as either gender and tweak as necessary.

@mcv

they’re unable to write interesting female roles, but they are able to write interesting roles and give them to women.

See, to me, that just means more of a trope I call “guy with tits”, where an obviously male character is simply played by a female.

I’m not talking about a well done gender swapping, like the (awesome) new Ghostbusters, I mean a “female” character whose every action, motivation, and thought process is clearly reflective of the stereotypical male heterosexual normative. She thinks like a man, acts like a man, talks like a man, and kicks ass like a man- But look! She has boobies!

And I think this has a lot to do with the less intelligent males’ misconstruction of “strong” equaling “brute physical force”. I’d like to see more fully developed roles with actual strength of character- Courage, perseverance, conviction, a willingness to do the right thing despite the consequences- In a way that doesn’t involve just beating someone senseless.*

But more to the point, I’d like to see female characters that are recognizably female by something other than anatomy. Men and women think differently. They reason differently. They have entirely different methods of conflict resolution, problem solving, and social interaction. Men have a tendency to reduce these things to “hit it with a rock”, and I don’t think that those differences are best addressed by giving more women rocks. I definitely don’t think that being motivated by an urge to nurture, nest, or communicate their feelings makes a character weak.

Know who I like as a good, strong female character? Kaylee Frye. She’s totally a girly-girl who wants to dress in frills and be romanced and you get the feeling she’d thoroughly enjoy being barefoot and pregnant on a nice little farm somewhere- But she’s ALSO the best mechanic in the 'verse, absolutely confident in who she is and what she wants, is an unashamedly sexual being without having to make a show of it, and she’s at her best when she’s talking about what she loves. What she doesn’t do? Fight. She’s about useless with a gun and perfectly happy to admit it. Despite that, she will when necessary, and when she’s threatened and terrified, she still finds the courage to do what needs to be done- Courage without macho fearlessness.

Elanor Arroway from Contact- Brilliant scientist, brave explorer, hero, driven to succeed, strong lead- But the defining parts of her character are her personal relationships, her trust, and her emotional IQ.

Hell, even Sarah Connor is motivated by the nurturing instict- She’s not just heroically saving the world, she’s doing it because that’s what needs to be done to protect her kid. And the character has been played in a way that really reminds you of that.

Not just more strong female roles- More strong female roles.

---

• Which is also why I get really protective about not gender swapping the very, very few male characters whose heroics aren’t defined by violence- Jean Luc Picard, Daniel Jackson, The Doctor, Sherlock Holmes, MacGyver…

[MikeTheBard]

Also, just because-

[L_Mariachi]

@MikeTheBard

Men have a tendency to reduce these things to “hit it with a rock”,

What’s wrong with hitting stuff with rocks? We wouldn’t have arrowheads or obsidian knives or sculptures or dead enemies with big dents in their heads if not for hitting things with rocks.

[Mindysan33]

Thank you and fair enough, a point I thought I’d addressed above. I certainly don’t want to exclude transmen, of any kind, when talking about pregnancy. Given the one time a hollywood film had a man who was pregnant in a film, it was played up for laughs, this seems an even trickier point to discuss and pin down.

I had never heard of Butchbaby & Co, and it seems like it’s not just aimed at transmen who are pregnant, but also to people who identify as genderqueer in general or women who like to dress more masculine in general. I don’t know what that says about transmen who give birth, as I’ve not seen any stats on that. But this also seem like something hollywood would studiously ignore except as either a token attempt to be more inclusive of trans narratives (which they’d cast a star who most likely isn’t transgendered) or as in the example above, as a joke.

This is a complicated set of intersections to wade through, as we all know. My comments weren’t meant to be exclusive, rather to note that for the most part, the necessity of a uterus to have children generally means the majority of those roles are going to be played by women. Whatever the reality of this complex set of intersections are about gender, we’re also talking about the normalizing view of hollywood.

But most certainly, we need to have more realistic depictions of trans people in film, PLAYED by actual transpeople.

[avicebenner]

@Mindysan33

But most certainly, we need to have more realistic depictions of trans people in film, PLAYED by actual transpeople.

YEP

speaking of which have you heard Jen Richards recently got cast into a trans role that is not a punchline or dead?

[Mindysan33]

I had not. What’s the name of the film? I’ll look forward to seeing it.

[avicebenner]

No Filter: Brittani Nichols Didn’t Understand The Assignment

nashville!

[Max_Blancke]

Hanna ?
The Bride?
Ellen Ripley?
My daughter has plenty of very strong female characters to look up to. She even wears one of those very expensive Aliens limited edition watches.

When she was younger, there was Becky Sharp, Matilda, and all those Ghibli characters.