Casting a feminist gaze over film and pop culture

[flippinada]

I know someone has already started a thread about Grease (wanted to acknowledge), but also would like to discuss this more generally.

What started me off thinking about this today in particular was going to see a film. I got free tickets to 50/50 which is basically a 'buddy' movie/dark comedy about a young man who gets cancer.

Now I enjoyed the film but while I was watching it, 2 things really struck me. Number 1, there is no way a film like this would ever be made with 2 female characters in the lead. Number 2, all the female characters were a)stereotypes and b)only there cos of the male characters.

This then got me on to thinking about other films/tb shows I've enjoyed. I'll pick an example - The Lion King. Now, this is a film I loved. But looking at it from a feminist perspective, the messages it gives out are just awful. For example, the men (male lions) are the ones in charge and the women (female lions). Need a man to sort them out..and again, the female characters exist only in relation the male ones.

Now this has opened a whole can of worms. I'm thinking about my favourite films and tv shows (The Simpsons and Family Guy immediately spring to mind) in a whole new light.

Anyway, I'd love to hear everybody else's ideas and thoughts about this because I find it fascinating subject to discuss.

Can I namecheck StewieGriffinsMom here? Checks spreadsheet ;) I remember she said on the thread where people discussed where their MN nn came from and she said it was because she is the least feminist and most downtrodden female on all of TV (or something like that).

It really struck a chord with me and I haven't watched it since it's shit and not funny anyway.

SGM I hope it's ok that I posted that and I haven't got it wrong. Please do tell me if it is or if you'd rather I asked MN to delete the comment.

OP, have you tried Friends from that perspective, Ross and Rachel? Whiney bully who thinks totally different rules apply to him and the happy ending is of course when she gives up a great job to stay with a man who only wants her when he can't have her. Lovely.

I'm going to suggest the series Ringer as passing the Bechdale test. Female lead character, interesting relationship with her step daughter, decent thriller type plot.

SGM I always wondered why you chose that name and now I know. Nosiness satisfied :).

She really is a handmaiden par excellence!

Milly I'm going to look up Ringer.

Also (I'm all over the shop here) I was looking up theme tunes on Youtube for fun with my DS, showing him my favourite children's shows. Up popped the theme tune for Maid Marian and her Merry Men which was pretty cool...lead was a female character, she's in charge, sorts out all sorts of tricky situations.

Patty I've heard of Inbetweeners, but never seen it myself. My sister likes it. That's the one about teenage boys, right? What's your take on it?

Hazle, I know the plot line you're on about and totally get where you're coming from. I still haven't read the Friends thread but I can imagine. The bit where Monica says it's every girls dream to get married and she's been planning her wedding since she was a little girl? That's like man writing who thinks hey all chicks dig this romantic crap, they'll lap this up. Ehh.....NO.

Can I just say further to your last post SGM I HATE the way Meg is portrayed in Family Guy.

Actually I think the whole programme is seething with misogyny. I just can't watch it any more - I suspect the creator has a real issue with women.

Comedian PJ Gallagher's take on the difference between 80's chart hits and todays'. Funny. but horribly true

I always wondered about your name SGM - now I know. I bloody loathe Family Guy.

One of my favourite threads was the Friends topic doscussed in Feminism.

I love this thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1209195-Ways-the-TV-series-Friends-was-anti-feminist

I don't watch Family Guy, it seems a bit frat boy humour, but I've seen a few episodes.
Isn't there a running gag about the elderly neighbour's paedophilic tendencies? And the onus is on Christopher to avoid him. Hilarious

I urge you all to check out that comedy clip I posted. It really is funny! About MTV.
Americn Dad is by the same people? well don't overstretch those imaginations.

Really enjoying tht Friends thread again

Anyone else like Bones? Strong women in that, and usually passes the bechdel test. I can't bear phinneas and ferb, the sister never seems to win.

I live in a tyranny of cats as well.

Many's the time when both DP and I are pinioned in our seats by a cat, and out of reach of the remote control, so have to sit there and watch something like Deal or No Deal.

The cats don't give a shit.

A tyranny of cats

excellent collective noun

It is a tyranny

Four of the bastards darlings.

They own the house and everything in it and let us in under sufferance, it seems.

i worship them really

LOL @ tyranny of cats.

I thought your name was making a joke about you having a baby who looked like he would say very sarcastic things (and try to take over the world) if he could talk.

It's a good point about there not being a lot of recent comedies that aren't gut wrenchingly awful wrt women. I can only think of a couple of recent ones, both of which I thoroughly enjoy.

The first one is Peep Show. I don't know if you'd want to call it feminist as such, but I think it does make it quite clear that Jeremy and Mark aren't meant to be seen as "lovable losers": even though the set-up is superficially similar to something like Men Behaving Badly, it seems to me that the tone of it is quite different - they are straightforwardly losers and we're not meant to think "gosh those poor helpless men". Jeremy is quite definitely meant to be seen as a complete idiot, and Mark comes across as being weak and rather nasty and manipulative at times. But crucially, neither of them are rewarded for it in the way that say Ross in Friends gets rewarded: Jeremy loses every woman he gets together with through his own idiocy and has no career; Mark does eventually marry Sophie, but she then realises that she hates him shortly after marrying him, and he also keeps sabotaging the romance with Dobby. And the women in Peep Show aren't always sympathetic, but they are fully formed characters - Sophie is also rather horrible in her own way, but then at least she figures out how totally incompatible Mark is and dumps him. And Dobby - I can't think of many characters like her on TV - a normal looking, genuinely funny, genuinely geeky misfit woman who works in IT and delivers a magnificent, spot-on rant about porn to Mark. And refuses to put up with him being obnoxious to her.

But at the same time, it would be hard to see a comedy like this with women in the Mark and Jeremy roles, because TV will tolerate men being unattractive losers in lead roles, but not women. Perhaps the closest equivalent is something like Ab Fab, where they get away with it because the main cast were established names and the characters were just so extreme and funny.

And secondly, I would put in a vote for Arrested Development: again, all the characters are horribly manipulative and selfish, but all the women are real characters. Although it does that Simpsons thing of tricking you into thinking there are more women characters in the cast than there actually are.

The film 'A Few Good Men' markets Demi Moore as if she's on equal footing with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. Demi Moore is given all the trappings of a strong powerful woman, but when you look at what she says and what she does, it's just bullshit. She loses every discussion with Tom Cruise, he constantly puts her down, and his brilliance (and when he's not being brilliant, his tearful vulnerability) means that she falls for him.

And the girl Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You is even worse for that. She's given all the trappings of an actual feminist, interest in womens' rights and challenging males, but all it means is she strops about being moody while trapped in the plot of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. She melts in the ends, though. And young female students think she's a role model.