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.

I have said this before, but tinkerbell and the great fairy rescue

Nearly all characters are female, and are fully realised, not ciphers or plot-moving devices and they possess a range of virtues and flaws, not just the stereotypical girl ones- they should bravery, initiative, resourcefulness, they have agency and an inner life, but they aren't boy characters wearing girlmasks iyswim

best of all, no one falls in love! the film is a paean to female friendship though

i really enjoyed watching it with my then 3 yo dd, shame this was probably the only film that put her and her world front and centre; nearly every other children's film is a wander in guyland, no matter how well written

dd and other girls make up half the population. They deserve better than to see their faces on a big screen as eternal sidekicks or flesh for conquest, while meanwhile, the real life is lived by people, that is to say, men/boys :(

again, its been mentioned before - but almost all of the Studio Ghibli animations have very strong female characters for girls.

My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke...

You can't really blame Disney for the lion king storyline or non realism wrt natural lions - it's the story of Hamlet. Same with 10 things; taming of the shrew. Either would be a decent place to start a discussion on Elizabethan culture but they were written in an era where female roles were portrayed by men on stage so would all have a little of a characature about them

SGM I am pleased to read about your name. Family Guy is one of those things that you keep reading 'oh it's perfect comedy one you get into it' but after seeing one episode I thought 'I never, ever want to see that again'. Your name makes more sense now.

I agree about Peep Show. Basically all the characters are awful in some way, regardless of gender. (I also love that Big Suze is a countess or something now, it's like she played the role in RL...)

I've never watched more than 5 mins of Miranda, is that a show with a kind of unattractive female loser as a lead? Or is it disappointing?

I watched something called Happy Endings the other day. The 3 women worked in fashion, PR (not sure about the 3rd job) and one was ditzy and promiscuous, another was a neurotic, ball busting control freak and the third was the pretty and nice one. It was friends all over again apart except one of the male leads was gay and one was black.

What really bothers me about Family Guy & American Dad is that the creators see themselves as very, very liberal. OTOH One joke from American Dad that did make me laugh was when the dad, Stan, was talking to another American white male and says something along the lines of, "but what really pisses me off is that we don't have all of the privilege any more, now we only have 90% of the privilege and that just really pisses me off."

I think the creators of Family Guy really DO get how sexist the storylines are, they're doing the whole "hey, it's so ironic, that means we can get away with it!" thing. They get to play out making up storylines where women get abused, where a baby constantly wants to kill his mother basically just for being his mother, where a woman accepts her fucking awful husband and even really fancies him, but have a safe "out" of supposedly being cleverer than their target audience.

I think Green Wing was pretty good on the female character front - in fact in my head I can only think of 5-6 male characters and 8-9 female ones - and they weren't all young/pretty either. In fact the only character who was their mainly because of his hotness was one of the male medical students.

Oh AND can I just play feminism with nature programmes for a second? It's always fun to imagine nature progs without the "the gender politics of the savannah resembles that of 1950s america" viewpoint. For instance, a pride of lions exists as a stable and supportive environment for female lions to hunt together and raise their cubs. They usually permit only one male lion to accompany them, as a sperm donor and bodyguard.

Flippinada, haven't seen 50/50 so can't comment but cancer, coupled with 2 female leads and Beaches springs to mind.

Shameless has had some fascinating female characters over the years - Fiona, Debbie, Veronica, Yvonne, Libby etc. Not exactly role models for the middle classes.

EAM, if a new male takes over the pride is it not true he usually kills off any existing cubs ?

I think Miranda is OK. I've only seen the first series, but I liked it and there were some hysterical moments. I suppose the obvious criticism of it is that the premise is 'single woman seeks man,' and all the stuff about her being unfeminine and gawky, but I think I can deal with that as being part of the overall deliberate 1970s sitcom aesthetic. But she is very endearing and charming in a way that, say, Jeremy and Mark from Peep Show are not, so even though she perhaps thinks of herself as a loser, I actually don't think she is!

What I like most about Miranda, and what I think is most feminist about her, is that she is fun, and the character has genuine fun, which I think is not something you often actually see women doing on TV. She might get hung up on how tall she is or her love life, but then by the end of an episode she usually says "to hell with it" and ends up playing Fruit Friends. I find that really refreshing.

And yay woman comedy writer/performer on prime time TV too ...

There must be some more positive portrayals of women out there

Princess Leia from Star Wars
Ripley from Alien
Private Benjamin

But they're all 20 years old. Pre Backlash.

Apart from Miranda, who recently?

Oh I know. Possibly - that recent French film with Catherine Deneuve - Trophy Wife. That was good stuff.

that 70's show.

Donna was great, a self confessed feminist and the one we're supposed to admire over the other one (can't remember name) who's more compliant. And daft, ditzy, self obsessed and pretty nasty too.

I remember reading a blog a while ago about the changing portrayal of women in film. It was about how, the more oppressed women are the 'safer' it is to portray women as strong and capable, such as the characters in the studio ghibli films, but when women start gaining more rights and status, then there is more need to undermine and downplay strength. Women can be shown as full human beings but only when there is no real threat to male dominance.

Can't find the blog post but did find this while looking. why western girls need japanese animation which is quite an interesting comparison of Disney and Miyazaki films.

Yes I imagine that's why films like All About Eve and other Film Noir stuff, many of which showed women as really strong, real characters, were made pre equal rights legislation. Mind you they always ended up with her getting her man (because that was obviously the main point of her life) but at least while doing so, she was a real person, not just an also-ran.

I think ER was good for female role models and feminist storylines. There was sexual harassment, drug rape, abortion, sex discrimination, abuses of power, maternity leave issues, women in leadership roles etc.

The women of Battlestar Galactica are quite interesting (and all real, fully formed characters), although we do get a lot of mixed gender messages from them. Laura Roslin is probably the most straightforwardly feminist character on the show. I love Starbuck too, but it's a shame that she mostly swings between either behaving in a really hyper-masculine way or being a total mess. I don't think anyone has pulled off a really good action hero woman character since Buffy/Sarah Connor/Xena - all 1990s (I haven't seen Kill Bill or Crouching Tiger though, so the characters in those might qualify). Not that women have to be action heroes to be good characters, of course.

In a feminist way or just because it was scary and had robots?

I love Battlestar - though I agree it's quite scary/disturbing in places. I didn't expect to like it, but I did. I like how Roslin isn't a young slip of a thing but she ends up with what you assume is a good sex life, much less angsty than the young ones. I don't care for the porn-bot implications of six though, and Gaius is a feminist nightmare ... so I try to pretend the ending didn't happen.

Btw, whoever said Bones on the other page ... I agree. And I like that the character is relentlessly less good at 'feminine' emotional skills than her male partner. It is presented as something she struggles with, but as an integral part of her character, and both her best friend and her partner manage to accept that is who she is (apart from occasional frustration). That's pretty good IMO.

Having said, I was quietly furious when some patronizing bloke told me a while back that loads more women were going into forensic archaeology (his discipline) 'because they all want David Boreanaz' ... as if they couldn't possibly be wanting to be Bones. Twit.

I think six is very interesting - she is a very complex character if you count all of her incarnations as being "her" - they start out identical but then become different. The one who is a porn-bot is the one who isn't her, she's just in his head.

I liked it in general not because the women weren't screwed up messes but because they were just as complicated and messed-up and flawed and complicated as the men.

LOL LRD he may as well say the rise of women in forensic science is because we all want David Carruso. The CSI effect.

I typed that while looking sideways at my screen, pausing, and raising my sunglasses.