The radical notion that women like good movies
While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence.
Geek culture is big business. The big summer Hollywood blockbusters this year are almost exclusively drawn from comics and other science fiction, or fantasy franchises. From ‘X-Men Days of Future Past’ to ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ what was once a small audience has become a massive source of revenue for Hollywood. It’s also big business for the comic’s industry. The release of ‘Guardians’ sparked one of the largest sales months for comics in recorded history. This is great news for the two big players in the world of comic publishing, as they attract new audiences and new readers to their franchises. DC and Marvel have television and film media planned well into the next decade.
First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.
It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.
Check out all of the posts for our Children’s Television Theme Week here.
‘She-Ra: Princess of Power’ represents a network of powerful women who not only like each other, but they support each other, organize a rebellion against an oppressive patriarchal regime, and get shit done. The example this powerful group of women set for impressionable girls like myself is tremendous.
This has been a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. I’m an absolutely die-hard fan of ‘Sailor Moon,’ and part of that is because it served as my childhood introduction to feminism. That might be a little bit hard to believe, considering the superheroines of the show are known for outfits not much more revealing than Wonder Woman’s. Silly outfits aside (you get used to them), this show was absolutely groundbreaking. Its protagonists are 10 realistically flawed, individual and talented teenage girls (and women) who, oh, you know. Save the world.
While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence.
With a running time of two hours and 11 minutes, audience members are subjected to some thematic repetition, gratuitous gags, and an unnecessarily meandering plot. That said, there’s no shortage of amazing costumes and make-up to bolster a ton of sweet action sequences depicting mutants kicking serious booty. ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past,’ though, is disappointing in its general dearth of female characters and its under-utilization of the ones it does have.
Despite how blasé the plot and character development are, despite the racism and sanctioning of torture of ‘In the Blood,’ I love the opportunity to see a woman on screen who is physically capable, strong, and is ultimately tougher than every man she faces. We don’t have enough female action movie stars. But guess what? Women like action movies, too, and we want to see other women in them as the leads, kicking ass and chewing bubblegum.
Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!
True confession: I love the emerging trope of strong, detached female leads in procedural crime shows. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist, from the TV show ‘Bones’ was a seminal figure in this movement, and Elise Wasserman, workaholic, brilliant police officer from ‘The Tunnel’ is a more recent iteration.
Ruth Wilson as Alice Morgan and Indris Elba as John Luther in BBC’s Luther This guest post by Lauren C. Byrd previously appeared at her Web site and is cross-posted with permission. With all of the summer tent pole movies premiering, there’s been outcry from audiences (and critics) for the studios to make superhero … Continue reading “Alice Morgan and the Luther Effect: More Female Villains, Please”
