Had an interesting conversation recently on the subject of the role of women in comics and comic-book movies, and here is my opinion.
Frankly, it sucks that in 2014, writers still cant figure out what to do with girl characters.
Let's take the X-men movies as fairly typical example, and focus especially on "The last Stand" in particular.
Who are the main women characters? Well, we have Jean Grey, aka Phoenix, and Oro Monroe, aka Storm, and we have Mystique as the bad girl. And none of them really do very much in the movie.
Mystique has one decent fight scene, and then is stripped of her powers, and considering that she's basically naked covered in blue paint, I feel like its mostly exploiting her sexually rather than making her cool.
As for Storm, she is supposed to take over for Professor X as the main leader of the X-men as well as the head of the school, but its Wolverine who ends up actually leading the team against Magneto, despite the fact that he hasn't been around much. And what does Storm do? Not a whole lot.
And as for Phoenix, she does even less before the climax of the film. I mean, she goes bad and joins Magneto, but Magneto doesnt even seem to have any plans to use her during his assault on Alcatraz. She's supposed to be this super powerful being, and he just basically has her follow him around looking blank.
Yeah, she starts blowing everything up at the end of the movie, but can you imagine any little girl sitting in a theater and saying "I wanna grow up to be like her?" Neither can I.
Yes, these movies are mostly marketed at boys and men, but come on, would it kill the writers and directors to give us a female character who can kick butt with the best of the boys?
What do you guys think?
Comments
Hitting the nail on the head
It's a continuing problem in comics and it has a name, "Women in Refrigerators".
The explanation of that phrase is kind of gross but yes, women characters in comics are often de-powered, deleted and eventually dead.
Some of the women in recent movies have fared a tiny bit better than the one's in the latest X-Men. Lois in Man of Steel is brave and strong and so is Jane in the latest Thor. But there are no super-powered females in any movies in the lead role. Sadness.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
comic book heroines??
In general, I agree with you.
Found one which I liked though.
Jennifer Garner -- Elektra
A friend of mine liked the character so well that she uses the same name as her alias when writing. ELEKTRA.
Anesidora
Elektra
A very good character. Tough as nails.
Much like that other tough gal, Lara Croft.
Sadly very much a niche in film history.
On the reverse side, there is the Anti-Hero, the conquerer of male chanauvism, Erin Brockevitch. For me, the best portrail in the film is the characte played by Albet Finney. Very understated, not full on like most American Actors (they mostly don't do subtle).
lets face it
that movie mishandled almost everyone, half Magneto's army were x people of various teams.
i'd love to see a good supergirl movie.
YES!!!!!
YES!!!!!
And then there's Modesty Blaise...
...who had three movies, My Name is Modesty: A Modesty Blaise Adventure presented by Quentin Tarantino, Modesty Blaise by Joseph Loser... whoops! I meant Joseph Losey, and a one-hour Modesty Blaise pilot for a projected television series.
Modesty Blaise started out as a comic-book character, and her appearances on the big screen happened so long ago that many now living can't remember her, not to mention the fact that their quality left something to be desired, by modern standards, at least (no CGI!), but in the comics, and in the derivative books, she kicked ass.
Their only real problem was that they were written by a guy, which explains almost everything that falls slightly short.
I have all her books and most of her comics (in reprint).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesty_Blaise
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
A superhero/villian story with strong female characters...
"Worm" is a web serial, not a movie or comic book, but it is my favorite superhero/villian story, and one of my favorite stories period. So I figured it wouldn't hurt to promote it here.
Most of the main characters and many side characters are female and make intelligent use of their (sometimes less than amazing) powers.
It's free to read here: http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
Although be warned, the story is pretty dark and you may lose a lot of time reading it as it's nearly 2 million words.
Comic Code
We still live with this stupid idea of normal. That men must be the hero's and women submissive. The idea of a powerful women being a role model for young women doesn't work with the brain washing people are being exposed to.
Our dominate culture is so running on fear and loathing it cant break out of this med-evil mind set, they remain welded to the old standard of white men making all decisions and present there cultural bias to the world as fact. Laura Croft is not politically correct Neytiri in Avatar as good as she is was blunted so the film could be sold.
I don't follow the underground not mainstream comic specialty books is there any real characters to be found there?. Is there titles drawn by women?
Misha Nova
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
Show me the original version
Show me the original version of a medieval story where there is a submissive woman and a male hero.
There aren't any.
In fact, stories like that have never existed.
You know, the 'stereotypical' story of the knight fighting the dragon to save the princess? There are NO stories like that. They were manufactured in the early 20th century with bits and pieces taken from a variety of fairy tales and folk stories.
There are stories that include dragons and knights, dragons and princesses, knights and princesses etc but never all parts together.
Usually women as portrayed in stories and myths throughout the ages were shown as strong, but in different ways.
To put it simply, they had different weapons.
Whereas a man would use logic, willpower and brute strength, the woman would use cunning, espionage, seduction etc.
As it was in real life.
Lets take the Renaissance for example, especially the merchant, banking and noble houses of the Hanseatic league and the Italian states but also Europe at large. There are as many famous strong women as famous strong men. Both sexes were equally educated as both were expected to take on the family assets, values and fortune should there be no one left other than themselves. There are many strong women and the plots and intrigues that permeated the era had as many influential and powerful women as men.
To put it very simply, for every Niccolo Machiavelli, there was a Catherina Sforza.
so what else is new
but I will say that Geena Davis in Long Kiss Goodnight kicked butt pretty darn well. Also Modesty in print was pretty spectacular too.
Buffy was one of the better TV series but beyond that....... ummmm......
k
True...
...and I completely forgot Honey West, mostly because I didn't like the Anne Francis TV show. She was a female private eye before she was bowdlerised as a television "babe," though. Never made it to the strips, as far as I can recall. She was only in print.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_West
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
We must be on like a wavelength or something
A few months back I got some old Honey West episodes from my local library, and they did not disappoint.
But as far as women comic book characters in films, what about Emma Frost, the Ice Queen? She comes from Boston, so she can't be a dummy. She was pretty kickass. And how about Scarlett Johanson, as the Black Widow? I've rewound and rewatched the scene in Iron Man 2 where she beats up about a dozen guys without getting more than slightly irritated.
Carol Danvers
Ever since the House of M crossover event, Marvel has had this on-again, off-again love affair with Carol being one of the most powerful heroes on Earth.
What I would love to see is a Captain Marvel (they changed Carol from Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel in 2012) movie with someone like Piper Perabo or Katee Sackoff playing Carol. With ties to her being in Avengers 2. That would be so amazing! It would require a complete rewrite of her origin, as I don't think a single movie could set the stage needed with the original Captain Marvel and the Kree, plus Noh-Varr.
Still. It would be awesome!
~And so it goes...
To Play Devil's Advocate
I'd like to make two points against you, if you don't mind (and as the title implies, some of this is done for the sake of contrariness, but also to at least think about it rather than just agree...)
First, picking Last Stand biases the question to begin with. It wasn't a good movie, so you're not going to find great roles in it. Nature of the beast.
Second, there's been a profusion of female action stars over the last 10-20 years. I pick Buffy the Vampire Slayer's success as one of the big starting points of the trend, but you can probably find other examples from the 90's if you care to look. Superhero movies are one of the last bastions of the male action hero. Non-superhero movies are increasingly made for strong female roles with the male role being less important. Take the recent Disney movie, Frozen (which I quite liked.) The whole point of the movie was that the two sisters handled their problems themselves, with sisterly love, and the male romantic lead was not necessary for the resolution. I don't think there's a major problem if one genre remains for the male action hero, even if I still like better movies than Last Stand.
As always, YMMV,
Titania
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
The solution
is to write your OWN stories with ass-kicking women heroes. I'll read them, as long as they're not biased towards femininity and overly girly and touchy-feely.
You wrote "Appropriate Punishment" because you were sick and tired of all the feminazi crap that's flying around. You can do it.
should't
there be katana hilt's over their shoulders?
Women as Heros
You might try
A Whateley Academy Tale
Jade 1 - Coming Out
By Babs Yerunkle
Zip
Hit-girl in Kick-ass movie is
Hit-girl in Kick-ass movie is pretty bad ass.
Women heroes
I agree, hit-girl is awesome.
I've been really disappointed with the way Marvel and DC keep reinventing themselves for years now, especially how the female heroes seem to get left by the wayside or reinvented as sex kittens, and it's part of the reason I decided to write Naughty or Ice and the whole Hyperverse thing. I want to show that women van be strong characters and not super-powered damsels in distress. That said men do have a big role in the superhero genre so I'm trying to work in some good male characters too while keeping it an enjoyable universe to explore.
Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3
What about Barbarella?
Who can forget the movie! (those of us old enough that is)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062711/
I bunked off School shortly and got a friend (who looked 16) to let me in the Fire Exit of the Embassy Cinema.
Then there is that hero of the west, Calamity Jayne.... :)
Trying to look at the subjet objectively I get the distinct feeling that because of Film Magnates like Cecil B Demille and others, women were portraid in much the same way as Children, i.e. to be seen and not heard.
Throuought the last 100 years of movie history women are in the main seen as weak and inferior to the men. In the main, this reflected the roles that women played in Society.
The along came the revolution, bra burning and womens lib. Still the Movie makers with very few exceptions carried on with business as usual.
There are exceptions naturally but even in Silence of the Lambs, the heroine is shown to have weaknesses.
To cut a very long story short, the title of that much maligned book seems IMHO to be very apt.
'Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars'. That just about describes it all.
However people like us here have feet in both camps. The challenge is,
CAN WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Get your pencils/keyboards sharpened ladies!
Katia in Afghanistan
Katia was surprisingly well recieved, and I have spoken to no one that did not like strong women.
G
Uninspiring for the future
Honestly, it seems to be getting worse since the 90s. More worryingly far too many comic / movie writers seem to assume that 'strong female character' basically means 'violent' or 'empowered to be a sexual object'. Strong characters don't have to out do an 80s action heroes body count or be sex kittens to be strong. Strong characters (male or female) are strong because of an inner strength not physical qualities. Let's not even get started on what my opinion is the misogynistic abomination that is the New 52.
I've nothing against most of the male heroes in movies and comics. I adore Booster Gold and like Batman and Superman just fine. The trouble is there should - by now - be an example of a great new female hero, ethnically diverse hero, or LGBT hero somewhere out there. Yet the creators at the big comic companies and studios through the 90s and 21st century have had the chance to address this and completely failed. Instead, half the time when they do make a half hearted effort we get brief retread heroes - old names rebranded and flipped to be a woman, minority or gay character - who eventually fade away and get replaced by the original white straight male version instead of creators taking the time to develop great new characters in those categories with their own stories to tell (a few exceptions to this exist but the basic point I think holds).
Focusing on female heroes, where there have been female heroes from the 1940s onwards there has been a consistent failure to properly utilise them. DC reboot the New 52 and we lose Donna Troy and Stephanie Brown while Starfire stays but loses about 150 IQ points. I've lost count of the number of female superheroes that have the physical dimensions and poses that even a barbie doll would think was being a bit unrealistic. The counter argument that male heroes present an unrealistic version of the male physique has some merit but misses the fact that male heroes aren't casually sexualised the same way. Not to mention that the female superheroes are wearing increasingly less and less. I mean seriously, if you got bitten by a radioactive wombat and decided to fight crime as Wombat Woman at what point do you think 'let's wear a bikini that doesn't protect my modesty let alone my vital organs?' I think back to the comic covers of the mid-1980's when I got into comic books on the cusp of my teens and compare them to now and the modern ones are basically comic porn far too often. I've seen a few in the last few years that I would have been embarrassed to have taken home as a kid for fear or what my mother would say. Heck, some of them I'd be too embarrassed now to buy as a grown woman due to the images they depict.
The irony of this is that it's self defeating for everyone if nothing changes. If comic books were written that presented a more balanced mix of women, ethnically diverse and LGBT heroes presented a way that wasn't demeaning then it would sell more books by widening the audience in turn making more money for the companies in book and film sales. Right now I wouldn't encourage my young nephew (let alone my even younger niece) to read many comic books due to the content. I got him a Tiny Titans book (basically an all ages version of the classic Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans line up) for Christmas which he loved but I've no idea where the comic books I enjoyed as a preteen are now for the next step for him. As for a comic book role model for my niece in the cinema... Hit Girl isn't it that's for sure. Neither is Elektra. I honestly can't think of a female lead movie superhero that would be inspiring right now.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Have you read
Batwoman? Even though Dan Didio's decision to backtrack and not allow Batwoman and her girlfriend to get married caused the the creative team to quit the book, it's been a great read.
Or, how about Captain Marvel? With the new Marvel Now, Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel. She's an integral part of the Avengers. And so far, she's being written as a real part of the team, not an add on.
Next month the new Ms. Marvel starts and she's a muslim shapechanger.
Give them a try.
~And so it goes...
Yes and No
While I enjoyed JHW's run on Batwoman and I am enjoying DeConnick's on Captain Marvel, all three characters are retreads of older ones who have used those names before. There was Batman's 1950s romantic interest Kathy Kane (as opposed to the current lesbian Kate Kane), a fair few Captain Marvel's before Carol Danvers including 'my' Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) so in effect we've replaced a prominent black Avenger with a blonde white woman, and Kamala Khan is something like the third or fourth Ms Marvel, most recently replacing Danvers.
I hope I'm wrong but the publicity around Kamala Khan also worries me a little as it has has focused more on her religion than her character (I don't recall Marvel's last fanfare announcement that they were introducing a Jewish hero for example) and I want to see strong female, ethnically diverse and LGBT characters for whom the selling point is their powers, their heroism and their uniqueness not just which box they tick.
I probably want my cake and to eat it.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
If the movies are bad enough...
...what about the spin-off toy lines? I remember in the aftermath of The Avengers / Avengers Assemble, the action figure ranges omitted Black Widow - both in terms of not having a toy, but also in being absent from the box art...
There were also a couple of strong female characters in the animation Young Justice, but that was cancelled after only two seasons - there's been speculation that Cartoon Network aren't interested in ratings so much as toy sales. Possibly dumbing down content as well, given the reactions I've read to Teen Titans Go! and Beware The Batman...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
This made me remember an article I read...
From The Mary Sue
Where Paul Dini of Batman: TAS, Batman Beyond, Tower Prep and Young Justice talks about his problems with WB Animation not wanting girls to watch superhero shows.
~And so it goes...
Right om target
Absolutely agreed women are so underrepresented in the media.. That's why Im so over the top about the new star wars. Let the cynics be damned... ❤❤❤❤