food for thought and much munching.
9 Feb 2010 08:29 pm( A few links of essays about female action heroes that I want to remember, currently simmering on the way to becoming chocolate cake. )Also, the abstract of an article called "Are Female Action Heroes Risky Role Models? Character Identification, Idealization, and Viewer Aggression":
So if idealization is based on a wishful impulse, and identification is based on perceived similiarity... the subtext in there, as it seems to me, is that if I identify with, say, Sarah Connor in T2 because I perceive an existing similiarity between us, I'm less likely to be aggressive. Maybe. Maybe that's because if I consider myself akin to the character, I'm probably pretty damn confident in myself and don't feel I have to prove myself, hence less aggressive about it. If, however, I'm nothing like her but wish that I were -- in which case, she's a role model rather than compatriot -- then my wishful idealization will lead to aggressive tendencies.
Unh-hunh.
Assuming, of course, that the authors aren't conflating aggression with assertion, which is not the same but often taken as the same, especially when leveled against women claiming agency. I mean, little boys go through a stage of acting out in adolescence, learning the balance between assertion and aggression, and part and parcel is learning that fisticuffs aren't the answer to everything. Seems to me that the problem isn't that women idealizing female action heroes suddenly learn that fighting is the answer. The problem is that those women never even had the chance to ask the question.
And, on a lighter note, someone else's brilliance: Everybody's Free (To Be Fannish).
[Discusses a survey] designed to determine whether identification with and/or idealization (wishful identification) of a favorite female action hero was associated with aggressive tendencies. Results show that behavioral idealization of an action hero was linked to increased self-reported aggressive behaviors and feelings. Behavioral identification (perceived similarity), by contrast, was not significantly associated with behavioral or affective aggression and showed an inverse relationship with relational aggression.
So if idealization is based on a wishful impulse, and identification is based on perceived similiarity... the subtext in there, as it seems to me, is that if I identify with, say, Sarah Connor in T2 because I perceive an existing similiarity between us, I'm less likely to be aggressive. Maybe. Maybe that's because if I consider myself akin to the character, I'm probably pretty damn confident in myself and don't feel I have to prove myself, hence less aggressive about it. If, however, I'm nothing like her but wish that I were -- in which case, she's a role model rather than compatriot -- then my wishful idealization will lead to aggressive tendencies.
Unh-hunh.
Assuming, of course, that the authors aren't conflating aggression with assertion, which is not the same but often taken as the same, especially when leveled against women claiming agency. I mean, little boys go through a stage of acting out in adolescence, learning the balance between assertion and aggression, and part and parcel is learning that fisticuffs aren't the answer to everything. Seems to me that the problem isn't that women idealizing female action heroes suddenly learn that fighting is the answer. The problem is that those women never even had the chance to ask the question.
And, on a lighter note, someone else's brilliance: Everybody's Free (To Be Fannish).