food for thought and much munching.

[kaigou]

Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women

I think the major problem here is that women were clamoring for “strong female characters,” and male writers misunderstood. They thought the feminists meant [Strong Female] Characters. The feminists meant [Strong Characters], Female.

Did female action heroes matter?

...the total prominence of the female action hero in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by her total erasure in the last ten years, makes her look like just another fad–something that was fun in the 1990s, like grunge, raves and Seinfeld. And if we could just consume her and then throw her away, like every other female type in the media, maybe she wasn’t all that tough in the first place.

Men and Female Action Heroes

What [Hollywood movie-makers] did instead was to come up with a formula that they thought was the one that had brought about success to previous female action hero’s movies: they placed beautiful women with well-shaped bodies wearing tight costumes and then they made them fight in them. Apparently, they thought that that was all it took to make a female action hero movie successful. They based movies on the protagonist’s good looks and sex appeal, but, actually, that formula was virtually wrong, which was a fact proven by the low box office income that movies like these obtained. What Hollywood should have realized, adds Larson, is that the movies that feature female action heroes that did well in the box office, did not only show a pretty woman with a nice body and revealing clothes, but they also showed them as strong, witty and successful.

From an academic essay titled "Female Action Heroes: Different but Equal, or Equal and the Same":

Male heroes are also presented as young and attractive, although they are more often older and more experienced, their clothes not as revealing. It seems at least possible, that while both female and male action heroes could be the objects of a sexualised or erotic gaze, women seem to have this potential more deeply ingrained in their characterization. Indeed, there is something of paradox in the presentation of many tough heroines, as they must represent in some ways both highly sexualised and feminine characteristics, while simultaneously stronger and more competent than most men.

[...]

In some ways, the action genre is a hegemonic project of self-validation, providing a set of prescriptions for action, presumed to be correct, that women are free to adapt. What is being hailed as a post-feminist period may be centred on this very illusion of empowerment and inclusiveness. It seems that what these action films are tapping into is part of a wider phenomenon, where women are granted equality with men, but only if both sexes can act in certain preferred ways. [emphasis mine]

Also, the abstract of an article called "Are Female Action Heroes Risky Role Models? Character Identification, Idealization, and Viewer Aggression":

[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).

Comments

[hokuton_punch]

Brilliance indeed, regarding the lighter note. XD

Interesting essays! Thanks for the thinkings.

Ya Think...?

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

It seems at least possible, that while both female and male action heroes could be the objects of a sexualised or erotic gaze, women seem to have this potential more deeply ingrained in their characterization.

...This guy is almost catching up to what some of us female comics fans have known for freakin' years....
http://counterpunch.girl-wonder.org/totallyappropriatecovers.html

[pseudo_tsuga]

I find many of those essays' theses unconvincing but I do agree there's a trend towards making a character "strong" by letting her kick ass, which isn't the same thing.

[leorising]

I showed a friend the "Wild Child" video you'd posted, and he was rapt. He made me promise to refer you to an lj comm called halfamoon -- and so have I done. Nope, haven't been there yet myself, and won't get there 'til this weekend; he insisted, and I promised, and so it is.

Enjoy?