question in re [western] female characters

[kaigou]

In US/EU television or movies: can you think of any female characters that are genuinely stupid?

I don't mean the dingbat of the screwball comedy, unaware of the 'real world' but savvy about people. I don't mean the so-called dumb blonde (who actually manipulates really rather cunningly to obtain the material goods she desires, when you really take a look at her). The most common form of 'stupid girl' characters I can think of in western media are usually like the bubbleheaded archetype of the daughter in Married... With Children or Chrissy in Three's Company: the kind of person who stands around, helpless, while everyone tries to diffuse the bomb, and at the last second says, "why don't we just unplug it?" and reveals she's been standing next to the outlet for the bomb's timer. Her apparent bubbleheadedness is meant to show she sees the world in simpler terms, and therefore isn't fooled by certain behaviors/appearances that fool everyone else (even as she's otherwise fooled by everything that anyone else finds commonsense).

In a sense, I guess perhaps I'm looking for the female equivalent of the stereotypical 'dumb jock' -- all brawn, no brains, and not even any perceptiveness or flashes of intuition, let alone an ability to see to the (emotional) heart of things. Just plain, well, stupid.

Anyone?

ETA: was on TVTropes (and managed to make it out before dark!) and came across this instance of The Ditz. It's a classic example of what I mean when I say "stupid/airheaded/scatter-brained in some ways, but then shows flashes of insight, intelligence, or some other kind of savvy -- sometimes to deliver an emotional message (usually to one of the main protagonists), sometimes for the sake of a punchline o' irony. In this case, the purpose is the latter (comedic irony):

Rose, confronted by a robber at the front desk of the hotel the girls are running, is too ditzy to even realize that she's being robbed. The robber eventually leaves, with nothing, in frustration. The trope is subverted as Rose immediately calls the police, providing a detailed description of the robber, where he's headed, what kind of car he's driving, etc., ending with "Who is this? Oh, just someone who's not quite as dumb as she appears," much to the delight of the audience. The subversion itself is then subverted as we hear Rose's next line into the phone: "Oh, this is four one one?"

However, when I say "stupid," I mean a character who wouldn't just be unaware s/he is being robbed... but then wouldn't even realize after-the-fact, but would just carry on. Like an extreme of Ignorance is Bliss, perhaps.

Comments

[kaigou]

Ahahaha, Harmony having minions, yes, I remember that line!

For the duration of BtVS, Harmony was definitely dumb as a brick... but she was also a tertiary character, at most. She was more of a plot device, really -- in that she acted as the lead Mean Girl's greek chorus. So I'm not sure she was really developed enough, at all, or had enough screen time to display anything other than mindless yes'ing.

Once she turned vamp, though... hmm. As her character was more developed, she did achieve some level of basic skill with work -- we see her doing general secretarial stuff, at least, with some basic competence. She also, as I recall, started to show (or was given screen-time to show) a little bit of the dingbat (topsy-turvy non-left-brain logic) mingling in with her previous flat dumb-as-a-brick presentation. That is, I seem to recall points where one of the other characters would try to explain what's going on (usually presenting a really rather complex issue, often with the point subtly implied that "it's so complex, see, you'd never figure this out so this was all a waste of my time and you should just learn your lesson and stop trying to figure things out") ... and Harmony, in the tradition of USian-media bubbleheads everywhere, would go right to the heart with a simple statement like, frex, "So really it's just that you like her, and she doesn't like you" or something equally simple, direct, and very nail-hammer-bang.

The irony in my mind is that to do such comedy well (and the actress playing Harmony really proved, IMO, that she had major chops for that kind of comedy, much like Christina Applegate had)... you can't be stupid on all levels. It takes incredible timing and delivery to pull of that combination of so-stupid and so-sharp, and that's not an easy skill.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Now you have me wondering about dumb-as-a-brick male characters. If someone is genuinely stupid in both analytical and intuitive terms, how do you build a story around him? I suppose if I were a less fussy media consumer I'd already know the answer, but as it is I'm not sure I could id an utterly stupid male character any more than I can think of a truly brainless female character.

Which, clearly, Harmony wasn't by the end.

To lurch off in a slightly different direction, though -- and this is an actual question, not a disagreement disguised as a question -- in the "why don't we just unplug it?" scenario, is it always intended that the character has intuition, or a kind of practical intelligence that the show tells us can be more effective than mere analytical intelligence? Because knowing nothing more than the scenario, I think I'd read it as not so much an indication of grounded common sense, and more an indication of someone who is actually so unbelievably stupid that she didn't even think to mention that there was a plug, or that she was standing so that her team couldn't see it, until the last ten seconds of the countdown.

(Or, if the show's rhetoric was appropriate, as an indication that she and her opinions were so routinely sneered at by all around her that she had simply assumed that if no one else mentioned the plug, that would mean it was too stupid to mention at all. Although in that kind of a setup she wouldn't be asking her faux-naive question. She'd be huddled with nervous tension until the last second, when she pulled the damn plug in desperation because it wasn't likely to hurt.)

[kaigou]

I think both are pretty common. If an airheaded (usually female) character doesn't get one, she'll get the other. I think it's meant to offset the rather offensive characterization of a female character as dim-witted (thanks to the gender implication of 'helpless' -- a jock may be slow, but he's still not cast as helpless, unlike the ditz). That is, to rephrase your words into two versions:

a) the other characters have repeatedly explicitly (or implicitly) set her aside as less intelligent, or devalued/discounted her non-linear or non-bookish intelligence... thus she so firmly believes her own stupidity that she only speaks up when there's nothing left to lose. (Or in a less common version, at least in the US, she only speaks up after the fact, and even then usually only to whomever she trusts/likes the most.) That's when you get 'dumbass has a point' (and I'm not linking! get buried in TVTropes all by yourself!)

b) s/he's so stupid s/he doesn't even realize how stupid s/he is, which I guess would be a really extreme representation of "ignorance is bliss". Thus, speaking up about plug-in-wall may sound stupid (or may not) but just as s/he is unaware that 99% of the time s/he is dumb as a brick, s/he will then also be equally unaware s/he just said something really brilliant or insightful.

If you're old enough (or seen any reruns), Chrissy from Three's Company was a classic icon of the "so stupid she doesn't even realize how stupid she is," so she'd freely come out with the most bizarre, screwball-like, ditzy commentary or explanation. Most of the time, what she said made sense to her (but no one else), thus she continued to believe she could hold her own among other people. Which, in a sad/uncomfortable way, makes the joke even more on her, for not realizing how pathetic/stupid she was in other people's eyes.