Strong Female Characters

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  • Strong Female Characters

    An interesting, revealing article from the The New York Times about the Strong Female Character in movies: http://nyti.ms/mSaSpK


  • #2
    Re: Strong Female Characters

    Great article. Thanks for the link.
    Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

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    • #3
      Re: Strong Female Characters

      I found it kind of luke-warm. It's an editorial, one person's opinion, but I don't consider her an authority and she doesn't back up her thoughts with anything more than musings and interpretations. I think what she has to say is important, but to be kept in perspective.
      Vancouver Screenwriters Meetup Group

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      • #4
        Re: Strong Female Characters

        I think she is being a bit selective. Not helped by the story she told of bursting into tears when "taken" to a shooting range. Was she "taken" at gunpoint? She couldn't say "No thanks"? And what's so bad about shooting? I was range qualified and taught thirteen year old kids, boys and girls, to shoot. It's not like she was being forced to shoot Bambi.

        Anyway, the points she makes can apply just as often to make characters. Look at Shaun in Shaun Of The Dead, his life is in just as big a mess and falling apart, but that doesn't make the character any less true or interesting. We may not like that "person" if we'd met them in the real world but as a character we watch on screen he was great.

        And that's the point. While we want to identify with characters, to like them and to cheer for them we also have to see them suffer pain, loss and crisis in order to see them rebound and triumph. Any move that shows its protagonist gliding serenely through life before achieving their goal is going to be a pretty boring movie.

        A "strong character" in a script can be a weak person, just as a tough Sergeant Major could be a weak character if the role is badly written and one dimensional.

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        • #5
          Re: Strong Female Characters

          She's really simplifying what defines a "strong female character". Strong women are allowed to cry. They're allowed to have vulnerabilities. The difference is, they face those vulnerabilities and do what they have to do.
          Chicks Who Script podcast

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          • #6
            Re: Strong Female Characters

            This article strikes me as being rather confused. The funny thing is, she is evidently aware of the source of her confusion, but brushes it under the rug:


            Maybe what people mean when they say “strong female characters” is female characters who are “strong,” i.e., interesting or complex or well written — “strong” in the sense that they figure predominantly in the story, rather than recede decoratively into the background. But I get the feeling that what most people mean or hear when they say or hear “strong female character” is female characters who are tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to scowling and not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone.
            In every meeting I've had where we're talked about strong female characters - and I write this as someone who has spent a lot of time working with a production company to get a female-lead action movie made - a lot of people said "strong female character" a lot, and nobody ever meant it as "tough, cold, terse, taciturn, and prone to scowling."

            If you bear this in mind, a bunch of her other complaints sound rather silly, eg:

            The absurdity of the strong-female-character expectation becomes apparent if you reverse it: Not only does calling for “strong male characters” sound ridiculous and kind of reactionary, but who really wants to watch them?
            Again, this isn't silly if people are talking about complex, interesting, or compelling characters - rather than emotionless muscle(wo)men. Women characters get shortchanged in Hollywood movies ... a lot. You'll hear a certain type of female lead (the second lead to the male star) derided as a "handbag" (eg, something toted around to make the star look good). "Strong female characters" means, if nothing else, something other than a handbag.

            Similarly:

            Funny, Mitchell remarked, Kristen Wiig’s character in the movie didn’t exactly strike him as particularly strong — she actually seemed like kind of a mess.
            She's hanging a lot on this very confusion here. It seems pretty clear that Feig was talking about strengh in the way the writer here is dismisive of, and that Mitchell focused on the other meaning, and in an unscripted conversation things got a little sidetracked and because it's a radio conversation, the smart people involved didn't let it slide into a semantic conversation and just ran with it.

            She talks about this "plague" and yet it's odd to me that she doesn't really do a good job talking about how these taciturn female characters are dominating our entertainment ... or even showing up in it at all.

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            • #7
              Re: Strong Female Characters

              Strong means we want active characters, instead of passive or reactive ones. Same rules for male leads.

              I think she really just wants to hear that it was leading lady material to go weep and read in the car for hours.

              Sorry.

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              • #8
                Re: Strong Female Characters

                Based on this article, this woman seems like a big dork.

                Ron is right, she briefly touches on a fair definition of a strong female character, but everywhere else, the article veers wildly off course. She needs a better editor.

                Now, I'm as liberal as the next liberal, but what was the point of starting an article on strong female characters by getting political and bashing her boyfriend's family. They wanted to go to an indoor shooting range - not buy crates of AK47's on the black-market and hole-up waiting for Obama to instigate martial law in the U.S. so they could start a revolution. (BTW, Happy 4th of July everyone!)

                And I like Jane Austen as much as Emma Thompson, and apparently Zombies, but this chick really missed out big time. Shooting at a shooting range, indoor or outdoor, is awesomely fun. And good marksmanship is an essential skill to have for when the Zombies do come, since you have to be able to shoot them in the head from a safe distance.

                And now I've veered wildly off course. But I don't have an editor. So, in conclusion, the article is dorky - and so am I.

                The End.
                "The Hollywood film business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S Thompson

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                • #9
                  Re: Strong Female Characters

                  Yeah for a second there I thought she was going to say that she picked up the gun, got high off a huge rush of adrenaline, then had a blast shooting the sh!t out of stuff.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Strong Female Characters

                    Here's a related article: Women as Violent Characters

                    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/mo...in-movies.html
                    Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

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                    • #11
                      Re: Strong Female Characters

                      Originally posted by JeffLowell View Post
                      Strong means we want active characters, instead of passive or reactive ones. Same rules for male leads.

                      I think she really just wants to hear that it was leading lady material to go weep and read in the car for hours.
                      This.

                      When she wept for being at a gun range, not because of a recent murder of a loved one, but because she was a democrat, I just thought: lame.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Strong Female Characters

                        Originally posted by Why One View Post
                        This.

                        When she wept for being at a gun range, not because of a recent murder of a loved one, but because she was a democrat, I just thought: lame.
                        Agreed. If I saw that in a movie I'd role my eyes at her.

                        That would actually be a great scene for an annoying character who gets in the way of the protagonist.
                        Chicks Who Script podcast

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                        • #13
                          Re: Strong Female Characters

                          I'm really confused by this reaction to her crying. She's not allowed to cry unless she has a good reason?
                          Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Strong Female Characters

                            I'd view the hypothetical movie character as weak. Not at all because of the crying, but because of everything before that... It's just kind of absurd to me. If being in that environment was that detrimental to her emotional health, and she's with someone she presumably loves...she should have said something to him - even if it was punctuated with sobbing and tears. Then I'd have viewed her as strong.

                            But when her "problems" are not having access to restaurants other than chains, and temporarily being exposed to beliefs she doesn't agree with and her reaction is to keep it bottled up until it boils over. And when it boils over to retreat...

                            That ain't strength to me.
                            Ring-a-ding-ding, baby.

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                            • #15
                              Re: Strong Female Characters

                              She strikes me as smart and a good writer (I've read some of her work before), and yet so much of this is questionable.

                              The idea that there is some rash of this unrelatable "strong female character" type in movies is just strange. (Where are they, exactly?) And the idea that men in movies are now often neurotic and goofy only seems right if you're focusing in a limited way on comedies. Even when the main men in those comedies are neurotic and goofy, they usually get the chance to have an arc and grow up by the end. The stereotypical bitchy women and sex objects in so many movies very rarely get to grow or change or have a happy ending that they author and that's particular to what they want in life. THE HANGOVER is a classic example of that; Stu hooks up with the ridiculous Heather Graham character (who will get nothing from the interaction), eventually straps on a pair, then tells off his evil ball-buster fiancee. Hooray!

                              I just read another comedy script yesterday, THE ESCORT, which like THE HANGOVER was quite good but had the same sort of blind spot. Three guys in the movie arc and grow but no women do, the two main antagonists are women, and the plot turns on a hot mother and daughter who for no apparent reason are immediately attracted to our main characters.

                              Do the math and you find very, very few movies these days where the gender breakdown of the protagonists/arcs/happy endings is reversed, and it's all about the women, with men only peripheral or antagonistic. (BRIDESMAIDS is the only one I can think of). We take for granted and/or forget how incredibly lame and uninspired that status quo really is...
                              Last edited by marcal; 07-04-2011, 02:51 PM. Reason: clarity

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