Women, the Struggle for Equality, and Bad Entertainment
It’s become pretty obvious that women are trying to make an impact on Hollywood, big business, and the government. And this is absolutely fantastic. I’d love to see a woman as President, I’d love to see more women leads in movies and television, and see the glass ceiling in the workplace be shattered throughout all industries. And I also don’t believe I’m the one white male who thinks this either. However, the message we seem to be getting is women don’t just want to have equality, they want to dominate. But is this really the message they are trying to emulate? While it can feel like that, I don’t think that is really what’s going on.
A progressive message in movies
When I hear about movies that have a strong progressive message that takes away from the enjoyment of the movie I am often reminded of old Christian movies. Christian’s have often struggled to make good content in their movies, (and entertainment in general), they find a point they want to make in a movie and build their characters and story around it. When you as the consumer go to watch it, you immediately understand the point but are bored to tears watching the story around that point. Christian movies tend to build strawman arguments around themes they want to hit you over the head with rather than explore these themes from two sides. It’s kind of the point though. When someone believes they are correct they tend to believe the other side of the story is not worth exploring.
This is the trap I’ve watched movies fall into over and over again. I hardly ever give a movie with Oprah in it a second thought because I know it’s likely to be packed with points it’s trying to make. The theme overtakes the story and the story, characters and audience suffer. Star Wars has also fallen into this trap, Kathleen made it clear she wanted a strong female protagonist, and what was delivered was a female protagonist no one could relate to, not even women. She was an excellent pilot, better at fixing the Falcon than the man who owned it for decades, and a crack shot with turrets and is stronger in the force than anyone we’ve seen before save characters in video games.
However, The Force Awakens really didn’t attack men outright. Sure Finn was a bit of comic fodder, but it didn’t feel like he was being emasculated in order to make Rey look better. He was, for the most part, a fun character.
We have characters like Holdo who I think Rian was trying to write as a surprise good guy but ended up making her character just feel disingenuous. Holdo could have been an amazing leader, but instead seemed to be created to make a point about mansplaining and men having an issue with women in authority. However, with Padme, Leia, and Mon Mothma, the Trade Federation/Rebellion was run by a woman at the head and no one ever brought that into question. Not even the fans!
Fast-forward to the sequels and all of a sudden we seem to have an issue with women in charge. What changed? Star Wars didn’t change, Star Wars has always been about equality among gender and race and no one ever questioned that. The thing that changed is the changing of hands for the franchise and people inserting their desires into the film.
Belittling men to artificially narrow the gap
Throughout Star Wars an argument can be made that the director is belittling men in an attempt to make women look better. Kylo consistently throwing fits, Luke attacking his nephew and refuses to train Rey, Han Solo reverting to be a smuggler and being a dead-beat dad, while Leia remains general just as she’s always been. I don’t believe the intention was to belittle men but when a large portion of fans come out of the movie with this perception there is a problem.
The above video was scrutinized by many fans, the short clip makes Leia into a controlling and annoyed female and turns Luke into a useless bumbling idiot. If LucasFilm hadn’t set a tone of ‘female good, male bad’, and hadn’t already made an assassination on Luke’s character, it’s likely the backlash would have been minor, if there had been any at all. However, with a track record like LucasFilm since Disney, it’s hard to ignore.
The problem is, just like in the clip above, many of the approaches given for female empowerment become less a service for women and becomes more a disservice to both men and women. It makes the statement that women cannot be at their best unless men are at their worst. This is not what Star Wars ever intended, Star Wars has a history of creating bold and capable men and women that also have struggles they must overcome. Clips like above and characters like Rey remove the need for others, creates characters that are completely self-reliant and makes the characters unlikable and unrelatable. Without a good story with good characters, the message is lost no matter how good that message is.
Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel
The main differences I feel that there is between Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are the actresses and the apparent emphasis on women empowerment. Wonder Woman’s actress Gal Gadot and the directors seem to have understood that they needed to first make a good movie and the message that women are capable leaders will take care of itself.
Captain Marvel has decided to go the other route and preach women empowerment and has allowed their star Brie Larson to go on rants about not having so many white men on her tour and white men critics for her movie. She wants diversity which is fine, but she’s created an enemy out of people who would want to see her movie become a success. But the hype for the Captain Marvel movie has dropped drastically as Brie continues to let us know just what she thinks of a male audience.
Conclusion
We want more movies with women in lead roles. We’re dying for more good stories and to end the tireless loop of retelling old stories, (looking at you Disney live-action movies). We want to encourage women to act and direct and produce movies. Many men are well aware that a woman doesn’t need a man to become a successful woman, but we are also aware that no one is an island, no matter their gender. We all need help, we all need support. Don’t turn your back on us, we really are here to support you if you are willing to not make us the enemy.
