Symbolic Destruction of the Femine in Pop Culture
Women are men, men step aside
The hero archetypes that have existed in storytelling going back more than 5,000 years had a commonality noticed by Carl Jung. The characters that often repeated, even across cultures and civilizations, repeated themes over and over as humans coped with civilizing themselves in villages and cities while suppressing their animalistic urges that upset the community. In humans, Jung asserted, the Personae was the person we presented to the world, the Shadow was the sexual and animal urges we try to control, the Anima is the conception of the feminine in men and the Animus is the conception of the masculine in women.
A common criticism of Christianity are the similarities to older myths, most notably the virgin birth of the son of God and rising from the dead (many other traditions are cultural traditions from the vast Roman-pagan empire). This criticism fails to notice that the repetition of these myths serves to prove Jung’s theory of the “Collective Unconscious,” that these archetypes, such as the Savior Archetype, repeat again and again because humans need and crave these stories to inspire them to strive.
The Anima/Animus is the important balance of masculine and feminine traits in both men and women. The masculine unconscious is aggression and the feminine is passivity, and in the development of our individuality as a person, we must explore these qualities in ourselves. Jung wrote:
“…becoming an ‘in-dividual,’ and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as ‘coming to selfhood,’ or ‘self-realization.’”
In cultures with rigid gender norms, people will often live un-individualized lives, relying on their personae and giving into their shadow in secret.
This doesn’t mean swapping gender roles or suppressing masculine and/or feminine parts of the unconscious. It means that one needs to explore these things in themselves; for men, it may be being more mindful, more compassionate, or expressing their feminine unconscious through art. For women, this might be being more assertive, taking leadership roles, or learning typically masculine skills like working with tools.
As the foundations of all of the great civilizations were built on these archetypal stories, a pernicious philosophy that is driven by the shadow (jealousy, resentment) and tries to overthrow civil order and hierarchy were born from Kant, Hegel, Marx, and postmodernist philosophy (namely Critical Theory) which ignore the thousands of years of archetypes, the universal concept of balance (Yin Yang, good and evil, light and dark, masculine and feminine) and what motivates humans to strive. The ultimate goal of these philosophies is to deconstruct society by minimizing it to simply “oppressive,” and create a bureaucratic aristocracy of intellectuals through the promise of “equity.” It isn’t enough that these ideas killed around 100 million people in the 20th century; the newest iteration of it is postmodern thought which deconstructs and devalues everything down to the definitions of words.
In Hollywood, the traditional archetypes still exist. Despite some Easter eggs relating to postmodernism (Baudrillard’s incoherent Simulation and Simulacra), The Matrix sees Neo as the reluctant hero who must venture through hell (taking the Red Pill and waking in the machine world) and defeat the tyrannical father (the personification of the machine overlord) and in the end of the third film is held up in a Christ pose after sacrificing himself to free humanity. In “Interstellar,” the protagonist Cooper reluctantly crosses the universe through a wormhole, sacrificing a life with his daughter Murph, and later himself in order to retrieve data from a singularity to save humanity. He ends up in a personal hell of sorts, seeing his daughter in the “Tesseract,” every moment of her life playing for him, torturing him with regret until he learns that love and connection his daughter Murph are supernatural and defy the laws of the universe (earlier in the film, Cooper reduces love to being a chemical reaction for childbearing to which his colleague Brand tells him “we love people who have died”). For a science fiction film full of quantum physics and wormholes, overall it feels religious, the Hans Zimmer score is even centered around a huge church organ.
However, a theme has emerged in the past few years that keeps repeating itself. Not only are women taking the role of the masculine hero, but the masculine hero is stepping aside or sacrificing himself for her to occupy the role of the hero. This is arguably deconstructing the old to make room for the new. However, the female heroes offered in these movies aren’t in any sort of anima/animus balance because popular culture is rooted in postmodern collectivism, i.e. that it’s only important that women are taking over, not individuals who happen to also be female, and that collectively, they’re replacing men. The common traits of men in these films are goofs, comic relief, or cannon fodder used only to make sure the women reach the top of the hierarchy in the story. However, it’s not the feminine that ascends to the top of the hierarchy, it’s a woman possessed by the Animus. This means that these films are repeatedly saying that power is attained only through the masculine.
Most critics of “remakes with females” or movies with “badass” martial artist women (often defying the laws of physics) say that it’s just a cheap gimmick by an industry out of ideas. That is partially true: the majority of box office sales are Super-Hero movies, remakes, reboots, or sequels. Studios are taking few risks due to the fall of physical home media sales due to the industry’s failure to compete with streaming services. However, studios don’t feel it’s a risk to keep repeating this in films because the mainstream culture believes the destruction of the animus is the same as women gaining power in society or smashing the patriarchy. It’s not, it’s actually repressing femininity.
Charlize Theron, a 5’9” woman weighing 120 lbs, the face of Dior in ad campaigns that capture the power in the feminine, is a talented actress that has portrayed a wide range of characters. Two of her recent roles, however, were almost entirely masculine. In Mad Max, she’s a bald truck driver covered in filth trying to find some female amazon utopia for the tyrant patriarchal god-king Immortan Joe. The film being titled Mad Max is misleading as the story is about him acting as a secondary character to Theron’s “Furiosa,” ensuring she returns to the former patriarchy and watching her and the women lifted above as Max walks away with a “my job here is done.” Max is a skilled security guard and blood donor to save Furiosa to fulfill her destiny. In “Atomic Blonde,” Theron’s spy character fights off large male Stazi and KGB agents and nonchalantly takes a woman lover, all while her male counterpart is a criminal loyal only to himself. Theron didn’t put on weight and muscle like Gal Gadot did for Wonder Woman, a character who is strong because she’s supernatural.
Wonder Woman was a more complex character, especially in comparison to Warner Brother’s lackluster “DC Universe.” She’s from an island of women sworn to save the world from Ares, the God of War. It is steeped in the archetypal stories from Greek Mythology which is full of anima/animus and shadow symbolism in it’s angry and imperfect gods and goddesses. In the film, Wonder Woman has some balance of feminine qualities (she and Steve Trevor romance, she is excited at the site of babies) but the film of course injects modern concepts of “female strength” onto 1918 Europe as she compares a secretary to a slave, refuses to wear contemporary female fashion as a disguise, and is offended she can’t sit in on a strategic war meeting with British diplomats and military commanders. She breaks through a trench stand off, giving British troops the morale to charge the enemy after which she launches off a piece of steel held by men to kill a sniper by blowing the top off a church. At the end of the film, she defeats Ares in full Christ pose, and his spell of hatred is lifted from the fighting soldiers (doesn’t really explain the deaths of WW2, or every other conflict after Ares’ death). She doesn’t receive these powers, however, until Steve sacrifices himself by flying the airplane full of chemical weapons out of danger and blowing it up. Her experiencing love for the first time gives her the power to kill Ares, but again, the male had to die in order for her to become powerful and embody the masculine warrior.
The Ghostbusters all-female reboot has a cameo in which Bill Murray is ejected from a window after which the women agree “he wasn’t ghostbusters material.” Unlike in the original, their receptionist is a man they objectify who is incredibly low IQ, and the antagonist is an “Incel” of sorts that releases ghosts because white men are losing their status. The characters were one dimensional oddballs including a fatty-fall-down, a psychotic, a nerd, and a manly black caricature. They wanted to play gender politics with androgynous goofballs, and is arguably an insult to the first movie, a fairly politics-free (possibly anti-government regulations) and comedy meant to make people laugh. The real point of the remake was to take Ghostbusters and replace it with people with vaginas and rake in the cash.
In Logan, Wolverine is given purpose again in his old age by protecting a young mutant with claws like his own. He fights an evil corporation raising mutant children to be engineered soldiers, trying to get the kids to safety. He grows to care for the girl, and as she holds him and calls him “daddy” while he’s dying, his final words are the heartbreaking “oh, so this is what it feels like.” Jackman’s run as Wolverine had come to an end and Logan would be his last, so the character had to die. However, we see again the male sacrificing himself to an animus-possessed female, in this instance literally a clone of him. She represents the next generation yet is just a biological female body encompassing all of Wolverine’s archetypal masculine traits.
The worst offenders are the newest Star Wars, Episodes 7 and 8. Episode 7 can be summarized as a clone of the first movie (“Episode 4”) with bigger stuff: multiple planets are blown up instead of one by Star-killer, a much bigger Deathstar by the First Order, who are supposed to be the Empire but are actually in rebellion against the Republic (who still call themselves Rebels…rebels against rebels?). Of course, the new hero is a woman, a “Mary Sue (woman who is naturally amazing at everything)” who can use the force with zero training. Rey is mostly androgynous, hair tied tightly back, draped in khaki rags, and sells scrap metal before being thrust into adventure. She momentarily shows compassion for Finn, right before traveling across the galaxy.
Episode 8 is the most egregious offender and is nothing more than a blatant attempt at (sub) cultural deconstruction; “kill the past,” “destroy the past,” “the Jedi are dead,” and many more references to destroying everything the Star Wars universe is known for. Luke, who was smiling watching Ewoks party the last time we saw him, is now an angry hermit hiding deep in space, not caring at all for his sister Leia, Han, or any of the ol’ gang, because his trainees revolted under leader Kylo Ren. Luke is found by Rey who follows him around, watching him milk some strange creature, before he reluctantly tells her very few things. Then Yoda destroys ten thousand year old holy books, because “destroy everything.” Rey defeats the last Jedi master of course, who can only muster up the courage to appear as an apparition (a trick Rey and Kylo performed earlier in the movie with ease) which in turn kills him, then Rey saves rebels by moving several tons of rocks with her mind. So, one movie threw away rules established in earlier films, the lore, the purpose of the earlier films, and the male protagonist sacrifices himself to make room for the anima-possessed biological woman to take his place.
Episode 8, despite being a vehicle to deliver the aforementioned trope, kept hammering away with postmodern moral propaganda. Poe Dameron, the heroic ace pilot, is humiliated by Vice Admiral Holdo, a purple haired woman (from the planet Tumbler) who is another masculine female. Erase any admiration for the character of Poe, that hotheaded toxic masculinity has no place in the rebellion against the rebellion! Instead of giving Finn a story in the movie, he travels to planet Capitalist Robberbaron with Rose Tico, played by the arguably attractive and slightly stumpy Kelly Marie Tran made to look like a frumpy androgynous transient, on a mission to a planet with a Casino for the Galaxy’s evil capitalist, which serves the purpose of delivering generic neo-Marxist critiques on “the rich.” In showing child laborers/slaves (which makes no sense in a fictional universe in which farmers own multiple robot workers), Rian Johnson shows his desperation to make the establishment in the movie to be the same as victims of slavery on a casino planet, and aligning the evil First Order with the evil capitalist robber barons who can somehow profit from the First Order obliterating several civilized planets in an economic union.
Rian Johnson’s injection of an already incoherent ideology is a great example of the delusion of virtue in media. To serve postmodern feminism, simply casting women in powerful roles is moral and virtuous. To serve intersectionality, the conflict in the movie must represent the postmodernist revisionist history in which the White man is the evil, intolerant tyrant at the top of a stolen hierarchy, being fought by a rag tag team of every other demographic. Like the elite in hollywood and politics that think they’re some sort of resistance movement even though they are hegemonic controllers of culture, a massive political bureaucracy is made the victim in the new Star Wars’ movies.
The world of videogames has been subjected to the combination of historical revisionism and the masculine woman trope. Electronic Arts, for some reason, features a British female soldier with war paint and some sort of unrealistic prosthetic arm. To be absolutely historically clear, there were no British women in combat roles. After their previous game’s depiction of WW1, fans were angry not only that a woman was on the cover (as women were probably 0.0000004% of combat forces), but a British, painted up woman with a robotic arm; it looked as if Battlefield went from hyperrealism to a goofy alternate history, and fans angrily asked why this character was the focal point of the entire marketing campaign. EA chief creative officer Patrick Soderlund replied:
“These are people who are uneducated — they don’t understand that this is a plausible scenario,” he told Gamasutra in a recent interview. “The common perception is that there were no women in World War II. There were a ton of women who both fought in World War II and partook in the war…you have two choices: either accept it, or don’t buy the game. I’m fine with either/or.”
EA apparently took the route of Disney in insulting their (Star Wars) fanbase. The response on gaming blogs are all the same, calling the critics “manbabies,” or “mysoginists.” In no part of business school is the answer to insult your fanbase and comply with the media echo chamber in insulting them. In a war almost entirely fought by men, why make this fictional heroine the focal point of the game? Why not, at least, feature a woman from a country that historically had female fighters (USSR) or partisans (France, Poland)? Someone at EA had a stupid idea and can deflect by framing critics as “anti-women.” EA stocks plummeted anyways, and pre-orders of the game are bad enough that EA management should expect a shakeup.
Every film (and one game) mentioned is filled with ideas that have somehow become unquestionable truth for which the basis is simply a philosophical movement that has been challenged and discredited, yet spreads like a plague through it’s intentional “slow march through the institutions.” This is mainstream logical thinking to half of the United States, and any criticism of it’s fundamental assertions has the quick escape of yelling “racist!” What these movies are doing is furthering parts of this ideology to effect mainstream thought, and anyone not in the mainstream is “insane,” or “evil.”
Objectively, they’ve convinced women that overcoming their historical oppression can only be achieved by giving into their masculinity fully and letting their shadow reveal itself as a symbol of their new liberty. The message here is that masculinity is the only strength, and that femininity is weakness; arguably, the virtuous postmodern man can atone for his sins by becoming less masculine. The logical outcome is females gaining power by denying their femininity and males giving up power by denying their masculinity. Like the outcomes of this philosophical thinking that history has shown, this is the oppressed becoming the oppressor. This ideology, in which women think they’re making progress, has resulted in women being less happy than women in the 1950s: the women who wore skirts and dresses every day, spent hours on hair and makeup, raised their children, cooked for husbands were more satisfied with their lives than the so-called liberated, anima-possessed modern woman. This is an unfortunate tool of class warfare that has made women reject femininity and think they’re doing the right thing. “Feminism.” Ha.
To close, Evengeline Lilly recently put feminist bloggers into the mental gymnastics tournament: they had a tough woman hero, yet the actor said she wanted to make the character “feminine.” Subsequent articles either rejected her position or warped it to fit their ideology.
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