"It's time we had a female __________."
Actually, no: it's not.
I don't need Female 007. I didn't need Female Ghostbusters. I didn't need Female Doctor Who. Our culture is already awash in original female heroes. You just need to dip into the right source material -- and then you need to make your final product good.
Everyone loved Wonder Woman. While that movie wasn't perfect, it was still incredibly appealing -- and shock of shock, there was no need to steal a male character to pull it off. Again, if you choose the right source material - if you adapt the right comic or the right novel - you will find the female representation you crave. True: those characters don't often have the benefit of widespread name recognition. But maybe it's time we bring these already extant fictional ladies into the limelight instead of lazily attempting to coast on what has been given to men.
That's the problem with all but a handful of Female __________ properties: the coasting. As soon as creators get into that Female __________ headspace, all we get is That Character You Already Know... With Tits! And why watch that when we can watch That Character You Already Know... Original Blend? And that's not even getting into the terrible marketing campaign that invariably accompanies Female __________, which generally makes her movie/show sound like woke homework instead of a pleasurable diversion.
I think I know where Female __________ is coming from: a mistaken belief that a particular franchise's historical maleness somehow excludes women from its fandom. But that's certainly not my experience. As you may have noticed, I have zero trouble identifying with male characters. No one needed to throw boobies on Tony Stark for me to fall head-over-heels in love with him in all of his iterations. That's because my reading of Tony goes beyond his sex, focusing on his personality and his very human struggles. His dick, to put it crudely, is utterly irrelevant.
Bottom line: We shouldn't encourage the current generation to be so shallow and surface trait oriented. A character's innie/outie status is one of the least interesting things about her -- along with her color and whom she prefers to bang.
preach it sister. I'm 46. I'm in that "age group who hates woke characters and is racist and misogynist". Except I grew up watching Lynda Carter as Wonder woman, Heather Langenkamp taking on Freddy Kruger, Sigorny Weaver taking on Aliens, and Linda Hamilton taking on Terminators.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with strong female characters. Like you I don't want to see a female 007. What I did want to see was Hallie Berry get her own spy franchise after Die Another Day. What a missed opportunity that was! instead we got Catwoman....ugh.
And when hollywood does happen to throw an actual strong female character at those who love strong female characters, hollywood pans the character like they did with jennifer Garner's Riley North.