The era of strong women has arrived in cinema, and this is what is wrong with them

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We are shown superheroines, but it has not yet been possible to make them human.

On March 7, Captain Marvel, the second superhero film in two years with a woman in the lead role, was released in Russia. The life hacker understands how strong female film characters became fashionable and why we are facing not just a movie, but a harbinger of great changes.

Why are we talking about strong women

2019 is rich in films about strong women: "Two Queens", "The Favorite", "Alita: Battle Angel" and, finally, the superb Captain Marvel. It seems that the filmmakers have understood what the directors of TV shows like Game of Thrones and The Amazing Mrs. Maisel have not so long ago learned: stories with women in the lead roles - strong, interesting, lively, different - know how to collect cash.

Strong women have been spot-on in popular culture more or less always. Jeanne d'Arc, Jane Eyre, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Iovyn, who killed the Nazgul king, and Carrie, bringing bloody retribution to the offenders, come to mind.

The problem is that there are only a few such characters. They are exceptions to the rule, examples of unique women. The rest of the strong heroines often acted as assistants to men, even if they were many times superior to them in strength or experience (Leia and Luke). They were villains like the Snow Queen and Maleficent, or were a sexualized male fantasy of a strong woman.

In our seemingly so progressive time, research has shown that venture capitalists are ready to invest in a project presented by a woman in 32% of cases. And in 68%, if the same project is "sold" by a man.

If even now many subconsciously consider women "by nature" stupid … that is, excuse me, unadapted to complex tasks and leading roles, what can we expect from our great-great-great-grandfathers? And breaking these stereotypes turned out to be more difficult than rewriting the US Constitution.

How strong female characters were formed in cinema

For films about strong women to be successful, you need, in general, one key component - an audience that wants to watch such films. And while women lived in financial dependence, considering their first (or even only) mission to be childbearing and serving the family, Wonder Woman simply had nowhere to come from.

For us today to discuss feminism in the context of the MCU, it took only two world wars, when men went to the front, and women stood at the machines. And then industrialization, the proliferation of contraceptives, and two waves of feminism.

Until the 70s, strong movie heroines were either historical characters (1948 Jeanne d'Arc with Ingrid Bergman) or rare anomalies, such as Victoria from the 1931 German film Victor / Victoria. She disguised herself as a man to work as an analogue of the modern drag queen in a cabaret. Even now, such a scenario would be considered daring.

And in the 70s themselves, a strong woman on the big screen had one beaten path - to become a villain. In film noir, this trend has given us the image of a femme fatale who deceived or used men for her own benefit. Her weapons were beauty and female cunning.

However, the market was not content for long with one fam fatal. And more and more new types came to replace her. Here are the main ones.

Pretty woman with a gun

In response to the audience's desire to see a strong woman in an aggressive, masculine representation, but still attractive, the writers created a beauty with a pistol. This is a gorgeous woman, everyone's dream, with a weapon in one hand and mascara in the other. An iconic early example is Pam Greer as Foxy Brown (1974). She broke the mold of the conservative male society of the USA in the 70s, becoming the first African American actress to play the role of a sexy bandit.

Today, this image will seem to us vulgar and degrading the heroine to a sexual object, but at that time Foxy and similar heroines became a bold challenge to the status quo. In the 90s, another, already white actress named Pam continued the tradition in Don't Call Me Baby (1996), and Charlize Theron removed the nineties style from her in Explosive Blonde (2017).

Mother bear

At first, mothers were featured in films either as backgrounds or as antagonists. Hitchcock especially often used the figure of a crushing, even tyrannical mother as a plot tool. Another famous monster mom was Carrie's mother in the film adaptation of King of the same name.

But gradually a strong mother is transformed into an independent positive figure. She inspires the hero and performs the functions that in fairy tales would be assumed by the goddess or the goddess-protector punishing the enemies of the hero.

Sarah Connor from the first (1984) and especially the second "Terminator" (1991) can be considered the first iconic mother-bear of mainstream cinema. And Molly Weasley in the film adaptations of "Harry Potter" modernizes this image. True, they began to consider her strong only when she swore and killed Bellatrix in a duel. Was she like this before? Most likely, yes: the other would not have stood Fred and George. But did anyone notice this?

Sarah was not considered a mother bear in the first film. And to gain character, she had to pump up muscles and take a shotgun in the second.

The Chosen One

The further is better. Real queens and mythological goddesses gave impetus to the development of the type of the chosen one - a girl with a gift, special power or birthright. The first characters of this type to be included in the canon were Joan of Arc, played by Ingrid Bergman (1948) and Cleopatra (1963), played by Elizabeth Taylor. The vampire slayer Buffy Summers (1992), Leela from The Fifth Element (1997) and Rey from the new Star Wars trilogy have followed in their footsteps.

The extent to which the power of these women is real, and not fake, differs from picture to picture: Leela, for example, turned out to be just a living artifact. She is “made perfect” because that's the only way (according to the writers) Korben Dallas could fall in love with her in the finale.

Buffy, on the other hand, is written and played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, a very lively and imperfect girl. She suffers from the usual pains of ordinary schoolgirls: what to wear for graduation and how to please that dangerous but nice older guy.

Rey, on the other hand, disappointed critics and fans alike, becoming the new incarnation of the Mary Sue archetype - a female character who is unrealistic in her exaggerated virtues. In line with modern social trends, the producers of Lucasfilm are determined to make the heroine of the new trilogy "a strong female character."

And it turned out that it always happens when feminism is shoved down the throat of people - a heroine who can do anything. And this is not real power.

The smartest

An interesting type who has not been given leading roles before. No surprise: in one study where participants were asked to rate an applicant's resume for a science lab job, they found John to be much more competent and deserving of a higher salary than Jennifer. Although at the same time, only the name was different in their resume.

In another, children were asked what gender, in their opinion, the "very, very smart" hero of the story belongs to. And children of both sexes were unanimously inclined to believe that the hero was most likely a man.

But times are changing and smart is the new sexy. And Scully from The X-Files, Hermione and Lisbeth Salander, although they worked side by side with male heroes, loudly declared themselves as independent individuals. And as a result, they became much more popular than their film partners.

Kid

Another new character in mainstream cinema is the kid. Even 10 years ago, it was difficult to imagine the frenzied popularity of such a Disney princess as Merida from Braveheart, knights like Brienne or Arya Stark from Game of Thrones.

Boys flashed in popular culture before. I remember Pippi Longstocking (1949 and later), Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Josephine from Little Women (1933 and later). But this type has never been so popular, stylish and box-office.

Boys are becoming more diverse and visually: Merida wears a dress and long hair, but this does not prevent her from being strong and courageous. These heroines participate in popular romantic lines, and if not, they find genuine happiness and joy in other things, gradually trampling on the stereotype "strong means unhappy."

Ellen Ripley stands apart, who burst onto the screens thanks to the movie "Alien" (1979), but finally matured in the second film in 1986. Until now, she is considered the standard of a strong heroine in the cinema, collecting a little bit from different types.

Ripley is sexy, almost like a beauty with a gun, but does not focus on it and prefers comfortable clothes, like a kid. Her mother bear wakes up to save the girl Newt from the xenomorph, and she becomes the smartest when she sends the monster to fly in outer space.

Despite her trivial origin, she can be classified as a relatively new film type for mainstream cinema, but already favored by critics and audiences - an epic heroine. Which brings us to 2017's Wonder Woman.

What is the problem with superwomen

Comic book adaptations have a difficult relationship with female characters. So, the first superheroine appeared on paper in 1940, and a year later, Wonder Woman first appeared in the DC universe. But she had to wait for her film for more than 70 years. For comparison, the first Superman short came out in 1944.

The predecessor of superwomen in cinema was the unforgettable Xena Warrior Princess (1995) for millennials. Together with her best friend Gabrielle, she became a feminist icon of the 90s.

And 22 years later, in 2017, Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot was released, and everyone went crazy. Critics were thrown off their feet, pouring compliments on the film. Feminist Twitter has started talking about a new era of Hollywood heroines. But is this justified?

The population of Themyscira looks like a parade of Victoria's Secret angels, only Robin Wright has a battle scar among the nation of hereditary warriors, and the main antagonist is the only disfigured woman for the entire film.

Diana herself, of course, captivates with her character. She is touched by a baby on the street, and after half an hour of screen time, she alone crosses nobody's land. There is no doubt that she is a worthy role model.

But there is one thing: Diana is also the chosen one. It resembles an ideal cobbled together by scriptwriters rather than a living person. The power was given to her, the Amazon and daughter of Ares, by birth. Steve Trevor's assistant directly calls her "the most beautiful woman in the world." Naivety and faith in people are the result of childhood spent in utopia without a gram of hardships. And her courage and kindness - a human choice or a superhero destiny?

But Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, is a man and a pilot of the United States Air Force. What if we get a new, brilliant, mainstream Ellen Ripley in the context of modern epic?

Unfortunately, Brie Larson has fallen into a common trap: "strong means stone-faced." It's hard to say why this happened. Maybe it was the parting words of the writers and directors who tried to isolate themselves from the emotional Wonder Woman. Or in the actress's own interpretation. Or maybe it is that this film tries to accommodate three pictures at once - an epic action movie, a feminist manifesto and a movie about cops-partners - and none of them fully reveals.

As a result, Carol Danvers turned out to be wooden. Even when she says the seemingly correct things (“I don’t have to prove anything to you!”), They look fabricated to please the social agenda, just like Wonder Woman's naive kindness.

In addition, the Captain can compete with Superman. And it is difficult to make a mere mortal out of a character who knows how to fly in space and shoots clots of deadly energy from his hands. Wherever she was born.

But there is also good news. Firstly, in flashbacks - in conversations with Nick Fury, who is 30 years younger, and in communication with an old friend - Carol shows herself to be exactly the woman everyone was waiting for. Cheerful and sentimental, but not weak. Secondly, for once in the film there is not even a hint of a romantic line, and the Beckdel test film passes with a good margin. Thirdly, the picture still collects a decent box office: already $ 260 million in the US and $ 500 around the world. This means that there will be new Marvel films with women in the lead role. And this is good.

In general, if you stop looking at Captain and Wonder Woman under a magnifying glass in search of flaws and look at the situation broadly, it becomes even strange that a movie about superwomen comes out so good, given how recently they have started to make them.

And maybe, if we are a little more tolerant of mistakes and let the new generation of filmmakers find their rhythm, we will also get a new Ellen Ripley.