I remember watching this documentary some time ago, by Rosanna Arquette maybe? Anyway Martha Plimpton was talking about how she wants to portray interesting characters, and she doesn't care if they are righteous, or honest, or role models or how it affects the perception of women in general...and she didn't understand why actresses are expected to take shit like that into consideration. Men aren't expected to agonize over the societal effects of the characters they portray.
Anyway, her current gig (and the only one in a long time) is as a working class mom/grandma, so I assume she liked the character.
I remember watching this documentary some time ago, by Rosanna Arquette maybe? Anyway Martha Plimpton was talking about how she wants to portray interesting characters, and she doesn't care if they are righteous, or honest, or role models or how it affects the perception of women in general...and she didn't understand why actresses are expected to take shit like that into consideration. Men aren't expected to agonize over the societal effects of the characters they portray.
Anyway, her current gig (and the only one in a long time) is as a working class mom/grandma, so I assume she liked the character.
This is our own Roland98 for those that don't know her because she is way too busy and important for apparently.
I have always admired (aka been jealous of) Tara for being such a young and attractive PhD, but not because she is a woman, but because there aren't many PhDs running around that are under 30 with model good looks. My niece is soon to be one of them, so you can add one more in about 3 years.
Did you read the link Ro posted to an "atheist movement" blogger who called out a guy at a conference for making stupid comments about the hot blonde bloggers luring men to atheism? Setting aside for the moment how silly I think the whole organized atheism thing is, check out the comments on that blog entry. People immediately go out of their way to talk hot chicks in response. Because it's hilarious, donchaknow.
Ladies in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) do get their very own special brand of shit sometimes. It's not consistent or anything, but there are some really hostile areas for women in those fields. And it tends to be exacerbated sometimes when women, even proclaimed feminists and some like lukewarm feminist blogs on the internet, aren't familiar with the challenges of working in a field like that, and they act all surprised like you're exaggerating or making things up or even that you must be doing something wrong to be treated the way you are.
As such, I recommend that women working in STEM look around at places like geekfeminism, which is a really good resource if, for nothing else, giving you terminology for things that you're always trying to describe to people. (The sickening grunch, invisibility, Magical Man Sparkles!) Their wiki and their blog are both pretty good resources I'd recommend to your niece and anyone else working in those fields. (I almost said for women, but no. Dudes need it even more.)
From Tara, for lisarea on accounta the use of mansplaining (in the comments of the "too pretty to be a scientist" post)
Quote:
Thank you, Rick, for the extra helping of mansplaining. I appreciate the advice that I should only care about the opinions of the few people who are directly relevant to my career, and ignore the masses who still have influence over the millions of girls out there who may have a flickering interest in science that may be extinguished by insensitive comments by jackasses like store-guy.
As such, I recommend that women working in STEM look around at places like geekfeminism, which is a really good resource if, for nothing else, giving you terminology for things that you're always trying to describe to people. (The sickening grunch, invisibility, Magical Man Sparkles!) Their wiki and their blog are both pretty good resources I'd recommend to your niece and anyone else working in those fields. (I almost said for women, but no. Dudes need it even more.)
Fuck, I hope I haven't been perpetrating any of that shit, even unconsciously. I'm going to make an effort to look out for it as I finish up college and move on to teaching. Thanks for the link.
This is our own Roland98 for those that don't know her because she is way too busy and important for apparently.
Totally too important! I can't be seen here with you plebes! Ooh, look at all the smilies I can apply to that!
I've been trying to stay out of the comment threads--so many of the replies make me want to curl up in a hole and never come out (and keep the kids in there with me so that neither of them are exposed to that shit). Nice to see you pop in, LS, and thanks to lisarea for the links. I think "grunch" is my new favorite word.
Well, she is fighting against the evil Umbrella Corporation and she does help "normal" people but she was invented as a video game heroine so you make the call. And she is played by Milla Jovovich.
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Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church.
Alice can kick ass in Resident Evil but her character isn't strong or developed. They seem to go out of their way to make her appear vulnerable or subservient as a character.
Umbrella Corp generally toys with her. Treating her more like a pawn than an enemy. In one film clones of her are made just so they can test and ultimately kill them.
The reason I made the comment was that there is a paucity of female led movies to the extent that Resident Evil leaps to so many minds. I could rattle ten male leads off the top of my head, I doubt if I could get to five women.
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Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church.
This is our own Roland98 for those that don't know her because she is way too busy and important for apparently.
Totally too important! I can't be seen here with you plebes! Ooh, look at all the smilies I can apply to that!
I've been trying to stay out of the comment threads--so many of the replies make me want to curl up in a hole and never come out (and keep the kids in there with me so that neither of them are exposed to that shit). Nice to see you pop in, LS, and thanks to lisarea for the links. I think "grunch" is my new favorite word.
All you gorgeous young "scientists" are so stuck up.
Srsly I was glad to see the topic, and the link to that atheist grrl too, and I enjoyed the hell out of the comments for you, so you don't need to go there.
I also find it weird how it seems like action movies are the ones viewed as important from that perspective.
As if most of them don't involve sexualizing the woman who is chosen for her attractiveness rather than her ability to convincingly portray an "action hero" type (e.g. Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan and Stallone didn't become action stars because of their acting chops or their great beauty).
I feel like there should be more comedies (that aren't rom-coms). I haven't seen Bridesmaids yet, but it will probably be relevant to this point when I do.
I can think of several films with female leads, but that's because of my interest in older films. Ironically, the collapse of the early-to-mid 20th century "star system" has actually made things worse for the portrayal of women in film. When you had a star under contract, you made sure that you used her, and she could wield extensive powers to get projects underwritten, which often resulted in films with serious roles for women (and not just her, but also a supporting cast of other women). I'm not saying that they were ideal in their depiction of women, of course, but there were plenty of opportunities for famous women to improve their chances of finding good roles, and to improve the opportunities for women generally.
Take Devotion, the 1946 Brontë sisters biopic, with Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland. Not only did you have them playing Emily and Charlotte, respectively, but there was also a role for Anne Brontë, Aunt Branwell, Lady Thornton (a friend of the family) and lots of other women. Of the fifteen members of the credited cast, nine were women and six were men. I don't think it's improbable that the need to keep Lupino and de Havilland happy and in work guided the choice of subject and the number of women's roles. In the end, it didn't work. De Havilland sued Warner Bros. to terminate her contract and was victorious in what became a landmark case.
People immediately go out of their way to talk hot chicks in response. Because it's hilarious, donchaknow.
A couple of idiots posted inflamatory contrariness "for the lulz" (there's always a few, isn't there). Do you have a problem with the lulz doctrine there, liv? Because I think has often witnessed similar behaviour and I don't think I've seen you challenge it here.
Fuck, I hope I haven't been perpetrating any of that shit, even unconsciously. I'm going to make an effort to look out for it as I finish up college and move on to teaching. Thanks for the link.
I think we all perpetrate it sometimes, unconsciously. Gender is such a pervasive construct that people get all flipped out and don't even know how to talk to or about a baby without knowing its gender.
The difference between a bad guy and a good guy is that good guys try to notice that stuff and eliminate it. So, effectively:
Scene: Initial project meeting.
Guy: When are you going to send the minutes out?
Me: Oh, I'm a developer. I didn't take minutes. Sorry.
Good guy: OH CRAP sorry! *works with me like a human for the duration of the project*
Bad guy: So, the minutes? When? *manufactures excuses and spends entire project asking me to do administrative tasks*
Scene: Technical presentation
Presenter: This should help picking up girls...
Me: I don't want to pick up girls*
Good presenter: OH CRAP sorry. *stops doing that*
Bad presenter: UGH I didn't mean you. *includes pictures of women in bikinis later in presentation*
* I've actually had to train myself to speak up and say things like, "I'm not a man," and "I don't have a wife at home" and things like that, because not only did I not even notice it, but I would actually do it myself sometimes.
Kael, this scenario that bugs me might apply to you especially as a teacher...please, when talking to both parents about their kid, address questions and comments to the dad either equally, or at least ask the question then make eye contact with both so they know you assume either one capable of answering. If faced with a dad only, do not assume he doesn't know anything or needs to ask the kid's mom.
I can't tell you how many times people have addressed all questions and comments re: Kiddo to me as if my husband wasn't even standing right there holding the baby, or he had not answered the previous three questions that had been directed at me.
The good thing about the Bechdel test and the female leads measures is that they're pretty much objective. It's not a matter of analyzing the interactions or the roles or anything. It's a simple and objective measure that can be (relatively) simply and objectively tabulated.
So like, this, which I just found looking for something else, misses the point of the Bechdel test here:
Quote:
Bechdel's comic strip had a feminist agenda, so the fact that the Julia Child character in Julie & Julia focuses on something as housewifely as cooking could be seen as a black mark against the film – but at least there's an attempt to show a woman who is determined, three-dimensional and creative.
Hell, the joke of the original strip is that Alien passes the test. So it's not a subjective measure that determines whether a movie is ideologically bad or good. It's an aggregate method that illustrates how astonishingly common it is for women in movies to be sort of throwaway characters that are just there to prop up and complement the male characters. (There is a promo going on right now for a summer movie lineup on some cable channel that shows clips from probably ten different movies, and there are only two women in the whole lengthy promo, and they're both kissing men.)
There's nothing wrong with one specific movie featuring male leads or failing the Bechdel. The measures just show how uneven representation is overall. There are reasons movies might not have two named female characters talking to each other about something other than a man. The point is that there should also be a roughly equal number of movies that fail the reverse Bechdel, and don't feature two named male characters talking about something other than a woman. That's not going to be as easy.
Maybe the bronies among us can name some My Little Pony movies that would fail a reverse Bechdel? And what I was looking for but failed to find before is that I'm thinking maybe Whatever Happened to Baby Jane might fail that one, too.