Female Characters Written by Men

For our last class we watched Song of the Sea and had a brief discussion on if the film is feminist or not. From that, one of the other students asked if the girls in the class feel that it's true that men need to stop writing female characters because they're not relatable. My answer to this is fucking of course. As someone who literally always watches movies, most of the women that I see are nothing like me and or any woman that I associate myself with. And that can be very difficult sometimes. This is true for student films as well, which is sad. I can't tell you how many films I've seen men in park make about some manic pixie dream girl who's just looking for her "destiny." They're all the same. And this is a man's ideal girl. It's as silly as any John Green novel.

It would be much easier to relate to female characters if they were written by women. One great example is Bridesmaids, one of my favorite movies of all time. One of the reasons that is is because it was written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and it perfectly sums up the way I act with my best friends. I know not every woman would feel this way, but the ridiculous antics and crude humor is much more natural to me than that of the manic pixie dream girl. I just want to see women who are like me, not a man's version of what they want me to be.

Comments

  1. maddieloweDecember 19, 2018 at 2:24 PM

    I totally agree with you. It's so important for characters to be written by someone that represents that population. Not just women characters, but queer characters as well. It is so extremely annoying when a gay or trans character is written by a cis straight male. In Park it's pretty easy to ask for an opinion of someone who represents that minority, or maybe just don't tackle that subject if you don't know much about it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bratz: Rock Angelz is the movie I didn't know I needed

Image
This weekend, I watched the hit 2005 animated movie Bratz: Rock Angelz. This movie was one of the first Bratz films in CGI, and let me tell you- the plot is ALL OVER THE PLACE. The girls start a fashion magazine and use stolen passes to get into hot London punk clubs, but when they lose their passes they decide that the only way to get into the gig is to become a rock band? This movie can be considered capitalist propaganda- the Bratz shop in order to destress about their problems, and it's an implemental part of their lives. They don't have jobs either- Jade has an internship, but only for three hours until she is fired. Chloe meets a TRASH British prince and ignores her best friend Yasmin who finds celebrity judge Byron Powell's (I don't make this stuff up) dog, Ozzy. Jade and Sasha try to do a photo shoot for the magazine, but Sasha micromanages the whole thing and makes her friend feel bad! And this whole time, there's these two evil blond twins (Kaley Cuoco PLA
Read more

Does Animation Have to Make You Laugh?

Something that I have taken note of lately is how you barely ever find any mainstream animation that doesn't have some semblance of comedy integrated into it. For example, when was the last time you saw a Disney movie that didn't make you laugh (or at least try to)? And when was the last time you saw an adult cartoon that wasn't making a joke every 10 seconds. My point is, mainstream animation has seemed to simplify itself into a single tone: Comedic. Even in the films that are primarily covering serious topics there is typically a comic relief character to add some lighthearted fun to the film. But do all films need this? Is it necessary for all animation to try and entertain us in the exact same way? My answer is no and I wish that more animation studios and their production companies would realize this. One thing I don't think many people realize is that animation can be lighthearted without being funny. When I say you don't have to be funny all the time, that
Read more

She-ra is my new favorite gay icon

She-ra is a Netflix original spinoff of the he-man franchise. I was never a fan of the original show, but I thought I'd check she-ra out and I'm glad I did. It's a fun show, and I wish we had more like it when we were kids. It's one of the few kids shows where women outnumber men in the lead cast, and there's so much gay but it's not like "woah look at all this gay!" It's a lot more subtle, and I think that's great. Of course, there are more seasons to come, but I'm glad that the first one showed as much restraint as it did. I feel like if we treat LGBT people as special, it'll only perpetuate the idea that they're something "other" than straight people. It's important that our pop culture reflects the idea that gay people are just, you know, people. Take all that with a grain of salt though, I'm a straight cis white guy. I just wanted to start a conversation.
Read more