oh wow look at that it’s ANOTHER gangster movie about WHITE gangsters being cool and suave and sexy and badass while violently murdering people and wreaking havoc lol wow I’m so surprised
WHOA PLOT TWIST they’re actually the POLICE just ACTING like gangsters, because *reasons*
and obviously that’s way better, because, like, the police are good guys so it’s totally ok when they break the law and go on killing sprees and are not held accountable at all, it’s not like police brutality is an actual real problem or that huge segments of the population are actually in constant fear of their lives from the police or anything nope not at all
white violent crime is sooo awesome and HAWT u guise lol let’s all go put on our pinstripe fedoras and patent leather loafers and skinny ties and shit and go shoot a bunch of people in the face, because we’re white so it’s classy when we do it
Now one film has single-handedly bucked that trend, passing the Bechdel test, and with the best portrayal of women in an action film I have seen in years: Dredd.
Put simply, and this is extraordinary, there is no difference between the portrayal of male and female characters in this film. The women are not sexualised, weaker, shown less, or more emotional, and their wardrobes are genderless, but neither are they simply rendered as personality devoid hard-asses… The women characters are excellent characters who happen to be women.
Full Article - Dredd: A Brilliant Portrayal of Women in Comics
This film is struggling to make budget in the US - please help it do well and spread the word!
I’m so glad I now have good reasons to justify how much I FUCKING LOVED THIS GODDAMN MOVIE
for srs if you missed this on the big screen you should never forgive yourself and you will probably be sad forever just FYI
When talking about this movie, people frequently bring up the fact that the message boils down to the fact that, in the end, it really does matter what you look like, and that the ugly guy won’t ever get the girl no matter how nice he is.
Well. Those people are wrong.
Think harder. There are three contenders for Esmeralda’s affections - Frollo, Quasimodo, and Phoebus. Frollo has zero affection for Esmeralda. No affection, no respect, no good feelings at all. All he feels is lust. And when he looks at her, all he sees are her faults (or what he believes are faults). He sees her a sexy gypsy who has spent her whole life in sin. And that causes him to feel lust. Because of this, he is incapable of seeing her good heart and truly decent soul. He sees a problem in need of fixing.
The audience wants Quasimodo to get the girl because he’s nice and she treats him well, and he deserves to catch a break for once in his life. And those things are all true. However. That line of thought essentially equates Esmeralda to his prize, to an object rather than a person. The problem with a Quasimodo-Esmeralda pairing is the exact opposite of Frollo. Frollo sees no good qualities in her, Quasimodo sees no bad qualities. He puts her on a pedestal and blinds himself to any mistakes she may make or flaws in her personality. He idolizes her in a way that is not healthy.
But Phoebus… Phoebus sits between the two: he sees her good, he sees her bad, and he can see the whole picture. He sees Esmeralda as she actually is - a person. She is not a sinful creature in need of reform and she is not a perfect specimen of humanity. Phoebus is the only one who can see that, and the only one who respects her as a person instead of a prize.
And that’s why the pretty guy gets the girl.
THANK YOU.
I adore this movie and I get so tired of that argument.
Amen.
It’s hugely important, with female character arcs, to manifest development without changing the character. Would Elle be the same Elle if she started dressing like Vivian and acting like Enid? Do we really want Elle to abandon her sorority friends and hobnob with the East Coasters? I love dearly that while Elle does take some measures to fit in with her Harvard peers, the conclusion is that it’s simply impossible. Her goal is not to fit in with them, but to achieve comparably to them. She buckles down, devotes her time and brain power, and works hard to be in the same league as her peers. But even when she endeavors to dress like them, she ends up wearing a shimmering smoking jacket and fashion glasses. Ultimately, the film’s message is that Elle only has to be Elle to succeed. When she’s on her date with Warner in the first scenes, she wears a bright pink dress - her power color. And when she walks into the courtroom for her last scenes, she wears a bright pink dress - her power color. Elle hasn’t changed; her power has only shifted.
people assume you’re joking when you say Legally Blonde is a feminist movie
but it’s one of the BEST. FEMINIST. MOVIES.
:D
The Unapologetic Afro-Indigenous Radical Feminist: The Glorification of White Crime
Take a facet of crime, and then look at television shows/movies that feature those criminals as protagonists.
White mobs.
White pirates.
White serial killers.
White political corruption
White drug dealers
I mostly want to talk about this as a TV phenomenon, but pick a crime, any crime, and Western media has probably made a movie/TV series/play/etc. with a white person that romanticizes the criminal activity. No matter what, a white person can do whatever terrible crimes and still have a TV/movie fanbase that loves them.
When you see black or brown people committing crimes on screen, you are to see them thugs and criminal masterminds and people to be beat down.
When you see white people committing crimes on screen, you see a three-dimensional portrait of why someone might commit that crime, how criminals are people too, and how you should even love them for the crimes that they commit because they’re just providing for their families or they’ve wronged or they’re just people and not perfect. This is particularly a luxury given to white male characters, since there few white female criminals as protagonists.
If and of the above shows were about black or brown folks, there would be a backlash of (white) people claiming that TV and movies are romanticizing criminals and are treating them too much like heroes and that it will affect viewers and encourage violence and “thuggish” behavior. And yet fictional white criminals get to have a deep fanbase who loves these white criminals, receive accolades and awards, get called amazing television that portray the complexities of human nature. Viewers of these characters see past the atrocious crimes and into their humanity, a luxury that white characters always have while characters of color rarely do. The closest that mainstream TV has come to showing black criminals as main characters is probably The Wire, and even then, the criminals share equal screen time and equal status as main characters as the police trying to stop them.
The idea that crime can be so heavily romanticized and glorified to such a degree is undoubtedly a privilege given to white characters. The next time you hear someone talk about Dexter Morgan or Walter White in a positive way, it may be an opportunity to rethink how white people can always able to be seen as people no matter what they do, while everyone else can be boiled down to nothing but a criminal.
Get out of my head, y’all! I’ve been thinking all like this about Breaking Bad specifically versus The Wire or even New Jack City.
And Dexter? Now maybe the analysis is out there and I haven’t run across it yet—and please send me the link(s) if they are there—but I haven’t heard a feminist critique of the Dexter’s serial killing as sanitized because he offs “bad people,” when the reality about quite a few serial killers’ victims are women. The last feminist analysis I read about male serial killers in US pop culture is Jane Caputi’s Age of Sex Crime from waaaaaaay back in 1987.
THIS SHIT IS IMPORTANT
(Source: daughterofmulan)
I think perhaps it perpetuates the “gay unless otherwise stated” idea that keeps befalling female characters without a male romantic interest, especially characters who are not exactly feminine. While “straight unless otherwise stated” isn’t much better, why does the defined sexuality matter anyway?
omg stop pls
I think the issue that person above is getting at is that Merida is a badass in a rather masculine-coded way, so some people were basically saying “she’s not girly enough, she must be a lesbian,” more as a way of policing gender expression than as a legitimate speculation on the possibility of her queerness. It seems to me that SJ-types are getting antsy about people saying she’s a lesbian because it rings too much like the standard homophobic shaming of women who don’t conform to social standards of femininity.
That doesn’t mean that that she can’t or shouldn’t be read as queer, or that queer people can’t choose to see themselves as being represented in her, or that sexuality isn’t important and we should just ignore it and heterophobia (??? lol) is as bad as homophobia, etc., etc. (we’re all starstuff!!!!). The problem seems to be who is deciding she’s a lesbian, and why.
Like, it’s awesome for a queer person to say “haha, she’s totally a lesbian!” meaning, “I can totally identify with her and see in this movie issues that the queer community has to deal with, that is so great”
but it’s really not okay for a straight person to say “haha, she’s totally a lesbian!” meaning, “she is not adequately feminine and subservient to seem appropriately non-threatening to the patriarchy/fuckable to straight men, so I’m going to shame her and dismiss her story by arbitrarily lumping her in with a group that I already have no problem persecuting.”
Does that make any sense? Am I talking out of my ass here?oh no i get that and i agree, but with what the rest of the person’s post was saying i am hesitant to assume their point was to tell straight ppl off for perpetuating stereotypes? like, i was willing to consider the possibility that it’s what they meant but with the “~why does sexuality matter anyway~” later in the post it’s just ugh no
hmm yes that is much more obvious now that I have slept for 8 hours. this is why I shouldn’t Tumblr (tumbl?) after midnight. :P
but clearly the only resolution to this issue of assumption of gayness or not gayness is to have everyone be explicitly gay.
ALL THE LESBIANS
FOREVER!!
I think perhaps it perpetuates the “gay unless otherwise stated” idea that keeps befalling female characters without a male romantic interest, especially characters who are not exactly feminine. While “straight unless otherwise stated” isn’t much better, why does the defined sexuality matter anyway?
omg stop pls
I think the issue that person above is getting at is that Merida is a badass in a rather masculine-coded way, so some people were basically saying “she’s not girly enough, she must be a lesbian,” more as a way of policing gender expression than as a legitimate speculation on the possibility of her queerness. It seems to me that SJ-types are getting antsy about people saying she’s a lesbian because it rings too much like the standard homophobic shaming of women who don’t conform to social standards of femininity.
That doesn’t mean that that she can’t or shouldn’t be read as queer, or that queer people can’t choose to see themselves as being represented in her, or that sexuality isn’t important and we should just ignore it and heterophobia (??? lol) is as bad as homophobia, etc., etc. (we’re all starstuff!!!!). The problem seems to be who is deciding she’s a lesbian, and why.
Like, it’s awesome for a queer person to say “haha, she’s totally a lesbian!” meaning, “I can totally identify with her and see in this movie issues that the queer community has to deal with, that is so great”
but it’s really not okay for a straight person to say “haha, she’s totally a lesbian!” meaning, “she is not adequately feminine and subservient to seem appropriately non-threatening to the patriarchy/fuckable to straight men, so I’m going to shame her and dismiss her story by arbitrarily lumping her in with a group that I already have no problem persecuting.”
Does that make any sense? Am I talking out of my ass here?
FANTASY!
The very word brings to mind the impossible, and is so wildly popular because it involves taking a piece of our world and juxtaposing it with literally anything your imagination can come up with. We’ve done this for thousands of years, telling stories of how the warrior slayed the dragon, how the enchantress trapped the magician, how it was the poor orphan who was the Chosen One all along.
It’s a genre where literally anything can happen, and where most things have, because the imagination of humanity is vast and deep.
So why is it that when a non-White actor or actress is cast in a Fantasy movie or TV show, so many people flip their collective lids?
Well, most Fantasy Fiction stories are set in Medieval Europe, or Britain, or a place that’s clearly based on such.
You’re correct, Devil’s Advocate Voice. There’s still a Eurocentric base to the Fantasy genre (which in itself is weird, given the aforementioned vast, deep imagination of humanity.)
And certainly, for example, the SyFy show Merlin obviously takes place in a fictitious version of Britain. It’s the millionth re-telling of a classic piece of the public domain, but it seems to be playing by the traditional storyline for the most part.
What’s that you say? The role of Guinevere is played by a Black actress?
And there’s a contingent of people on Tumblr who like to fan-cast Sophie Okonedo as Helga Hufflepuff from Harry Potter?
This is all historically inaccurate, you say? Well goodness me, don’t we have ourselves a pickle here.
Let’s pretend for the sake of argument that it’s completely not weird to have magic and dragons but definitely weird to have Black people in fictional versions of Medieval England.
Let’s do that for a second. Are we doing that? Good.
Because Black people have totally been in Europe, and England, for a really long time.
There exists this strange belief among otherwise well-educated people that from the time hunter-gatherers migrated from Africa and settled in their respective niches throughout the Earth until Europe got a bug up their ass about exploration in the 1400’s, nobody went anywhere. Everyone remained at home, in pure ethnic isolation.
Go Google a map of the Earth, specifically the Old World. Look at how close Africa is to Europe, and how Europe and Asia are connected. They’re connected so closely one might even say they could be considered one continent.
Isolationism has happened before, but mostly on island nations because inland isolation is difficult to enforce. There’s been so much movement and war and enslavement and migration through these continents that listing every major inter-cultural event would be impossible, so here’s a bit about Rome:
The Roman Empire, at it’s height, ruled the Mediterranean sea, much of North Africa, Western Europe, the Eastern bit of what’s now the Middle-East, and left a bunch of walls in Britain. Rome is fun in this context because often, the people they conquered were absorbed into Roman society, climbing high in the ranks of Roman nobility and military. Like this woman here, who was at least partially African, and was found buried with clear markings of being a noblewoman. In York, England. Hmm.
And they weren’t the only ones to do crazy things like move around a continent. The Huns originated somewhere in the Steppes of Central Asia and went on to tear Europe a new one, eventually giving the entire country of Hungary its name. The Scandinavian Vikings sailed around the known world, taking slaves from literally everywhere and trading them, as well as goods, with the Arabs. The Muslim Arabs themselves took advantage of the power gap after the fall of the Roman Empire to spread across Eurasia, absorbing the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and developing a center for learning in Baghdad that rivalled anything the Europeans were doing at the time. The Moors of Northern Africa get talked about a lot in conversations like these, and not for nothing. They waltzed into Spain and stayed long enough that their culture infuses Spanish life to this day. (Almost everyone read Othello in high school. I wonder if the English thought it was pandering for Shakespeare to have the main character of a play be African.)
And if you think for one second that these armies came in, killed whatever standing army was there, and then left nobody behind to rule the roost, and that these conquered people, who were at least second-class citizens of their new nation, didn’t travel for trade? Then there’s no hope for you and we should just turn back now.
Now answer me this:
- Do people like to have sex?
Yes. Yes people do. The vast majority of humans throughout history have enjoyed having sex. Sometimes, ethnocentrism and racism has kept people from inter-ethnic lovin’, but if you think that was the rule rather than the exception you’re underestimating the overwhelming desire humans have to get laid. Aforementioned Othello went into how Othello and Desdemona secretly got married, because per-marital sex was way worse than interracial marriage in Renaissance Italy.
Additionally, there were several conquerors and marauding armies, on every side of the equation, who ignored and/or promoted rape as a tool of war. For example, the Mongols did so much of this whilst pillaging across Eurasia that Genghis Khan, by himself, has about 16 million descendants today. The idea of consent meant basically nothing to most people at the time, given the extremely low status of women.
So, inter-ethnic sex was had, consensual or not, and heterosexual sex generally meant babies back then.
Ok, sure, says the Devil’s Advocate Voice, there were people of other ethnicities in Europe and Britain. There were interracial children. But certainly this wasn’t the norm, right?
I’ll give you that, because census data from the year 1000 AD is pretty sketchy.
But if you acknowledge that it did happen, that non-White people did exist in Europe, did work their ways up into nobility, you can’t turn around and say that having a Black actress play Guinevere is unrealistic. You can’t say that every single representation of a non-White British or European person is somehow “affirmative action,” or unrealistic, or pandering of some kind. To pretend it is is to erase the historical experiences of these people.
If there were a danger of there being no more White people on television or books, I wouldn’t be writing this. But there clearly isn’t.
Go read this post I did on how having a Black and Hispanic Spiderman matters. If you don’t want to, I’ll summarize it: it’s important that people, and especially kids, see positive portrayals of people who look like them represented in media. It’s important that kids of any ethnicity see a variety of people doing a variety of things.
And besides, all White people all the time is fucking boring. It’s boring and lazy and unimaginative to present one narrow view of history, and even more so to repeat, over and over and over again, the same narrow view of fictional lands that have never existed where the good guys are automatically White, and if there’s any Non-White people they’re presented as bad or primitive.
Beyond the tinge of racism that colors every debate about the “realism” of having people of color in Fantasy stories, there’s just a level of oh, I’ve read this story before, #shrug. Will the White protagonist of this Europe-analogous land triumph in the end? Will he?!? Fantasy exists because we wanted to plumb our wildest imaginations for adventures, and I think there should be a little more looking at actual history, more reflections of the lives that people really did lead.
It is 2011. Guinevere can be Black.
(Source: Guardian)
#635
White privilege is making the very first Black Disney Princess… and then make her spend the majority of her movie as a frog, design her white sidekick to look more like a princess than she does, , make her love interest racially ambiguous, and have her villain be a caricature of a black religion.
Submitted by marrymejasonsegel
Mod note: And then expect black people to be satisfied with that.
So I felt really bad when P&tF came out for being like, “yeah so this is the first black disney princess but I’m not actually sure this is completely a cool movie guys and I don’t think I can really get behind it 100% sorry”
but
yeah
this.
I actually may switch my essay topic
But here’s entry one on the Things I Am Told I Am Unusually Passionate About:
1. The inaccuracy of gender ratios in almost every fiction work I have seen about social insects. The most immediate examples that come to mind are Antz, A Bug’s Life, and Bee Movie. In the vast majority of bee, ant, and termite species, almost all the members of a hive or colony are female. The only males are a handful of drones. In these films, however, the ratio is at least fifty-fifty, and the protagonist is male. For me this speaks to such deeply entrenched sexism in society that the protagonist of a movie meant for a general audience - rather than a specifically female one - that the hero must be male even if it is immensely unlikely. Were Disney, or Dream Works, or some other former culprit to make a film featuring anthropomorphized versions of that species of lizard that is entirely female and reproduces through parthenogenesis, chances are the hero would be the First Male of His Kind and therefore The Chosen One. Note that I am excepting Studio Ghibli, for Hayao Miyazaki is a kind and loving god that knows how to write female heroes.
this bothers me SO MUCH
#biologist problems
Reporter: I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?
And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?
Scarlett: How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?
The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.You know, I always did like Scarlett Johannson.
Dat side-eye.
Let me just hug you forever Miss Johannson.
That reporter should be sacked on the spot.
There should be a word for when you are utterly unsurprised and completely pissed off at the same time.
My Scarlett Johansson appreciation levels are reaching incredible heights lately.
I’ve always kinda loved her, now I love her even more
Kill that reporter with fire.
This.
Yep.
“Yes, actually, I had a special workout regime where I would beat the everloving shit out of three smarmy, demeaning, sexist reporters each morning. It really kept me in great shape.”
When they’re making a movie about men they make a movie about lifting a house into the sky with balloons and traveling across the world, or about a lonely garbage robot with a heart of gold (so to speak.) When they’re making a movie about girls they make a movie about the restrictions placed on girls, and how this one! special! girl! will fight the (other women) people enforcing these restrictions placed on her.
Pro-tip: when the only plot you’ll write for girls are about how they’re GIRLS! DID YOU NOTICE THEY’RE GIRLS!! LOOK IT’S A GIRL! (BUT NOT A ~~GIRLY-GIRL~~ DON’T WORRY) THE WORLD IS UNFAIR TO GIRLS BUT SOME OF THEM ARE PERFORMATIVELY MASCULINE AND THAT MAKES THEM COOL. as a priority dominating the story about them as people and it comes off as feet-draggingly second-wave and smacking of tokenism even though she’s the chief protagonist, which is almost impressive.
“This isn’t your typical love story…” opens the trailer for a movie about a white, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, middle class, and likely loosely Christian couple who find each other through serendipity and a very small amount of actual work.
why is movie/tv birth always so clean and pretty
like you can just yell for a little bit and pop out a clean happy little human and everyone smiles at each other and goes home and drinks champagne.
WTF
the entire premise of this show is exhaustively dissecting the horrifyingly gruesome remains of brutally murdered people
and childbirth is too icky for you???
AAAAAAAGH FUCK THIS
