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A while back, when Age Of Ultron came out in theatres, one of these storm-in-a-tea-cup controversies happened, and a group of internet people (including some I otherwise respect) attacked the movie as being sexist because of a single scene that had to do with Black Widow.
Now, I thought at the time that the outcry was completely unjustified and that you pretty much had to deliberately misinterpret that scene to view it as sexist. But, in a discussion in these forums, I tried my hand at an argument that attacked the issue from an altogether different angle. I asked people to imagine a situation where Black Widow is a man, but one of the other Avengers is a woman. I claimed that never matter which of the avengers is a female in this thought exercise, you can find a way to interpret the movie as being sexist and relegating the character to a gender role (The Hulk is the embodiment of mockery to a woman in a period, or Hawkeye is obviously hiding "her" nurturing side with a hidden family, or "Ironwoman" is slutty and insecure and hides inside her shell when she fights, etc.). I argued back then that the actual problem, the real gender bias in the movie, was a question of numbers. One female Avengers, five male.
The idea kicked around in my head ever since. Essentially, what I believe is that merely by having *enough* female characters, or minority characters, you can actually afford to do what you want with these characters without being insensitive. It's not that every female in a movie needs to be strong, or that every movie needs a well spoken and well educated black person - it's that the movie needs to have more than a token of any one gender or race. Obviously not every movie, no need for absurdism - but if the norm is that there simply are enough of these characters around, then each of them can be viewed just like a white male character would, and not as a representation of the creator's politics or opinions about whatever sector the character belongs to.
If there are three female characters in a movie, and one of them is a sexy thing that uses sex as a weapon against men - that's completely fine, because there are two other women who aren't like that. It's even OK if every single one of your female characters fall under some gender stereotype, if they are all different stereotypes - because almost every male character from every movie falls under some male gender stereotype or another. That's fine - stereotypes are the basis upon which most characters are built (that's the literal meaning of the word) and for most real people their gender plays some role in who they are.
My perfect example of this is the movie Chicago. It's a story so female-centric that it actually fails the reverse bachdel test. In that movie, just about every female character behaves in a way that in a male dominated movie would surely be considered a display of the sexism of the screen writers - the main character most of all - and yet nobody in their right mind would blame the movie of any such thing. That's because when watching the movie it is clear that every character is just that. A person, a human, not a mascot.
This brings to mind a different application of the word "diversity". The way the word is used in public today seems to me to encourage a daredevil competition to get the most types of humanity into your story, as divided by the lowest common denominator type of identity. Get as many genders and races and ages and socio-economic backgrounds and physical/mental disabilities represented, make sure everyone is included. But in this idea of mine, of representation as a numbers game, diversity means something else - get as many different types of actual identities into your movie. Put in people who are lazy, people who are inventive. Include the brave and the curious and the greedy and the attractive, the self confident and the hateful, the friendly and the thrill seekers, the shameless and the overtly sexual, the calm and the weird. Then all you have to do is to make sure no one group of people in your story is represented by a single set of characteristics that they all share - and there you have a it. A diverse movie where all people involved are well represented. Even if some or all of their members are shown in a negative way. Even if some or all of their members are to some extent defined by their gender/race/whatever. Because once no character has to bear the weight of representing the essence of an entire huge group of real humans, each character can become a representation of a single made up human - just like story telling is supposed to work.
Thoughts?
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An example of this in casting would be Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire. One of the main producers on both shows made it a goal/rule, that any actor who portrayed a criminal on one show, could only be cast as a non-criminal in the next show. There were a lot of African-American actors on both shows and they wanted to make a conscious decision not to type-cast actors into one type of character so that people watching both shows wouldn't associate that type of behavior with the actor, and potentially break significant stereotyping behaviors of many viewers.
Another thing that will be solved by greater diversity, is that white-washing will become a non-factor. If Asians get major roles that have nothing to do with being Asian and are appropriately represented in media, then who cares if one specific role that has an Asian aspect to it goes to a non-Asian? But if Asians aren't getting roles in general, then they're going to be mad about not getting Asian-themed roles.
If I'm getting my share of the pizza, I can survive if it isn't THAT pizza.
People just want to participate and be respected.
No one accuses Chicago of anything because the movie makes it clear that every single one of its characters are horrible people who, while interesting and entertaining (as characters), are not supposed to be admired. At least, not for their morality.
The one characters who is not an a~&#$@$ in that movie is the main character's husband, "Mr.Cellophane". And he's a weak-willed moron.
It'd make no sense to complain about a certain group of people being presented as unlikable or immoral when everyone in the movie is presented the same way.
Don't get lost in an example. An example is not the entirety of the thing being discussed. If you turn the discussion into only the example, then someone has to give an example about something, then we're just talking about THAT example. Then it just keeps getting dragged further and further from the actual topic.
Don't get lost in the details.
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An example of this in casting would be Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire. One of the main producers on both shows made it a goal/rule, that any actor who portrayed a criminal on one show, could only be cast as a non-criminal in the next show. There were a lot of African-American actors on both shows and they wanted to make a conscious decision not to type-cast actors into one type of character so that people watching both shows wouldn't associate that type of behavior with the actor, and potentially break significant stereotyping behaviors of many viewers.
That's really cool, I didn't know that.
I think that's pretty much the point.
The fact that it looks like a "rush to put a strong female character in every action movie" is that that has been so rare for so long that changing it is going to look that way. And while it might be fine for your movie to only happen to have one female character who happens to have an apparently sexist negative trait in a world of movies that was full of a broad range of positive and negative portrayals of women, the very same movie will look very different in the current world.
It's a process. We've got to get through this stage to get to the real diversity we're aiming for.
The problem I have with how things are currently done, is that it feels like the end goal is lost in the chaos, and like people are talking about all the wrong things. Instead of simply asking for balancing the numbers, every single aspect in a movie/book/etc. that could in some contrived context be considered sexist is pounced upon by the mob, when really what the focus should be is balancing the numbers in a more reasonable way. Instead of talking about getting more female Avengers, we're accusing Whedon of chauvinism. Instead of asking for more Asians to appear in diverse roles, we denounce the Wachowskis of white washing (in a movie that literally is all about having the same core group of actors appear as completely different people throughout time and space in order to blur the lines of identity...).
I wanted, in this discussion, to bring the focus back to what I think is actually important.
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I think one problem is that you're thinking about bad representation as mostly (and maybe exclusively?) as a numbers problem. Certainly that's a factor, with characters who are white, straight, cisgender, and/or male being overrepresented and standing in for the default from which other people vary. Certainly it's important not to rely on offensive stereotypes and to represent a wider diversity of characters so that one character doesn't have to stand in as a representative of that race/gender/sexuality/etc.
But it's also important to recognize that the issue is two fold: there's a lack of representation overall (numbers) and a lack of good representation (quality). In other words, I think you're wrong when you say: "Essentially, what I believe is that merely by having *enough* female characters, or minority characters, you can actually afford to do what you want with these characters without being insensitive." You might be able to hit some high points with good representation by simply increasing the numbers, but "doing what you want" with these characters could still produce insensitive or poor representation if you're not working on the quality simultaneously.
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But it's also important to recognize that the issue is two fold: there's a lack of representation overall (numbers) and a lack of good representation (quality). In other words, I think you're wrong when you say: "Essentially, what I believe is that merely by having *enough* female characters, or minority characters, you can actually afford to do what you want with these characters without being insensitive." You might be able to hit some high points with good representation by simply increasing the numbers, but "doing what you want" with these characters could still produce insensitive or poor representation if you're not working on the quality simultaneously.
I disagree there. I think that in any but the most extreme cases, where say every single black character is the exactly the same, just having enough different people of the same gender or race around should and would suffice. Because even if every single character adheres to some gender or race stereotype, so long as they are different ones, then each character is still an individual. Bad storytellers will continue to fail to write characters that can rise above the oversimplified stereotypes they are based upon, but good ones will create actual (fictional) people for their stories.
This is exactly why I used the movie Chicago as my example. Every single character in that movie is shown in a negative light, and almost all of them in a gendered way. And yet, the movie clearly isn't sexist - just a story of very flawed humans, that happens to be centered around women. This is an extreme case that, to me, proves the rule. On the other hand of the spectrum there's Avengers: Age Of Ultron, which as I discussed in my opening post simply cannot avoid criticism about sexism - but not because it actually had any sexist content, but because there's only one main female character. Pick any one character from Chicago and have her stand in for Black Widow in the Avengers and you bet there will be cause for a feminist outcry - but in the context of a movie with many women, each of them can be whatever the movie makers intended her to be without this being taken as sexism.
Showing a character in a negative light is not the same as perpetuating a negative stereotype.
Edit: to add, just because something is bad writing doesn't excuse it either. If something is racist/sexist/gender biased/ableist/etc, even if it's poorly written, it's still the thing that it is.
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Good storytellers can still tell sexist stories.
Quality of representation still matters. It's totally possible (and arguably necessary) to be critical of media while still enjoying it. There are people who will latch onto problematic aspects of a work and because of it dismiss the entirety of a work, or that creator's work generally, or the creator directly. There's certainly a discussion to be had about the difference between holding proper accountable and dismissing works and creators entirely (deserved or not).
I don't think we can have that conversation, though, if we can't agree that sexism involves a lot more than just the number of women in a movie. The Bechdel-Wallace test is meant to illustrate the overwhelming degree to which movies and media representation in general focus on stories about men and men's agency. It shows that a huge number of films can't meet a very low benchmark; passing the Bechdel-Wallace test doesn't automatically make a movie feminist or not sexist.
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Showing a character in a negative light is not the same as perpetuating a negative stereotype.
Well, it's not the individual action that's the problem. It's the trend of the action being taken time and time again, and it isn't really something where you can blame the artists themselves. That's where the numbers game becomes so important. You don't say you can't portray black criminals, you try to portray more black heroes and non-black criminals to buck the trend.
Really, though, numbers are only one facet. If you see lots of transwomen but all they do is entrap men into sex for the audience's amusement, you still have a problem.
Novelist Chimamanda Adichie says some really useful stuff about the single story that I think applies here.
Whenever you decide to only include a single female character in a cast of dudes (there are eight major characters in Avengers, not counting Coulson or the hypnotized doctor guy), she's going to end up representing all women for that movie. That's what happens when you give over 50% of the population 12% representation.
The same issue exists in all facets of diversity. It's fine to portray a woman as emotional, or a black guy as violent, as long as you include other women and black men in your story to break the stereotype. I mean, there can still be problems (if you aren't careful, you can just feed into a "the good ones" narrative), but it eliminates so many potential problems.
I will point out, though, that the movie does nothing to critique the idea that a woman who can't have children is broken. That goes beyond the character—that's a narrative concept they introduce as being reasonable. But you are right that it would be a lot less glaring if there were other women in the cast who had no intention of having children. See? Multiple narratives. It goes from being, "Here is our women, and here are her woman problems" to "Here is Black Widow, and here are her Black Widow problems".
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Because even if every single character adheres to some gender or race stereotype, so long as they are different ones, then each character is still an individual.
Wait, the problem isn't that genders and minorities aren't seen as individuals. The problem is that they get pigeonholed into a small number of potential roles. We asked indigenous peoples, "Are you a noble savage, or a dangerous cannibal?" and acted like we were respecting their individuality. We asked women, "Are you a cold, unfeeling career woman, or a happy mother who stays in the kitchen?"
Offering a diversity of roles does not help if all the roles are just rehashed stereotypes. Greater representation doesn't much help if it's all bad representation.
I feel like you've hit upon one huge problem and decided, "Well, this is pretty awful, so it must be the source of all these other problems."
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I don't think we can have that conversation, though, if we can't agree that sexism involves a lot more than just the number of women in a movie. The Bechdel-Wallace test is meant to illustrate the overwhelming degree to which movies and media representation in general focus on stories about men and men's agency. It shows that a huge number of films can't meet a very low benchmark; passing the Bechdel-Wallace test doesn't automatically make a movie feminist or not sexist.
To be clear, my idea has nothing to do with the bachdel test, which as you say was merely a short cut to illustrate a point, and not a valid metric of anything truly important about a movie.
Now as to your main point, and to also answer Kobold Cleaver and TheJeff, yes. I made sure to include the caveat that numbers don't really matter if all the characters are essentially the same. A great example of this is The Wheel Of Time, a book series that gets the numbers right and possibly even tips the other way and includes considerably more women than men (because every single Aes Sedai has to be a named character with lines of text), but they basically all act exactly the same, and you can't help but think that this is how the author believes women to be - while the men in the series have a considerably greater variety of personality types.
Wait, the problem isn't that genders and minorities aren't seen as individuals. The problem is that they get pigeonholed into a small number of potential roles. We asked indigenous peoples, "Are you a noble savage, or a dangerous cannibal?" and acted like we were respecting their individuality. We asked women, "Are you a cold, unfeeling career woman, or a happy mother who stays in the kitchen?"
Offering a diversity of roles does not help if all the roles are just rehashed stereotypes. Greater representation doesn't much help if it's all bad representation.
Agreed, you need to go beyond the stereotypes - but this is just good storytelling in general. I think it's OK, for example, to have two indigenous characters, one of whom is noble and the other a cannibal - if both of them are otherwise fully realized characters and have actual depth, then adhering to some racial or cultural stereotype is not automatically bad. Imagine you had just a single... I don't know, a single Aboriginal character in a movie, and she is a cannibal. That will make the audience view Aboriginal people as cannibals - or at least, it will signal that this is how the movie makers think of them. But if we the audience see other Aboriginals who aren't cannibalistic, then we can rest assured knowing that the script writers also understand that.
I feel like you've hit upon one huge problem and decided, "Well, this is pretty awful, so it must be the source of all these other problems."
Yeah, pretty much. I tend to think that if we get the numbers right, the rest of the wrinkles will work themselves out over time. I can be swayed from this belief, but the Chicago-Avengers meter shows me that the principle works on a broad band of examples. you can populate the mid parts of this spectrum with many different movies and see if my case holds up. I say - the more representation in numbers that a group has, the less meaningful an adherence to stereotypes is. It would also help to remember that white straight male characters also adhere to racial and gendered stereotypes all the time, and there are plenty of movies dominated by them in numbers where every single character can be categorized as some stereotype, but nobody minds because there are so many such characters that it is clear we should inspect each of them individually and not as a symbol of their sector.
I will point out, though, that the movie does nothing to critique the idea that a woman who can't have children is broken. That goes beyond the character—that's a narrative concept they introduce as being reasonable.
Now, an aside about Black Widow and that scene specifically - I'm going to give the benefit of a doubt (going against my own earlier assesment) and say that you did not deliberately misinterpret the scene just to have something to rant about online. From what I know of you I see only a reasonable and level headed conversationalist. So I'll just tell you how I understood that scene when I watched it, and I'm curious to know if you can be convinced on the matter.
To me, it seems pretty obvious that Natasha is not thinking of herself as broken because she cannot have babies. We know from previous movies that her self loathing comes from feelings of guilt over her time as a brainwashed assassin for the Soviet Union - see her conversation with Loki in the first Avengers movie as a frame of reference. The memory that Scarlet Witch brought back to the surface was from her most traumatizing part of life, in the training program. The apex of that time happened when her evil masters cut out a part of her, an organ from inside her body, in a brutal manner, pinning her to a cold metal desk and surrounding her with intimidating doctors. And they did all that to their own soldier just because they believe it would make her marginally more effective as a heartless, mindless killer. And in the scene where she recalls what happened to her, she's talking with Bruce Banner, a man also haunted by the knowledge that he spends part of his time as a killing machine he can't control. Natasha knows that from his perspective, she brings order and calm to his life, and he wants to be with her at least partly because of that. But she's telling him she doesn't feel worthy being anybody's angel, that she thinks of herself as a dangerous monster too.When I watched the scene, I thought it was complex and wonderful and flashed out a rare depth Black Widow. It was one of my favorites in the movie. When I emerged from it to find out that so many people interpreted the scene in such a superficial way, I felt like fandom is going nowhere good. You have to ignore everything you know about the characters involved and their relationship, and see only a woman without identity talking to a man without identity, to understand the scene the way people seemed to. At least, that's what it looked like to me.
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I watched it with the expectation that I'd be underwhelmed, to be honest. What I'd heard made it sound like a fairly minor thing and not really sexist at all. But from my basic perspective as a feminist (which obviously informs my perspective and the opinions I form), when I actually saw it, I couldn't see any way to not view it as kind of gross. It's Whedon's special, patronizing brand of sexism, but it's still sexism.
Sure, she's dealing with guilt over being brainwashed. I get the context. That's why, going into it, I didn't expect to be that put off. The thing is, though, Black Widow's inability to have children is presented as the "peak" of that loss. It's the climax of her argument that she's a monster. You can't just consider the broader context—you have to consider the context in which she places the remark. Within that conversation, it's not just about her history as a trained killer. She's talking about how being unable to have children has rendered her aberrant.
The context does help place her strange statement, but it does not remove or obscure the language used. The language remains the same, and the language is fairly clear: Being barren is akin to being broken.
Ultimately, this is a matter of a difference of perspective. Like I said, I came at it from a different perspective from yours, even if I didn't, as you assume of many, "look for an excuse to be offended". I don't think we're going to be able to reach much of an understanding on this.
I've got to agree with Lord Snow. I have no idea why the internet got up in arms over that scene. Its a great scene.
So would a scene with a man having been castrated and having a similar reaction be 'problematic' or only with women?It can be read as "A woman's only value is bearing children, thus the Widow is a monster because she can't." I think it's far better read as a thing that is deeply traumatic to many women and far more so when it was deliberately inflicted on them.
If I'm recalling that scene correctly, Bruce Banner is complaining about not being able to have kids too.
Yeah, frankly, to me, I heard it as Bruce saying he can't offer Natasha a life like Clint's because he doesn't want to risk passing on his Hulkiness to his kids and Natasha saying, "Not a deal-breaker for me, since I can't have biological kids anyway even if I met a 'normal' guy."
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I'm going to jump in just long enough to say that everything MechaPoet and Rosie have said is 100% on-point, for film and for every other form of media. There is a multi-factted problem of not just a decent number of female or minority characters, but also terrible representation when those characters exist at all. So much of that terrible representation comes down to a complete lack of that same female/minority presence behind the camera as well: writers, producers, directors, actors.
The newest controversy over Mark Ruffalo's new movie "Anything" is a great example. He thinks trans people should be grateful we're getting a movie at all, but the character is a badly-written stereotype: a psycho, drug-addled sex worker. To make matters worse, he hired a cis man to play her. So at every step—-producer, casting director, writer, and actor—-this problem could have been dodged by having a trans creative in the mix to write a better character or hire a better actor for the role or the restructure the movie to be less of a stereotype-reinforcing oscar-grab, but because that entire line of people are the usual oblivious cis folk, we get another sad-sack trans character that rings as hollow and insulting to the actual trans community.
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Yeah, frankly, to me, I heard it as Bruce saying he can't offer Natasha a life like Clint's because he doesn't want to risk passing on his Hulkiness to his kids and Natasha saying, "Not a deal-breaker for me, since I can't have biological kids anyway even if I met a 'normal' guy."
The difference is that Bruce literally turns into a monster. Natasha's "so I'm a monster too" can be read as "because I can't have kids."
Hence the visceral reactions from women who are infertile. Several of whom I know walked out in tears.
But as I scroll up, I'm glad women have a bunch of dudes on the internet, and here on this thread, to tell us how we should feel about things they'll never experience. What would we do without their expert opinions on things they're ignorant about?
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A guy can't experience being infertile, and possibly seeing themselves accordingly as 'less than a man' so to speak?
You sure about that?
You honestly claiming that fertility issues and conflicting emotional states resulting from them are limited to women?
Dog, do you have any particular portrayals of male infertility that you'd like to discuss? Because I'm super down to hear what you think about actual media representations of men who can't have children and their relationship to masculinity. I'm prepared to engage in a conversation about the gendered standards of fertility, especially as they're widely represented in media.
So do you want to go there? Or do you not actually care how men feel about their relationships to (in)fertility and you're just tryna use them as a pretense to fight?
Hell, male fertility is often an "out" to remove the sting of consequences. See:
Racking my media-saturated brain for infertile males for whom such status actually matters, and I'm coming up wiiiiiiiiith... some characters who "shoot blanks," but it's either played for laughs or to reveal infidelity/sexual trauma on the part of their female partners.
The closest male parallel in media to the female infertility issue is the guy who cannot successfully find a woman to go to bed with (making him less of a MAN, bugawd!), and that narrative almost always culminates in his succeeding at this "task." Or being killed off in bitter disappointment, but that's mostly a stock bit in teen-themed horror.
There's a definite gulf there.
I feel like the way I see the different media portrayals can be summed up like this: Being a father is an achievement. It's something you do. Being a mother is a life. It's something you are.
"I'm a father!" is an announcement of your accomplishment: You have become a father.
"I'm a mother," is an introduction: A mother is what you are.
Like I said, this is just how I see it.
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I literally just re-watched that entire scene.
While "I" didn't view the scene as problematic within the context of the conversation between the two principles it doenst mean that it ISNT problematic.
There are PLENTY of movies that I LOVE with black characters that I find problematic that my white counterparts just shrug and go "eh, you sure youre not just looking for something to be offended by?"
Then I just take a deep breath and let it go.
EDIT: And FFS I am in NO WAY saying that people who DO find the scene problematic should just "take a deep breath and let it go".
That's how "I" choose to deal with it.
A guy can't experience being infertile, and possibly seeing themselves accordingly as 'less than a man' so to speak?
You sure about that?
You honestly claiming that fertility issues and conflicting emotional states resulting from them are limited to women?
Dog, do you have any particular portrayals of male infertility that you'd like to discuss? Because I'm super down to hear what you think about actual media representations of men who can't have children and their relationship to masculinity. I'm prepared to engage in a conversation about the gendered standards of fertility, especially as they're widely represented in media.
So do you want to go there? Or do you not actually care how men feel about their relationships to (in)fertility and you're just tryna use them as a pretense to fight?
I'm not the dog you adressed the question to, but I'll bite. Dan Dreiberg in Watchmen is impotent and can only perform sexually when he's dressed as a superhero. The entire secret identity/superhero paradigm based around impotence being the natural state of a man and potency being a supernatural state he can only achieve by putting on a costume to assume a false identity. Consider mild-mannered Clark Kent vs Superman.
I mean, I think Black Widow's revelation of child abuse ending in forced serilization was a craptasticly over written rationale when she could have looked at the Hulk and said, "Dude, c'mon, they invented birth control pills in the last millennium. I take them preemptively 'cause, y'know secret agent type. I actually get laid more than James bond. Anyhow, not a problem."
I certainly don't mean to dismiss the experience of any infertile woman who found the scene painful to watch, but anyone who thinks I, as a heterosexual cisgendered male, see myself portrayed realistically in superhero movies is being naive.
Impotence is not quite the same thing as infertility, but if it is included in this discussion, it feels necessary to mention Hemingway's The sun also rises.
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I like how a conversation about the representation of POC and women in movies has turned into one about male sexual performance.
I thought the whole problem with Black Widow was that she couldn't preform sexually; have I missed a step?
I thought the whole problem with Black Widow was that she couldn't preform sexually; have I missed a step?
She can "perform sexually" just fine. She cannot, however, "perform" reproductively. And the fact that the distinction exists and is seen as meaningful is part of what is being thrashed out here.
I thought the whole problem with Black Widow was that she couldn't preform sexually; have I missed a step?She can "perform sexually" just fine. She cannot, however, "perform" reproductively. And the fact that the distinction exists and is seen as meaningful is part of what is being thrashed out here.
Reproductively as compared to sexually, that's the step I missed. Thanks for the clarification.
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I thought the whole problem with Black Widow was that she couldn't preform sexually; have I missed a step?
Then shouldn't we talk about Black Widow? And not say... a bunch of guys who aren't Black Widow?
I'm jumping on this early, but there's a half dozen posts that don't mention her and instead start discussing various men and their infertility/impotence and it's portrayals in comics/movies.
Here's a really close analogy. Imagine we were talking about female genital mutilation. Someone decides to chime in about male circumcision, then, the conversation proceeds to discuss mostly male circumcision. While there's a case to be made that the two are very similar, the fundamental fact is they aren't identical, nor do they affect the same people. The more it goes into male circumcision, the less it's about female genital mutilation. That doesn't mean both topics don't deserve to be discussed, but they should take place in their own venues.
When the conversation is supposed to be about women or POC, we should talk about women or POC. If we go look at the Movies and Comics sections of the forums, there are literally dozens of conversations about white male characters. They don't need this one too.
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Iron, please don't scold me for responding to a previous post in the thread. A poster asked for an example of male infertility, I provided one of impotence, and then Cole pointed out the difference between sexual performance and reproduction. That's all that happened.
If we're only allowed to talk about Black Widow I'll say this: Johansson does what she can with the role, but Black Widow is a one dimensional character who exists only to wiggle her chest and her rear at the camera. That's a much bigger problem than the character's forced sterilization, and it won't be solved by having oodles and oodles of badly written women and POC.
Going back to the thread title, I don't think representation is a numbers game, I think it's a characterization game, but all that means is that I think Dear White People is a better movie than Avengers: Age of Ultron.
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I thought the whole problem with Black Widow was that she couldn't preform sexually; have I missed a step?Then shouldn't we talk about Black Widow? And not say... a bunch of guys who aren't Black Widow?
I'm jumping on this early, but there's a half dozen posts that don't mention her and instead start discussing various men and their infertility/impotence and it's portrayals in comics/movies.
Here's a really close analogy. Imagine we were talking about female genital mutilation. Someone decides to chime in about male circumcision, then, the conversation proceeds to discuss mostly male circumcision. While there's a case to be made that the two are very similar, the fundamental fact is they aren't identical, nor do they affect the same people. The more it goes into male circumcision, the less it's about female genital mutilation. That doesn't mean both topics don't deserve to be discussed, but they should take place in their own venues.
When the conversation is supposed to be about women or POC, we should talk about women or POC. If we go look at the Movies and Comics sections of the forums, there are literally dozens of conversations about white male characters. They don't need this one too.
I'd rather we actually talk about representations of infertility than have people try to use it as a "gotcha" and false equivalence.
That said, I agree that it is important that we don't just talk about male infertility. What's important to look at is how fertility is gendered, and the (double) standards of parenthood. Which is to say, the way fertility is portrayed as such an integral part of gender is damaging and gross overall. But for women, being infertile is often this "dark secret" that's presented as the worst, most monstrous thing she can be. Infertile men, on the other hand, aren't so nearly defined by their ability to reproduce and it's never a troubling dramatic secret. Hank Hill's low fertility is supposed to be comic in the way that all his other moderate-conservative Texan insecurities cause him embarrassment (his "gluteal deficiency", his constipation, his less-than-rugged son)--it doesn't define him in the way that reproductive ability is a major factor for female characters generally (which is to say, across media and not just in King of the Hill).
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Are the characters in Ghostbusters stereotypical? That wasn't my understanding. Or is this just you seeing a potential opening to talk about the internet's current punching bag?
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Are the characters in Ghostbusters stereotypical? That wasn't my understanding. Or is this just you seeing a potential opening to talk about the internet's current punching bag?
I thought it was hilarious that Chris Hemsworth got the female stereotype. The dumb attractive blonde that needs to be rescued?
You mean the historical expert Patty Tolan? I thought that was just an accent. And it's sort of problematic to complain about a black character using African-American ways of talking—what, is she supposed to talk like a white person from Seattle? Sure, she could, and there would be nothing wrong with that, but...See, this seems less like an example of "lots of representation, but all the characters match stereotypes" and more an example of "not enough representation, so any choice looks like a problematic choice".
In fairness, I did have concerns about them again choosing to make the lone black character the "practical street-smart" one, but she's certainly got more intellectual pull than Winston did. I'd have to see the movie to really gauge whether she's treated as an equal among the other three, though.
While there may be valid criticisms for the movie (the main ones I've heard are the overabundance of inside jokes and the tendency jokes have to go on too long), I haven't heard anyone else accuse the female characters of leaning on stereotypes. I have heard a lot of praise for the diverse range of female archetypes, in fact, indicating that they don't lean on tired, sexist cliches.
But you were replying to my post saying this:
Offering a diversity of roles does not help if all the roles are just rehashed stereotypes. Greater representation doesn't much help if it's all bad representation.
And you cited a single role that you interpreted as a stereotype. Ghostbusters: Answer the Call has, like, four or five major roles for women that I know of. So how does this connect?
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Are the characters in Ghostbusters stereotypical? That wasn't my understanding. Or is this just you seeing a potential opening to talk about the internet's current punching bag?The way the black woman talked and acted seemed like that kind of stereotypical black woman to me.
It's also how Leslie Jones talks on SNL. It's all her.
I dunno, maybe they could make it less bad? I really can't stand Gone With The Wind. Even putting aside its s%&*ty s*&~ty politics, it always felt overwrought and whiny to me. A mean woman marries a guy who apparently doesn't love her for her personality, until he suddenly decides her personality matters again and he skedaddles. Also, The South Did Nothing Wrong, but look at those awful Yankees setting fire to things, who was the real villain???/?//? *head explodes*
That's my take on it. Maybe a trifle simplified. :P