I think I'd want a promotion after a little grappling and bridge-falling.
If you make promotion contingent on grappling, that's sexual harassment.
In the current movie landscape, female action heroes tend to be so few and far between that their mere existence seems like an accomplishment
Oh FFS. Of the top 20 films of the 2010s by box office, 10 contain a "female action hero" (Star Wars, Avengers, Avengers 2, Dark Knight Rises, Catching Fire, Hunger Games, Frozen, Harry Potter, Deadpool, Mockingjay).
Was this article reprinted from the early 1990s or something?
Also:
Perils of Pauline, which established White as one of the era's most popular stars, features a different kind of bravery: one in which the lead character pursues her explorations to the point where she has to be rescued--usually by her beau, Harry.
Yep. There is actually a difference between "female action hero" and "damsel in distress".
Everyone who's into grappling and fashion has already watched Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, right? it's not the 1910s but so what?
Frozen is an action movie?
It has a fairly action-hero type lead character, who is female.
Deadpool? You're counting Negasonic Teenage Warhead? I guess she's a female superhero, but she's a fairly peripheral character.
(Irrelevantly, wow was that an embarrassing movie to have gotten talked into taking two teenage boys to. I had not realized how prudish I've become.)
Is that the one where the remote control car tries to kill Clint Eastwood?
10: her and the Gina Cassano character whose name escapes me. None of them were the lead, but does an action hero character have to be the lead? Even Vanessa (?) displayed action-hero type characteristics (hitting people with shovels, etc). She wasn't just a dame tied to the railroad tracks.
I saw it the other week and thought it was hilarious. But, yes, rather closer to the bone than most of the other superhero films around.
"Your face looks like an avocado slept with an older, less attractive avocado." Heh heh.
It has a fairly action-hero type lead character, who is female.
Who solves her problems by...trying to talk to her sister. I mean, I like Anna. She is adventurous and impulsive. But she's not exactly into hand-to-hand combat or cool ninja moves.
Should Imperator Furiosa be on the list in 4? Maybe that wasn't a top 20 film, but she seems more relevant to the point that Anna.
(Full disclosure: I haven't seen Frozen and only saw maybe half of Fury Road.)
an action hero character have to be the lead
If you're complaining about the industry, sort of. I don't keep track of movies enough to actually make the argument myself in terms of how many of each kind of roles there are, but there's a real difference between a movie where there's a female character who hits someone in her five minutes of screen time, and where there's a female character who's the lead in an action movie.
Like, of your list above, I'd give you Star Wars, probably not Dark Knight Rises (didn't see it, but did Catwoman really get focus comparable to Batman?), the three Hunger Games movies.
Not Frozen, because it's a cartoon. Not sure what to do with Harry Potter and the Avengers movies -- both have large ensemble casts with more men than women, and more focus than the men, but yes, women aren't absent. And really not Deadpool -- by that standard every Bond movie would count as having female action heroes, and that seems to me to the wrong answer.
(I think I probably would have found Deadpool much funnier if I had not been worrying that Newt's friend's parents were going to be deeply concerned at me for having condoned such a thing. R-rated is one thing, but that was distinctly R-rated.)
By percentage of box office receipts (and certainly on total inflation-adjusted box office receipts) there's no question that female-action-heroine movies are bigger now than they were in the 1910s. And counting Perils of Pauline is ridiculous. But still that was a pretty interesting article.
Negasonic Teenage Warhead is a fantastic name. I don't know anything about her but I'm 100% positive it was a mistake not having her be the lead.
(Full disclosure: I haven't seen Frozen and only saw maybe half of Fury Road.)
If you need me to recite Frozen to you, just let me know.
Another way of making the same point: there were 100% definitely more theatrically-released films starring women action heroines in the 1910s, but that's because there were massively more films of all kinds when studios were cranking out 20-40 minute cheap silent films every two weeks. You can certainly find more films from the 1910s that prominently feature alligators or squirrels than you can today, but that doesn't tell you all that much for your cultural studies thesis.
Is this about Richard Scarry again?
The article's interesting as a reminder of how successful those serials were, but a) I don't think they were good examples of early female action heroes and b) I suspect that their demise is more due to the fact that most of the early cinema stars, male and female, were really bad actors and couldn't make the shift to talkies from what was, basically, mime.
What's bizarre about having action figure protagonists who are women is that we really have seen more of that recently, and in films which are by all measures wildly, insanely successful. And yet you still clear that idea that you can't do that and have a successful movie is firmly entrenched among a lot of people in the film industry. (The fact that there were almost no Rey action figures/merch/whatever for the Star Wars movie is probably the best example of that. I mean, I know what they were thinking because it's pretty obvious* and not remotely their ridiculous statement about the controversy, but what were they thinking?)
*See also the cancellation of the show Young Justice.
The Rey merchandise thing baffles and enrages me so much.
19: 100% agree and I am hoping she gets her own movie.
22: the studios are still cranking out cheap 40-minute films every couple of weeks, of course, but they show them on this new "television" thing rather than in cinemas. And many of them involve female action heroes. I think that was the main thing that annoyed me about the article; it's an apples-to-oranges comparison to set up 1910s serials against modern cinema rather than against modern TV.
You can certainly find more films from the 1910s that prominently feature alligators or squirrels than you can today, but that doesn't tell you all that much for your cultural studies thesis.
My cultural studies thesis will focus on films featuring female alligator action heroes. Who fight squirrels.
You can certainly find more films from the 1910s that prominently feature alligators or squirrels than you can today,
Also, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is one of the most successful comics of 2015
25, 27: There's probably something interesting to be said about the very specific culture of marketing departments (or whatever you call the people who are focusing on selling tie-in stuff.) I mean, sexism generally, yes, still a problem but there's progress. But that specific area... I don't know anything about it myself, but I find myself speculating that there's some historical reason that incredibly retrograde meatheads have unquestioned control over marketing.
30: Featuring adorable trading cards supposedly penned by Deadpool, so there's your tie-in already!
My best guess is that deep down a lot of people have an engrained sense that boys won't identify with female characters (and so won't want to play with action figures/whatever for female characters). And so they worry that if they put out stuff that is in what they think of as the boy's-toy-market that does have those in it they'll drive the boys away. They might pick up some girls buying toys, but they already have princess dolls for them or whatever so the net effect will be a loss.
The fact that boys seem to have exactly no problem doing that in practice is hard for them to fully take on board because of how obvious it seems, and how unnecessary it is to say it when doing planning strategies. And so you see these bizarre examples where they look like they're just setting piles of money on fire for reasons they can't fully explain.
26: me too. I mean, you wouldn't think it took any effort at all for a marketing person to think "ooh, a Star Wars film. Based on historical experience, could we profitably make and sell hundreds of thousands of action figures of every character with any lines at all, and also most of the ones without lines*? Let's consider that for a momentYES." This decision to not make any of the actual lead character must have really taken effort.
*There was an action figure of R5-D4. This is the droid that Luke Skywalker looks at at the start of the first film and goes "I'll buy that one" whereupon it goes fzzzt and falls over and he goes "oh, I'll buy that R2-D2 one instead". It has literally five seconds of screen time, consisting entirely of it going fzzzt and falling over. It had no lines, not even droid noises. It served no role in the plot whatsoever. And yet there were people in my class at school who plonked down £2.99 for one.
There were about 14 different Princess Leia figures, for that matter, in her various outfits. So it obviously wasn't a problem in 1981.
On phone in car so this is short, but movie marketing=broaden your demographic, toy marketing=gender segment to the max. Very different things. You want the whole family's butt in the theater seats but tie-in toys get sold in the boys aisle or girls aisle + SW is gen boys aisle. That may be awful but it's profitable for tou companies and based on rsrch they do
19: Negasonic Teenager Warhead was the best part of the movie, but I'm not sure that it would work at feature length.
35: Many of them likely owned by some of the biggest assholes of Gamergate -- owning a female action figure is not necessarily an indication of feminism.
That may be awful but it's profitable for tou companies and based on rsrch they do a situation they've created for themselves.
That may be awful but it's profitable for tou companies and based on rsrch they do
I'm super skeptical that they do high quality research. I assume they are researchologists who blow smoke up their president research bosses' butts.
Is this the thread to ask what we are to meant understand Wonder Woman as having been up to since WW1 in Batman vs. Superman?
...owning a female action figure is not necessarily an indication of feminism.
I guess you get to define "feminism"? I am not so clear on how it should work everywhere.
Umm, anime. I'll give you nice collections of two seasons, you can look at the pictures or read each synopsis.
The variety, and limitations, make it a little hard to talk about.
There are lots of "girly" fighters, like Sailor Moon. They will usually fight in a team. There will usually be a little romance, but rarely as the main plot or motivation.
They may or may not support a male leader, but usually in such "harem" circumstances a) there is no male competition in the team, b) they save the male "leader" much more often than are saved, c) there is always a variety: a smart quiet one, a sarcastic cynical one, etc.
There is quite a lot of I guess revealing costumes, sexual objectification but not universally or not without art or variety. Sorry, if they have to look like Imperator Theron to be feminist, they fail.
Guys in Japan absolutely do buy female action figures, by the truckload.
That mysterious exotic culture that is Nihon
Osomatsu-san was overwhelmingly the surprise massive hit of last year, and a supermassive success among...fujoshi.
Fujoshi being the young women who match up male characters from manga and anime and communally write romantic or xplicit doujinshi slash/yaoi fanfiction about said males making love.
Why this series? Worth thinking about, but unclear.
".owning a female action figure is not necessarily an indication of feminism."
See, for example, all those statues of the Virgin Mary in Catholic churches.
Here's one fer ya, sincere question
Series, 1990s, takes place on a space warship
Captain, woman, is tactically brilliant, tough, has to destroy civilians at one point to save the ship. She is also constantly and openly chasing the male cook "Marry me, Marry me" and fighting the female competition.
The cook isn't interested, being an otaku who watches anime and collects figurines. He is also a fighter pilot who doesn't want to fight.
He is a lousy fighter (okay, mecha) fighter pilot, who has one move: when in danger he closes his eyes and ganbaru charges the enemy.
The other four fighter pilots, women, and very brave and competent, then have to band together to save the idiot. Over and over. Oh, they are also in love with the idiot.
The navigator and weapons officer, 14 year old woman genius, comments on all this by muttering "Baka baka" (crazy) constantly.
Should I feel guilty? Do I lose my feminist badge?
Moby, see Heat and ALL of Fury Road. Now.
(skip Queen of the Desert which I just saw. I love Werner Herzog but man, that was just embarassing)*.
*And Gertrude Bell was a IRL action hero, too bad the movie sucked.
47 to 15.2 You'll thank me later.
I kind of want to see the movie where Herzog gets eaten by a bear.
I really have trouble watching movies at home because I just wander away to the computer as soon as the movie hits a slow spot.
48: Watched White Ribbon again this week. Love that movie.
Hidden treasure: Yoji Yamada (Tora-san guy) Flag in the Mist 1965. Nasty film noir, really fucking good.
1960s Shochiku was a studio in fast decline cause television, but they were at their peak in craft. A early scene has our heroine walking a busy urban sidewalk and all we hear are her foosteps, not the dozens of cars going past her. Another short scene is filmed in a reflective hubcap. A sequence in the film is compared to Antonioni. Yamada is way underrated, and even the Tora-sans are underated.
Le Dossier 51, Deville 1979 was excellent, and Siberade, Konchalovsky 1979 was pretty good. Die Parallelstrasse 1961 was too abstract for me.
I watch old movies.
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Oh well
Finished Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shunji tonight, about postwar storytellers, and it is a masterpiece. 10/10. So many things could be said about it, I'll just do two.
1) They used a cast of older voice actors, in their fifties, because they wanted to and succeeded portraying the characters of the war survivors. So many traits go into this, a weariness and humor, a strength and sadness, think Roger in Mad Men or Bob Mitchum. Really tough for a kid to catch.
In movies, Naruse's Floating Clouds and some Ozu. It was important because the show is getting a second season, and goes up to the 1990s. It is about Japan, shown thru an allegory of a dying traditional artform.
2) It is at the least homosocial if not homosexual, about two guys who love each other and the woman who comes between them. A triangle of sorts. Misogynistic? Well, she is given her due, also a sad survivor who was forced into prostitution in Manchuria and then discarded and ignored made dependent after the war by men. There is also a nice guy/asshole/woman's choice dynamic here, that is very complicated and not necessarily what would be expected.
Technical and production values? Perfection. But it is the multiplayed novelistic quality of the tragedy that hits first.
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I really have trouble watching movies at home because I just wander away to the computer as soon as the movie hits a slow spot.
Get a dual monitor setup and you can watch movies at the computer.
