Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?
-
Branch out of American media; European and Asian media have much less tolerance for on-screen hardcore violence. American media freaks out over a nipple in children's media, but war and graphic fighting are A-OK!
-
Yes. It is my experience.
I am looking at the last 9 years (my oldest is 9); I agree, when I was a kid in the 80's, most movies were male focused.
If we restrict the dataset to big popular kids movies in the last decade; it is either a female empowerment movie or a movie based around violence.
As for kids books, in Harry Potter (my oldest boys favorite books) his favorite character is Hermione. Because she is brave, smart and gets shit done; Harry is brave and good at sports...
Even when the stories are male focused, the characters are still two dimensional.
-
Yeah, i like it when they mix it up. Diverse backgrounds make for interesting stories and engage new people with the genre. Its really lame and insulting when it feels like theyre just trotting a character out to meet a quota and don't give them any development beyond they're cultural origin though.
If women want to see more female characters, they should definitely write them and probably not do it with the intention of creating a character "for women" to resonate with, but the larger comic book Fandom as a whole. Whenever people declare a target audience, they inevitably alienate orhers.
-
I like the ringantasy over romantasy any day. Sometimes I also read sword-and-sandalsantasy.
+Old man grumbles over the youths word usage+
-
I think it really depends on why the story has a female lead.
I think Alien is a good example, Ripley could have been male and it really wouldn't have changed the plot that much. If I'm not mistaken Ripley actually was male at one point in the movies writing.
Doesn't matter that the shift happened, it happened, Sigourney Weaver fucking smashed it out of the park and the rest is history.
If the story is good and happens to have a female lead, I don't think people are actually against it. The Menu is the first movie to come to mind, I don't think anyone said anything about the lead in that being female (although being a lead in an ensemble cast with damn near equivalent amounts of screen time is kind of meaningless). I think what people are against is blatant pandering because it usually indicates that the product is poor.
-
Just for a specific example. Bluey vs Paw Patrol. Both HUGE kids shows, about dog-based characters.
In Bluey all of the important characters except Bandit are female. The stories are awesome, they revolve around family, caring and over coming challenges. They are almost never violent, the stories are rich and interesting and somewhat entertaining even for an adult watching for the infinity+1th time.
In Paw Patrol; all the important characters are male except Mayor Goodway and Skye. The stories are repetitive and boring, they revolve around working together, being heroic and solving problems. They are regularly violent, and as the show has progressed it has gotten stupid with massive power creep and a group of antagonists. Paw Patrol just kinda sucks.
In Bluey often Bandit is used for comic relief; none of the female characters are. In Paw Patrol, the comic relief is handled by Mayor Humdinger who is often the antagonist, Mayor Goodway is often scatterbrained but rarely is the comic punching bag.
-
Totally.
I love Shaun the Sheep.
-
But you surely agree that both of your statements to be are at odds with each other.
You can’t reject simultaneously hold that an increase in diversity leads to a “reduction in richness” of a work, whilst also claiming that the work itself is bad a problem if it lacks diversity.
First, you are claiming that good works are diminished by after the fact alterations, but then you also claim that after the fact alterations are a bad idea, because the work was never good in the first place if it lacked diversity.
It more looks like you are finding post hoc validation to support something you already believe, rather than explaining the actual reasons you believe it, because those reasons contradict each other
-
Hey, I'm just the messenger - blame the publishers. They've gotten sloppy, too, have you noticed? I've noticed major grammatical errors and even typesetting issues, even if the book is from the Big Five -- even Tor. It's disappointing, the 'enshittification' is happening before my eyes in real time.
-
A lot of it comes down to genre, target audience, and writer's personal experience. Even MC and DC are characters written decades ago. Batman is basically from the 1930s/40s.
Compare that to last decade's best selling YA novels. Hunger Games was constructed to be very balanced from the start including a female main lead, same for Percy Jackson.
My hot take is that most of these instances are actually fine as is because Hollywood in general sucks total ass at writing new characters into existing franchises, especially for the exact purpose of introducing diversity without any depth.
There's literally a 3+ hour series on youtube of how bad the new star wars trilogy is, and a solid third of that rant is about how poorly written the female lead is.
The issue here is that having an equal or majority female (or any other metric) set of characters wouldn't automatically make your story or writing better. You have to develop each character just like the rest, otherwise you end up with inserts that have no purpose other than to equal out a fraction.
Whether that is due to the writers being able to create male characters easier, or just a perceived audience target, you'd much rather have a well written character than a soulless one.
And that is likely not even correlated with male vs female writers. So much so that some critics even believe female writers are better at writing male characters than male writers, which is funny to think about. Ex: Harry Potter is still a 2:1 ratio.
Again though, there are plenty of good examples (mostly books) with very successful stories with equal or majority female characters.
If it makes you feel any better, this argument is old as hell lol. You can find ye olde forum posts discussing the exact same things mentioned in this entire thread from as far back as early 2000s, with plenty of in text examples from books and screenplay.
The general concencus though, is that if the characters are good, the plot is good, and the writing is good, no one really cares about the number because you're absorbed into the story. Your attachment to the story is a direct reflection of your own personal identity. If you notice the lack of X whatever while reading/watching and it breaks your immersion, then it's probably a viable critique of the writing. If it's something you notice after outside the story, then it might not matter as much as you think.
-
Most of those superhero teams were originally created by comic book companies staffed almost entirely by men. The heroes created are therefore how they visualize heroes being, which mostly takes inspiration from their own experiences, and therefore creates mostly men.
-
Yup this is exactly the argument I bring when it comes to this. People act like female leads just suddenly started to exist, and usually get irritated if I state those particular movies suck. A character being female or gay should not be the entirety of that characters use in the movie. If the story is done we'll and they happen to be female, gay, trans, whatever, and those things compliment and show a strength they wouldn't have otherwise and assist them in the story: Fucking fantastic. But that's not what we are getting majority of the time. We get 'hey this character is female therefore this movie is amazing'. Nah.
Examples of well written female leads off the top of my head:
The Hunt (2020): I actually reference this one specifically because it destroys the trope of 'females being weak and needing rescue'. This chick flips the whole movie on its head.
Kate (2021): Another action film (sorry) but more of the same. Well written gritty main character who happens to be female.
Everything, everywhere, All at Once: Pretty much everyone knows this movie at this point. I wanted to include this one specifically because it's an example of being well written characters and story where being female is a strength and deepens the story and characters. The mother / daughter connection and the turmoil of growing children, etc makes the movie. Arguably it would be worse if they tried to replace them with men and have the same impact.
I could keep going but by this point I'm sure I'm beating a dead horse.
-
liking those movies doesn’t prove anything because both movies (especially the second one) just give a new spin to pretty traditional perception of women
Blatantly untrue, Ripley was written as assumed to be a man in the script and they didn't change it after the lead actor got the role as a woman.
-
Titanic literally the box office champ for a decade with a female lead (close to 50-50 to be fair). Terminator 2 as well, and Mad Max Fury road, 2 of the greatest action movies of all time (you can fight me but, name aside, that story is all about Furiosa). Those movies work because the female leads are just good. The selling point isn't that they have women in them, the selling point is they are really really good movies.
-
To prove this point, The Marvels was received better than Captain Marvel, and it had 3x as many women in leading roles
-
I think it's cool, but I also really like strong women so.......
-
I know, I've even heard of pages missing from paperbacks published by reputable print houses here in sweden
-
This answer could greatly benefit from explaining how the higher-level concepts like patriarchy and privilege apply to this scenario in particular
-
I recommend Onward, especially if they're a little older enough to really resonate with the ending
-
This is valid but I want to non-judgmentally laugh at the concept of power creep in Paw Patrol
