Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

It's not different from a guy fantasising about having a One True Bro™ to be the wingman in his life when he hasn't got anybody like that and is going through hell without support or help. Or, he might even wish for a True Love™ to do that, too.

Why should girls wish for Prince Charming sweeping us off our feet and taking over/ smothering us as a default for "saving us"? Can't we wish for a Best Big Sister™ to help us deal with the crap, too? Or, a guy who works with us while we work with him and help him, too?

edited 24th Jun '14 5:57:11 AM by Euodiachloris

I find the large swaths of fiction that are dominated by a female market, whether books, movies, videogames, or whatever else tend to be ignored whenever discussions of female representation in media tend to come up because said sectors aren't as popular / mainstream / visible / profitable.

Video games are a particularly egregious example, where the majority of the discussion focuses about women as they relate to the AAA FPS loci of games while simultaneously ignoring the millions of women happily engrossed in what most would dismiss as Casual Gaming

Euo is right.

Edward Cullen is a freaking stalking psycho. Hence why I said Prince Charming and the Disney route is a slightly saner example, if not only slightly less unhealthy.

Women and Men, girls and boys, all need a variety of characters and environments to lose themselves in because especially if you are coming from an abusive, traumatic, or otherwise troubling background, these characters are more than just entertainment, they may be your only friends.

If you don't have good friends, you can be lead to make poor decisions or not recognize unhealthy relationships.

Forcing being a damsel in distress as the only culturally advertised model on girls is dangerous for both sexes.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

True, it would be a less common depiction. Usually if you enter your princess phase, Prince Charming is kind of mandatory in the narrative for most girls ( and some boys) from most Disney Princesses to old-fashioned wedding vows about loving and protecting vs. loving and obeying. The same goes for most boys whose role models are usually depicted as completely righteous when engaged in girl rescuing.

But I thought those ideas are something you don't really acquire at middle age. It looks more like one of those ideas you get in childhood and carry over as a comforting fantasy, while consciously realizing that there is more to life than indulging your submissive streak, and that the guys have more complex ideas for their life, than being devoted to protecting you. Not realistic, but certainly pleasant for daydreams.

As for one true Bro: I think that might actually be a bit on the retreat. Manly friendship was a big thing in older media, I think, where the women were more plot device or decoration (Bros before Hos and all that). Nowadays good-looking men who enter emotionally significant relationships tend to be shipped with each other (I plead guilty on multiple accounts, but being into men I claim minority privilege ). And with most guys being brought up with the idea that finding men attractive is the girly thing to do, and that being girly is undesirable for men, it is a little difficult for some.

edited 24th Jun '14 6:07:04 AM by blauregen

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

I guess I was lucky: I got into ballet at a really young age. My favourite "fairy tale" wasn't Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella.

It was Swan Lake (with all its inherent complexities). Oh, and Giselle was a close second. Although I've always had a soft spot in my life for The Nutcracker, it never engaged me as much as Swan Lake. Yeah: so much for happy endings of being swept off your feet and "saved".

edited 24th Jun '14 6:05:01 AM by Euodiachloris

xMany and/or Lots (me lost count)

@aceofspades: You say "fanwank" I say Watsonian (and it's ironic you consider fanwank a negative considering the thread, let alone contextual examination). It absolutely is analytical. They're not preposing any new story, they're just saying "But what if it's actually not a kidnapping and they're playing a game for the afternoon? And what if Mario fights a giant frog for no apparent reason other than MB characters were slapped into a completely different game to make more money? Dude, whoa..."

I'm sure you could write a litany on Indie games such as Fat Princess, Castle Crashers, Limbo, and Braid and read them from a Doylian perspective that takes them out of context and without bothering to finish them (the last two, especially), but that doesn't mean the conclusions would necessarily reflect anything helpful or even accurate. Context matters and if you evaluate a presentation outside of the context it's in (Suey Park's failed and poorly thought out #Cancel Colbert campaign comes to mind), you can come out looking like an ass who's completely missing the point, and not like violins on television.

Re: Twidumb. When a relationship is based on mutual manipulation, you're gonna have a bad time. Also I know you folks are savvy, but have you heard about Nostalgia Chick's 50 Shades of Green project (aka, "Awoken") where the bland protagonist is named "Andromeda Slate" and the Cullenbot-5000 is Cthulhu (aka, "Riley")? It's kind of the best thing ever, and the reviews are likewise wonderful. It's hard to tell if they are being Poes or not, who is in on the joke and who is completely oblivious.

edited 24th Jun '14 6:10:44 AM by chi_mangetsu

"I'd like to be a tree." - Fluttershy

I dunno, this is gals like J.K. Rowling and Agatha Christie we're talking here - one is a global phenomenon while the other is the best selling author of all time, with all but yearly screen adaptations. Sounds pretty mainstream to me. Even video games are like this - multi-million dollar behemoths like World Of Warcraft, Diablo or The Sims are all but ignored whenever gender comes into discussion, never mind the casual Wii games that positively dwarf everything else.

Conversely, as popular as Twilight got, nobody's being forced to read it; people do so on their own accord. Having role models, be it fictional, but more importantly personal, is the responsibility of the people at home, not the writer from across the world.

edited 24th Jun '14 6:30:21 AM by indiana404

I don't really agree. I think media portrayals are important, because they reach so many people and penetrate the collective consciousness, so to speak.

I understand what was being said about the appeal of a rescue romance, but the thing about a Twilight style rescue romance is that the girl doesn't have to do anything to get the man's love (corollary: she can't lose it, either). Which is great appeal for the depressed lovesick, but doesn't really give any encouragement about how to actually, you know, make their real world happier, or find a healthy relationship.

Even Cinderella has a protagonist who has to work, hard, to get happiness, and stress virtues other than her appearance that attract her Prince Charming.

edited 24th Jun '14 6:34:36 AM by PointMaid

True enough. The message of "be the best drudge you can be under abusive conditions and, you, too, can earn your awesome Prince" does have some merit.

But...

The appeal of rescue romance comes basically from learned helplessness and reinforces it. Women are powerless to change anything, being the message. The women are insofar important, as they get to feel desired by a man. Because the worth of women is measured in how desirable they are to men. Neither helplessness nor desirability as your only worth are particularily healthy concepts.

Waiting for a saviour instead of realizing their own power, makes those rescue romances the opium of the women.

Pretty much what I wanted to say.

EDIT: Also... rather sexist to the men, when it's the case that the women don't care who he is personally or want to give anything back, just want him to rescue her. Because he's a man, y'know?

edited 24th Jun '14 7:05:04 AM by PointMaid

Yup: which is why so many men have the unwritten corollary when it comes to the Girl in the Tower: "Entitled Bitch".

"I'm a girl: of course you must rescue me and lavish attention upon my majestic, boobilicious, Very Pink self!" -_- It's the dark sister to Entitledto Have You. <_<

edited 24th Jun '14 7:13:16 AM by Euodiachloris

I would be interested in a gut-reaction. Our male hero faces the dilemma of either rescuing his old male friend or the nubile, sympathetically portrayed female lead from gruesome death. Neither potential victim is in a position for self-rescuing. Both potential victims are approximately the same age and social strata. Our hero decides to save his male friend and let the girl die. (Did this ever happen in a movie or novel?) Before critical analysis: Is it ok?

edited 24th Jun '14 7:15:26 AM by blauregen

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

Well, it would be OK to me, considering that it is a Sadistic Choice. Well, no critical analysis allowed, so that's my 2 cents worth on the topic.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

Thank you. It was just that even for me the first idea was 'save the girl' before the 'Wait a second ....' kicked in.

And I still can't think of any major work were rescuing the guy over the girl happens.

edited 24th Jun '14 7:38:33 AM by blauregen

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

Isn't that what more or less happens in The Dark Knight ?

I think he took a third option there.

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

No, in The Dark Knight, he explicitly tried to save the girl, but the Joker predicted he'd do that because he'd already seen Batman leap out of a window to save her (leaving the rest of the Joker's potential victims totally helpless) earlier in the film.

Also of note is that the man (Harvey Dent) that ends up being rescued also becomes distraught when Batman comes to save him instead of the girl. This is despite the fact that we're told multiple times that Dent is the single most important person in Gotham at that moment, and the key to making Gotham a better place once and for all.

The movie plays it ridiculously straight.

edited 24th Jun '14 7:46:08 AM by KingZeal

I question whether it's accurate to say that the appeal of the rescue romance comes only from learned helplessness. Any feeling of helplessness, powerlessness, or lack of value, no matter where its roots, can make a heroine who is clearly valued just for being who she is almighty appealing. Prince Charming isn't appealing only because he's handsome and a prince: he's appealing because he values the damsel enough to put himself at risk for her — and he may value her that highly without even knowing her.

Don't confuse the way people ideally should think of themselves as with the way they really do, and don't make the mistake of dismissing a coping mechanism as a bad thing just because in an ideal world the damage it's used to cope with wouldn't exist.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Thank you.

edited 24th Jun '14 7:46:57 AM by blauregen

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

Doesn't Batman's "girl-over-guy" decision have disastrous consequences, though?

Schild und Schwert der Partei

It does, but that decision isn't portrayed as the wrong thing to do. The overarching angst of the third act revolves around his failure to save the girl, not his decision to save her.

It's easy to interpret that we're meant to see his decision to save the girl as the morally correct, even if logically incorrect, thing to do.

edited 24th Jun '14 8:08:55 AM by KingZeal

Yeah, that's what I was going with as well. It's not so much the idea of being rescued that's appealing, but being rescued by the right type of guy. The one time the rescuer turned out to be a brutish ogre, well, he still was what the princess really wanted anyway. Even the sparkly creep from Twilight has his merits, in that he honestly cares for the living personification of blandness that is the main heroine. And I'd wager that she is in turn appealing, precisely because she's not a picture perfect princess or an ambitious action girl, but a homely wallflower that everyone has felt like at some point.

All in all, I'd say the female appeal of the rescue romance isn't based around the passive and self-aggrandizing wishful thinking that people should really risk life and limb to appease the girl's sense of entitlement, but stands on the simple desire to have someone care and be with her, even at her lowest point. Hardly the sexist objectification it's made out to be.

The Prince Charming trope in itself isn't a bad thing. Doing my own independent research on these tropes in my spare time, I've found that while Prince Charming is a problematic character, what's truly problematic about it has become muddled with both gender politics, including good old-fashioned mis-ogny/andry.

Prince Charming's has two core problems: (1) He's a man that drops by to bestow value upon a woman because he claims her as his and (2) He's placed as the epitome of what a man should be (he embodies every form of power imaginable—wealth, social status, handsomeness, physical prowess, kindness).

However, as the trope got rejected in gender politics, a funny thing happened: people turned against the second problem (menscoff at the idea that a man should have all those qualities and women scoff at the idea that a man can have all those qualities).

So our heroes have become more of an Everyman or Anti-Hero type...while still doing the same things that Prince Charming once did. We don't have a shining, handsome Prince on horseback riding in to save the day anymore; now, he can be a grocery store employee with a chainsaw hand, or a fat Italian plumber, or twin brothers from a martial arts dojo.

No, that doesn't work. Because if it were, the same thing would apply for men. And it doesn't.

The closest equivalent is the woman who cheerleads her man into recovering from a Heroic BSoD or who "inspires" him to be a hero. But it's still about HIM being a hero and her being a cheerleader.

If this weren't sexist, there would be more cases of a man being captured and helpless within his "darkest hour" and needing a strong woman to rescue him and let him know he's valued.

edited 24th Jun '14 8:12:37 AM by KingZeal

I love the way Bill Willingham handled Prince Charming in Fables. It really deconstructed the trope then over time, reconstructioned it. If anyone here hasn't gotten around to reading the series, I highly recommend it. Fables is highly addictive and for those interested in the concept, very hard to put down.

"I'd like to be a tree." - Fluttershy