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

But that's just it - the Furies were never evil of their own volition. None of the evil New Gods were. Even Darkseid has a backstory of being abused by his mother to make him evil. The series is merely continuing the theme that denizens of Apokolips were all victims of the evils of tyrants themselves.

And if this quote from a producer of the live action Aladdin remake is any indication, they're still making mistakes.

http://lethal-cuddles.tumblr.com/post/182750713412/in-the-first-movie-we-felt-she-didnt-have

Yeah, Jasmine's thing is she wants to stop Jaffar as soon as she finds out he's after the kingdom.

Except it wasn't till now that the women were revealed as victims of rape and other sexual abuse (classic shitty 'reason/explanation' for villainous women throughout stories if they're not a Woman Scorned by the way) in order to make them evil. And that's the problem. Don't recall the dudes having to be victimized in such a way, nor was there ever an emphasis on it before. It was more implied and understated or even not there at all in some stories, and thus the women were awarded a sense of agency. Here, not so much.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Mar 10th 2019 at 1:21:30 AM

Throwing in rape is basically cheap exploitation, IMHO.

Especially in what used to be family friendly characters.

Yes, they were bad but entertainingly bad.

Re: Disney Princesses.

Yeah, is hilarious how while trying to be progressive, they end up destroying the Fair for Its Day aspects and leaving something subpar.

I mean, if there's something for original Jasmine to be criticized for it's the fact that she's rather sexualized despite being 15.

As for Maleficent, I maintain that while the movie was flawed and that I do understand why some did not like the changes made, I feel it is a necessary movie about a woman exacting justice on a man who wronged her which is all too relevant now. The Three Good Fairies shouldn't have been screwed over though, that I will agree.

Though that is probably more a modern time issue since I wouldn't be surprised if that was the age range to get your daughter married to a young prince from another land.

At the very least her father was letting her have a say in the selection process. I feel like most rulers back then probably didn't do that.

Mind you, as an animated character, she could have been said to be 22 and nothing would change.

Indeed that wouldn't change much on the narrative front since I get the feeling Jaffar is probably in his late forties at the very least so the "but you're so old" comment from the Sultan would still fit.

OH MY GOD

>.<

Princess Jasmine DID NOT want to meet a guy. She was actually trying to escape the Sultan's effort to make her "meet a guy". And she's pretty hostile to Prince Ali because he's just like all the other smarmy princes she's been forced to meet.

Jasmine wanted two things. She wanted to escape from her Patriarchal obligation to become some rich dude's arm candy, and she wanted to stop Jafar from ruining her nation. Jasmine was fine.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The Disney Princesses are feminist icons. It's men like Guy Ritchie, Dan Lin, and Jonathan Eirich who think they need to be "fixed", because they just know them through the memetic lens of "LOLprincesses".

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 10th 2019 at 4:43:58 AM

There is also the fact that the guy before Ali stormed out angry because she let her pet tiger take a chunk out of his pants.

While everyone else was enjoyed the show Ali put on Jasmine couldn't have cared less. It makes me curious how many extravagant parades did she have to see to get tired of them.

Well, to be fair, Aurora doesn't really do much in her movie, and Ariel's goal in her film is to give up her whole life, friends, family, etc for a man she doesn't even know. Mind you, that isn't to say the men behind these movies aren't making them worse or have simplistic views of their characters.

I thought Ariel's goal was to understand the surface world / meet guy she doesn't know much about.

This realization was a awakening to me. Girls like girly stuff. Is a Captain Obvious stuff, but I didn't realize it when I was (even) younger. I was set up to the idea that "strong woman" were some special type of woman.

My own mother had to correct me at times...Eventually, I realized that dividing girls into random class based on their personality and correlating them with emotional strenght was fucking dumb.

Yhea, there is this tendency for 'strong female character' to mean acting like a guy with boobs that I've noticed.

Ariel's infatuation with Eric stems from him being part of that world she's so fascinated by. Sure, him being handsome and cool helps, and she did genuinely get to know him after she got legs, but it was just as much her surface-philia and giving her dad the middle finger for destroying her life's work that led her to Ursula.

This is one of those times where "somewhere in the middle" is the correct option.

Female characters should be able to be feminine and strong while also having the right to behave in ways that may or may not be seen as feminine.

I don't think middle of the road is the right answer either necessarily. Femininity and 'toughness'/basassness are separate scales and it's ok to be anywhere on it. However, what we are currently getting is only one end of a single scale.

Oh certainly, I meant more the "strong female characters have to be feminine vs non-feminine" scale.

I agree that femininity and badassness are orthogonal to one another.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Mar 10th 2019 at 7:51:02 AM

The answer is, of course, every girl is different.

Just like every guy.

[faux profoundness]

Profound or not that's still true

A lot of girls like "girly" stuff. A lot of girls also don't care for anything "girly" either (like me). There are also girls who like some girly stuff but not others. There's no reason to pigeonhole things like that.

The problem is when people, often men but definitely not always, think female characters need to come in a single overly-confining box to be acceptable. As long as the overtly negative parts are filed off, these characters still appeal and are empowering to some section of the female audience (and surely some of the male audience as well, and etc.) They don't have to "add" anything to make these characters acceptable for contemporary audiences.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 10th 2019 at 9:57:08 AM

Aurora and Philip were underdeveloped to the point of being near props instead of characters in their own right in Sleeping Beauty. The only characters who seemed to be actual characters in that movie were the fairies, good and bad.

As for what constitutes a "strong" female character, that's an issue of a culture in which "feminine" has somehow become synonymous with "weak".

Edited by M84 on Mar 10th 2019 at 9:59:55 PM

Hate to admit it, but like part of growing up for me was realizing that it is 100% possible to like both. Growing up I was pretty tomboyish because I liked computers, machinery, and like all the things that is normally "boy", annoyed my mom that I didn't like dresses and would much rather steal the stuff my brother got because she would never get that stuff for me...

Starting my late teens/early 20s, I finally realize that it is entirely possible to like all that stuff AND cute dresses and dolls. Basicly this comic entirely relatable◊

Pigeon holing people into one or the other alone, is something that needs to be overcome, not just "Both are valid"

Edited by Imca on Mar 10th 2019 at 7:05:08 AM

I've always just understood "strong" to mean "has agency in the story and is complex/fleshed out".

Edited by Draghinazzo on Mar 10th 2019 at 10:09:14 AM