The Take

The Dangerous Woman is the female answer to the Bad Boy. She’s a combination of a few other popular tropes: the femme fatale with a modern tough girl edge, a cool girl heightened by the so-called ‘crazy’ woman. While she might be physically dangerous, the true power — and threat — of the Dangerous Woman is emotional. She embodies our society’s fear of the woman who doesn’t feel the way we expect women to, or who plays with men’s feelings. Here's our Take on how the Dangerous Woman exposes our culture’s drive to compartmentalize female emotion and sexuality, and why women are drawn to this fantasy as a means of unlocking their dangerous selves within.

Film and TV have long failed to depict neurodiverse characters with accuracy - often framing them as the "odd one out" or as autistic savants, like in Rain Man (1988). But lately, as our society learns more about neurodiversity, we have begun to see a change. Nuanced portrayals of neurodiverse characters aim to put us in their shoes and give us a window into how they experience the world differently. Audiences have rallied behind characters such as Abed (Danny Pudi) in Community, and Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) in Sherlock, reclaiming and celebrating them for providing authenticity to neurodiverse stories.

The henpecked husband traverses centuries and genres, but why, after decades of feminism, is the nagging wife a character we still accept? The “nag” in film and TV is often cast as materialistic, pushy, and unfaithful. Furthermore, she is often depicted as unappealing and willing to raise her voice. Even if what she asks of her partner is actually pretty reasonable, her tone or the incessantness of her demands is played as insufferably annoying. Thus she can serve as a kind of emotional “scapegoat” allowing viewers to excuse her male partner’s blatantly irresponsible behavior.

Increasingly, stories from the nag’s perspective explore how she’s often an overstretched wife and mom juggling a lot and carrying an intense mental load, while feeling let down by a partner who’s not committing the same effort or showing her due respect. So where does “the nag” come from and what can we learn by hearing her side?

East Asian women onscreen have long been haunted by the figure of the Dragon Lady: a violent seductress who will do anything to achieve her goals. At the same time, the dragon lady is unapologetically driven, ultra-assertive, and has agency — disproving the widespread assumption that Asian people must be “meek”.