Time to Drop the Whole “Female Led” Thing
And by that I mean the term, not the concept.
Short Version:
“Female led super-hero movies” will fail until people pull their heads out of their asses and focus on the movie part, rather than the “female-led” gimmick. “Female-led” shouldn’t be a thing. It should simply be.
Allow me to expound:
Labeling a superhero movie as “female-led” makes it “other.” Making it “other” causes it to stand out. Making it “other” makes it a big deal.
As I mentioned in the “short version” above, super hero movies featuring female leads shouldn’t be a big deal.
They should simply be.
I can say it for a third time, but that’s probably overkill.
I babble on.
Defining a film, book, etc etc as being led by a specific gender is a marketing gimmick. It says to consumers: LOOK WHAT WE HAVE MADE TO APPEASE YOU! YES, YOU. YOU, SEPARATE DEMOGRAPHIC. OVER THERE. WE HAVE DONE YOU THE HONOR OF FOCUSING UPON YOU TO CONVINCE YOU TO SPEND YOUR MONEY ON THIS THING OVER HERE AND NOT THAT THING OVER THERE.
Give women a little credit, folks. Hell, while you’re at it, give everyone a little credit. Everyone, each individual person, from the moment we are born, likes certain things and dislikes others. As we grow, we’re influenced by the likes and dislikes of others and, if we’re lucky, come back around to a place where we’re confident enough in ourselves to like what we like what we fucking like no matter what other people fucking think about it provided whatever it is we like doesn’t come at the cost of anyone else’s wellbeing or safety.
I’m not going to see your movie simply because it is “female-led;” I have very little free time and limited disposable income. The movies to which I choose to allot some of that time, and some sector of disposable income, had best be, at the very least, enjoyable. I have my own boobs, I don’t need to follow whatever set you’re throwing up on screen.
I didn’t see Guardians today because there was one semi-important (ish?) female hero and one (sadly) underutilized female villain. I saw Guardians because I wanted to have some fun and get lost in a space adventure for a couple of hours. Would gender swapping the lead to, I dunno, Petra Quill, have made me any more or less likely to see it? No. Because I care about story and character development and very, very large explosions. Minimal adherence to the laws of physics. The ways in which the sentence, “I am Groot,” can be vocalized to make it mean different things.
Should there be more ladies in the mainstream, large and small screen hero worlds out there? Sure. Should they have larger roles? Absolutely. Should they be the pivot point of stories. Hells-to-the-yeah. But not because they’re female. There should be more ladies in the super hero universes out there because those ladies are good characters, because they have interesting stories, go on interesting adventures, kill interesting people.
It isn’t a box to be checked. It’s a fact of life and biology: there are males, there are females. There are those who fit into both boxes or into neither. There are those who are born in the wrong box and rebuild a new one from scratch. All of those people should be represented. But not because of what they are.
They should be represented because of who there are.
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