|
EmmyOk posted:I have only read the book of Gone Girl but Amy is presented as a baddie The movie has a different ending than the book, though. And let me go back and spoiler tag my post, oops.
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 10:39 |
|
|
Snak posted:The power fantasy is essentially escapist in nature and people like it because it's based around the idea of vindicating their masculine identity rather than telling them they need to fix themselves to be happy. There's this bit from I think Louis CK where he says when he's on the subway and an old lady is standing he thinks about giving her his seat and never does it but feels better about himself because he thought about it. And I think that kind of easy self-validation is at the heart of a lot of power fantasy narratives. If you look at the classic era of Shaw Brothers kung fu films, for example, they're fairly explicitly empowerment myths---oppressed hero rises above to seek justice for the weaker wronged, usually expressly trodden under the heels of the corrupt government. The big breakout hit was Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman (1967) which came at a historical moment when the film was generally read by contemporary audiences as an anti-establishment empowerment story and it's all about having to rebuild yourself from scratch to overcome your problems. And that's a central conceit in the canonical kung fu story---the guy who can't beat the bad guy at first but then spends the second act training and so can punch Pai Mei right the gently caress off the temple steps in the dramatic freeze frame at the end of the last reel. The fact that the narrative goes out of its way to emphasize that the hero isn't strong enough at first is part of the way it works as a power fantasy for the audience. To paraphrase Neal Stephenson: most guys harbour in their heart of hearts the belief that if they really had to they could become a martial arts badass to avenge the death of their father/family/girlfriend, and that's absofuckinglutely part of the way power fantasies often work on film.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:33
|
|
|
Rabbit Hill posted:The movie has a different ending than the book, though. And let me go back and spoiler tag my post, oops. Amy might come off like the protagonist in the book (don't know, haven't read), but in the movie she's clearly the antagonist. She wins, sure, and that's par for the course for femme fatale characters, but she isn't an outlier because she's the villain. Some people might not care if she's the villain, though, so there's that!
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:37
|
|
|
Rabbit Hill posted:Uh, I posted my female power fantasy movies (and I'm a real live woman!), but maybe no one took my answers seriously? I haven't seen Gone Girl, but everything I've heard about it fits the bill. I saw Under the Skin and loved it, despite it being nothing like the book it claimed to adapt, because Scarlett Johanssen's character was so unique: a female protagonist who is a literal cold-blooded sexual predator. In what ways do you feel like Under The Skin even depicts a power fantasy on the part of the protag?
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:39
|
|
|
I think a huge part of the problem is that if you want a female empowerment movie you run headlong into the Bechdel Rule. So a lot of the suggestions were just "oh,a woman who is more than a plot device
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:42
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:I think a huge part of the problem is that if you want a female empowerment movie you run headlong into the Bechdel Rule. So a lot of the suggestions were just "oh,a woman who is more than a plot device Nothing about the Bechdel Rule prevents or encourages female empowerment.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:44
|
|
|
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:In what ways do you feel like Under The Skin even depicts a power fantasy on the part of the protag? It doesn't -- it's a power fantasy for the viewer (uh, if she's a woman). Same with Amy -- regardless of the film's attitude toward her, the viewer gets to watch a woman crush her cheating husband. I'm not saying I endorse these fantasies, or that they're positive and healthy, but they're definitely power fantasies. Rabbit Hill fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Sep 18, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:50
|
|
|
SubG posted:That's a weirdly narrow definition of a power fantasy. One Armed Swordsman is sitting on my DVR. Gonna watch it this weekend probably.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:50
|
|
|
SubG posted:That's a weirdly narrow definition of a power fantasy. Yeah I mean, I may have bitten off a little more than I can chew by waking up this morning, seeing a post on the internet, and deciding that instead of doing my homework I would codify and define exactly what constitutes a male power fantasy and then immediately start trying to translate that into female terms. It's been a really interesting discussion so far, but I'm the first to admit that I came up with that definition on the spot because I wanted to be part of the conversation. I don't think it's totally off, but it's clearly not comprehensive or completely accurate.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 00:54
|
|
|
Rabbit Hill posted:It doesn't -- it's a power fantasy for the viewer (if she's a woman). Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:One Armed Swordsman is sitting on my DVR. Gonna watch it this weekend probably.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 01:01
|
|
|
Rabbit Hill posted:It doesn't -- it's a power fantasy for the viewer (uh, if she's a woman). Gone Girl I could see, especially since it commits to making its point about her performance as a put-upon "cool chick". I can't really see it with Under The Skin.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 01:03
|
|
|
SubG posted:Then a grindhouse in the '70s is the centre of all social progressivism in the universe because '70s exploitation films are absolutely in love with the idea of depicting avenging female characters engaging in sexual violence. Master of the Flying Guillotine takes gimmicks to the extreme and it rules.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 01:34
|
|
|
Would the Tony Scott/Richard Kelly film Domino count?
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 01:59
|
|
|
What Women Want is worth examining for this idea. Also I heard Dragon Tattoo has a girl rape a guy. There's that Japanese "Audition" too.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 02:13
|
|
|
Someone mentioned Kill Bill on the last page. How about Le Femme Nikita? Thelma and Louise? (Not sure that one holds up under analysis, though, depending on how you lay out the requirements)
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 02:28
|
|
|
Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Master of the Flying Guillotine takes gimmicks to the extreme and it rules. Like if you want to talk about non-exploitative action film power fantasies involving female rear end-kickers, wuxia as a genre is way more progressive (if you want to think of it that way) than most people would assume. In most people's heads they probably imagine poo poo like women getting raped and then going on a scantily-clad revenge tear. And there are a lot of films out there that aren't wuxia that are pretty much exactly like that---like most pinky violence films, a lot of giallo, and a fuckton of Spanish horror/Spanish gaillo films. So poo poo like Fujita's Lady Snowblood (1973) and Jesús Franco's She Killed in Ecstasy (1971). But in wuxia films the stereotypical female hero is empowered in all of the same ways that a male hero is, and she's not likely to be threatened with sexual violence, and if anything she's going to be more sensibly dressed than her bare-chested male counterparts. So in a film like Come Drink with Me (1966) Cheng Pei-Pei's Golden Swallow is definitely an rear end-kicker and she's absolutely feminine but there's none of the other male-gazey poo poo you'd normally expect in the typical exploitation action film treatment of the subject. And perhaps even more to the point, there's a kind of normalisation of rear end-kicking women implicit in the handling of the material. Like not only is Golden Swallow a woman who happens to kick rear end, but the framing story treats this as something that isn't any more remarkable or exceptional than anyone being an rear end-kicking revenge machine. Like there's this scene in John Waters' Multiple Maniacs (1970) where Mink Stole shoves a rosary up Divine's rear end in the pew in a church and Divine has a vision and then they leave and while they're walking down the street a cop stops them and harasses them for being lesbians. I mean we've just seen all this transgressive poo poo that's probably squicked out even a lot of the people who are watching an early Waters film specifically to get squicked out and then that's the thing that gets called out by a stand-in for The Establishment, and the stand-in for The Establishment implicitly accepts Lady Divine is a woman. This isn't played as a Big loving Thing in the film, but it strikes me as way the gently caress more progressive than a lot of `very special episode' films about tragic minorities/margninalised people. Because it's all about normalisation rather than exceptionalism. And I think that under the hood of a lot of golden age wuxia is the same sort of normalisation that comes across as being more `real progressive' than a lot of the films mentioned here (like Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)) where it's a Big loving Deal that there are women kicking rear end. If that all makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 02:37
|
|
|
Modern Wuxia (is that an accurate term?) is kinda iffy. House of Flying Daggers is really bad in this respect, and my personal favorite, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a somewhat problematic sequence as well. They do both have rear end-kicking female characters, though, so I guess there's that. Has anyone heard anything promising (Besides Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen! being in it) about the upcoming Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2: The Green Destiny? I'm kind of refusing to get my hopes up, but with those two leads I'm gonna see it for sure.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 02:47
|
|
|
Secret Agent X23 posted:Someone mentioned Kill Bill on the last page. I haven't seen La Femme Nikita but how about Leon: The Professional. That kid wraps Leon around her little finger. Even gets him to sleep with her against his better judgement.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 02:48
|
|
|
Hanna is a pretty cool movie about badass lady assassins and the evil lady government agents who hunt them that has just enough artiness to it to make you kind of forget that you're watching an action movie.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 03:19
|
|
|
syscall girl posted:Even gets him to sleep with her against his better judgement. I might be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure they don't actually sleep together.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 03:52
|
|
|
Klungar posted:I might be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure they don't actually sleep together. They don't have sex* but they do sleep together. Having seen the American version someone telling me they slept together was shocking so I thought I'd share that. It's on youtube as well as the Euro version. *obviously I mean jeez
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 03:55
|
|
|
Snak posted:Modern Wuxia (is that an accurate term?) is kinda iffy. House of Flying Daggers is really bad in this respect, and my personal favorite, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a somewhat problematic sequence as well. They do both have rear end-kicking female characters, though, so I guess there's that. You ever see Wing Chun, also starring Michelle Yeoh? The fights are pretty good, but the gender politics are pretty bizarre.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 05:20
|
|
|
Sleeveless posted:Hanna is a pretty cool movie about badass lady assassins and the evil lady government agents who hunt them that has just enough artiness to it to make you kind of forget that you're watching an action movie. Hanna was pretty good. The ending thing that Hanna does is not a physics, and that kind of makes me upset, because there's no reason it had to be that way. I guess there's one other other big thing that happens near the beginning that's also not a physics which kind of sets a precedent, but it always pisses me off when a perfectly good story breaks reality even though it doesn't need to to tell the story.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 06:20
|
|
|
SubG posted:Which is a long leisurely walk toward the point: if we accept that narrative is (or can be) gendered---and I'm not at all convinced that we must---then if we're being serious here I think we have to take a step back to ask where the locus of the `gendering' is. If we accept, and I think we have to, that it isn't in the person of the principle character, then I don't think we're forced to accept that it's in the message (or however you want to say it) rather than in the thing itself. I mean, the locus is definitely on us as viewers. A woman taking control and aggressively winning scans as "masculine" only because we think of dominance as being masculine. You look at a stone from the river and deem it "masculine" for having this or that feature, and the onus certainly isn't on the stone - the stone doesn't want a huge penis, you do. Really, the only reason it's a "big deal" that the women kick rear end in Mad Max is because it's a big film and we treat it as a transgression against the cultural violence against women that is the norm. John Waters can buy a six dollar camera and a ten cent rosary and shove it up Divine's rear end and nobody cares because it won't be on TV (thanks, Marshall McLuhan!).
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 07:26
|
|
|
SubG posted:While not a film, it feels like the approach (narratively) taken by Bioshock Infinite deserves a mention---the central conceit being that both the `good' male power fantasy (the avenging good guy protagonist) and the `bad' male power fantasy (the creepy, controlling, stuff-women-in-cages bad guy) are both inextricably part of the same narrative and as long as either continues they'll end up victimising other people one way or another. And so the only solution is to remove them entirely from the equation. Well nowadays male power fantasy films have been mostly replaced with comic book movies. You can make a similar reading with any superhero movie featuring a duality (and a male protagonist, though that is a given right now) E.g., rear end in a top hat Superman vs regular Superman in Superman 3, rear end in a top hat Peter Parker vs regular Peter Parker in Spiderman 3. Batman uses his powers for good to help the downtrodden, Bane is his evil counterpart with the same training and an appeal to the common people, the only solution is for Batman to die. Etc. Regardless I suspect all subtext re: male power fantasy in Bioshock Infinite is almost certainly accidental, the combined result of market forces (shooty game needs a brown haired man with a gun on the cover), the constraints of the medium itself (the player automatically has agency while all NPCs automatically do not), and the desire for a mind-blowing twist at the end that echoes the twist in the first Bioshock, while also conveniently allows for either infinite sequels or no sequels. But that's why mort de l'auteur exists and in that respect Bioshock Infinite is a really interesting game. VVV I personally don't think so, not with the hilariously hamfisted way they treated the race and American exceptionalism (not to mention the lengths the game goes to try to hide the identity of the bad guy until the big reveal, which suggests preserving the twist is more important than making a statement about duality). But you're free to believe otherwise. No one knows what Ken Levine was thinking when he wrote this thing. emoticon fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Sep 18, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 07:41
|
|
|
Really don't want to give game any credit huh?
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 18:34
|
|
|
I'll throw out a whole bunch of characters that popped into my head along with some visual and auditory evidence: Aeon Flux (Aeon Flux): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CG3l_BTl30 Alice (Resident Evil: Apocalypse): https://youtu.be/2uJ0ZJ7iTjg?t=9s Miss Eglantine Price (Bedknobs and Broomsticks): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs33mAlkXDI Major Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell): https://youtu.be/z2mXrndt1ZI?t=4m54s Nausicaä (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRLO-w3nX-4 Susan (Hogfather): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQCeBnZewpM Violet Song Jat Shariff (Ultraviolet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OT1gcO2urM Are these characters representative of "female power fantasies?" Might as well go for broke and add in Mary Poppins, Princess Mononoke, Garance (Children of Paradise) and Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Dangerous Liaisons).
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 22:55
|
|
|
Zogo posted:
Holy poo poo Mary Poppins is great. I didn't even think of that. But it fits my narrow definition perfectly. She shows up to teach everyone else what's wrong with themselves and her "powers" (both supernatural and will) are never in question. Motoko Kusanagi is a good example also. She is never weak, she is experienced, smart, and physically capable. Also, technically her sexualization is her choice (her body and appearance is entirely prosthetic) because she wants to look that way and have that effect on people. This is kind of one of these "chicken or the egg" issues for sexualization though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2015 23:00
|
|
|
Snak posted:Modern Wuxia (is that an accurate term?) is kinda iffy. Magic Hate Ball posted:I mean, the locus is definitely on us as viewers. A woman taking control and aggressively winning scans as "masculine" only because we think of dominance as being masculine. You look at a stone from the river and deem it "masculine" for having this or that feature, and the onus certainly isn't on the stone - the stone doesn't want a huge penis, you do. Really, the only reason it's a "big deal" that the women kick rear end in Mad Max is because it's a big film and we treat it as a transgression against the cultural violence against women that is the norm. John Waters can buy a six dollar camera and a ten cent rosary and shove it up Divine's rear end and nobody cares because it won't be on TV (thanks, Marshall McLuhan!). emoticon posted:Regardless I suspect all subtext re: male power fantasy in Bioshock Infinite is almost certainly accidental, the combined result of market forces (shooty game needs a brown haired man with a gun on the cover), the constraints of the medium itself (the player automatically has agency while all NPCs automatically do not), and the desire for a mind-blowing twist at the end that echoes the twist in the first Bioshock, while also conveniently allows for either infinite sequels or no sequels. But that's why mort de l'auteur exists and in that respect Bioshock Infinite is a really interesting game. But that all aside it's pretty clear that what I'm talking about isn't just a tacked-on thing any more than any FPS plot point necessarily is---all of the over-elaborate nonsense involving multiple timelines and poo poo is there to make the point that it isn't that this person is inherently good and that person inherently bad, but rather that the power of violence in and of itself is inherently corrupting. In one universe the Founders are an oppressive theocracy with racial purity laws and the Vox Populi are the noble opposition. In another the Vox Populi are a fanatical junta hunting and exterminating the Founders. And so on. I mean we even get a musical number asking the question `Will the Circle Be Unbroken?' I mean it's not exactly Dostoyevsky or anything but it's thematically consistent.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2015 00:06
|
|
|
SubG posted:You're actually working your way around the thesis that the locus of the `gendering' of narrative isn't even in the viewer but rather in the culture around them. Which is the reason why a Mad Max film is a big thing and an early John Waters film isn't. That is, the individual viewer doesn't choose to imbue one narrative with US$150M worth of production value and the other with US$5k, that's a decision that is presented to the viewer implicitly in the film. I mean, that's kind of what I mean - viewer as part of culture, part of audience making mass judgement. That the studio would spend a bunch of money on this movie and allow it to happen is almost an act of politics. Multiple Maniacs is probably not going to be seen by a bunch of boat-shoe-wearing randos in some flyover swing state, but those same people are much more likely to see Fury Road, whether by choice or because it happens to be playing. Multiple Maniacs might still be more "legitimately" progressive for being unrestricted but it's still nifty that people are seeing a film that's putting women front and center, even if it is heavily self-conscious about it. Clumsy but meaningful, I guess.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2015 00:33
|
|
|
Magic Hate Ball posted:I mean, that's kind of what I mean - viewer as part of culture, part of audience making mass judgement. That the studio would spend a bunch of money on this movie and allow it to happen is almost an act of politics. Multiple Maniacs is probably not going to be seen by a bunch of boat-shoe-wearing randos in some flyover swing state, but those same people are much more likely to see Fury Road, whether by choice or because it happens to be playing. Multiple Maniacs might still be more "legitimately" progressive for being unrestricted but it's still nifty that people are seeing a film that's putting women front and center, even if it is heavily self-conscious about it. Clumsy but meaningful, I guess. I mean yeah I'll take a better film over a worse film instead of insisting we wait for a perfect film. So all appropriate props to filmmakers for doing what they can. But I also think that big-budget halfassed progressivism has a real negative effect in that it normalises being halfassed about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2015 03:16
|
|
|
So in Nightmare on Elm Street 2, did that scene where the coach meets the kid in the gay bar and takes him back to the gym really happen? There's no explanation in the film for why he has the kid running laps at night after hitting on him (?) and not being concerned that it's his student. It's like subtext just exploded into text for 10 minutes and then leapt right back.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
How about Bound?
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2015 17:55
|
|
|
Does anybody else think the assassin in Nashville looks an awful lot like Stephen King?
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2015 20:48
|
|
|
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Heathers would be a good example. This is kind of what I'm thinking. I wasn't merely asking about action movies with a female lead, more like movies that play on the typical societal roles and the like.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2015 03:05
|
|
|
All of these replies are great. I'm glad we got a discussion going about what a power fantasy even is. I wasn't even really thinking of action movies so much as movies that are the most nonsensical extreme of societal expectations on us. I guess I was just approaching it in a different way, but yeah the responses in this thread have made me want to check out some movies I haven't seen previously.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2015 03:16
|
|
|
socketwrencher posted:How about Bound? I wouldn't think so because a lot of the tension in that story comes from the fear of getting caught before they get away with the scheme. Fear doesn't seem like an emotion that would blanket the majority of a power fantasy. Interestingly, the rest of the tension is based on the fact that the two protagonists are both femme fatales and, as such, each one(and the audience) can't be sure that she can count on the other when the poo poo hits the fan.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2015 05:01
|
|
|
Good points. Maybe it's a more realistic power fantasy in that the fear and trust issue make it more relatable than say flying across the treetops in Crouching Tiger.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2015 19:11
|
|
|
I'm not entirely sure of the definition of Power Fantasy, but what about Hard Candy? That's about a female. In a powerful position. In a fantastical situation. Maybe? Also, how can people even talk about best years for movies, I can't even decide on a best decade! (not the 80's).
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2015 07:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 10:39 |
|
|
xcore posted:I'm not entirely sure of the definition of Power Fantasy, but what about Hard Candy? That's about a female. In a powerful position. In a fantastical situation. Maybe? The best decade for movies was the 70's, it's barely a debate.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2015 09:11
|
|