|
Ambition is not tolerated in women in our society. Simple challenge. Name a movie with a heroine who is openly ambitious, portrayed in a positive light, without being a rape-and-revenge trope, that isn't based on a real woman. Some examples of movies that do not meet this challenge: Hunger Games - Katniss spends the whole series being tricked/used into being a symbol of rebellion. She has no personal goals beyond her own survival. Kill Bill - kiddo is good now because upon becoming pregnant she gave up being an assassin and settled down. Her flashbacks to when she pursued her ambitions were when she was an evil assassin. Erin Bronkovitch - based on a true story. Every royal female character - being born to power and trying to do a good job is not aspiring to it or asserting that you are better suited than others to it. Flashdance - based on a true story. X-men - being born to power isn't aspiring to it. Also the good female mutants are almost never protagonists and constantly have horrible drawbacks to their powers that cause them to mope around all the time whining about wanting to be normal. Black Swan - could have been a Rocky style movie about a woman striving to become an amazing ballerina the way Rocky wanted to become a great fighter ( and the way the star of flashdance did ). But instead she's a nervous wreck being driven to dance to please her shrew of a mother. Ambition in a female character always heralds their status as a villain. Heroes can venture out to "win" a throne - and presumably a hot princess - in our stories but not heroines. If a woman specifically seduces princes they are a heartless evil gold digger. Unlike Heros who can cheerfully take the quest to win the hand of the princess - thereby becoming the next king - without worrying overmuch what the princess thinks about all this. It's incredibly difficult to even find a training montage about a female character. The montage period gave boys a gazillion training montages in everyone from chess to skiing and gave girls makeover montages in which they passively sat there while other people made them pretty. Kill Bill has training montages from flashbacks to evil kiddo. Rape-and-revenge trope chars have them to gain the skills to enact revenge. There are a few "involuntary training" montages where someone else forces a female character through training of some kind. There are a poo poo ton of "magical girls" who "OMG, I'm good at this? Neat. I've never practiced at it" like the adorable heroine of Butter who was an accomplished child sculpter with no instruction. And now there are plenty of skilled female chars who presumably worked hard at some time in the past to become good - but the story of them pushing themselves for their own advancement is never told. Starbucks, Brienne, and Vasquez simply are. Sprung into being fully formed. You see the same thing in real life where most female athleticism is presented as art only - the vicious competition happens behind the scenes in the auditions. All you see is the victors take their victory laps in shows. Think about how elegant she looks as she twirls. Not about the rivals she crushed to get there. So we have been conditioned since our earliest days to associate "ambitious woman" with "villain" because in all the stories we hear and see ... well they almost always are. Real life isn't like the movies which is why movies based on real life buck this trend. But the net effect means that the neural pathways in your brain between the concepts of ambition, woman, and evil are well worn and if two light up the third is raring to go.
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2016 06:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 10:33 |
|
|
Ego-bot posted:Princess and the Frog, maybe? I'll check it out, thanks. =)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2016 07:24
|
|
|
skeet decorator posted:I was thinking about this recently and I realized I can name plenty of movies with ambitious heroines, they just all happen to be aimed at children: I wouldn't call most of those characters ambitious per se. And strong/good female characters can be strong and good without being ambitious. Kiki is doing what every witch her age does. So she is simply fulfilling what is expected of her. Ambition involves a desire to exceed the norm in some way. They even make a point of mentioning that Kiki is a rather poor witch who is only decent at flying. So engaging in a delivery service is not stretching herself any. Mulan is responding to threat. She didn't aspire to be a warrior like a young Brienne of Tarth must have. Sure she wasn't happy with an arranged marriage but she didn't run off to join the army in search of fame or fortune. Her father was being drafted and she knew he was to old and frail to serve so she took his place. Much like Katniss volunteered for the hunger games when her sister's name was drawn. This storyline is rooted in the feminine nurturing stereotype, not the masculine ambitious stereotype. Brave is very magical girl with her already being an accomplished rider and archer. She rebels against tradition certainly, but what does she aspire to? It's a great story and on my "good kid movies" list for sure but Merida's end goals are negative rather than positive. She wants not to be married off. Not so that she can pursue another dream instead but rather so that her life can remain precisely as it is. Which gets trickier after she accidentally turns her mum into a bear. I haven't seen any Disney channel original movies so I don't know about those. True Grit I haven't seen in forever but what I remember seems like it fits the bill. But yeah, what little there is is disproportionately pre-pubescent. For adult women I've got ... Well ... The lady in Silver Linings Playbook aspired to compete in a dance contest where they were terrible and scored 5/10. I think that's still ambition - she worked hard and practiced a lot and their efforts were central to the plot. Succeeding in one's ambition isn't the criteria, simply having ambition is.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2016 08:28
|
|
|
radmonger posted:Daenarys from Game of Thrones probably counts; because despite being nominally royalty, she is very much driven by ambition to gain power and wield it for good. Book daeny eventually - and it always pisses me off that the book where she stopped marching on westeros and used the time to apply herself to learning statecraft is universally unpopular - the arc everyone hates. There is an excellent blog post somewhere explaining to people that what they are looking at is important character development and not a waste of  that is slightly effective - but without that she is mostly a rape-and-revenge trope mixed with magical girl. So it isn't trying to retake the birthright that was stolen from her and return to the safety and love of the room with the red door that made her ambitious - it's the resolution to be a good queen and rule her subjects well. And that happens mostly in her head as well as involving putting her revenge down for awhile as she studies up and practices statecraft. Does the show make her thought processes there clear? If people are seeing her as villain potential I'm guessing no.Imagine a Dany storyline where she woke the dragons after finding the eggs herself from clues left in a family journal, studying with the red priests, and sacrificing some of her own Queen's blood to do so. The new Leia would count if there was a movie about her studying up to become a general - proving to others that she is the best general etc. Instead she is presented fait accompli. The product of ambition yes but the display of it no. More damning is the fact that her midichlorian count is supposed to be very high per cannon but she never applies herself to learning how to use the Force. Who doesn't do that???? If you were told you had the makings of a great space wizard would you just go, "meh. Don't care."?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2016 14:57
|
|
|
This meeting starts in a second but I wanted to tie this to studies about the effect on children for praising them for being something vs praising them for trying hard. When you praise a child for being smart then offer to let them take a harder or easier test they opt for the easier because they don't want to mess up and reveal that they aren't actually smart. When you praise them for trying hard they opt for the more difficult challenge. And trying the more difficult thing is how you grow. Challenging yourself is how you become better. Boys get ample lessons on the importance of getting up again after being knocked down and letting failure galvanize you to try harder. Girls have the one-two punch of lack of examples of striving to attain a goal and stereotype threat causing them to fear letting down all women everywhere if they do badly at something.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2016 16:48
|
|