The Hollywood Jungle™: Creating Strong Female Characters

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Creating Strong Female Characters

Although I am pressed for time this morning, one of my readers, Bobbie Walker, submitted a link that contained a clip I thought might be of interest here. It's writer/producer/director Joss Whedon (who's now on one of those press junkets in Australia)giving a speech for the humanitarian group Equality Now on the subject of why he writes such strong female characters.

Whedon is probably best known for his Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse TV series. He also wrote the viral musical spoof Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog and is working on his directorial debut for features The Avengers - which is scheduled for a 2012 release.

Hollywood needs more strong female characters because the world needs role models for them. As a rape survivor (a fact you have NOT heard me share before) I've made my voice heard on this subject many times, especially as it relates to getting female-driven movies into development and through the system - and not just movies starring women who are sex objects. The Middle East is not the only country that has a problem seeing women as equals.

Sex in the City: The Movie, for all its glitzy, sexist stereotyping is the epitome of what's wrong with our images of women but it's actually progress in the sense that at least it was a female-driven film and it made fun of itself. Charlize Theron is developing Christopher Buckley's satire about women in Middle-Eastern politics Florence of Arabia for the big screen with Dean Craig writing the script.

Making fun of women in heroic roles may not be as sinister as you might think. Comedy is often the forerunner of serious discussion. After all, as Carol Burnett once said, "tragedy plus time equals comedy". It may be that the formula works in the reverse - ergo, comedy plus time in the media may equal a dramatic shift in role models, especially if we are aware of the message we're transmitting. Let's hope so.

In 2007, Academy Award winning actress Geena Davis started the Geena Davis Institute for Gender Studies - in the hopes of raising awareness on this pressing issue. Her focus has thus far been on providing positive, equal images of women for children in television and film. The Geena Davis Institute has resulted in an important study from the Annenberg School for Communications entitled Gender Stereotypes: An Analysis of Popular Films & Television .

Here's a partial transcript from Davis' June 21, 2010 interview at The United Nations on gender stereotypes in the media (to see clip click here):

“I think there’s two roles improving the media images of woman can play; one is that we really learn our value in society by seeing ourselves reflected in the culture and kids more so than anyone, I mean, as they’re learning what their role in society is and what’s their place and value, they’re exposed to massive amounts of media and the message that boys and girls are getting currently is that girls are not as valuable as boys., and women are not as important as men, and by changing this message into one of more empowerative of boy and girls sharing the same box equally we in effect be affecting the culture that boys would see girls as more important and girls would feel more important, as opposed to the disempowering message that’s there now. The other aspect of it s that while so many people are working so hard on these millennium development goals and the progress we make in economic development, and violence against women and all those areas, we don’t want to see it undermined by a culture of hyper-sexualisation or stereotyping women in the media because it will hamper the progress or certainly take away the progress.”

Nikita (the CW TV series) begins this fall based on the film La Femme Nikita. It still stars an overly thin, hypersexualized female but she's in a typically male role and obviously has some brains. Here's the extended trailer.

The feature films Wanted and Salt also feature women in the role of the kick-ass and both have been enormously popular. Maybe going to extremes in the other direction is all a part of the process. Here's the trailer for Salt, just for fun!