sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Red Cat These are the points LP makes about male writers
I wish I’d known, at 21, when I made up my mind to try to write seriously for a living if I could, that that decision would also mean a choice to be intimidating to the men I fancied, a choice to be less attractive, a choice to stop being That Girl and start becoming a grown woman, which is the worst possible thing a girl can do, which is why so many of those Manic Pixie Dream Girl characters, as written by male geeks and scriptwriters, either die tragically young or are somehow immortally fixed at the physical and mental age of nineteen-and-a-half.
My Facebook feed is full of young male writers who I have encouraged to believe in themselves, set up with contacts, taken on adventures and talked into the night about the meaning of journalism with who are now in long-term relationships with people who are content to be That Girl.
I packed two suitcases and walked out on Garden State Boy, to be a person who writes her own stories, rather than a story that happens to other people
Men write women, and they re-write us, for revenge. It's about obsession, and control.
Writing about Doctor Who this week got me thinking about sexism in storytelling, and how we rely on lazy character creation in life just as we do in fiction. <...>
The companions of the past three years, since the most recent series reboot, have been the ultimate in lazy sexist tropification, any attempt at actually creating interesting female characters replaced by... That Girl. Amy Pond was That Girl; Clara Oswald has been That Girl; River Song, interestingly enough, did not start out as That Girl, but the character was forcibly turned into That Girl when she no longer fit the temper of a series with contempt for powerful, interesting, grown-up women, and then discarded when she outgrew the role
There are four examples referred to.
Films
1. Elizabethtown
2. Garden State
3. 500 Days of Summer
Plus TV Series Doctor Who.
I believe each of these is male-written (haven't seen any of them tho), and that this point:-
Men write women, and they re-write us, for revenge. It's about obsession, and control.
is what is driven at, that many men use women for emotional self-satisfaction, not treating women as real humans compared to their male friends/associates ie sexism - which is true.
However my point would be that it's important to stress that the kind of sexist culture of the films LP uses as examples comes heavily from a Hollywood industry hinged around romance as complete fulfillment.
The thrust on the lines of:- once someone finds their reciprocal love all other social concerns can take a back seat, young people not able to find love is why they are so restless etc etc. There's a love or lost love interest in just about every Hollywood film that isn't a straight-out comedy or horror. Is that too much of a generalisation?
I wish I’d known, at 21, when I made up my mind to try to write seriously for a living if I could, that that decision would also mean a choice to be intimidating to the men I fancied, a choice to be less attractive, a choice to stop being That Girl and start becoming a grown woman, which is the worst possible thing a girl can do, which is why so many of those Manic Pixie Dream Girl characters, as written by male geeks and scriptwriters, either die tragically young or are somehow immortally fixed at the physical and mental age of nineteen-and-a-half.
My Facebook feed is full of young male writers who I have encouraged to believe in themselves, set up with contacts, taken on adventures and talked into the night about the meaning of journalism with who are now in long-term relationships with people who are content to be That Girl.
I packed two suitcases and walked out on Garden State Boy, to be a person who writes her own stories, rather than a story that happens to other people
Men write women, and they re-write us, for revenge. It's about obsession, and control.
Writing about Doctor Who this week got me thinking about sexism in storytelling, and how we rely on lazy character creation in life just as we do in fiction. <...>
The companions of the past three years, since the most recent series reboot, have been the ultimate in lazy sexist tropification, any attempt at actually creating interesting female characters replaced by... That Girl. Amy Pond was That Girl; Clara Oswald has been That Girl; River Song, interestingly enough, did not start out as That Girl, but the character was forcibly turned into That Girl when she no longer fit the temper of a series with contempt for powerful, interesting, grown-up women, and then discarded when she outgrew the role
There are four examples referred to.
Films
1. Elizabethtown
2. Garden State
3. 500 Days of Summer
Plus TV Series Doctor Who.
I believe each of these is male-written (haven't seen any of them tho), and that this point:-
Men write women, and they re-write us, for revenge. It's about obsession, and control.
is what is driven at, that many men use women for emotional self-satisfaction, not treating women as real humans compared to their male friends/associates ie sexism - which is true.
However my point would be that it's important to stress that the kind of sexist culture of the films LP uses as examples comes heavily from a Hollywood industry hinged around romance as complete fulfillment.
The thrust on the lines of:- once someone finds their reciprocal love all other social concerns can take a back seat, young people not able to find love is why they are so restless etc etc. There's a love or lost love interest in just about every Hollywood film that isn't a straight-out comedy or horror. Is that too much of a generalisation?
