An interesting issue has come up in the comments to that 101 101 post, one that I think deserves its own thread to start unpacking its stuff.
Indefatigable commenter typhonblue linked to this article from OnFiction, and elaborated on its thesis:
What the article talks about is the Actor/Observer bias. We attribute to ourselves that we respond to circumstance, to others that they respond based on their personality. For example, if we’re studying hard we say that’s because we have a test coming up; if we see someone else studying hard we say that’s because ‘they’re studious.’
How this relates to fiction is that we assume male characters respond based on circumstance(like we see ourselves) and we see female characters responding according to their personality. Female characters thus have a sense of ‘other’ that we’re observing as the audience. Male character’s don’t; we, in essence, don their skins.
I believe that’s because, unlike minorities or women, we don’t really have a belief that men have a mystique or otherness about them. They become our proxy into fictionland.
In the words of W.S. Gilbert’s Pirate King: There’s something in that.
I recall as a kid looking at the media images I grew up on and feeling a little let down that I was Normal. (Normal of course meaning straight white cis male.) I didn’t have any kind of cool gimmick like being black or Asian or a girl. The Black One was always really cool and sometimes smart too, and The Asian One (who was still The Oriental One when I was small) always knew kung fu, which was awesome, and The Girl One was always pretty, and being pretty must be fun.
Now, observers will note that that is hella fucked up (i.e. fucked up times 10^27) in its attitudes toward… well, basically everybody. This is absolutely true. Sometimes I look at how I grew up and I’m amazed I’m not even more racist than I am.
At the same time, though, my experience reflects typhonblue’s point that there is a certain hollowness in the concept of Normal, as it exists in our notion of protagonists. I’ve mused before on the phenomenon of Normal People in media and how it excludes everyone but guys who look like me, only usually less bald.
If I follow typhonblue’s theory correctly (and if I’m confused, I’m sure she’ll clarify) a Normal protagonist becomes made up of actions, while lacking any intrinsic qualities. He reacts to situations because of the situations, not because of who he is. In a certain sense, then, there IS no “who he is”. He’s just The Hero, he’s John Everyman, he’s a Normal Guy, as opposed to a person with a personality.
Now, the reflexive shallow response to this is to start listing personality traits of Normal protagonists. James Bond is horny! Marty McFly is cool! Harry Potter is a whiny little shit! But that’s kind of missing the point. Their actions aren’t dictated by their internal qualities, they’re dictated by the circumstances of the story and their reactions to those circumstances.
Seen in this light, the very ubiquity of the Normal protagonist (Which I think we can all agree is offensive and tends to erase other people’s experiences, right?) is itself a form of erasure of the experience of guys who happen to pass, superficially, for Normal. After all, we have internal drives and personality traits. I for one am horny, cool, AND a whiny little shit. So while we see ourselves superficially reflected on the screen in a way others don’t, that very reflection becomes dehumanizing in a very subtle, very odd way.
It’s certainly an interesting way of looking at the problem, and one I think is worth chewing over for a while. What do you think?
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@ Noahbrand
The action versus personality thing is a relative quantity. Male protagonists will always have personalities(of a sort) but they are always more defined by their action then their passive qualities or emotional reactions.
It ties right back into the essence of masculinity, which is about being active, having agency, responding to circumstance with ‘a plan’. Masculinity itself is about reducing men down to their actions. The more action orientated a man is–the less he’s concerned with passive things or emotions–the more manly he is.
The most manly man of all, is nothing but action action action and more action. He has absolutely no personality or existence outside of his agency.
I think I get it now (thanks for your explanation, Noah, and thanks, typhonblue, for your further clarification in the other post and for raising the idea.)
I have to say, it looks pretty shitty to me. It’s shitty to everyone who’s not a straight, cis, white man, because they aren’t reflected in the characters who are at the centre of the action, the clever ones who figure everything out, the one we love the most, and the ones that save the day (just getting to stand around Being Pretty? Bluuuuuurgggghh.) And, it’s shitty to straight, cis, white men, because what they get to identify with is a shallow, one-dimensional person.
I liked your comment in the other thread, typhonblue, that we need to “give men baggage”. I think the plus side of there not being many female protagonists is that when they do come around, they tend to be more interesting characters (maybe? Or maybe that’s just because I’m into “art house crap”, as a friend puts it).
@doubletrack
“I think the plus side of there not being many female protagonists is that when they do come around, they tend to be more interesting characters (maybe? Or maybe that’s just because I’m into “art house crap”, as a friend puts it).”
Well, they tend to actually respond to stuff. I was thinking about this as I watched about the only show I still watch: Torchwood.
The two female characters each had emotional break downs: one when her child was kidnapped–she went off the rails; the other when she was forced to ‘murder’ someone. Big, incoherent, wild-eyed sobbing breakdowns.
The two main male characters? If they didn’t move around I’d be worried they didn’t have a pulse. They respond to almost nothing with anything approaching an emotion. Well, one of them is perpetually angry, or more like he’s constipated.
Strangely enough in Torchwood the male _villains_ are allowed a hell of a lot more latitude to just dissolve into emotional puddles. In fact they seem more human then the heroes! (I don’t know if that was the intent but it certainly is jarring.)
Speaking of villains, this focus on manliness==agency means that even a villain is more manly then a victim. Which has implications when abusive men need to deal with the emotional pain that’s compelling their violence; these guys would really rather see themselves as evil then as hurt.
In fact the only ‘hero’ male character I’ve ever seen that came close to the whole ‘my-emotions-are-totally-out-of-control’ vulnerable was Chriton from FarScape(a really gender subversive series, IMHO.)
About female villans on a quick note, Kill Bill’s kill bill o’ren ishii and her crazy 88. Van helsing’s female vampyres, although they are minions for Dracula, catwoman and Forbidden Kingdom (chackie chan) the super cool white heared witch Li bing bing.
Heroes Kill Bill’s Uma Thurmann (I dont remember the characters name), buffy the vampyre slayer, Melinda from ghost whisperer and Allison from medium.
Just a small fast list…..
Torchwood and Farscape in one post <3. Another thing I disliked about Torchwood was that all the women could not cope with the angst of being in Torchwood and the only way they could cope was Sex With Owen. And the only reason Tosh didn't was because he rejected her.
Farscape was great in that respect (as well as in all other respects). A lot of scifis feature the stereotype of the big, silent and scary ethnic male – Tyr in Andromeda, Worf in TNG, The Haitian in Heroes, to a certain extent Teal'c in SG1 etc etc, but Farscape subverted this with DArgo, who developed into a character with a sense of humour, a feminine side and a good grasp of his emotional self.
Of course Firefly goes without mentioning.
It’s interesting that typhonblue mentions male villains as being allowed more emotion, because I often prefer female villains to female heroes/sidekicks (and know a lot of women grew up feeling that way), because they’re more capable, more enviable (they tend to have cool gadgets, outfits, or abilities, and get to do whatever the hell they want, or in short, they’re often closer to what girls want to be than what boys want girls to be) and sometimes even more relatable because their motivations are less likely to revolve around a man.
Which has implications when abusive men need to deal with the emotional pain that’s compelling their violence; these guys would really rather see themselves as evil then as hurt. (Typhon)
You bet it does. I would surmise that this is because typically no one came to help the abuser when he was first the abused. It is usually left to him to save himself. More often than not people come running to help the little girl when she is being hurt, with boys, its suck it up and be a man. Is it any wonder that by the time they are abusers they wont listen or trust anyone? I am amazed when any man comes back from the dark side considering what usually put them there in the first place.
Doubletrack: What I’ve found, as I’ve started to explore gender egalitarianism, is this. Every situation that sucks for women has an equal and opposite suckage for men. Every situation that sucks for men has an equal and opposite suckage for women. 🙂
It’s arguable just how much agency these male characters have; while they might be doing lots of running around and saving-worlds, in fact they’re typically in an entirely reactive role, always responding to the latest in a series of crises. Think of Indiana Jones fleeing a temple that he’s been ‘raiding’ (glossing over that whole stealing the cultural artefacts of ethnic peoples thing for a moment…). He sure is doing a lot of running and jumping, but at no point does he have any real choices: he either does the single action available to him, successfully, or he dies. To a large extent, the plots of many action films are the same thing on a larger and slightly fuzzier scale.
Consider also how often we see male action leads that literally have no natural personality. So many action films these days cross into a techno-thriller zone where the lead character has been, in some sense, artificially created as a vacant container to pour the plot into. The film might open with them waking up as an amnesiac, and needing to be told by other people who they are and what’s going on.
(And how many times is the answer, “you were created specifically to be a Disposable Male™”?)
They might be a robot, or a clone, or genetically engineered, or brainwashed, or they might simply have been in a crash, or other near-death experience. Regardless, they’ve been oh-so-conveniently emptied out (or created that way in the first place) ready to be filled by the demands of the plot.
The Bourne Identity is perhaps a poster child for this. Source Code is another recent example. Wolverine in X-Men. Jackie Chan’s character in Who Am I? Robocop of course… Terminator 2… The Matrix twists this slightly because the whole world is the lie, not Neo — but once he “wakes up”, of course, he’s once again a twenty-something newborn, waiting for everyone else to pour information into (literally, since they download skills into his brain).
This post reminds me a lot of my reaction to the movie Minority Report. Attention, extremely vague summary ahead because I don’t remember the movie that well…
In that film Tom Cruise’s character is a widower, but we only see him mourning his wife and child by taking FutureDrugs ™ and staring emotionlessly at a videotape. When it turns out that he is the victim of a massive-ass conspiracy against him by the agency he’s poured all his energy into for years and years, his reaction is… nothing? His entire worldview is shown to be wrong, the work he’s been doing was damaging and based upon false premises, but dude turns into a video game character and gets down to business running, jumping, spying, evading capture etc. without so much as a moment to ask himself, “What’s happening to my life?”
It was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen. All of the plot devices to explain this guy’s personality went nowhere in the film, because they were clearly just set up to put him on the rails of the plot. The character wasn’t explicitly an Action Automaton in the way Cheradenine describes, but he acts like one. I found it really, really shallow and off-putting.
Ozy ” What I’ve found, as I’ve started to explore gender egalitarianism, is this. Every situation that sucks for women has an equal and opposite suckage for men. Every situation that sucks for men has an equal and opposite suckage for women ”
Same conclusion here 😀 but i’ve taken a little further as, men have their own set of privileges, and so does women. So equal suckage and equal privileges but only related to the specific traditional gender role 🙂
The societal supersymmetry (SOSUSY) 😉
“What the article talks about is the Actor/Observer bias. We attribute to ourselves that we respond to circumstance, to others that they respond based on their personality.”
It’s officially called “Fundamental attribution error” or “Correspondence bias”.
Cheradenine:
While I agree with your larger point, I’ve seen all those movies and I disagree with you about Source Code. The protagonist in that movie has his own thoughts and feelings, rebels against what he is told to do (be a disposable hero and nothing else) often taking his his own time and doing things his own way despite , sometimes, direct orders to the contrary and ends up after he has done his “derring do” convincing one of his “handlers” to do something entirely for him. In short, unlike the other characters you mention I feel SC humanized their hero.
I don’t have much to add, just wanted to say I’ve really been enjoying your posts Noah! And love the discussion in the comments of Torchwood and Farscape. 🙂
@Clarence: Oh yeah, I was just pointing out that it’s an example of a film which opens on a blank-slate, extremely disposable hero, being dropped into a situation with no knowledge and being forced to respond to everyone around him, and essentially finding out only what others deign to share with him. The film diverges somewhat from the template as things progress, but I don’t want to get into it too much, so as not to spoil it for others.
I’ve seen action movies where the main character has a personality. That personality is usually “violent thug”. Or even if I’m being charitable, “super manly man”. Not to knock your observation, though; the main character trait of an action hero is “can kick ass”, which doesn’t really tell you about how that character feels. They’re Dr. Manhattan-like super-competent robots for the whole movie.
It’s interesting that a movie like Salt can exist, where your typical action hero is swapped with a woman and it makes no difference whatsoever to the plot. It’s too bad Salt wasn’t actually a very good movie or I’d go all “whee!” at it.
The funny (to me) thing about this phenomena (which I’ve also observed in several films, books, etc) is the way different people with mutually contradictory beliefs will use the same thing to support theirs:
Type 1: “It’s disgraceful that Hollywood thinks it’s being egalitarian for doing this. That’s not a realistic female character, it’s just a male character with the names and pronouns changed. Where are the realistic depictions of female experience? It’s so sexist to depict a woman as just a man with tits. It’s obviously wank-fodder for teenage boys.”
Type 2: “It’s brilliant that Hollywood is being egalitarian with this. Just because a character is female, doesn’t mean she needs to bake cookies and talk about relationships all the time. Women can kick ass as much as men can! […] Oh, she’s showing even a tiny moment of emotional weakness of any sort? CURSE YOU HOLLYWOOD!”
A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t approach where if you depict a woman displaying any kind of traditional gender role behaviour, you’re stereotyping, but if you don’t, then you’re not depicting “a real woman”.
I lean towards Type 2 myself, because Type 1 makes me queasy with its restrictive implications about what “real” women do, and its lack of awareness of how this is exactly the same shallowness that’s normally applied to male characters. On the other hand, I’d rather see both male and female characters depicted in depth, and feel it’s just as restrictive to insist a female character be tough all the time.
This is even more common in video games. Nearly every Heroic Mime is male…
Yeah, I can only think of two specifically female Heroic mimes: Chell of Portal and Samus of Metroid. And still some people aren’t aware Samus is a girl. I don’t think any of the pokemon girls count, since you can pick either gender. (Technically MAYBE Ammy of Okami is, but not only is she a wolf, but she’s portrayed as pretty gender neutral [peeing technique lifts leg like a male dog, she has male gaze sometimes…])
But the relevant TV Tropes link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AudienceSurrogate
It’s interesting to note that there ARE instances of female audience surrogate here, but it’s for things that are marketed to females: the page quote is about Bella of Twilight, and I’d wager that it’s not uncommon in the romance genre.
I also wanna comment on the villains bit: I always found it rather interesting for something like, say, Captain Planet — very sure to indicate that heroes are of all races and genders, and then the villains are all white and entirely male save for one female, and she’s the only “attractive” one. Nobody fights for more women and people of color to be portrayed as villains, of course.
“Female characters thus have a sense of ‘other’ that we’re observing as the audience. Male character’s don’t; we, in essence, don their skins.”
It’s an interesting theory, but I’m curious who the “we” is in that sentence.
For me, I’m not sure a character’s gender has much relevance as to whether or not I see hir as a potential avatar of myself in the story. Similiar to what another commenter said, whether or not I can “don the skin” of a character is highly dependent upon the genre.
ozy said:
“What I’ve found, as I’ve started to explore gender egalitarianism, is this. Every situation that sucks for women has an equal and opposite suckage for men. Every situation that sucks for men has an equal and opposite suckage for women”
Wow. “Every”? That’s quite a claim. Seems deserving of its own post (or gigantic book). 😉
Skidd: I do! I do! Pick me! 🙂
Fannie: Well, every one I’ve encountered so far, anyway. 😛 The Patriarchy Sucks For Everyone, News At Eleven.
“It’s an interesting theory, but I’m curious who the “we” is in that sentence.”
Bingo, fannie. and that seesm deserving of its own post too!
I don’t think that “we” menas only the male readers. I think that a literature with that kind of cast of characters is going to form readers, male or female, that conform to that cultural structure. It is not only going to cheat those readers, but it is going to deform them. Male or female.
@f
I think you’re confusing Minority Report with another movie. In M.R. Cruise and his wife had a son who disappeared. He is still upset years later and it is his grief that drives him to help develop the Pre-Crime program.
Just FYI.
@Ozy.
Hehehee. Evil is an equal opportunity occupation! 😀
Skidd:
“I also wanna comment on the villains bit: I always found it rather interesting for something like, say, Captain Planet — very sure to indicate that heroes are of all races and genders, and then the villains are all white and entirely male save for one female, and she’s the only “attractive” one. Nobody fights for more women and people of color to be portrayed as villains, of course.”
I don’t think that’s true. A lot of people want a better representation in general, but naturally, the most focus is on what is seen as the most important role, the one the audience is supposed to identify with. Especially in light of how female and minority characters are often placed in supporting roles to back up the straight, cis, able-bodied, white male protagonist. Not to mention that there are practical reasons for why heroes tend to be more diverse. And personally, I remember more great female villains from my childhood than protagonists.
Ahem. I would like to nominate Tally Youngblood (The Uglies) as female lead developed role in storytelling.
There are literally dozens of recent novels and books that depict female leads who are fully developed.
The thing is – developed characters (male or female) don’t make for blockbusting movie scripts. If the story is one that Hollywood thinks would make a blockbuster, you can be sure the male characters will be simplified and overmasculinized and the female characters will be masculized (to appease the Feminists) and given bigger boobs (to appease everyone else.)
@ Ozy, Fanny–
Personally, I’m not at all convinced that the privileges and drawbacks are equal–both genders are given privileges based on conformity to the ideal for their gender, but I’m comfortable saying that the rewards for being a perfectly gender-conforming man are largely better than for being a perfectly gender-conforming woman. (And there are drawbacks to gender conformity, but I think these, too, reward the gender-conforming man more than the gender-conforming woman–or at least punish him less than her).
And both genders are punished for lack of gender conformity, but men more than women (I mean, think of it: for example, cross-dressing men get killed a lot; cross-dressing women… who cares?).
In short(ish)–I think conforming to your gender role gets rewarded, men more than women; lack of conformity is punished, again men more than women.
@ Typhonblue–
That’s excellent.
@saratoday, fair enough. All I remember is the FutureDrugs part where the guy mourns his son with a pronounced lack of affect.
And how when the precrime program turns out to be targeting him (or whatever?) he doesn’t even get to have a decent existential crisis about it!
Motley:
“In short(ish)–I think conforming to your gender role gets rewarded, men more than women; lack of conformity is punished, again men more than women.”
This has been my experience too. It’s one of the reasons I’ve found Glick and Fiske’s theory of three basic forms of prejudice to be so useful. Distinguishing between high status vs. low status, and a perceived cooperative vs. a perceived competitive relation to mainstream society., is a lot more precise than than just talking about who’s marginalised and who isn’t.
@Motley “I think conforming to your gender role gets rewarded, men more than women; lack of conformity is punished, again men more than women.”
Agreed. And I think femmephobia helps to explain this.
@AB: That sounds like something I’d like to read about. Do you have a link to the theory?
Also, if this is true (conforming to your gender role gets rewarded, men more than women; lack of conformity is punished, again men more than women), it’s another example of Ozy’s equal suckitude for everyone, because it means that:
1) We, as a culture, think Being A Woman Sucks; and
2) Therefore men should have less freedom than women to traverse gender roles.
Skidd:
I also wanna comment on the villains bit: I always found it rather interesting for something like, say, Captain Planet — very sure to indicate that heroes are of all races and genders, and then the villains are all white and entirely male save for one female, and she’s the only “attractive” one. Nobody fights for more women and people of color to be portrayed as villains, of course.
In my experience (meaning what I’ve seen and read) you have something of a point. Its usually the complaint that female PoC villians are unfair representations or are simply sexist/racist stereotypes (with varying degrees of validity), but even then not much of a call to remove the stereotypes and come up with a better villain.
Toy Soldier:
I wonder much of this is genre specific. For example, female action characters are also pretty hollow when it comes to personality. Since the purpose of an action story is to get the character to the dramatic climax, you do not need much personality to get from point A to point B.
True. Major Motoko Kusanagi (from the Ghost in the Shell) anime is a good example of this. She puts off this whole stoic badass vibe (that she can more than back up mind you) and that’s pretty much all you get from her (at least in the anime). There are the occasional episodes where you will get glimpses of events from her past and the rare “deep insightful moment” but for the most part she’s the stoic badass that doesn’t take any shit.
Agent Ziva David (NCIS) walked that path for a long time before she opened up and and Agent Kinsey (NCIS: LA) is barely showing signs of growing beyond that point (but even then a lot of the change from them was due to a catalyst, Agents DiNozzo and Deeks to be exact).
doubletrack:
“@AB: That sounds like something I’d like to read about. Do you have a link to the theory?”
No, it’s from one of my books. You can try searching for it on the net, but it’s pretty simple: Status is decided by who is considered powerful, competent etc. Usually, that’s men over women, rich people over poor people, adults over both children and old people, people who’re perceived as able-bodied and able-minded over people who’re not, ethnic groups that are considered successful over those who are not, and so on.
Relationship with mainstream society is decided by who is considered to contribute, and who is considered to be taking more than their fair share. Usually, that’s the dominant ethnic group over all other ethnicities, people who stick to their required gender role over people who don’t, lawful citizens over criminals, ‘normal’ people over those who’re considered to be abominations, etc.
If low status is combined with a cooperative relationship with mainstream society, the result is paternalistic prejudice. Those subjected to it are usually not treated with direct hostility, but are frequently expected to occupy lower positions and subjected to less direct forms of abuse. This group tends to include women in traditional roles, the very old/young, and people with socially accepted disabilities (e.g. people in wheelchairs). They’re often protected, but rarely respected.
If high status is combined with a competitive relationship with mainstream society, the result is envious prejudice. This is often the case with members of low-status groups, like women and minorities, who gain higher status (e.g. career women), rich people, and ethnic groups that are considered to be doing well (e.g. Jews). They’re subjected to a mixture of fear, exclusion, envy, and sometimes a grudging respect.
If low status is combined with a competitive relationship with mainstream society, the result is contemptuous prejudice, which is pretty much the worst both worlds. Those who’re targeted with it are usually both disrespected, and subjected to hostility and exclusion. This group tends to include members of low status ethnicities, ‘deviants’ of all kinds (e.g. homosexuals), criminals, people on welfare, the obese, etc.
The description I first read didn’t include men who don’t conform to their gender role, but I would label them as mostly subject to contemptuous prejudice, given that they both lose status and set themselves up as opposed to mainstream society. Of course it’s an incomplete model, but it makes far more sense to talk about different kinds of prejudice (in this case paternalistic, envious, or contemptuous) than to only talk about whether someone is oppressed.
Yeah, and what about those straight, white female leads who are strong at the expense of any supporting male characters? Usually there’s the default for the supporting males though: Imbecilic, evil, bumbling, ignorant, or comic relife. Then they’re chewed out by every female character without a means to defend themselves.
Talk all you want about it, and I hate to continue parroting, but I find it marginizling and an erasure of my experiences with popular media from the other side always focusing on the straight, white male characters.
All I’m saying is maybe we should discuss both things?
Or is this going to be exclusionary like the previous post about straight, white cis guys?
This observation dovetails pretty interestingly with Captain Awkward’s Feministe post about doing exercises in casting with her film students. She has them look at headshots and then brainstorm about roles:
Makes sense, it’s easy to project onto a face that says “normal” or “default” in our society, and that plays into everything typhonblue was talking about. Captain Awkward then goes on to talk about how limited the students’ imaginations are when it comes to other actors, and the roles they think up for PoC and women: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/08/23/step-into-my-film-school-the-importance-of-casting-in-breaking-open-movie-stereotypes/#more-19769
Very interesting, AB. Thanks for that summary. That resonates more with me than the “equal and opposite suckage” claim, which seems far too simplistic.
Whelp, as I thought.
You guys keep talking about white, straight cis male protagonists and disparage it.
I’ll just stay in my corner and keep stuff to myself from now on. Obviously this place doesn’t welcome other viewpoints after all if it doesn’t fit the standard “White men oppressive, women victims” motif.
So I took a peek through the OP’s narrow lens, considered it, then dismissed it as, well, silly.
First off, actor-observer bias is, to me, part of the conservative mindset. Where, for example, republicans blame poor people for being poor, rather that blaming poor people’s circumstances for them being poor.
Secondly, just because there is a bias in people doesn’t mean all people ‘suffer’ from this bias and nor do all people suffer at equal levels. All this means is that for some people there is a tendency to think in a certain biased way. (aside: teach more critical thinking in school)
Third, I can find too many counter examples where the main (white male) characters act in a way that is contrary to how I would act. The notion that I can use the white male character as a proxy for myself in fictionland is simply (as it relates to me) false. (for example the movie District 9…I thought it was pretty bad but the only aspect of it I liked was how the main character (white male) turned out to be a prick, not some goofball naive scapegoat). The main character is NOT me.
Fourth, there are so many example of characters in media that go against this white-male-proxy model that the exception seems like the norm. Whether it’s female characters, minority characters, or white male characters acting as hapless morons, these all fly in the face of the white-male-proxy model.
And fifth, the study in that onfiction website is weak sauce. Not only are the methods of gathering the data pretty bad but the focus is very narrow…”literary fiction”, “1000 word passages”, and the researchers (a misnomer imo) failed to use double blind methods when they re-wrote the extracts themselves….of course, adding their own biases into the mix.
So IMO what’s going on here is taking some very minor conservative mindset (and for this post that means simple, not well thought out, rush to judgement) bias and applying it to everything in media and then to society. No no and no. You are doing it wrong. Looking at certain things through certain lenses is fine (and useful) but at some point you gotta step back and realize that you are only looking through the lens momentarily to help you see the bigger picture.
Eagle:
You are being unfair. One comment thread does not totally describe the opinions of all the various authors and commenters at this site of which you are one.
I wonder how much of that is literally that they have limited imaginations or that they simply chose parts that they thought would not get rejected.
This is fascinating, thank you.
This is a little late, but I was reminded of something… in the script for the movie “Alien”, the characters are not identified by gender, and the script says that actors of any gender can be cast for any of the parts. So action movies aren’t the only genre in which this works. (Similarly, “Night of the Living Dead” became a parable about racism completely by accident because the director cast a black actor in a part written for a white man.)
Hmmm… I was going to bring up how there are plenty of books with “everywoman” characters, making specific reference to Twilight, but I notice that Skidd beat me to it.
I can however be the first to link to The Oatmeal’s comic on Twilight, which describes the concept perfectly. (But is rather offensive, so be warned!)