They don’t.
Honestly, some of the criticism surrounding female superheroes and their movies belies belief.
It’s fascinating that several think-pieces about these movies, in particular, contain an almost mandatory disclaimer, something akin to “And it’s not because of sexism. Not everything is about sexism; not everyone is sexist.”
I’m not sure how many people claim that ‘everything is sexism’ in the first place.
And while I’m not advocating that these disclaimers have nefarious origins, but in an effort to state that ‘not everything is sexist,’ we are perhaps disregarding the fact that some things are sexist, and some people are sexist.
There was an intense wave of backlash when Gal Gadot was cast as Wonder Woman. And much of that backlash was centred on her supposedly not-so-sizeable breasts.
Similarly, a rather unflattering photo of Brie Larson was doing the rounds. The problem there seemed to be Larson’s supposedly not-so-sizeable buttocks.
Now, perhaps it’s best to file these matters into the ‘some people are idiots’ cabinet and be done with it. But these people are vocal on the internet; they create and shape opinion.
Remember when Larson’s approval ratings shot-up into the stratosphere one fine evening when she hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live in a saucy number?
Of course not everything and everyone is sexist.
And of course there is room for criticising several facets of female-driven superhero films – the reticence to place women heroes in vulnerable situations is one that rings true for me.
But some of the criticism is confounding; to the pitch of near-lunacy.
One line of criticism I can’t wrap my head around is the ‘the movie is shoving feminism down our throats.’ Captain Marvel faced some flak in that regard.
And I am left to wonder, did I watch the same movie as those who made this claim?
Because while the film did have decidedly feminist undertones, the crux of Captain Marvel, wasn’t that Carol was a woman, it was that she was human.
Her struggle and arc throughout the movie wasn’t to embrace her femininity, it was to find her humanity, which was stripped from her.
A Captain Marvel movie with a male lead would have been 90 percent similar to the one we got.
That is to say that while the gender of the protagonist wasn’t exactly immaterial to the movie, it certainly wasn’t the most prominent aspect of the character.
There’s another criticism that I chanced upon recently. It stated that in Birds of Prey, all the men are shown to be bad guys.
Yeah, here’s the deal - everyone in the movie is a bad guy!
It’s a movie centred on villains/anti-heroes. Harley kills a guy and feeds him to her pet Hyena and the movie had barely begun. These are bad people.
To surmise that the movie was trying to say that “All men are bad but women are good” requires a particularly narrow and biased viewpoint.
Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are the only two superhero movies led by a woman made in the last 15 years.
Neither of those movies “try to remind watchers about the fact that they are women.”
The marketing might have, because since there have been only four female-led superhero movies made since 2000, it is a point of saleability.
But as far as the content in the movies is concerned, there are no “reminders.”
Thanks for Reading
Image source Google
0 Comments