ok, not really what i was talking about, but you think about it. a lot of the most interesting settings for stories would not normally have women in them anyway.
For example? That is, I have no trouble thinking of plenty of settings that wouldn't have women, but most of the ones that I can think of, I find pretty boring. So I'm curious.
it seems you lack imagination or have a odd sense of exciteing Submarines (ala Hunt for Red October) exploration and colonization ( Heart of Darkness) most millitaries in history (Gods and Generals, The Gladiator,) most ships until recently (sailors till the end) Hunting camps and safari's (The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber)
I think that there's some self-selection here, on both our parts. If I imagine those things in the context where women are plausible, I find them increasingly exciting, and I suspect you'd find them increasingly boring. (For example, there could be plenty of colonization plots that could involve women.) If I imagine them in a context where only men are possible, I find them increasingly boring. There are admittedly limited roles for women in certain kinds of historical stories, which is part of why I find those historical stories boring. If I do want war and diplomacy and exploration, I can find it in science fiction, with plenty of women--for example, the remake of Battlestar Galactica would pass the Bechdel test many times over. Boomer and Starbuck, for example, as women just...work. (Edited to put the Boomer/Starbuck thing in the paragraph where it belongs.)
Every time I imagine a plot summary, I only think of one woman, the woman of the story. It's not intentional, but I think it's some kind of singular uh (vocabulary and brain failing me here) mindset? It's pretty broad to say this, but I think that in male fiction work, all but one of the elements are under much control the writer. All of the variables, characters and antagonists are disguised deep personal feelings and experiences. Except for the woman. The opposite gender is very, very important to us (excluding some cases, of course) and has the greatest emotional impact on our lives. The primary women in men's stories, usually love interests, are the most raw element of the work. We have such powerful emotions about them that we think of them less as independent characters with their own interests and more what they are to us. What they have done to us, what we wished they would have done, what we hope they will do, what we wish they were. We write them as if they are a third party, the 'girltagonist' if you will. John, Jack, Phil, Bob, and the other guy are all me and the girl is her. The reason there are always fewer female side characters, not-love-interests that are there just to move the plot along or build character, is because it's simply more difficult for a male writer to imagine a female character. This occurs subconsciously, of course. Ask a man to write a woman and he will do so. Ask a man to write a judge or a plumber or a janitor... One last aspect to look at is the possibility that male readers are slightly more comfortable behind the eyes of their own sex. I would almost wonder if male protags find their way on shelves more than the girls, just because of market research. I still don't understand it myself, and the above was just throwing a hypothesis out there to see if someone else can take something from it or elaborate. There are also easily thousands of exceptions to what I said, and ten thousand better ways to describe it. I think I am going to add more female characters to my work from now on, though.
I was done with this topic, but this really bothered and annoyed me. So when there is not enough women in a story, you find it increasingly boring. Nobody else notice how hypocritical that is? So you find history boring, even though history has so many great stories, because its mainly men. Thats your determining factor on whether you enjoy something- if it has enough women in it? You're pretty much just saying that men don't matter by saying you can only enjoy stories if they have women. I'm trying really hard to find the reason in my brain as to why characters' gender affect your enjoyment of the particular movies or story, or even part of history. Nope, nothing. Except maybe some kind of weird ego feeling for your fellow women(similar to being patriotic and feeling proud if someone from your country did something that you had nothing to do with). Or being sexist, disliking men but I'll assume this is not the reason.
Women aren't a recent invention. History isn't mainly men, and of course I don't find history boring. I said "certain kinds of historical stories" not "historical stories" or "history." The moments of history that primarily involved men, and that men thought were interesting enough to write about, tend to have some similar elements. They tend to depict a highly hierarchical social environment (battlefield, ship, palace, parliament, etc.) Hierarchical social environments don't interest me much, especially when they go unchallenged. They are often, though of course not always, focused on events outside the characters without all that much interest in the characters themselves. That's probably why Hunt for Red October--which of course isn't history but is inside an historical context--was interesting to me. The plot turned, to a very great degree, on Ramius's *character*. No, it's whether it has a certain kind of focus on character. Thank you for challenging me on this, because I'm not sure if i would have teased the details apart without your post to challenge me. I want that focus on character. And I want it to be a focus on character that has some relevance to me. Some historical stories containing men explore elements of the male character and male relationships, exploring character very well. But if I have no context that I can relate to at all, it's hard for me to be interested. The men don't have to turn into women--Ramius certainly wasn't, and there was plenty in his character that I could identify with. But there has to be some opening. In Ramius's case, The concerns that caused him to challenge his hierarchy were universal and provided that opening, and so were the personal elements and the chinks in his armor that we saw. As another example, I really can't criticize the Horatio Hornblower miniseries as having a lack of character develoment. But it was character development that was about men, and the male version of duty and ethics and pride and obedience. It was interesting and I'm not sorry that I saw it, but it was a very specific character type at a very specific time, with no particular effort to give it context for non-males. There *was* plenty of effort to give it context to modern viewers in a class sense--the men lower in the hierarchy were made human, and Hornblower's conflicts in being expected to treat them at times as less than human, when his instinct was to treat them better, was an opening from the modern to the historical world. But there was no similar opening into that very male world. Horatio was utterly walled off from women. That was made more, not less, obvious when he got married, and Hornblower's mentor, as I recall, more than once pointed out that Hornblower absolutely did not understand women. Hornblower was uncomfortable in a non-hierarchical world that contained women and that wasn't driven by duty. I can't complain about that particular story's failure to pass the Bechdel test, because passing it would make no sense. Hornblower was the very much the viewpoint character, Hornblower's world was male, and he was only briefly aware of the existence of a very small number of women, and only in the context of his relationship with them. It would have been a waste of screen time for those women to communicate with one another. The interesting statement that the series made about male-female relations would have been *undermined* by having full female characters. That balancing act couldn't have been supported forever without starting to sag, but in this couple of dozen(?) episodes, it worked. But I'm still not going to go out of my way to watch Horatio Hornblower again. What it has to offer in a character sense, it primarily offers to men. Well, when a dozen opportunities for "generic human" go by, and eleven of them are filled by men, and the twelfth exists purely to flirt, yeah, there's a cetain amount of that. Let's say that you were watching a murder plot. Female victim, female detective. The victim has a husband who does...er, something, it's not really discussed; we just discuss his relationship with his wife. She has a son, but he just says a few words about his mother and his sister and goes away. Her daughter, on the other hand, was following in her mother's career, and we discuss the daughter's career, her reputation, her friends, her possible motives to kill her mother. The PI takes a cab somewhere and in conversation with the female cabbie, learns something about recent events that's important and relevant. She stops for a cup of coffee and flirts with the cute male barista. She stops off at the station and exchanges a few words with a male colleague about his upcoming wedding. She talks to the female medical examiner about the gunshot residue patterns, and the male colleague and the ME's male assistant exchange a few funny whispered words about that same wedding. Are you seeing a pattern here? If most movies were like that, would you find it irritating? Sure, you could identify with all those female characters, but wouldn't you like it if, a little more often, movies acknowledged that men do things in the world, too? Not just by giving them the jobs ("But she has a male colleague! What more do you want?") but by actually showing them doing those jobs. Would you consider that desire to be a "weird ego feeling"? I don't dislike men. But I also don't dislike women, so I'd like to see them included in the world.
Heh heh heh... I only failed this test once, and that was ONLY because it was a very short story with three named characters, and none of them were female.
Okay, you didn't mention anything about the focus on character so you can't really blame me on what I assumed to be just only enjoying stories with women. Well, actually history IS unfortunately primarily men- there is definitely a lack of women, probably because they usually weren't in high positions except as a Queen(But those that are women, are very well known!). Your point that most historical stories or just stories in hierarchical social environments involving mostly men don't focus on character seems like a generilization(Which I normally don't have a problem with if they are true), but doesn't even seem to be true(Band of brothers,House of Cards, The Pacific just to name a few series). And it also does not have much to do with this topic. I personally would not have a problem with the example you provided(The murder plot one) and most men wouldn't either. I also wouldn't feel proud of any men that have nothing to do with me. I once heard that women connect with other women a lot easier without actually knowing them at all, while men have to be for example in the same proffession to feel connected to eachother in some way. I've no idea how true that is though. Also, there many movies, series and books that don't fail the bechdel test, and those that do often have to. Its a serious exaggeration to say that most fail it. I'm actually watching a really good series on Netflix(The killing) right now with the main character a woman and another series I watch right now also does(Parks and Recreation). I can honestly name so many examples of movies and shows with strong female characters. I know this reply is really short and does not say much, but I'm fairly tired right now
sounds like you suffer from bad taste, but that's your problem not mine. also who cares what a professionals gender/race/religion/ any of that BS is as long as their good at their job?
Nailed it. When I write a story, I select a pair of names (one male, one female) for each character and then flip a coin to decide which name I will use in the end. My characters are supposed to be heroic, villainous, smart, dumb, warm hearted or cold blooded, not masculine, feminine, black, white or any of that crap. If gender/race/religious background are important features of a character, it is a poor character.
I'm assuming that I must be completely misunderstanding your statement above, because I can't parse it. If a character is in a story about changes in the Catholic church, their religious background is likely to be important. If a character is in a story about race relations in the American South in the 1950s, or a story about the internment of the Japanese during World War II, their race is likely to be important. If a character in a story about women's suffrage, their gender is likely to be important. We're not talking about faceless interchangeable chess pieces here. We're talking about people--fictional people, but all the same, fictional people are not interchangeable. *When* gender isn't a critical part of a character's definition, the "default" should stop being male. When race isn't a critical part of a character's definition, the default should stop being white Western European. And so on. But that doesn't mean that gender, race, religious background, social background, and a thousand other specifics aren't often absolutely critical to the definition of a character. When I say that I want more women in fiction, I don't mean that I want generic characters. I mean that I want more *women*.
Correct. Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" which is set in late 19th century Congo was famously turned into the movie "Apocalypse Now" by Francis Ford Coppola, who moved the story to Indochina during the Vietnam War. It still explored the same themes, contained the same character types and conveyed the same message. Whatever you choose as your stage set and however you dress up your actors doesn't matter, because the important stuff is universal and goes far beyond petty superficialities. This is precisely why I consider characters who are chiefly defined by gender/race/religion or other superficial things to be poor characters. There shouldn't be any "defaults" in the first place. They may be critical to the definition of a poor character. Well, I don't. I want more well-written characters that happen to be women though.
It's often held that one of the themes of both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now is "western imperialism." How do you do that without having different cultures and without defining which character is from which culture? How do you tell the story of, say, Henry VIII, without depicting two religions? How do you tell the story of Othello without Othello being of a different culture from the dominant culture?
I'd be careful about making statements like 'you suffer from bad taste' on this forum. That swipes close to being a personal attack on ChickenFreak. It's not very courteous, is it? Not pleasant to read, and certainly is not persuasive, especially in the context of polite debate, which ChickenFreak has engaged in.
This is not true. The character types were very different and their reasons for being where they were were different. The skeleton of the plot is the same and that's pretty much it. In Conrad's story, Kurtz is an ivory trader with big ideas about bringing European-style civilization to the African jungle, and Marlow is simply there to transport ivory. In the film, Kurtz and Willard are military men and Willard is sent to kill Kurtz because he's supposed to have gone mad. Coppola and Milius just took Conrad's story as a framework and imposed their own themes and ideas onto it.
Totally missing the point. In each case, culture or religion would simply serve as a tool to distinguish the conflict parties. Do you think a soccer player is defined by the team he plays for?
I would be happy if someone else could explain the point, because, yes, I don't understand. Or I simply can't believe that you're saying what you seem to be saying. Are you saying that people don't feel at all defined by their religion, their nation, their politics? Or are you saying that the way they feel about themselves is irrelevant? Are you saying that conflicts are never *about* anything, that it's just people facing off for the sake of facing off? This idea that we have that people enter conflict about privilege or lack of it, wealth or lack of it, safety or lack of it, different religions, different beliefs, different cultures...all of that is false? We've imagined it all? People who are conquered aren't in conflict due to being conquered, but because...because...see, here's where I don't get it. You seem to be saying that all conflict is a generic, equals-on-equals, manufactured thing like a sports match. And...no. No, it's not. Conflict is real, and conflict is the core of essentially all stories. If you don't care about the cause of the conflict, why does the story exist?
I like stories with a female lead or plenty of women because I can often relate to their problems -- being a woman myself. I don't really look for "strong female characters" in the fiction I consume (movies, books, tv shows), I look for relatable characters who have both, strengths and weaknesses. I like stories with men because I'm not one, and they're a great big mystery to me. How do they sense an impending kick to their goolies? What would they do if they get a boner at an awkward moment, like in a fight? What does it feel like to have no obligation to wear heels? Or go shirtless on a hot summer's day? What's a male orgasm like? What techniques do they use to keep themselves from bursting into tears when Jack sinks into the sea but Rose is rescued?
Many people feel defined by these things, but it has nothing to do with their religion/nation/state per se. It's simply their personal conviction. Other people who belong to the very same denomination/nation/state might hold entirely different views. So if you decide to turn one of your characters into a crusader-type or a nationalist, (s)he is rather defined by world view than by religious affiliation/nation/state, even though (s)he might feel different. Care to explain where I wrote or even implied these things?
Ah, so you pretended to be asleep? Crafty... I'll remember that. I need a tear-control system for sappy movies. Mascara starts running, don't want that.
It occurs to me that there might be two different definitions of "I don't care about gender" at work in this discussion: not caring about other people caring vs. caring about other people not caring. Not caring about other people caring: I don't think that stereotypes can ultimately hurt people, so even though I personally do not try to portray stereotypes as important descriptions of the real world, I nonetheless don't care if other writers do. "If [race, gender, wealth, religion...] is not important, then it's not important." Caring about other people not caring: I want people to stop using stereotypes to insult each other because I want them to put actual individual distinctions above imaginary group distinctions. "All that is required to Evil to triumph is for Good people to do nothing."
I'm not interested in explaining your argument to you, when I still have absolutely no idea what your argument is. I was trying to understand what you were saying, but I've given up by now.
I doubt the evidence of how individuals absorb the culture of the group would support your conclusion. I'm pretty sure profits in the movie and entertainment business outweigh pressure to be PC by a comfortable margin.
