Female Protagonists on the Hero's Journey

You seem to be saying that a woman's risk of returning to protected slavery is less frightening than a man's risk of returning to unprotected freedom.

And I'd say, no. It's really not. Even accepting that women were/are all that well-protected, which I'm not accepting.

 

Here's where things fall apart. I'll use Marvel comics as an example because they totally imploded, going from the #1 top dog in the comics industry to barely competing for the #3 spot. They started listening to the far political left, who by and large are not even comic readers. They're just loud and demanding and obnoxious. So Marvel started catering to these people instead of their actual customers and that led to a dramatic drop in sales in the comic marketplace. Unfortunately, Marvel assumed that because these people were loud, they were numerous and because they were interested in what Marvel was doing, they were potential customers. They are neither. In fact, they are locusts. They move from group to group to group, demanding their political ideology be implemented and then they move on. They don't care about any of these various industries, they are just spreading their far-left agenda and companies are being ruined because of it.

We know where the imbalance comes from though. I mean sure, you get scumbags like Weinstein out there, but the far left are well known for eating their own because half of their ideology is based around virtue signalling and the idea that anyone who isn't perfect must be purged. And then you get all of these people screaming about how great they are because everyone else is scum. It's based around tearing everyone else down so you can build yourself up. They spend their time trying to point out the faults of others, even if those faults don't really exist.

It isn't because you have people who are simply not interested in reality, they are radical identitarians with an agenda to put themselves at the top of the oppression stack. they want to claim to be abused so they can seek sympathy of those around them. The person with the worst lot in life and the most puritanical position wins. Now for something like Black Panther, obviously, you need black actors and actresses, but Marvel went overboard, playing along with the SJWs who demanded that every single position within the film, both in front of and behind the camera, be filled with black people. Never mind skill or talent, it only mattered so long as they had the right skin tone. And then they were going "that's not racist!" Of course it is.

All of this is just making the world a worse place to be, not better. Catering to people who aren't even part of your target demographic, just because they're loud and will make false accusations against you, that's becoming the status quo these days. And to bring this back to writing, when an author starts wondering if they've packed their manuscript with enough of a certain demographic because if they didn't, crazy people are going to start screaming that they're racist, that's a problem. It's a problem when people start saying they're only going to read books by authors with the right ideologically-approved skin color or the right gender or sexual orientation and not care at all about the quality of the story itself... that's a serious mess and people are allowing these loudmouths to control the narrative instead of telling them what the hell to go do with themselves.

 

Harry Potter was a wizard, that makes him a minority in his world. There's a reason the wizards were constantly hiding from muggles and some had a hard on hate for them, which I'm going to assume has something to do with that shared period of our history where people were being burned at stakes and drowned as witches. Or were you asking as to whether Harry Potter would have been better if Harry were black? Amazingly enough, there really aren't any descriptions of Harry or his parents (that I can remember) that specifically say they're Caucasian-Anglo-Saxon, so it's really a matter of reader perception telling them that. Which brings me back to the point I made above.

 

Since this sort of thing really calls for context, not a summary conclusion:

https://nerdist.com/marvel-diversity-comics-david-gabriel-wrong/
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/4/15169572/marvel-diversity-outrage-gabriel
//www.npr.org/2017/04/08/523044892/beyond-the-pale-male-marvel-diversity-and-a-changing-comics-readership

 

Wait, really? I thought it was only Hermione who was like that. The more you know, I guess.

In response to multiple people:
Right, I guess I need to clarify further. When I say who a character is, and how they live their lives, I mean how they choose to live. I'm talking about the choices they make. For example, if someone walks up and splits people up depending on their skin color, they're separating them based on what they are, and if someone splits people up depending on which school subject they like best, they're splitting them up based on who they are.

Okay, I'm drawing the line here. I'm bowing out of this topic. You can interpret that as me conceding your points or whatever, but I just don't care to argue at length about politics when I came here to talk about Heroines and whether or not they should have a different "Hero's Journey" then men-folk. Good day.

 

I don't follow comics at all, but your argument is a bit confusing to me. You seem to be equating "imploding" with losing market share, at the start of your post. Now, I'm not really sure I accept your premise that the quality of a company should be measured by its sales, but if we do accept that, then the phenomenal box office success of Black Panther seems to suggest that Marvel made excellent decisions with that movie. Right?

Again, I don't agree that sales are the only determinant when we look at the quality of a company. And, in the case of Black Panther, you seem to agree, since you're critical of their "racist" hiring practices despite the sales. You think ethics should have been a consideration, apparently.

But then you don't apply the same logic to Marvel comics... for them, market share should be all that matters, ethics be damned.

You seem to be jumping between approaches in order to justify your argument.

 

It's a fascinating development:

• Conservatives argue movies with Black main characters would be a mistake because "they won't make enough money to justify the investment"
• Black Panther sets box office records
• Conservatives argue that Black Panther was a mistake because moviegoers spent so much money on that movie that there won't be enough money for the rest of the blockbuster season (white-dominated) movies

We noticed.

 

That really isn't relevant to the bit you quoted. Unless you're saying that it's actually left-wing loonies who are doing more to keep women and non-white people down than any other factor.

And this makes even less sense. The movie is largely set in an insular African nation, so ummmm, yeah, the majority of the cast are going to be black. That was a really bad example to use to reinforce your point.

Here's where we part company, because you barely seem to be registering what I'm actually saying in your haste to alert us all to the great liberal SJW agenda. Thankfully, this conspiracy has failed to silence you (or the many, many others like you), so I must conclude they're a very inept conspiracy. I'm sure we can trust in you to spot their insidious influence wherever it may strike. Your posting style makes it clear how objective and free from ideology you are, after all.

The impression I get is that you've encountered angry people who don't understand you can make a good point in a bad way and who think that being righteous removes the need for civility or rational argument. And eh, they're out there adhering to the cause of inclusion along with every other cause, and I've been accused of being nasty things by some of them for not adhering exactly to their view. If you're looking for me to defend every argument, no matter how absurd, ever made by someone on the same side of the political spectrum, you'll be disappointed. But the existence of people who advocate ineptly for a cause doesn't make the cause without foundation or merit.

Personally, I find that the only thing more irritating that people who brag about being politically correct is people who brag about being politically incorrect.

 

I think it's fair to say this thread has railed off from the original post.

 

Agreed, also think we're getting to a murky part that Border Lines politics!

 

I'm returning to this. Is the meat of, say, Batman's plots really that applicable to men? How many men can go out on and fearlessly beat up a bunch of criminals? Having the power to do pretty much what you please is a fantasy--a fantasy that isn't really closer to a man's life experience than a woman's.

In fact, I would say that a far larger percentage of women feel physically intimidated when out in the world, and that therefore the fantasy is likely to have more, not less, appeal. Part of the enjoyment of Wonder Woman was her ability to effectively say, "Yeah, right. You stay here where it's safe, OK? I'll go get the real work done," when a man tried to tell her what to do.

Super heroes are fantasy; they're nowhere near anyone's life experience, man or woman.

 

That was my favorite part of the movie Technically, it "should've" taken place in WWII, and I'm pretty sure that it was only moved to WWI because they wanted to avoid it being seen as "just another Captain America: the First Avenger,"

but if the movie had taken place in WWII, then we wouldn't have had the scene where Captain Steve Rogers Trevor, played by Chris Evans Pine, says of the battlefield "That's No Man's Land, that means no man can cross it..."

 

lol I thought they put it in WWI so they didn't have to make Hitler = Aries

 

What I mean is that a lot more men involve themselves in violent jobs, indulge in violent idiocy, or take part in hierarchical combat, either on the playground, in the ring, or on the street. Unfortunately for men, it is very natural to have your sense of self-worth tied up in how you confront those challenges. Gaining status through violence is one of the only ways huge numbers of men have to advance socially, and it works. Some part of this unfortunate situation might be due to nature. While all of that can and does apply to some women, most men obsess about it at some point in their lives. There isn't much difference between watching a middle weight fight 1v1 against a heavy weight, and watching Superman fight Doomsday. Partly, you root for Superman because he's smaller and brave, and you hope that when you're challenged, you'll do the same.

Again, while all that might be true for some women, and it isn't true for all men, it is true for many more men than women.

You might be right. I'm sure there are some women who agree with that.

Right, but the emotional experience of rooting for heroic figures courageously standing up against bad odds because of what's right, and physically prevailing with violence, is a thing that lots and lots of boys and men do, attempt to do, or wish they had done at some point in their lives. Superhero stories are inspiration for it. While this isn't true for all men, and it is true for some women, it is more often true for men than women.

 

Well, unless you have a scientific study or at least an extensive poll, this is an assumption on your part, right? I'm not saying that it's a crazy assumption, but it's an assumption.

You could argue that because men are stronger on average, they're more drawn to fantasies of using strength.

Or I could argue that because women are less strong on average, they are logically drawn to fantasies of using strength, and that any particular fantasy's lack of appeal to women is based on something else in that fantasy.

Plenty of women enjoy Buffy, River Tam, that female terminator also played by Summer Glau, Bo in Lost Girl, Arya on Game of Thrones, Helena in Orphan Black, etc. Those women deal out plenty of violence, but they're also amply appealing to plenty of women.

Again, I'm not saying your assumption is crazy. But I also don't think that we can take it as established fact.

 

I feel the urge to post a link to "A Calm Helena is a Dangerous Helena"

 

There actually has been research done by the CDC and Oxford University on the Napoleon Complex, or Small Man Syndrome that basically said that that smaller or weaker a man was, the more likely they were to fantasize about and engage in violent behaviour. This research was only done on male participants, so I'm not sure how well it would translate to a female audience, but if this trend follows across genders, then it would seem to back up @ChickenFreak 's counter argument.

 

lol yeah, I would definitely take anything I say without posting a source with a grain of salt. I'm not a scholar at all, but I really like Campbell, Jung, Pinker, and Peterson.

I'll try to post some sources that are easy to digest. While little of it is directly relevant to the things I said in this thread, I'm sure this stuff influenced how I think about things:

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2013/215126/

40 Minute Video on the differences between men and women including greater risk taking and rough / tumble play by boys:



And here is a shorter version of some of the same material:



In this video, Jordan Peterson talks about how men use violence to establish a dominance hierarchy in order to mate for most of human history:



Wikipedia Article for Sex Differences in Crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime

Peterson on the Hero Myth:



https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-psychology-behind-superhero-origin-stories-4015776/

 

My issue with these is that the parts that are about gender differences don't seem to be about fiction, and the parts that are about fiction don't seem to be about gender differences.

The idea that men are more violent and that they are more likely to commit violent crimes doesn't necessarily suggest that they're more likely to like violence in their fiction. In particular, the fact that they're more likely to commit violent crimes doesn't seem to map with the idea that they want to be violent good guys.

I don't suppose you've watched Orphan Black? I suddenly find myself wanting to discuss Helena.

 

No, sorry. lol it’s on my list.

Thanks for sharing your feelings and I think you’re right that I shouldn’t get too attached unscientific ideas.

 

So, the twelve-minute Helena video full of spoilers is out?

I love Helena so much.

 

Sure you can have a Fem-Protag Hero if you want.
I have one, and people seem to like her.
Though I try to stick to realism, keep everything
from falling into the OTT, or the that is not even
possible or even feasible category.

 

I hate to break it you guys but non white male heroes have been around for some time. Although I'm a bit too old for action hero type stuff anymore, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider (female) and Blade (black male superhero) were two excellent heroes and that was decades ago. Certainly infrequency is still, decades later, an issue, but I think you guys are giving Black Panther and Wonder Woman way too much credit.

 

I think we should also be careful about assuming that the audience for fiction matches the gender of the characters in the fiction. Women and men may like to identify with scrappy fighters standing up to the odds, and women and men can both satisfy that craving with female or male characters. It's nice (REALLY nice) to see someone of your demographic doing what you wish you could do, but it's not the only way to get the vicarious experience. ETA: Which isn't meant to suggest we shouldn't have more representational heroes. I just mean we shouldn't assume that because most action heroes are males that means only males are interested in action heroes.

I also question the necessity of violence to the hero's journey. It's generally interpreted pretty openly, right, so that most of the elements can be satisfied symbolically? Is there actually a requirement that the hero physically beat the shit out of somebody?

Final note - watching @ChickenFreak's clip about Helena - I don't like violence, I'm not comfortable with violence, but what I enjoyed about the clip was the power and the freedom from social constraints. Helena (I assume puffy-faced Russian woman is Helena?) isn't worrying about whether she seems ladylike or whether people like her or whether she's violating social norms. She's her own person, in charge of her own shit, and that's EXCELLENT to watch. People respect her, fear her, and if they don't? If they threaten babies? Look out!

I don't care whether she's on the hero's journey or not - I still want to watch her!

(I only watched the first episode or two of Orphan Black and it didn't grab me, but then I keep seeing cool stuff from later in the run...)

 

There's a difference between "they exist" and "the representation approaches the demographics of the real world". But I think you know that.

Heck, how many MCU movies will we have gotten through before we get one with a female main character?