Women Portrayed In Fiction and Why We Don't Progress
Posted: Sunday, August 16, 2009
by Alisa Miller
http://alisa-miller.com
When it comes to stereotypes and how women are portrayed fiction plays a vital part. Fiction has always been the way we have externalized our internal world so we can then internalize the lessons it gives us. We learn about good and evil and all the different shades in between. We have (mostly unacknowledged) fictional role models which range from James Bond to Wonder Woman and we can, through fiction, critically examine our world and see if we can spot what needs fixing so we can have a stab at fixing it.
This means that you'd expect that Hollywood which acts as the unofficial weather vane of popular culture and tastes would signal that things have moved on in the last 400 years. A look at what's on offer however offers little hope of that.
The box office hits of our days rehash the storyline of a woman tragically single with a discernible obsessive-compulsive streak who is unknowingly dissatisfied by her essentially hollow and meaningless high-flying career, plagued by assorted neuroses and can only be saved from a future of certain loneliness thanks only to the intervention of an "immature and/or emotionally abusive" slob of a man who teaches her "the true nature of love (which often seems to involve her quitting her high-pressure, high-power job)."
Translate career for lifestyle and you can see that Sandra Bullock as the pushy boss in The Proposal, who forces her young male assistant to marry her so she doesn't lose her green card; Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly and Ginnifer Goodwin playing assorted one-dimensional and desperate women in He's Just Not That Into You; Renée Zellweger as the high-flying executive in New in Town, who finds true meaning in her life only when Harry Connick Jr shows her; Isla Fisher in the self-explanatory Confessions of a Shopaholic; and Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway nursing a lifelong obsession about weddings in Bride Wars are updated versions of Taming of the Shrew.
In the last 400 years we have managed to put a man on the moon and a small army of robotic explorers on Mars, we are about to uncover the mysteries lying at the heart of the universe through the findings of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, we can communicate at the speed of light and traverse the globe in less than 20 hours and yet we still, popularly, believe that true happiness for a woman lies in the arms of any man, as long as he is a man.
Hollywood's inability to get past Shakespeare's creation may have a lot to do with playing the safe card and dishing up undemanding tripe in what is a tumultuous economic time for many but we, as consumers, have to be able to see past this and understand that there is now a large disparity in terms of the roles of men and women from what they were 400 years ago which has little to do with the size of the pay cheque.
While I saw all of the above films and was as entertained by them as I was enthralled by the richness of expression in Taming of the Shrew when I studied it at school, I also know that the reason we face so man difficulties when it comes to relationships are found precisely in the fact that our world progresses much faster than we do. To truly change within we need to really change without and for that we have to accept responsibility for our own personal development within and not leave it up to the same biochemical soup which drove our ancestors.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Very interesting read Alisa! Great advice at the end, it really brings your thoughts to a close! I enjoyed this!
I enjoyed your piece. I have long looked at foreign films and independent films to gain a more rich and full portrayal of female characters. I also (please don't laugh) have seen modern animated films and series --- that some are more mature in their tone --- that have done a much better job of fully developing female characters (i.e. The Justice League Justice; Justice League Unlimited Wonder Woman etc.) which I happily watch on Saturday's with my 8 year-old son (these cartoons weren't around when my 25, 21, 20 year-olds were younger)
You are so right Alisa. Check out the movies on Lifetime television - exactly what you are saying. I don't know why, but they all seem driven by the same MENtality.
Lorrie you've just made a great point. It is a classic example of TV execs playing it safe and simply approving what's been done (to death) before.
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