Female Protagonists: Can Women Actually Do Things?

Lately, many remakes of old movies have been released with female protagonists instead of male. It’s all nice and good that Hollywood is accepting the concept of feminism, but it also seems like they’re milking it for their own wealth. Especially Marvel. There was a scene in Avengers: Endgame where all the women get together in a group and are like “ We’ll take it from here”. Of course during this scene I was just thinking “ You go girl! Whoo!” And then nothing happened. All the other women disappeared and Captain Marvel was just trying to kill Thanos all by herself. And guess what? She couldn’t do it. The worst part about this scene is that Marvel actually thinks women are stupid enough to think this is the extent of feminism they can fit in the biggest movie in their series.

But the whole movie industry is doing things like this. Some good examples of this are Captain Marvel, Ocean’s 8, and Ghostbusters. These show women doing things that were recently considered “manly” (like blowing things up and robbing department stores). We now know that anyone with a bomb can blow things up, anyone with a gun can rob a store, and anyone with a ghost sucker-upper can suck up ghosts. We knew that without these movies though. I’m not saying those movies were bad. Captain Marvel is one of my favorite movies of all time. But I do think that it’s very unoriginal. What about instead of copying movies from the past we make new, more relevant movies with women protagonists. I think D.C. is way ahead of their game. Why did everyone forget about Wonder Woman? I’m not quite sure about her choice of a metal leotard though.

I’ve always thought Black Widow was the most badass superhero. She was also the only Avenger without her own movie. Finally, they’ve created a movie about her backstory. Sadly, this movie was only created after she dies in the main series. All the males got a backstory. Even Antman! What is the point of that superhero! Did they create that just so they could fit Paul Rudd into their universe somehow?

Also, why do all female superheroes wear make up and skintight size 0 jumpsuits in battle? Just a thought.

Of course not all strong female protagonists are superheroes.

Take Legally Blonde for example. Although this might not be the best symbol of feminism, it does show a woman doing a job that, generally, a man would do. And she doesn't need to beat anyone up to get it. That movie more accurately betrays the real world. You might notice that if a woman can use a weapon, she’s considered a badass ( At least they gave Princess Leia a gun). But that doesn't really apply to reality.

9 to 5 was a perfect representation of women's struggles in the workplace (except for the kidnapping your boss part). It showed sexual harassment, pay equality, and how a woman could improve the workplace if given the chance.

Captain Marvel was an amazing movie because it passed the Bechdel Test. The Bechdel Test is a good way to determine if women in fiction are being betrayed sexistly. For a movie to pass the Bechdel Test it must have three main components:

1. 2 women

2. 2 women with names

3. 2 women with names having a conversation about something other than a man

The first two are generally very easy to achieve. The third one, not so much. Two straight women could be talking about their love interests. This is the most typical form of a conversation about a man. But even a conversation between two gay women about there male boss dosen’t pass the Bechdel Test.

Captain Marvel passes this test so well we never even learn her sexuality.

Of course most kids movies, like Trolls, Finding Dory, And Zootopia, pass this test too.

I think the fact that this is such a simple and easy test to pass says a lot considering that only about 60% of movies pass it. Granted, just because a movie dosen’t pass the Bechdel test dosen’t mean it’s not feminist. It’s really just a test to determine if the women in a film have a personality that doesn’t only revolve around a man. Thankfully, in recent years many more movies have proven to have female protagonists that are neither, based on a man, nor revolve around a man.

Sincerely,

Flora