Here's My Take on the Idea of the Strong Female Character

You know, my outlook on how movies work has changed a lot as I've grown up, even and in a lot of ways especially since I started this review blog. Reading through some of my older articles, a lot of my criteria for determining the quality of a film are the same, but I regularly notice much more hyperbole and far less thoroughness regarding how I went about my writing and how I went about explaining my reasoning for giving this movie or that movie the score I did. But growth is a part of life, and so even if I'm not the fondest of some of my past articles, it is what it is, and I wouldn't change a thing about how I've grown. So, I'm a little surprised to be saying this, but today, I got the idea to talk about the controversial character archetype known as the "strong female character," and so that's what I'm going to do. I am well aware that this topic is a very popular one amongst some of my more reactionary, politically involved, and I would believe less-experienced and more change-averse critical peers. On one side, you have primarily right-wing YouTubers like Nerdrotic and Robot Head who regularly put out bombastic videos lambasting the idea of strong female characters while rarely, if ever giving any substantial commentary on the actual quality of the stories they inhabit. On the other side, you have journalists from primarily leftist publishers like Vox and The New York Times who put out theme-obsessed articles defending films like this without doing so much as lift a finger to address anything like writing, pacing, and the like. With so much hyperbolic noise flying around between the two camps, it can be hard to look at this issue through a more nuanced lens, and if you've been looking for a more balanced take on an idea like this, then I'm sure you will be happy to hear that the goal of this article is to do just that. First, I want to approach this issue by raising a fundamental challenge to what we in America accept as a "strong female character."

In short, I don't believe that characters like Captain Marvel are "strong female characters" at all.

What exactly is strong about putting down every male character you come across? That's not strength, that's pettiness. What exactly is strong about being able to overcome every obstacle thrown your way with minimal effort? That's not strength, that's a fundamental lack of any realistic narrative challenge. My first problem with "strong female characters" as we've come to know them is that they are written less with the intention of creating a three-dimensional character, and more with the intention of addressing whatever bone a given female writer may have to pick. Now, on the flip side of this, women haven't always been treated well in the slightest by Hollywood, often getting relegated to the role of characterless and over-sexualized eye candy, and so oftentimes, I'll give some of these writers the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they're only putting out characters like this because they're trying to address some of their own frustrations with the all-too-prevalent reality that women have more often than not been getting the short end of the stick in movies pretty much since movies themselves were created. And that's a perfectly legitimate complaint, and one that should be addressed more. But a legitimate complaint does not justify an artistically void reaction, and swinging back to my criticisms, I would say that the most fundamental problem that arises from this approach is that a writer's idea of a "strong female character" is almost always a woman with traditionally masculine character traits. These people are playing into stereotypes they're trying so hard to reject without even realizing that they're doing it. And with that, I want to bring us back to the idea of putting down male characters. Is a female character really all that strong if all she has to put up with is a weak guy who capitulates whenever he's so much as met with a challenge?

Now that I've dismantled Hollywood's idea of a "strong female character," I want to say something that may surprise you: if you have the right idea of what it means for a woman to be simultaneously strong and feminine, you actually can craft an effective and even moving strong female character. I like a strong female character who has to use smarts and resilience to overcome challenges. I like a strong female character with weaknesses that she'll have to find the strength to face. I like a strong female character who understands that sometimes she needs a man just as much as that man needs her. I like a strong female character who can show motherly, realistic kindness to others. I like a strong female character who can cry. I like a strong female character who doesn't have it all together. Strength is not being able to overcome every obstacle on your first try and humiliating those who can't. Strength is being willing to move forward despite the very real possibility that you will fail. To throw out some examples of what I'm trying to get at here, some strong female characters that I absolutely love are Evelyn Abbot from A Quiet Place, who has got to be one of my all-time favorites as far as strong female characters go. She's a caring mother and a loving wife who pushes herself to the absolute limits so that her children can live to see tomorrow. I love Marge Gunderson from Fargo. She's a goofy and lovable cop with a heavy Minnesota accent who just so happens to possess a surprising and endearing amount of wisdom. The Bride from Kill Bill is another. She is incredibly capable but also has legitimate challenges to overcome, and many of these challenges arise because of her own failures. I also love Furiosa from Mad Max. She's a survivor to the very core of her being, never puts anyone down, and has goals that are easy to get behind. And for my last example, Dr. Lousie Banks from Arrival is another, lesser-known female protagonist I love, and I love her because she's just so insanely noble and chooses to do the right thing, even when she knows that doing the right thing is going to hurt her more than she could ever imagine. And now that I think about it, it also doesn't hurt that the movies these characters inhabit are actually well-written in the first place, unlike a lot of pieces created for the sole purpose of showcasing a studio's fractured idea of what it means to be a strong female.

Is this really hard, Hollywood? Ah, but you misread the question. What I mean is this: is it really so hard for you writers to find something strong about actual femininity? Well, it shouldn't be, and it's a shame that a woman in a movie has to act like a man now to be labeled as "strong." What's worse, the entire term "strong female character" has been tainted by our society's expectations when we hear that word, and this is undoubtedly going to make it more difficult to dig out of this hole of a fad in Hollywood's history that most certainly will go the way of the dinosaur, just not easily. Now, I'm not one of those guys who thinks that any movie with a strong female character in it is automatically bad, but I do believe that attaching ourselves to tropes and stereotypes like these makes it almost impossible to make a film that is truly great. The sooner we can kick the stereotype of the "strong female character" as we've come to know it to the curb, the better. There is nothing wrong with a man who acts like a man, and a woman who acts like a woman, and trying to bend an audience's perception of this is ultimately a pretty good way to kill any sense of disbelief that your film might otherwise have possessed. Both genders possess inherent strengths and weaknesses unique to each other, and after all, well-written strengths and, even more so, well-written weaknesses are what make a character truly great, are they not?

Ephesians 2:10