Guest post: Misogynist men as cool bros
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on An ordinary, malignant symptom of systemic sexism.
It’s hardly surprising that Hollywood, or the movie industry in general, should be such a hotspot of misogyny and sexism when you look at some (most?) of the stuff it produces. A while back (inspired by Anita Sarkeesian) I went through my own movie collection (not a vast one, but not exactly tiny either) and tried to identify all the problems (from a feminist perspective) I could find. Unsurprisingly most of my movies failed to pass the Bechdel test. Objectification/sexualization of female characters etc. was obviously a recurring theme. The Damsel in Distress as well as the even darker Woman in Refrigerator trope* were depressingly common. I also identified several instances of what Sarkeesian has called the Evil Demon Seductress trope and a few that, as far as I’m aware, don’t have names at all.
But by far the most common problem I found was sympathetic portrayal of sexist and misogynist men. Whereas overt racists are almost universally (with perhaps one or two exceptions, mostly from some of the older movies) depicted as the scum of the Earth and deserving of nothing but contempt, when it comes to sexism, the general tone seems to be that being a sexist or misogynist in no way makes you a bad person. At best it’s portrayed as a minor flaw or “quirk” that only makes the male character more “human” (and hence likable), and at worst it’s one of the very things we’re supposed to find cool about him **. Sure smells like self-serving bias to me.
* I.e. the one where a female character is killed as a pretext for the male hero to seek revenge and kick some ass.
** We see something similar with rock stars, many of whom who are/were notorious sleazebags. I can no longer listen to some of the rock songs I used to enjoy because the lyrics sound like the stuff that people tweet at Anita Sarkeesian.
I revisited my movie collection, and here are some more problems that occur at least once (and, to be clear, I don’t claim to be the first to identify any of these):
• The sheer absensce of female characters (or the inclusion of a single token woman in an otherwise all male cast to create an illusion of inclusitivity and equality).
• The (closely related, but not identical) “Smurfette principle” in which men are portrayed as complete persons with with their own backgrounds, jobs, inner lives, personalities, interests, strengths and weaknesses etc., whereas the sole female character in the movie simply gets to be “the female” and nothing else (except maybe “hot”).
• Female characters serving mainly as love-interests or otherwise reduced to/defined by their relationships with men.
• Female characters serving mainly as a reward/trophe to be won in the end by the male hero.
• Female characters included mainly to look hot and show as much skin as possible.
• Female characters as status symbols of men (“Isn’t he a real Alpha since he managed to get a woman like that?”).
• The portrayal of female characters as hysterical, crazy, irrational and completely controled by their emotions.
• The inclusion of a powerful female character just so that the male hero can look even better by comparison when he outshines her in the end.
• The inclusion of a powerful female character only to have her totally sidelined and defeated in the end while the men go on to save the day.
• Naked rape apology, as when a male character forces himself on a woman who is strugling to resist him. But that’s ok, because once he’s gotten started she suddenly melts like butter in his arms and loves him forever after. So surrender in retrospect works backwards in time to justify the lack of consent in advance, hence the man is still a good guy and did nothing wrong.
• Making the (female) villain (the one we’re supposed to find despicable in every way) the only character in the movie to express anything resembling a feminist viewpoint.
• Etc… etc…
And what’s so infuriating about all this (well, there are many infuriating things about this, but one of them) is that not a single one of these problems is necessary for the movie to work or makes it better/more enjoyable in any way. In fact there are movies I would otherwise probably still enjoy that I never want to watch again because the sexist tropes make me feel dirty and tainted for days afterwards.
Bjarte, I have recently undertaken a similar research project (though mine is more systematic, since I am hoping to publish) in relationship to stage plays, and a related but slightly different phenomenon: the absence of good roles for middle-aged women. I noticed one time reading a book of plays for women (requirement to have at least 2 women characters, and a woman lead) that most of your tropes held true even there, but also something astonishing. Women appear to disappear the moment they hit mid-30s, and don’t reappear again until they are around 65 at which they can have a token appearance as the voice of the past.
I realized that most people assume middle aged women have nothing interesting to add to anything, that our life is less rich, less interesting, less complex, and less full than other lives. The rich, full lives being lived by middle aged women is unnoticed by most people, who assume a middle-aged woman is simply hugging grandchildren, writing petitions to send Congress, and cleaning house. Most the middle aged women I know are dynamic and interesting people, and it’s a bit harder to turn them into nothing but eye-candy, since people assume middle-aged women are also unattractive. On the rare occasions that a middle-aged woman does show up, she is a maid or a nanny, occasionally a mother (but mothers in plays all seem to either be non-existent, having been traded out for a grandmother, or they are older than you would normally expect the mother of the main character to be). I suspect one reason for this is that, for most people, if a woman is not young she is old. You know, the infamous “wall” the MRAs like to talk about. Women go straight from youth to feeble age, and the rare middle aged women are frumpy, fat, figures of fun.
So, I recently watched a one-season crime-soap from South Korea, called Bad Guys. It’s… intriguing to see how patriarchy manifests itself differently (I try to avoid ‘better’ or ‘worse’–it’s still patriarchy, but with local accents) in another culture’s media.
The series absolutely fails the Bechdel Test–the main cast is four guys and a woman, and the regular supporting cast adds more men than women as well, just increasing the imbalance. And initially, the one woman member of the ensemble doesn’t do much other than stand around and look frustrated at the antics of the menfolk. (Core concept is basically Leverage on steroids–a group of actual killers of different stripes, under the command of a disgraced cop who got busted for abusing a witness, go out to hunt down the worst serial killers in the country. The female character is a young [of course], professional officer largely there to serve as liaison with the more orderly professional police hierarchy, which mainly means she gets dismissed by the four men and patronized by the police brass.) And the brutal cop’s motivation is classic women-in-refrigerators tripe, where his daughter was murdered by a serial killer he’d been chasing.
And of course, it has most of the issues that any crime-focused story tends to–namely, a large number of women being victimized (the exception being an organ-smuggling ring that is actually run by a very ruthless, competent and bold business-woman). But there were a couple points of light, too.
1: The victims are never, ever blamed. There’s no, “If only she weren’t a prostitute/out late at night/dressed that way,” blather. Instead, the blame is fully placed on the criminals themselves.
2: Despite the fact that most of the killers being hunted were targeting women, there was no explicit sexualization of the violence. No lingering views of a half-naked corpse, or detailed descriptions of things the killer did before she died. This alone puts it miles above most American TV of the same category.
3: By the end of the season, the female officer has transformed into being fully the equal of the men–including having her own flaws, taking reprehensible actions but then earning her own redemption (and, interestingly, she’s the only one whose redemption comes at risk, but no final cost–so the opposite of the woman who ‘dies nobly’ to earn her forgiveness). I was actually pleased to see this–it was the sort of thing I’d never expect in a show that started with such a lopsided character design try to address, and do so fairly successfully.
(Of course, the series has other issues–it’s a soap, and it’s of that genre of fiction that believes that criminals deserve to be abused and tormented if that’s what it takes to stop crime. But those aspects are not so gendered.)
iknklast, I revisited my collection again, and…. same story. Hardly any middle-aged women and very few older ones. Come to think of it I can’t remember seeing the names of the actresses who were big stars when I was in my twenties (Uma Thurman, Cameron Diaz, Halle Berry etc.) near the top of the cast list of any new mega-blockbusters for a while…