A Very Brief View of Feminism in the Media

I read an interesting article today titled Reasons why I'm not supporting Disney's Frozen. It discussed the change of the original story (The Snow Queen) that contained a cast of interesting and powerful women to the plot of Frozen - women helped by men. Being helped by people in general doesn't make one less of a person, but why bring in the opposite sex to a story when they weren't needed? Refreshingly, the woman saves the man in the original, and I think that sends a great message to children - women can be powerful, and men can ask for help, unlike McCoy's Man Crisps. However, I have to admit, I haven't yet seen Frozen, and thus can only for the moment go on other people's opinions. Frozen: Disney's First Foray into Feminism gives a different view, stating that in fact the film had a thumbs up for feminism. I certainly liked Brave, and thought the main character was innovative - a powerful young girl with a rotund face, big ginger, curly hair and a non-American accent. So I will have to reserve my own comments.

The article however did make me think of other pieces of items I have picked out from my travels of surfing the internet, such as Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood. I watched it a while ago, but the main points I took away from it was the expectations of the male protagonists - a woman as a prize, and the Bechdel test:

1. Does the film have at least two women in it?
2. Do the women talk to each other?
3. Do they talk to each other about anything besides a man?

10 Famous Films that Surprisingly Fail The Bechdel Test details some interesting results: Avatar, Star Wars (Of Course), LOTR. Counter arguing however, Bechdel test is damaging to the way we think about film does make a fair point that the Bechdel test can be useless. Collin argues that Gravity fails the test but contains a fascinating female character, while The Counsellor passes "...even though its two named women fall boringly into the usual virgin/whore dichotomy" (Collin 2013). Using Collin's example, analysing LOTR from my own opinion, I think the females are as strong as their male counterparts, even though they are far and few between. As for Avatar, I think it more fails the white-American-male-saves-entirely-different-people test aka white-washing, seen in other films like The Last Samurai and The Help (Although I did like all these films even though I shook my head at them), which I came across briefly in Attempting the Impossible, than failing the feminism test. But I still think Stokes has a valid point.

This brings me to cleaning product adverts, a constant stream of women cleaning in adverts, looking extremely happy. Sure, they can't market unhappy people even though housework is not fun, but why not show men cleaning too, instead of the husband coming in after the chores are done. It is true that many cultures have a division of labour, but this is an arbitrary divide and can differ between cultures e.g. I remember reading once that men's toilets in Sweden have male baby changing units, on the other hand, other societies may be egalitarian. The point being that the media consistently show this women cleaning scene, when it will be a great day when the adverts break the mould. I'm not saying no women cleaning or no man filled movies (although I would like to see a large female adventure cast in a film one day, saving the world, dressed for the weather) but I do want to see equality. Which takes me back to Frozen. If the film is based on The Snow Queen, then why take out such a large female cast? Like I said, I can't comment on this film, but it reminds me of Stokes, saying how he liked The Wizard of Oz, where the majority of the cast were female. Now look at the film Oz the Great and Powerful, a film about an unneeded protagonist who used a lot of women and turned one of them to the dark side, finally choosing Glinda, who for some reason wanted Oz who had no power to save the land, who seemed herself to have little power until she reveals herself at the end.

There are some great films out there (Blade being a favourite of mine) but lets stop a moment, and try to get the big screen some new storylines.

[As a sidepoint, I remember having a discussion with my friend (View her blog here) about the new Sherlock series and the American version - Elementary.  She said she'd like to write a screenplay where all the male characters of Sherlock became female and vice versa. I thought this was a superb idea and I agreed that if Elementary had tried that instead of the male-female, will-they-won't-they plot I expect of the programme, I'd probably watch it. I asked her, "Why not make Sherlock female?", and with sarcasm in her voice, she replied "Because they couldn't do that". She brought up another valid point also, that due to Watson being female, Sherlock could no longer order Watson about, because then it would be regarded as sexist. For now, I think I'll stick to the BBC Sherlock.]

[Sidepoint 2: I wanted to write more about adverts but I was running out of time. I do want to add this point though. Period adverts. That's right. Period adverts selling sanitary towels and tampons. Most of the time, the advert consists of a clean environment and women all happy again. Periods are not joyous. One particular advert comes to mind - the Always Infinity advert. I have no idea why these women are studying sanitary towels in this futuristic world, touching cotton wool, wearing all white. They even use blue liquid to show absorbency, when that will only apply to the Queen's long forgotten time of the month. A period is not clean, it's messy, but half the population goes through it, so let's not make it flowery, let's make it funny. Take a moment to read The Tampocalypse,  a brilliant rendition of the common period advert, where women fight zombies with tampons, covered in blood, and chant; "For the fighting spirit". Because it's a damn painful experience, but we battle on.]