I would have sworn I brought this up in a recent post, since this kept cropping up throughout 2016. I believe it was when I fisked Lizzy Bourke into Tuesday.
Which is why, back in the dark ages, Mrs. Emma Peel was trained in Savate. By a real maitre, who had trained women for the rings. One, his system used tools, and second, the leg focus helped address the size issues. Yes, they messed that up in the remake.
We all remember Diana Rigg, but there was a very, very bad remake at one time. I met Maitre LaFond, who trained Ms. Rigg, and he had nothing but good things to say about the English lady.
This is what gives me a bit of hope for the John Wick spinoff "Ballerina". In the trailer, the protagonist's instructor says "You will always be weaker. You will always be smaller. You want to win? Improvise. Adapt. Cheat!" Queue the groin-stomp.
My main cast of "The Last Solist" is full of Strong Female Characters.
They got that way through magic, genetic modification, a S(YAY!)T load of training, and even they try to make fights as unfair as humanly possible in THEIR favor.
They know all too well that they can't trade punch for punch-they don't have the mass.
They have to fight fast, fight hard, fight mean, and go for the jugular or they'll get stomped into the ground.
Thank you for schooling me on this. I need to make sure the female superhero characters I write about fight with some variety besides brawling (and most of them are short, with one exception).
You know why it's happening: the culture that has infected both Hollywood and most of the major publishing houses, enforced mostly by those who can't actually create, demands it. They have no conception of the real world, only gender studies and CRT, so they don't even understand that having a woman not only do what the man can do but do it better is jumping the shark. Not saying a woman couldn't deliver similar results with different methods more suited to her strengths, but having them constantly trade blows in full on cage fights with big tough men is just not believable, and audiences are turning away. Movies that have even a whiff of girlboss to them now appear to be dead on arrival, there have been too many IPs absolutely trashed by inserting a female character that shows up the nominally star male in every way; the audiences for action movies are primarily male and we are sick of it.
Yes, but it was different in 2016. I'm still not 100% convinced that Hillary's very nomination led to all that BS. Because yeesh, that all started early in the year.
It's been coming for a long time, you can only see it in retrospect.
I love me some Luc Besson, but La Femme Nikita is an early example, as is, to a lesser extent, The Fifth Element. Toss in The Messenger, Columbiana (which he didn't direct but produced and shared a writing credit on; that movie was originally written for Natalie Portman as a sequel to The Professional but she refused to do it) and Lucy and it's easy to see he's been doing this for a long time, he's just better at it.
Kill Bill? Cool hotness in its day, much better done than current offerings but still part of the pattern, and the plot line is pure third wave feminism.
As much as I enjoyed it (and feel that if there was ever a female actress that can pull it off, it was Gina Carano before she stopped training) Haywire belongs on this list and it was made in 2011. Salt was in 2010 and Tomb Raider was even earlier than that, although it might get a pass as a video game IP but why exactly was the main character of those action games a girl?
These are just the low hanging fruit that I can think of quickly off of the top of my head. And it's not just movies, fiction has run a parallel path over the same time frame.
This shift didn't happen quickly around 2016, it built up slowly but surely over 20+ years leading up to it. I don't mind a little representation and inclusion but it's clear to see the pattern where the straight white guy can no longer be anything but the villain, and the good guys are always PoC or females, with some plucky gay sidekicks thrown in. Hollywood has always had a propaganda element to it but it has recently become very unsubtle, and they have taken over a lot of the publishing world as well. It's just like everything else leftists do, they eventually turn the knob to 11 and are totally ham handed in execution so that you can't help but feel like it is being rubbed in your face and I think we are at the point they are doing that on purpose.
As I recall, wasn't Lucy Lawless around 5'10"? Anyways, you nail a particular problem nicely. Women do not have the reflexes, muscle mass or bone density of men, so in a direct brute confrontation, if they don't have training, they lose. If they have training and the male does, they'll likely lose. However, history is full of female fighters of high quality. At a guess, I'd say you are right. Fighting in ways that take advantage of limitations. Say a reasonably strong female comes at me with a baseball bat. If I have no training, I'm screwed. If I have minimal training I might get out with broken limbs. If I have lots of training she's screwed. If she has lots of training and I don't or have minimal training, I'm screwed. This is a reality.
I've no problem with women fighting well, with using weapons, yeah, shooting people in the head, that works. I have a problem with tiny anorexic things going against military level 180 200 pound brutes. More to the point, Lucy Lawless and Buffy. They worked because in spite of being a bit overpowered, they were seriously flawed. Nowadays there is absolutely no trouble whatsoever for a so called strong female character. No drama. Like Rey in Star Wars. Luke had to painfully learn how to use the force. She expertly weilds it without training and never encounters any trouble, ever.
The men in Predator worked because in spite of size strength and training they got messed with badly. Sigourney Weaver in Alien worked because she had nothing more than a spacesuit and an airlock against the creature. She knew she had neither the strength nor the skills to deal with the thing, so she used her brains and the scene works because she does not know if this is going to work.
While I think the pattern you're drawing attention to may be a product of misunderstood feminism, it may also have roots in various underdog tropes--small, unmuscular women aren't the first people portrayed in unrealistic combat situations.
Consider the character, the Ancient, from "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" (1990s). He is extremely old yet beats thugs in their twenties and thirties on a fairly regular basis. Maybe there's room for a fantasy exception, since he's a Shambala master, and peripheral elements that could be supernatural do appear in the show. But it's not uncommon for exploits of a physically unspectacular person to be explained by a knowledge of martial arts.
We like David and Goliath kind of stories. Of course, David had skill and God on his side. But he is the literary precursor for a number of characters whose exploits are only vaguely explained, if at all. The stereotypic bully is usually bigger but slower--physically and mentally. The David figure in these stories thus usually outsmarts the Goliath figure or perhaps uses speed to outmaneuver him. But not all of these scenarios are realistic. We put up with them because we like to see the underdog win.
Perhaps the prototype for strong females in Western tradition is Athena. She isn't necessarily more muscular than Ares--the ancient writers don't comment on that, one way or another. But she is smarter and more disciplined. Ares engages in senseless slaughter. Athena is much more measured and strategic. Later strong women (like Bradamante in Italian Renaissance epics) may owe something to her.
There may sometimes be a practical reason for seemingly miscasting women. A female body builder might have a better look for the part--but can female body builders necessarily act? Directors will sometimes opt for perceived acting ability (and/or box office draw) over the ideal look for the part. We see that in other situations, so it's not surprising that we see it in combat roles. And in fantasy and science fiction, more than human musculature is involved. No amount of human muscle could enable a guy to life a whole truck Superman style. So while I agree that it's a better experience for the audience if super strong characters have some muscle, their ability is really based on alien characteristics, the favor of the gods, or whatever.
This is making me think of the highly stylized fights in the Precure franchise-it’s both clearly fantasy and animated, in addition to being meant for young girls, and yet it is more believable and interesting than what Hollywood can do.
Anyone who has ever been taught to fight knows - use your greatest strength against their greatest weakness. If your greatest strength is batting your eyes and looking adorable, DO IT; then disable your opponent any way you can, so you can run. Of course, this technique only works once if your opponent has any brains at all...
hence the need for stealth and evasion. Rose can get away with this in WATCHER of the DAMNED only if she never looks back -
There's a related trope where the writers got half a clue, but their cure is about as bad as the disease.
I think it actually started with Legolas. Male, yes, but not exactly the brawny brawler type.
People saw that and thought, "that's perfect! Katniss/Merida etc will be an ARCHER! She can stand back and look cute while shooting people!"
Except that unlike the 30 lb target bow in the prop department, a people-shooting bow, (aka a warbow) takes immense strength to use. Even most men can't shoot one. A real archer would look much more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Errol Flynn. Legolas himself gets a pass because he's a magical being, but what chaos he's wrought. 🤣😂
Unless you’re talking about the absurd draw-weight longbows, I think you’re exaggerating a bit by saying most men can’t draw them.
Men are weaker now than they used to be, sure. An average dude now could probably still pull an 80 lb draw, even if he was sore the next day, but that’s just a conditioning issue.
Thats well within decent recurve bow ranges, even for war bows.
I blame Joss Whedon. It was him gave us the Buffy TV series, and Summer Glau in Firefly. In Buffy it made sense, at first - it was meant to be a joke, "Buffy, the vampire slayer," with "Buffy" not exactly being a tough person's name. But then it took itself seriously.
And a million scrawny young women desperately wanted to believe they could kick arse, too. It's the female equivalent of Jack Nicholson scoring Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. The best lie is the one people want to believe. Obnoxious old men want to believe they can score beautiful young women, and scrawny young women want to believe they're actually tough.
At the other extreme, if you don't know of it then look up the computer game Last of Us. In Part I you have Ellie, a skinny 14yo girl who kicks arse, and nobody had any problem with it. In Part II they introduced Abby, a character whose body model was Colleen Fotsch the crossfitter. And there was a lot of "she's a tranny" backlash.
We've had forty years of movies with big strong steroid-abusing male actors, from Arnold Squashenegger to Chris Hemsworth. So much so that people actually believe Hemsworth just lifted weights and ate lots of chicken and got jacked in three months. Just lifting and nutrition, bro. They're just so used to seeing roided guys they don't even know it when they see it - like the 35yo actresses with botox. "It's totally natural!"
It seems society is not ready for big strong steroid-abusing female actors. Which is a pity, because I think it'd be cool.
Yes, Buffy was meant to be a Chosen One. But here's the thing: Superman has supernatural powers, he's from the planet Krypton. Thor has supernatural powers, he's a god. The males with supernatural powers still, for some reason, need big muscles. The women don't. Why?
Are you asking for an in-universe explanation or a real world explanation? In universe, I’d say that a scrawny Kryptonian would have super powers.
In the real world, we depict superheroes as being overmuscled because being heavily muscled is, on Earth, a sign of masculine strength. Overmuscled females are generally less desirable.
In other words, it has nothing to do with the “reality” that strength requires muscle - even superstrength. It’s about what makes the audience want to rub one out.
That’s why 100lb girls can smack around 200lb guys. Because the male audience thinks the 100lb girl is hawt, and the female audience like to think that if their 180lb selves were 100lb, they too could kick arse.
It’s a fantasy. A rather sad and pathetic one, but a fantasy nonetheless.
Yes. Superhero movies are mythic fantasies. They don’t actually make sense if you think about them for any sustained period of time. Male superheroes are overmuscled because that’s the myth. Female superheroes are not, because it’s not the myth.
And we have gendered notions of what is physically attractive.
In the Republic, Plato quotes Socrates as saying women are just like men, they just aren’t very good at it. Back in the day, that was considered misogynistic, but it appears Plato was a very early 4th wave feminist.
Sane people recognize that women have a different strength than men. Good examples of strong feminine women in recent fiction are Anna in Frozen, and Kaye in The Blind.
Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) is 5'8". She looks short because the rest of the cast is really tall.
Look at the current iteration of Lara Croft in cartoons-- who looks like a man. Or She-Hulk after the mastectomy, or "Abby" from The Last of Us 2.
I invite your attention to:
https://reactormag.com/admirals-and-amazons-women-in-military-science-fiction/
I would have sworn I brought this up in a recent post, since this kept cropping up throughout 2016. I believe it was when I fisked Lizzy Bourke into Tuesday.
related: https://mythcreants.com/blog/eight-absurdities-we-force-on-female-characters/#comment-384550
Which is why, back in the dark ages, Mrs. Emma Peel was trained in Savate. By a real maitre, who had trained women for the rings. One, his system used tools, and second, the leg focus helped address the size issues. Yes, they messed that up in the remake.
Remake? I only remember Diana Rigg.
We all remember Diana Rigg, but there was a very, very bad remake at one time. I met Maitre LaFond, who trained Ms. Rigg, and he had nothing but good things to say about the English lady.
This is what gives me a bit of hope for the John Wick spinoff "Ballerina". In the trailer, the protagonist's instructor says "You will always be weaker. You will always be smaller. You want to win? Improvise. Adapt. Cheat!" Queue the groin-stomp.
That was also encouraging to me.
Though I must admit, I'm so cautious about modern films, I haven't even opened John Wick 4 yet
Works in real life too. Always cheat if you’re the weaker opponent 🤣
My main cast of "The Last Solist" is full of Strong Female Characters.
They got that way through magic, genetic modification, a S(YAY!)T load of training, and even they try to make fights as unfair as humanly possible in THEIR favor.
They know all too well that they can't trade punch for punch-they don't have the mass.
They have to fight fast, fight hard, fight mean, and go for the jugular or they'll get stomped into the ground.
Thank you for schooling me on this. I need to make sure the female superhero characters I write about fight with some variety besides brawling (and most of them are short, with one exception).
Weapons and tactics matter!
You know why it's happening: the culture that has infected both Hollywood and most of the major publishing houses, enforced mostly by those who can't actually create, demands it. They have no conception of the real world, only gender studies and CRT, so they don't even understand that having a woman not only do what the man can do but do it better is jumping the shark. Not saying a woman couldn't deliver similar results with different methods more suited to her strengths, but having them constantly trade blows in full on cage fights with big tough men is just not believable, and audiences are turning away. Movies that have even a whiff of girlboss to them now appear to be dead on arrival, there have been too many IPs absolutely trashed by inserting a female character that shows up the nominally star male in every way; the audiences for action movies are primarily male and we are sick of it.
Yes, but it was different in 2016. I'm still not 100% convinced that Hillary's very nomination led to all that BS. Because yeesh, that all started early in the year.
It's been coming for a long time, you can only see it in retrospect.
I love me some Luc Besson, but La Femme Nikita is an early example, as is, to a lesser extent, The Fifth Element. Toss in The Messenger, Columbiana (which he didn't direct but produced and shared a writing credit on; that movie was originally written for Natalie Portman as a sequel to The Professional but she refused to do it) and Lucy and it's easy to see he's been doing this for a long time, he's just better at it.
Kill Bill? Cool hotness in its day, much better done than current offerings but still part of the pattern, and the plot line is pure third wave feminism.
As much as I enjoyed it (and feel that if there was ever a female actress that can pull it off, it was Gina Carano before she stopped training) Haywire belongs on this list and it was made in 2011. Salt was in 2010 and Tomb Raider was even earlier than that, although it might get a pass as a video game IP but why exactly was the main character of those action games a girl?
These are just the low hanging fruit that I can think of quickly off of the top of my head. And it's not just movies, fiction has run a parallel path over the same time frame.
This shift didn't happen quickly around 2016, it built up slowly but surely over 20+ years leading up to it. I don't mind a little representation and inclusion but it's clear to see the pattern where the straight white guy can no longer be anything but the villain, and the good guys are always PoC or females, with some plucky gay sidekicks thrown in. Hollywood has always had a propaganda element to it but it has recently become very unsubtle, and they have taken over a lot of the publishing world as well. It's just like everything else leftists do, they eventually turn the knob to 11 and are totally ham handed in execution so that you can't help but feel like it is being rubbed in your face and I think we are at the point they are doing that on purpose.
As I recall, in Salt, Jolie uses a lot of kicks and movement to counteract her strength disadvantages. She’s not brawling toe-to-toe John Wayne style.
As I recall, wasn't Lucy Lawless around 5'10"? Anyways, you nail a particular problem nicely. Women do not have the reflexes, muscle mass or bone density of men, so in a direct brute confrontation, if they don't have training, they lose. If they have training and the male does, they'll likely lose. However, history is full of female fighters of high quality. At a guess, I'd say you are right. Fighting in ways that take advantage of limitations. Say a reasonably strong female comes at me with a baseball bat. If I have no training, I'm screwed. If I have minimal training I might get out with broken limbs. If I have lots of training she's screwed. If she has lots of training and I don't or have minimal training, I'm screwed. This is a reality.
I've no problem with women fighting well, with using weapons, yeah, shooting people in the head, that works. I have a problem with tiny anorexic things going against military level 180 200 pound brutes. More to the point, Lucy Lawless and Buffy. They worked because in spite of being a bit overpowered, they were seriously flawed. Nowadays there is absolutely no trouble whatsoever for a so called strong female character. No drama. Like Rey in Star Wars. Luke had to painfully learn how to use the force. She expertly weilds it without training and never encounters any trouble, ever.
The men in Predator worked because in spite of size strength and training they got messed with badly. Sigourney Weaver in Alien worked because she had nothing more than a spacesuit and an airlock against the creature. She knew she had neither the strength nor the skills to deal with the thing, so she used her brains and the scene works because she does not know if this is going to work.
That's how you write a movie.
Yes, exactly.
Real world example, my ex wife, 6' tall. 155 lbs. She Lifted weights, trained, played High school varsity football, and track and wrestling.
I am 6'5", 220 lbs and trained.
She was a physical hand full yes. Against most men, her size or smaller, untrained, she could dominate.
I could still dominate due to size, reach, training.
Now with a long sword ( Hema) she is a force to be reckoned with.
Our Daughters as well.( Both are 6')
These are NOT typical women.
Size, strength and training/tactics are critical.
I should also iterate.
All Three are distinctly feminine.
Interesting post!
While I think the pattern you're drawing attention to may be a product of misunderstood feminism, it may also have roots in various underdog tropes--small, unmuscular women aren't the first people portrayed in unrealistic combat situations.
Consider the character, the Ancient, from "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" (1990s). He is extremely old yet beats thugs in their twenties and thirties on a fairly regular basis. Maybe there's room for a fantasy exception, since he's a Shambala master, and peripheral elements that could be supernatural do appear in the show. But it's not uncommon for exploits of a physically unspectacular person to be explained by a knowledge of martial arts.
We like David and Goliath kind of stories. Of course, David had skill and God on his side. But he is the literary precursor for a number of characters whose exploits are only vaguely explained, if at all. The stereotypic bully is usually bigger but slower--physically and mentally. The David figure in these stories thus usually outsmarts the Goliath figure or perhaps uses speed to outmaneuver him. But not all of these scenarios are realistic. We put up with them because we like to see the underdog win.
Perhaps the prototype for strong females in Western tradition is Athena. She isn't necessarily more muscular than Ares--the ancient writers don't comment on that, one way or another. But she is smarter and more disciplined. Ares engages in senseless slaughter. Athena is much more measured and strategic. Later strong women (like Bradamante in Italian Renaissance epics) may owe something to her.
There may sometimes be a practical reason for seemingly miscasting women. A female body builder might have a better look for the part--but can female body builders necessarily act? Directors will sometimes opt for perceived acting ability (and/or box office draw) over the ideal look for the part. We see that in other situations, so it's not surprising that we see it in combat roles. And in fantasy and science fiction, more than human musculature is involved. No amount of human muscle could enable a guy to life a whole truck Superman style. So while I agree that it's a better experience for the audience if super strong characters have some muscle, their ability is really based on alien characteristics, the favor of the gods, or whatever.
This is making me think of the highly stylized fights in the Precure franchise-it’s both clearly fantasy and animated, in addition to being meant for young girls, and yet it is more believable and interesting than what Hollywood can do.
Anyone who has ever been taught to fight knows - use your greatest strength against their greatest weakness. If your greatest strength is batting your eyes and looking adorable, DO IT; then disable your opponent any way you can, so you can run. Of course, this technique only works once if your opponent has any brains at all...
hence the need for stealth and evasion. Rose can get away with this in WATCHER of the DAMNED only if she never looks back -
and that was her mistake.
There's a related trope where the writers got half a clue, but their cure is about as bad as the disease.
I think it actually started with Legolas. Male, yes, but not exactly the brawny brawler type.
People saw that and thought, "that's perfect! Katniss/Merida etc will be an ARCHER! She can stand back and look cute while shooting people!"
Except that unlike the 30 lb target bow in the prop department, a people-shooting bow, (aka a warbow) takes immense strength to use. Even most men can't shoot one. A real archer would look much more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Errol Flynn. Legolas himself gets a pass because he's a magical being, but what chaos he's wrought. 🤣😂
Recurve and compound bows don't have that issue. Katniss used a recurve bow.
Unless you’re talking about the absurd draw-weight longbows, I think you’re exaggerating a bit by saying most men can’t draw them.
Men are weaker now than they used to be, sure. An average dude now could probably still pull an 80 lb draw, even if he was sore the next day, but that’s just a conditioning issue.
Thats well within decent recurve bow ranges, even for war bows.
We HAD Gina Carano until some absolute FAGGOT and purple-haired witches at Disney decided to fire her. 😠
I blame Joss Whedon. It was him gave us the Buffy TV series, and Summer Glau in Firefly. In Buffy it made sense, at first - it was meant to be a joke, "Buffy, the vampire slayer," with "Buffy" not exactly being a tough person's name. But then it took itself seriously.
And a million scrawny young women desperately wanted to believe they could kick arse, too. It's the female equivalent of Jack Nicholson scoring Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. The best lie is the one people want to believe. Obnoxious old men want to believe they can score beautiful young women, and scrawny young women want to believe they're actually tough.
At the other extreme, if you don't know of it then look up the computer game Last of Us. In Part I you have Ellie, a skinny 14yo girl who kicks arse, and nobody had any problem with it. In Part II they introduced Abby, a character whose body model was Colleen Fotsch the crossfitter. And there was a lot of "she's a tranny" backlash.
We've had forty years of movies with big strong steroid-abusing male actors, from Arnold Squashenegger to Chris Hemsworth. So much so that people actually believe Hemsworth just lifted weights and ate lots of chicken and got jacked in three months. Just lifting and nutrition, bro. They're just so used to seeing roided guys they don't even know it when they see it - like the 35yo actresses with botox. "It's totally natural!"
It seems society is not ready for big strong steroid-abusing female actors. Which is a pity, because I think it'd be cool.
Wasn’t Buffy supposed to have some magical or supernatural powers? At least that was the impression I got.
As to Chris Hemsworth, I thought he took years to get that big, not months like some Marvel actors.
Yes, Buffy was meant to be a Chosen One. But here's the thing: Superman has supernatural powers, he's from the planet Krypton. Thor has supernatural powers, he's a god. The males with supernatural powers still, for some reason, need big muscles. The women don't. Why?
Are you asking for an in-universe explanation or a real world explanation? In universe, I’d say that a scrawny Kryptonian would have super powers.
In the real world, we depict superheroes as being overmuscled because being heavily muscled is, on Earth, a sign of masculine strength. Overmuscled females are generally less desirable.
In other words, it has nothing to do with the “reality” that strength requires muscle - even superstrength. It’s about what makes the audience want to rub one out.
That’s why 100lb girls can smack around 200lb guys. Because the male audience thinks the 100lb girl is hawt, and the female audience like to think that if their 180lb selves were 100lb, they too could kick arse.
It’s a fantasy. A rather sad and pathetic one, but a fantasy nonetheless.
Yes. Superhero movies are mythic fantasies. They don’t actually make sense if you think about them for any sustained period of time. Male superheroes are overmuscled because that’s the myth. Female superheroes are not, because it’s not the myth.
And we have gendered notions of what is physically attractive.
In the Republic, Plato quotes Socrates as saying women are just like men, they just aren’t very good at it. Back in the day, that was considered misogynistic, but it appears Plato was a very early 4th wave feminist.
Sane people recognize that women have a different strength than men. Good examples of strong feminine women in recent fiction are Anna in Frozen, and Kaye in The Blind.