I’ve been reading some angry fan comments about Bryce Howard’s character in “Jurassic World.” How incredibly sexist her portrayal is, mostly because she has a character arc rather than starting out as Ellen Ripley from the beginning. Fans seem outraged that she begins as a corporate shill but ends up so worried about her nephews and thus somehow has acquired maternal instincts. Even though Ripley effectively has something of that same arc, being willing to risk her life by the end for a little girl who ends up embracing her and calling her “mommy.”
And as I thought about Ripley, it made me wonder about “Aliens” and, more specifically, the character of Burke.
And I wondered, if Burke had been a female–with NO change in dialogue or characterization other than gender–would any fans have decried that as sexist? Would they have said that the only reason she was so nasty was because the writer felt the need to balance out the strong female character of Ripley with a total villain?
Thoughts?
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I suspect not, since I don’t recall that affecting Theron in Prometheus, who was pretty much Burke 2.0 in that.
I thought of that. The difference is that there was a LOT to complain about in “Prometheus.” Sexism charges seem to pop up when the rest of the film is solid. Witness “Age of Ultron” and “Jurassic World.” Almost as if people must find something to complain about.
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I haven’t seen Jurassic World, and it’s been years since I saw Aliens, but there tends to be a rule of thumb with Hollywood blockbusters: Only one woman can appear in a major role.
Burke was one of a number of men in Aliens, so it was obvious that his behavior didn’t represent all men. And if Black Widow or Bryce Dallas Howard’s character had been one of a large group of women, then we could contrast her with the other female characters in that movie. But when she’s the Smurfette in the film, any clichés or stereotypes tend to call attention to themselves.
I disagree that Ripley has the same arc, since I don’t think she is ever a corporate shill. Yes, she agrees to go to the planet at the behest of Weyland-Yutani, but she is motivated not out of pay or bonuses, but out of pure concern at what may be happening on that world, especially when she hears that contact has been lost with the colony. Plus, Ripley from the get-go is heartbroken to realise her daughter’s entire life passed her by while she was in cold sleep, so (entirely understandably) is immediately drawn to Newt and to becoming the child’s surrogate mother, particularly given the shared trauma both characters have been through.
I think Jurassic World made plenty of dumb plot decisions. To quickly sum up my top 3: the movie’s entire “bigger than a T Rex” USP had already been done with the Spinosaurus in JRIII, why exactly did Chris Pratt, the so-called “Alpha Raptor”, have to run for his life out of the raptor cage at the beginning after getting the stricken worker to safety, and why on Earth wasn’t more made of the movie’s climactic deus ex dino T Rex being THE T Rex from JR1? If I hadn’t read some pre-movie promotional materials I would have had no idea it was the same dino, unless I missed something.
But…the whole accusations of sexism thing did kinda strike a chord with me. I think Tevorrow was foolish if he caved into Howard’s rather dubious claim that her character viewed her heels as “a shield” and so it would somehow betray the essence of her character if she discarded them. It was dumb, pure and simple, but it wasn’t the main offender: that came after Howard’s character saved Pratt’s fairly heroically in full view of her two nephews and yet they still all but drooled over his manliness. In “Aliens” terms it would be the equivalent of Newt barrelling through Ripley to get to Hicks, despite having just watched Ripley tear the Aliens a new one.
I think all the movie needed was a moment for Howard’s character – maybe in the Raptor jeep escape scene – to open the window to her nephews and give them what for. “That’s IT! I have saved your áššëš already! So if I hear one more word about Star-Lord I’m gonna see if those Raptors want a side order of Y chromosones! Now I love you both, but do exactly what I say and SHUT UP!”
Boom. Audience applauds – I know I would have!
Unfortunately, any more, the complainers want a “strong character” to be that strong and virtuous character, from the beginning through the end, with no character arc or no suggestion that the Strength Of Character came from anywhere. And not one iota of vulnerability (read “weakness”) to get in the way of the keister-kicking strongness.
These are usually the same people who rage about how a person “cannot write,” “cannot act,” or “cannot direct” without ever taking a class, standing on a stage (or in front of a camera), picking up a script, or writing anything longer than a snarky email or Facebook/Twitter post.
People do make the sort of complaint you talk about in your first paragraph, but lately I’ve seen a lot of people–most of them feminists–complain that the Strong Female Character has turned into a type rather than a believable human being. Here are two of the many essays on the topic:
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters
http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/
Your second paragraph is kind of an Internet cliché: “Let’s see you write a movie as good as Piranha 3D!” There are certain aspects of filmmaking that are difficult to understand if you haven’t worked on a movie. But–and I’m hardly the first person to say this–you don’t have to be a carpenter to know that the walls of a house are crooked. And you don’t have to be part of the movie industry to recognize that Keanu Reeves is a limited actor or that the dialogue in the Star Wars films is a little stilted.
If you find that to be a cliche, so be it;ultimately, I’d rather be the person who can find something to like in everything than the all-too-prevalent person who hates everything. People like that claim to know when the walls are crooked, but the truth is more that they are looking so hard for crooked walls that crooked walls are all they see.
This does not prove that they recognize the metaphoric crooked walls … just that they will find crooked walls everywhere they look. Which is its own Internet cliche.
Mostly my thoughts are that i really don’t care what people look for to pick nits over.
You could look at the woman during Ripley’s debriefing, the one who declares LV-426 a rock, as Burke’s female counterpart.
There are enough strong female characters in Aliens, but not one who acts directly as a foil to Ripley except the queen. Had Burke been a woman, though? People then might have had something to say. What makes me shake my head is the second part of your question–“has something of that same arc.” I know a lot of people who don’t want to see characters with ANY arc.
I don’t think JP was necessarily sexist at all. It doesn’t take more than 30 seconds of research to find out how many idiotic women line up for hours to buy the latest in physically dangerous needle-like high heels that can NEVER be comfortable. That some dipsy doodle working corporate in Costa Rica is wearing high heels did not surprise me at all, and if you’re in a crisis, you don’t stop to say “Oh wait! I’ll get my Asics from my locker!”. And yes, if you’re that caught up in your job and your shoes, you are probably not the most instinctive of mothers. There’s a reason why the character had not found a partner and popped out puppies. Not every woman is a born mother – any headline will prove that, especially Florida.
Ripley, on the other hand, was not someone who fell in that category. Strong women are never portrayed as ever being attuned to fashion or feminine traits (can you imagine Brienne of Tarth in heels and a gown, greeting courtiers?). That is where the sexism lies, but it’s not inherent in just JP or Alien – it’s all of them. Women cannot be seen in media as both capable AND feminine; they must be one or the other or it is felt that no one will believe it, ignoring the millions of women who do manage to do both in the same day.
Of any of them, Black Widow is probably the one that comes closest to that ideal – kicks ášš, then puts her heels on, but they were very quick to defeminize her/sterilize her in the last film. Don’t worry guys, she’s hot and can kick your ***, but we won’t let her breed more of her. I know the high-fashion high-heel stereotype woman does exist; I know the combat-boot wearing ****kicker exists as well. What we need to see more is the “normal” every day female that can do both. It works on TV (thinking Sons of Anarchy here), but not in the movies.
It’s funny, but I’ve noticed that the trend seems to be that women, when portrayed as heroes, are frquently not allowed to be anything other than unalloyed, enthusiastic heroes, while with men it’s frequently the opposite; men have to be driven or tortured or otherwise forced into heroics, like women are not allowed to be reluctant heroes, and men are only allowed to be reluctant heroes. This isn’t always the case, obviously, and it hasn’t always been like that, but I find the frequency noteworthy. Can you imagine, all other things being equal, if the traditional Lee-Ditko/Romita Spider-man was a woman? With all the inner-dialogue and waffling? How quickly would such a portrayal get labelled sexist?
Since James Cameron seems to be pretty into strong woman characters (Sarah Conner, Ripley, Rose Dawson) I think he would have found a way to make Burke work as a woman. Having said that, I think he would have been criticized more for having a woman throw all the others under a bus so that she could escape from the aliens, even with the counterarguement of Ripley staring them in the face.
Oddly enough, I feel that the backstory of the Black Widow is more empowering. Here is a woman who overcame years of abuse in the Red Room, culminating in the final “rape” when men robbed her of her god given reproductive capability, to become a woman who can be feminine enough to matchmake for her friend in the middle of a combat mission. Seriously, if the character was written as a man, would they say he was feminine or gay? Or just looking to get his bud some booty?
BDH character seemed OK to me… I didn’t see her as a “weak female” but more of a urbanized businesswoman who was thrown out of her comfort zone (particularly because of her own mistakes) into a life threatening situation. I didn’t see her as “maternal” in her looking out for her nephews, more as “crap, my sister’s going to kill me, these kids are my responsibility”. I didn’t walk away with the feeling that she was going to find a guy and pop out some puppies, I more felt that she and Chris Pratt had nothing else in common and this relationship was going to be short.
I’m sure there would have been, but it might not have been as noticeable. Even if the number of screamers may be no greater, the volume of the screamers is turned up thanks to the net and social media.