Why...

I love movies. I love watching movies, talking about them, and studying them, but I'm sick of leaving a theater annoyed. If I'm going to spend my hard earned (and limited) money supply going to/renting a movie I feel that it's only fair that I'm represented.

Some of the most 'captivating' films are impossible for me to enjoy because the female characters are either peripheral or absolutely ridiculous. When I watch a film I want to be swept up and taken into a different world, I don't want constant and blatant reminders that the film I'm watching was not made for me.

This blog is an attempt to help others in the same boat and also a way for me to put my frustration into a productive place... reviews.

Some misconceptions about pro-feminist films:

1. Every female character needs to be a feminist
2. Female characters need to be idealized versions of women

The thing that bugs me the most about most movies is the difference in representation between male and female characters. The male hero or anti-hero is usually the 'everyman'. The Everyman is a character that all males can relate to; he is an ordinary character who reacts realistically to the events that happen around him.
The female (usually there is only one) character in most movies is an idealized version of women who's sole purpose is usually the everyman's love interest.

So we generally get the perfect, beautiful, wise and loving woman (The Madonna) or the purely evil bitch who often uses sex to manipulate (The Whore). Like all woman out there I can't relate to one or the other. The problem is generally the fact that the 'good' female character is so idealized and so perfect and the 'evil' character so evil and manipulative that no woman can relate to either of them in any real way.

The main female character doesn't need to be anything other than a regular girl... someone that every woman can relate to.

If you aren't going to have a representation of women that is at all realistic, that's perfectly fine, just don't put women in your films. Look at Snatch or Reservoir dogs; these are great movies with no women in them that I love to watch. I don't want to be represented just for representation sake... As they say: Do it right or don't do it at all.

Here's a great site with this information for a lot of films based on the Bechdel Test which became popularized through Alison Bechdel's 1985 comic strip called The Rule in the Comic "Dykes to Watch Out for"

That test is that a story must:
1. have more than one female character
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

http://bechdel.nullium.net/

You would be shocked at how rarely this happens, or maybe you wouldn't...