Gender Politics On and Off the Screen

The interplay between men and women has been the subject and catalyst for comedy and dramatic effect since the dawn of time. The Greeks used it in theatre, history is dotted with it, opera sang about it (usually very high pitched and mostly in Italian), and film has polished it for more than a century. I'll be the first to admit that I am a big patron of it - romance would not exist the way it does today without it, especially not the genre of the rom-com or the bittersweet love story; but that doesn't make it always ok. 

This post is going to probably be a little insufferable to begin with, because what I mostly want to talk about is the negative side to gender politics and how it comes across on screen sometimes. The major issues I mean are connotations, defamation, stereotyping and rape - which all of course happen off-screen as well. Obviously there are also a lot of pros too, but I'll get to those later. 

Connotations are the things that we align with other things; images, ideas or beliefs that we associate with something else and what it means. For example, negative connotations of priests might be rigidity in relation to things like sex, homosexuality and abortion - not that it's entirely true, just that portrayals can lead to people later having those associations. Negative connotations of female behaviour is one thing that bothers me more than it should on screen. Things like being hopelessly whiny about love and romance, being openly sexually adventurous (which I reiterate are NOT bad things) that can often get a little twisted somewhere between being portrayed on the screen and people interpreting them. 

The problem with this is then that both men and women get the wrong idea about each other and how they're supposed to interact with each other, and we then lead into things like stereotyping. Odds are every movie you've ever seen contains at least one stereotype - they're everywhere. They're often comedic, sometimes inappropriate and occasionally offensive, but what makes stereotypes either positive, neutral or negative is the connotations that they have. 

Take Carrie Bradshaw, for example. Most western women probably know who she is and are familiar with what she's like; she's needy, sexually adventurous, an aspiring almost bohemian fashionista of a journalist living in a modern day New York City. Whilst some aspects are pretty specific, the stereotype of a young professional woman looking for love in the big city isn't a new one even if the show was a frontier in sexcapades on network television. And although Carrie isn't really a bad person, you shouldn't ever want to aspire to be her - she may be a new prototype in sexually open women, with some feminist qualities, but if you really pay attention to a lot of what she does she is truly a negative stereotype. All Carrie does is whine about love and being desperate to find it, and eventually does, but not before seasons of misadventure and inappropriate behaviour like stalking, snooping, screaming and cheating have all been accomplished. Don't get me wrong - the show does raise a lot interesting topics, can be educational and does right by bringing some issues surrounding sex to the public forum, but the stronger, more pro-feminist characters like Miranda and Samantha do not carry on in the manner that Carrie does. It's just a frustrating contradiction to have a character insist on being happy and single, whilst spending considerable time and effort in the active pursuit of a man. That is how negative stereotypes about women not being able to function as well as men are perpetrated, when women are so often characterised as needing completion in the form of a man instead of functioning on all cylinders regardless. 

Cinderella, too, is a much older and far more widespread and translatable example of this negative female stereotyping. Maybe even a perfect example - and in so many ways. She is a young, beautiful woman who cooks, cleans, makes house and dreams of being somewhere else only to be rescued by a handsome prince. Since the first accounts of the fairytale - long before the brothers Grimm showed up - Cinderella was always this domicile of an 'ideal woman' which when you consider the time period and the way that men liked their women best kind of makes sense, even if feminists clench their teeth about it now. By today's standards we, women particularly, tend to think that this isn't what we want to be, what we want our daughters to be, or what we want men to expect of us. We make a big deal now about teaching younger generations to get out there and be successful, to break away from the old woman in the kitchen ideal and to be man's equal. We teach each other that times have changed, that women have the right and the opportunity now (well, at least in the western world), and that we are very staunchly NOT Cinderellas. 

You can even see the change over the years in the characterisation of Disney Princesses from Snow White to Merida, and now Anna and Elsa. Tiana in particular teaches the value of working hard to make your own dreams come true, not by sitting around and just waiting for them (or a prince) to come along and save you. 

And to the men out there? Telling us to make you a sandwich or to iron something was funny in the 1980's, and sometimes it still is when it's very obviously supposed to be a satire - but god help the few of you that ever say it for real. We don't like it and it's particularly defamatory to us, not to mention belittling and stereotyping. And defamation can be a pretty serious thing, especially when used as a power play to make others seem weaker or more vulnerable. 

An example can be seen in the film Wolf Creek, in which two young women and a young man enter the bar in which a group of very seedy middle-aged men are hanging out in and make some lascivious jokes at the expense of the women. Whilst you remember watching it that it's just a movie and those guys probably aren't actually massive dicks in real life, the bar room heckling scene is a pretty common one especially in the place in which the film is set in Australia. And there isn't anything about what the men actually say that is ok - quite the contrary. 

Unlike Cinderella, this isn't something you can even blame on the times so much as just a regionalisation of people thinking they are above change. The film is set in 1999, not long ago and not long enough ago that women had no rights or were treated second rate, but you can't just blame the remote locals either for catalysing some men just acting like complete buffoons (or women, it's less common or open, but it happens). But it is something in particular that bothers me - on and off the screen because in neither forum is it ok. And trust me - two years in the mines is a great place to pick up on how much you really don't want to hear that kind of talk. 

But the thing that bothers me the absolute most about the gender relationships between men and women is the subject of rape. I can deal with watching gory movies, slasher flicks, war films, thrillers, ghosts, nitty gritty hard life stuff and tragedies so long as they don't contain two elements: animal cruelty or rape. The second an animal is killed purposefully on screen or a character (usually female but not always) is raped, I see red. Rape is a very serious issue in society, and I think that too many people take it lightly. Having been raped is a very serious thing and I have heard people mention it flippantly before, like it was cool. And then there's the rape jokes - never have rape jokes been ok, so why do people make them? Saying something to someone like 'you're going to get raped' isn't funny and this bizarre and disconcerting desensitisation to it as an issue is causing more issues in the long run for society, which is why it probably needs to be addressed in a better way both on and off the screen. 

One way that I do, vigilante heart that I am, think rape is well tackled is in a film called the Last House On the Left. Now, I had a hell of a lot of trouble getting through this film because it contained a very graphic rape scene, which always bother me and keep me up at night, but the main plot of the film revolved around the parents of a rape victim taking bloody revenge on their daughter's attacker. It definitely brings out the primal side of me, but I think that that is fair justice and I'll tell you why: a very big part of rape is power play. The nature of equality between men and women is interwoven with the shifting patterns of power play - if someone is not given power, they are not treated as equal and the act of rape tears power from the victim. Historically, rape would be justified by invading forces reaffirming their superiority; men over women, white over black, Viking over Saxon, Roman over Sabine - the list goes on. Not to say that rape has ever been ok, just like slavery, but those responsible would find a way to justify their actions based on the level of power the opposition holds in a situation. Power is everything to some, and necessary to most. It's also why we have so many issues now with being purposefully politically correct, in order to return power to minorities. To rape, to forcibly take power from another person, is akin to committing an unforgivable curse - and so it is unforgivable! And that's even before we get into the physical damage the act can cause both men and women. 

When I see a rape scene or similar I always imagine a masked avenger, a very strong kind of assassin woman (like the main character of TIME, the details of which will be at the bottom of the page amongst those for all my works), slipping in to quietly execute the rapist. Also when I watch things about Hitler, like the Book Thief. I have a very active imagination. 

I know that I've spoken predominately about women, but I admit that's my field of knowledge more so than men are - I admit I don't know anywhere near as much about men as I do about women, so I'm just writing about what I do know and what I think. By no means do I think that women deserve more rights or are portrayed worse on screen then men because negative connotations and stereotyping occur in both sexes. It's probably a great deal to do with why we just can't seem to understand each other no matter how hard we try, and why we always seem to be going around with the wrong impression of each other. 

Now, I know that my opinions are just that - my own - and no one has to agree with everything that I've said because it is after all a bit of a rant. But I am interested in hearing some alternatives if you have them, or even just other points that I haven't made. I only mention it because I am bothered right now and I wrote about it to get it off my chest. I hope I didn't offend anyone, and I know there is a lot more I did leave out but because I wanted to focus on a few major issues which I did. But again, I am more than interested to hear alternative opinions if anyone wants to share them. 

Ok, rant over for now. 

Sam xox