6 Bizarre Assumptions Movies Make About Strong Women

RDJ134 27 juli 2016 om 19:30 uur

Als je in een TV serie of een film een sterk vrouwelijk karakter voorbij ziet komen, dan voldoet deze ook vaak aan een hoop stereo type clichés. Waarbij je moet denken aan Tomboy imago, een verkrachting of blinde liefde voor een mannelijke karakter. Yep, Hollywood en de entertainment industrie zijn zo low gezonken, dus vonden ze het bij Cracked.com tijd om dit artikel te schrijven en daar van kan je hier onder alvast een stukje lezen.


#6. A History Of Traumatic Sexual Assault Seems To Be A Requirement

Tragic backstories are great character development because they show that the hero suffered in the past ("Suffer? Hey, that's what I do every day!"), but was then able to get over it and become a better, stronger person. And they're really varied, too. Batman witnessed his parents' murder, Harry Potter was mistreated by most of his family, Captain Kirk is a Space-Holocaust survivor, etc.

But when it comes to women, it seems they only get one type of tragic backstory: rape.

Look at, let's say, Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous lead of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. She is a capable, strong, ass-annihilating genius with legendary hacking skills ... and also a rape survivor. Now, she was a genius before her assault, but throughout the movie (both the American and Swedish versions), it feels like her rape was the final push she needed to become an avenging angel with a keyboard. And that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if that wasn't also the case for seemingly half the female action heroes on the market. It's as if when writers try to make a tragic backstory distinctly female, only one thing comes to mind.

Even in Mad Max: Fury Road, the most kickass, female-friendly action movie out there, every female character under the age of 60 was raped by Immortan Joe, and that possibly includes Furiosa. Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU was the child of rape, and this became her main motivation to prosecute sex offenders. The Bride from Kill Bill was raped while she was in a coma, after being shot by a jealous male lover. Gretchen, the psycho operative from Prison Break? Raped. Black Widow? Well, she was made sterile by the Soviets against her will, so her tragic backstory is still connected to males doing non-consensual things to her genitalia.

And in most of those cases, their traumatic past utterly defines their personality. Jessica Jones is a good example.

Throughout her Netflix series, Jones (who has literal superpowers) repeatedly freaks out, drinks, and loses her shit because she was brainwashed and raped by David Tennant's character. The show handled her PTSD beautifully, which really could have added a lot to Je-Jo's character. The problem is that she doesn't have much character beyond that. Jessica Jones isn't really a "person with a dark past." For almost the entirety of the first season, she is her dark past, and nothing more. Everything she does stems from that.

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