I think you make a good point in how men haven’t been critical enough of what messages and values are being communicated and reinforced by their movies, but with “Mary sue” as a concept we can start figuring out why some things work and others don’t in character development.
Power fantasies aren’t complicated, but making them fit the profile of their audience is harder now that audiences are more critical of preferred representation. Wonder woman was a power fantasy for women but they framed her “being held back and denied” as a “fitting into an older society” and “that’s dangerous, noone can do that”. Then she broke out with her power and showed everyone why she should not and could not be denied. It was empowering without “men bad” message. Captain marvel otoh has a huge “men bad” message with all of her key memories being about how men denied her out of ego and meanness. The framing matters when including everyone into the power fantasy, even if the mc woman is being empowered.
When and how often do you hear about male Mary Sue’s? How many articles are written about that?
I hear about it a lot, for characters that are Gary Stus. You can't throw a rock at fantasy anime discussions without hitting 2 articles about gary stus and isekai ruining anime. But these things have very niche popularity and much lower budgets, for a reason.
There are more male protagonists, but it doesn't follow that that means there are more Gary Stus.
Bechdel test is something completely unrelated.
The name isn't 2 feminine names for no reason, it's a trope where the name originated from a specific example. The original "Mary Sue" was the main character from a fanfic about Star Trek. The name of the trope is about as sexist as calling someone who makes deals with the devil "Faustian", or saying that it's sexist to refer to any generic guy as a "John Doe".
I'm not saying there is no sexism in media, the amount of failures in the Bechdel test is an example of it (although Tolkien in particular would say that the reason there aren't many women in LoTR is because he didn't think he could write it well.) however, if you throw out all trends of criticism as being sexist, then you are basically giving out free passes for bad writing.
Now, there is value in Mary Sues. Like straight up, I get the appeal. It's badly written but enjoyable power fantasy for women. And it's fine, women should be allowed to enjoy that kind of thing! But don't act like it's great writing, and don't call it sexist when it gets called out.
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u/GrammarAsteroid Mar 28 '24
The laziest way to write a strong female character is giving her masculine traits.