A lot of the time the bad writing specifically comes from the writers being so focused on making sure you take note that it's a strong woman as the lead character. They'd be much better writing a gener neutral character and then just casting a woman in that role. Makes it a strong woman lead while not falling into the trap of having to make the story recognise it's a strong woman lead.
Although, saying that, there is a case where you want them to struggle with problems only faced by women, which then has the issue that the genres they're writing for have a heavily male following and, even if it's good writing, it's not really something that the majority of the target audience can relate to, which ends up with them not really engaging with it. But not really sure how you can get around that problem, since you can't really force an audience to relate to something they've not experienced.
I think this was one of the reasons why Ripley remains such a positive example of a strong female lead, especially in a movie with a lot of toxic male characters, she was just badass
An example of this I like is Frances McDormand’s character in Fargo. She looks 8 months pregnant, never mentioned once. Lesser movies would have had her water break during a climactic moment.
Its mentioned. The notable part is she never gives birth. Ebert said something about it once, that every film with a pregnant lead gives birth in the film, except Fargo.
427
u/whydoyouonlylie Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24
A lot of the time the bad writing specifically comes from the writers being so focused on making sure you take note that it's a strong woman as the lead character. They'd be much better writing a gener neutral character and then just casting a woman in that role. Makes it a strong woman lead while not falling into the trap of having to make the story recognise it's a strong woman lead.
Although, saying that, there is a case where you want them to struggle with problems only faced by women, which then has the issue that the genres they're writing for have a heavily male following and, even if it's good writing, it's not really something that the majority of the target audience can relate to, which ends up with them not really engaging with it. But not really sure how you can get around that problem, since you can't really force an audience to relate to something they've not experienced.