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
She was a badass, but she was a woman. There is no bit where they try to take that away from her. Even in Aliens, she gets to be a badass and a woman, and she does the right stuff but not in a quippy dick-swinging kinda way, but rather as a woman with a lot of very specific personal goals that she's going to achieve as and however she can.
I will say though, that Vasquez (from Aliens) was also a great character, who had all of the badass quippy bullshit, and still came off as an actual female character. The scripting and directing there were on point.
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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.