Feminism in movies: refreshing or overplayed and extreme?

This is a crude and, frankly, bizarre thing to say. And it's pretty far afield from movies, too.

Gonna ask you once (and only once) to clean things up, and make a good faith effort to re-center the discussion around movies, rather than branching off entirely into culture war stuff.

And I'll ask everyone else to make that possible, too, since we've already had several posts that effectively can't be answered or countered without leaving movies entirely.

But the person I was reply to gave me a movie scenario, specifically naming Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves. So I gave my opinion. As a guy, if I walked into a room of bad guys, my instinct would be to fight them. If I walked into a room of "bad girls", my first instinct would be to try and charm them...appeal to their female nature. See my point?

And if it was a girl, she could offer the age-old bribe: sex. To use an example in a movie...if Holly Gennero in Die Hard had sex with Hans, he would have let her leave.

"So I gave my opinion" is a very broad umbrella, under which is both the reasonable (politely and substantively explaining your disagreement with a claim) and the unreasonable (a flat assertion that people can be reduced to instincts, put crudely for no discernible reason).

I don't think a lot of "arguments" that are just people taking their own inclinations and assuming they must be universal, either, but from a moderator's perspective I'm mostly concerned with the other stuff. As I said, this has been a warning, and to be fair I'm asking everyone else to make their arguments in ways which can be rebutted without leaving the topic of cinema, too (which has not always been the case in this thread).

I don't think this conversation has been close to productive, and I have very little confidence it will become so, but I'll allow the thread to remain open a bit longer on the off-chance what I'm saying is actually taken on board. But, in short, the way it's been discussed so far can't continue. If you need more clarity on exactly what I'm talking about, please PM me.

Being completely serious here. Maybe it's because I'm typically annoyed with politics, but I love it when a moderator joins a political debate to give a long, detailed and polite form of "shut the **** up or I'm closing the thread." Love it on RYM and I love it here.

I've always accepted that I'm somewhat sexist, but it never crossed my mind that Ripley should have shagged her way to Newt and back

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I actually left RYM years ago because of their big-brother moderation, as I did with the notoriously micromanaged Steve Hoffman music forum. I find that it's easier to stay out of a discussion you don't like rather than have the whole thing shut down. Anyhow, we're not talking politics here. We're discussing feminism in movies, right on topic. Even if it went off-topic, couldn't it then just be moved to the off-topic section?

I moderated my own music forum for years...only kind of speech that wasn't allowed was hate speech. Anything else was fair game.

Well... I did enjoy seeing Schwarzenegger giving birth, so there's that.

Just because violence is predominantly associated with men doesn't mean that only men are capable of performing it. I'm still not sure how exactly a woman having sex with a room full of bad guys in order to defeat them is automatically more plausible and logical than if she physically fights them. Such a scenario also contradicts your assertion that men's primary instinct is one of violence - by your logic, it seems like said instinct can easily be overwhelmed by one woman with an obvious ulterior motive of escaping danger. To try to apply this logic to Die Hard not only does a gross disservice to Holly Gennero but also to Hans Gruber, whose main characterisation is that he is such a ruthlessly professional criminal that he isn't going to let something like sex with a hostage distract him from his plan to steal $600 million. That's without mentioning how a major part of his plan is that he's going to kill every single hostage in the rooftop explosion anyway. Between this and using The Stepford Wives of all movies to argue why women should be more feminine, you really need to get better examples to prove your points.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I did include other examples in the same post when I mentioned The Stepford Wives. I mentioned Julie Christie and her dogged persistence in Heaven Can Wait. I also mentioned Demon Seed where she fights back against the her husband, the AI and its determination to inseminate her.

I haven't seen Heaven Can Wait and I barely remember watching Demon Seed, so I suppose I have to concede all two of those titles.

The problem with this is that the same logic could be used to excuse any behavior. I could also use it to say "stay off a website whose rules you don't like."

"Politics" in this context is obviously not limited to elections. You can see references to this on the Rules page (linked in the footer), as well as this recent thread announcing rule changes to this effect.

Anyway, as I already said, if you require clarity on this rule, PM me. And I'll broaden that, since the hint wasn't taken the first time: if you want to argue about the rule, do the same.

By the way, I'm pretty sure a film called Angel of H.E.A.T. actually uses this sort of scenario. I saw it as a kid (yeah, I watched all sorts of junk back then already), but I'm pretty sure a female agent in it destroys evil androids by overheating them with steamy hot sex. Maybe that movie would fit a certain poster on this thread?

I saw Fat Girl not too long ago, but what point where you going to make about it, out of curiosity?

Oh okay good point. I just watched the movie again and I see what you mean.

Has a nice title song.
Yes, I am watching it now.

EDIT: A decent good bad movie, with some genuine funny jokes/moments. Also Blade Runner-esque moment with the whole 'Android capable of love bit'.

The comparisons, whether intentional or not, to big brother moderation pointed at Yoda is pure hyperbole.
Next you’ll argue 1st amendment rights here.
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That movie annoys me

Was this before or after Austin Powers had a scene where Austin does a seductive dance routine to destroy a squad of fembots? I think it says enough that the trope exists mainly in the form of absurd parodies and genre fare rather than being any kind of plausibly realistic solution to a conflict.

Yeah, I mean that was the same with the 1982 film where the crew of the station already has its own hierarchy of power that is destabilised by the Thing's arrival - MacReady is comparatively low on the totem pole but he becomes the leader after the main authority figures (Garry, Copper, Blair) are all either incapacitated or are suspected of being the Thing.

Way before Austin Powers. Angel of H.E.A.T. is from 1983. Otherwise, this is a (rare?) case where we're in complete agreement in feminism related matters (though this to me sounds more like a common sense related matter, honestly).

I've actually seen this in low budget movies and B movies, so I cannot remember any titles off hand, but I have seen thriller movies that are trying to be serious, where a woman is kidnapped and she will seduce the guy in order to escape, and the kidnapper ACTUALLY FALLS FOR IT, and I hated that.