Strong Independent Women

It's not a movie.. but they had great female leading characters in The Shannara Chronicles.
It's was like a mix of LOTR and Game of Thrones.

Still waiting for MTV to decide on renewing for a new season

I haven't seen that.

I was 'bout to say...

*shudders violently* NO.

Maybe if Hunger Games were a better movie to begin with. She's a walking plothole in that movie.

By "these people" do you mean the article writer?

If so I'm only going off the movie's portrayal of the character, not how her toys sell.

If by "these people" you mean the people selling those toys...

Then I'm disinclined to believe "strong and independent female character" translates into "bankable" as far as toy manufacturers are concerned.

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i mean the people who are buying the toys. there is waaay more Finn merchandise than there is Rey (and, as the article points out, she was excluded altogether in some cases). the prediction was obviously that everyone was going to want Finn merch, but it turns out, if you read not only this article but others to get more of a broader understanding, there is an overabundance of Finn sitting on shelves and finding Rey merch is few and far between because there wasn't nearly as much made, and it's selling like crazy. conclusion: the public feels differently; they want more Rey than Finn.

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That's presumptuous (depending on how you meant that). Evidently they want more Rey and less Finn, but whether Rey is more popular than Finn or not remains to be seen.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised that Finn was more popular because, as I said, he was more of a character (also the Star Wars fanbase is predominantly male and humans tend towards familiarity which is reinforced by social conformity).

REGARDLESS of any of that though, I don't see how the people wanting these toys somehow contradicts my "She's fit the strong and independent bill, but she's pretty flat as a character compared to Finn." statement.

It's much better than Aliens. Death Proof is a great chick flick.

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it doesn't contradict what you said, because what you said was an opinion. i was pointing out that it seems like the public generally seems to be of a different opinion than your own. and, well, that was, like, just my opinion, man.

i thought Rey was a better character than Finn. Finn had the comedic relief thing going for him, he was more fun to watch for that reason, but Rey, i think, has a helluva lot of potential. we gonna see.

So if a person achieves their own goals, that makes them successful or capable? I don't think so. Perhaps in their own mind, but surely by that rational then everyone is successful/capable to an extent. But here we are discussing success/capability as some type of universal indicator where we can compare different people in terms of the positive impact they've created for, in this case, other women.

If those goals are at all ambitious (like, say, being a world leader for a really long time), yes. Of course.

This simply doesn't follow. The only way someone can be successful/capable no matter what they actually achieve is if they never set any notable goals for themselves. That obviously doesn't apply here.

The inverse, however, is absolutely true: if you deny someone's capability because they had different beliefs than yours, then virtually everyone can be said not to be capable to an extent.

I'm not sure what the argument is here, other than "but I really really really don't like her, so I don't want her used as a positive example of anything."

But you-mhm-meheh-what?

The different opinion is that Rey isn't a flat character? Or she isn't strong and independent?

All I'm saying is toy sales or market demand doesn't translate out to fact.

Just because Garbage Pail Kids was grotesquely popular back in the day doesn't mean kids who bought them considered them fine satire.

Oh, is THAT what you mean?

"Time will tell", as I said before.

Now, it appears we're talking about two separate things, or at least we've divided the argument in to two separate things. Yes, they are successful at achieving what they want, but within the context of the original post, success should be judged on the quality of not only achieving what they wanted, but doing it well enough to be judged as such in general, by the public. The OP seems to be suggesting that women are chosen because we know they are quality, are capable, as opposed to being chosen "for the sake of it" but I am suggesting that in the example they chose it proves it not always to be the case, and there are other factors to take in to account as to why a person may have been able to achieve their "success".

What I'm arguing is that ultimately whether a person is a success, or once again going back to the OP's original point, a capable person, then there has to be evidence to back that up beyond someone simply being a leader, or being elected. As much as you think it's fair to say she was a success in the fact she became leader, and was re-elected twice, I think it's fair to say that now the majority of people will agree with me that her tenure was one of the worst in the 20th century, and the consequences of what she implemented destroyed many lives, and still do. Whenever you're judging success/capability then there will always be split opinions, so I don't see how your criteria for success is any more fair/unfair than mine.

And yes, your right in saying that if you judge certain ways different to others than you can make an argument that everyone is not capable. But generally, when it comes to judging people, there always tends to be expectations and places of agreement where people can be judged against other people.

I was just about to post my response when the power went out, so this is going to be a bit more succinct than it otherwise would be:

Yes: I'm talking about the normal usage of the word "capable," which is a description of one's abilities. You're talking about something different: specifically, whether or not she used those abilities in a way you'd like.

The first mention of Thatcher, that I can see, is simply a British person saying that they don't need to be reminded that women are capable, because they elected one.

Correct, and that something is effecting change. A leader who effects their desired change is capable, whether you like that change or not.

I don't know if this is true (and I suspect it's one of those claims that ends up being about who the speaker chooses to associate with), but I don't see how it's relevant. Popularity is not capability, except insofar as the former influences the latter.

Frankly, the argument that she was "one of the worst" undercuts the argument against capability: how could she be hated if she was so incapable/ineffectual? Did she do little, and is thus incapable, or did she do all sorts of things you think are awful? At minimum, you'll have to choose which slight you want to go with.

That's precisely why it's more fair. For terms to have meaning they have to come from a shared premise. They're useless if they just become a proxy for your political beliefs.

But nobody asked for a summary judgment: they simply used the largely value-neutral word "capable."

I will throw in a serious wild card - Mountain Girl (Constance Talmage) in Intolerance, yeah the 1916 epic. She's the best character in the movie, outrageously physically expressive, rejects marriage and even disguises herself as a man so she can go into battle in ancient Babylonia.

Cool! I've never heard of that one.

*checks, sees Birth of a Nation* Oh... uhhh...

There seems to be a misunderstanding around a lot of issues where the promotion of one group is seen only in the context of taking away from other groups.

For example, I see a few posts saying something to the effect of "we don't only want strong independent women, we want women in a diverse set of roles".

Well, yes, that is indeed the point.

We want a diverse set of roles, strong women, conniving women, cooperative women, heroic women, and even women dependent on men. The point is that there appears to be a natural bias in media to have sexualized, dependent women. When that bias exists, you probably will need to take additional steps to correct for the bias, which means emphasizing those strong independent roles.

Trying to construe the argument that emphasizing strong female roles is the same as saying there should only be strong female roles is willful ignorance.

Re: Thatcher

Thatcher is an example of success, Hillary is an example of success. But recognize that the dominate ideas determining success have been molded by masculinity. And in turn, recognize that part of what makes Thatcher and Clinton formidable is their ability to succeed even according to those masculine criteria.

I say this, even though I think Thatcher was a terrible PM whose legacy is slowly being reclaimed from divinity in the same way that Reagan's is.

Oh god where do you start on telling someone who doesn't live in the UK what I think about Thatcher. Strong, independent ok fulfills the brief, but what about willful, narcissistic, unable to empathise, unwilling to listen to advice even from her closest advisors railroading her ideas in the face of evidence to the contrary - this lady's not for turning? If you're asking if whether she was a strong and independent woman who acted for the majority of our country, then you can ask in our decimated manufacturing areas or our mining towns or then again you can ask in our Home Counties amongst the financiers and the people who made wads of money during the 1980s . You'll get different answers that's for sure.

Intolerance is nothing like Birth of a Nation, probably the most racist movie ever made. BOAN was banned in a number of states as being unacceptable, even by the standards of 1915. Intolerance was Griffith's attempt to redeem himself, by making a movie about the horrors of intolerance in 4 different time periods (although none of them was the American south). It's really an epic and, unlike BOAN, also an epic, it doesn't make you feel dirty to watch it.

Aye. I don't have to agree with a word Hillary says to recognize that, as a Senator and Secretary of State, she's a success by any shared standard. The only standards by which either are not are those where we slip a partisan thumb on the scale.

This makes both more impressive in the technical sense of overcoming additional hurdles. But it also dilutes the value of their example; how has society improved if women replace men in positions of power, but do so by emulating the people that were there before?

This reminds me of an essay (which I can't recommend enough) written by Dorothy Sayers in 1947 called "Are Women Human?," in which she argues for a feminism concerned with increasing appreciation for feminine traits. She even correctly predicts that the movement may go astray by equating advancement for women with an actual shift in cultural values.

Thirty years on, I think both are pretty well calcified, however chagrined that may leave their critics (probably just as chagrined as my fellow conservatives are about the canonization of FDR).

I agree with you there.

Interesting. I guess my thought is, how can a racist perspective reliably portray a minority? Be it gender or otherwise?

I'll agree with this. When considering pioneering individuals, one should also see if by their pioneering virtue, institutions/norms have changed due to the specific nature of the individual.

I think FDR's legacy is being chipped away at too (his personal legacy; not his legacy of achievements, even if that's true too), which is certainly fair.

At least within the possibly more liberal communities I'm a part of (e.g. Reagan's legacy more correctly as strongly conservative rather than moderate, FDR's legacy seen less as moderate liberal and more as statist liberal).