Feminism in movies: refreshing or overplayed and extreme?

Sorry, the formatting of this post just won’t straighten out. I keep leaving strange gaps and I don’t know why.

Revenge (2017) - I actually love that film, but still...

Peppermint (2017)

I honestly can’t list them now because I tend to dislike them. But they’re all logged in my film notes somewhere, so I’ll add.

It’s not that the people in question are innocent; it’s just that if a man kills a woman in a film, even if women are evil, it’s called ‘misogyny’. When women kill men, that’s supposedly great.

That just made me laugh out loud. I think I’m overdoing this discussion, it’s a Monday, after all. This has been a very heavy topic for a Monday.


I never said it was made for women. But why should a woman have a problem with any of that? I like striptease scenes when well done, who’s to say women don’t like them?

I don’t know. Disclaimer, since that’s what it’s come to: I am a woman; I have no problem with any of the above. Why can’t women enjoy other women stripping? For one thing, there are gay women who might find it hot just as a man would; also women go to strip clubs to see other women dance in short dresses, why on Earth not? Women can enjoy sexualised portrayals of other women, even when they’re straight.

Oh okay, I saw it as a contradiction, because how can you have a movie that is so misandrist and women hating men and that's all they talk about, yet the movie is made for a male audience with the elements that you mention. I felt it was a contradiction, like Tarantino was trying to have his cake and eat it too.

Here's just a thought, though: all films have an agenda. For many films, that agenda might just be maintaining a status quo, but that is still an agenda. Having a team of scientists in a film include a woman character is a choice, but so is not having any female characters. It's just that excluding women (or people of color, or gay characters) from certain roles is the default and so it doesn't *feel* like a choice.

Movies don't reflect the real world, but they must reflect some emotional truth about the real world. Kids don't literally find out that they are wizards, but kids do want to feel that they are special. Fathers don't actually fly overseas and single-handedly take out sex trafficking gangs, but parents do want to protect their children.

I don't care about the gender of a character if their story reflects an emotional truth that I can connect with. And from a literal scientific point of view, it means something to people to see themselves in certain contexts. There are countless studies out there about how the portrayal of different groups in media can have a very real impact. A woman is less likely to by the world's best spy, sure. But also I'm pretty sure that no spy ever rode down a zipline while firing a handgun and managing to blow up a truck. Why is it so easy for us to let go of that unreality, and so hard for us to accept the other?

It might be true that these traits are more likely to be reflected in men than in women. But in my years of teaching at this point I've probably supervised over 1,000 students and athletes (because I also coach a girls' sport). Girls do want to be action heroes. They do connect with those characters. I had one student who loved comic books and used to talk all the time about how she couldn't wait for them to make a Batgirl movie. Girls pick up sticks and use them like swords (as I run toward them going "NONONONONO SOMEONE IS GOING TO LOSE AN EYE!!!!"). When I ran a filmmaking club there were some girls who wanted to make a pop song music video, but there was a larger group of girls interested in creating an action film where they fought zombies.

So you're saying that male action characters are now acting like women? Or you're saying that action movies are being distorted to accommodate female characters?

Either way, the majority of action movies are still bro-fests. Again, a quick look at the top grossing films of 2019 give you John Wick, Hobbs & Shaw, Angel Has Fallen, Midway, Gemini Man, Rambo Last Blood, and so on. And there's a whole slew of B-level action from people like Scott Adkins that falls in a very traditional action model.

I'm fine with people not liking certain movies or not wanting to watch female-led action. Whatever floats your boat. But I just don't think it's true that there are no movies anymore for people who like traditional action.

Yes, I'm in the short lull where the regular school year ended by my summer work hasn't started and I have a lot of time on my hands. Can you tell?

I'm not saying that women can't enjoy sexualized portrayals of other women. But the imagery and films that Tarantino references in his costuming and framing are from sexual media aimed at male audiences. It's not that women can't enjoy those films (I thought Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! was a hoot), but Ironpony seemed to be suggesting that the film was man-hating and I'm saying that such plots are actually not uncommon in movies that were made for a male audience. I mean, there's an entire sexploitation sub-genre of women being abused in prisons or whatever where every male character is an abusive guard or warden. And a really good sign that the film's audience is male is that almost all of the male actors look like regular guys (some are overweight, many are not conventionally handsome, many are in their 40s/50s/60s) while the women are all stunning.

Ha, good for you! Enjoy your break. I, on the contrary, just switched jobs, and was ridiculously engaged in this exchange throughout my work day. One eye on the Excel file and one here. Shameful. But then what do I know, I watch films during my lunch hours on work days...

Yes, alright, I can see that. I didn’t read that exchange carefully enough.

I would say it is affecting the behaviour of male characters, yes. There’s emotional depth - and I’m all for that, I love what Joaquin Phoenix does in You Were Never Really Here and similar films - and then there’s a tendency to make male characters unrealistically, almost off-puttingly emotional. See: La Cara Oculta (2011), even in Marvel films with Tony and others, etc. The Endless does it much more subtly.

If it's subtle thats cool. If it's like that scene in Avengers Endgame barf.

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I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)

I can immediately list a ton of counter-examples (despite female villains not being nearly as common as male villains):

The female villain in Brotherhood of the Wolf (when the male main character killed her, the entire audience cheered like the Death Star had just exploded)

The character of Maw-Maw in Dredd.

The woman being killed in Tell No One.

Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.

Nurse Rachet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (not killed, but assaulted)

The female villain in Along Came a Spider.

The female character in Play Misty for Me.

And while it's not killing, there are plenty of movies where men physically harming women (for being annoying) is played as a joke, like the woman being punched in the face in The Way of the Gun.

What's an example of a man killing an evil woman and it was called misogynist? (And who called it misogynist?)

But The Hidden Face isn't an action movie--it's a drama/thriller.

You Were Never Really Here is excellent and it generates a lot of empathy for its main character. I would almost compare it to Blue Ruin where on paper it's a traditional action/thriller, but in reality it takes that structure and makes it something much more personal.

You're saying that you love what is done in that film and in other similar films. So isn't it just down to whether or not the writer/director/actor does a good job of conveying that emotion and keeping you on the side of the character? It sounds like we agree that the emotional depth of You Were Never Really Here makes it a better film, not a worse one. And movies like it existing don't do anything to stop something like John Wick or The Fate of the Furious from being made.

Yes, which shows it’s ultimately personal and hard to rationalise. It was an interesting conversation.

Yes, always fun to hash things out with someone.

Well to answer the OP's question more on if it's refreshing or overplayed, are feminist movies really refreshing nowadays? I mean they have made movies with feminist elements in the stories, going way back though. It's not like it's a new revolution now, is it?

There are a ton of male-centred films that are so cliche and similar in plot and characters and overall style.These movies shoud be a genre of their own-like, this is an average joe film, this is an action film, a romance film etc.Generally movies like that tire me so i don't watch them.

But this thread is about focusing on FEMINIST films, not on other kind of topics like racism or average joes that become superheroes in films and get the hottest girl etc.
This thread is not about gender equality but about people handling feminism wrong in some films.Not all feminist films are bad and many are really great, but the way directors and the actors examine and develop feminism and/or girl power in a movie can actually quite ruin the movie and that is what bothers me.That is why i made this thread.

If you want, i can make a thread about average joe films and how annoying and cliche they can get, called :Average joes:give them the hot girl and superpowers or give them the boot?
There we could discuss how many movies like these are totally unrealistic and insulting to women etc.

Also, you said at one post what if the tile was "Racial Equality in movies: Refreshing or overplayed and extreme?". Feminism and Racial Equality will never be the same thing.And im not against feminism.It's just that i hate the angle of badass woman that kicks butt and is super and perfect and also kinda hates men because her last boyfrined was abusive.That is not feminsim-its just generalised hatred- yet that is what many films present as feminism.In reality, not all men are bad or idiots and women shouldn't hate all men because some are sexist.Women should simply have equal rights with men and be treated respectfully.That is feminism that isn't fanatic and exaggurated.

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@Takoma11

I’ve been thinking about this since last night, this is indeed hard to articulate. The problem with the heroine-abused-by-ex trope is also that it shows one side of the story, and anyone who has been married/in a long-term relationship knows it’s never like that. That’s what makes Gone Girl (2016) pretty brilliant - I think it shows Amy as a horrible person who plays the victim card. This is amusing, nuanced and relevant, and it flips the victimised-woman stereotype on its head.

Invisible Man (2020), and the arguably original film of the genre - In Bed with the Enemy (1991) with Julia Roberts - do not bother to explore the relationship at all before taking sides. In the latter, the protagonist lives in a huge house, is supported by her husband and seems content with that, yet takes issue with having to hang up hand towels correctly. Why do we not explore her reliance on him? Her conscious choice to take his money and therefore, by implication, live by his rules? We don’t have to agree with that viewpoint, but why is it completely ignored? I’m not talking about the scene where Martin hits her, just the prologue where she seems to be insulted by having to maintain order in a home where she lives and didn’t work for.

The POV espoused is very extreme. The protagonists in both take issue with their ex gaslighting them (the same applies to Vigilante (2017) with Olivia Wilde and I Spit on Your Grave III (2015)). But the relationship with the man is rarely (very rarely) explored in depth. It is almost never shown how this couple came to be together, what attracted her to him.

Relationships are complex and their dynamics can not be neatly separated into good-female-victim and big-bad-wolf. Feminist films of that type do not take the trouble to explain why that woman loved that man, why she was with him in the first place - more importantly, they don’t show the spectrum of her feeling when taking her revenge. People do not get together with men whose lifestyle they hate and marry them because they were gaslighted. Occasionally, perhaps, but usually it is their choice.

Female heroines of that type don’t react in complex, nuanced ways, but simply bludgeon the abusive exes with gusto. As we agreed, @Takoma11, that’s all fine and no one is forced to watch it, but I also feel it’s perfectly fine to criticise/critique. I honestly, personally, do not see such a bias with regards to relationships in male-led films. That’s just my opinion, of course. But an average man ending up with a hot woman is not the same at all. There are, again, various complex reasons why that might happen. These films usually don’t have the man’s relationship as one of the main storylines, it’s a side plot. But in a film where a woman takes revenge for a past slight, the relationship with the man she takes revenge on is the central theme and warrants far more attention. The entire plot of Vigilante and other films above is getting revenge on a man. There are, however, few films where a man’s entire quest is getting a hot woman. Hence the perfectly reasonable imbalance in the screen time devoted to rationalising the relationship between a hot woman and the average Joe versus a woman who made a choice to be with someone and then came to want to kill him.


Btw: I find, again, that Kill Bill is extremely nuanced in that respect, especially Vol II. The Bride cries when she kills him, this is partly relief, yes. But also I believe it is undeniable that the final scene shows they had a very deep connection and that she is partly crying for Bill. Her emotions towards are far more complex than hatred, revenge, or any of that. If you remember that scene, you will remember that she talks to him with respect and something like sorrow, and allows him the dignity to die as he would have liked to die, by literally walking to his death himself, instead of being killed on the spot by her. She shows him respect and that is very nuanced. This shows us that she did love him.

And I asked for 15 examples from the last 3 years of this phenomenon. If it's such a problem, then it should be easy to list many examples for each year. If I make a generalization about films and I can't find at least 15 movies to back up my point, I go back and re-evaluate my point of view.

I think that it's kind of funny that I've been posting in movie forums since 2001. I have seen COUNTLESS threads about how feminism is "ruining" film. I've never seen a single thread about how average-joe stories are demeaning to women.

You are welcome to hate these movies. I just don't think they are as common as you make them out to be. And they are certainly no more common than movies that play out other really tired tropes about women.

Let's look again at what you just posted: Not all feminist films are bad and many are really great. If this is true, then feminist films are . . . just like all other subgenres. Some are bad, and many are really great.

I don't take issue with specific films being called out for how they handle themes. I frequently call out films (including "feminist films"--I'm looking at you, American Mary!) for being clunky in how they handle their themes. But I reject the absolutist language that many people in this thread are using. Nine people upvoted a post that read, in part, "Any and all movies today with a female character in the lead, is a Mary Sue." This is blatantly false. Even the title of your thread posits feminist films as a binary: "refreshing OR overplayed and extreme?". They are either "refreshing" (good) or "overplayed and extreme" (bad). Aren't you yourself now saying that many of them are good?

The Invisible Man is focused on a specific stage of the (unhealthy) relationship between the main character and her partner. It is not efficient storytelling to spend 15 minutes of the film showing the guy's "good side". It's made really clear what his good side is: he is super smart (a brilliant scientist), he is wealthy, he is good looking. The film does not need to spell out for the audience why the main character ended up with him. But guess what? He is also abusive and controlling. The way that he responds to her trying to leave him also quickly and efficiently shows us this.

The story that The Invisible Man is telling is about what it's like *after* leaving an abusive relationship. How the main character is overwhelmed by just how much power and how many resources her ex has. And then the horror element kicks in when the main character must confront a seemingly impossible contradiction: she is told that her ex is dead, and yet at the same time she is sure that he is still watching her, still finding ways to put his hands on her.

It's true that more often women are avenging romantic partners, and that this dynamic is less common in a male-led film (ie there aren't many films about men getting revenge on an ex-wife/girlfriend).

But in storytelling there's such a thing as a character crossing a line to a point where we don't need to see history or "consider both sides". For example, when someone's partner in a heist shoots them and leaves them for dead, do we really need to see both sides? Nope.

You cited The Invisible Man, and let's revisit that film. What does the main character want at the beginning of the film? We learn that she has been imprisoned, that her partner has swapped out her medication for placebos, physically abused her, accessed her e-mail and cell phone without permission, etc. But what does she want? She just wants to leave. We don't see any inclination to violence from the main character until she is physically threatened and other people she loves are physically threatened.

In fact, .

I know that it's not a violent revenge film, but consider a film like It Could Happen To You. Both main characters are married to horrible people. And the film makes very little effort to give us "both sides". The male lead's wife is shrill, materialistic, and greedy and is nakedly the villain of the film. We don't need to see their courtship or the early years of their marriage to understand that (1) she's a bad person and (2) we should be rooting for him and (3) we can cheer when "she gets what she deserves".

There is quite a good thread discussing that here, but also it has been addressed elsewhere since the film came out that it’s deliberately made to be unclear whether Adrian really was as much of a monster as Cecelia thinks. The entire film is told through her point of view, and we all know that’s a hallmark of an unreliable narrator. Showing their past or Adrian’s side would have only served to enforce the perception she is right to want to kill him, if he is indeed the one stalking her. I personally agree that it’s him, but there are critics that seemed to think it was deliberately left ambiguous and it could have all been his brother, in which case Cecelia does kill an innocent man. There is only one specific clue that the invisible man throughout the film is indeed Adrian, and it is open to interpretation.

I mostly agree with your second paragraph, but the reading that she has indeed killed an ‘innocent’ man also exists.

I think that’s precisely the problem with not showing the other side. In this particular case a balanced approach would help. We never see Adrian doing any of these things to her - I think that’s a strength of the film, actually, but it makes it ambiguous enough to suggest she might have actually killed an innocent man. Not that I’m arguing that she did. But it would have been so easy to make it crystal-clear, and Whannell chooses not to.

I need to watch that, it looks promising. But I agree that in some cases both POVs are not necessary to judge. It’s just that I feel The Invisible Man is precisely the film where it does make a difference.

Well one criticism I keep reading online is that they do not like how in Birds of Prey, the female characters are able to beat up all these male characters who are bigger than them, with no effort.

However, in older movies, you would see Schwarzenegger and Stallone do this in their movies, and be able to take on several guys as a one man army so is that any better than Birds of Prey?

Even supposing that Adrian is only guilty of, you know, imprisoning her, sabotaging her birth control (a devious and cruel way of controlling a partner, whether you're a man or a woman), and playing mind games ("surprise"), I think that it's important that the violence in the film is seen as a last resort. Again--if the message was just that Adrian should be punished for his abuse of Cecelia, then the film could have started with her plotting to kill him.

You say that it's a problem, but in the next sentence say it is a strength of the film. We could have been spoonfed an answer one way or the other, yes. I think that it's pretty clear from the film (again, the importance of the use of "surprise" and how clearly that's a deciding moment for Cecelia). Also, we know one real thing that Adrian must have said to her (" He said that wherever I went, he would find me, walk right up to me, and I wouldn't be able to see him.") because I believe she says this before knowing about the suit.

Also, how does any of this dialogue make sense if it's not Adrian:


But let's say that as a viewer you do find it ambiguous enough that you really don't know. I think that the tone of the film itself reflects that. I haven't seen the film since I saw it in the theater, but I don't remember the ending being super celebratory.

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And I don't actually think that you need to see Adrian's abuse of Cecelia. The rage as he pursues her in that opening scene, the fact that he swapped out her birth control--to me that says all that you need to know about him. If they were in a healthy relationship, why did she have to sneak out of the house at night? The film does a great job of mirroring exactly what Cecelia finds so scary about him "he always makes me look crazy". Whatever his side of the story might be (and, man, doesn't his smugness at the final dinner tell you a lot about him?), her fear is definitely real. It's not a performance that she puts on for other people. And we DO know that because we see her in moments when she is alone. And, importantly, the film uses a lot of ambiguity to build dread. There are many moments where we pan to "empty" places, but we never get confirmation as to whether or not he was really there.

If we see Adrian's abuse of Cecelia, does it make it a better movie, though? If the ending was all smiles and fireworks, maybe. But there is a somber tone to the film (including the finale) that works well whether or not you believe in Adrian's "innocence". No matter how you interpret the film, it is a horror movie and it is a tragedy. A 5-10 minute sequence showing their life before she runs away isn't necessary.

Yes, I am aware of that. Not the best wording. I meant that as a general technique, I think it’s simplistic (and I said above I feel only showing one side diminishes the impact - especially when the past relationship was not explored in detail). But then I said it worked to generate suspense in this particular film. Which I think it does.

Fair enough. I agree that it almost certainly wouldn’t have made it a better movie. But I do regret a bit that Whannell didn’t bother making Adrian complex, or addressing why he was behaving like that towards her. Though I imagine if that was done, it could be described as justifying his behaviour.

I think that Adrian is about as complex as he needs to be, especially because the point of the film (and the place where it derives its horror) is Cecelia's subjective experience. And that opening shot of Cecelia's open-eyed, fearful stare says it all. I think that the film conveys a lot by showing how Cecelia's desire works. She doesn't take anything expensive from the house. She's not after Adrian's money. We never get any indication that she tried to control his behavior. It's made explicit that her relationship with him has stifled her career.

I suppose the kindest reading of Adrian's character is that he loves her (in his own, unhealthy way) and is trying to create what he thinks is a good family. But even if that's true, his intentions don't/wouldn't outweigh the harm that he does to her. What could possibly justify the birth control thing, for example? I don't think that it's meant to be ambiguous whether or not Adrian was controlling and abusive, even if you think certain ending elements are ambiguous.

Also, from the experiences of my friends who have been in abusive/controlling relationships, there isn't always much of a "why". Some people just enjoy having power over others. Some people will unfeelingly manipulate others to get what they want. The lucky ones get out before there are kids in the picture.

This is all true, although in fiction the ‘why’ matters more than in real life. All I had in mind is that for me, it might have made it more interesting to see both sides. It’s nothing to do with real life or attempting to devalue her experience, but rather with how storytelling could be addressed alternatively. It is, again, an entirely subjective opinion. I’m probably just someone who doesn’t appreciate the female revenge genre the way it looks most of the time, and therefore, I’m not making a claim to objective critique.

It is similar to how some people will watch John Wick or Kill Bill and dislike them just because they are bloody. From experience, the argument that both can be called highly stylised art-leaning films in some sense won’t resonate with them because they are put off by all the blood.

This is similar to my perception of The Invisible Man. I personally find it boring to see the protagonist as a victim with no detailed exploration of the past and no attempt to show the perspective of the other side. It is simplistic storytelling. As I said before, Gone Girl, for one, shows us that very few things in a relationship are objective. I am in no way defending his actions or saying that he does not deserve a comeuppance for messing with her birth control.

But I think what made Gone Girl a far more interesting and complex film is showing both sides in stark contrast and portraying Amy as part-villain. The same can be said about Kill Bill in the sense that it is far more nuanced psychologically. When I see any film where the protagonist is an underdog and that is meant to make me sympathise, I feel that someone was being a little lazy. That’s all. I’m sure it is easy to come up with an argument against all of this.

But that’s partly where this entire thread stems from: there is something about that plot device/hook that some people find unsatisfying, myself included. It’s not that other films, specifically about men, don’t have limitations, but this is something people find particularly irritating. Why is it a problem to discuss that? It’s the same as discussing any cliche, like an apparently dead person coming back to life.

I do realise that maybe the attempt to express this feeling is futile, because someone will almost certainly come up with a rationalisation as to why these films work the way they do. And I realise that, of course, they work the way they do for a reason. But women regularly complain about not liking how they are represented in film, whether because they are over-sexualised, or not given enough dialogue, and so on and so forth. That also results in attempts to rationalise the choices made. Let’s compare: When Martin Scorsese explains Anna Paquin did not need speaking lines in The Irishman for the story to work, this is met with criticism; however, when the scenario is reversed and I suggest that Adrian’s perspective is ignored, this is seen as totally irrelevant. I find that strange, that’s all. Surely Adrian as one part of the abusive relationship duo has more relevance than Anna Paquin, who plays absolutely to part in the plot except to show her mafia boss father has never cared about her?

Let’s take a film like The Gift (2015). The section where we discover the protagonist is in fact a bully makes it far more interesting and engaging. We begin to see the past and present in a different light. I do not suggest Cecelia is to blame, or that the film should have in any way suggested that she brought Adrian’s treatment of her on herself.

However, I am drawn to detailed explorations of dark characters, and I would have found The Invisible Man far more interesting if it explored Adrian. It would have only made Cecelia’s story resonate more if done well. A strange example to reference, but Wuthering Heights is one of the earliest works about abusive relationships, written by a woman, no less. It explored Heathcliff and Catherine in equal detail and gave a detailed rationalisation and backstory to Heathcliff’s every abusive action towards Catherine. Catherine herself is shown as manipulative, which is a part of what attracts him. I just think that’s better storytelling, plain and simple. I think the film would have felt far less one sided if it took the time to explore both participants of an unhealthy relationships in equal detail, including why of all things to don an invisibility cloak fie, Adrian uses it to chase his ex - a bizarre choice for a scientist.

In any case, again, I don’t want to see this conversation even as a debate: it just goes to show people can have entirely different perceptions of the same film.