Feminism in movies: refreshing or overplayed and extreme?

Well put.

The distinction between "not sexualizing things because of prudishness" and "not sexualizing things because of sensitivity" seems pretty thin; so-called prudes would say THEY are merely being appropriately sensitive. I think this is one of those things where nearly identical behaviors are seen as either good or bad mostly based on having signaled a preexisting allegiance.

Eh, I'm not so sure about that; in my experience, prudishness tends to come about as a result of an unhealthy sexual repression, brought about by either outdated social pressure, or other personal issues that the particular person is struggling with, while I've found that a lot of people who tend to be wary of over-sexualizing others also tend to enjoy a healthy "liberation" in that area themselves. Take the old NSFW thread on the Corrie, the deleted forum a lot of us came from, for instance; while I never posted in that thread that much myself, I rarely remember the discourse in there taking on a leering, perverted tone. Obviously, it was a thread full of people (of both genders) sharing pics/GIFs of sexual acts and nude people, but the vibe I got there was more of people coming together to enjoy a mutual appreciation of human sexuality; I mean, when one forum troll said that the thread got boring when he got tired of "looking at naked women", a well-respected regular there responded with something to the effect of, beyond just physical lust, he also found the human body fascinating to study on an aesthetic level, with a number of people agreeing with him on that point, so I haven't seen much overlap between the two categories in my experience.

Oh okay, but when it comes to women being portayed as eye candy, I was talking about about their behavior than how they are portrayed physically. Sure they would wear more provacative and sexual clothing but I was talking in a the sense of it being a character trait, rather than talking about them being eye candy, if that makes sense?

Can't a female character in a movie seduce men and enjoy sex without being labelled 'exploitative eye candy' for an audience? If a male character can act that way and not be considered exploitative eye candy, can't a female character? Isn't it a double standard to label it as exploitative if a woman character does it, but not male characters?

And this is partially why it comes off as regressive to me, cause if a female character in fiction wants to behave in a sexual way and seduce men, then it's exploitative, compared to male characters doing it.

What about not sexualizing things because it's simply not necessary?

But this is exactly what a "prude" would say they're doing: being appropriately wary of oversexualizing people! By definition everyone is against "over" sexualizing, and often pejorative terms like this are really just expressions of our own ideological center: everyone to my right is a prude and everyone to my left is reckless. Reminds me of that old George Carlin line about how anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot but anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac.

Anyway, my claim is not that that they're the same thing, but that the vanguard thinking on this stuff has to analyze under-the-hood stuff (rather than actual practices) to elide what's been a pretty sharp turn. I think it's tempting to try to look at this along a sex-positivity/negativity axis (with all the motive parsing and psychoanalysis that entails) because that's the only axis that even kinda allows today's view to avoid rebuking its sexphisticated counterpart of the 90s and early aughts.

I think the more important and relevant axis, though, is sex-seriousness, and in that regard the progressive view has mostly just come around to the "prude" view, which has always seen sex as powerful and consequential.

Works for me, and I for one welcome our progressive overlords and remind them that, as a forum owner, I can be useful in rounding up others to...et cetera.

It's rarely necessary, and people seem to bend over backwards trying to justify it sometimes. Makes me think of that bit from Bowfinger:

Perhaps I do not have the right idea of what counts as sexualizing. For example, I said that you do not see female characters seduce male characters as much anymore in the story and that it seems fround upon nowadays. But if a female character likes sex and seduces male characters and does provacative things to do so, then does that count as the character being sexualized?

I wonder what Gina Carano has to say about this.

What would she say, or what does she have to do with it?

Have you Googled her name?

Yes I know who she is and saw a couple of her movies. I liked her in Haywire. But does she have a high opinion of how women are portrayed in movies when it comes to the character's sexual depiction or something of that sort?

I think I know what you mean by sexualized... Do you mean sexualized=slutized for female movie characters whose only role in a movie was to be eye candy and provide ample titillation for the male audience. Is that what you mean?

Now a days it seems the movie viewing public has moved towards demonizing female eye candy characters in movies who only exist to show off their, umm attributes...So the movie makers have responded to what they think the movie viewing public wants, IE actresses in what was once traditional male action roles.

Well here is an example of what I mean, about how female characters were more sexual in the past compared to now.

Maybe I have to give a CONTENT WARNING:



So this female character uses sex as a weapon, but she sexualy gets off on it too, and has a high sex drive obviously. But nowadays Hollywood does not want to portray a female character like this. That's what I mean.

As far as nudity goes, there is no nudity in the scene, but I was talking about more about the female character behavior that is now frowned upon.

I didn't ask if you knew who she was, though. I asked if you Googled her, because she's in the news right now.

Oh yes she was fired for having certain poltical views as far as I am reading. But what does that have to do with this, or sorry I am not seeing the connection ?

Yes, which is why the seduction scene in Tully wasn't called exploitative when it came out just a few years ago:



Whether sex/seduction scenes qualifies as exploitative doesn't boil down to what member of which gender is initiating the contact, it's about how the movie films the scene in question, and whether or not the camera devolves into using the ol' "male gaze" to leer at the woman, which makes such scenes feel less like a necessary part of the film, and more like an excuse to fit in some gratuitous T&A just for the men in the audience when it happens. But again, that doesn't have to happen, and when it doesn't, then female-lead seductions won't be problematic to portray in film.

And this is a female character conceived and written entirely by men. It is a male sexual fantasy played out on the big screen for the titillation of men. Men want to fantasize about a hyper-sexual woman (but also would probably shame her publicly even as they privately desired her), but that doesn't make her anything more than a male fantasy. As a man, I found the character a lot of fun, but there is no case to be made that that is a legitimate female character that represents in any way what any real woman is like. You can say that Bond is the same, but Bond is also a male fantasy, written by men. So all we're seeing now is, "Hey, what if we didn't write every female character solely to either further a man's story or simply to excite men in our audience?"

But there are women in real life who are into naughty and kinky sexual stuff, and seduce men. So even if a character like that is thought of by men, there are women in real life who are like that, so I think it is realistic still.

Plus in fiction there are naughty and kinky male characters written by women as well. So if a female writer can write a character like Christian Grey, then what's wrong with a male writer, writing a character like Xenia Onatopp (the Bond woman)?

If female writers can write a character like Christian Grey for the titilation of a female audience, then why can't male writers do it for a male audience? Is it so bad when femaile writers do this as well?

The faux-feminism of Hollywood. Beautiful young hot chicks who are empowered because they can kick the crap out of slightly less hot chicks and men by doing bendy-flexi-combat. Wow, you've come a long way baby! Feminism isn't really "in movies" if only women of a certain political persuasion can get jobs as actors. The feminism we get is a lefty-corporate consumer product that is designed to safely objectify women as sex objects while officially finger-waggling at toxic masculinity. Girls rule! Guys drool! Now run up that hill while the camera just happens to focus on your ass.

Great feminist films are just good-old fashioned "chick flicks" - films about women, and featuring women. Movies that guys may not like, but who cares? It's not for them. We don't need a stream of Mary Sues to make up for the Manic Pixies of years past. How about a film about human beings (not overpowered proto-fascists who solve their problems with overpowering violence in infantile fantasies) that happen to tell female stories from a female point of view? Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias are wayyyyy better than female cast reboots and "gritty" girl butt kickers. This is not some great mystery.