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I used to think all the fuss about women being treated differently was in large part an exaggeration in this day and age. But then a few months ago I woke up fr
by tokipin 13y ago
I used to think all the fuss about women being treated differently was in large part an exaggeration in this day and age. But then a few months ago I woke up from a dream vision of Storm (from the X-Men movies) being 'strong'. Weird because I've never even seen the movies. But the "strength" was forced and farcical in the absence of actual depth of character.
What struck me was that that was a fairly subtle observation, nevermind examples of e.g. discrimination that is much more obvious. So that vision raised the question of what else had eluded my perception, and made clear that there is still a lot of progress to be made.
- Tichy 13y agoI don't understand what you are saying. Do you mean while Storm is "strong", she has no depth, whereas male X-Men character are both strong and having depth? Or what is the problem (apart from judging society by a Hollywood movie about superheroes)?
- tokipin 13y agoIt was a vision of a movie scene where the posturing and ambient styling made it clear that the movie-makers were emphasizing the "strength" of this female character, because "a strong woman is always cool." Something along those lines.
- Tichy 13y agoYou mean they were actually enforcing the stereotype of weak women by emphasizing the exceptionality of strong women?
- rustynails 13y agoStorm was a terribly written character. Giving her strong power and little personality was a token "female" hero with little thought. It was just plain "crap story telling". As someone else said, there are only a few xmen characters with depth - wolverine being one.
- tokipin 13y agoYes. I don't think I broke it down that precisely but that's probably what it boils down to.
- saraid216 13y agoI don't understand what you mean by Storm being strong or not strong. She's a claustrophobic mutant with massive self-esteem issues that have to be overcome in order to provide effective team leadership. The thing about Storm's story is that it's unexceptional amongst the X-Men. The essential narrative of X-Men is "teenagers have growing pains", so self-esteem issues are the stories' bread and butter. The other essential narrative, that of fearing and Othering a group for ambiguously poor reasons, is one which Storm could provide an interesting voice for if any of her writers weren't busy making her the token black girl. The dialogue between Xavier and Magneto is reminiscent MLK Jr. versus Malcolm X (not exactly, of course, but I'd be unsurprised if this was a direct inspiration).
- tokipin 13y agoAs I said, I've never seen the movies (or read the comic books, for that matter), so I don't know what in the bonkers you're saying. It's just the fact that it was a female character being portrayed in a particular way. I probably should have been clearer about that.
- saraid216 13y agoI don't understand how you even know who Storm is.
- tokipin 13y agoYea, it is weird. The dream was probably inspired by an X-Men trailer I must have seen, but I don't know why Storm was singled out. Though I've had enough practice with dreams to know the recursive detail-filling manner in which my brain makes them, so the answer is probably mundane, like maybe I saw two bright things and my brain knew that Storm's eyes glow bright so it filled in the rest with Storm.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoXavier and Magneto were a direct allegory to MLK Jr. vs Malcolm X, and general 1960's American racial issues (early comic books involved mutants getting lynched). This was the direct intention of the original writers way back in 60's when it was first written. Interestingly, the recent X-Men movies don't generally fall into the SFC archetype, at least no more than is required by the nature of the X-Men. Most of the on-screen characters are just "shoots X out of their Y" - Storm, Cyclops, Pyro, Iceman, etc. Of the 3 characters of any gender with any depth at all (Wolverine, Magneto, Rogue), the female is definitely not an SFC.