I recently attended a panel discussion at which I met Elisabeth Robinson, a former film producer and executive turned novelist. The panel’s topic was whether or not publishers are tending to slot all female novelists into the “chick lit” genre. One of the points Ms. Robinson made was that her novel was clearly packaged as “chick lit”, with a picture of a little girl on the cover. It also featured not one but two female protagonists. And yet a number of men contacted her to say while they would ordinarily never have looked at a book with a little girl on the cover, someone they trusted recommended the novel, and they read it, and they loved it.
Hollywood insists men and boys don’t want to see stories featuring women, whether the women are shoe-shopping and falling in love or toting guns and shooting aliens. They say it’s unfortunate the male audience has that bias, but what can they do? Regular readers will be familiar with the response I gave in film school, in the film industry, and on this website: I don’t think men are incapable of enjoying female protagonists or even “women’s stories.” I think rather there is a stigma attached: a man or boy who reads female stuff suffers his masculinity and/or sexual orientation to be questioned. This is a cultural issue, and because marketing influences and shapes culture, I always argued Hollywood could indeed change the situation if they wanted – and open up vast new profit opportunities in the process.
A number of film professionals over the years explained it to me this way: young men prefer to picture themselves as the protagonists while women prefer to have sexual fantasies about the protagonists. They considered this immutable biological fact. The vast numbers of men who flocked to the Alien series and watched Sarah Connor kick ass and watched Buffy, sometimes on the sly, were “exceptions.” Or it was really the spaceship/Arnold/something else they were enjoying so much they’d put up with the unwanted female in the story’s midst. I was told I myself was a rare exception for relating to male protagonists rather than lusting after them. But since then the internet has exploded with women and girls expressing the same feelings.
Ms. Robinson also talked about the stigma against men reading women’s stories, and her book seems to be yet another example of a fiction that’s supposed to repulse men being enjoyed by those men who find it, despite the marketing. I also offered the fact that this website’s largest demographic (by a small margin, admittedly) is, and has been for some time, males 18-34. Judging by how rarely I have to moderate disparaging comments and how infrequently I track back our inbound links to some forum where men are bashing us, I’m going to hazard a guess this means most of that young, male audience is sympathetic to our desire for more diverse, interesting female characters.
What do you think? Are men really so offended by female sci-fi heroines, cops, and dramatic protagonists that they insist on male leads, as Hollywood assures us? Would Aliens have done better with a male lead? Should Terminator have been the story of Kyle Reese instead of the story of Sarah Connor (like, they elude the Terminator just long enough for her to give birth, and then she gets killed – probably protecting her young, of course – and he has to raise John)? Would the new Battlestar Galactica have been more successful if it had kept Starbuck male? Or is it just that men are teased and stigmatized into feeling they shouldn’t (openly) watch movies or shows in which they risk empathizing with a woman?
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I’ve met some guys who’ve internalized this so much, it’s scary. I’ve been shouted at by a couple of guys just for talking about BL (Boys’ Love, the slash of Japanese pop culture). At least one of them was deeply into ecchi anime himself.
Even worse, the first guy’s girlfriend said he was just joking, the second just laughed when he raved on about feminism “ruining womens’ lives”.
But on the topic of BL, I find it interesting that there is a rapidly growing fanbase of women (at least in Japan, whose popular culture I know better) are drawn to and relate better to characters in a genre of fiction without women. I think it’s generally the ones who feel more restricted by gender who like this sort of fiction, because they tend to be more interested in power dynamics, which can be explored in an all-male genre WITHOUT having to touch upon gender issues and its associated baggage. It also makes me sad, though, that the female character has to be removed rather than redefined.
Karakuri(Quote) (Reply)
Personally, I love Ingmar Bergman’s films and many of his movies feature a female “protagonist” (Persona, Cries and Whispers). Also, Silent Hill 3 was a fantastic video game; Babyface, the Alien series, and Hannah and Her Sisters (my favorite Woody Allen film) are all good films featuring strong, developed female leads.
As to novels, it’s possible that novels featuring females tend to be less well-received because of societal patterns putting women into a shallower category. Other cultures are fully capable of writing novels featuring women, such as Russia (Anna Karinina by Tolstoy, and many of Dostoyevsky’s books feature strong, dominant female characters) and England (Jane Austen is classic).
Many modern novels are trashy attempts to emulate Hollywood films regardless of their main protagonist, so the gender is only coincidental unless it’s a heavily masculinity/femininity-dominated book.
Tom(Quote) (Reply)
this is just two problems of incompetence layered on top of one another to become impenetrable.
one the one hand, part of it is it’s simply because this society had more men doing the creative work during our cultural formation periods that you see so few female protagonists: writing believably of the opposite sex is hard at best, so the path of least resistance is the predominantly male protagonist. this gets compounded over the years as lazy writers of male characters have many more tropes to fall back on.
the imbecile media suit sees this state of affairs and makes a pronouncement like the one above, though, because he has that fundamental inability to understand cause and effect that seems to come part and parcel with a business degree nowadays.
put together, laziness and stupidity form a barrier to any sort of change. the only way to fix it is to start making enormous cash in a way the suits haven’t thought of before, and they will then all imitate you.
Tom(Quote) (Reply)
Well, I hate reading chick-lit, but when it comes to Joyce Carol Oates, or any author with intelligent things to say, then I don’t mind.
And when I make a female character in a game, I am essentially identifying with the female protagonist, and maybe even roleplaying for fun. I might be ogling her behind at the same time, but there isn’t any problem identifying with the protagonist. Discussions about female characters between me and my friends aren’t limited to how hot they are, some female characters are pretty in-depth and fun. Latest, Morrigan in Dragon age. Nicely fleshed out, amoral character, who is believable.
I would only have problems with women’s stories if they had boring women in them. I didn’t care for The Devil Wears Prada. Fashion is boring. But Coraline, was weird and fun to read and watch.
Harsha(Quote) (Reply)
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