Always wanted to teach a class on Bond Girls…
You’ll call BS, but it wouldn’t be for the procession of gorgeous gorgeousity. Believe it or not, I’d love to study the progression of the archetype. The degeneration of the cliche. Sure, plots change… but the Bond girl remains. Name me a single Bond film where she doesn’t…
From Ursula Andress as Honey Rider in Dr. No to Pussy Galore in Goldfinger on up to the bumbling Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever on up to Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies, who actually portrays a graceful Chinese agent well practiced in martial arts. Where did this change happen? And why has it taken so long to get women out of the damsel in distress mode?
Anyone who saw Mad Max: Fury Road doesn’t need a news flash to know that women’s roles in action movies have changed. We can look at an accumulated list of women in action to see just how far they’ve come, baby. That’s a Virgina Slims cigarette commercial from the 70’s, for you folks born in the Flock Of Seagulls era.
“What is a woman? One of nature’s more agreeable blunders…”
I’ve got one that goes back even further. The Perils of Pauline series…Dick Dastardly, mustache, railroad tracks…the whole bit. One wonders how Mila Jovovich would have gotten out of it…
I like this breakdown by Super Forty on helpless females through movie history. Here’s a piece:
“Ever see the character Ripley in “Alien”? That sure threw the audience for a loop: a woman grabbing a man at the collar and ramming him up against a wall. And she wasn’t even bionic! Gasp! I thought this scene would be the start of a whole new trend for Hollywood writers. But sadly, it had no effect, and Hollywood has since continued to portray women as weak, whimpering, retreating and crying.
Classic weak-woman scenes in the movies and TV:
Man grabs woman by upper arm. Woman exclaims, “You’re hurting me!” (Err, isn’t that the idea?)
Man suddenly appears from around corner. Woman gasps and exclaims, “You scared me!”
Man and woman are arguing. Man’s voice raises and he steps towards her. Woman backs up. Man continues slowly moving towards her (no weapons, by the way, not even a raised fist) and woman continues backing away.
Man and woman are running away from gunmen in a forest. Man’s hand is always grabbed onto woman’s wrist and she slows man down. (A woman cannot run beyond her natural speed if a man has her wrist; if anything, she’ll run slower due to the disrupted gait! A woman’s, or man’s, fastest sprint can only be accomplished with BOTH arms pumping freely! Wake up, Hollywood! These scenes look so ridiculous!)
Woman is running from man in woods. Woman trips and falls, and man catches up.
Woman is hit by man’s backhand and falls to floor. Whimpering, she then slithers across floor away from man.”
Why not also throw in there a woman who can fight back? That would be far more realistic than any of the scenes I just described.
Men are portrayed as superhuman, leaping off the top of trains and running away; busting through glass windows, rolling out of it and hopping right back up and then taking out half a dozen bad guys; taking a gunshot to the shoulder, yet somehow beating up a string of bad guys and then driving a car throughout a 20-minute pursuit scene; yet women can’t even grab a man and slam him to a wall.
This goes far beyond men being bigger than women, because in a man-to-man fight, someone always loses, and you NEVER, NEVER, NEVER see the man who loses whimpering, crying, slithering in retreat to the corner of a room, or anything else like that — unless, of course, the male character has mental retardation. Or … the character endures horrific abuse, such as Ned Beatty in “Deliverance.”
But I’m talking about fight scenes. Every time a woman is approached in a bar by some creepo man, she acts helpless, and then it requires another man to scare off the creep.
I want to see a woman deck a guy for once, a woman who’s not bionic, not part Hulk, not part alien, not a hardened prison inmate, and not strung out on drugs — but an average woman. We’ve had enough of Hollywood always painting women as weeping, teary-eyed, feeble-voiced children when confronted by bad guys.”
Why not also throw in there a woman who can fight back? That would be far more realistic than any of the scenes I just described.
Men are portrayed as superhuman, leaping off the top of trains and running away; busting through glass windows, rolling out of it and hopping right back up and then taking out half a dozen bad guys; taking a gunshot to the shoulder, yet somehow beating up a string of bad guys and then driving a car throughout a 20-minute pursuit scene; yet women can’t even grab a man and slam him to a wall.
This goes far beyond men being bigger than women, because in a man-to-man fight, someone always loses, and you NEVER, NEVER, NEVER see the man who loses whimpering, crying, slithering in retreat to the corner of a room, or anything else like that — unless, of course, the male character has mental retardation. Or … the character endures horrific abuse, such as Ned Beatty in “Deliverance.”
But I’m talking about fight scenes. Every time a woman is approached in a bar by some creepo man, she acts helpless, and then it requires another man to scare off the creep.
I want to see a woman deck a guy for once, a woman who’s not bionic, not part Hulk, not part alien, not a hardened prison inmate, and not strung out on drugs — but an average woman. We’ve had enough of Hollywood always painting women as weeping, teary-eyed, feeble-voiced children when confronted by bad guys.”
Well, the times…they done changed…here…
And here…
And here…finally!
