Maybe females would like to see female leads what with them consisting of half the population? Maybe little girls would like to see Captain Marvel beating people up instead of yet another white guy? Maybe the basic idea that men and women are equally talented at acting suggests the huge inequality in lead roles is inevitably leading to a lower standard on screen? After all, if you want an actual meritocracy (the best people getting the best roles) then you would expect more minority actors in lead roles than we currently have. Unless you think white men are just better at acting or the best roles are white male roles. There's a whole well of talent not being utilised properly, which is reason enough for an attempt at correcting the balance.
I just find the use of the term "strive" in relation to this just odd. Like it's implying it absolutely must happen.
Should there be more female lead films? Yeah, there's absolutely no reason why not, but it's not a thing that absolutely has to happen or the world is fecked. It doesn't bother me, it bothers me when they're shit though and I've paid to see them just like any film that I found to be shit would. I get to voice my opinion on that. Which again is why I brought up the examples I did. I'm not saying don't make female lead films, I'm saying don't make crap like the new Star Wars films and then hide behind feminism and blame toxic white males when you made bad films/wrote bad characters. Don't dismiss the characters of the past that helped build the genre in order to give your new character a false step up. If you want to make films to give little girls something to look up to then that's great, do that, but do it right. Don't pump something out and when you get backlash for the poor quality cry bigotry and then talk about giving girls someone to look up to as an after thought.
I'm not arguing against diversity or anything like that. I'm arguing against the cynical way it's being used. It's all a deflection from creative bankruptcy and they've found a group of people they can blame for all their shortcomings.
Can you point out where I said that you said they need to be male lead films? I don't believe I did.
I pointed out that asking why they need to be a female lead is a pointless question. It infers that either nobody requires a role as a lead, in which case there should be no opposition to female leads, case closed and no discussion necessary - or that this question only applies to females, in which case the point of the discussion becomes apparent.
I believe you were referring to the former, that it should be a none issue which I agree with - but unfortunately it's not. It's so far in one direction, that we're now seeing attempts to balance it out. Just because you don't want your entertainment affected by politics you don't care about, doesn't mean shit because there's millions of people out there that do want their entertainment affected by politics that they very much care about - like the issue of representation in all walks of life.
And yes she was a damsel in distress. The fact that she mouths off to Tarkin doesn't change the fact that she was introduced as a prisoner who had to rely on the male hero as her only hope and who had to be rescued from the predicament that she was in. That was her role, in spite of the fact that she was plucky and stuck up for herself. The fluff you bring up in addition to that, doesn't change this core concept that she was a damsel in distress who needed to be rescued from the first minute of the movie. Also it's laughable to say that the people who grew up with her were too young to appreciate the bikini.
With regards to you knowing straight white dudes, your anecdotal experience is completely irrelevant as all anecdotes are. Your whataboutism and experiences with the opposite sex is also irrelevant because you've seen a few examples of A and haven't witnessed the plethora of examples of B. If you want to be blind to it, go ahead. Or alternatively, take 5 mins to ask 10 random men on the street to list the amount of times they've witnessed this behaviour from women, and then take 5 mins to ask 10 random women on the street how many times they've witnessed this behaviour from men. Extrapolate it, and gather more examples until you feel like you have a meaningful sample size. Or do any amount of reading into the subject at all, it's been discussed and documented to death and it's clearly way way way disproportionate. You can't just pretend it isn't a real issue because you haven't seen it yourself. To say that this kind of behaviour from one gender to another isn't mostly related to men is simply garbage. The Me Too movement alone evidences that, let alone all the other mediums that we've come to understand this problem from. I'm really sorry, but saying that that biker scene doesn't reflect real life and just reflects 'how people on TV sometimes act' just shows that if you don't hold the views yourself and see nothing wrong with them, then you are at least completely naive and blind to the reality of what your average woman goes through on a regular basis when it comes to men.
That isn't necessarily inherently a bad thing. Hell, I'm naive myself about this, I couldn't pretend to understand the scope or the impact as much as a woman could even if I can see and accept that it's true, and that's partly exactly why people push to change things in Hollywood and in other mediums. I doubt those who experience this, who feel it every day and who are affected by these attitudes give 2 shits about what you want from your entertainment just because you don't see white men being douchebags to woman and once had a colleague grope you.
Sorry that was my fault, I misread the way you asked why should there be a male lead and thought you were attributing that statement to me.
As I said in my response to Sully, the idea that it's something we should strive for just baffles me. Especially when the films that seem to be claiming this feminist angle the last few years really haven't been good and then biggotry is being used as a shield to deflect criticism. When a film starts firing out the political messaging now it feels like a warning sign that it's going to be crap and it's getting the defences ready. There's also millions of people out there who don't want their entertainment affected by politics they don't care about so it's all moot what anyone wants and at the end of the day Hollywood doesn't give a single feck if women or anyone is represented. It's all bluster and if it doesn't sell they won't make it. They aren't putting more Asians in Star Wars for representation, they are selling to the Asian market, it's the same with everything they do. You might care, millions might care, Hollywood only cares about money and PR and if the feminism thing isn't doing what it wants then it will get dropped like a stone. Having said all that, I'm not against female lead films in any way, I just prefer them to be good ones.
You're dismissing everything about her character to label her as a damsel in distress purely to reduce her to that role. She's a rebel that was on a mission, she pushed on with it despite it going horribly wrong, she then needed rescued so she could continue the next mission. What's wrong with needing rescued? Is it because men rescued her? This is one of the problems of letting a political agenda dictate entertainment. Women can't ever need help from men now? It's the same argument you used against Sarah Connor. There's a rabbit hole we're very close to going down. How is it laughable that people would be too young to appreciate the gold bikini? I was like 5 when I first saw it and I saw it dozens of times, if not more by the time I was a teenager. Not only that but it wasn't even that attractive, it's just a stupid bit from Friends. You've taken 3 films of character development, everything she did and boiled it down to she wore a gold bikini and she needed to be rescued. This strong female character that seems to be striven(strived? strove?) for is not a character. Characters have flaws, men have limitations, women have limitations, everyone needs help, characters need rescuing sometimes. Han was no worse for needing rescued by Leia and Leia was no worse for needing rescued by Han, Luke and Chewie. What exactly is wrong with starting out as a damsel in distress anyway? It doesn't mean that's their entire character. Luke didn't stay an ignorant farm boy.
I didn't pretend it wasn't a real issue and I didn't use those examples for whataboutism. I challenged your statement that it's "straight white dude" behaviour. Every race, gender and sexuality has people like that. Is it worse for women? I never said it wasn't, I'm pretty sure it is worse for them. How can you say the biker scene is a reflection of what the regular woman goes through on a daily basis though? You're not a regular woman so you don't know, you might be reading stories from people that things like that happened to, but at the same time there's not going to be people turning up to say "Well it never happened to me." You're hearing bad shit, then extrapolating that out to mean everyone is getting harrassed all the time and it's all these white dudes doing it. I don't mean this to sound like I'm dismissing anything that women go through or saying I actually know what it's like, because I really fecking don't. My point is in relation to attributing this behaviour purely to straight white men, you've labelled an entire group of people as the villain in this scenario.
Likewise, I don't give two shits what some screamer on Twitter wants from their films or what they think about the patriarchy. Bad shit happens in the world, yet it's got nothing to do with me paying to see a film and then being allowed to say that I don't like something about that film. They shouldn't get to use people's gender, race or sexuality to invalidate all criticism. I don't like Rey, I thought Captain Marvel was pretty pathetic and none of that means I'm a sexist or I hate women as much as Disney would like to pretend it does.
To try and cut down the long winded back and forth we've gotten into. A slightly simpler question I've been meaning to squeeze in here somewhere, because if this keeps going one of us is going to end up challenging the other to live as a woman for a week. If Sarah Connor and Leia are not two of the strong female characters that sci fi was built on and are just simply damsels in distress, then what are you expecting from this mythical strong female character they are searching for? Is it Rey? Someone utterly flawless that needs no help from men? What exactly is it? Because there needs to be a journey for the story, starting out awesome and continuing to get more awesome is boring. Is it Wonder Woman? Because she's been around for a very long time and that film really wasn't that good.
