Rape: As countless people have said – Half of the movie’s main cast consists of sex slaves. And there’s not a single rape scene.
Gore: The film looks exactly the type to be ultra-violent a la Quentin Tarantino. But it’s not. The one gory moment is one that you can see coming from miles away and lasts only for a second. And even then, it’s not terrible. Considering this, the movie probably could have had a PG-13 rating with minor alteration.
Sexualization: Five women wearing nothing but gauze sounds like a recipe for anything but what we got; no lingering, awkward, bodily shots. There was even a scene with a completely naked young woman with the camera focused directly on her. Guess what. The camera treated her exactly as if she were wearing flannel pajamas.
Degradation of women: Bad people get upset. We get that. Sometimes they like to swear at our heroines. And yet no one felt the need to say “bitch,” “cunt,” or “whore.” How a film managed to present about the least female-friendly society you can imagine but treated its female characters with more respect than 99% of action movies is beyond me.
Things that the film did not handle with restraint:
FLAMETHROWER GUITAR.
Gender equality: No one once says “Women are ___,” or “Men are ___.” It almost seems like outside of Immortan Joe’s freakishly utilitarian society, men and women get along just fine. Huh. Weird.
Death: Good and bad people die alike on the Fury Road; very quickly. It’s your typical action movie body count. But in a move that’s both odd and brilliant, the film spends a good amount of it’s scarce dialogue detailing what death means to the characters. For some, it’s a suicidal call to honor. For others, it’s a necessary risk to bring about more life. People die in droves. And it’s sad. Death matters.
Criticism: This is about the most critical movie of gender inequality, capitalism, and fascism I’ve ever seen without anyone ever mentioning gender inequality, capitalism or fascism.
COMPASSION: I can’t state this enough. This is a post-apocalyptic genre movie where people kill each other over sex slaves, border disputes, and cars and its message is hope and compassion. The biggest, most heroic moment of the movie is an act of healing, not an act of violence. WHOA.
“40 is good, 50 is great, 60 is fab, and 70 is fucking awesome!” ~ Helen Mirren 💪🏻
missed some greats!
I can’t believe Julie Andrews is not on this list guys.
“It’s fucking outrageous. It’s ridiculous. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.” – Helen Mirren on the bullshit that is (sexist) ageism (source)
Whenever you need a positive role model to help you remember that aging is NATURAL, aging is BEAUTIFUL, there is NOTHING WRONG with aging, and if you’re LUCKY will you live long enough to experience it – look long and hard at every single one of these these Queens.
LOOK. AT. THEM.
Go ladies!
Might I add
Rekha
Hema Malini
Shabana Azmi
Asha Parekh
Rita Moreno
Many women have talked about how amazing life is after your 40s. Some have their happiest years in their 70s. We need to stop believing society when it tells us our lives are over when we reach 35.
We had 5 months of pre-production and, you know, I’ve seen the girls at the gym, around the studio. They always looked so beautiful and so strong and fit but I had never seen them in costume. When we shot the first scene, when all the women were riding horses together, I was holding Patty’s shoulder, watching the monitor and I told her ‘I can’t believe we’re shooting this’. – Gal Gadot on the Amazons’s workout video.
It’s rare to come across a movie (or any medium) that has more than one strong female character, but with Ghostbusters (2016) we get four! And what a fun crew they are: science-loving, quirky, brave, and always there for each other, these fearless ladies overcome obstacle after obstacle in order to prove that they aren’t crazy…and also save the day.
Now, before the complaints roll in: NO, this movie is not trying to replace the old one. We are allowed to enjoy both, you know. NO, this movie is not a good remake, because it isn’t a remake. It’s a brand new story based on the old concept, with fan-pleasing nods to the original. YES, I’m sure it is annoying for men to see Chris Hemsworth’s character be the only man on the team who is only there for looks and is a total ditz. Gee, wonder how that feels? It was intentional, sir, to prove a point. YES, this movie is amazing and funny, and you can’t change my mind.
Any other teams of female characters out there I should write about? Let me know at @yesstrongwomen in a message or ask!
So who else wants to see the scene where Chaos makes his demands known to Parker and Sophie? With Nate, Eliot, and Hardison just standing around waiting gleefully for the fallout.
Right?! Women as complex, layered characters: this is how you do it. I also love this bit of the DVD commentary floating around:
JOHN ROGERS: And also, this is an informal rule, is, y’know, and we’ll probably wind up breaking it eventually but, I have a real bug up my ass about female characters being in danger. Like hostage. And it’s kind of the rule we don’t give up.
CHRIS DOWNEY: Is it just female? I thought it was in general.
JOHN ROGERS: No, very specific. If our women get kidnapped, they either rescue themselves or they kick ass on the way out of the rescue. If you see, every time our girls get grabbed there’s a punch thrown or- No, I- I hate that crap.
ASDJDSASKL JOHN ROGERS, LET ME LOVE YOU.
Even the female villains are handled fairly. Their monstrous crimes are committed because they are greedy, power hungry, or callously ambitious—failings that can apply to all of humanity. In other words, they are never villainized just because they are women. They are not sainted either: women are shown to be capable of the same evil as anyone else, and are taken just as seriously.
Even the most likely candidate for female character assassination, Nate’s ex wife Maggie, turns the cliché on its head: she is literally everybody’s favorite. Even Sophie’s. I LOVE THAT IDEA SO MUCH I HAVE NO WORDS FOR IT. Another typical evil female caricature, The Catty Workplace Bitch, is subverted in Tara. She has all the signs at first: her overt sexuality and hidden motives make the audience suspicious of her, but she turns out to be a genuine ally in the end. And even before we know that, even when the crew doesn’t like her and she doesn’t like them, Tara is able to work with them like the damn professional she is. HOW GREAT IS THAT?! IT’S SO GREAT I JUST WANNA HUG THIS SHOW SO MUCH FOREVER. GAH.
RandomFandom 