What's your take on SFCs? Do you agree or disagree with the article (or somewhere in between)? How should we judge or divide characters, if at all?
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Talk About It Thursday: Strong Female Characters: What's Your Take?
This week's discussion is about the term "strong female characters." I'm going to admit that I used to say this a lot. "Wow, this character is such a well-written, strong female character!" or something along those lines. And it wasn't until reading THIS article that I really thought about the way SFC is used. Now, I'm trying to stay away from using that term. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a feminist. And yeah, I agree with the points made in the post. Both "strong" and "weak" female (and male) characters can be great. We should focus more on the way the author writes them. Are they convincing? Do they seem real? Do you feel some emotion toward them? These are the important things to think about. You can love a "strong" or "weak" character, whether they're female, male, or otherwise. We shouldn't have a separate category for them. That just deepens the split even more. I could go on and on about the article and the topic and feminism in general, but I won't.
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I agree. I think the "strong female character" type thing is the entertainment industry's response to what they perceived as feminist complaints. Like, throwing women a bone and giving the characters more "masculine" personality characteristics (e.g. resilience, cunning) while still keeping them gorgeous because that's what the audience wants. The only way to remedy this, I think, is to just write *more* female characters. Right now, in any given movie, it will be mostly male-driven with maybe one or two main female characters. Those few females are then boxed into categories (SFC, girly girl, mother) and may not be afforded the three-dimensionality that the male characters may get. With more female characters, they can be shown to have as much depth and variety as the male characters.
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