To start off, her lover dies at the beginning of the movie so she is emotionally damaged, dealing with her heartbreak and desire to avenge his death, which eventually clouds her judgement. She fits the role of the weak, emotional, and fragile sex object.
Yes, our friend, Ethan Hunt, experienced some heartbreak as well, with the divorce/loss of his wife (to be explained in the movie) but he powers through it, without showing any signs of heartbreak or weakness despite his pain.
This brings me to the scene in which Carter is face to face with the woman who killed her lover. In the movie, Carter was given specific orders not to kill her. However, after a crazy, emotionally charged fight, Carter throws the assassin off the building.
In contrast to all the male fight scenes, this one loses all sense of control and the girls stumble around the room, resorting to throwing vases and lamps at each other, pulling each other's hair. To top it all off, they're both wearing skin-tight clothing that accentuates their bodies and there is plenty of cleavage going on there.
The outfit for a female fighting character is always the same: provocative, skin-tight outfits with heavy eye makeup and pouty lips, but she can throw a punch. More often than not, she is the accessory to her male counterpart, the girlfriend, sacrificing her life to be in his.
The media plays a powerful role in manipulating how we think about gender and defining "normal". From movies, boys learn how to be macho and see the woman as constantly emotionally fraught or dependent. On the other end, girls watch chick flicks and action movies where, in the end, its all about the guy.
How else do you see the media defining what is "normal"?
I also saw this movie with my male cousin. What great acting!!! (note my sarcasm). I find it so odd how it was given shining reviews. Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A." Ew. That scene bothered me as well. What was the point of the female character anyway? It seemed less of a stylistic, artistic, IMPORTANT choice to include her and more of a marketing scheme. This is surely the slow death of screenwriting.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't see any change in this trend because it's always happened. Even during the Golden Age, women were used as accessories to the men. Now, not ALL women, but quite a few. I'd love to see more movies like "The Help." It was a primarily all female cast portraying strong women with strong feelings who did something about those feelings.
I believe that the only reason that filmmakers put women in movies like these is because she is hardly ever wearing any clothes. I would like a movie like this to have a woman parading around in baggy sweatpants and an over-sized sweatshirt! But if you think about it, having only men is completely unrealistic. We need to think about how many women there are in the military and other professions that people associate with men. They make women these objects that get into one or two fights, but besides that are only used to run or seduce the bad guy, and it is an old fashioned idea. The movie industry really needs to evolve.
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