I
had to explain this to someone the other day and I think there's some
mileage in putting this out there in case anyone is interested.
The
reason I think that Mad Max: Fury Road can get away with doing
things with and to its female characters that would normally bring it
in for criticism (like, say, running a pregnant woman over with a
monster truck or the one Bride who decides for a moment that, yep,
sexual slavery in exchange for material comfort wasn't too bad a
deal, actually) is because there are close to a dozen named, speaking
female roles in the movie. What this means is that no single
character has to bear the weight of representing their entire gender.
When
you only have one or two developed female characters in an
overwhelmingly male cast (oh, hello, Avengers: Age Of Ultron,
I didn't see you there) you get way less leeway because there's
nothing to offset these things. Its easier to read the Bride who
breaks as an individual rather than a statement on women as a group
because she's standing next to Furiosa, the other Brides and the
sniper grannies.
So,
how do you get to explore flaws or weakness in female characters without being
accused of portraying women as innately weak? You include plenty of
them in what you're writing to show that you are treating characters
as individuals and not as a case study on your views of an entire
half of the human race.
And
I hate that something this simple even needed to be explained.
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