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Has anyone else noticed that almost all of the “kicking a** and taking names” leads in movies lately have been women? The new Star Wars movies are just an example.
Something else I have noticed lately is a plethora of “hot chicks with guns” memes. Now I suspect this may be along the same lines as “hot chicks with hot rods” or “hot chicks on bada** bikes” and so on, as it’s pretty unlikely women themselves are creating these memes.
But there is something about this that troubles me. For example, on a social media site I saw this image, along with the caption, “A happy woman is…”
(Setting aside the debate of her hotness level, that I will leave up to the males to deliberate) the thing is while it at first glance is comforting to think, “heck yeah, I am gonna go get me some guns!” when I really pondered it, is this not just another form of “You go gurrrl!!!”?
For me anyway, happiness is not a warm gun. My preferred happiness is standing behind a big, strong, well fed, and well loved man with a gun.
Let’s be real, women are not and will never be warriors. We can be mean, nasty, and sneaky but women prefer their violence more on the passive aggressive side than on the hand-to-hand combat one.
Even early on, this can be seen if you observe pre-school aged children play. The boys love to play warrior while the girls stand in a huddle screaming and pretend to be the rescued damsels in distress.
I wish I had the link to a post from long ago about how women can best support a war effort — not by taking up arms but by bringing tea and sandwiches to the men. (The post is long gone now but maybe someone here remembers the incident the post was referring to?)
Let’s not fool ourselves, ladies. We need men (husbands, dads, brothers, sons) who love us deeply and fiercely enough to keep us safe. Men are not our enemy, they are our guardians.
And this could be a whole other post, but when little boys play warrior, don’t shame them. Build them up, make a fuss, and tell them how fabulous and brave they are. It won’t make them violent, it will make them men.
Let those who have ears hear.
What do you think? Please share in the comments.
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
I love this and I totally agree!
Thanks Amirie and welcome! 🙂 I agree, I can’t think of anything more terrifying than having to defend myself in a time of war. No thank you. I mean I would if I had no other choice, but it would not be something I would choose if I could avoid it!
This is pandemic in Britain. Every combat scene now contains a women. SWAT women, Special Force women, female cops etc etc
Apparently aimed at “showing to the girls that they can do anything”. I find this highly disturbing for a very specific reason.
At the moment, there is no status gain for man in taunting a woman into a male ritual of Monkey Dance and mauling her. I’d say, it’s not even “no gains”, but “negative gains”. Man kicking the shit out of the woman will be considered a coward by other men – it’s like punching a child, or an old person. But this is solely based on a widespread and accepted notion that women are fragile.
Now, feminists, The State, high-achieving women, whomever – want to remove that. By promoting fantasies of women warriors. What can go wrong, right? Guess what happen when girls will no longer be perceived as fragile creatures, and there will be a status gain from picking a fight with girls for boys? The violence against women folk will peak. And it will be laughably one-sided, as women will not gain extra testosterone and what it grants to men: developed upper body muscles, dense bones, higher pain threshold and risk tolerance – just by watching the movies where women kick the shit out of men.
It is delusional wishful thinking that enables future violence against women.
I totally understand. I served 8 years in the Air Force as a Cardiopulmonary Tech and on deployments I was perfectly okay with allowing the Security Police to protect the hospital while I tend to patients. I’ll stay right inside of this tent thank you. 🙂
Exactly, Sergey! I also wonder if these boys who have been raised to suppress their masculine warrior tendencies are the ones now creating these memes, hoping the women will save them bc they have been taught they themselves should never ever fight?
Bloody hell… I love women in Nazi uniforms.
But this phenomena is not new. I remember the gangster´s girfriend in that “noir” American films from the 30s and 40s. The hot woman with the little gun in her stockings..
True, Iberian, in fantasy it is OK, in reality… not so much! Unless it is play reality, and you know who are we to judge what people do. Lol. 🙂
RPG, I’m still trying to catch European men’s attitude toward violence. What I can tell, is completely different from Mother Russia.
Back there, you took it as a default that society is inherently violent. You accepted it as a fact of life and adapted accordingly. I don’t say that Russian men are all tough fighters, but we do keep in mind the fact that spontaneous violence is always possible.
Here, most people never actually experienced any type of violence. It’s considered the gravest offence in school (that starts from age 4), it will get you immediately fired or arrested after. So they only maybe have a few low-intense push-push pub brawls over their lifetimes.
I’m trying to find a boxing gym in London at the moment. God, that’s hard. I mean, there’re dozens of “boxing sessions”, you can find one in every gym. But they’re are Zumba-style punching-pad exercises (and 80% of attendees are women! There are more men on yoga!) – and with strict ban on sparring! Insane.
I could see how growing up in Russia, being a coddled pajama boy was not how things were. I don’t think it is good for any of us for men to be feminized and women to be masculineized — maybe it is projection? Women are attracted to masculine men and men are attracted to feminine women. Today we have the opposite, and suprise — the two do not attract!
Maybe it’s different in Texas? I get the hot women with guns thing 🙂 It’s still scary having to ever use it, but it is really nice knowing you’re not helpless and left without a means to defend yourself if you ever need to.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an assassin lol. Who knows? It was NOT from seeing it somewhere or in movies, I simply liked the idea of killing peope who were evil. I think I got it from the Bible story of the woman tricking the man into sleeping with her, and driving a tent peg through his head. I loved that!
If I remember “Peanuts” well, I think it was Snoopy who said “Happiness is a piece of fudge caught on the first bounce.” He had good priorities.
Lol Stephanie, when 9 1 1 happened (No kids yet but I was married) I actually contemplated volunteering to do pretty much that to you know who! I would have gladly seduced him and then — shiv! — in the name of my country. And yes, I think it is good for women to know how to use guns (I could learn this myself) but that women could be the front line? Hopefully not! Things are pretty bad by the time things get to that.
As for the caption above, the gun is a phallic symbol. So, she might as well be holding a dildo or God forbid, a live penis attached to an actual man. Or maybe I just watch too much porn. But hey, there ya go.
LOL GAL, maybe bc I am a girl I don’t get what it is really about! 🙂 Had not thought of that!
Firefights are like honeymoons compared to marriage
I totally agree – wars and front lines or even being in the army is way too much for me (or women really)! But yea, something behind the scenes… Russian spy kind of thing lol.
GLA now that I look at it again, ak, I am embarrassed! Lol.
Snoopy sideskirted the issue brilliantly.
“As for the caption above, the gun is a phallic symbol. So, she might as well be holding a dildo or God forbid, a live penis attached to an actual man.”
Lord have mercy! I am SO GLAD I’m not a man and I only saw a gun there…. goodness!!!!!!
“maybe bc I am a girl I don’t get what it is really about! Had not thought of that!”
Well, if you were a dirty girl, you would have seen it from the start, but then the whole nature of the post would be different too. I mean really Bloom, you didn’t have to think all that LONG or HARD about it did you? Funny how that just SLIPPED your mind.
Hey Stephanie, you see it now! Don’t lie.
That caption above reminded me of this:
😉
GLA I honestly just took it at face value. Not that now that I look at it I don’t see it, but yes that was not where my mind went initially!
Whew glad Stephanie didn’t see it either! 🙂
“GLA now that I look at it again, ak, I am embarrassed! Lol. ”
This post isn’t going the way you had planned, is it? 😛
Plausible Deniability. YAWALT. 😉
@ RPGal
I am very obedient.
@ Sergey
Sdrasvuitie!
I have been in Holy Russia several times (in Ukraine and Belarus, too) traveling on my own. I never had a major problem with your countrymen. Just once, I was waiting with a bunch o people outside a nightclub in Kaliningrad, out of the sudden, a big Russian guy came out of nowhere and pushed me with violence. He shouted at me: “Fucking Italian!”. I said to him: “No, I am not Italian, I am Spanish”. Then he replayed: “Oh! Sorry, man” and he left away.
Well, maybe I can understand him a little bit. Italians use to go in big crowds to Russian cities and they behave a little harassing to local girls, like they were in Rome shouting at blonde tourists. I find that Italian behavior funny in Italy, and female blonde tourists love it. But out of context, in Russia, it is quite another thing. Spanish men they don´t behave that way to women nowhere on Earth because Spanish men are frightened about Spanish women´s bad attitude. We have grown that way: really scared about our women´s bad attitude and terrible answers. An Spanish woman answer can destroy any man ego in seconds and forever. Then here you see really attractive women in the cops, with that bitch from hell face expressions and that big guns and the sticks and then you say to yourself “No jokes here”. I have seen female cops all over the place, no one scared me the way Spanish female cops scare me.
Remainder: That attitude in our local women has nothing to do with feminism. In the times of macho patriarchy (lol) it was the same. Feminism succeed a lot in Spain since the mid 70s but it was only throwing gasoline to a bonfire. They never have been sweet creatures before feminism. Spanish women are The Exorcist´s girl.
@ Bro Iberian; this girl?
Wow Iberian, even I am afraid of these Spanish women!!! Lol.
@ George
Absolutely.
@ RPGal
You bet!
“it’s pretty unlikely women themselves are creating these memes.”
You’re probably right. I can’t picture women making memes like that, especially with all that sexual innuendo going on. Women don’t have nearly enough testosterone to have sex on the brain as much as men do unless they’re using steroids for whatever reason.
“My preferred happiness is standing behind a big, strong, well fed, and well loved man with a gun.”
You precious, precious girl! This made my day.
Better to stick with Snoopy.
Awwww, thank you Alex! 😀
@ Alex your comment just made my day, in fact! 😀
” I think I got it from the Bible story of the woman tricking the man into sleeping with her, and driving a tent peg through his head. I loved that!”
Hmmm, interesting. I was always fascinated of the story of Jezebel’s death where she was thrown out the window of her castle like a rag doll, breaking her neck upon hitting the ground and the dogs outside ate her corpse while it was still warm.
I loved that too! Good times in the bible. 😉
“Men are not our enemy, they are our saviors.”
Good luck with that. “A happy woman is… a woman who knows her place.”
And with that, I’m done. Good night, everyone. 🙂
@Fuzzie
Snoopy ain’t skatin’ around this no more, bro.
Fun fact, Scottie Hamilton’s routine was video recorded and the anime of Snoopy was later superimposed on it.
You mean, that Snoopy has been corrupted?
That must have been hard to do.
“(No kids yet but I was married) I actually contemplated volunteering to do pretty much that to (((you know who!))) I would have gladly seduced him and then — shiv! — in the name of my country.”
Who? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??? And while married, no less. Hmmm. Yeah, skate on there, Snoopy.
I stopped watching Hollywood movies years ago. They sell a total role reversal.
Rote,
Thank you for getting me back to the original post. Your point is well taken and I am tired of seeing girls take down men twice their size. It only ends up feeding thier ego to go out and try it for real.
Listen to the men yelling. “Fight Back!”
For the most part women just do not have the instinct to fight back.
Their fight or flight reflex is locked on flight.
More than strength etc this is why women “heroes” are not believable.
Classic meme.
Guy’s girl shows up before the attack, she gonna die so he gets pissed and rains heroic justice down on the merciless heathens.
Braveheart, Mad Max, Rambo2, even Disney’s John Carter, the list is endless.
Name me a flick where the chick avenges her murdered man.
Woman finds a dead spouse…she mourns, cries for justice from someone…
But get pissed and pick up the gun??
GLA, I did NOT volunteer for this mission, but had I not been married I may have went after Osama just to give him the shiv, that’s what I meant. Of course this is hypothetical, because it would have been a long shot to track him down and then seduce him then do the shiv.
Oh nevermind! Lol. They got him in the end!
Stephanie
Your fantasy nails it. An assassin. Strike sneaky, from the shadows. Not head on. Not strike in anger but cold, calculated.
0.000001% of combat is that. The first sniper shot. Then the rest of the team goes loud.
https://tonsplace.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/movies-vs-real-life/
“a flick where the chick avenges her murdered man”
Without disagreeing MH, “Bandolero”, “Serenity” and “Attilla”.
Zoe is an aberration on all counts.
And as much as I likd the guy…Wash? Really?? Wash?
Thanks for reminding me of that link Ton, I added it! See “hand to hand combat.”
RPG,
Just wanted to let you know that I did not think of the symbolism of the picture until it was brought up in the comments.
So it is not just a difference in the way men and women think.
Oh good, go figure! 🙂
There are some additional reasons for this Action Girl phenomena. First here’s a bit of background because I am new to your community here: I work in the publishing industry, write and edit fiction and non fiction and was once a screenwriter and producer working in network and cable TV.
So, after reading your blog for a week or so I have suddenly run across a post that is right up my alley!
Here are some truths about these female action hero stories and how and why they are made —
1) There is pressure to have as many female roles in Hollywood as possible, though not necessarily female heroes.
As much as popular culture seems to deny it, men’s and women’s worlds are still quite separate, especially when you get into areas covered in fictional adventures. In reality, having a female character tagging along with your male hero isn’t often realistic and it puts her into a side kick role that is pretty boring to write since it’s been a staple of stories for a century or more. One of the things that was an unbelievable relief to writers in the mid 20th century was the rise of Noir subject matter where you could allow the woman to more often play a villainous role in classically male stories … not that examples like Lady Macbeth don’t count!
So getting the “girl” involved in an adventure plot without her having to play a traditional supporting role (which is boring to a writer) is difficult. She always seems to be tagging along with only a hint of actual relevance to the plot. You can beat this problem without making her the hero, I’ve done it a number of times, but it makes your story more complicated by far. Streamlined stories are what it’s about these days. All this changes when you make your female character the one the story is ABOUT. Now you no longer need to justify her involvement … it’s her story, she needs no excuses for her being there. It’s simple and straightforward.
2) Writing women is FUN, even when they are just stand-ins for men (well, less fun, but still …). Male writers write male characters ALL DAY EVERY DAY in every genre but especially in adventure type films and fiction. Personally, I really love writing women. They are a welcome relief from the logic of writing men. In fact I have occasionally gone to some lengths to create men who are in highly charged emotional situations or have a background of greater emotionality in order to mix things up and make them more interesting to write. I have a long background in macho fiction and film and it’s both fun and exciting to write different characters and the first and most fundamental difference between people is sexual.
3) As a man, I find myself very attracted to female characters as my heroes because I can put them in more jeopardy. This is, of course, because they are women. Even if they are super competent warrior women (I haven’t written one of these yet) there is still the underlying feelings of female vulnerability. The secret to writing fiction is that you take your characters and then you do horrible things to them until they finally triumph and that creates a sense of catharsis in both you and your audience. The underdog is always a better hero than someone who seems destined to win. I get a real rush out of creating a woman who can triumph over a traditionally male situation, and creating a situation where this is believable is always an interesting problem. It’s not only because she is a woman, though. It’s because she is an underdog. It’s the human experience rather than the sexual politics. As hired creators writers in Hollywood have only just been allowed to start writing these sort of women-centric action stories … pretty much just since “Alien.” It was an occasional thing that is going mainstream only now. Star Wars has only now caught up with Alien!
In the audience boys like to watch attractive girls and girls like to watch active women. This seems like a win win for those directing the path of popular culture … which, just to be truthful, is not the writers but the “creative” executives. These “creatives,” contrary to popular belief, are rarely motivated by money but by internal corporate power politics … the winds of which could blow in any direction for nearly any reason.
It’s possible that male writers would also like to write the sort of women they wish existed … if women are going to have to play male roles in modern society then it would be good to inspire them to do so with the sense of honor and legitimate authority expected in a man. There’s a lot more to being a bad ass than just kicking butt. If women are going to talk the talk they need to walk the walk. If history and fiction have taught us anything it’s that snowflakes don’t survive even the slightest heat and that the future always belongs to those who can get up off the ground again and again.
4) In TV go girl programming has been a market driven thing longer than in the theaters, though it has been presented in a softer manner. Traditionally, women shop. Therefore the ads are for them. Therefore TV, especially broadcast network TV, is for them. Programming wise, until just recently, theatrical movies were seen as being more of a male choice and TV a female choice. More women are in executive positions in Hollywood in general and they are getting braver about what they choose. The MALES behind the scenes in Hollywood are VERY girly in their culture no matter how macho they may be as individuals. But until just recently the men kept the women down pretty consistently.
5) As a producer I would VASTLY rather make an action film with a female star than a male because of attitude. In general, male stars are like: “Do you HAVE to tie me to the train? My hair will get messy.” But the ladies tend to be all: “Tie me to the train? Screw that! I want to do the jump ONTO the train!” They are just more gung ho about everything. Some of this is because the guys do it all the time and so they are bored by it (especially the constant technical repetition of complex action sequences), some of it is because they are pussies who are way too full of themselves. The other truth is that there are many times more roles for men in films … because, in life, men tend to do more active sorts of stuff, it’s just a fact … so the women are unbelievably happy to work and are vastly less whiny about difficult stuff. Women also tend to live in their imaginations rather than the physical world, this gives them a significant benefit in the discipline of acting. Beyond that, film crews are big collections of men who are basically construction workers and technicians, highly competent and very male. They tend to behave better and do better work if there are women around (especially attractive women). Unconsciously they compete in their quest to prove their excellence.
I can be as irritated as anyone with the current “You go girl” silliness and there is no doubt that it does show up in movies more and more but you have to realize that it’s also just a relief to add women to the aggressively macho (a lot like the military) environment of film making. Unlike the military, there is no potential down side to having them there. Where they are less welcome is in the ranks of sniveling bureaucrats on the executive and producer side of the business, where being female to often (though the most honorable and brave executive I ever knew was a woman) an excuse for never having to have honor or courage or convictions. As publishing is taken over (almost completely now) by women that is a problem there too … though again, one of the most honorable people I ever knew was Linda Grey at Ballantine. Movies and publishing function better when there is a true alpha, an INSPIRATIONAL leader, as opposed to someone simply obsessed with dominance at the helm. It’s more common that is a man, but I’ve been lucky enough to see women pull it off … though not recently. Is it an issue of another generation?
Sorry for going on and on. It’s what happens when you let a writer loose.
@ Allan
As a guy who loves bad girls and tough girls, I agree totally with you.
The stepmom of Cinderella rocks, so Joan Collins in “Dinasty”. What to say about Sharon Stone in “Blood and sand” or “Totall recall” or “Basic instinct” or “The quick and the dead”? Hell, yes!
Off Topic.
First of all, Mr. Trump´s domestic policy is not of my business at all since I am not American, but I got quite surprised about Prez Trump very first decision in the White House: banning Obamacare. I thought Trump was kind of “socialist Right”, the way the European Far Right is. By the way: the Euro Far Right is crowded of tough women at command. Shall we consider from now on a new feminist school? Fasci-Feminism?
I think it was the queen witch of Snowhite, no the spetmom of Cinderella.
Allan Kardec,
Thanks for a very interesting post. I’ve often wondered about the challenge faced by male writers creating female characters, or female writers creating male characters….I wonder if there are any standard patterns of what writers in these situations tend to get wrong in their constructions.
I don’t write women as good as I’d like and certainly the type of woman who tends to criticize nearly everything about men’s vision of women would probably have my head in a basket. But I do write women better than quite a few female writers that I know write women … could that be because they are not willing to look clearly and unemotionally at themselves and their sex, or put themselves into a female character who is imperfect?
The hardest thing for me to do, as a man writing women, is to find the space to appropriately express the tangential, sub textual, way women often, though not always, communicate. Unless you are very good at it, it takes up a good deal of real estate and therefore time, so everyone, even women writers, tend to have their female characters, especially in action movies, communicate more like men; saying what they mean straight out.
I’ll overstate the case a bit her because no one really worries about this in the way I’m about to put it but: if you get 12 lines of dialog on a page you are doing good. A page runs about a minute. A TV show might shoot 4 to 6 pages per day and a feature maybe 2. A day costs around $100,000 minimum. You can see that there might be some pressure against making the dialog too subtle IF you’re not really good and efficient at that sort of subtlety. I’d say that, more than the fact that most of the writers are men, is why some women complain about how women’s parts are written.
When you are “in the zone” the characters just speak for themselves and when you’re not the ideas tend to leak onto the page as you go over and over it so I’m not entirely clear how I do it. It’s a lot like doing improve comedy … just not for an audience.
I do ask four questions however: 1) What does the character want? Like right now at this moment. 2) How does the character control the world? Like what tools do they use on any given situation? Seduction, reductionist logic, a display of reason-ability? Do they change methods when they don’t get their way? 3) Are they always acting in what they PERCEIVE to be their own best interest? As opposed to the writer’s best interest, which is cheating. 4) What came before this moment? A character forced back into a life of crime should probably never say: “I don’t want to be forced back into a life of crime.” But he should act (and speak) as if he secretly resents what is happening.
Women’s characters or not, you are always writing subtext, drama/fiction is dull as dust without it. People NEVER really lie if you watch their behavior. It’s got to be natural selection that forbids us to expend calories on things that don’t matter to us. Appearing to be a good person could matter to a jerk, but watch long enough and you’ll see that the energy is going into “appearances” as opposed to goodness. What writers do is carefully create situations designed to expose the behavior that reveals the truth behind people’s character. Put the right number and type of situations in order and you have an interesting story.
If there are any other writers here it would be great if they spoke up to argue or share their sense of what we are doing when we are at work!
Again, long winded, but you got me thinking …
I have noticed this and it’s annoying. It’s just not believable that these skinny little waifs are whooping ass on bad dudes twice their size. Like, Kiera Knightly as a butt kicking bounty hunter? I think this trope can be traced back to Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, where after every nerd gamer had her poster on the wall (or was a screen saver). They grew up to be Hollywood screenwriters, I guess.
A character forced back into a life of crime should probably never say: “I don’t want to be forced back into a life of crime.” But he should act (and speak) as if he secretly resents what is happening.
If only you could have coached George Lucas…
Farm Boy,
That would have had more impact had you allowed Master Yoda to say that. 🙂
While the script has an overt effect, music is subliminal. I wonder how much of the success is attributable to John Williams?
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Zion — Slap me up side the head if you’re already familiar with what I’m about to say — I agree with you totally about the realism. But films are fantasy, pure and simple. The good ones will create a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in the audience; meaning they will give you just enough reality to keep you in your seat and having fun. Obviously, certain bits of casting (waif-like girls and their giant adversaries), directing (the details of the fight) and writing (the situation in which the fight takes place) can be excellently or poorly done. Writers and directors have to take the most criticism here; casting is always about who’s bankable/affordable and who’s available at the last minute, ‘realism’ often isn’t even considered.
I’m sure you could come up with a situation where a bounty hunter woman was wise enough to carefully approach only when she had the advantage and, in my opinion, it would be a more interesting situation to see her nearly failing because of the liabilities of being female … I haven’t seen the film but that is the sort of thing that I’d find more entertaining and a challenge to write.
Farm Boy/Yoda — you got me laughing. Mr. Lucas was a good writer once, as a young filmmaker I can’t tell you how much I learned from American Graffiti, then he got famous and started thinking too much about what he was doing.
You made me rethink my Star Wars/Alien comment above … Leia was a good fantasy heroine and not an over the top (like you see today) ‘action girl.’ She even talked like a s**t testing woman: “Aren’t you a little short for a storm trooper?” She substituted spunky and funny for chop socky. On the other hand I have heard that Alien’s Ripley character was originally a man with only minor adjustments for the casting of Sigourney Weaver. There’s a lot of BS in Hollywood so I don’t know if this last is true.
Yoda’s comments keep going to spam. This is humiliating for a Jedi.
One wonders what inspired Lucas with his Anakin/Padme dialog. Surely not the Force. Furthermore, building the major character’s decision around teen angst was not good
That would have had more impact had you allowed Master Yoda to say that.
Are you suggesting that Master Yoda is a puppet?
One thing wich really shocked me is that although the Shieldmaids as we got to know them did not exist, many viking women were most likely absolutely not helpless.
They defended Home and Hearth while the men were away. Fact is, all able bodied Men were away during at least the Sommer months.
Intruders, Lawless men and Outcasts to say nothing of Prey would have been a constant danger. So being able to defend Home and Hearth and themselves or at least hold the attackers of for a while was essential. This is the grain of truth wich all the Ancient Writers build around on.
Womens Graves with weaponry are most likely a sign of Status and Importance rather then showing of female warriors. But they do show how versatile Womens Roles were back then. And they show that many women were highly respected for their occupation. (We can also safely assume that many women of the poorer people would be craftswomen alongside their men or in their own right.)
When one compares the work these women put in to keep home and hearth but also the agriculture going without able-bodied men the workload of the modern SAHM pales in comparison. Also the hatred towards kinder gardens seems silly when taking into account that the children are up with a lot of people who watched them.
And this could be a whole other post, but when little boys play warrior, don’t shame them.
So true but in our house there is this rule also:
All wich you recklessly destroy needs to be repaired or repaid. If someone not involved in the play gets hurt, this play is over for good!
Boys need so much stricter boundaries then most people give them.
Just catching up with reading all the comments… wow Allan how interesting – thank you for writing those in depth comments. It’s interesting you say that a lot of women live inside their imaginations frequently, I do kind of live vicariously through my husband’s job, and I love hearing stories of him having to fight and take someone down (even though I couldn’t have done it that way at all more than likely). One time he actually caught himself fighting someone outside a gas station on his dash cam. He let me watch it and it was SO AMAZING! I always refer to him as Batman… but seriously he’s like an action hero to me from the movies lol.
A lot of the police wives I talk to admit their husbands’ jobs are extremely sexy. There seems to be a higher level of sexual attraction there where they OPENLY talk about how sexy their husbands are. I’ve never heard normal women do that about their husbands, which is sad in a way. We were married before he started though LOL, so I didn’t just marry him because he was a man in uniform… but it is nice knowing and watching what he’s able to do.
Some of my favorite movies are the Hunger Games lol… not sure what you think of Katniss Allan, but it’d be interesting to hear your interpretation.
I thought it was brilliant when they did show just how kind of stupid and vulnerable she is (even though I love her and love those movies) when she stepped out in front of those traitors and was shot. Idiot move, but just like an idealistic woman would do lol. Lucky enough she had on bullet proofing material, but it was realistic in the way women think they can just talk and bring peace.
Welcome Allen, and thank you for adding some behind the scenes info! 🙂
Lol Looking for Zion, good points! Thanks for commenting and welcome!
Emesherweib, true re limits. Those seem like very fair and reality based limits! Welcome!
Stephanie, I liked hunger games as well. The book more so than the movie. 🙂 but I only read the first book, have seen two or three of the movies. Lots of allegory to current events there, that was what I found really fascinating.
I don’t see any Yoda comments in spam, farm boy. I wonder what’s happening to them? Sorry to Yoda about that!
Yoda silenced by technical issues? Sounds like a Sith plot to me!
Farm Boy, it is only that Yoda has more gravitas on certain subjects.
More John Williams may be needed.
Stephanie: “It’s interesting you say that a lot of women live inside their imaginations frequently”
I actually think this should be a subject of Red Pill research. I have noticed that getting on the right side of a woman’s imagination or fantasies is a necessity in the seduction process. Engage her imagination and she will do half the work you. Perhaps it could be called “training the hamster.” We know that women do the same sort of thing in their own way, to men. Maybe that one should be called: “training the lizard … you know, brain.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called my female friends or co-workers (and some “subjectively minded men”) out for what I call “adding information” to what I’m saying, when it comes to accurate communication it is necessary to stay on the same page but as a writer this inclination, which exists in differing amounts in men and women, is your greatest friend. Good fiction guides the audience in telling themselves the perfect version of your story. A good actor lives in a state where unreal things have a visceral reality. I wrote and directed Radio Dramas for quite awhile, no costumes, no sets, no props, no “reality” for an actor to grab onto. We used plenty of good people but the women always stood above the pack in their ability to inhabit whatever fictional world we were dealing with.
Thank you RGP!
Emscherweib: viking women were most likely absolutely not helpless.
In envisioning men’s and women’s societies I’ve always thought of two circles, one inside the other. The inner circle is the women and they are facing inward, dealing with inward things. The outer circle is the men, facing outward. There’s a lot you can do with that metaphor but I am thinking women are more inclined to defend that inner circle, society, tribe, family, whatever, than to carry offensive action into the world.
Allan K….”I wrote and directed Radio Dramas for quite awhile’…..I remember reading about a kid being asked, at the dawn of the television age, whether he preferred radio or television. His response was “I like radio more, because the pictures are better.”
It does seem that both radio and print-form novels and stories offer more scope to the imagination (the consumer’s imagination, that is, not necessarily the producer’s) than do the video formats.
Screenwriter Robert Avrech, who has a great blog, just recently quoted Hitchcock on sound vs silent films and the temptation, with the former, to lean too heavily on the dialogue:
http://www.seraphicpress.com/hitchcock-the-purest-form-of-cinema/
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/grasping-at-straws/
In modern times CGI detracts from the story. I am not sure how a writer compensates
I’m not entirely familiar with the rules around here and I don’t want to hijack this thread. You-all just put me back in my box if I’m pulling things too far off the Warrior Women subject line!
David Foster: “I like radio more, because the pictures are better.” — I love it. Never heard that one, but it’s true.
In film you need to create equations that allow the audience’s imagination to connect the dots. Exhibit A + Exhibit B = Conclusion C. Here’s a classic from director Ernst Lubitsch: A – a woman is dressing to go out, she has a verbal spat with her husband. He gets in the last word and she throws a shoe at him. He dodges out of the room closing the door and the shoe hits the back of the door. + B — The back of the door, now revealed, is covered with scuff marks from previously thrown shoes. = C — We immediately realize what kind of relationship it is … and our imagination is activated by getting to put the equation together. That is a very compact example. The superb Nazi nightclub scene early on in Schindler’s List is a more drawn out one. But neither can hold candle to what your imagination does for you in a briskly told novel. “Literary” writers often break the imagination’s spell by describing too much or using language that is too complicated. A good writer needs to know to never do all the work and to keep his inner Show-Off locked up!
I’ll check out that blog. I work mostly in publishing these days so this return to my film persona has been a blast from the past.
Farm Boy: No writer can compensate for CGI, except by writing films that won’t ever need it. The problem with CGI is that it’s really just good old fashioned effects photography that computers allow you to do so well that it is often used far too ambitiously. You also never know how it’s really going to look until you have no money or time left to change it!
On Warrior Women: there’s a lot of similarity between this spate of WW movies and the superhero fad (and sometimes they are the same thing). Both are power fantasies for different sexes that some fairly good writers have made acceptable to a much wider audience than anyone would have guessed was possible 30 years ago.
Warrior Woman movies probably wouldn’t have been imaginable without martial arts films first suggesting that extraordinary coordination and accuracy can consistently overcome strength. It seems to me the “consistently” part is some of the problem. In general martial arts films seem to be a way to make films about dance yet with a less abstract story than Swan Lake. Once we had Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it’s like the martial arts film became almost pure dance fantasy. In 20 years we might even have Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Ballet.
Hijack away! The more discussion the better is the rule here, so long as all play nice, which clearly you are 🙂
Please, by all means, distract from my not seeing the obvious phallic symbolism in the said photo (egads! lol)