Why it’s important to have more “Brave” roles for women in movies

Brave is an important movie, perhaps more important than it thought it might be. Media attention aside for the moment. Revenue and profit aside too, for the moment.

Brave is a movie about women.

I’ve had people ask me why that point is important. It’s important because women honestly don’t feature in most movies. Actually, they don’t feature in most media.

That statement might send some people into scoffing disbelief, but pay close attention to it. I said feature. Women might exist in every movie or television show you’ve seen recently – but do they feature? Is there more than one woman in that movie? Do they progress the plot? And Bechdel’s infamous question: do they talk about anything other than a man?

For interest, I had a look at the top 50 most popular 2012 movies in IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=2012,2012&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter,asc

As of writing this blog, 6 of those 50 had female leads – and one of those was Twilight. Another 3 titles had split 50/50 male and female leads.

Considering women are half the population, those aren’t great odds.

This is important, and no, it’s not just because I’m menstruating.

Movies themselves are a microcosm of our current culture. Women being underrepresented in movies says something about our culture at large. While egalitarianism is no longer at the forefront of our minds – ‘cause women can work and buy their own tampons and shit – this phenomenon still shows our current culture clearly. This underuse shows that men – and their stories – are more important to our society.

Brave is Pixar’s thirteenth movie, and their first female protagonist. Why? It’s a money thing. There’s a secretive agreement we’ve all come to, in the boardrooms of the people who greenlight movies and in the isles of Target when you’re buying a movie to watch: men will watch movies about men, and women will watch movies about women AND men.

The movie houses get nervous about releasing things with female leads because they honestly think it can’t sustain a male audience and thus will lose out on 50% of the supposed earnings.

Which is why Brave is so important. Because Brave is a great movie, it’s an actioned packed, emotional movie about breaking social norms. About breaking free and taking charge of your own destiny.

And it’s driven by women. Strong women, who can lead and have their own stuff to deal with, and their own female-female relationships to nurture. And just like little girls could love Woody and Buzz – little boys could love Merida.

And no, I’m not saying you should never have a movie aimed at women, or a movie aimed at men. I’m just saying, that by the law of averages, we should be about 50/50 and we’re not – we’re nowhere near.

It's an anthropomorphic sausage party up in here

This issue is especially important in children’s movies, because children need role models. Most female roles in children’s movies are either princess (a ‘girls’ movie), a secondary character or some sort of token femme-ification of a male character.

How did that woman get in here?

Children are like little sponges, and if all little girls can take away from movies to look up to is a token female they’re going to learn their place in our society very well and very quickly. They’re going to learn that women aren’t equal. They’re going to learn that a story about a women is merely a secondary plot. They’re going to learn that a woman is just not as important as a man is.

It’s important for women to be represented in movies, and television and books. And our society can change its current standpoint. If it's Brave enough.

Review: Angel & Faith: Live Through This Volume 1 by Christos Gage

warning: yeah I'm probably going to nerd out on this one.

Angel & Faith #1-5, plus the Harmony one-shot.

I've always been a bit skeptical of Angel - at least in comic book form. Dark Horse published a few series while Angel the Series was still on air.

I likened these comics to the many AtS books that were released as a media tie-in - you know, where the writers were still writing about Doyle while the show was in series 2 and Doyle was long dead. Never minded this. While the books weren't canon, they were interesting stories about characters I loved and I collected them greedily. Only a few ever really captured the essence of the show though, honestly - at best, they were really really good fan fiction.

The comics from that era were the same, though I wasn't as interested in collecting those. More often they missed the target, either in storytelling, or in art direction.

Then, as AtS began to reach the end of it's televised life, IDW Publishing picked up the rights for Angel, and released some one-shots leading up to and after the final season. These were considered non-canonical, BUT IDW were in charge of Angel: After the Fall which IS considered the canonical season six.

Now, I tried to read this season six. And I hated it. I found it confusing, and infuriating. The characters, to me, just didnt ring true, and I pretty much rage-quit the whole thing and vowed not pick it up again.

I think the comics in general - from what i've read! -  seem to push the character building into the background, bringing the plot in as all important. This is not for me - though I appreciate some people would enjoy that.

Now Joss backs the season six, validating it for being able to do things that a television budget would never allow. I think this is one of the things Ive always had issue with in media-tie ins. I'm USED to those constraints. I know that's a funny thing to say, but the universe has been layed out in the show. It's been constructed keeping visual budgets in mind. So to break those and bring in grand-scale ideas is often jarring.

Not saying that's a good or a bad thing - but for instance, one of the one-shots from IDW Publishing (Auld Lang Syne) have Angel and Spike spending time in a hell dimension that, while interesting and quite awesomely designed with skulls and demon dominatrixes, is not something you'd see on the show. So it feels out of left field.

Uh... not used to this.

I was never really that interested in Buffy so never really followed her television series after s3, let alone the comics. I know there was something about Dawn being a centaur and Twilight - the big bad of the season - turned out to be a (possessed?) Angel. Which I only heard about because it caused a bit of a stir amongst the combined Buffy/Angel fanbase asit knocked Angel's season six out of whack.

Well, Angel & Faith picks up after that development.

Dark Horse is taking back the reins to the franchise, and have released this comic as a spin off to Buffy's canonical season nine.

We start off in London, and for those of us that missed the Buffy season eight (i.e. me) we get  surprisingly swift and skilled exposition of that arc, and how it relates to the story and our two titular characters.

Basically, the world is without magic, there are still slayers, and Angel is dealing with the fact he killed Giles while possessed by Twilight. Faith is pretty much looking after a catatonic Angel after the Twilight episode.

The plotline from that is refreshingly simple: Angel wants to use the macguffin to bring Giles back.

That's it.

Faith, the perfect sarcastic foil for the straight of Angel's character.

What the writers realised, is that these characters are pretty interesting. The plot isn't what you read this particular comic for. It's a character study.

From Angel's side, you see him trying to adapt to life after another set of bad decisions that led to blood on his hands. You see him adopt Giles' mannerisms as he tries to find a way to undo one of the worst things he's done - in a creepy bit that I believe shows just how close he is to cracking.

Faith is Faith. In the series, she evolved from an unwanted rebel, to a caretaker. She's in a caretaker role in this story too. Not only is she looking after Angel, she's looking out for a group of slayers who seem to keep getting themselves in trouble. She's looking out for Angel because he looked out for her.

Faith in the grown-up role.

Though Faith continually, and silently, questions Angel's motivations and the morality of bringing Giles back from the dead - she plays along with it, knowing that Angel is close to the edge and his revival of Giles is what's keeping him going.

On a more superficial note, I've scanned so many sections because the art in this is amazing. This is the best I've ever seen the characters look in drawn-form. Especially Faith - which is great because this, at the moment, is more her story and a lot of it relies on her expressions in any given scene. Beyond the text, you can see what Faith's thinking, which is something that is missing with lesser artists.

It's really worth a read. I always thought Angel always related so well to Faith and that the relationship wasn't properly explored in the show. Also the combination of Faith's sarcasm and sexuality with Angel's repression and depression always worked so well.

This one more than makes up for for the lack of it in the television show. I was quietly hoping I would like this comic because of the two characters... and it exceeded expectations.

More please.

You can get it from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Angel-Faith-Volume-Live-Through/dp/1595828877/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt