Women in Films

From the Vancouver Sun:

But any woman seeking a potent female role model on the big screen these days would need a machete to cut through a thickening tangle of celluloid images choking a generation’s worth of feminist thought right out of the frame.

It’s a disturbing regression. Thirty years ago, young women were growing up with Sigourney Weaver surviving alien attacks with little more than her intelligence and a feisty drive to survive.

This year, the female character attracting all the attention is Precious, an inner city kid played by first-time actor Gabby Sidibe in the Lee Daniels’ film Precious, the Sundance winner based on Sapphire’s novel Push.

A quick survey of leading roles for today’s ingenues include wannabe brides, woeful girlfriends, irritating wives, romantically obsessed wannabe vampires and super hot sex objects who drape themselves over the set decor.

For the most part, unless it’s an art film or unless the female lead has a subversive edge, female characters in the year 2009 are flatter, less intelligent and far more victimized then they’ve ever been.