Summer movies prove film is dead but sexism isn’t
By Liz Reichart, A&E Editor//
Back in April when I previewed upcoming films premiering in the summer of 2015, my thoughts could best be summed up by Maroon 5’s recent single “This Summer’s Going to Hurt.” It seemed from the big titles set to release that there was not a modicum of originality from the well-known production companies. When we left off, everything that was once old was being made new again, and not with plot lines or subject matter, but with a de-facto changing of cast members like the guards outside Buckingham Palace, and increased amounts of CGI.
I’m pleased to report my findings three months prior to summer film season were in fact completely accurate. But now, more pervasive than the argument of film being unoriginal is that of the role of women in film.
“Jurassic World”, the fourth film in the Jurassic Park series, brought the delightful Chris Pratt to the silver screen. Amongst various sexist claims brought against the tone of the film, the selection of Pratt as the film’s leading man somehow delivered women to the movie theater in droves. Many critics voiced opinions on the way Pratt’s character treated the female lead, in the film, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. “Age of Ultron” director Joss Whedon went so far as to call a clip of the film “70’s era sexism” for its depiction of a female as a stiff and a male who is interested in nothing but sex. Even when critics saw the film in its full length, many felt Claire, the female lead, was shamed early on for not having a maternal instinct when she’s asked to take care of her nephews. Even throughout the film, she’s repeatedly told that one day she’ll understand the error of her ways when she has children of her own. By the end of the film, lo and behold, she begins taking care of her nephews. “Yes, “Jurassic World” is not about corporate greed, anti-militarization, crass commerciality, disrupting the food chain, or dinos eating the mess out of people. No. It’s about a woman’s “evolution” from an icy-cold, selfish corporate shill into a considerate wife and mother,” says Marlow Stern at the Daily Beast. Many were eager to counter Whedon and others crying “subservient woman”, saying that the real protagonist of the film is in fact Claire. “We embrace [Claire’s] femininity in the story’s progression…I don’t feel that we need to surrender a woman’s femininity in order for her to be a badass action hero. That was something I was interested in. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of women who are made to look very masculine and tough — and that’s awesome too. But this felt like someplace I could go that might actually be new in how retro it is. So we embraced it,” says Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow.
But no one cares about feminist or anti-feminist under- or overtones now that “Jurassic World” is one of the most successful films to have ever been made, raking in a monstrous $1.24 billion worldwide. Money and box office record-setting is all that really matters.
A film widely deemed to on the opposite end of the feminist critique spectrum this summer was “Mad Max Fury Road.” In its many roles for females, the revamped Mad Max cast is full of varied depictions of what different women can be. The New York Post calls it the feminist picture of the year. I think “Mad Max Fury Road” makes so many headlines for being feminist because the apocalypse is probably the last place you would expect to see women being empowered. I think also the fact that women break the mold in ways that aren’t just showing brute force and strength is incredibly important. In “Age of Ultron”, many cried it was sexist because it didn’t prominently show female superheroes kicking villain behind, and displayed Black Widow as domesticated and feminized, which to me seems a face-value analysis. The important scenes in “Mad Max Fury Road” were not when women showed brute force, as if to say that if the world ended, women would be just a strong and tough as the men, because that simply wouldn’t be the case. The great scenes are where women show their strength in competence of the mind. When Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, uses her wily nature and resourcefulness throughout the film instead of trying to show she has the same muscle power as the rest of the boys, it sends a message to girls that competence of the brain is valuable. Women don’t need another superhero; we need an intelligent, self-assured role model.
As intentional or unintentional as any sexism was on the screen was this summer, the films were exactly what was expected as the next step in the film series. The dinosaurs escape! Who could have seen that one coming? A wasteland apocalypse full of brutality? That’s nothing like the last five films! Maybe this was actually a golden opportunity in film where we could stop focusing on surface features like plot and dialogue, because they were all the same as the film that came before them, and start focusing on real issues, like what society does value, how that differs with gender, and how it shouldn’t differ when it comes to payday off-screen. But instead, let’s return to making movies our escape from the societal burdens of the real world, and keep churning out Magic Mike films, because those are great and don’t objectify women at all!