It's not just about genre flicks, though.
And they most certainly cared about demographics of the lead, regardless of genre.
Why Doctor Who is a MESS
- Thread starter Shaka Zulu
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It's not just about genre flicks, though.
And they most certainly cared about demographics of the lead, regardless of genre.
Erm. Many minority actors broke out through SF and Horror etc precisely because they weren’t being scrutinised or bankrolled by the higher ups or bigger studios. Terminator is a fine example of this from a certain point of view. Every cult film from that background from about thirty years ago onward is up to its ears in minority casting, and SF and Horror both probably lead the pack in female leads and minority casting, even now.
It’s only when the big money comes to town things get different..
My issue has always been, taking an established male character, to replace them with a female character. Rather then developing one. If its a good character then the show or movie will succeed. If it's not written well or presented well then it will fail that's not an indicator of entrenched misogyny or sexism at what point does it come down to writing and presentation? There are plenty of female leads in various media that succeed on their own Merit. Despite the alleged sexism of fandom. So if those female lead properties can succeed, then why do we chalk it all up 2 sexism when that's clearly not the case in those instances?
Yet do you honestly believe there's an even distribution of attempts, fails and successes?
The fact that the instances of successful female leads always seem to default to SC, Ripley and Buffy should be telling when there are thousands of male counterparts, too many to readily count in fact.
That's right, because they have been low budget affairs. Though, don't be the black man in a horror film, you'll be one of the first to die.
But, for the most part, in TV and film, they have made the choice--regardless of genre--to put a white straight male at the lead because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to sell it.
Do you think they saw a person of color for Die Hard?
And it's great that things have changed in the past 30 years, but, per the conversations on this board, people are still freaking out about the idea of a black lead in a movie. How many poster on this board are saying, "they should just make a good movie..." "Casting a minority just to cast a minority is racist!"
Clearly, we are not in a place of parity.
How does one objectively define a "good" character?
Do you think if studios knew exactly how to great "good" characters to have guaranteed success, they would do that?
I don't know why you think making TV and films is so simple as "make a good character" and it will "succeed." How many shows have you watched and loved that simply didn't find an audience?
Who is saying a show fails because of entrenched misogyny? (though, there were the people who said they won't watch a woman play the Doctor, are you talking about them?)
Out of the 20 or so Marvel movies, how many have been led by women? 1. MAYBE you could say 1.5 with the Wasp, who gets second billing. Finally, after ten years, Black Widow finally gets her own movie. That would bring it up to two.
There are few female led projects that get made and fewer still that succeed. And that same is true for films with black actors as the leads.
I bring up the sexism in fandom because it does exist. Look at the reaction to when Whitaker was cast, even your own. It wasn't criticism of Whitaker--a specific person, it was the fact that it was a woman. The complaints were about gender. "How dare they cast a woman to play a shape changing alien in my TV show!"
And I know, you've said, "I'm not sexist" "I don't see sexism" "Or racism," yes, yes, you've said it before. Have you checked with your female friends? Your friends of color? Have you done that yet? Because, you know what? I would have a lot of respect for you if you actually talked to them about their experience in the world rather than suddenly claim "You're just against my point of view! You just hate libertarians! I don't commit acts of sexism!"
I mean, yeah, that's kind of my argument for why people would call starsuperion's pitch SJW non-sense.
I always found it odd that her series were always titled X-23 and that that was her codename, when that was basically the name given to her by the people who forced her to kill people. But also, I never read an X-23 story in my life, so maybe that's just one of those things that make sense when you actually read them.
Yup. Although Silk was better.
I mean, it's not just about female characters, or even minority characters in general. In today's comic book industry new characters have an incredibly hard time surviving, let alone becoming as iconic as characters from last century. And you can even extrapolate that to other industries, where all the popular stuff is sequels or remakes or adaptions. And since everything that's ramade or adapted or sequelized is based on stuff from some decades ago, where there were less minority characters, so by proxy we are basically stuck with that level of diversity, unless we change the identities of some characters up.
I'm like halfway through my Thor: God of Thunder read-through, so I'm looking forward to see what the fuzz was actually all about soon
Thousands of successful genre TV shows?
Really?
Really really?
Successful SF film franchises running thirty years?
Did we forget the sheer number culled by Fox alone?
I am lucky if I can get above ten that lived to see a finale on TV.
If we are branching out to cover every genre, where the heck do we put Coronation Street or Eastenders? ER?
Even sticking in Genre, where do we put Trek? Voyager outlived ENT. DS9 outlived ENT.
Even if we count not getting shot down at series one, there’s very few.
Stargate is about the only success I can think of. And that only didn’t get cancelled cos I didn’t bother with it. Evidence for that? I started regularly watching SGu. ;p
What do we do with ensemble shows? What do we do with X-files?
There really are less successes than we seem to be thinking here.
I won’t even go into the sheer number of stuff that went straight to video when it comes to films. Success is rare.
None of this is an argument that we shouldn’t push for decent representation in casting, but in general terms of SF&F...I just don’t like historical revisionism. Buffy, SC and Ripley are my gotos because they were successes and I am a fan. Many things I am a fan of aren’t successes. La Femme Nikita...cancelled...Vr5...one series gone...Farscape...cancelled but we got a finale afterwards...there’s quite a list if I keep going. I don’t go these old chestnuts because I know they are the ones everyone uses when talking about female leads, these are the ones I like, the ones I bought books on or hum the music from. The ones I buy on DVD etc.
There’s flops too...Blade Runner never makes box office bank, and I am pretty sure very few other people have sat through Space Hunter about ten times. Heck..even iTunes don’t care about that one, the poster art is in Spanish. Both of those are Male lead though.
Then there’s stuff like Charmed and Supernatural, neither of which I watched much (or at all in Supernaturals case) which seemed to go on *forever*. (As did the X Files...but I stopped watching around season 7 or 8 I think.)
The truth is things like Who, long lived and Lazarus, are rare as hens teeth. Pretending the money men or the audiences only get behind Male SF TV or film or what have you is just a nonsense.
Action films? Never ending military and police procedural? Sure. But then there’s rom-com’s and sit-coms and weepies and musicals and....
It just because the SF stuff is the zeitgeist for a while now.
Where did we narrow this down to:
1 tv shows?
2 shows that reached a finale?
3 genre shows?
I mean, yeah, that's kind of my argument for why people would call starsuperion's pitch SJW non-sense.
I always found it odd that her series were always titled X-23 and that that was her codename, when that was basically the name given to her by the people who forced her to kill people. But also, I never read an X-23 story in my life, so maybe that's just one of those things that make sense when you actually read them.
Yup. Although Silk was better.
I mean, it's not just about female characters, or even minority characters in general. In today's comic book industry new characters have an incredibly hard time surviving, let alone becoming as iconic as characters from last century. And you can even extrapolate that to other industries, where all the popular stuff is sequels or remakes or adaptions. And since everything that's ramade or adapted or sequelized is based on stuff from some decades ago, where there were less minority characters, so by proxy we are basically stuck with that level of diversity, unless we change the identities of some characters up.
I'm like halfway through my Thor: God of Thunder read-through, so I'm looking forward to see what the fuzz was actually all about soon
I’d say reboots and remakes are fair game tbh. First time adaptations? Giving the fans you hope to bring with you the character they love, or as close to it as you can reasonably get, is probably the best idea.
Yes...there seems a dearth of succesful new characters of late...but I wonder if that’s because we are knee deep in reboots and remakes. Heck, *my* x-men are all over the covers again now, so I guess they are just chasing my age group.
Oh...Wolverine was called Weapon-X all over the shop too, so I wouldn’t read too much into the X23 naming. So far as I can tell more people in universe call her Laura anyway.
I had a peek at the Thor stuff on Marvel unlimited today, but I just could t bring myself to bother. I have literally never enjoyed Thor in the comics, I just don’t do straightforward capes and tights.
By talking about a genre tv show in a forum dedicated to another?
Though I also mention films in both for and against.
If we were to broaden it out, I doubt you would see much change...in fact, the further back you go, you will find even *more* stuff with female leads, because housewives were stuck at home. But if you really want it broad enough to start including things like Sex and The City and Roseanne....
Shows reaching a finale is one way of judging success vs being cancelled, unless it has a long run first...since we are talking about successes when it comes to T.V.
I think the real problem is the right now, and the dominance of the MCU and Disney overall at the box office.
Hollywood overall again...for instance the age factor in lead actresses continuing to get roles...is an area rife with all sorts of problems. Ironically, again, not so much in genre films, where if you are a name you will still get parts, for the most part, unless you went mainstream, when it probably means a retrograde step.
But seriously..we are talking about Who, and genre TV, and fandoms. We started off with just Who. XD
Yet Ripley was one of the examples you used.
I'm sure you can name plenty of empowered female leads, but I'm pretty sure there are far more male ones.
Try swiping randomly round Netflix or Amazon if you doubt it.
I named Ripley because it’s SF, and two nights ago I was watching Alien Resurrection.
And I have no doubt I can find a bajillion Chip McToughpants Space Ranger’s too...but they aren’t exactly super succesful and lodged in public or fandom consciousness. I suspect if we were to find a list (one must exist) of the ten or twenty most popular SF franchises (or individual films) there would be a healthy dose of female leads and ensemble casts. More so if you look at dual leads... Mulder and Scully, Crichton and Aeryn (Though it’s sort of ensemble, Farscape has its heart in those two.) etc. SF basically has always been way more inclusive than people give it credit for. Always. Even when it was dusty tomes.
I'm not sure Scully was really a co lead to be honest, she was a prominent sidekick, a Watson to Mulders' Holmes.
It took a significant battle for Gillian Anderson to narrow the pay gap between them for that very reason.
That was because the execs at Fox were dicks and didn’t even want her cast. Duchovny had a bigger CV, maybe a better agent, but both were borderline unknown. And Scully was clearly co-lead...it’s her we see writing up the files captains log style, which ties nicely to your analogy...in early Holmes particularly, Watson is decidedly not a sidekick. For a start, it’s him writing the stories as it were.
Didn't they drop that after the first few seasons?
I liked this comment because I was thinking Watson was the Beach Ball from Castaway. Oh, that's right!!
Handles was the head the 11th had with him. I was thinking that as another contender.
Wait! No.. No.. The Beach Ball is Named Wilson..
Sorry to go off on a rabbit hole here, but Who was Watson in sci-fi series that I am thinking of??
Oh.. I know what I was thinking of, that AI from IBM on Jeopardy!! LMAO!
Burrrrrrp!! Sorry.. Beer and Trekbbs don't mix well.
continue the journey. I'm gonna get a Healthy Feta Burger. cheers.
Not when he was first written. He’s a Doctor, he’s a soldier, he’s telling the story in first person etc. Study In Scarlet doesn’t even have Watson or Holmes in for a chunk of the book, as we get the massive flashback that is basically a western.
Yes I know, he's a doctor and soldier who rents an apartment with and follows the adventures of this strange man who investigates apparently unsolvable mysteries using skills only he possesses and is clearly in charge of the dynamic. Watson takes his lead and narrates for the reader. As an aside I'm not the only person to have speculated there was more implied to the relationship than was permissible given the sensibilities of the time.
Scully is similar, she's an ambitious FBI agent (and doctor) who finds herself assigned to a department solely run by a strange man who investigates aliens using knowledge only he in the bureau possesses and is clearly in charge of the dynamic. Scully takes his lead and narrates by filling in the reports. Notably for much of the early seasons Anderson was instructed to physically stand behind Duchovny on screen to visibly illustrate the authority relationship.
Female leads have existed for a long time but you aren't going to make a case they have had equal representation, success or prominence across the board by throwing up a few famous examples.
You’re right, it’s an argument I can’t possibly win.
I do suggest however, that past times were not as antediluvian as it is popular to portray, and would also suggest the situation is actually worse now as result of how things have gone in the creative industries for the last ten or twenty years.
As an amusing aside, I would also point out the only successful video game adaptations (videogames themselves making much, much, more money that film for a number of years.) have all had female leads. I am defining success in this case as ‘making money and getting a sequel/fanbase’. Also amusing in this regard is how much hate those films get in some quarters for some reason, with gender never being brought into it.
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