"I’m bored. Those roles are written as incredibly stoic, you spend the whole time acting tough and saying tough things."
Said Emily Blunt, quoted in "Emily Blunt Rails Against ‘Strong Female Lead’ Label: ‘It’s the Worst Thing Ever' and ‘I’m Bored’ of It" (Variety)(via my son John, who linked to it on Facebook).
Movies need to be interesting! If the actors think the characters are boring, why would the audience show up? To be bored?
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I wrote the role of Margaret Frankenstein in my “Frankenstein, Part II” with Emily Blunt in mind.
Margaret has a club foot and a facial scar from a burn. She’s married to a wife beater, war criminal and slave trader. She ends up marrying the Creature.
It’s interesting! Perfect role. The role that will define her career.
"To be bored?"
Nah. A ton of them are showing up to be lectured. Al Gore...trendsetter. Whodathunkit!
And Hugh Jackman would play the Creature aka Franz P. Frankenstein.
BTW, there’s a murder at the Althouse Inn in the German part of Switzerland.
Strong Women Marge Piercy switches to non-solo, ending
... Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
The best female roles have always built on unique and distinct female traits: Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Heppa Hepburn, Burny Hepburn, Pinky Hepburn, and Mia Farrow. Strategy, relationships, beauty/desire, betrayal, secret deals, Lady McBeth. Oops, too many Hepburns there?
But, let's all watch tough Uma Thurman in Kill Bill punch her way 6 feet through dirt to get out of a live burial. Then, kill dozens/hundreds and men and women by herself in a sword-fighting free-for-all. Sooooooo realistic for the world's strongest man even! Then Marvel and DC Comic movies happened. Wonder Woman, etc. They are not boring per se, but certainly not 'female' roles. The are just comic book roles with an attractive female body shape.
If you are bored it is just because you are FAILING the narrative.
WAKE UP!
You are on the Nazi, racist homophobe path.
Next up you'll tell me James Bond should not be transgendered. What is wrong with YOU?
You and me both Emily. How about a good story well told. THAT'S something Hollywood hasn't done in awhile.
Blunt needs to do a sequel of Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Whatever, I like Emily Blunt. I liked the movie, The Young Victoria.
What does it say about the script if readers have to be told the female lead is strong? Shouldn't they be able to get that from the story?
"Bored of." Some people's whole lives are ruled by their genitives.
"Strong female lead" is a cliché that's had its day. Maybe the vogue started with Sigourney Weaver in Alien, though of course there were strong female roles before that (Barbara Stanwick, etc.). Sooner or later it was bound to be played out and recognized as exploitative.
We watched "The Wonder" on Netflix last night. An English nurse in 1862 is hired to go to Ireland and "watch" a healthy nine year old who hasn't eaten in four months. Florence Pugh is just as dynamic and talented as Emily Blunt, and very able to open a movie.
No one would pitch this character as a "strong female lead", although it is. I enjoyed the film, and even my daughter put down her phone after a few minutes.
I see "strong female lead" and I think Rita Hayworth.
I see "strong female lead" and I think Rita Hayworth.
I see "strong female lead" and I think Rita Hayworth.
"Feminist" ideology is tedious, boring, and false.
Females are fascinating, challenging, and real.
She's cool.
I like Emily Blunt, but she is kinda the queen of strong female lead. It looks like there isn’t a single Hollywood pitch that doesn’t begin with…”strong female lead”. I’ve been bored with it since 2012. The young women in my life have been bored with it as well. They’re raising families, finding beauty and purpose in domestic life. (Who knew?) “strong female lead” doesn’t reflect the reality and priorities of a single woman I know, no matter the age. Female “empowerment” is a false narrative, peddling the fiction that the only thing worth doing in life is relentless pursuit of career at the expense of all else. And the Supreme Value of autonomy is antithetical to relationships. Many don’t figure this out until their early forties, when the longing for children comes a haunting.
True “empowerment” would be to inhabit authentic femininity, to allow our natural gifts — nurturing, gentleness, universality— to benefit those around us.
And, too, there is the boring, lifeless inevitable masculinisation of “strong female leads”. The hard boiled female detective/agent is a sad spectacle of dysfunction, and we rightly recoil.
Yesterday was the feast of St. margaret of Scotland, married to Scottish King Malcolm during the Norman Conquest. Though he was illiterate, he enjoyed hearing his wife read to him from the bible, and other spiritual works. He became known as one of the most virtuous Scottish kings ever to rule. She was known for her piety, her self sacrifice, care for the poor, encouragement of faith and the arts. She bore him 8 children. According to Theodoric, a monk of Durham, “she softened his temper, cultivated his mind, and inspired him with the most perfect maxims and sentiments of all Christian virtues.”
Now there’s a movie I would love to see. Action, romance…epic.
Women, men, and "our [unPlanned] Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
Larry Correia, a pretty successful author, in one of his 'how to be a successful author' pieces, that if you have a message, that's great; if you make the whole story about The Message, not many people will read it or like it. They want entertainment, not another lecture on how to think.
A bunch of people had fits and called him names, everybody else nodded and said 'True.' I wish movies would learn the lesson.
Betty Sue's are inherently boring.
I haven't seen a movie in the theater in years, but I will stand in line to see Mr. Begley's "Frankenstein Part II". C'mon Hollywood, there's box office gold string you in the face! Let's get this movie done!
Equal and complementary. Stop the hate.
Makes me think of the South Park “Strong Woman” episode.
Work/life/activist balance. The ladies can do it. The gentlemen, too. Why can't everyone else?
Maria von Trapp is the strongest female lead I can think of. She is completely rooted in truth, beauty and goodness. Her fierce loves are rightly ordered (the Lord, her man ("the love between a man and woman is sacred too," the mother abbess wisely counsels), the children, music. She speaks the truth when she is led to do so, with courage and passion. She pursues excellence in the kind of art she was gifted with (music) in order to glorify God. She is both brave and trusting in turn.
Marmee/Meg/Jo/Beth/Amy also come to mind (the 1994 version, thank you very much). Opening lines of the movie as Jo reminisces: "My sisters and I remember that winter as the coldest of our childhood. A temporary poverty had settled upon our family some years before. The war had made fuel and lamp oil scarce. But necessity is indeed the mother of invention, and somehow in that dark time, our family, the March family, seemed to create its own light."
Meg: "It was nice to be praised and admired. I couldn't help but like it."
Marmee: “Of course not! I only care what you think of yourself. If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that’s all that you really are. Time erodes all such beauty, but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind: Your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage. These are the things I cherish so in you. I so wish I could give my girls a more just world. But I know you’ll make it a better place.”
Now that's strong and meaningful female leadership!
Oh, Caroline, what a beautiful story. I, too, would watch it.
Blunt didn’t reject strong female leads. She described her reaction to the *words* “ strong female lead.” Big difference!
Hollywood = a leftist lecture or ... the 23rd installment of spider-man or batman...
boring.
It's so cringy when some itty bitty female character beats the crap out of some huge male bad guy. Not only is it unrealistic, it's also so obviously ideologically motivated woke bs.
Because 'strong female lead' means Lara Croft kicking ass in a skintight suit or whatever.
Blunt is one of my favorite female leads, because she actually portrays well rounded characters that have hopes, dreams, horrors, strengths, and vulnerabilities. "Strong female lead" is just what it appears to be to screenwriters. A leader that is female (born that way!) and strong. They have no weakness or vulnerability. They have no doubts. They are followed because they are there, not because they show a reason to be followed beyond some blunt plot point, "don't we all want to fight against X". Maybe, but what's your plan?
I think it's great that movies today finally portray women as they truly are-- 5' 7, 110 pounds, and trained in flipping a 300-pound guy while kickboxing him.
Semantic suggestions are not trending. #SummaryJudgment #OneTooManyLabels
Emily Blount is a talent. Anyone who can follow in Julie Andrew’s footsteps, and play Mary Poppins, and do a great job, has my respect.
Of Maria von Trapp ... I'm wondering if "The Sound of Music" is the only major Broadway musical with a song that passes -- aces! --The Bechdel Test:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test
A whole bunch of women talking to each other, about... another woman. How do you solve a problem like Maria?
The courtly love trope lasted over six hundred years. It fashioned the weakness and strength of the two sexes into a powerful and ennobling narrative. People of both sexes liked this narrative. The lady was chaste. The knight was brave. The quest was honorable. It's what people wanted to believe about themselves and their courtships. Even the noir narrative was in its way a variation on the courtly love theme. But that's all in the past....They haven't hit on a trope as appealing and resonant as the courtly love one, but they keep trying.... Maybe the two sexes aren't meant to hook up anymore. Probably better if women pair off with other women. Men don't have much to offer.
The Eastern European singer said, through an interpreter, that she liked playing Aida because she was a strong woman--whose lover hides their relationship, whose father harasses her into betraying the lover, who begs for mercy from the gods. If she were strong, she would have rallied the Ethiopians like Boudica did the Britons, sacked Thebes, and nailed Amneris to the floor.
We watched too many episodes of "Criminal Minds" and other detective shows oriented to the female audience. They all have young female victims or even leads who bash the bad guy and then drop their weapon and run away instead of finishing him off and ending the chase.
rhhardin said: Blunt needs to do a sequel to Edge of Tomorrow
It's been rumored.
"Betty Sue's are inherently boring."
Sue Anne Nivens wasn't!
I thought "Edge of Tomorrow" was a soap opera.
I enjoyed The English, but Blunt seemed like a strong female lead. Took a knockout punch in first episode.
Why in the world are women being portrayed to be "just like men?" Is that really the best they can do? It passes strange that normal women tolerate it.
Blunt prefers playing nitwits like Catherine Howard (briefly Mrs. Henry VIII)? Or is it just that she doesn’t know how to play a “strong female lead” and make the character nteredting?
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