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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Film villains: a pretty homogeneous bunch?

At TheMarySue.com, Dan Wohl writes about a lack of female sci-fi villains, using the “Abramsverse” J.J. Abrams Star Trek remakes as examples.
“The now-infamous Carol Marcus undressed scene was, to be sure, gratuitous, offensive and completely inexcusable. I was equally disappointed by the scene of a Starfleet Command roundtable which shows a 20-person group that’s between 70-75 percent male. But where equality appears even farther away, in Hollywood as a whole, is among another realm of film characters: villains.”
Wohl raises a thought-provoking point about gender equality and what I find most interesting about his argument is that it can be applied with equal validity toward other segments of society under-represented in villainy:
“I feel like filmmakers are thinking, ‘why does it matter if there are female antagonists – it’s not like a villainous character makes women look good.’ And while this might be true in the simplest sense, it misses the bigger point. Having female characters in films shouldn’t be about getting in a few nice, positive moments for women and then calling it a day. It should be about naturally having an equal distribution of genders in film roles.”
What supervillain demographic would you most like to see given more screen time?

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