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Cate Blanchett interview:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/15/film.cateblanchett.ap/index.html

"To have someone walk into court who's literally gone to the edges of the known world. How incredible and expansive must that have been for her, her sense of poetry and the possibility of what life could be," Blanchett said. "It was interesting, I found, to play a vicariousness in the relationship with Raleigh, rather than simply making it, here comes Clive Owen, isn't he handsome?

"Which of course he is, and undeniably charming. But to actually sort of say, 'I'd like to BE him.' I've certainly had those experiences. I was talking today about watching the 'Indiana Jones' films. My experience was as a young girl, and of course, you want to kiss Harrison Ford. But I wanted to BE him. I wanted to BE Indiana Jones and have those adventures."

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See, this is great. This is one of those experiences that I think lots of young girls have -- "I want to be the hero" and then we learn that we're supposed to want the kiss the hero too or instead. I think we still don't talk about that enough, this idea that role models can be outside gender and that desire can be outside sex.

This is also not a feeling reserved solely for young girls. I grew up reading a large number of fantasy & SF novels either with female protagonists or where women were the primary ones or often the only ones using magic, and as someone who has always been in love with the idea of mysticism and magical powers, I had the exact same experience in reverse.

I hear that loud and clear. The stereotype , even in fiction is that the male is the sword wielding bravado fueled hot headed kill kill kill machine, and the women are the mystical mysterious magic weilding scary thing. Usually the moral of the story is they balance each other out and so on. Granted there are exceptions, but usually the male wizard is 900 years old and dits in a pile of test tubes waiting for something to bubble. Lets face it - some of us would rather be Merlin than Conan. :)

Y'all had Merlin though. We didn't have adventurers who were women -- fact or fictional it seemed. Rather, there were the occassional "girl adventurers" that seemed, at least in my childhood, to have been cooked up to ease the minds of parents with girls like me, who really, really wanted to be the boy.

I imagine things are at least marginally different now.

I'd like to think that things are changing, but the problem is that society as a whole is fighting the change. I mean back in the 70's / 80's no one would have imagined a fictional character like Trinity ( The Matrix ).

Sure we had the Nancy Drew stories to balance out the Hardy Boys, but look what they did to that in the movies ( ugh ). There never was a female counterpart to Tom Swift who built rockets and robots and went to the planets. The nearest the popular hacker scene had to a strong female lead was Kate Libby, and that was just peppered with anti-male lines ( In the movie her mother was a writer who wrote books belittling men and was successful, and she made no small point of this ). Granted in the end of the movie she admitted that Dade was her equal, but again this was the exception. Having a roomate who was a dead ringer for her AND had the hacking skills was a big plus for me.

As I said in my other comment, we don't have any " girl advenenturers " in our early childhood stories , and because of that we come to not expect them down the line. Little red hed just stayed at home and made bread, Grettle stood by while Hansel pushed the witch into the oven, and so on.

Maybe that is the task that is sitting ahead for you. To take your writing skills and adventures and make something that includes / encourages girl adventurers. Something like Laura Croft with more fencing and less T&A.

Oh as for the Conan / Merlin bit, there was Red Sonja. I'm not sure as I never really followed that genre much, but I think she lopped off a few heads in her time.

I think you are missing my point.

For one thing, Trinity may kick ass, but that story is still about Neo.

Secondly, I'm not advocating these "girl adventurers" stories -- they seem like scraps tossed at us as opposed to adventurers who happen to be female.

I'm saying it shouldn't matter. I'm saying it shouldn't be weird for a girl to want to be like some boy or other when she grows up or vice versa.

I agree that the story is still about Neo, but Trinity is not some waifly little thing sitting at home waiting for the hero to come back. She is kicking ass right beside him as an equal partner - a concept unheard of say 30/40 years ago.

My point is that it will take someone like you to write the stories that are not scraps tossed, but solid real things. I agree, and I tried to point out, thhat things like Nancy Drew et all were scraps and poor ones at that.

It should not be that way, but in order for that to happen people have to do something - set examples, write the books - live the lives to change it.

What Im saying is I agree with you , and I feel that you are the voice that needs to get out there to make it so that it doesn't matter. Write stories that aren't scraps and half hearted attempts to make do.

"I want to be the hero" and then we learn that we're supposed to want the kiss the hero too or instead.

I think the root of that problem is not that you learn, but you are taught that way of thinking. This is not only taught by parenting but by mass media as well as social situations. Also public education does what it can to reenforce this by backing up the expectations, if not outright teaching them.

I don't want to think that it's done out of malice, but I think it's not done out of fear. Who wants to be the teacher who has to deal with the angry parent threatening you because you are teaching an " adgenda " to their child who they don't want to see grow up that way.

As I see it, the only way to counteract this is by education from birth. Setting in stone the ideas that you can do/be anything before exposure to traditional nursery stories, teaching what television is prior to letting them watch it, and exposing them to possibilities without limits. If this is done right, then exposure to the norm in public is seen for what it is - and can be readily handled with a little help.

In short, parenting.

The people who are there now are there mostly on their own accord. Through the school of tough knocks and self liberation from external expectations. The task is to teach these things to future generations in the hope that the butterfly effect will take over and someday these norms will evolve.

< /IMHO >

This is not only taught by parenting but by mass media as well as social situations.

I agree. I mean, part of why these gender-role stereotypes never seemed to affect me nearly as much as other females is that (a) my parents pretty much had a moratorium on all mass media (no television, only "classic" fiction of the sort that would help me in my formal education), and (b) for my formative years, my mother was a chemistry professor and my father was a stay-at-home dad. So my own patterning was quite different from the norm and had a profound effect on me.

That said, my parents were strongly against having heroes, and I think I picked up some of that. Why try to be like someone else when what you really should do is focus on self-improvement?

Gah, when did having heroes become about trying to be like someone else?

They are talismans of possibility, proof that the one in a million exists.

Well alot of times the heroes are supposed to be people to hold ourselves up to. There was a seies of recordings in the 50's called " The Heroes of Democracy " that parised firefighters, policemen and utility workers. the idea of the hero ( and less often the heroine ) was to get people to say " I want to be like that person " and emulate their behavior. This lead to " Well if you want to be strong like Popeye eat your spinach " , and then the first time you eat spinach and can't life a car with one hand it kinda diminishes.

If one in a million exists, wouldn't you want to be that one? I know I did. I wanted to be Dexter Reilly, James Bond, Michael Knight , McGuyver , etc.. etc...

Eventually I became my own blend of those and more.

There is no fun in just knowing that one in a million exists, it's the possibility that you could be the one in a million that makes it interesting. How many people lines up to try to pull the sword from the stone?

Of course I want to be that one in a million, Frank, that's my point.

I'm as ambitious as plagues. All I need to know is that there can be a one in a million to decide it's going to be me.

Well I think that part has already happened. you have already established that you are that one in a million, now the rest is just watching the story develop.

I can see what you mean though - without any example how does one know that one can become the one in a million.

Where I'm standing, part of being one in a million means that there is a responsibility to create the next one in a million. Some day you will hand over a used practice foil into the hands of someone who will cherish it not just because it is a symbol of choice and empowerment, but because it came from you - who is the one in a million.

Imagine how many lives you could change if you published your fencing dairy as a book.

Gah, when did having heroes become about trying to be like someone else?

I'm not saying it *has* to be. But that was the sense I got from the quotation you cut-and-pasted: "But I wanted to BE him. I wanted to BE Indiana Jones and have those adventures."

Literally, the quotation is about wanting to be (like) someone else.

Wanting to be a character in a story isn't about having heroes. It's about identifying with the protagonist, which is how lots of stories are designed to be enjoyed. As far as I can tell, Blanchett is saying she wanted to be that protagonist, even if the protagonist was male. And what I'm saying is that that should be okay, this cross-gender identification in stories and imagination, instead of telling girls they should want to kiss the boys in the stories they like, as opposed to wishing to inhabit those stories in the same way their male counterparts might desire to.

That's fine. I was just conflating two parts of your post--the Cate Blanchett excerpt and the statement "I want to be the hero." Sorry.

I wasn't turned away from television, but I was taught what it was all about. I also benefited from my parents owning their own business so I developed a business sense and understood the how and why oc tv commercials early on. Also though I loved reading, and my father encouraged this by supplying me with book after book after book. Eventually instead of watching TV I was working on VCRs and working in a TV station.

I realize that as a male of the species I've had some advantage and leverage in this society, but I also would liek to think that I've never held anyone back / put them aside by saying " you're a girl, you can't do that ".

Frank, your excellence and that of many many men I have had the pleasure to know and even more I haven't, regrettably, is not enough to undo the rest of the shit going on out there.

I know it's not. However it is my responsibility to pass on the excellence on in the attempt to make it real. It is also my responsibility to support those who put forward the motions to change things.

I know I can't undo it by myself. I know that maybe 100 of me could not undo it. That's no reason not to fight it. I want to at least say that I made an effort to change it instead of just letting it happen. the result might not come for 100 years, but at least somewhere down the road a person could look back and see what people like you and I have done to make their lives possible.

I think we still don't talk about that enough, this idea that role models can be outside gender and that desire can be outside sex.

Wow, R. For reasons I just don't have the stamina to go into today, this post pretty much solved a really big problem I'm having, and one that dominated most of last week's therapy session. Thank you so, so much *heart* :D

You're welcome. I'm glad that sentiment was profound for someone. I was pretty pleased with it and hadn't thought of it until it was written really, and am glad it had use beyond my own little aphoristic head.

And most of my role-models at a very cruical time in my life were male, and more often than not, the people I want to "grow up to be like" are males. Though that wasn't what we discussed in therapy but...yeah.

Thank you for posting bits of this interview. You know my whole deal. Different from yours, but...yes.

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