(no subject)

[rm]

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."

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.

Comments

[delchi.livejournal.com]

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. :)

[rm.livejournal.com]

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.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

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.

[rm.livejournal.com]

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.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

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.