(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

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

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.

[rm.livejournal.com]

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.

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

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.