Friday, May 7, 2010

Movies' Female Violence Double Standard

In modern American media, with the exception of video games (which are unsurprisingly hated by the establishment) the standard relationship between violence and gender looks something like this:

Male on male: entertaining, amusing
Male on female: abusive, sexist
Female on female: hot (especially if they are scantily clad)
Female on male: empowering, humorous

Despite the feminist whining about "violence against women" in the media, male on female violence much rarer than female on male violence in modern movies. If it is present, it is usually either used to show how evil a villain is or is used in a fight scene that the female character wins (usually unscathed). As TV Tropes notes, it is possible to discern the villain and hero in most fight scenes based on gender alone. Note that there are some exceptions to this model, such as Inglorious Bastards, but that isn't exactly an average movie.

The white knights of both the liberal mangina and chivalrous conservative variety out there will probably argue that "violence against women is always wrong" and spout out something about not hitting women and respecting them. But it's interesting to note that the people who essentially laid the foundations for our society, the ancient Greeks, did not have this taboo in their myths. Greek mythology was full of antagonistic goddesses, evil queens, and even had an entire nation of villainous women. Pretty much every Greek hero ends up fighting and killing a female villain at some point. Contrary to their portrayal in feminized popular culture, the Amazons were not heroes in Greek mythology, but were villains and several of the Greek heroes (Achilles, Heracles, and Theseus come to mind) fought them. Somehow I doubt we will see any movies involving Heracles killing Amazons and "stealing the girdle" of their queen.

Anyways, what got me thinking about this topic was watching the Iron Man 2 trailer, which towards the end shows Scarlett Johansson's character beating up a bunch of male security guards. Naturally, most members of the current generation of young men, after thirteen to seventeen years of feminist indoctrination, probably thought that scene was "badass." Somehow I doubt modern American women would consider Heracles killing Amazons to be "badass." They'd probably complain to their congresswoman.

I've noticed in the past couple months that female violence against men is common in movie trailers. Hot Tub Time Machine's trailer showed a woman slapping a man in a bar, Kick Ass's showed a young girl killing a dozen men, and Death at a Funeral's showed a black woman punching a white man. Naturally, in any cases, the reverse would never be shown in a trailer. I'm sure feminists and "family values" conservatives would unite to condemn it. They did last year over the fact that a mere 11% of the violent acts on TV are committed against women.

Also, it's worth noting that those trailers are available for viewing on MTV's website. This is the same MTV that, when a woman got punched in the face in a bar during an episode of the reality show Jersey Shore, blacked out the punch and ran a public-service announcement saying "Violence against women in any form is a crime" and giving the number to an abuse hotline.

That there is a double standard regarding to portrayal of male-on-female and female-on-male violence in movies and TV is unsurprising. We live in an era of double standards.

4 comments:

  1. I don't making it a habit of attacking persons weaker than me, but if a woman wants to pretend that she's a man and tries to run up on me, I'll knock a bitch out!

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  2. I'm still pissed about MTV censoring Jersey Shore.

    On the Real world a few years back (Austin 2005), a cast member almost went blind from a sucker punch. They not only ran it incessantly in commercials, but they replayed it numerous times within the episode, INCLUDING IN SLOW MOTION.

    And to make it worse, unlike Snookie, the attack was unprovoked.

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  3. Female violence against men is becoming the norm in our society. We need to combat this early and show that is isn't acceptible.

    I think men's policy should be that if a woman strikes you, strike back with full force.

    Other men should back this up through jury nullification if necessary. Otherwise, it will become normal for men to be beaten up by women and we'll be told to "man up" and take it (& this will be codified in laws)

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  4. Hot lips (MASH), Roz(NightCourt), Carla (Cheers), Debra(Everybody Loves...).Even the trailer for 'Anger Management' is an assault of a male showering.This is old hat and truly a double standard. The mutilation of John Bobbit is joke material. A women in Alberta, Can, on her husband returning home - goes into the garage and empties a revolver in him then goes back inside and finishes her coffee-- gets 6 months counselling.What feminists don't get is that as long asd they insist on this ' responsibility for behaviour' forgiven fotr woman- woman will never be considered equal.

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