One Woman in the Justice League
Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.
Also watch Jimmy Kimmel’s "Muscle Man’ superhero skit - “I’m the girly one”
The Avengers:
In Marvel Comics:
“Labeled “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.”
5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Modern films (MCU):
The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Justice League
In DC comics:
“The Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman”
6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.
In modern films (DCEU):
The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyder’s Justice League director’s cut))
5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the director’s cut who is also male. Only one member is female.
The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)
7 members:
- Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
- Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
- Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
- Klaus (Number Four / The Séance)
- Five (Number Five / The Boy)
- Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
- Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Page’s transition but that’s not really relevant to this.
Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengers’ 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).
Now let’s look at some sitcoms and other stories.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that I’m willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.
Community:
Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice it’s always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then it’s a “chick flick” or a “female team up” or “gender flipped” story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.
Stranger Things:
Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. 🤦
Why is it ‘iconic’ to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean it’s the tradition, the way it’s always been? Can’t we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, it’s mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with ‘a little help’ from a female/a few females (at most), too!
It’s so fucked up and disgusting to me I’ve realised. And men don’t seem to care. I’m a male and this is really disturbing to me now that I’ve woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?
I think it’s cool, but I also really like strong women so…
Sexism
A simple answer for a very long post.
Probably. As others have said here no one seems bothered by female leads in good stories - but the focus on gender when it’s a bad story is probably sexist.
I’m likely guilty of this myself, grumbling about “woke nonsense” and blaming the ideological messaging for the bad writing rather than just the bad writers.
It’s not all doom and gloom though - check out this list of books. Lots of highly rated entries there with female protagonists - many of which are targeted at a broad audience, not just women.
so much was comics at the start I was wondering if it was more a comics thing. I know I don’t like when they change the characters in most cases (green lanterns being a job makes it easy to change it up). But then it went into other genres. is this really a widespread complaint. I have just not been watching much modern stuff really so maybe Im missing the drama.
I hate when a story is forced into any agenda. Like making Daneel a woman in Foundation is atrocious because it has other implications across all of Asimov's stories like with Gladia and Jander, the relationship with Elijah and family dynamic, how Solarians perceive Daneel, and the nuance and contrast between Daneel and Dors just to name a few off the top of my head.
These are stupid people making last minute frivolous and agenda based pandering nonsense decisions. It is disingenuously stealing from the richness of the story these films are supposedly depicting. If they can’t tell the story they claim, they should be creating an independent work that stands entirely on its own instead of butchering the original art that should be told with full scope in the long term.
If you want to tell a female lead story, awesome. Pick a good one to start with. God Emperor of Dune is all about super strong women in roles. I mean there is an army of all women that outright rape men in battle. There are all levels of women present in that story. Chapterhouse Dune is another all about female leading roles. Tell the story around Susan Calvin in Asimov’s stories. There are tons of these types of stories. Hacking and butchering a universe or fitting a female lead in by committee agenda is absolutely garbage. Like Star Wars is a story about inevitable authoritarianism and exceptionalism where no one else is relevant. Trying to make that into some diversity flick is absurd. It is ultimately the wrong story from the start. I loved it growing up, but it is what it is and nostalgia is often blind. The story has an underlying ethos that is the foundation of the universe. It is flawed. So what, it can still be entertaining. When that ethos is in conflict, the story stops having any relevant value. Build a new story on a better foundation. Reshaping old stories shows that the entire premise is overly conservative bankers that treat art as investment. Bankers are shitty artists. They are incapable of being bold and trying new and novel things. There is no art in such endeavors. I have no problem with female leads. I take issue with terrible art by committee and bankers.
It is disingenuously stealing from the richness of the story these films are supposedly depicting.
Strangely enough, as a woman, I see it generally adding to the richness…
Men doing all of the interesting stuff isn’t rich.
Hell, even I Robot, a movie that should have had a female lead, turned Calvin in to a supporting role to put a man in the lead.
If men in a story are doing all the interesting stuff, the story is the bad choice. Adding oil paints to an existing watercolor does not make art. Paint a beautiful oil painting.
You’ve just shifted the goal posts here.
First, you said it’s stealing richness from a story if you add more women to make up for the lack of representation in the original source material.
And when challenged on that, you’re now saying it wasn’t rich to begin with, and the story itself is broken if women are underrepresented.
You are
projectionprojecting a position I neither stated nor hold*spelling
But you surely agree that both of your statements to be are at odds with each other.
You can’t simultaneously claim that an increase in diversity leads to a “reduction in richness” of a work, whilst also claiming that the work itself is the problem if it lacks diversity.
First, you are claiming that good works are diminished by after the fact alterations, but then you also claim that after the fact alterations are a bad idea, because the work was never good in the first place if it lacked diversity.
It more looks like you are finding post hoc validation to support something you already believe, rather than explaining the actual reasons you believe it, because those reasons contradict each other
I see your nuance better now. I’m saying that diversity is not a qualifier for total artistic value. I believe it is okay to tell flawed stories as art. I do not believe that all stories should be flawed, they should be an exception not the rule.
This is where we are likely strongly aligned versus any potential for difference. I believe telling better stories is the failure of the entertainment industry. There are plenty of better stories to tell. The real prejudice is happening by the cowardice of choosing misogynistic stories to tell. Really, there is not enough value placed on the big picture abstract overview. People are playing with the trees when they should be managing the forest. Old familiar stories with foundations built in an era of a lack of diversity are ripe to abandon for a new era of better stories.
Hell, even I Robot, a movie that should have had a female lead, turned Calvin in to a supporting role to put a man in the lead.
That’s exactly the point, arbitrarily changing the characters is unsatisfying. I, Robot should have been about Calvin.
Men are not the only ones that watch movies…There are plenty of movies either female led or majority female but they are typically not very popular amongst women either and consequently don’t make very much money
Because we want the story, not the gender stuff.
Sometimes gender makes no difference. But sometimes the author wants to make a point about gender. I have zero interest in points about gender.
Why is it gender stuff when it’s women but not men? Men and their gender is apart of their movies too, you just may not see it, like how a fish doesn’t see water. Take how a film is shot, how women and men are framed. You may not notice the camera assuming a het-male’s perspective by “eyeing” women a certain way because “that’s just house films are shot.” You may not go into a horror movie with the silent prayer that the male lead doesn’t get raped because that can just be thrown in there. You may not notice if every woman looks a certain way, and how no matter how old the actor gets, the female lead is still 25. Even in movies where it doesn’t even matter. You make not notice when a woman only gets to speak to and about men. You may not notice that one woman is usually tossed in to represent the entire female demographic because “they’re not the focus.”
But all those little details add up. Women have had men’s gender and their ideas and values soak into almost every part of society, even to how they value themselves. Men are not the default, and that means that they will have to go into some media knowing that they are not the main target and be okay with that.
Nobody notices things that conform to their expectations—but when anything violates their expectations, they assume it’s a deliberate message. (Even if it’s fiction violating their genre expectations in the direction of reality.)
And if they can’t figure out what the message is supposed to be, they let other people tell them. And if people tell them different things, they go with the one that makes them feel the strongest reaction.
I’ve never met anyone who acted like this, nor even seen someone on the internet complaining about it, besides reviews in movie sections. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, it’s just I believe that you’re probably seeing a vanishingly small portion of society do this.
Who complained about the female led movie Alien (93% audience rating on rotten tomatoes)?
I think the issue is that the movies aren’t written well. Rey in the third trilogy never saw a challenge she couldn’t master on the first attempt. A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun
I think the issue is that the movies aren’t written well. Rey in the third trilogy never saw a challenge she couldn’t master on the first attempt. A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun
John Wick gets a pass, though?
It works in that genre. The main guy in Nobody also was pretty good from the start. The fast and furious flicks also don’t do a great deal of character development
Those all have characters presented as good at whatever the movie is about
You can’t really compare the two movies, John Wick takes the route of being so over the top to the point of becoming funny. I don’t think they were aiming for that with the new SW trilogy.
You can’t really compare the two movies,
I’m not exactly, I’m asking why:
A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun
Can be true, but also John Wick can never falter and that be fine. Kinda seems like a double standard to me.
There’s a thing in movie writing that’s called the suspension of disbelief which is the mechanism of being involved in a story by “what do I have to believe in order for the movie to make sense”.
SW3’s premise is the classical hero’s adventure, where the main character undergoes a journey of betterment. And in this particular case, if you already are the best there is no journey.
John Wick’s premise is “this guy is going to kill everyone” frome the minute one, you just sit down, switch your brain off and enjoy what he’s doing for the next two hours.It’s not about the sex of the character, is about how the character is written.
The bit I didn’t say was I meant such a character in a hero’s journey style story
John works where Rey doesn’t because he’s had the career and experience to back up what he does. Other characters are terrified of him, he’s been in the setting long enough to become a legend.
Rey a scavenger in the arse end of nowhere goes from knowing literally nothing about the outside world and starting at about the same power as Luke’s ability in new hope to by the end of that first movie Luke’s ability in return of the jedi with no training involved.
John is an example of a legend in action, an unstoppable force, it’s satisfying to watch because the film does such a good job of building him up. That one with the mob boss talking about the pencil comes to mind. Rey gets none of that, she’s just great at everything without trying. She can fly a ship like the falcon on her first go ever flying a space ship well enough to out fly trained fighter pilots. Luke at least has flown similar ships in similar situations before the death star run.
One that is better is when she beats Kylo with the first time using a saber because it shows she is letting the force guide her so it makes much more sense why she can do it.
There is also the fact that John gets punched in the face, kicked and beaten…and then gets back up to wipe the floor with the enemy.
Showing female characters getting their arses handed to them is not as commercially popular.
If there’s any universe in which it makes complete sense for someone to be born ultra powerful completely at random, it’s Star Wars and superhero movies.
I love The Force Awakens but I know someone who complains that it’s really distracting that the three main protagonists have a black guy and a woman, and it’s “trying so hard to be woke” that it spoils the film for him. He really truly honestly believes that he’s not racist or sexist but the “blatant DEI” ruins it.
NONE of the the main 9 star wars films are particularly subtle or deep, but they’re great fun, and if you can’t get over one of the lead characters being female or one of the main characters being ridiculously powerful for no other reason and you try to justify that in terms of consistency or good writing, you’re definitely using double standards.
I think he should reconsider how racist and sexist he is, and I think bleating about Rey being effortlessly at Kylo Ren’s level in the force isn’t worth the effort you put into justifying it.
I’d say the latest star wars movies were shit. It had nothing to do with Rey being a woman or even naturally gifted. Finn, Grumpy Luke, Swolo Ren (other poorly written characters), the writing team and the plot points (a spacecraft the size of a city needs to refuel but a lightsaber that can cut through anything has an infinite energy source) the writing team chose, should all share the blame. If your criticism is levelled at Rey alone, your argument isn’t worth hearing.
I don’t have a problem with the character, just the way she was written especially in the second film, I didn’t watch the third. And that film was terrible. The plot was bad, all the characters were bad, their adherence to star wars space stuff was bad
I don’t know if the writers were bad at their job or whether they were required to change it
I’ve always thought it was absolutely insane that the kids show paw patrol has 6 dogs with just ONE girl dog, along with the human lead being a boy.
and in Bluey almost all characters are girls.
Also in paw patrol, the good mayor is a black woman and the bumbling villain is a white man…
And those things mean they couldn’t have just had at least ONE of the 5 boy dogs as an additional girl? I don’t see what another show or the race of characters has to do with this.
Maybe it’s not being female led that’s the problem, it’s Mary Sue’s that I think people are tired of.
I don’t know what a Mary Sue is. Can you explain?
A main character who can do no wrong. They’re the best, prettiest, most important person. Rarely has flaws, or flaws that are actually “cool.” Like, the lead in many YA novels.
Or Batman, or Harry potter, or Tony Stark, or Kirito… There are so many! But those aren’t a problem for some reason. 🤔
Thanks.
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Because when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
because many people are uncomfortable with change and having women suddenly appearing more frequently thatn their use to upsets them. You’ll find this fear of the unknown a very common source of much stupidity.
You’re not over reacting. It is that fucked up. welcome to the insanity.
The following is a representation of conservative thought:
Because it defies belief! Everyone knows any real superhero team would have NO women, women couldn’t be superheroes! Movies only force us to have women there because of Woke. We can “tolerate” (will still complain about but will give Hollywood our dollars anyway) a 5/6 men/women ratio. If we gotta pretend to be Woke, it better not be more than five sixths!
Source: I was raised in a conservative household and did not fully reject that poison until I was 27.
