Pathetic Female Characters


Something I've noticed more in movies with time is how often the female movie characters are just an appendage basically, hollow shells. See the female lead in The Hustler and to an even greater extent its sequel The Color of Money. In the latter, Tom Cruise's girlfriend Carmen does nothing but sit, watch him play pool and video games in bars, hold the money he wins, take off his jacket, drink and smoke cigarettes, eat and go to the bathroom. That's her character's life basically and whatever love life is implied. Eddie's girlfriend is a little more 3-dimensional as the bar tender. There's very little back story with either of them and it's unsavory or uninteresting. They have one or two anecdotes. In the end, Carmen is reduced to just an errand boy - carrying money and messages between Eddie and Vincent, who have a falling out. The character just seems empty, a cardboard cut-out put in for the sake of having a pretty face for men to look at and someone for women to relate to. But she isn't worth relating to as there is nothing there.

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The Smurfette Principle is a term coined by Katha Pollitt in 1991 in an article for The New York Times.[1] It refers to a trope, found in many TV series and movies, where there is only one female in an all-male ensemble.[2] In Pollitt's words:

Contemporary shows are either essentially all-male, like "Garfield," or are organized on what I call the Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined... The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.

The Smurfette Principle establishes a male-dominated narrative, where the female is the exception, and exists only in reference to males. This signifies an underrepresentation of women, since they are half the world's population.[3][4]

From Wikipedia. Also see the Bechdel Test and the Finkbeiner test for gender bias in the mass media.

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They have all of these definitions and "tests" to define and frame movies' portrayals of gender, ethnicity, etc., when really it's these "flaws" that most accurately reflect real life.

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So true

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Pool hustling does tend to be pretty male dominated. I mean, I've been in pool halls, and there's not a lot of women there usually.

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Boobies

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I second that!

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