I’ve been thinking a lot about the character of the blonde popular bitch in teen movies. There are a lot of examples:
Regina George (Mean Girls), Sharpay Evans (High School Musical), Heather Chandler (Heathers), and Cher Horowitz (Clueless) just to make a few.
What is interesting is all of their characters are defined by three primary characteristics: being physically attractive, being ultra-feminine, and having ambition. Now what’s interesting is the first two characteristics are things that society likes in women, so in a typical story one would expect these characters to be treated as heros or at least love interests. But instead ¾ of these characters are either primary or secondary villains. Cher is the exception, being the protagonist of her movie, but many of her actions are vilified by the script so despite being the protagonist, it isn’t until the end that she is treated like a hero.
Why is this character type villainized?
The answer is that these characters are women who use the things that society likes in women (femininity, beauty) not for men, but for their own personal use. This goes back to the aforementioned ambition. These characters crave power, and are willing to work for it, more specifically, they are willing to use their ~feminine wiles~ to get it. By having this ultra masculine character trait, these characters are seen as villains when they perform simple acts like caring about their appearance, or being flirtatious. Traits like this, ambition, flirtation and even vanity are praised in male characters.
Many of the actions and personalities these women do/have are strikingly similar to many male anti heroes in action movies.
They are arrogant, clever, manipulative, self-aggrandizing, just like characters like Tony Stark, Loki, Han Solo and Deadpool. But whereas these anti heroes become lovable scoundrels with hearts of gold, these characters become the villains of their tales because they are teenage girls.
To me what this says is audiences and writers are fine with all the traits associated with ambition, they just aren’t fine when it’s associated with femininity. Because an ambitious clever man is a scoundrel, but an ambitious woman is a bitch.
As a little girl constantly seeing these characters portrayed as evil made me develop a really negative image of femininity. I wanted to think I was superior to other girls because I feel better presenting pretty masculine. I was really misogynistic to a lot of girls because of my preconceived notions about femininity equating to shallowness and bad intentions. I know there are a lot of gay/gnc girls that like me had similar misogynistic hang ups because of gender non conformity and that really sucks!
As such I think it’s really cool when movies subvert the blonde bitch trope. To some extent, Clueless did this, but I think a better example is Legally Blonde. Elle Woods is clearly ambitious and hard working, but she’s also a feminine pretty blonde woman. And she is absolutely the hero of her story, and she is able to succeed due to a combination of her femininity and her ambition without having to compromise either!
What, like it’s hard?
Allow women to be feminine and ambitious and written like heros!
Tessa Thompson behind the scenes of ‘Thor: Ragnarok’
I didn’t notice this while watching the film but: they gave her heels? WTF? Who thinks that any warrior of any race or gender in their right mind would want to do that?
You weren’t meant to notice those in the film. Those are not “her armor has heels”
Those are stage lifts designed to make the actor look taller/the correct height for the character. You’ll see them a lot in behind the scenes clips – and not just on women either (in fact, RDJ wears them all the time to make him the right height relative to Chris Evans, ‘cause RDJ is short. Tom Cruise also wears lifts in a lot of his movies, because the guy is TINY). Tessa Thompson is only 5′4. She needs that extra height to look convincing as Valkyrie.
Remember when they had to build a ramp so Natalie Portman wouldn’t look weird kissing Chris Hemsworth XD;; I laughed, and yet, I’m only about 7cm taller than her so it was kinda an ugly laugh
Check out those extreme platform boots on Haldir (Craig Parker) from Lord of the Rings 🙂
Look if we’re gonna point out anyone’s high heels lets not forget the best one
mamma mia: here we go again was a good movie with some great 70s Looks and great bops and I will not hear otherwise
“We looked initially at David Lean’s B&W classics, such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), both shot by the amazing Guy Greene. They’re timeless, the cinematography is stunning, and they set very high bar to reach in they way they evoke emotions.
However, B&W movies are not the perfect visual references to show to studio executives wanting to make a big budget production in colour. So we also talked about certain painters that Ken [Branagh] and Dante [Ferretti, production designer] had in mind. The usual references for candle-lit period dramas are Flemish painters, such as Rembrandt and Vermeer. But these have been done many times over, and were not playful enough for Disney. That was the trick. For the more joyful moments in the movie, they asked me to consider the paintings of Fragonard, an often-overlooked artist. Fortunately, the UK has many of his works at The Wallace Collection in London. The Fragonards are colourful and playful, and I could see how they could open-up new cinematographic opportunities. The “The Swing” in particular, is slightly naughty and flirtatious, and there’s a direct reference to it in the movie.
For the darker, more wretched moments in the movie, we again avoided the typical references, and looked at the works of the French Baroque painter Georges De La Tour. They are unusual, dark, but with bold lighting and strong compositions. I’ve loved his work since being a student at Central St Martin’s and “Joseph The Carpenter” is a masterpiece.
Whilst these painterly references gave us two strong starting points to counterpoint the joy and drudgery within the story, we also wanted a way to treat the seemingly benign but evil step-mother – for her to appear more like a film noir femme fatale. So I suggested that we also consider the portraiture work of Joseph Walker, cinematographer on many of Frank Capra’s best-loved movies, inventor of the zoom lens, and a forerunner of the Hollywood glamour look, and also the large format portrait photography of George Hurrell, upon whom Walker had great influence.” — Haris Zambarloukos on finding the looks for the movie
Anyone got suggestions for creepy documentaries im in the mood
here you go
not scary scary but its unsettling
What the fuck
Im watching this immediately this looks freaky as shit thank you
I saw this documentary at Sundance when I was working the festival, and every single screening of this film had heightened security, as well as bag and pocket checks before entering the theatre.
Why? Because earlier on in the festival, one of the people from Jane O’Brien Media (the company behind the “tickle cells”) was in the audience disrupting the screening.
At other festivals people from Jane O’Brien Media were kicked out for bringing recording devices into screenings with coffee cups and for continuously attempting to sabotage festival screenings. They hijacked the Q&A at a screening in Los Angeles, where they spent the Q&A portion threatening legal action against the filmmakers.
Not only a great “the truth is stranger than fiction” doc, but an absolutely crucial film to watch in an age where digital media has the power to be used for coercion. There’s a reason why those profiled didn’t want this doc getting out.
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