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Author
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Comment
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(3/25/03 8:05 am)
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Literalism doesn't work
Hey, I said "usually"!
Anyway, I think we have a problem with an expectation that fairy tale heroines must behave like real-world women -- winning by negotiating, taking a job, dumping the bastard, whatever. But you can't dump the bastard when he's part of your own psyche! You might, however, have to kill him, or turn him into a pig (or a prince).
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Angel
Feather
Registered User
(4/23/03 9:48 am)
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Female Hero
How about Sigournay Weaver in "Aliens"? Female hero fighting female villain (the egg-laying alien) all to protect the little girl found on the planet. You really couldn't replace Ripley with a male hero because the motivations wouldn't be the same. There is something very primal about a mother protecting her children, although in this context Ripley is projecting onto the little girl through the loss of her own daughter.
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(4/23/03 10:31 am)
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No real heroes
How interesting this is!
It is good to see someone else voicing my own thoughts about the lack of genuine heroes in literature and in film. And by that I mean heroes who show real strength and take responsibility for events.
It's something that fascinates me because I tend to feel it's partly to do with the growth in the power of women, which naturally enough I'm not against! Still, it would seem that the more powerful women become, the weaker men become... And who can explain why boys are now doing less well in school than girls? Or why fewer and fewer boys read for pleasure any more. Or why girls now get better degrees at University? It is a bit of a mystery.
Fascinating though.
Alison
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GailS
Unregistered User
(4/23/03 2:06 pm)
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Alien Movies
I’m not sure you can examine Ripley’s (Sigournay Weaver) mothering instincts too closely, especially within the context of the complete Alien mythos. In Alien 3, Ripley finds she carries the embryo of the alien queen. As a result, the lurking alien on the prison planet protects her. Since a lot of religious imagery is used throughout the film, assorted reviewers chose to link the ending (SPOILER ALERT) when Ripley kills herself and the embryo with various abortion issues.
Unfortunately, the third movie is a mess. Even if you want to look at Ripley’s relationship with Newt, you don’t know what happened to the girl between movies 2 & 3. Since she spent that time locked in a ship with the impregnated Ripley, it does leave a messy end untied.
Although in other ways you are right, men don't generally become pregnant, except in fantasy/s-f movies, so it's a dynamic they don't usually deal with.
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(4/24/03 5:37 am)
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No real heroes
Alison -
I have to disagree with the generalization that boys have grown weaker. The circumstance you cited, boys doing poorly in school, presupposes that they used to dominate school, which hasn't always been the case. To begin with, in America at least, most people had little schooling or dropped out of school by the sixth grade. This was the case for both boys and girls until the middle of the twentieth century. Very few people went on to any kind of higher education. True, many of these were boys. However, for different periods of the nineteenth century, business was considered an upper class man's world, while university or finishing schools were where upper class families sent their daughters. Those who weren't in the upper classes did a variety of things: farming, factory work, had small businesses, etc. None of these included attending school.
As far as women doing better in school now, Americans are very concerned that there seems to be an education gap. Girls still tend to do worse in math and sciences than boys, especially in the higher grades. Kids, boys and girls, in schools with few resources also do worse, over all, than kids in schools with more resources.
I just mention these because I think the situation is more complicated than women now have much more schooling, therefore boys are doing worse in school.
Sorry I've seen to strayed so off topic.
LauraMc
Edited by: Laura McCaffrey at: 4/24/03 8:31:19 am
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(4/24/03 9:41 am)
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No real heroes
Hi Laura,
It's interesting what you say about America, but certainly in the UK there is no doubt there is quite a clear divide between how well girls and boys are doing academically. Girls are even doing better than the boys in sciences now too.
It's troubling to many people because although various theories are put forward to explain it, no-one is really sure why it is happening.
It does seem to be something to do with reading though. In the UK boys simply don't read now in the way they did once. Many don't read at all.
Some people have suggested it is all to do with methods of teaching reading which don't favour the way boys think. And to redress this there has been a return to an emphasis on phonics which was very out of fashion for a long time.
But it is a curious phenomenon and I feel there is more to it, although what exactly I'm not sure. But what kind of unbalanced situation do you have when boys and men don't read any more? It's rather horrific really.
Alison
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/26/03 8:35 pm)
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'heroine' vs 'love interest'
(Permit me to assert a distinction between "women as heroes" and "heroines." If anyone has a better way of expressing the difference, I'd love to know.)
Back to the original question, I've run across some related comments by Richard Stefanik, who analyzes movies such a THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Instead of the pattern of hero and villian struggle for heroine, he speaks of hero and villian and 'love interest.' In WOZ Dorothy is the hero and Toto is the 'love interest'. In ET, if we consider Eliot the hero then ET is the 'love interest'. When Indiana Jones was searching for the Grail, his father was the 'love interest'. There are more examples at his page http://www.themegahitmovies.com/rms/
and more detail in his ebook.
So the term 'heroine' is ambiguous, it can mean either 'a hero who happens to be female' or 'a sympathetic character whom the hero loves and rescues'.
Rosemary r@rosemaryake.com
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/26/03 9:27 pm)
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Interesting
Rosemary,
I think that is an interesting theory, but wouldn't the "love interest" in WOZ really be "home", or "Aunt Eller", or some other object of the quest? Toto is really an accoutrament - not a character. The way you have described "love interest"/"heroine" it is rather possessive in nature, like a "thing" rather than a character, or am I missing the point?
Jess
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Alan
Lattimore
Registered User
(4/27/03 5:36 am)
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Love Interest
Rather loosely defined, would be that which is pursued by both the protagonist (hero) and the antagonist (villain) that motivates the protagonist to action.
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(4/28/03 7:18 am)
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Heroines, princesses and such
Getting back to the Russian formalists again, Propp analyzed characters in terms of their dramatic function, and offered up a list of 7 dramatic roles based upon these functions (actual characters taking on one or more roles in any given tale). So in the Russian tales, you have hero, villain, helper, princess (a sought-for person), donor (provider of a magical agent), dispatcher and false hero. He considered these distinct from the gender of the hero, princess, etc., which he would have called an "attribute" of the character, but the terms "hero" and "princess," especially juxtaposed, are nevertheless strongly colored by gender expectations of one sort or another.
The Russian folklorist Meletinsky, who worked with Siberian materials, used the term "tale value" to refer to the sought-after person, object, or state. Even in European materials, obviously, the tale value is not always a love interest (e.g., Holy Grail). Nice to have a term available that has nothing to do with gender or romance.
Judith
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/28/03 1:55 pm)
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Re: Heroines, princesses and such
So in the Russian tales, you have hero, villain, helper, princess (a sought-for person) ... but the terms "hero" and "princess," especially juxtaposed, are nevertheless strongly colored by gender expectations of one sort or another.
The Russian folklorist Meletinsky, who worked with Siberian materials, used the term "tale value" to refer to the sought-after person, object, or state.
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Is "tale value" the same as "the MacGuffin"?
Yes, Propp did use the term "princess" in kind of a generic sense.
Stefanik says:
"Dorothy and Elmira Gulch struggle for possession of Toto in the first act of the film. In the third act, Toto is the love interest that the Wicked Witch threatens to kill if Dorothy doesn't give her the ruby slippers."
http://www.scriptmag.com/pages/Classes/instructions/storydesignclass/StoryDesign4.html
He also stretches the term "love interest" to cover a treasure fought over (the Ark in Raiders, the plans in Star Wars, etc). I think he'd do better to keep "love interest" for an appealing character and use MacGuffin for the object. Often the hero has to choose which one to save.
Rosemary
Edited by: Rosemary Lake at: 4/28/03 1:57:39 pm
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(4/29/03 7:05 am)
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macguffins and tale values
>Is "tale value" the same as "the MacGuffin"?
My understanding of the term "macguffin" is that the two are a bit distinct. The macguffin is a thing that sets or keeps a plot in motion; it's often an object that's the focus of a lot of activity, e.g. the Maltese Falcon or the One Ring in LOTR. The actual "value" that the protagonist or other characters acquire in the course of the story might be something completely different. And, of course, not all stories have a macguffin, while -- by definition? -- all have a tale value.
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(5/2/03 9:51 pm)
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tale value
Ok, what are some examples of "tale value" in contrast to MacGuffin, love interest, treasure, etc? Does it coincide with "lack liquidated"? Would "back to Kansas" or "no place like home" be an example?
R.
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(5/7/03 9:44 am)
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Disney's lineup of heroines
disney.go.com/characters/...index.html
Disney sets its princesses up against Barbie. (Mulan was listed in the Economist article, but is missing from this page). I can't fault them. Princessing has to be better than shopping.
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(5/7/03 9:47 am)
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Disney's lineup of heroines
Oops, they also left out Pocohantas.
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