Thinky-thoughts on irresponsibility and gender portrayal

[jethrien]

This is brought to you via the Green Hornet, which is getting lukewarm reviews today.

So once upon a time, when men were men and women and minorities knew their place, men (white men, of course, the others don't count) in television and movies and comics were competent and benignly indulgent of the dizziness and incompetence of their female companions and minority sidekicks. See, say, The Spirit or I Love Lucy.

These days, it seems far more likely, at least in light-hearted fare, that the women are the competent ones, while the men are overgrown man-children who need to be gently herded lest they do nothing with their lives but drink beer and make fart jokes. With the Green Hornet, we apparently have the same dynamic--Kato is the hyper competent killjoy to his employer's inanity.

So here's the question. Is it that we've made some progress, so women and minorities are allowed to be competent? (Clearly, not enough progress, as the main character's still a guy and the woman/minority still acts as an "other". Although I'd certainly rather be boringly responsible and competent than a ditz.) Or is the social mores have changed enough that the prejudice is still just as bad? Is it that in the 1950s, competence was prized and therefore only white men got it, while now perpetual adolescence is prized and therefore only white men get it?

(I realizing I'm totally generalizing here. Obviously there are movies with female heroes and so on. Although, I can't think of a movie where a woman acts as badly as the men in, say, Knocked Up or Iron Man. It seems that you can be a useless, irresponsible schlub and still be sympathetic and even heroic, but only if you're a white dude. Anyway, there are lots of exceptions, but I feel like there's enough of a trend to think about.)

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The sister and brother-in-law do actually follow the pattern of man-child and responsible woman. But then, that whole movie is about how the man-child learns to grow into a responsible adult (as exemplified by yelling at the sister...IDEK).

As opposed to Iron Man 2, which is about how a man-child who makes his PA's life a living hell with his selfishness, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, and by flat out running roughshod over anything she wants to do fixes everything by marrying her. Cause that's going to work out SO well.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Hm. It's been a few years since I've seen it, so I'll defer to your better memory.

I did, though, feel like the sister *wanted* to be a slacker, but knew she couldn't for the sake of her kids.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I recently caught the second half of it on TV, otherwise I wouldn't remember it well at all. But yeah, nobody in that movie could really be called a decent human being.