This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The hero's journey typically starts with the "character vs self conflict", while the heroine's journey you describe is more like "character vs society."
The hero has to overcome some internal conflict before they can succeed in their other conflicts. But a heroine seems to not be overcoming her own internal conflict, but instead figuring out that her internal conflict is actually something imposed on them by society's stereotypes of women. Hell, the heroine's journey may be better parsed as "character vs (character vs self)."
There are movies where the heroine follows the hero's journey. Romantic films are big on them. The internal conflict is typically about which guy to pick, the trauma is some crap relationship from years ago. Lifetime/Hallmark movies do a lot of this, too. You'll see some big city lawyer (female) who has to go and close a deal on some property development in a beautiful small town. She goes and meets a handsome guy, usually they get off on the wrong foot. And he happens to run a failing business, which just happens to be the one she's there to buy. He bitches about how horrible the property developer is, but he has no choice but to sell. She hides that she's working for them. Internal struggle, people find out, everyone hates her, she realizes she loves the dude and hates her job, she quits her job and manages to save the failing business. Happy ending.
Anyways, what I hate in many Hollywood movies is that the female lead doesn't have the initial struggle at all. The story is basically reduced down to just the main conflict, but we go through the motions like there's a character vs character conflict. Instead this is basically just targeted at the audience, it's a "character vs (audience vs society)" conflict or something. Like we're supposed to expect her to fail, to struggle, but she doesn't. Our expectations, as they say, are subverted. And we're bigots if we think that the character should have struggled. Really what we're seeking is for the character to grow. If our heroine happened to meet the enemy at the beginning, it'd be a short film rather than a feature.
I've felt many recent female characters are basically written like one-dimensional villains, but they happen to always win.
This would be really interesting to unpack just because we could make the point that there are many female villains who are actually well-rounded characters because they have some tragic flaw (usually related to their reasons for being a villain) AND they act in an agentic fashion. Indeed they'd have to, or else the plot wouldn't happen! So they don't end up shortchanged in the character department like a female heroine might be.
And then discuss the point that Disney has recently started making films that examine their (female) villain characters and given them backstory... in a way that tends to explain or justify their flaws that led to villainy as not really their fault. In the process arguably making them less interesting.
Somehow I doubt we're going to get a Gaston movie that explains that his extreme narcissism and borderline obsession with Belle is the result of a traumatic childhood that drove him to be an extremely competitive perfectionist or something.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link