This BBC Arts thread continues on the iPlayer with Inside Cinema’s Strong Female Characters. It’s a barely-there critique that fails to nail marketing over actual writing.
“Hanna Flint teams up with some Strong Female Characters to look at whether kicking ass is always empowering. From Hotel Artemis to Thelma and Louise, via the action heroics of Birds of Prey and Captain Marvel, these action heroines are here to save the day. But are characters like Lara Croft feminist icons or sex objects – or maybe both?”
At only six minutes, this is an illustrated montage of characters from action, sci-fi and fantasy. Questioning ‘strong’ and/or ‘female’, it reminds us Ripley in Alien was originally written as a man. It skips lightly through cinema’s female rebels and super-heroes from the last forty years without answering any of its own questions or looking beyond certain genres. There’s no mention of recent hits Ladybug, Little Women or Pieces of a Woman.
Meanwhile the current golden age of TV offers us a much more satisfying choice. The show’s cover star Tessa Thompson (Thor Ragnarok) fares much better alongside Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton in Westworld, to pick just one. Perhaps because TV is a writer’s medium? Who’s have thought?