I found this pic/quote of Joss Whedon, and it immediately made me think of the head of a multimedia studio I work for. He’s always talking about certain studios that refuse to make films with a strong female lead and remarks he gets from his writing group about the teen fighting girls series he publishes, remarks like, “But she’s a fifteen-year-old girl facing a two-hundred pound man, she ain’t gonna win.” And he’ll reply, “If that fifteen-year-old girl is wielding a flaming sword or a two-handed battle hammer, that guy’s gonna be toast.” And then the critic still can’t wrap his mind around a girl with a sword in proper battle armor (proper, as in built to fully protect, not built to protect some parts and expose others). And come to think of it, the majority of entertainment-related things I enjoy best include male leads. Not that I have a problem with John McClane, he’s completely awesome, but why can we have a woman doing that kind of badassery? And I have no problem with Link getting the Master Sword and shoving it between Ganon’s eyes, but why can’t there be a woman character wielding a sword and having a similarly epic showdown with evil? I enjoy these forms of entertainment because I get to sort of live adventurously through these characters, but the living through them is just a bit more distant when I can’t live through them as a woman.
I agree that Joss Whedon is very good at writing female characters (well as much as my opinion counts having a Y chromosome and all…). I think one of the most well known example’s is Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vast majority of the protaganist characters were female and butt kickers to be sure.
While I like agree that the whole female armor thing is ridiculous as shown by this college humor video…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTGh0EMmMC8
Course us guys still have Conan the Barbarian to contend with and the Incredible hulk…he just runs around in his skivvies. But women’s protrayal in fiction is definitely for other people to discuss because I have learned through watching online “discussions” that having some extra plumbing in the basement means you can’t comment.
Still a good quote though….