300 Movie And Gender Inequality

Didn't see any thread about 300 Rise of an Empire, and forum search is down ATM.

This is kind of a weird example, but I'm getting kind of tired of women getting a pass in battle scenarios. Artemisia wasn't a typical Evil Sadistic Bitch stereotype, but she proved time and time again to be an enemy of Themistocles. And yet, after their big-ass fight at the end, he gives her an out. Had she been a man, that scene would have ended right then and there with Themistocles cutting off his head, presumably with some kind of bad-ass quote.

I can't point out other examples at the moment, but surely other people have noticed this trend. I guess, in a round-about way it's Gender Equality at its finest in the sense that these succubi use their feminine wiles to ensnare our heroes, who break free of the trap in the end. Men have their brawn, women have their boobs, and each use theirs to their advantage. It makes sense, it's just such a cliche by now. I guess that 300 was probably the wrong place looking for ground-breaking gender portrayals, but hey.

You know, some women actually DO use their sexuality as a weapon. It's actually been a fairly common thing throughout history. Go ahead and call me sexist if you want, but i'd probably hesitate more in killing a woman than a man. But thats me.

tired of this crap.

andherewego.gif

So, you're upset because some man didn't chop off some woman's head while saying "gimme some head" or something in an unnecessary sequel to a movie about fake, highly stylized ancient Greece/Sparta/whatever filled with ridiculously over the top caricatures of real people?

300 Movie is fo defs a documentary.

Is the new flick just another soapbox for Frank Miller's hilariously awful politics? I'm sure the new one is filled with instances of unintentionally ironic homophobia and characters saying "don't tread on me!". I can only imagine the film ends with a stirring montage set to Tobey Keith's "Courtesy of The Red, White and Blue(The Angry Athenian)".

(P.S. Goat men?)

I'm not sure if "gender inequality" is necessarily the right label for how two fictional characters in a fantasy version of an ancient society relate to each other.

You know, in some ways, I feel like a preposterously over-the-top "historical" action movie is the best place to discard gender bias. It's not as though 300 is trying its damnedest to hew to social context.

The first movie was actually a little bit surprising in that. When the political stuff played out in Sparta, it manipulated gender roles in a smarter way than anyone had a right to expect. Maybe a tad exploitative in the execution, sure, but we are talking about a movie in which a bunch of topless warriors are betrayed by a hunchback.

I watched this movie yesterday and it was just another story of other Greek who attack the Persians which is Athenians. This movie shows how Xerxes became the Persian King.

All hail Google, finder of all relevant knowledge!

First search result for "gender and criminal sentencing"

http://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx

If you're a criminal defendant, it may help—a lot—to be a woman. At least, that's what Prof. Sonja Starr's research on federal criminal cases suggests. Prof. Starr's recent paper, "Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases," looks closely at a large dataset of federal cases, and reveals some significant findings. After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper.

There are other studies that have shown gender disparity in criminal cases, but not as pronounced as Prof. Starr's findings. This is because she is looking at "a larger swath of the criminal justice process" in her analysis, she said. The paper states, "Existing studies have typically focused on single stages of the criminal process in isolation"—in particular, the judge's final sentencing decision. These studies compare actual sentencing outcomes after controlling for the recommended sentence associated with the defendant's ultimate conviction. The problem with this, Starr explains, is that "the key control variable is itself the result of a host of discretionary decisions made earlier in the justice process"—including prosecutors' charging and plea-bargaining decisions. Starr's research incorporates disparities found at those earlier stages, and finds that "more disparity is introduced at each phase of the justice process."

So yeah. That seems about right. Ask a politically active feminist about this, and I imagine they would tell you that it's one more injustice created by the system of patriarchy. Then they'd do absolutely fuck all to attempt to change these outcomes.

Yes, that was quite bitter and negative, but please note that I don't think all feminists feel that way, just the most politically and socially active ones. The ones who could actually stand a chance of changing something. The one's who have brought about things like title IX, predominate aggressor laws, and so on.

But I'll certainly admit that I could be wrong. If anyone can provide a link to any example of feminists actively fighting the gender bias in criminal sentencing, please provide a link. I'd be happy to be wrong about this, but I wasn't able to find anything with a quick search.

wait now its even movies like 300 ? Please kill me....

Oh please...

I dunno. A lot of men have reservations about hurting women. Maybe the guy in the movie feels the same. Seems fairly simple to me.

@twisted: such sexist pigs...

I am for equality and make no difference in men or women. I hit everyone the same.

which means never since I never hit anyone in my life before

Hmmm...well if we want some equality let women and men battle each other in UFC, have female bodybuilders compete with males, allow females to compete with males on basketball, football,baseball,and other sports. Lets start the female uprising ladies and gentlemen.

ughhhhhh.gif

I know there's a "rider meet horse, horse meet rider" joke hiding in here somewhere, but I can't quite tease it out.

The OP is a joke making fun of the mindless SJWs who cannot take the fact that a woman isn't portrayed as a perfect goddess of everything right and treated 100% right in fiction based on history, don't take it seriously.

Oh no there isn't more misogyny in this movie, how darest!

Don't expect to see men hurting/killing women in media anytime soon. Or ever.

For that matter, displaying the combatants as equals can probably be considered sexist. Y'all know how Anita said: "The harmful misogynist myth this trope reinforces". Well the harmful misogynist myth this trope reinforces could be argued to be that violence against women is a 50/50 conflict between good and evil and that hurting the woman was an act of triumph.

So yea, don't look for "equality" here.

The .gifs in a trying to be serious but is failing thread do get annoying guys...

I don't know. Isn't it better that there is a powerful leading lady antagonist in the movie, something that has rarely been done?

I don't care about the gender politics as long as I get some more of those burnished abs and homoerotic subtext. Rowwwwwrr!

Yes, there is a gender inequality, but it goes both ways, and until we realize that gender inequality hurts everybody, all talks of sexism on the internet run the risk of devolving into the oppression olympics.

As for the movie, from what I hear, It's a lot less Frank Miller-y than the last one. But what do I know?

Its that sexism again!

What movies honestly do quips any more? When was the last time you legit heard a movie where the action hero did a quip? Quip movies were regarded as being so silly I thought they were kind of wiped off the face of the planet after the 80's.

As others have pointed out it is a rather societal thing that has been taught that is "Men shouldn't hurt women." And the issue is such an ingrained one there would be a lot that would have to change in our culture that I don't see to many movies taking the step forward and being the one that goes. "Oh course he killed her! She was the bad guy!"

I completely disagree with your statement that it would have been different if it was a man, it could have been different sure but it probably wouldn't have.

I'm going to give you a scenario and you just tell me if it sounds familiar.

Villain has hoards of goons and henchmen, hero and pals slaughter every single one of them until they reach the Villain. Main hero and Main Villain duel, Hero gets the Villain on his knees and does the "No, I am better then killing you, I am above that." And turns around and walks away exposing their back and the dastardly Villain takes this opportunity to attempt to back stab them but then the collapsing building they were fighting in falls down on him, or the buddy of the Hero shoots him or the one goon who was really a good guy all along saves the Hero and blah blah fucking blah.

So I would say this is a movie trope in general not just a female movie trope.

However I will say it is hard for me to think of to many movies where the bad guy is a female and the good guy does straight up kill her.

Actually I can think of one that was fairly recent and was a kick ass movie too, but given how recent it was I don't want to outright spoil it for anyone, so, under separate spoiler tags I'll give an actor who was in it, the year it was made, and then the movie it was so you can attempt to avoid spoiling it if you were excited for a movie from that year/with that actor.

Karl Urban.

2012

Dredd, the movie was Dredd, he marches right up to Lena Headey (who was in the first 300 coincidentally) gives her no out and boots her right the fuck out of a window. Awesome. So basically Dredd is the least sexist movie of all time.

Oh, also in the t.v. series 24 at some point Jack straight up shoots a series regular female antagonist while she is laying on the ground.

Let's just face it already that there are distinct differences between men and women on average. It's not a crime to admit we're different from each other. It's what you do with it that counts.

I'm more curious what you thought of the movie as a whole. Did you enjoy it? I really liked the first movie. Is this one any good?

@zolroyce: @egg: About the don't ever expect to see a woman get killed by a man in a movie: He totally kills her. Runs her through and stands over her as she bleeds out. (spoiler tagged for major spoilers)

I think the OP is seeing fire where he wants to see fire. The fact that the movie takes place in the time period that it does and there are two pretty kick ass women in this flick is cool. They actually made a female villain that wasn't just a sex toy with a bad attitude and a mean left hook. They actually make her and her blood lust something you could sympathize with. Lena Dunham returns as the Queen of Sparta and she plays a conflicted hero type. I felt like they had great roles, but I'm a white male so what do I know.

Edit: Also, I just want to say that because of something that happens in an earlier scene in the movie, I think his offer to spare her was totally legit (and a little selfish).

If he kills her, it's sexist.

If he doesn't kill her, it's sexist.

I took it as him feeling pity for the hardships she had experienced that brought her to the point where she was. Also, that movie kinda sucked anyway.

Welcome to the internet! Where misguided young people (like me! for typing this out) pretend to be outrage at stuff that doesn't really matter, all the while completely ignoring shit that would actually help causes that they agree with. Instead, we go on video games forum and bitch about movies, at the same time forgetting that it is his/her mother/sister/daughter that is getting paid less (hell in many industry around the world fraternity leave is not a thing so they just have to quit or not get hire at all in the first place) while doing the same job because she is a women. Nah, that's not important. Lets just talk about Scarlet Johannson looking too sexy on posters and woman warrior getting preferable treatment?

BTW, this is not a call out to op but it is getting a little ridiculous with all these thread about this issue going about it the wrong way.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but the way you describe it does make it sound like sexist stereotypes reinforcing typically-perceived gender roles.

@zolroyce: you got me real excited for a second because I totally believed Lena Dunham was in that movie but in actuality it was a different Lena.

therefore the only thing she was a badass in has been adventure time

Yeah, that dude totally should've killed that chick.

Oh shit, haha, I switched out one Lena for another, my bad, probably accidentally made @sixpin say Dunham as well. To the editmobile!

Just saw the movie, and Themistokles is a strategist not a bloodthirsty suicidal warrior like Leonidas; so obviously he would choose to try to capture the leader of the opposing side. Since the movie's called 300 he had to be the best warrior ever and all that nonsense so that audiences would accept it but in general the character is more tactical (though perhaps not in the bedchamber) and the movie does a great job of demonstrating actually effective strategic formations that have been used throughout history which is not in an easy thing to do. It also does a pretty good job of showing just how stupid the Persians had to be to lose those wars. This stands in stark contrast to the first movie which was literally 300 dudes standing in front of a bluescreen on identical terrain for the entire movie.

This is a real stretch. Eva Green stole the show as Artemisia and it really was HER movie.

I actually thought Rise of an Empire did a decent job of getting away from the hilariously cartoonish "soldiers are the awesomest" wank of the first movie and made the Spartans look like stubborn assholes. It wasn't that great of a movie overall, but it did some thins right.

War is hell. Also sexist.

I don't appreciate this sort of commentary towards my character, thank you very much.

ha! Yeah, he should show a little respect.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't is the case for everything now a days.

uggggghhhhhhhhhh

I think I'm missing something here; Artemisia != ArtelinaRose...

I wonder if it's possible for GB to create a gender politics/feminism section of the forum so all these types of threads can go in there.

My original sign up name was Artemesia; I changed it a while ago to go along with my name after coming out as trans.

If in the movie the hero character killed her the way he would kill a male antagonist there would be major controversy about violence towards women.