Let's say I wrote a novel that featured three male characters and eight female characters. All three of the male characters are unintelligent, domineering, and physically abusive to women.
At the other end of the spectrum are the eight female characters, who are all intelligent, sensibly humble, and skilled at resolving problems with open communication instead of with their fists. I hope that if I wrote a novel like this, it would be absolutely eviscerated in Amazon's 'review' section. Stereotyping men by consistently featuring them in a negative light is completely unfair. And sadly, that's exactly what a lot of Hollywood's White male screenwriters constantly do to women. How often do we watch movies that feature an abundance of significant male characters, all of whom have an appropriate variety of personality types while the comparatively small number of featured female characters are basically all the same person? The women are ALL nagging, screaming, intuitive yet completely illogical, and have a tendency to scream phrases such as, "Be a man! Do something!" It's as if these screenwriters have only one mindset when it comes to writing female characters- the women must be sexy yet HIGHLY annoying. But that's not what women are like in real life. Most of us don't nag or scream at men for no reason. In fact, in many cases, the opposite is true. A lot of us are trained to be overpolite and put up with abuse, meaning we often let the men in our lives do terrible things to us because we think this is okay. So, yeah, maybe when we reach our breaking point, we might lose it and scream. But we don't just walk around yelling and demanding to be treated like royalty. Sadly, that's typically how we're portrayed in movies written by Hollywood's most adored White male screenwriters. And then there's the case of the 'Black woman' character who these men feel obligated to add to their movies as a sort of comic relief. The Black woman is never a main character. She typically works in the service industry. Perhaps she's a nanny, a waitress, or a salesclerk of some sort. That said, this character has the attitude of an esteemed Duchess. Completely narcissistic, despite the fact that she's laughably unattractive, this loud and angry character has a tendency to roll her eyes at everything the White characters say. And at some point, she will roll her eyes and mumble, "White people," under her breath in a way that is supposed to be funny. I always feel bad for the actresses who have to play this role. Because they're so talented, but they repeatedly get stuck in roles like that. (Until they get on Shonda Rhimes' radar and end up with a more realistic character in a production that's actually decent) I also feel bad for myself and for other Black women in the audience when I'm watching movies like this because they subconsciously tell us that this is how the average man views us- they see the color of our skin and immediately expect us to be unpleasant. Of course, not every White male writer in Hollywood is doling out screenplays with these stereotypes. Some of the talented writers who do an excellent job in portraying female characters are J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Schur. It's usually pretty refreshing to watch their productions, because I know that whatever movie or television show they're behind will include people who look like me and who aren't stereotypes. Hopefully one day, more writers will be like those guys.
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