2015: A GREAT YEAR FOR FEMALE CHARACTERS?

You know how pretty much every year there’s the usual complaint about how less female-centric (and at times less Non-White) Hollywood is? This year was CLEARLY the exception for women. This year the women were in full effect from heroes of all shapes and sizes (we see you Melissa McCarthy) to villains who would give their male counterparts a run in villainy (Rose McBryne in Spy and Elizabeth Debicki in The Man From U.N.C.L.E) to women who just overtook a movie named after a guy (Mad Max: Fury Road).

                                          Miranda Hart & Melissa McCarthy shine in Spy.

The women didn’t take it lying down this year (it was hard to avoid that pun, it all but wrote itself). Melissa McCarthy kicked ass in Spy with a little help from the bumbling Miranda Hart who played her efficient Girl Friday. Charlize Theron’s Furiosa upstaged the title character in Fury Road with not much of a blink from most people, except that stupid men-inist group (I don’t have time to google their name). Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust had the highest number of action sequences after Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation which was a lot more than the trio of Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner & Ving Rhames combined. The Man From U.N.C.L.E presented us with two different female characters played by Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki, one good and one bad who played more than their designated stereotypes in these types of movies, particularly the former, this despite- or because of it –Guy Ritchie’s penchant of lacing his movies with bits of homo-eroticism which I oddly enough enjoy from Ritchie (every guy remembers Handsome Bob, DON'T LIE!)… but that’s another topic!

           Tom Hardy as Max and the real star of the show, Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa.

It’s not just that these women were given roles that were different from what is usually expected and it’s certainly not the first time either, but what is interesting is that all these characters seemed wholly formed rather than as an afterthought. The only character who suffered, ironically enough is the most superhero of them all, The Avengers’ Black Widow. As much as I loved her love story with Dr. Banner a.k.a The Hulk. She just wasn’t as present for me as the aforementioned female characters; of course Age of Ultron had a lot going against it between being a Joss Whedon movie and a Marvel movie, so that’s understandable. Even the movie soundtrack of the year (till the new Bond song drops at least), The Man From U.N.C.L.E’s You Work For Me sung by Laura Mvula has her reminding her lover that “you work for me… come when I call, get down on your knees…”!

                    Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Fasut... and a Tom Cruise clearly in need of rescue.

        

Of course all this female-centricness has a “dark side”. Just because Hollywood has proven time and time again that women can carry and lead a movie (hello Bridesmaids) doesn’t mean everything now has to be female-driven (just like we don’t want to see a Black Bond, just because he’s Black… even though we still want Idris Elba for it, it’s because he’s a good actor before anything else and not the colour of his skin). 20^th Century Fox’s decision to turn their League of Extraordinary Gentlemen reboot into a possibly all female group after planning to make it “female-centric” (League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen?) comes after the success of films like Mad Max, Spy and the recently rebooted Ghostbusters (which by the way most of us are probably going to see because those women are funny and not just because they’re women), doesn’t sit well with me, because- am not saying it can’t be done with women –it needs to be done right (character and story-wise) and more importantly despite its title, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is led by a woman, Mina Harker… at least in the comics (the 2003 movie pretty much made Sean Connery’s Quatermain the boss). It’s one thing to have well-rounded characters (which I hope they go for) and it’s another thing to just change things because of a growing trend. Our female characters should be more genuine than the latter, we deserve that!

                           Elizabeth Debiki as a villain on top in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Whatever producer John Davis’ plan is to make The League more female-centric**, I hope it’s more around the supporting cast. Simply changing one of the male leads to a woman downplays the group’s dynamic: all the males are crazy and only Mina seems to be the sane one! It’s one of the reasons why it’s worked so well as a comic (again, the 2003 movie made Sean Connery the sane one and Mina a vampire).

        

I’m not back-peddling here on girl power, but Hollywood has a way of simply following trends and then fucking it up to the point where it becomes impossible to get a movie full of women after one or two don’t sell. Right now, we should all settle for strong female characters and be grateful for a year full of victories and not the trend of it.

                                     Alicia Vikander whose had a very stellar year!

P.S. By the way I wrote my version of what I thought The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen reboot should be (maybe that’s why I’m so iffy about the whole thing) way before Fox’s reboot plan, even before the female announcement, which you can take the time out to read/download here. This shameless plug was not initially planned; it just happened last minute… and maybe because it dawned on me finally that Fox will never hire me! My script still kicks ass! *proceeds to belt out “You Work For Me”*
 

** The only logic step would be to introduce Nemo’s daughter, but I’m going all nerd here and into comic-book territory, that place that confuses casual fans… which is why I put this at the very end!

THE KILLING OF INDIVIDUALISM IN NIGERIA

Because by their very nature, most African societies, Nigeria included are communal ones, we sometimes bury individualism and at large the individual. We are made to believe that in each of our own respective communities we must all think and function alike. Never mind the fact that we live in communities that are very often neighbours to people who are very different. Despite this and with its varying religions and ethnicities, Nigeria as a whole still suffers from communalism. We expect our children to inherit our religion, cultural beliefs and sometimes our politics (God, I remember getting the stink eye, because my brother and I didn’t like a Northern president – not as a person, but as a president and no not the present one!). While there’s nothing wrong in wanting for your child what you think is good for them, the problem comes when children “rebel” and we overreact.

Because we are in so many ways forced to think alike, little signs of differences are immediately shut down. In the short run, this exposes our herd mentality, in the long run however this may have an impact on the self-esteem of the person made to feel wrong for being different. Sometimes, if not often, these “differences” that are quick to be shut down can be quite… how do I say this, stupid. A friend of mine recently told me of how when we were kids he use to get beat by a religious teacher for being left-handed. Today this sounds silly. Heck, even back then it was silly, you just didn’t dare say it before you too got whipped. This whole left-handed thing is seen as a cultural misnomer in Nigeria. God forbid you give someone something with your left hand and end up receiving a lecture on cultural ethics, even if you were holding something with your right hand (I got an earful for that, including being asked what tribe I was). It isn’t the fact that some people find this to be wrong, it is the way in which they go about trying to correct it like one has all of the sudden become a pariah and will burn in hell, because they can’t write with their right-hand.

Showing interest in another person’s way of life can also be a problem. A Muslim friend of mine told me how everybody around her (friends and family included) freaked out while when in Secondary School she decided to take CRS (Christian Religious Studies) to fill out her number of required courses. She was purely taking it out of interest and not as a means of conversion, she was quite comfortable in her beliefs, but everyone else was worried. More worrying was how she will be perceived if she left the herd so to speak. Well my friend took CRS and is still very much Muslim today. I had a similar situation, although I’d be the first to point out I’m not the most religious of types. When I was 18 I took an interest in reading the Bible, simply because it was a new and intriguing to me, I had read parts of it before in Secondary School. When someone in my family saw me reading it, I got a warning that I may very well be disowned if I was found reading it again. This despite the fact that I got the Bible from another Muslim household who were quite aware the book was being read in their house and are still very much Muslim last I checked and I haven’t gotten any more religious. I haven’t read the Bible since nor did the warning get me to read the Quran even more at the time.

My point is- even though I agree people should feel concern, because they are people and people do irrational things –we are killing individualism at the cost of a form of communalism that doesn’t help us as a society in the long run. What happens when you need someone to help you understand Christian customs when no one from your religion is allowed to take an interest in how the others live or interact? We all seem welcoming to people who take an interest in our way of life, but not when someone takes an interest in another’s.

The feeling of guilt that comes with being the pariah is another problem in itself. The more you coerce people to conform, the more problems you are going to have in future, because we end up having people we are neither here nor there. Repressive societies in my opinion hinder growth. Even when it comes to things like sexuality *gasps*… oh yes, am going there. While I’ve never really been a fan of the in-your-face show of homosexuality you see in almost every TV show now- simply because I don’t need a show to tell me there are gay people who have seemingly normal lives –I’ve always respected the rights of the individual in private. Whatever you do in your home, it’s YOUR home… providing you don’t kill someone and bury them in the backyard, because that someone probably belongs to someone else emotionally and otherwise (that’s a police investigation for when the police decide to be competent). 

 

I understand the cultural complexities of our society and why things like gay rights and /or marriage are a cultural no-no, I do. But the truth of the matter is even if I understand these things as do many others, we surely can’t expect everyone to be in line with what we think is right. For starters, your very existence and the way you choose to live your life is wrong to someone else… even if you do it in a community. Think about that!