Why do people scream "Feminist Agenda" when there is a female lead?

[runic knight]

I haven't followed the marketing of the new Ghostbuster, but I think they never went and promoted the movie as "hey it has FEMALE LEADS!! So progressive!!".

I haven't seen anything in the marketing from the studio yet myself, but I have seen some pointing to the announcement of the female cast in that light. Was trying to make a general point about when something becomes an issue on the topic, so my fault for being less than clear I suppose.

Because yeah, usually when someone does that, it means the movie in reality is the exact opposite of progressive.

I agree, if someone is jumping up and down about the fact something has female leads like it is some great social victory instead of it merely being a choice in character traits, it is pretty opposite of actual progress. Sadly I've seen the mindset used to promote half-baked ideas or even attack people for disagreeing far too often. Gaming gets it a lot, though usually it is more through the attacking the alternative.

I think it was more about some fans claiming they put female protagonists only for propaganda.
Time will tell, either it'll be a great movie that has female characters in comedy roles (finally!), or it'll be an awful reboot that uses female characters as their only selling point, as if having a female lead without anything else was how you'd sell a movie.
So far I am having a hunch it'll be the first scenario, so I'm curious.

Well, with Aykroyd at the head, I do have hopes, even without his late colleague. Anyone getting too into the "feminist agenda" thing at this point I will say is premature concerning the ghostbusters film, though I do understand why they would be worried in general, even without the beloved franchise being rebooted (sorta), a process that is hard to pull off well, and is more likely to result in gutting and childhood rape than not. The world needs not another Gem and the Holograms. I suppose that makes me hesitantly optimistic for the time being, going off just the concept and knowing some of the people involved. Once they start promoting it and get closer to finishing, that's when I will start to worry more or not.

 

[Redryhno]

Considering I also said that she took his identity which hasn't happened before with other people taking up the hammer and she has been hailed as a feminist icon because she usurped a male character's identity, I think the answer's pretty obvious.

A name is not an identity. It's a name. As for who's hailing her for what, I can't say anything about that because I haven't seen anyone hailing her for taking anything from the Odinson. The closest I've seen is people praising her for being a hero who's a hitter instead of a sorcerer, as female heroes tend to be.

It's honestly got nothing to do with her being female

Then we're back to the question I've asked four or five times now: Why bring it up if it's nothing to do with that? I feel I am being forced to choose between what you profess and what you say when you're not professing, and they contradict one another.

It's just [REDACTED] "somehow" being considered worthy of title, powers, and the complete identity of Mjolnir and Thor because Thor isn't actually Thor.

She is worthy of Mjolnir. Thor considers himself unworthy of his name, because he's apparently a codependent little twerp who defines himself by the relationships he's in, so he changed his name and started hanging out with the Goth kids behind the school because Wendy broke up with him.* Thor Odinson is the only person who has decided he's not Thor anymore.


*I may be confusing which property I'm talking about, here.

And we come around once again to the same junk. "Power of Thor" either now means that Mjolnir is not the full name of the weapon, or it's not the name of the guy that always gets back around to using it. It's never discussed, it's just "this is Thor now, deal with it". Which is not a good way to bring in a new character with a title(going back to the Falcon becoming Cap example I was talking about) out of the blue.

Now, Thor has done this before with not thinking he's worthy. It's partly why there's SO many hammer-wielders out there in the Marvel universe. There's something like two dozen in total, some of them major, some of them minor, I think Doom was able to trick it at one point by force of will even. That's not a good explanation of why "this is Thor now" is hailed as anything close to good writing.

And hitter instead of sorceress not being the norm? You are aware Rogue, Jubilee, Psylocke, Captain Marvel, Gamora, She-Hulk(even if she is largely just another variation of the Deadpool/Lobo formula), Tigra, Domino, Diamondback, and Thundra(this is literally just off the top of my head, there's many more) all exist as well right? And they've been kicking ass with their bare hands long before Thorina popped up right?

 

[runic knight]

The closest I've seen is people praising her for being a hero who's a hitter instead of a sorcerer, as female heroes tend to be.

Tend to be? I'm not that privy to the greater comics universe, but MOST female supers I can think of are hitters.

Supergirl, Ms Marvel/Captain Marvel, Powergirl, Wonder Woman, Spiderwoman, Hawkgirl, Catwoman, Batgirl, Psylocke, X13, all of the top of my head examples there fisticuffs their opponents.

Most of the mainstream female supers that I can rattle off the top of my head are hitters. It may be different once you get out of the mainstream, but I'd imagine the 'not-punching' supers also get more prolific on the men's side as well.

Also, all things aside, the fact that the name is the superhero identity and the person identity and are intricately tied together until they're not feels like lazy writing. Thor Odinson is known to everyone by his name, Thor, until he's suddenly not Thor, and Thor is the new Thor, even though her name isn't Thor, but people call her Thor anyways while Thor piddles about not being Thor.

I don't know of any other superheroes that have their name be their regular identity AND superhero identity, except maybe the earlier mentioned Luke Cage.

So the equivalent would be Luke Cage decides to stop being Luke Cage, so he passes on the name Luke Cage to....Tiffany Willows, who is now known to the world as Luke Cage, while Luke Cage goes on being regular old Luke Cage, rather than the super hero Luke Cage.

It's weird, and smacks of bad writing to treat the name as a title while also not being a title.

Don't forget they have passed the mantle of the lightninger to others in comics previously in various ways, even including to a woman before without needing to call the new person Thor. The name is a name, not a title, and the weird justifications for it always felt both very forced, and very counter both common sense and established lore. Title would be Lightninger, or Wielder of Mjornir, or Norse God of Thunder. Honestly, they'd have been better to just force Thor to wear a girdle of opposite gender if they wanted to go with Thor being a woman. Hell, could have even offered character development to the Norse god of lightning in dealing with that and even given the writers who so badly wanted to turn Thor into an ideological mouthpiece at least a better excuse. It'd still be pretty poor writing, but it would at least tie in better to why it felt like the authors were talking down at the readers with some of that, and it would give excuse to mix up Greek artifacts with Norse mytho-based gods, and that sort of dueling pantheons I always like to see.

Sorry, getting off key there. But yeah, Thor is person, not title, trying to pass the name off to another is pretty silly, not only on its own, but even according to the previous times the mantle has been passed temporarily. The only occurrence I can think of where the name itself was transferred was when Thor was Donald Blake part of the time, then he wasn't, then they were two entities... Man, it has been a long time since I went through the Thor books, but I think at one point the individual named Thor Odinson mere with Blake and thus transferred the name to the new person (person formed of two individuals) as Thor. Still, that seems to be more a continuation of Thor as a person than random new person taking his name.

 

[Cicada 5]

People are much more critical of female characters because there are few of them compared to male characters and even fewer that are written well.

It's honestly a catch 22 at this point. There are people who want more female characters in fiction, but every time one who isn't 100% perfect (and thus boring and uninterested) causes a large number of people who claim they want more female characters to complain that women aren't being portrayed in a fail light.

Just look at the new Star Wars (not going to spoil anything). The character who is an obvious Han Solo clone in terms of his role in these new movies is, despite being a copy of an already established character who is IN these movies already, is more interesting then the female co-lead despite the fact she has 10 times as much screen time. Poe and Fin should have been the co-stars of the movie, and it's honestly sad that one of the two leads played a character who would have made the movie better by being absent, but had she been written in a way that was actually interesting and allowed for emotional investment people would have been complaining.

At this point the only way to make good female characters is to ignore the criticism (and inevitable harassment) good female characters cause from people who claim to want them but in practice do not.

Jessica Jones isn't perfect. Neither was Buffy. Or Cookie from Empire. Or Olivia from Scandal. These women are flawed and have been well received.

It could well be that people have differing ideas on what makes an interesting character.

 

[Cicada 5]

Because for all the belly-aching about another bland male toughguy lead, there's a helluva lot of bland female leads the last few years that have all the same problems in that they're indistinguishable from one another. Jessica Jones is not all that interesting character in the series, which was a big let down because pretty much every other character and person in the show I looked forward to seeing MORE than the titular character for how fucking bland she was(sorta the same problem as Daredevil had, it didn't want to commit to being a part of a comic book universe unless it was convenient, though at least Murdock wasn't boring when he was on-screen and not relying on everyone else to carry his ass and the fighting didn't look like he would rather be doing literally anything else).

Think of most female leads that have been popping up the last few years that have been raved about, they're largely just the same basic character, they have trauma in their background that happened relatively recently, they work past it, the end. And for some people, they see it because they saw the male leads and how similar they could be, but there's people giving points for swapping a character's genitals about and turning a pretty minor, but somewhat interesting character into just another antagonist in a rape-revenge story. Because that's what so much of it all boils down to. Many female leads are just rape-revenge fantasies(whether they be literal or metaphor). Jessica Jones, Maleficient, even Frozen to a point was raved about because Anna was going to be used for her title to get a guy in power and it was averted.

And people don't really like that when they're told that male leads are boring and they can't be told apart because they're all "Steve" when the thing that replaces it is just the same thing with a set of tits and bodily betrayal baggage.

Not seeing how Olivia from Scandal, Cookie from Empire, Alex from Quantico, Rey from the recent Star Wars flick are rape/revenge stories. I'm not even sure how you got that from Frozen.

Those are also shows I never even heard of, much less watched...And Star Wars I don't really have much interest in seeing(used to like it, now I just can't be bothered for whatever reason). And it's not me that got it from Frozen, it's what someone that also insists Elsa is some kind of asexual space Lesbian came up with that was then agreed with by a few hundred people unironically.

To go further, I'm well aware there's other female characters that are very well liked and aren't what I'm talking about here, but they're also not lauded as great female leads either and called unique and wonderful for how "different" and "unique" they are.

Person of Interest basically has the women being the most important characters in the show, they've got a woman in position of "authority" that she's finally realizing is more just a figurehead/pawn position that will kill alot of people on the basis of "terrorism", your standard Mary Sue-lite that's actually turned into a good character you care about, and just a 63'd version of Cavizel's character honestly.

The side [s/]chicks[/s] female characters in Jessica Jones are all great for the most part, just not the person hogging 80% of the screentime(I can't stress enough how dull she is, whether it's the actor or the writing I'm not sure I just know she's not interesting unless someone else has the scene devoted to them).

Blacklist is full of strong women that don't get nearly enough attention compared to this archetype that is lauded as being the most feminist-friendly.

And that's just talking about western media, which I'm not all that knowledgable about anymore(anime's largely replaced it, and I don't think you can spit and not hit at least four series that have strong female characters in them that are more human than these each season)

I wish the people that claimed that Jessica Jones or Mad Max: Fury Road or even the new Star Wars film are "feminist propaganda" had some self-awareness.

Aren't you the same people that get upset about Anita Sarkeesian claiming games are misogynistic because, if their "damsel-in-distress" themes are taken to the extreme, they become abuse and male entitlement?

How is "this protagonist is a white hetero male purely to pander to audiences" any different from "this protagonist is black/female/gay purely to pander to SJWs"? I mean some good arguments can be made against tokenism but all I see is hypocritical whining.

To be fair, it probably wasn't the best idea to talk about pandering while talking about Jessica Jones not being feminist propaganda...As much as I liked Moss as Hogarth, one of my roommates was really annoyed by the lesbian triangle junk that was just sorta there(didn't know this, but Hogarth isn't female, gay, or married in the comics apparently, and also not an irredeemable asshole lawyer trope). And as a result, it's sorta soured the performance to a point. And with people getting annoyed about shoehorning in romantic partners for the main dude in other genres, you'd think there'd be slightly more uproar from the groups that normally complain about it here with the same shit happening.

I'm really not seeing how Jessica Jones is Mary Sue. She's an alcoholic, has lousy social skills, etc. I really can't agree on her being dull. Same with Cookie from Empire, Olivia from Scandal, Annalise from How To Get Away With Murder. All of these women are flawed and have been well received and are extremely popular.

 

[Silvanus]

Yes but there is a difference in that this one select group of people complaining in this case are the only ones who are hypocritical about it, since they're complaining about getting what they literally asked for while the others at least didn't ask for the things they where complaining about.

I'm not seeing how its hypocritical. Feminists in general would want to see more (or better) female representation in media; there's nothing contradictory with also seeing some kinds of representation as a step backwards.

It's not what they literally asked for, unless what they asked for was "more female characters, regardless of type and quality", which is something I've not seen anybody ask for.

There's also the fact that the Christians who criticisms him are not people who are from a group he is a part of (they where from more radical sects after all) so him being chased off of Twitter by feminists, a group he is a part of (and was unfortunately the one they turned of in their at the time latest instance of turning on their own) is noteworthy.

It's not a single, coherent "group". There's nothing contradictory whatsoever in feminists disagreeing with one another; it's clearly to be expected. There's nothing binding them together except a single, highly up-to-interpretation stance. This is like expecting all Christians to agree, or all atheists, and seeing it as hypocrisy when one criticises another, although there's no reason on earth that should not happen.

 

[Amaror]

I'm really not seeing how Jessica Jones is Mary Sue. She's an alcoholic, has lousy social skills, etc. I really can't agree on her being dull. Same with Cookie from Empire, Olivia from Scandal, Annalise from How To Get Away With Murder. All of these women are flawed and have been well received and are extremely popular.

I don't think that Jessica Jones is feminist propaganda or anything of the sort, but i do agree with the quoted poster that Jessica as the main character is sort of dull. The earlier episodes showed her competence at investigation, which I liked. It showed her competence and made her a more believable character. But in the middle-episodes, i haven't finished the series yet, she shows less and less of that competence. A lot of the work seems to be done by her partners or on accident and she continues to dismiss some valid sources that have previously given her vital information.

Spoiler

The Killgrave support group for example

It just makes her seem really incompetent and dull.

 

[Cicada 5]

Gonna stop you right there, because you are making more things up. There is only one person in Thor who treats her as having stolen anyone's identity: Odin, who is clearly the antagonist of this story, with whom the rest of Asgard and half the Marvel Universe disagrees on the topic. Even his enforcer Cul is only humoring Odin for the sake of maintaining a position of power in Odin's court.

Alright, so only Odin was the only one acting in-character in the comics and the fanfiction's writer made everyone else act OC, functionally their treating not-Thor as though she was Thor only reinforces the point though, since they're acting as though someone who is unambiguously not Thor is in fact Thor despite the fact that she was not.

No, it's okay because nothing was stolen. Thor Odinson gave up his name of his own free will. Disagree with it all you want, but the words are printed on the page all the same. You are denying reality, and I can't comprehend why. You are mad because a crime that took place, and your proof that a crime took place is because you're mad about it.

So what you're saying is stating what bad writers functionally did is a faux pas because, despite being terribly written and having only 1 character in the entirety of the comics act in character with the entire rest of the universe being out of character in a story so bad all who read it are less intelligent as a result, because the bad writing had Thor willingly give up his identity and the other characters willingly accepting it, the bad writing which functionally had the identity of one character stolen and slapped onto another should be called something else because... I'm actually at a lose to finish that with.

In any event writing so bad that it was clearly not in any way related to how the writers got their position is beside the point. Not-Thor is a Mary Sue who functionally stole Thor's identity to the point where most of the comic's universe somehow are under the delusion that she is Thor with only one character not being spellbound by the magic of bad writing. You may as well say that in Star Trek if Wesley was given Picard's name and everyone started calling Wesley Picard then Wesley wouldn't have stolen Picard's identity even if that is a 100% accurate representation of what has happened out-of-universe.

The argument not-Thor didn't steal Thor's identity hold no water. Didn't when it was announced, didn't when it was happening, didn't when it was over, still doesn't.

Something cannot be stolen if it was given up willingly.

 

[Cicada 5]

I thought the only ones trying to push mad max as a feminist movie were feminist sites themselves, resulting in people calling that out for being rather blatant straw clutching. If someone was being honest in making that claim though, then I agree, they would be rather silly too.

As for Ghostbusters though. A movie series that had 4 beloved actors gets reboot with a full cast gender switch, and even gets pushed by some sites as a righteous jab at the caricature presented in the OP, and you wonder why people are complaining? Hell, it is also twitter, where depth of opinion is harder to demonstrate and people are resorted to short blurbs expressing singular ideas in as shallow a way as possible.

I agree about Mad Max. While I think it was a great movie and I really enjoyed it, it was definitely not a feminist movie. Between ridiculous hot women (I mean, it's ok that they look attractive but they also looked like they came out of a hairdresser's, not a wasteland) who need saving and the idea that only male characters can be evil and warmongering while women deep down are all nice and all about mother nature and "growing seeds".... I don't even know what's feminist about it, it's about as clich? as it gets. Is it only because of Furiosa? Watch out world, a female character who kicks ass (and still gets the spotlight stolen by the male lead and gets saved by him).

I disagree about the new Ghostbusters. Does it make me a bad person that I am intrigued by the movie simply because I can't recall seeing any other movie that has female characters in the goofy roles that are always reserved only to the male characters? (Apart from Whoopy Goldberg I suppose.)

Well, the Wives are concubines so them looking beautiful kind of fits even if it stretches suspension of disbelief. Also, I don't think the movie was saying all men are evil, just that the major problems in the world has been a result of men having disproportionate power to women. The film also showed how patriarchy negatively impacts men through the War Boys.

Considering Furiosa rebels against Joe and fights literally one handed and kills Joe, I'd say the love for her is deserved. And she and the Wives get way more development than Max.

 

[JimB]

Tend to be? I'm not that privy to the greater comics universe, but most female supers I can think of are hitters.

Most of the ones I can think of are energy manipulators. Top of my head, we have Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau as Captain Marvel, Clea the sorceress, Scarlet Witch, Polaris, Firestar, Storm, Jean Grey, Kitty Pryde, Magik, Jubilee, Emma Frost, Dazzler, Blink, Dagger, Fire, Ice, Icemaiden, Starfire, Raven, Terra, Amethyst, Zatanna, Mera, Atom Eve, Freefall, Rainmaker, Voodoo, Void, Cyblade...and I'm tempted to include characters who have hitting powers but tend to solve them with energy, like my general experience with Supergirl (more apt to solve things with freeze breath or heat vision, or in the Peter David continuity, with fire wings and teleportation) and Psylocke (to whom hitting is simply a delivery method for her magic telepathic knives), but I don't want to muddy the waters by arguing about which writer's preferred method conflict resolution is most prevalent.

I don't know of any other superheroes that have their name be their regular identity and superhero identity, except maybe the earlier mentioned Luke Cage.

There aren't many superheroes who are also gods (well, more or less), who have weird ideas about how personality and legend interact. See also Loki, who is currently not the god of evil because he had to be reborn and commit suicide to be reborn again the god of stories, an act for which he is reviled in Asgard because since the god of stories is not the god of evil, Loki's suicide is also an act of murder even though the murderer is the same person as his victim.

There just aren't many equivalent situations to compare to, here, and I think your extended example about Luke Cage is ignoring the context of the mythology of Thor within the confines of the Marvel Universe. Even if he's not strictly a god, he's prone to big, sweeping, melodramatic gestures like a god...and there's still the issue of us not knowing what Nick Fury whispered in his ear to make him unworthy. I will admit that I don't believe any reveal could possibly live up to the mystery for as long as it's dragged on at this point, but you never know, maybe in some fundamental way he really isn't Thor any more.

And we come around once again to the same junk.

We are coming back to the same junk, as you say, because you keep bringing up Thor's vagina, saying her vagina isn't the problem, and then changing the subject when I ask why you brought up her vagina in the first place. If you won't answer the question, then that's fine, but please quit trying to act like changing the topic is a useful response to a very simple question. It reeks of shifting the goalposts, and maybe I'm still cranky from having just woken up, but I'm not in the mood for it.

It could well be that people have differing ideas on what makes an interesting character.

Mm, no, I'm pretty sure feminism is a single monolithic entity, kind of a hive mind defined by the sins of the worst of them.

 

[JimB]

I gotta ask how people got to the Lord of the Rings is racist?

In the books--and in the movies, to be fair--the good humans are white. The "wicked men of [I forget which cardinal direction and can't be bothered to look it up]" who join with Sauron are dark-skinned.

There's also a lot of room to argue that dwarves are intended to be Jews. They're short, big-nosed, greedy for gold, and they cause wars with their refusal to share all their hidden treasures. These are traits Cartman has accused Kyle of dozens of times in the last twenty years.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Can't we just agree that if a character is well written then it ISN'T a feminist/MRA agenda trying to screw something up?

Are the two things mutually exclusive? I'm not so sure.

People have me slightly worried about the new Star Wars. I don't care if the main character is female, but I don't want it to be laden with corny girl power messages either. No choice but to reserve judgement, I suppose.

In a way, they are mutually exclusive, because an "agenda meant to screw something up" wouldn't produce stories that we could all agree are good, with well written characters.

Or maybe it's just me who connect "nefarious agenda" with "ham-fisted handling of issues".

 

[Ogoid]

Mm, no, I'm pretty sure feminism is a single monolithic entity, kind of a hive mind defined by the sins of the worst of them.

I don't know, considering that when some 12-year old playing CoD tells a woman over voice chat to go make him a sandwich it means gaming as a whole is inherently misogynistic and problematic, I was kinda under the impression that's how these things work.

 

[JimB]

Mm, no, I'm pretty sure feminism is a single monolithic entity, kind of a hive mind defined by the sins of the worst of them.

I don't know, considering that when some twelve-year-old playing Call of Duty tells a woman over voice chat to go make him a sandwich it means gaming as a whole is inherently misogynistic and problematic, I was kinda under the impression that's how these things work.

I'll accept that point, as long as you're not making it to argue that two wrongs make a right.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Can't we just agree that if a character is well written then it ISN'T a feminist/MRA agenda trying to screw something up?

Are the two things mutually exclusive? I'm not so sure.

People have me slightly worried about the new Star Wars. I don't care if the main character is female, but I don't want it to be laden with corny girl power messages either. No choice but to reserve judgement, I suppose.

In a way, they are mutually exclusive, because an "agenda meant to screw something up" wouldn't produce stories that we could all agree are good, with well written characters.

Or maybe it's just me who connect "nefarious agenda" with "ham-fisted handling of issues".

It's kinda a weird sentence to start with, since I think ideologues who make propaganda probably assume they're doing good rather than trying to "screw something up".

I took it in more broad-strokes to mean that propaganda in film can't be "well written" (a term that's bound to mean different things to different people), and I'm not sure that's at all true. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who would watch a couple of Bruckheimer films and then be confident in declaring him a sexist. But, I am no stranger to films trying to persuade me of things. Sometimes it's full-ham and sometimes it's well-integrated, imho.

 

[Treeberry]

Regarding the "feminist agenda" thing, I think it stems from people not understanding what feminism is in the same vein that there are asshats out there who genuinely think that by treating non-white and/or non-male people as actual human beings means they're going to take over the world and treat them as they have been treated.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what feminism is - as there are and have been with other civil rights concerns. People are quick to forget how certain types of people have historically been regarded as waste even in the realm of fiction. I can imagine this would smart quite a bit.

I remember when I was a kid, quite a few times I thought 'I'd like to play a female character. I wish it was an option' when playing perfectly good games. I remember seeing an advert for Urban Chaos and thinking something to the effect of 'WTF? The (playable) character is black?*' as it was the weirdest thing ever. Please note, I used to play as blue hedgehogs, purple dragons etc. It's strange that a kid I wanted to play as my own gender but didn't recognise that maybe a non-white person would want something similar. This wasn't something that ceased my enjoyment of those games but just things that popped into my head as a young child.

Also, I think we underestimate how many children use the internet. (Well, I hope they're children anyway)

Also also, isn't kind of weird how we're fine with non-human protagonists but people suddenly flip out if a human protagonist is designed to be non-white or non-male? Or if other gamers want there to be a non-male or non-white protagonist?

*I think some people may have a similar experience with the Earthsea books...(I still wanted to play that game though. Even though I thought it was weird she looked like an absolute badass and she was a cop! I might go track down a copy and see how it is.)

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't know, considering that when some 12-year old playing CoD tells a woman over voice chat to go make him a sandwich it means gaming as a whole is inherently misogynistic and problematic, I was kinda under the impression that's how these things work.

That sounds like an absurd and ridiculous thing for someone to calim and I can see why you'd be against it.

It also sounds like the sort of thing that is either not what was actually said or is made up from whole cloth. So, that latter bt in mind, who actually said this?

 

[MrFalconfly]

Can't we just agree that if a character is well written then it ISN'T a feminist/MRA agenda trying to screw something up?

Are the two things mutually exclusive? I'm not so sure.

People have me slightly worried about the new Star Wars. I don't care if the main character is female, but I don't want it to be laden with corny girl power messages either. No choice but to reserve judgement, I suppose.

In a way, they are mutually exclusive, because an "agenda meant to screw something up" wouldn't produce stories that we could all agree are good, with well written characters.

Or maybe it's just me who connect "nefarious agenda" with "ham-fisted handling of issues".

It's kinda a weird sentence to start with, since I think ideologues who make propaganda probably assume they're doing good rather than trying to "screw something up".

I took it in more broad-strokes to mean that propaganda in film can't be "well written" (a term that's bound to mean different things to different people), and I'm not sure that's at all true. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who would watch a couple of Bruckheimer films and then be confident in declaring him a sexist. But, I am no stranger to films trying to persuade me of things. Sometimes it's full-ham and sometimes it's well-integrated, imho.

I get what you mean, and it is hard to quantify.

The only examples I can come up with in both categories would be Furiosa (as a well written character), and Fem-Thor (piece of trash that barely qualifies as bad fanfic).

The only critisism against Furiosa seems to be that she has more screentime than Max (which is a bit cherlish if I'm honest), while Fem-Thor can be critisized on all fronts, from poor writing to just complete lack of knowledge regarding the source material.

But then, I'm from Denmark, where Thor isn't just the name of the old viking God of Thunder, but also an everyday male name. So to me, a female character called Thor, would sound like a female character called Stephen (or Richard, or Benjamin, or Arnold) to you.

EDIT:

But then again regarding Fem-Thor, even before I learned how atrocious the writing was, I just wondered "Why stick with the name Thor?!?"

What was wrong with Freya? I mean I get that "Goddess of Love and Fertility" might be a hard sell in socially conservative US, who're fine with disembowelment, but the second a nipple is visible the moral guardians come out en-masse, but Freya was also the Goddess of War, Magic and Death (and some links to the Valkyries).

 

[elvor0]

In any event writing so bad that it was clearly not in any way related to how the writers got their position is beside the point. Not-Thor is a Mary Sue who functionally stole Thor's identity to the point where most of the comic's universe somehow are under the delusion that she is Thor with only one character not being spellbound by the magic of bad writing. You may as well say that in Star Trek if Wesley was given Picard's name and everyone started calling Wesley Picard then Wesley wouldn't have stolen Picard's identity even if that is a 100% accurate representation of what has happened out-of-universe.

I'm just no.... Marvel characters have a long history of giving their monikers to other, if not having their monikers out right stolen. Iron Man isn't always Tony Stark, Steve Rogers often dies and some one takes up the mantel of Captain America, Captain Marvel has been a number of different people too. Hell this applies to DC comics too, like how Green Lantern isn't always Hal Jordan. Thor Odinson giving up the moniker of Thor to the person with the hammer currently isn't a real stretch.

It's slightly different in this instance though, when people take up the mantle of other characters, they are just considered the guy who is currently Iron Man, or currently Captain America, they don't assume the identity of Tony Stark or Steve Rodgers and aren't considered to be them. Falcon may now be Captain America, but he is still considered Sam Wilson and Steve Rodgers is still Steve Rodgers.

Green Lantern is different because its for all intents and purposes a job, not an identity. Hal Jordan has never been the only Green Lantern since the inception of his character, and multiple Green Lanterns have always existed alongside him. In universe, he is A Green Lantern, not THE one and only Green Lantern.

Thor is tricky because Thor isn't his superhero identity or an alternate identity, its who he is. He can give up wielding Mjonir sure, but is still Thor even without the hammer, because that his name. The same as Tony Stark is still Tony Stark without his Iron Man armour. Characters have taken up Mjonir before and they are just considered to be worthy of wielding it, they don't become Thor or are even considered to be taking up the mantle, just Steve Rodgers who is currently wielding Mjonir.

I'd be fine with it if he said that he is no longer worthy of being called Thor and went under a pseudonym, whilst "She" takes up the Hammer. But Thor is still Thor even if he says he's called Bob Fletcher. It's not the hammer that makes Thor Thor, its just who he is. It could maybe work if whomever wields the hammer is considered The God(ess) of Thunder and only one person can be worthy at a time, that could work, but they shouldn't become Thor.

It feels clunky because they're mitigating all canon in a way that doesn't even make sense. There's no reason for any of the characters to consider this new woman Thor, they should just consider her to to be the person wielding Mjonir because she is worthy of doing so.

 

[JimB]

What was wrong with Freya? I mean I get that "Goddess of Love and Fertility" might be a hard sell in socially conservative US, who're fine with disembowelment, but the second a nipple is visible the moral guardians come out en-masse, but Freya was also the Goddess of War, Magic and Death (and some links to the Valkyries).

I don't quite understand your question. Are you asking why when [REDACTED] took Mjolnir and the power of storms, she didn't take the name of a god with an entirely different portfolio of powers, or are you asking why the writers didn't give [REDACTED] Freya's powers and then replace Thor with her?