Thursday, May 22, 2008
In the interest of discussing something deeper than the continued idiocy of politics, I have decided to devote myself to what I shall fondly call "the de-feminization of society" or "Warrior-Princess Syndrome." It seems that the need for women to be better men than men has so permeated our culture that no movie is complete without a woman being more masculine than a man. The greatest irony, of course, is that the latest travesty has been the application of this psychological shortcoming to the great C.S. Lewis who suffered not a whit from it. His Queen Susan the Gentle who never fought a battle and shot a Telmarine in the real "Prince Caspian" only with a white face and trembling hands has turned into some kind of super-female calmly mowing down the enemy while her sister flees on a horse. Poor J.R.R. Tolkien had his shadowy Arwen, the fantasy his hero was striving after, turned into the only human who could keep the unstable ranger from tottering off the deep end. The real shame of these piracies is that both Tolkien and Lewis contained heroines who did fit the politically-correct profile: Eowyn from LOTR and Aravis in Lewis' "Horse and His Boy." Neither writer thought that women were inferior to men, only different. But Disney and Hollywood can't stand the idea that women possibly might excell in some other field from men. They appear to have skipped the day in school when their teachers talked about differences between the genders. Now they have effectively neutered possibly the last two thinkers who truly appreciated the glories of the two-gender system. They edited out Father Christmas' admonition that women should not fight in battles, but decided to keep Lucy's response to Peter that. "Girl's heads have something inside them." Lewis included both.
Lest anyone think I am threatened in my manhood by the phenomenon of strong, active women, I assure you all I am not. I enjoy both the literary and actual sort of strong women. One of my favorite literary characters is Hermione Granger from Harry Potter--she's strong-willed, intelligent and fiery. Yet even she, in the books anyway, is not always one-upping the stupid boys and saving them from themselves. She makes mistakes same as they do and if she saves their rears several times, they also save hers. This fun little dichotomy is missing, as usual from the movies--one scene from the latest movie has Ron assuring Hermione during a practice duel that he will "go easy on you," following which she blasts him into a wall. Needless to say, this is entirely a Hollywood fabrication. J.K. Rowling never hints that Ron is a useless lump with pride bigger than his brains, or that Hermione is some kind of super-witch (in fact, she finishes second to Harry in Defense Against the Dark Arts throughout the series).
The tragedy of this inability to celebrate the differences between men and women is there gets to be nothing particularly special about women. They have to "outman" the men in order to be seen as truly successful. Who is going to come off the best in the new Narnia movie--Lucy who successfully finds Aslan and helps to raise the sleeping forests, or Susan coolly shooting down enemies and mounting horses at a running leap? Galadriel sitting quietly at home or Arwen facing down the Dark Riders? The answer is obvious: it's exactly who the movie producers want you to admire. The only pity is that they had to pirate the work of far more intelligent and talented people in order to push this worldview.
Lest anyone think I am threatened in my manhood by the phenomenon of strong, active women, I assure you all I am not. I enjoy both the literary and actual sort of strong women. One of my favorite literary characters is Hermione Granger from Harry Potter--she's strong-willed, intelligent and fiery. Yet even she, in the books anyway, is not always one-upping the stupid boys and saving them from themselves. She makes mistakes same as they do and if she saves their rears several times, they also save hers. This fun little dichotomy is missing, as usual from the movies--one scene from the latest movie has Ron assuring Hermione during a practice duel that he will "go easy on you," following which she blasts him into a wall. Needless to say, this is entirely a Hollywood fabrication. J.K. Rowling never hints that Ron is a useless lump with pride bigger than his brains, or that Hermione is some kind of super-witch (in fact, she finishes second to Harry in Defense Against the Dark Arts throughout the series).
The tragedy of this inability to celebrate the differences between men and women is there gets to be nothing particularly special about women. They have to "outman" the men in order to be seen as truly successful. Who is going to come off the best in the new Narnia movie--Lucy who successfully finds Aslan and helps to raise the sleeping forests, or Susan coolly shooting down enemies and mounting horses at a running leap? Galadriel sitting quietly at home or Arwen facing down the Dark Riders? The answer is obvious: it's exactly who the movie producers want you to admire. The only pity is that they had to pirate the work of far more intelligent and talented people in order to push this worldview.
// posted by The Pendragon @ 11:39 PM 
