Academy Award-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson criticized the prevailing trend in movies of making women act like men.
Speaking on CultureBlast podcast, the former “Love Actually” star said that it’s not “good enough” to simply give a woman a gun and have her act like a man, even going so far as to say that movies should utilize a women’s feminity as a source of her heroism.
“So all the women screenwriters I talk to, I say, ‘Well, what’s the story?’ Because it’s not good enough simply to give the women the guns, and then make the women badass, as well,” said Thompson. “Now women have to be badass — if they’re feminine in the way that they used to be, and they’re not badass, then they’re not welcome. Also, they’re not allowed to cry, apparently, anymore, because we’ve just got to be like the men.”
Thompson said that screenwriters and directors need to explore the feminine to find the heroism inherent with it, such as giving birth.
“And I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s not what we meant,’” the actress continued. “When I got a group of women together in my thirties, and I said, ‘Okay, what’s the female heroine? Who is that? What does she do?’ Because she hasn’t got the wherewithal to do the Superman, to do the Godfather, that’s not the point. That’s not where our heroism lies. So how do we make it heroic?”
“Why are there no films about giving birth, for crying out loud?” she added. “Does anyone even know about that? No. No. It’s all hidden. All our heroism is hidden, because what we’ve done is we’ve just given women the same parts as men, and that’s not the point. How do we turn into our own lives and make those stories heroic?”