Here’s the thing. If the plot calls for her to get beat up, sure, no problem. No one I’ve been reading has a problem with that. What they have a problem with is the fact that she doesn’t even ATTEMPT to defend herself. She acts like a victim in a horror movie. She’s a fucking AVENGER, for Gods’ sake. If the script calls for her to get beat up, to lose the fight, great. I can believe the Hood got a lucky hit in, or something. I can believe something slipped under her feet and she fell and he capitalized. What I can’t believe is that she did NOTHING.
This is one of the things that drive me fucking batshit about most serial killer movies. Serial killers are guys. Just guys. He chases the heroine into a kitchen, a room full of fucking knives and other stabby, pointy implements and she screams and flails and does nothing useful. Or even better, a garage. This leads to me screaming at the screen yelling, “Pick up that tire iron and beat him like a rented mule!!! Make him call you DADDY!!!”
Here is how the opening scene of Scream would have gone had The Geek Girl What Rules been the Drew Barrymore character:
“What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“I like to know the name of the people I watch.”
“Oh, you’re watching me are you?” Walks to bedroom, gets gun. “Are you watching this? Yes, this is me loading my gun. Now I’m going into the bathroom which only has one entrance, and I’m going to wait with this gun pointed at the door. Now, I have a question for you: What are you going to do?”
“Um, I’m going to go bother the sorority girls down the street.” Click
And this is why girls who were raised in relatively redneck families don’t make good horror movie victims.
The “helpless girl” trope really pissed the fuck right out of me. Seriously, I think people, regardless of gender, have a far more highly developed survival instinct than that. Particularly when they are Super-fucking-heroes.
Geek Girls Rule!!! 
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt I watch. Oh, you re watching me are you. Walks to bedroom, gets gun. Are you watching this? Yes, this is me loading my gun. Now I m going into the bathroom which only has one entrance, and I m going to wait with this gun pointed at the door. Now, I have a question for you: What are you […]
A lot of ppl who justify these things with “characters get beat up and victimized in fiction”
forget that the great unique thing that in theory comics has is that there are no back up characters. Nobody is the “hero”. Batman is not the “smart one” to Superman’s hero. Batman has his own book, he saves the day too. Every character is their own hero of their own city (often) with their own casts (often, unless you’re Supergirl XD).
Tigra is a superhero too. She’s not just “victim girl #2”. >:O
From another girl raised in a relatively redneck family … awesome post 🙂
Thank you.
Like I always said, The most feminist legislation imaginable isnt the ERA, and the most feminist organisation isn’t the WOW. Its CCP laws and the NRA that earn that distinction.
You know what the sad thing is? Horror movies are learning. At least the not so mainstream ones (Dead and Breakfast comes to my mind) no longer have the girls doing nothing. Sure, they get killed in the end, but at least they go down fighting.
Here via WFA
One of my current favorite horror movies is Jeepers Creepers, because the older sister fights the thing through the whole movie, even once she’s figured out she can’t kill it, she keeps fighting. I love that.
Is it just me or did the first two comments make no sense to others either??
I had a dream that I was being attacked about a week ago. I woke up having rolled over and punched the shit out of my pillow several times. It’s a sad testament to story writing that even in my sleep I have more self preservation instinct than the average female “superhero”.
The first comment is a trackback.
The second actually does make sense, it’s that Tygra is an ACTOR on her own, and should not be treated as Girl-Victim #2.
I always was always pissed off at the girls running around in high heels waving flashlights around and screaming… I finally started to shrug and tell myself it’s just natural selection at work.
Sometimes, when the movie is bad enough I can do that.
Sometimes not.
Sometimes it depends entirely on what time of the month it is.
“…..it’s just natural selection at work.”
This is where the sheer numbers begin to piss me off though, because if women really acted like they do in horror/action movies (with notable exceptions) natural selection would have left us with a world filled with pretty much only men.
It’s kind of like when I went off in a women’s studies class. “Why does everyone assume that all men were rat bastards all the time? For fuck’s sake, women MADE and CONTROLLED the food. Hello? Poisons? I think there’d be a lot fewer guys in the world if they all sucked.”
Yup, that’s me. Not popular with hard-line feminists OR the He-Male Woman Haters. Sigh.