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Web Event 3: The Detriments of Strong Female Characters
For years, one of feminism’s great quests within pop culture has been the call for stronger female leads – for women who have a life of crime-fighting or crime-perpetrating or otherwise some sort of death-defying singular agency. It’s evidenced in the current trend of fiction-derived films released – Catching Fire gives us Katniss Everdeen, hellbent on destroying the oppressive system that forces her to kill again, and Thor 2 in turn supplies Lady Sif, ruthless and deemed by Thor himself as stronger than most of the male warriors. Of these, I chose to see neither – they’ll be on DVD someday, I can save myself the movie ticket now and watch it later. No, when I left campus to spend some time with a friend before buckling down to work, we instead went to see a movie that had been causing me internal conflict since its inception: Frozen. I braced myself for the worst, the complete elimination of the original tale’s feminist qualities for the sake of a traditional Disney template. When I left the theatre, however, I found myself pleasantly surprised, as well as questioning what comprised a female character. I entered the theatre wishing for a protagonist who would gladly take up the burden of a fight without necessitating any outside assistance, accepting the responsibility as her own, and I still thank the directors for taking the opposite direction.