A friend pointed an article my way called “We’re losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome,” citing a concern that, while storytellers in film have come a long way in empowering female characters, those characters are often reduced to mere plot devices.
There is an essential truth to this: they ARE plot devices.
And the reason for this is just as true: secondary characters support the Protagonist’s story.
Before we crawl under the hood, understand that I am not advocating the treatment of Strong Female Characters in many works – the author of the article makes a fair point of this – but we’re not talking about Ripley from Aliens or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” because those are their stories. We are also not talking about “Women In Refrigerators,” a trope concerning violence against women in comics as a plot device to “hurt” Strong Male Characters.
The article outlines eight questions writers should ask themselves about Strong Female Characters, everything from “(can she be) seamlessly replaced with a floor lamp with some useful information written on it” all the way to “deciding to have sex with/not have sex with/agreeing to date/deciding to break up with a male hero” pointlessness. The article contends that writers should rise to the occasion to create someone worthy of the name Strong Female Character, but these could all be reduced to a single, far simpler question: Can your Strong Female Character be seamlessly replaced by a Strong Male Character? If yes, all’s good; if not, why not?
Continue reading “Are Strong Female Characters in Supporting Roles Mostly Useless?”
Complexity isn’t reserved for the old; it’s often a mistake that, too often, many adults forget how smart they were as kids and underestimate young adults. The difference is experience, not intelligence. Also, the point of view of a child isn’t any less interesting than an adult – or an alien, a monster, an animal, an addict, a plumber, or an artificial intelligence. Stephen King’s Stand By Me aka “The Body” has an all-child cast; It is born of childhood fears and has one leg in. Very few will argue that John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In is “for children.”
The casting for Star Wars VII is out, and besides everyone’s favorite former bikini-clad slave princess Carrie Fisher, there is only one new female character in anything resembling a major role… out of SEVEN. Throw in the original Boy’s Club cast of six and that’s two out THIRTEEN principles. 
Say, isn’t this a J.J.Abrams production? What’s interesting is that his television programming (“Lost,” “Alias,” “Fringe”) have meaty roles for ladies and often many of them, but his film production credits (Star Trek, Cloverfield, Super 8, Mission Impossible) seems to only have room for a chosen few in an ensemble, often ONE. Playing devil’s advocate, maybe this is an informed choice: are relevant female characters too complex for most screenwriters to simply throw them up on-screen and present them believably in a film format? 
I had a thought today…
Kevin A. Ranson 