Real Clear listed 19 female characters that "changed TV or movies forever." I'm kind of into this sort of thing, but I'd never heard of a surprising number of them:
1. Princess Leia, Star Wars: OK, I at least noticed her as an early attempt at a female who was more than a prize or a McGuffin.
2. Jane the Virgin: I may have heard of her, not sure.
3. Clair Huxtable: I've heard of her but never watched The Cosby Show that I can recall.
4. Mary Richards: I did watch some Mary Tyler Moore show episodes as a kid. Did they fill me with the conviction that I could make it on my own? I can't recall. I guess it's possible.
5. Sophia Burset, Orange Is the New Black: Heard of it but never watched it, no idea who she is.
6. Jessica Huang, Fresh Off the Boat: Never heard of it or her.
7. Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games: I think I watched it, but it made so little impression I'm unsure.
8. Annie Hall, Annie Hall: I certainly remember her. Perhaps she made an impact as a not-entirely-unfair take-down of a bit of a ditz who was afraid of spiders and ended up the kept woman of some soulless Hollywood mogul.
9. Letty Ortiz, Fast and Furious: I'm almost sure I watched this movie, but I retain no memory of her.
10. Coffy, Coffy: Never heard of it or her.
11. Elle Woods, Legally Blonde: I'll give them this one.
12. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter: I at least noticed her, without experiencing much impact.
13. Annalise Keating, How to Get Away with Murder: Never heard of it or her.
14. Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman: I know the character but not the movie. Not particularly my thing, even as a kid when the comics were popular.
15. Olivia Pope, Scandal: Never heard of it or her.
16. Mulan, Mulan: I've heard of her, never saw it, can't remember what it's about.
17. Rebecca Bunch, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Never heard of it or her.
18. Minda Lahiri, The Mindy Project: Never heard of it or her.
19. Ellen Ripley, Alien: I'll give them this one. I genuinely identified with her.
No Sarah Connor? Emma Peel? The Geena Davis character in The Long Kiss Goodnight? Not even, maybe, G.I. Jane? I was quite taken with the Patricia Arquette character in True Romance, as well as Riff Randell from Rock'n'Roll High School, even Rosalind Franklin in The Race for the Double Helix. I am truly a lost demographic.
Not even any Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Hmm....
ReplyDeleteI watched the first couple seasons of Jane the Virgin; I was curious about what a telenovela was. It was mildly amusing, but the joke was inherently limited in scope, so the writing became repetitive and just another soap.
The Jane character, though, was unremarkable; if she change[s] TV...forever, it will only be for having brought telenovelas to mainstream TV.
Eric Hines
I've seen 1, 3, 14 (but the Linda Carter version from the 1970s), and 19. I think 1 and 19 are kind of cool.
ReplyDeleteSarah Connor in Terminator 2 is awesome (though occasionally crazy). I love True Romance.
A more traditional but excellent example might be Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke (1985). She is strong, proud, unbowed in spite of the power exercised over her by an evil bishop, and her character is necessary to sustain her partner through the hardship they mutually and unfairly suffer. When he is ready to give in to despair and revenge-seeking, she bows him up and gives him hope -- hard as it is, and all the way to the end.
Mulan is an old Chinese folk tale. The Disney animated movie was fine as it goes. I've got a live action Chinese movie on queue with Netflix of the same title. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteConcur with Isabelle from Ladyhawk.
The only cool thing about Terminator was Arnold.
They left out the Bionic Woman. This is mostly just a list from the last 15 years, if that.
Piggybacking on Eric Blair's comment, I think this is more a list of "Cool females from the last two decades. Let me show off how deeply embedded I am with this cool female culture."
ReplyDelete