I'm not understanding the comparison between Football and WWE. Football is neither campy nor homoerotic. Football players have been wearing the same kind of uniform for years. I do not believe the uniforms were chosen to get women and gays to watch football.
Warbler said:
Football is neither campy nor homoerotic.
Well, there is a position called a tight end.
But what about Top Gun?
TV's Frink said:
Octorox said:
I think most action movies are primarily marketed towards males. That being said, one could make the case that movies like Star Trek and Transformers are targeted towards general audiences.
Really? I haven't seen the new Star Trek yet, but how was Transformers targeted towards a general audience?
Well, you have a point there. I stand by the new Star Trek though. Most of my friends who loved it are females.
Gaffer Tape said:
Yeah, but if you consider Uhura's role in other Star Trek media, I found it quite odd how pushed to the forefront she was in this one. I mean, she was touted as more a major character than Bones! Not that it's bad to see Uhura actually do something, but I do get the impression (from that and the taking off her top scene) that they wanted a hot woman on the movie poster.
EDIT: Or maybe I'm looking into that from the wrong angle, and maybe they just wanted a forced love triangle, and, digging into the Smurfette Principle, she's the only girl, so it had to be her.
Or maybe they wanted a strong female role this time around and Uhura was the only major female character in TOS?
Warbler said:
I'm not understanding the comparison between Football and WWE. Football is neither campy nor homoerotic. Football players have been wearing the same kind of uniform for years. I do not believe the uniforms were chosen to get women and gays to watch football.
It wasn't but consider the design and nature of the uniform.
American Football has it's origins in earlier forms of football like Rugby where no or very little protection is worn.
The uniform is stylised armor.
The shoulder pads, the helmet and the tights create a deliberately über-masculine shape (much like Tudor male dress) :
It's as much about the look as the function.
The effect is intended to not only protect the players but to make them look more masculine and martial (though it's so extreme it also looks rather camp).
WWE is theatrical (wrestlers are genuinely athletic and their injuries are testament to the serious effort they put into their art but you are deluding yourself if you believe the storylines and can't see the slight of hand).
If you can't see how the wrestlers are costumed and their personas are designed to be comic exaggerations of masculinity you really need to get your eyes tested.
You could hold screen shots from WWE matches side by side with gaypride floats and celebrations and you wouldn't be able to spot the difference.
I mentioned those two entertainments not as illustrations of alternate examples of male sexualisation in popular culture (not they they couldn't be drawn as such) but to point out how some people are blind to the visual language used to display gender ideals.
Your post seems to illustrate my point.
Bingowings said:
(only there is one Bond per film and more girls).
Except for Casino Royale 1967. ;)
Bingowings further said:In Casino Royale Daniel Craig's body gets much more screen attention than Eva Green's.
True, but she shows TONS of cleavage as does the brunette from the first half of the film.
Boost said:
I was 17 when it came out, and I had a man thing for Natalie Padme.
Now I'm 29...
You aged 12 years in 10.75 years?
IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!
"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005
"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM
"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.
Daniel shows all the cleavage and hints at both front and back package too :-D
I read comics and I'm married- so I have this conversation with my wife all of the time.
Here's a typical conversation we have:
She: Why do the women have to be practically naked?
Me: They're not all practically naked. Look, this one is covered head to toe!
She: Yes, but everything she is wearing is skin tight! She might as well be naked.
Me: The men are wearing just as much skin tight clothing as the women.
She: But it's different. All of the women have huge boobs-
Me: And all of the men have a 12 pack and massive biceps on their biceps.
She: But it's not the same- because breasts are "sexual" and the biceps aren't.
Me: The biceps are just as 'sexually attractive' as the breasts.
She: ... (Yes, she's an anime character.)
Me: Okay, maybe not "just as" sexually attractive- put it's part of it!
Having had this conversation about 10 times a year, I have had some refined thoughts on it. They go like this:
Our sexual instincts are designed to ensure survival of the species. Men are attracted to women so that the species can survive. Women are attracted to men so that the species can survive. (And then there's Rob, but that's another subject) In this way, men and women are the same. However, a man's role in the survival is different than a woman's. Obviously we have physical differences. Traditionally- men have been providers of physical needs and protection and women have been bares of the babies, providers of emotional nourishment and washers of the dishes. ;) In our post-modern world, I have heard of women that earn the money and men that wash the dishes- but that's not what our natural instincts are tuned towards.
So, to mid-cap- women are sexually attracted to men who appear to be good physical providers and men are sexually attracted to women who appear to be capable of taking care of babies. Are we all on the same page?
So, a healthy and fertile looking female is sexually attractive to us. on the most basic level. Obviously not everyone will agree on which females are the most healthy and fertile looking, but most of us men share the basic concept (hint: it's boobs)- and not a lot has changed over the years.
Women, however, seem to be very confused when presented with the current situation. Their most primal of primal instincts tells them that a very strong and muscley man will be best at hunting wild game and protecting her and their children from danger. However, most of us don't hunt game to put food on the table and our modern society makes physical danger a lot less likely than it used to be. So, how now to judge which male is best capable of furthering the species with her? Well, I think the first thing a lot of women look for is a guy that will stick around and be a father to the children- that's probably always been the case. But how will the father provide? Meaning- what is his potential to earn money? Is he smart or funny or hard working, etc? That will earn him money. Or- how much money does he already have? Surely, that is some clue as to how good of a provider he will be.
Now those thugs with lots of money hanging out with beautiful women makes all sorts of sense.
Women are torn between their primal instincts and their modern understanding of what it means to be a provider. This confusion is good for us guys because they might be so confused that they end up with us: A guy who is neither muscley or rich!
In conclusion, a womans perceived fertility (again: boobs) are the prime source of their "sexual attractiveness" to a man and a man's variety of qualities that a woman may or may not correctly attribute to his ability to provide are those that make him sexually attractive to a woman.
So, in an action movie- a man shooting guns and otherwise being an action hero is on par as a foxy lady getting some foxy foxy screen time in terms of how they are being portrayed as the epitome of sexual attaction to the oppoiste sex.
IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!
"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005
"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM
"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.
Partly you are right Xhonzi but gender ideals are largely cultural and open to the fashions of the age.
Culture and technology can frequently replace and overwrite what may be biological cues.
When poor people had to do manual labour on a spartan diet the idealised woman in western culture was heavy and pale because rich people could afford lots of food and didn't have to do exercise outside in the sun.
If a wealthy woman couldn't eat enough to get that shape or obtain that skin tone she wore padding and painted her face pale.
When poorer people had access to cheap food and took up more sedentary work indoors the ideal changed to being lean and tanned.
Rich women had the time to go to a gym and the money to travel to the sun. Once again if a wealthy woman couldn't naturally adopt that shape they had to resort to cosmetics and corseting.
As travel and gym access became cheap the idealised form became emaciated and pale and dressed in extreme clothing which would normally look ridiculous but could go in and out of fashion and promote the spending of money.
When women can't keep up with that they take drugs, starve and cut bits off of their bodies (in Africa women spend a lot of money bleaching their skin with harmful corrosive creams in the west women spend money and time risking skin cancer under sunbeds).
Breasts are interesting because in a lot of cultures they are not sexualised at all and in some large breasts are seen as ugly and just as some women risk their lives making the breasts look ridiculously large others spend similar amounts cutting them off and removing the natural fat layers around the hips and thighs.
Human bodies are seen as commodities and while men's bodies have traditionally been seen as less so it's increasingly no longer the case.
You can't move around the web without seeing an advert flash up offering a fast track method for making a normal looking man look like a leather armchair.
Action heroes tend to be athletic to make the action seem plausible but also tend to follow the idealised form of the day.
So it's unlikely that a Rubenesque action female would sell cinema tickets (unless as a gimmick) but the same is true of an overweight male action star.
Western culture doesn't have an equivalent to someone like Sammo Hung anymore (unless the actor was once very fit and attractive but has been cast for nostalgia reasons).
xhonzi said:
Boost said:
I was 17 when it came out, and I had a man thing for Natalie Padme.
Now I'm 29...
You aged 12 years in 10.75 years?
I've had a hard life.
(or I misremembered when TPM came out and am bad at math. Whichever is more likley)
BarBar Jinkx said:
and as for toning down a female leads sex appeal they tried that with the naturally blond Gillian Anderson in the X files, that backfired and they made her a total sex symbol to a Very large part of that shows viewership
Wait... how did that backfire? I think that one worked out very nicely. They never put a huge emphasis on her sexiness, but guys still found her sexy. I don't think that is backfiring, I think that is a good thing. It is a good example of a woman lead being found attractive without having to wear tight or skimpy clothing.
"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape
Warbler said:
Gaffer Tape said: Which leads into a subsidiary problem: sexualized females are deemed appropriate in movies marketed towards males and females. Sexualized males are usually only deemed appropriate in movies marketed towards females. That seems a bit odd.
I thought action movies were usually marketed towards men. Do you think there were many women that went to see The Dark Knight that weren't dragged there by husbands and boyfriends?
Actually, yeah, I'm sure there were, as it was the biggest movie of that year. In fact my (stupidbitchwhore) ex dragged me back there the same day after we'd already seen it because she had to see it again.
But I wasn't necessarily talking about action movies, even though that's the original point of this thread. I was talking about media in general. Male fanservice can spring up pretty much anywhere in anything, but female fanservice is generally relegated to female-targeted things. But that's really more to do with men being too whiny homophobic to handle it.
There is no lingerie in space…
C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.
Bingowings said:
I do think there is a degree of male flesh blindness on this thread.
The main area in this genre where gender prejudice really kicks in is with age and I think that will eventually change as people become equally ageist towards men and women (the idea of a middle aged man being cast in Doctor Who is almost unthinkable at least to the suits at the BBC now, sadly).
Bing's got two good points here.
I think I need to rewatch "Wolverine" and pay close attention to the hot throbbing man-flesh I may have missed the first time through.
I can't believe I just typed that.
I also think he's right that there's increasing sexy-ism bias against men in movies as well. Steve McQueen couldn't be an action star today, with his weak chin and skinny arms. It's a pity that instead of women being less objectified as society advanced, they're being more unrealistically objectified... but so are men so maybe there's a kind of fucked up equality.
Seriously... Doctor FREAKING Who has to be young and sexy? Isn't he like, a magic grandpa? And Tom Baker looked like a tall lawn gnome and he was the best!
You don't need to watch the latest Wolverine film just watch X-Men (the first one and it's already there).
I'm not saying it's necessarily the director's intention it could come straight from the nature of the source material e.g.
but the same goes for tightly clothed women with wips and high heels in such films (especially those pulled from comic books).
In Matt Smith's defense he is young (the youngest actor to play the Doctor yet) but he isn't conventionally sexy, in fact a lot of the new fangirls have been complaining about his looks and that he isn't sexy enough.
He has a strange old/young face which may work with the character but it has meant we have missed out again on the best Doctor we never had :
That was my point in re: Tomb Raider.
Want to book yourself or a guest on THE VFP Show? PM me!
Bingowings said:
He has a strange old/young face which may work with the character but it has meant we have missed out again on the best Doctor we never had :
who is that?
If you ask two best doctors we've ever had were Tom Baker and Patrick Troughton.
That's Bill Nighy. And he's right, he would have made an awesome Doctor.
Speaking of awesome Doctors we never had, this one almost actually happened. If the show hadn't been canceled during the McCoy years, he was in line to be next:
^I can't believe I'm saying this after looking up his IMDB credits/wiki page, but when I saw him, I said to myself, "that's Dr. Albert S. Meinheimer!"
That would have completed the Withnail set of Doctors and this guy could have been the Master :
^I'm really tired of that guy.
Withnail?
Some people (especially on this forum) claim that the actor played me in The Phantom Menace. Of course, it should be obvious that I played myself.
Withnail And I (one of the funniest flims made in this or any other Britain):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withnail_and_I
Starring :
as well as :
http://www.shadowlocked.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91:why-are-women-portrayed-so-negatively-in-film-&catid=40:rant
This article seems to be on the subject.
IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!
"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005
"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM
"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.