Movie INJUSTICE...

In today's news, a successful masseur briefly told his story about how he was blinded at the age of 8 but continued working towards being good at massages. He currently has a student, who was also blinded after getting hit by a drunk driver. His student was significantly disfigured from the accident, but both teacher and student have pulled through and become competent in what they do.

I then thought, I HATE it how movies usually make the "bad guys" the ugly people. For example, in the Dark Knight Rises, the bad guy is the ugly and ferocious Bane. In The Amazing Spider Man, a disfigured scientist automatically turns evil when he transforms into an ugly lizard. Even in Star Wars, the Sith (the "bad guys") are usually old, wrinkled, burnt, ugly, etc.

I also thought, "I HATE it how movies portray women as easily swayed and weak-willed people. Usually, the guy only has to spend time and act cool and the girl somehow "automatically" falls in love with him. (I wish this were true for me So far, it has never happened :pinch: )

Any comments?
and
Do you think there is movie INJUSTICE???

What do you mean by ugly though? Disfigured suit's villian's because it denotes a violant life, but being old and wrinkled isn't so bad, just different.

I guess if your attracted to the characters, for whatever reason, then it might form a stronger connection between the audience and the character. In the same way then a character who people find hard to connect to and relate with, could be less important to the execution of the plot. They've only got 120 minutes or so to create an entire story so things like that might be part of the toolkit used by productions.

There is a lot of questionable casting in regards to relationships, because without chemistry it is not very convincing.... but which man knows the workings of the womens mind :laugh:

Developmental studies reflect that even as infants we show a tendency to prefer attractive people, seeing them as "good" or "better". The tendency for films to have villains as disfigured or unattractive and the heroes usually played by people that could be models is playing into this instinctual response.

Its not just in film either. Look at the Lord of the Rings books. Orcs were made from elves. The elves, nominally good, are attractive, the orcs, nominally evil, are disfigured wrinkly and wan.

Do I think this is unfair? Sure, however its a prejudice picked up so early its not until we catch the behavior in ourselves that we can do anything about it.

As far as the portrayal of women... there are SOME women who would lust after or think she loves a man after such a brief contact. I've a friend a console roughly every 3 months when her most recent boyfriend turned out to be a jerk.

Societal pressure says a woman isn't a proper woman, isn't "complete", if she's not in a relationship or at least trying to have kids. There's something wrong with her otherwise. The portrayal of women as being swayed with such ease is reinforcing these existing biases. So while I think it would be better for writers to portray women more authentically without this, they're writing based off the societal bias.

I find the difficulty with film to be that it creates a culture loop. A societal bias exists, it shows up in film because the writers and actors and directors are part of that society. The bias is portrayed in the film which reinforces the bias in society. This is how many modern stereotypes are formed.

It depends what kind of movies and programmes you watch. It's just character portrayal. The age old story line of something bad happening, whether it be mental or physical. Their misfortune corrupting them and turning them to the dark side.
I've seen many action films and t.v dramas where the bad guy is smooth, good looking and suave, but ultimately still a nut job
If it's possible to go through every movie bad guy and rate their appearance, I would say that the majority would fall into the brackets of 'Average Joe' to 'Hollywood hunk'. More ugly personalities than physical ugliness.

Not all heroes are faultless either. Like Spawn from Todd McFarlane's comics. A devoted father and husband who gets burnt to a crisp and wears a magical suit to hide his scares.
Snake Eyes from G.I-Joe, always wears a mask because his face was disfigured in a helicopter crash.
Plo Koon from Star Wars. He's just an ugly alien :laugh:

"Judge me by my looks do you? For 900 years I have looked this bad":whistle:

I know how you feel, Sean. Sometimes I feel that way too. It helps if I step back and realize that filmmakers (at least those that are not independent) exist to make profits. In order to make profits they must show people what they want to see.

*Shrug* Personally, I try to stay away from new and popular movies unless the storyline interests me for just this reason.

My recommendation might be to check out the way movies were prior to color photography. Not sure how you feel about black and whites or silent films, but the first time I gave them a chance I was awed. It was like finding the real film industry that is all but forgotten today. Before people became millions and millions of dollars richer after starring in, producing, or directing a film there was true art in movies, something that I don't always see in modern films.

I agree with all of the points you've made, Sean. Beauty is often equated with "good." I understand that this is innate, because good-looking people are most likely to produce healthy babies, and those who are disfigured or diseased are less likely to do so, but, we like to think of ourselves as "civilized" and beyond our animal instincts... :dry:


Here's a test for you to determine if women are represented fairly in a film.

1. Does the film have more than one important female character?
2. Do these characters ever speak to each other?
3. Is the topic of conversation something other than men or the weather?

You'd be surprised by how often movies fail these criteria....

Have you ever noticed that "foreigners" of Hollywood (non-Americans) are almost always portrayed as the evil people? Even in Star Wars, the Imperials are "british"

In addition to the good points already said, here are a few things I noticed as well...

- Movies (and stories in general) usually use a boy/man as their main character. After all, there are so many Batmans, Spider Mans, Iron Mans, Super Mans, ~ Mans, etc.. There have been a few stories on females as main characters, such as "Wonder Women", but I've not seen any of them in recent movies that have made a lot of money.

- In video games, the same situation occurs. For example, I remember that in the original Pokemon Red and Blue versions (I love that series) the only option was to play as a boy. It wasn't until around 5 or 6 games later where players could choose to play as girls in the video game. I remember talking to some of my female friends; they've told me that they had "no problem playing as a guy in the [original games] although playing as a girl would be nice".

- Even female authors usually choose to write about a boy/man as their main character. For example, J.K. Rowling happened to make her famous, main character (the one and only Mister Potter) as a boy.


- Overall: It seems to me that stories, movies, and entertainment in general are very male-oriented.
- Overall: It doesn't seem to bother females - they even contribute to this situation!

SeanChing wrote: - Overall: It seems to me that stories, movies, and entertainment in general are very male-oriented.
- Overall: It doesn't seem to bother females - they even contribute to this situation!

We have a basic societal pressure that masculine or male = better. Even the feminist movement of the 90s and early 2000s carried this bias, many of the radical feminists denigrating women who wanted to be wives or mothers and didn't care about careers. Women writing about female characters happens all the time, I'd even venture to say more often then women writing male characters but these books end up in the romance section or are seen as somehow political or "chick books" and rarely gain greater popularity regardless what acclaim they may earn in literary or cinematic circles. The misogyny so often railed against by the feminist movement is often ironically practiced by feminists themselves.

It comes down to the basic valuing of masculine over feminine that exists in our society.

I normally don't think about movies much...
I don't think the people who make them do, either, unless it's in regards to money.