Written by Luke Barnes

This piece will talk about the modern Hollywood archetype of the girl boss, and why by its very existence it reduces women in cinema and makes them inherently stunted.

So to give you a quick summary the girl boss is a girl that takes charge, is in control, is usually fairly emotionless and needs no man. The idea of this character type comes with the idea of giving women more agency allowing them to have power and to be a dominating figure in a films narrative, in this sense the girl boss was supposed to be empowering. However, the fundamental issue with the girl boss is that it stops women being human, they may be powerful and in control but they are no longer allowed to have flaws or be well rounded characters, the character simply becomes they are great and in charge and that is where the exploration ends.

For the sake of this piece I want to look at two girl bosses side by side to show how the archetype has lost its way to the point of being parody at this point. Firstly lets look at the character of Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise, Connor is a girl boss as she is in control she tells people what to do she fights Skynet and despite her fling with Kyle Reese at the start of the series she doesn’t need no man, she is a strong independent woman and mother. She is not immediately perfect at fighting terminators as she would be if the film was made today she has to train and work to get there, she is a flawed person but does everything she can to protect her son, she is human. Then you have Elodie, Millie Bobby Brown’s character in Damsel, in this film Elodie repeatedly says how she doesn’t need a man or want to get married as though having human wants and desires made you weaker, Sarah Connor had romance didn’t make her any weaker. Elodie preaches about the patriarchy and how she needs to be a figure head for all women, implying all women need to be activists and take to the streets otherwise they are enabling oppression, Sarah Connor fought the patriarchy and won she didn’t spend her time preaching. Finally and most damning of all where before I said Sarah Connor had to work to be a badass, Elodie just picks up a sword and bang she’s better than any soldier, why because she is a woman that’s why. It is reductive.

The modern girl boss archetype as a whole makes the idea of a female action hero or even a powerful woman generally inherently less human and takes it to such an extreme caricature like place that then makes the characters incredibly one dimensional and allows them no room to grow. The reason why Rey was a bad character in the new Star Wars films was because she was not a character you could root for as she didn’t have an arc she was just great and then saved the day that’s it there was no progression, no journey as there was with a Sarah Connor, Laurie Strode or Ripley.

The girl boss as an archetype reeks of work by committee or perhaps in Netflix’s case work by algorithm they go what do young women care about? Social justice, activism, breaking down gender norms. Can they be floored or need to grow as a person? No that would imply they weren’t inherently perfect that’s sexist. Can they want to be equal to men rather than better than them and needing to degrade them in order to make themselves look even better? No, once again that’s sexist wanting men and women to be equal that’s sexism if the female lead of your superhero franchise isn’t inherently better than all the male characters there that is problematic now- see She Hulk.

One would argue that the progressive idea of strong interesting and well developed female characters is being ruined by the girl boss archetype and that in many ways the view of women it presents is limiting and regressive  

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Written by Luke Barnes

This piece will talk about the idea of why people in Hollywood can’t see how the message is killing the film industry. Left wing social justice politics is very in right now with some people, these people think that everyone else is like them, and that if they are not that screaming at them and telling them they are a vile nazi will get them to change their mind, it won’t. Apply this to movie studios when you have actors and executives making statements to the press saying x film or tv show isn’t for a certain group of people, based usually around political beliefs and you can see the problem. It is an industry, and in an industry you want to make money so you have to keep everybody happy, so putting in divisive left wing themes and messages into a film to appeal to just people of one political persuasion becomes off putting for everyone else, the film will then do poorly, not always but most of the time

I am not arguing that film should be depoliticized some of the best films ever made are inherently political, but a studio deliberately doing something divisive and then insulting their fanbase is never the way to make a hit. Look at The Rings Of Power it spat on the books, and did many left wing changes to make the show appeal to a very small and vocal group of left wing activist and again what these creatives need to learn is that these are a small group, the majority don’t like this hence the poor viewership and completion rates.

Hollywood is famous for being a very left wing place, to them social justice issues are the be all and end all as they live in their mansions, and they see this small and vocal minority of people online and go see audiences agree with us lets make sure our films reflect our own personal beliefs, but this is echo chamber logic. The majority of people are aware of social justice issues but are busy trying to put food on the table or just get through the day, they don’t have the resources of the activists that don’t seem to need to work and have family money to keep going indefinitely. They go to the cinema because they want to be entertained not lectured to, or told how they are bad, this is why people are switching off. I have multiple streaming services worth of classic films to watch why would I go to the cinema and watch a modern release that screams about how anyone who eats meat is on a par with histories greatest baddies, I wouldn’t and I am not alone.

Yes streaming and rising ticket costs have brought pain to Hollywood’s door at the box office but it is the shoehorned diversity, that audiences can see is not done because they actually care about these groups or properly representing them but rather just to have them so they can show them off in an exploitative fashion, and the divisive social messages that take film from a place of entertainment into a lecture hall. I think this practice is sad because it is ruining the industry and it is stopping actual progress being made on things like making film more diverse as rather than do it for the right reasons it is just being done by an all-white board in order to appease a group of people online who aren’t numerous enough to make a film successful.

Personally I don’t think anything I have said here is particularly new nor do I think it is inherently one way or the other politically, I aim to be centrist I don’t aim to align with either side. I just think that something needs to be done about writers in Hollywood, I think that they need to stop preaching and start entertaining or they’ll be out of a job, I mean AI is only shortly around the corner anyway. Actors and executives can have their political views but they should know if they start saying to parts of the audience this film isn’t for you then they are limiting the reach of their film, and then they can’t be upset when it flops. They themselves can be very left wing if that’s who they are but it should stay out of their public image and they should remember they are actors not activists and trying to be the latter will hurt the former, look at Brie Larson she made a few probably well intended comments but her activism made her a hate figure and her career has struggled as a result. I think a return to the days of old is in order where stars were more greatly controlled by the studio whilst under contract and weren’t allowed to just say any old statement they like to the press which can then tank a 200 million dollar movie.

I think the winds of change are in the air I think people are realising audiences aren’t just people on X, that pushing social justice messages isn’t enough to make a film successful and that it may even be damaging. America and the world as a whole is a deeply divided place and if you view the split between what would be considered politically left and right down the middle you would probably find a fairly even split if more right wing people overall, so when Hollywood shoots its mouth off about who a project is and isn’t for they want to remember that ratio and remember it again when their project fails.

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