Speaker 1: Have you noticed that modern screenwriters have a terrible taboo when it comes to women? They may not admit it, but the truth is it can't be defined as anything else. Whether it's out of fear, ignorance, or flat-out malevolence, the current crop of Hollywood writers refuse to allow any type of character development for their female leads. It is currently taboo to ever show a female character having moments of weakness, vulnerability, grace, or growth. Instead, writers insist that their female characters be strong, from beginning to end, with nothing else in between. What does this do for the story? And what lessons can we learn from this as aspiring creatives? Today, we're going to take a look into characterization and story, and see what it really takes to write strong female characters. Okay, so the first thing to note is that films and TV haven't always been this way. It's a very recent phenomenon, which means it isn't actually all that hard to overturn if people would just be a little bit brave about it. We can all recall some of the great fictional heroines of the past. Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley are usually the most frequently cited, but there are others as well that aren't as obvious that are often overlooked. Remember that a strong character, female or otherwise, doesn't just have to be physically strong. There are other attributes about human beings that we admire far more than strength. Qualities of intelligence, loyalty, courage, and moral steadfastness are all equally as impressive in female characters as they are in men. But for reasons of ideology, many of these qualities are neglected in modern female characters in favour of the writers trying to push an agenda. I'm using the character of Galadriel from the god-awful Rings of Power series for most of these visual examples, as she represents the most recent iteration of the same old empowered characters that they've been trotting out for years. In the show, the writers are determined to portray the wise and ethereal Galadriel of Tolkien's work as a battle-hardened commander and a physically tough warrior, who kicks ass, knows everything, and has no weaknesses to speak of. At least, she has no weaknesses as far as her writers are concerned. But what they don't realise is that her shallow character is a weakness. It not only prevents the audience from relating to her, but it also starts to make us actively dislike her. Oh, for fuck's sake. Let me ask a question. Why is it we allow a broader range of qualities in our male characters than our female ones? In the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, Samwise Gamgee was portrayed with the qualities of loyalty, empathy, humility, and honour, and the audience absolutely loved him for it. For some reason, the writers seemed to think that these qualities would make a woman look weak, even though it certainly didn't do that for Sam.

Speaker 2: I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. Don't you leave him, Samwise Gamgee. And I don't mean to. I don't mean to.

Speaker 1: We don't have any female characters like this in our current day movies. Modern writers are obsessed with portraying their women as strong and empowered, but they don't fully understand what that means. As a result, they send their characters to the Beth Tannen School of Personal Empowerment, where they learn that to be strong is to be imposing, obnoxious, and consumed with a desire to prove oneself. In reality, this makes for a person of weak character, and in a story context, such a person would traditionally be a villain.

Speaker 3: As a specimen, yes, I'm intimidating.

Speaker 1: Now, we could speculate for hours as to why modern writers want to turn their female heroes into bad bullies, but I'm not Sigmund Freud, and I don't fully understand the concept of penis envy beyond its very apt and descriptive title.

Speaker 2: The suit is literal perfection.

Speaker 1: It will be,

Speaker 3: when it fits a woman.

Speaker 1: Anyway, like I said at the start, I think there's a deep insecurity about femininity in present day Hollywood and it's robbing us of satisfying experiences. We need heroes, both male and female, that we can respect and feel compassion for to open us up to the story the film is trying to tell. Without a vulnerable central character, the audience themselves can't be vulnerable and the story will fall on deaf ears and barren ground. Right, let's move on to a more positive example now and see if we can work out something productive to turn this anti-artistic trend around. As you will have seen from the thumbnail, the good example of a strong female character that I want to talk about today is Clarice Starling from 1991's Silence of the Lambs. If you haven't seen the film, Clarice is a trainee FBI agent who is brought in on a case to hunt down the serial killer Buffalo Bell, who is actively killing women and skinning them in order to fuel his fantasies of transformation. Clarice is tasked with interviewing the psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, a convicted cannibal murderer, in order to build a psychological profile of the killer that will aid them in the investigation. She has several cat and mouse style interactions with Hannibal over the course of the film and over time she manages to extract enough clues and information from him to lead her to the killer and rescue his current captive, Catherine Martin. Throughout the film, Clarice displays many great character strengths. She is whip smart.

Speaker 4: Tell me what you see.

Speaker 5: He's not a drifter, he's got his own house somewhere, not an apartment. 30s or 40s, he's got real physical strength and he's never impulsive, he'll never stop.

Speaker 6: Not bad, Starling.

Speaker 1: She is motivated.

Speaker 6: You're so ambitious, aren't you? But you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? You know how quickly the boys found you, all those tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars while you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the FBI.

Speaker 1: And she is humble and courageous in the face of both physical and psychological danger.

Speaker 2: Put your hands over your head and turn around, spread your legs. Catherine Martin? Yes. FBI. You're safe.

Speaker 1: She is also explicitly feminine in characterization and this is something that is neither repressed, apologised for or overcompensated for. In fact, the script actively leans into it to great effect. There are several scenes that highlight both her physical vulnerability and her emotional vulnerability that are particularly relevant to her sex. On the physical side, Clarice is almost always the only female on the screen in situations of tension or danger and her engagements with men are often filmed in a point of view style, making the audience feel discomfort as the male characters brush up against the fourth wall without ever quite breaking it. There are also some clever shots throughout where the camera is positioned lower down on Clarice's eyeline, making us feel the inherent precise difference between her and the other officers without having to explain it through dialogue. Some situations that wouldn't have felt quite as dangerous with a different protagonist really get the sense of danger dialed up due to her increased concern for Clarice's physical safety. For example, the scene where she investigates the storage unit. She has to crawl under a broken shutter to venture alone into a dark and dangerous potential crime scene, trusting to a male stranger to arrange help for her if anything goes wrong. We would have much less to worry about if it was Arnold Schwarzenegger going into the unit, rather than the 5 foot 3, 28 year old Jodie Foster, and the film knows this and takes advantage of it to the fullest. Then there are the emotional dangers, the most glaring of which are the various types of sexual advances that are made towards Clarice as a young and attractive woman. These advances range from the sweet but clumsy to the inappropriate and sleazy to outright violative assault.

Speaker 6: Look at the blood. Hannibal Kill.

Speaker 1: The film runs the gamut on these uncomfortable situations but there are deeper emotional threats for Clarice here too, most notably Hannibal's disturbing intention to gain a foothold inside her psyche.

Speaker 6: Quit pro quo, I tell you things, you tell me things. Not about this case though, about yourself. And you're to tell him nothing personal Starling. Believe me, you don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.

Speaker 1: Clarice has to be emotionally strong enough to withstand Lecter's probing, as well as charming enough to convince him to give up his own secrets. It's no easy feat, but she proves herself to be the hero in the end, when she risks giving up one of her foundational memories to Hannibal in exchange for the chance to save an innocent life.

Speaker 4: Do you think if you save poor Catherine, you won't wake up in the dark ever again? To that awful screaming of the lambs.

Speaker 5: Tell me his name, Doctor.

Speaker 1: So we can see that Clarice is vulnerable across multiple dimensions throughout the story, and as a direct result, the audience naturally worries and cares about her. But she also earns her respect by being a genuinely brave and determined person, with a strong sense of right and wrong. She's a strong female character, who takes all of the peril in stride, doesn't seek special treatment, and doesn't make gender an issue, except when she really has to.

Speaker 7: When I told the Sheriff we shouldn't talk in front of a woman, that really burned you, didn't it?

Speaker 5: Cops look at you to see how to act. What matters? Point taken.

Speaker 1: Clarice is someone who relies on her intelligence to get her closer to the goal, and in the process, she occasionally manages to get the upper hand over her more skilled and more experienced opponents.

Speaker 4: Anthrax Island. That was an especially nice touch, Clarice. Yours? Yes. Yeah, that was good.

Speaker 1: She gets through the film on her own merit, with the resolve of her mind and the fortitude of her character. She navigates society as it is, warts and all, rather than defiantly trying to bend the world to her will, and succeeding solely due to the generosity of the screenwriter. Because of these compelling character hooks, the film is really free to dial up the level of danger throughout the story. It makes us more and more invested in the case as it goes on, playing on our emotional attachment and eventually building to a thrilling crescendo at the end of the movie when Clarice is revealed at the killer's house. Alone, on the wrong foot, and with everything at stake. Does Rings of Power even get close to anything like this? Which character out of Galadriel and Clarice has had more of an impact on you as a viewer? Look, this may come as a surprise, but I really strongly enjoy diversity in films. By that I mean I actually enjoy it when a film allows me to see the world through the eyes of another, and lets me see things in a way that I never could in my own life. Funnily enough, I don't really know what it feels like to be an attractive young woman in law enforcement, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to get an insight, without having to go to extreme measures like Buffalo Bill and his...disturbingly relevant women suit. You might ask why all of this is important. Well, it's my opinion that good art is genuinely transformative, for the artist as well as the audience. One good film can change you forever after just one viewing. Propaganda, on the other hand, is a net disservice, presenting as a shallow short-term opportunity. It has to be repeated over and over again for any of it to take hold, and even then it only lands in a disappointing surface-level type of way. And you know what? To hell with that. Life is for living. We can do better, and we deserve better. We need real heroes in our movies and literature. Characters we can aspire to. What we don't need is 1 billion dollars worth of time-sucking content that has all the emotional appeal of a fucking bank advert. So all you aspiring writers out there, let your story protagonists, male and female, be vulnerable and relatable. Give them genuine qualities, and leave the inane and childish power fantasies for minor characters. Or, simply leave them at the door, and do something better. I had a bunch of other examples of good female characters that I thought about discussing today, but I thought I would keep it focused on just the one, to keep the video from being too cluttered. But I'll ask you, do you think it would be worthwhile to visit this topic again in the future? Is it worth breaking down some other overlooked female characters, or would that be a bit redundant? Let me know in the comments below, and let me know if there are any other topics you'd like to see me cover too. In the meantime, if you enjoyed the video, please leave a like to help out the channel, and subscribe to see new videos in the future. I'm still new to YouTube, but already I want to say a big thank you to everyone who's helped the channel so far. I'm grateful for every subscriber and every comment, so thank you very much for keeping me motivated. Anyway, that's all I've got for today, folks. I'll see you all again soon.

Speaker 5: Well, Frederica used to work for Mrs. Lipman. Did you know her? Oh, wait. Was she a great big fat person? Yeah, she was a big girl, sir.