I’m a sucker for a good girl-power movie. Shocker, I know. Who would be interested in the stories of powerful women? But it’s true, and what I’ve discovered is that power takes on multiple forms both on and offscreen. A powerful woman can be a stone cold ice queen who keeps her heart under lock and key, or it can be a girl who is emotional and vulnerable and wears her heart on her sleeve. Maybe that woman is single by choice, or maybe she’s clumsy in love, in and out of every relationship. Perhaps that woman prioritizes her career above all else, and perhaps the highest career move she could aspire to is mother. God forbid, maybe the most powerful woman is someone who doesn’t conform to any of the narrow archetypes that the patriarchy has set for a 21st century woman, instead going to the beat of her own drum. But what I’ve found to be consistently true is that the successful stories of powerful women are the ones most often curated by powerful women. Takes one to know one, right? What I’ve also found to be consistently true, however, is that it’s often men in positions of privilege behind the scenes that domineer the stories of women onscreen. This not only makes for poor, inaccurate storytelling, but also erases the voices of women who have important things to say.
It’s great, that as society, we’ve put more emphasis on delivering diverse and accurate representation of women in movies and TV, but it’s just as important to integrate women into the process of writing their own stories, rather than simply portraying them. This means that it should not simply be the prerogative of men to handle executive positions of writer, director, producer, etc. If we really want to champion women’s rights in the media, it’s important that we address the issue of women’s power and control in all its forms, visible and invisible.
It’s the classic case of mansplaining strikes again that allows men to feel entitled to the bodies and voices of women. Of course, who better than a man to understand the complex inner workings of the feminine psyche? One need look no farther than David Ayer and his botched direction of the movie ‘Suicide Squad’. After intense build-up for what was projected to be the biggest movie of the summer, Ayer single-handedly destroyed any sense of arc or complexity for the female characters in the movie. The women in these movie were seemingly engineered - their lives designed to revolve around men and fulfill their every fantasy. Now, there’s no guarantee that the movie would have fared any better if directed and led by a predominantly female team, but it’s common sense than when you have a personal stake in a venture, you obviously put more effort into ensuring its success. DC Comics, the white male powerhouse that it is, simply didn’t have a personal or emotional stake in the success of ‘Suicide Squad’ outside of box office earnings so they had nothing to lose from this venture, other than the respect of women everywhere. A team of women - women of color, trans women, disabled women, etc. - could have scraped together the most empowering flick of the season even with the most limited of resources, so there is no excuse for a conglomerate like DC with billions of dollars to its name to market this shoddy excuse for representation and expect people to be satisfied.
David Ayer and DC’s executive team are not the first of their kind, and certainly not their last. For more on the topic of privileged white men overshadowing minorities, let’s talk about our favorite white mansplainer, Matt Damon. Matt Damon has reached such high levels of mansplaining that we had to come up with a new term for him - Damonsplaining. The term was coined after the season premiere of Project Greenlight, the HBO show run by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon himself. The series focused on selecting a first-time or inexperienced director to take charge of a feature film. In selecting the cast, Damon and Affleck sat down with a few panelists, one of whom was Effie Brown. Brown was not only the only black person on the panel, but also the only woman. When she raised legitimate concerns about the only black woman in one of the movies being an abused prostitute, and suggested hiring a woman or person of color to direct that character, Matt Damon then proceeded to loudly and ignorantly condescend to her. In his nonsensical, vomit-inducing tirade, Damon spewed some nonsense about casting diversity only being a priority on-screen as opposed to off, and effectively silenced one of the voices that really matters, the voice of a powerful woman of color.
The cases of Matt Damon and David Ayer may seem like anomalies, or one-offs. But the fact is, that Damon and Ayer are simply figureheads. Just two men at the forefront of entire generations of privileged white men who cannot cope with this loss of power and control that they are facing. Unfortunately for us, these men have sunk their talons into the media and are unwilling to let go anytime soon. But unfortunately for them, these men have a new generation to face. A generation unwilling to put up with the bullshit that we have been force-fed all these years. A generation more diverse, more liberated, more expressive than any that have preceded it. It is of the utmost importance that we take the opportunities we have to rise up, to say no the mansplainers, the whitesplainers, to anyone who tries to take our power away. As a generation, as a society, as a global community, we deserve better, and we will do better. It’s our turn to tell our story, and this time, we get to write the script.
