No more Manic Pixie Dream Girls.

I am bored of second rate female characters in films. I am bored of being highly critical of how a film portrays women, or people of colour. 

The other day I saw 'Isle of Dogs' at the cinema and it was great. But at the end of the film I was left feeling annoyed. How come Wes Anderson's female characters can only exist as romantic interests? I went back through them all in my head as the credits rolled, he may be the king of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The women are interesting, sure, but they only serve as quirky love interests of the much more developed, central male characters. 

This isn't to say that I don't enjoy the films where every character except for the white male is mis/under-represented. I'd be hard pushed to find films where that didn't happen. Even in films that I love, films that might have interesting women fall short elsewhere. "Oh the black actor is the main part's funny sidekick again? With minimal characterisation? That's new." 

If I'm going to be "fair" to the sexist way women are presented in (mostly) Hollywood movies then obviously I have to consider the social climates/times they were made in. Blah blah blah. The newer the film the less time I have for its lazy underdevelopment of non-white male characters. Or its lazy casting. Or its outdated, antifeminist sexualisation and exploitation of women's bodies (I just watched Blade Runner 2049). 

I know that social movements go slow. I know that the Weinstein exposure only just happened meaning, up until the end of 2017, women were quietly being bullied, manipulated and sexually abused. Women are still being bullied, manipulated and sexually abused just, hopefully, less quietly and less effectively. If Salma Hayek's story is anything to go by then the constant misrepresentation of women in film and the constant over-sexualisation of them is hugely unsurprising. 

But I'm still bored of it. Female characters are not hard to write, a black actor is capable of playing the lead role, white men are quite clearly not the only interesting, complex, beautiful human beings we can portray in film. There is so much more we could be exploring, so much more most people want to explore. I am so bored of pretending otherwise.