Sexism - An Observation on Elizabeth Swann
Edited and purged, formerly “Sexism and Asian cinema”: Because Elizabeth needs some love all her own.
You know how you just get that irritating feeling when people say ‘that’s sexist!’ whenever the opportunity shows itself? Yeah, try and swallow that when you’re around me. After this stereotype and prejudice course, I’m seeing shit in a whole new light, and everything is sexist, or racist, and can be justified.
I find it extremely hypocritical for these very same Sue authors to tout an unrealistic representation of themselves when Elizabeth is a (relatively) realistic representation of nearly all of these things that they want to be. She fends for herself, holds power, and doesn’t fall for every man that comes her way, but at the same time she could not defeat the main antagonist, Davy Jones. She couldn’t save her father from death, or Will, even.
Fanfiction aside, I observed (at least in the communities I frequent), people refer to the personage as Keira, not Elizabeth. It’s ‘Keira’s annoying’, ‘I didn’t like Keira in the movie’, and it baffles me why they don’t refer to her as Elizabeth. If they want to hate the character, shouldn’t they refer to the character’s name, and not the person who portrays her?
There were numerous comments of ‘I liked her when she wore pretty dresses/fainted’, ’she had too much screen time’, and ‘I’m all for girl power, but she was annoying’. I got really bothered by the second reason; are males really necessary to become the main protagonist on default? I also never got a real definition to ‘annoying’ when I probed for answers, and my guess is that they don’t know (at least consciously). My inference was that they didn’t like the stronger character of Elizabeth, and ‘annoying’ was just the most suitable way to express dislike without sounding prejudiced (I suppose the most popular word to describe Elizabeth in the fanfiction world would be a Sue).
When I attempted to probe further into the reasons why they wanted Elizabeth to not be the Pirate King, they began to get offended (who wouldn’t, and in my defense, I would like to believe I wrote as neutral a tone as I am now) and began to state over and over along the lines of ‘I’m not sexist, I LOVE KEIRA, I never said I didn’t like her, and I’m not going to discuss this further.’
Sadly enough - from my observation at least - comments of this nature were usually made by females. It’s really sad to see females actually conform to the stereotype of gender inequality, where females are supposed to wear pretty dresses and get rescued by men, and must always play the supporting role to a male protagonist.
The males, in contrast, don’t disguise their prejudice. I’ve seen comments ranging from ‘I hate Keira’s jaw’ to this little gem:
if you’re gonna have a girl that’s a badass in your movie, the only way for it to be believable is for her to be butt-ugly. a pretty girl just throws all believabiliy out the window. anyone seen “Monster” with Charlize Theron. she killed lots of people and it was freakin terrifying. why? because it was hard to even look at her.
Let’s take this apart, shall we?
1. The only way for a girl to quash stereotypes (specifically, not being the damsel in distress) is to be ‘butt-ugly’. If you’re beautiful, you’re just there to be goggled at. Your purpose is to be goggled at. Apparently beautiful girls cannot be strong - it’s not ‘believable’ - which makes me wonder how many women he actually knows.
2. The fact that the character of Charlize Theron murdered people was not because of the act itself, but rather it was how ugly she looked. I’m pretty sure the movie wasn’t exactly trying to portray her as the next Medusa… literally.
There are others which are perhaps more explicit and implicit compared with this comment, but I shan’t make you roll your eyes and tell me that ‘ZOMG SEXISM EXISTS DIDNT U KNO’.
What I am shocked to see, however, is how bad the objectification of women has become in cinema, and how much of these stereotypes have been internalized. Even when a female character is ‘badass’, she still needs to bare skin and have a desirable personality (Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels), while simultaneously getting defeated by a man or being ‘broken’ by a man (falling in love and thus not being able to be badass anymore). The character of Elizabeth isn’t like that at all. She traveled all the way by herself to find Will, made decisions herself, becomes a captain of a ship, becomes the Pirate King, and actually took on the roles that a man is stereotyped to hold. That doesn’t sit well with people (females included, sadly enough). I find it absolutely sad that Elizabeth’s character has been so negatively received, simply because she has rejected all the stereotypes of what women are supposed to be without having to become a sexual object.
I think we’ve become a society so afraid to offend others that subjects like these become taboo. I myself have stepped away from the constant Elizabeth-bashing because of all the high emotions that run from the other party (I just like to analyze other people’s words, regardless of my personal bias.) Out of all my sourcing, I have yet to see a legitimate, unprejudiced reason as to why Elizabeth (the character, not Keira) has been so widely disliked by everyone. Goes to show how much stereotyping and prejudice runs deep in the societies we live in.
When I hold a grudge, I hold it long.
Grudge #1: Rupa Beng Choo
Grudge duration: 4 years (and counting)
Grudge background: English teacher. Practiced favoritism, and liked the girl who didn’t know how to spell ‘preist’. I, on the other hand, went cheeky one day and wrote a composition entirely in Yoda-speak. I expected I’d fail (and I did) but what I didn’t expect was how deep that stick was shoved up her ass.
She began to fail me for every composition I wrote, and gave ‘preist’-girl A’s. She told Gwen and me that we wouldn’t make it past a B for English, we were pissed. Gwen and I got A1 for English. Her precious pet? A2. For two years I always mentioned going back to Crescent and shoving my A1 up her ass, but never did. The next two were spent poking fun at her enormous mole on her forehead which she tried to cover up but wasn’t successful.
Grudge #2: Anjali and Sarah-Ann.
Grudge duration: 4 years (and waning)
Grudge background: Nothing much. I just don’t like them. Both of them have obviously gone on to greater things, like studying medicine in Ireland doing Economics in some London institution.
Grudge #3: Azrul Hisham
Grudge duration: Approximately 3 years (and stabilizing. I don’t throw things at random people at the mention of his name anymore)
Grudge background: Cowardice, stupidity, hypocrisy and a superiority complex. We got into an internet war of sorts, where along the lines he said that the woman was ‘a better fuck’. I was very disgusted at his objectification of women, and I sort of won the internetz-war. Because once you delete your fucking posts, you FAIL.
Believes himself to be extremely talented in literature and writing. Problem? He failed to get into a university and now works as a fireman. Because if you are that great as you proclaim yourself to be, you would’ve been IN university. Just because people repeat ‘you’re great’ on end doesn’t mean it’s true. Julia actually wrote up a short blog entry on the linguistic wannabe. Apparently a new one pops up every generation, and I swear God must have a stash of those clones in his cupboard or something.
Grudge #4: Whoever used my tube of new toothpaste.
Grudge duration: 1 day.
I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN.
