How “Female Empowerment” Has Destroyed The Art Of Storytelling
The most damaging movement for creativity and storytelling in cinema has been the progressive movement to “empower” women.
Last Friday night, actress Alyssa Milano trended on social media for a post in which she made in reference to what she calls “innate misogyny.” Milano took to Twitter to let the world know how offended she was by the notion that women sometimes need help, even if that woman is your own mother.
Milano made the following statement, “Can we stop saying to our son’s things like “take care of your mother while I’m gone.” This is insinuating that women can’t take care of ourselves. And it’s bulls***.”
At face value, these are the ramblings of an aging washed-up Hollywood actress, but a deeper look at this tweet exposes the core problem of the mindset of the far-left ideology. In the minds of progressives, women in film have to look as strong as men at all times because otherwise, that is misogyny.
You might not have heard the term “Progressive Storytelling” before but if you have watched any movie or television show in the last decade, you have seen it with your own two eyes. Thanks to diversity and inclusion mandates that ensure that unqualified writers are now required to be a part of major Hollywood productions, the floodgates have been opened to storytelling infused with intersectional feminism.
The biggest casualty of progressive storytelling is the concept of a hero. Heroes don’t always need to have superpowers but the idea of a hero is a selfless individual who is willing to sacrifice for the greater good of those around them.
A hero is someone who is there when you need them. If a car breaks down on the tracks and a train is coming, a hero will risk his own safety to make sure that the person inside is saved from certain doom. A hero can be defined in many ways, a person who gets the game-winning base hit, or someone who fixes a car that someone uses for work, or someone who brings the good beer to a party.
This idea of a hero is “problematic” to progressives because we live in a world that needs to teach women that they don’t need a man to save them.
Take Solo: A Star Wars Story for example (Spoilers for those who haven’t seen the movie after 4 years). In the climax of the film, the title character Han Solo is in a heated battle with the crime lord Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).
In a movie that was created to be an origin story of one of the biggest heroes in the entire Star Wars universe, Solo gets his moment of heroism robbed by Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) who kills off the main villain by herself with minimal effort. In the biggest moment of his own film, Solo takes a backseat to a strong independent woman.
In the 2019 film Shazam, our hero sees a woman getting mugged and races over to save her only to realize that she had taken care of the mugger by herself.
The takeaway from this scene isn’t our hero learning the ropes of how to use his powers for good, the message here is “regular aged ladies don’t need your protecting so get woke bro!” (actual line from the movie).
How about the new Disney+ series “Moon Knight” where our titled character is led around by a strong female character named Layla El-Faouly who can clear an entire room of men by herself while Moon Knight…stands there in awe.
We have all seen recent cinema where there is a woman in distress and right as a male hero arrives to save the day, the woman has taken care of the problem all by herself. Why? Because she doesn’t need a man to help her.
Progressive storytelling cannot allow a woman to be perceived as weak, even if it is at the expense of the story itself. Hollywood’s creative decision to prove to audiences that women are just as strong and powerful as their male counterparts, robs its protagonist of the moment that cements his legacy as a cinematic hero.
Earlier I mentioned how selflessness is a key character trait of being a hero. Progressive storytelling however teaches women that the last thing they want to do is put the needs of others above their own desires.
In the 2020 film Gretel & Hansel, the evil witch is shown to be a maternal figure for the young, female Gretel. The witch tells her that she has the power to shape her own future, but in order to keep this “power” intact, she must let go of her younger brother who will only hold her back from her potential.
Now a villain using Satanic undertones to tempt a protagonist into a dark path in and of itself is not bad storytelling, this creates conflict which makes for a good story.
The problem is when your protagonist sides with the antagonist and embraces their message. When this happens, your hero becomes a villain and your film has nobody to root for because evil has won. A character is no longer “the good guy” when they adopt the anti-family ideology of a Satanic cannibalistic witch.
This is why Progressive storytelling fails.
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In a society of “female empowerment,” we celebrate women who reject the idea of motherhood in order to reach their “potential.” Whether that is giving up family to be the CEO of a corporation, becoming an unfunny cast member of Saturday Night Live, or crediting your abortion as a key factor in winning a golden statue.
When a person lacks morality, they lack the ability to distinguish between good and evil. If you don’t understand good or bad behaviors, you don’t understand the fundamental art of telling a story.
When movies are created to prop up the far left view of the world, storytelling and character development will always suffer because the progressive ideology is at direct odds with the traditional values that create heroes and villains.
The far-left uses cinema as the canvas to paint their broken view of the world. As a result, audiences are left with an eye sore that many flock away from not towards.
Alyssa Milano’s tweet is easy to dismiss as the complaints of a middle aged left wing white woman who is bitter about her reality as a D-list actress but her mindset exposes the moral flaw in the minds of progressive women.
Female empowerment is a pillar of progressive storytelling but its injection in movies is anti-storytelling at its core.
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