Jurassic World is one of the most
successful films ever made. The plot is predictable, and the majority of the
characters, dull, but it has mutant dinosaurs and raptor gangs and fucking sea
monsters and that’s some good shit right there. Good shit.
It’s probably not going to win Best
Film any time soon, but it’s fun and silly and a welcome reimagining of the
classic series. The only qualm I had with the film is that it could do with
less mopey teenagers, and more Jeff Goldblum.
As a feminist, I was surprised to hear there was so
much controversy surrounding Jurassic
World due to its apparent sexism. Normally, I can pick up on that kind of
thing pretty quickly. Like a spidey sense, except instead of fighting crime, it
mainly gives me the power to irritate people.
Even Joss Whedon, the patron saint of ‘strong female
characters’ has a problem with Jurassic
World- although, I’m not about to take advice from the writer who frequently
threatens his female characters with rape (Buffy, Kaylee, and Inara, to name a
few) to up the stakes, and as for Black Widow… Well, I digress.
The issue seems to lie with leading woman, Claire,
who is in charge of operations at the park. I’m going to cut to the chase and
tell you every reason people have a problem with this character, and why
they’re stupid. (The issues, not the people- in most cases.)
1. She’s
Cold
Claire is a business woman. She’s preoccupied with running
the park, keeping its inhabitants safe and happy, and overseeing the making of
fucking dinosaurs. Why is her
temperature an issue? She’s just doing her job. Girl doesn’t have time for
D&Ms and a family vacation; she still has a job to do, and she’s busy creating
prehistoric monsters and that’s some good
shit right there.
Also, let’s not forget that, theoretically, Claire
had to work very hard to get to her position of power. She probably endured a
lot of sexist remarks and behaviour throughout her career as a women in STEM,
so I can hardly blame her if she feels that emotions don’t belong in the
workplace. The thing is, Claire is labelled as cold for being all business, but
if she had allowed her emotions to show in the workplace, she would have been
called ‘weak’ or ‘hysterical’- or, as Physiology or Medicine Nobel Prize winner
Tim Hunt put it, a ‘distraction’. There’s no winning.
2. She
Turns Into a ‘Wife and Mother’
a.
No
she doesn’t.
b.
Did
you watch the fucking film?
Claire learnt that while career is important, the
people in your life are important, too. She’s able to open up to Owen, and she learns
to appreciate both her family and the animals she helped create. Since when is
this a bad thing? This character arc is in no way gendered. In fact, Dr. Alan
Grant in Jurassic Park had a similar
arc, and no one had any issues with him. Furthermore, Claire had the most
developed arc in the entire story. Sure, Owen is smart, and cool, and gets the
best gags- but ultimately, he wasn’t as complex as Claire.
By the end of the film, Claire isn’t demanding Owen to
marry or impregnate her- she simply sees things from a different perspective,
and that’s how character development is supposed to work.
3. Heels
The character of Claire is also receiving backlash
to being seemingly ‘too feminine’. She wears skirts and heels, she doesn’t like
to get dirty, she cries, she screams. I don’t know about you, but if I thought
I was moments away from being brutally killed by a creature that’s basically
the spawn of Satan, I would shed a tear too, because I don’t have a fucking death wish.
In my mind, seeing a woman in the action adventure
genre who is both complex and flawed, and embraces her own femininity is a
welcome change. The idea that any strong female character has to wear combat
boots and kick arse (literally), is sexist in itself. Women can be strong no
matter what they wear, which brings me to the crux of my point: Yes. Claire
wears heels. Many women do. I don’t know about you, but if I were traversing
the tropics, it’d be a lot more concerned about stepping on something sharp or
getting bitten my something walking around in bare feet, than I would be about
breaking a heel. And you know what else? It isn’t that difficult to run in
heels. If you can confidently wear heels to work every day (as Claire
presumably does), you definitely know how to move in them. It’s not like Claire
borrowed eight-inch stilettos from Jurassic World’s resident drag queen to wear
to work every day. I’ll admit, if someone asked me to run in heels, I’d refuse-
but if I were being chased by a fucking t-rex, you’d better believe I’d make
that shit work.
To
Conclude
The real issue here is that Claire can’t win. If she
wore khaki’s and boots and was willing to get dirty, she’d be called a Dr.
Ellie Sattler rip-off. If she entered the film all guns blazing, delivering
round-house kicks to raptor faces, she’d be a carbon copy of every other female
secondary character from every other action film (looking at you, Michelle
Rodriguez).
People claim to want ‘strong female characters’, but
when they’re presented with a character who could genuinely be a real person,
people lose their shit because she isn’t invincible. Claire is, heaven forbid,
a real woman on our screens, with
real strengths, and yes, real flaws. Claire saves the day. Did we forget that?
She knew she was wrong for taking part in the creation of the Indominus Rex.
She learns the age-old lesson of Jurassic
Park; you can’t play God. She’s incredibly intelligent and resourceful, and
was willing to sacrifice herself to save others.
Seeing equal, realistic portrayals of women in film
isn’t about pumping out the same no-emotions-physically-strong-take-no-shit
automaton we’ve seen time and time again; it’s about portraying all kinds of
women. Women who are flawed, women who cry, women who fall in love, and women
who don’t.
Strong female characters shouldn’t all be women who
are physically strong, infallible tom-boys. Strong female characters shouldn’t
exist at all. There are only strong characters and weak characters- gender has
nothing to do with it. Women, contrary to popular belief, aren’t a different
species to men. There shouldn’t have to be a special formula of label to give
to women to signify that they aren’t bad characters- because they shouldn’t be
in the first place. And that’s a notion that the film industry hasn’t really
caught on to.
Finally, why y’all getting so high and mighty about
gender politics, when we all know that you just saw this film to see shit get
eaten by dino-mutants?
