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In an interview for The Telegraph, British actress Emily Blunt said she is tired of “strong female lead” roles.
On the occasion of the premiere of her new film, The English, London actress Emily Blunt has expressed her disgust at the lack of originality in films when it comes to portraying female characters.
“It’s the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words: ‘strong female lead’. That makes me roll my eyes – I’m already out. I’m bored,” stated Emily Blunt.
Regarding her character in The English, Emily Blunt said she loves “a character with a secret. And I loved Cornelia’s buoyancy, her hopefulness, her guilelessness.” Of today’s female characters she criticized that “those roles are written as incredibly stoic, you spend the whole time acting tough and saying tough things. Cornelia is more surprising than that. She’s innocent without being naive and that makes her a force to be reckoned with.”
Regarding her relationship with Eli, the male lead character in The English, Emily Blunt said that “their differences become irrelevant because they need each other to survive. I thought that was very cool.”
Emily Blunt and Hollywood feminism
In just a few sentences, Blunt did an accurate dissection of everything bad that feminism woke has brought for female characters in film.
The film industry’s determination to be a transmission belt for the left and to satisfy feminist demands has only succeeded in ensuring that for some time now all female characters have lacked originality and have been limited to following a recipe almost to the letter.
The woke ideological corset only allows female characters who are strong and act like men, like tough guys. Femininity in women is seen as undesirable and as a sign of weakness; therefore, female characters are always shown as invulnerable and perfect, making it impossible for the audience to identify with protagonists who are not realistic.
A good character, whether male or female, should show the so-called “hero’s journey”, a learning path in which mistakes are made and learned from, making sacrifices to overcome obstacles and evolve. As Billy Wilder explained at the end of Some Like It Hot, nobody is perfect, so it is impossible to identify with an immaculate and omnipotent character.
However, lately, every female character is shown as perfect for the mere fact of being a woman. They are strong, intelligent, wise, and “empowered” at all times, and their only flaw is not believing in themselves, the latter always being shown as a consequence of patriarchal oppression and disregard, which is the only thing that would be preventing them from advancing.
These kinds of perfect people only exist in the fevered imaginations of feminists, and that’s why the public turns its back on these kinds of female representations. Thanks to Emily Blunt’s words, we now know that not only the public is tired of this trend, but also actresses are aware of how artificial and problematic this Hollywood fixation is.
Blunt has also put her finger on another of the big problems affecting current productions, which is how relationships between men and women are shown under the strict ideological framework of feminism.
When Emily Blunt considers it a good thing that the protagonist couple ignores their differences in order to survive, she is acknowledging that feminism dictates that differences between men and women are to be exacerbated rather than celebrated.
The left is interested in exploiting inequality to gain followers and votes, but in its obsession to promote equality it forgets that not all inequality is the result of injustice, nor is it necessarily bad.
Men and women are not the same, nor can they be. Their differences are, in many cases, innate and make them complement each other, taking advantage of each other’s strengths and mitigating each other’s weaknesses.
However, Hollywood has been working hard in recent years to promote an agenda that not only portrays women as perfect – to the greater glory of feminism – but also systematically deconstructs men, who are shown as weak and stupid at best, or evil and perverse at worst.
Rare is the film in which the man is no more than a mere sparring partner whom the woman is engaged in mercilessly beating figuratively, and sometimes literally. When they are not beating them up despite the physical implausibility, they are giving them lessons and orders so that they can act correctly.
Paradoxically, what they try to sell us as a brave and necessary representation of women, has ended up becoming a not very credible caricature, and Blunt’s statements to The Telegraph are brave because she now risks being canceled for not following Hollywood’s feminist script to the letter and saying what most of the public thinks: that feminist female characters are already tiresome.
Ignacio Manuel García Medina, Business Management teacher. Artist and lecturer specialized in Popular Culture for various platforms. Presenter of the program "Pop Libertario" for the Juan de Mariana Institute. Lives in the Canary Islands, Spain // Ignacio M. García Medina es profesor de Gestión de Empresas. Es miembro del Instituto Juan de Mariana y conferenciante especializado en Cultura Popular e ideas de la Libertad.
Social Networks: @ignaciomgm