And when women are violent, it is usually only after they are mistreated by men. They, by contrast, have been variously stereotyped as virtuous, weak or passive, and sidelined in famous franchises such as James Bond and Indiana Jones. In fact, a 2014 study from The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that 90% of the highest-grossing movies across a 25-year period had a segment of violence – and relatively little of that is enacted by women. Though there have been many filmic portrayals of toxic masculinity and its associated violence – American Psycho (2000) or A Clockwork Orange (1971), for example – male screen brutality, especially in thrillers or action films, has been widely accepted and fostered the idea that aggression is a male trait. This legacy remains, and numerous studies have found that men prefer violent films. Colonial westerns and Hollywood war films promoted violence as heroism and a rite of passage into manhood, as argued by writers such as Ralph Donald. Since the birth of cinema, male violence has provoked less gendered controversy. Basic Instinct (1992), meanwhile, sparked protests from the LGBTQ+ community for stereotyping lesbians as vicious, though Sharon Stone's was lauded as "one of the great performances by a woman in screen history" in an essay by Camille Paglia. Thelma and Louise (1991), which starred Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as women on the run whose destructive spree is triggered by an attempted rape, was, while praised by feminist critics at the time, variously branded "toxic feminism" by John Leo in Time magazine and unfeminist by Sheila Benson in the LA Times. Glenn Close's Alex in Fatal Attraction (1987) was alleged by Susan Faludi in her 1991 book Backlash to have been made the scapegoat for a man's actions – while also inspiring the misogynistic term "bunny boiler". A Question of Silence (1982), about three women's unexplained murder of a shopkeeper, was controversial upon its release, but later deemed a feminist classic. On screen, violent women have prompted fierce debate. One sneered, "What are they going to do? Collaborate to death?"Īnd yet, there is a long legacy of violent women in culture, from Euripides' play Medea, the ancient Greek myth where a wife seeks bloody revenge on her unfaithful husband, to Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1862 novel Lady Audley's Secret, where a woman's murderousness is explained as insanity, to film femmes fatales such as Kathie Moffat in Out of the Past (1947). Critics of McGehee and Siegel's project argued that girls would never exhibit the same savagery in such a situation. William Golding's 1954 novel famously features a group of boys who descend into barbarism after being stranded on an island. When, in 2017, the directorial duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel announced their plans to create a female version of Lord of the Flies, they were roundly mocked on social media.
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