“Anything you can do I can do better!” sang the title character in the 1950 “Annie, Get Your Gun.” That could be the motto of most of the female leads in blockbuster movies today. Consider Rey, played by Daisy Ridley in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” She’s hailed as an empowering role model for girls, but critics have pointed out how closely she follows the infamous “Mary Sue” trope—an adolescent with no prior experience whose improbable powers and skills save the day.
In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker lost his hand the first time he confronted the bad guy. Rey, meanwhile, easily bests her story’s villain, despite never having picked up a lightsaber before.
Writing at “Mere Orthodoxy,” Alistair Roberts points to a pantheon of recent heroines from Merida, Katniss, and Black Widow, to Jyn Erso in the upcoming “Star Wars: Rogue I”—all of whom are more than equals to men in combat. These 98-pound kung fu masters routinely make guys look like clumsy idiots, all while showing off petite, department-store model figures.
This “strong female character” cliché, says Roberts, teaches audiences that in order to prove their equal dignity, ladies must be able to best men in hand-to-hand combat. But these portrayals, he argues, aren’t just “failures of imagination” that pit women against men in a “zero sum game.” They also fly in the face of biology.
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