If you have a male hero, do you run the risk of him losing sympathy fighting her?
I think so, although this changes by degrees over long stretches of time. One thing I remember annoying me when I was a kid was how the hero in a lot of TV and movies would be taunted with the line "You wouldn't hit a girl/woman, would you?" or would actually say "I don't hit girls/women" to the female villain. Nowadays, if those lines are used at all, it's delivered ironically or quickly subverted on-screen.
That said, I think you can risk losing sympathy, and the perception of worry over how an audience might react to seeing man-on-woman violence is there. I remember how a few web commentators on LoK were surprised that Nick showed Amon flat-out hitting a restrained Korra in Episode 4, and he was the villain. So I guess male villains aren't supposed to hit female heroes because it makes them look too evil?
How are her actions judged differently because she’s female?
Female villains tend to have excuses for their actions, whereas male villains can simply be villainous. TV investigative crime dramas are the clearest example of this. Serial killers are a dime a dozen on the CSIs of the world, but female serial killers seem to always have a tragic backstory that drives them.
If I had to think of a male counterpart to Mother Gothel, I'd probably point to John Winchester from Supernatural. He's not outright villainous as Gothel, and the show even presents him as heroic on several occasions, yet the damage he did to his sons gets demonstrated at length over the show's run. The show's leads, Sam and Dean, both love and hate for their father, wanting to live up to his legacy as a hunter but also calling each other out when they start to behave like him. Rewatching the first season, it's hard not to see John Winchester as the show's first Big Bad instead of the Yellow-Eyed Demon.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-09-03 06:41 pm (UTC)I think so, although this changes by degrees over long stretches of time. One thing I remember annoying me when I was a kid was how the hero in a lot of TV and movies would be taunted with the line "You wouldn't hit a girl/woman, would you?" or would actually say "I don't hit girls/women" to the female villain. Nowadays, if those lines are used at all, it's delivered ironically or quickly subverted on-screen.
That said, I think you can risk losing sympathy, and the perception of worry over how an audience might react to seeing man-on-woman violence is there. I remember how a few web commentators on LoK were surprised that Nick showed Amon flat-out hitting a restrained Korra in Episode 4, and he was the villain. So I guess male villains aren't supposed to hit female heroes because it makes them look too evil?
How are her actions judged differently because she’s female?
Female villains tend to have excuses for their actions, whereas male villains can simply be villainous. TV investigative crime dramas are the clearest example of this. Serial killers are a dime a dozen on the CSIs of the world, but female serial killers seem to always have a tragic backstory that drives them.
If I had to think of a male counterpart to Mother Gothel, I'd probably point to John Winchester from Supernatural. He's not outright villainous as Gothel, and the show even presents him as heroic on several occasions, yet the damage he did to his sons gets demonstrated at length over the show's run. The show's leads, Sam and Dean, both love and hate for their father, wanting to live up to his legacy as a hunter but also calling each other out when they start to behave like him. Rewatching the first season, it's hard not to see John Winchester as the show's first Big Bad instead of the Yellow-Eyed Demon.