Hollywood's Silent Messages about Women

One of the most popular films for kids right now is Planes: Fire and Rescue from Disney. My grandson received several toys associated with the film for his birthday and they were really neat toys. I thought it was a cool concept, so I rented the film to watch with two of the other grands.

I was horrified. The first half of the movie features a single female character, the mechanic. OK, not bad, except that she can't fix Dusty's (the main character) engine. Too bad.

Dusty goes off to a national park to join wild fire fighters. He can live with his problem. We meet the only other female character in the movie, a cute little plane called Dipper, who has a role to play in fighting fires, but not a very big role. Her main function is to look cute and get all googly over Dusty.

After a few ups and downs, Dusty learns to fight fires. But to really succeed in an emergency, he has to take the engine out of its safe zone into the "red" zone. He saves the day but crashes. Not to worry, the mechanic at the park refashions the necessary part for the plane (because he is obviously much smarter than the little hometown mechanic), allowing Dusty to return to his real passion as a racer.

In a completely different genre is the movie Interstellar. It's doing well in the box office, and it is a good sci-fi movie. In this movie, we get two strong female characters: the main character's (Coop) daughter Murph and a female scientist/astronaut, Dr. Brand. In the end Murph saves the day and the human race. Anne Hathaway, Dr. Brand, gets a billing with Matthew McConaughey. But make no mistake, this is McConaughey's movie. There are long tedious minutes watching Coop wrestling or not wrestling with his space ship, wandering on a weird planet with the bad guy, or floating around in the fifth dimension. We get glimpses of Murph over the years, but she mostly gets to stare at the bookcases in her room, until Dad contacts her from the fifth dimension and gives her the final clue to saving civilization. Dr. Brand gets to accompany Coop on his critical mission to establish contact with scientists on the far side of a worm hole; but when it comes time to decide which mission to pursue, Coop shoots her and her plan down saying her decision is based solely on a love
interest. 

It is so easy to imaginethis film featuring Murph and Dr. Brand as the leading characters, with Coop along for the ride to fly the ship.  But no, this is Hollywood 21st century, still putting women in supporting roles and sending out messages that girls can't fix things and make good "arm candy" to ooh and aah the hero.

By contrast, we have started rewatching the Star Trek series, Voyager. Captain Janeway and B'Allana Torres don't stand around waiting for any male to do their thinking. They frequently out think the guys and beat them to the punch, but Janeway also has a shrewd sense of leadership and doesn't miss much. The men in Voyager carry their own weight, but they never outshine the women.

In 1993, Hollywood could get it right. What has happened since then? Where are the women?