Thursday, November 10, 2016
An interview with Melinda Lopez on the State of Female Characters in Drama
HowlRound: In the recent aftermath of an election which flooded light on gender equality like never before, questions of fairness dominate our discourse. Whether the discussion lands on wages, medical autonomy, questions of intersectionality, or media representation, there is a resounding sense of frustration in how women are perceived. For many, there is no better example of this inequity than how women are represented in stories (the lack of fully-developed women in film and television and on stage have been studied extensively).
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This article confuses me. It is very much all over the place and hard to follow. For example, it opens by talking about the election results, drawing in readers like me who are devastated by the results of the presidential election and would like to read into others’ reactions to it. However, the interview itself barely touches on the election or potential future women’s rights issues that the opening sentence implies should be in the article. In a way, I feel as though this first sentence was merely a ploy to get readers (and that worked for me, but it has also left me severely disappointed with the article as a whole). Melinda Lopez also has some interesting words to say about “strong women”, stating that a strong woman is, to put it simply, a murderer who also causes chaos everywhere. This is not what is meant by “strong” in my mind – when I think of a strong female character, I think of someone who can make an impact without heavily relying on others (or, alternatively, someone who can lead by taking into account every person’s opinion). The fact that Lopez only sees “strength” in connection to “violence” is pretty alarming, and this mindset of hers definitely propagates throughout the article to create an awkward read due to the fact that I do not agree with her core statement regarding women in society/on the stage.
This interview is pretty abstract at some points, which makes it a little hard to follow the interviewee's arguments, but a point I did get from this is that labeling someone a "strong" female character doesn't really mean as much as one might think. Clearly, there is a reason to ask for more strong female characters in media because as this article mentioned they're fairly few and far between, but a "strong" female can mean many different things. The character could have good or bad intentions, could be the pro or antagonist of the play, or could make decisions that the audience doesn't agree with at all. The definition of "strong", then, seems to be that the character is interesting and complex, not that she should have a certain kind of personality or fulfill a certain role in the story. I'm not sure if the interviewee had this exact definition, but from what I gathered when she was talking about having to both avoid stereotyping and still draw from the general female experience, this is what she meant by "strong".
“There are many ways to be strong—but is that person carrying the play and is that play worthy of her?” I do not understand how this concept is so difficult to grasp. Why do we have to explain what a real woman looks like? A real woman in a show is the same as a real woman in real life; someone hard-working and dedicated with goals and ambitions and dreams and a job. I think that Melinda did a good job of addressing her desire to present real characters, but the interviewers’ questions were pretty bad and sexist in and of themselves. One of the questions even implied that the creation of strong female characters would cut something out of our humanity. How is that even appropriate??? The fact that the interviewee had to break down the question to show how fundamentally sexist it was is bad. In addition to working toward equality, we have to ask better questions and come up with better answers to how to solve the problems of inequality.
"That's the nature of the theatre ... to generate conflict." I love this! This reminder could not come at a more pertinent time. In school, it is oftentimes difficult to see how our work can impact the world. Reading this article reminded me how powerful and important theatre can be. This article not only speaks to the rise of female representation in theatre, it speaks purely to the revolutionary nature of theatre. I especially like when Melinda spoke to the importance of representation in the room. It is sad that in 2016 we still need reminders to surround ourselves with those who are different than us. But it is a reminder that can no longer be ignored. Diversity is being demanded by the theatre community, which is an incredibly exciting theatre community to be in. It will be very interesting to see where theatre takes us in the next four years.
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