thing I’m pissed off about today: token-girl movie posters (and movies)

For an excellent illustration of how The Smurfette Principle guides filmmaking in Hollywood (and beyond), one need only look at the posters used to sell movies. To wit, The Raid 2:

The Art of the Steal:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier:

Out of the Furnace:

Cheap Thrills:

Need for Speed:

And Guardians of the Galaxy, which is particularly egregious, because of the five characters pictured, two of them aren’t even human… and they’re still dudes:

Good movies, great movies, meh movies, shit movies, movies I haven’t seen yet so I have no idea of their quality. These are only the most recent examples. I didn’t have to dig for them. At all. I set specific rules: there had to be at least three men and only one woman on the poster. And still it was effortless to find these.

Because, as far as The Movies are concerned, a woman is just a type of person. A person can be a hero (male), a villain (male), the human comic relief (male), the alien comic relief (male), the muscle (male), the competent cop (male), the incompetent cop (male), the fuckup (male), the leader (male), the sidekick (male), the nerd (male)… or the woman (female).

Fuck this shit.