Why I found Jurassic World to be a sexist movie

I’m actually kind of stunned that hardly anyone on tumblr is talking about this. I’ve seen people outside of this website discussing it, but no one here. It’s weird because tumblr is usually the first to call this out.

First off, Jurassic World is a fun popcorn movie and I enjoyed it just fine. I’m not saying anyone is a bad person for enjoying this movie, I just want to point out the many sexist tropes I saw in it.



Claire is the only female lead. Yeah there’s the mom, the assistant, and the tech girl, but all three of them add very little to the plot. The mom is there to be worried about her kids, the assistant is there to die a brutal death, and the tech girl is there for exposition and to have one comedic moment. So yeah, Claire is the only woman that adds anything important to the story. The rest of the characters are all male. I don’t see any reason why one of the nephews couldn’t have been made a girl.



They made Claire almost insufferable for a solid 70% of the movie. In my theater, the audience groaned at most of her scenes because she was so frustrating. She made stupid decisions like not wanting to clear the park because she was worried about the press. She put the park ahead of guest safety. Then she has to be the idiot in the movie that screams into the forest, calling for her nephews, when that dinosaur is lurking. She talks about the dinosaurs like they’re not animals so the audience can know she’s naive. Everything she does for a large sum of the movie happens for the audience to groan in annoyance at her. While Owen is always right and we’re supposed to love him.



Claire is portrayed as a bad person for not being close with her nephews. When she can’t remember the ages of her nephews, Owen is shocked and we as the audience are supposed to see her as a bad person for this. Huh? I couldn’t tell you the ages of half of my cousins. She knew one was high school age and the other was younger, and she’s neglectful for that? Once again, a moment for us to be annoyed by her. Then later her nephews don’t have any interest in her and want to stay with Owen and for him to protect them. But why? They just saw her kick pterodactyl ass in the previous scene! So why do they think she won’t protect them? Oh, because Claire is an annoying stiff and Owen is our dashing hero.

Speaking of that scene. I don’t have a huge problem with the kiss, but it still irritated me. Claire has a great moment of triumph when she shoots that pterodactyl to save Owen. We can see now that she’s done seeing these animals as exhibits and now sees them as actual dangers to people. It could have been a great moment, then they had to make it about romance by having Owen grab her and plant one on her. Then it turns that moment of character growth into a reminder that those two still want to bone and Claire’s attraction to Owen.



The movie also has a lot of moments that are supposed to lead to Claire realizing that she wants to be a mother. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I can’t help but be annoyed that that unnecessary subplot was shoved into this movie. When she tells her sister that she doesn’t want to settle and want kids, her sister says “You will” or something. There’s a very clear implication here that Claire being a no nonsense business woman is only temporary, and her true desire is to have babies. Because apparently that’s every woman’s purpose. She’s portrayed as broken and wrong for not wanting to have children.



Let’s talk about the sexual harassment between her and Owen. It mostly happens at the beginning of the movie when he makes that gross bungalow comment. Basically he tells her “I wanna bang you” and when she tells him “that’s not funny” you know, DEFENDING HERSELF AND TELLING HIM TO CUT IT, he laughs and says “It’s kinda funny.” This is not charming. It’s telling the audience that saying that to her is okay because she’s just a stick in the mud who needs to lighten up. Haha, sexual harassment is funny, and they’ll be making out thirty minutes later.

I’m pretty sure every time there was danger in a scene, we cut to a shot of Claire running to stand behind Owen. Big strong man is here to protect feeble female.

Anyone else notice how her clothes kept coming off over the course of the movie? They were lost and torn and by the end she’s in a tank top and her skirt’s a lot shorter.

Yeah, I know Claire got arguably the coolest moment in the movie when she released the t-rex. But I can hardly get excited about that after the movie spent two hours giving us reasons to dislike Claire and portraying her in a sexist way. Not to mention her awesome scene was really just an echo of what we’ve seen already in the franchise. It was an obvious callback to when both Malcolm and Grant did exactly what she did in previous movies. Lighting up a flair and allowing the t-rex to chase them. So really, they gave her a hand-me-down moment that’s meant to make you go “Oh, it’s just like when Malcolm and Grant did that!” rather than giving her something new and cool, like Owen had for the whole movie. One cool moment doesn’t make up for all the sexism in this movie.

I really can’t believe hardly anyone on tumblr is talking about this. I don’t get why. Is it just the love for Chris Pratt? Can we not acknowledge this movie’s problems because Chris is in it? You can love something and point out its flaws. Honestly, anyone saying this is some feminist triumph, I do not get it. If anything, this movie clearly showed just how many problems still exist in movies today.

