Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Shrew shmoo to you

I'm sorry, 'shrew shmoo' is hard to say, but bear with me; it's all in a good cause...


You see, I was doing a bit of research on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew -- as you do -- and came across this interesting article from a movie script assessor, a male movie script assessor
http://www.scriptmag.com/features/taming-shrew-writing-female-characters-archetypes lamenting the lack of likeable female protagonists in the 2013 line up of big films, a line-up he also notes is woefully short on female leads of any sort, compared with the line-up of big films with male leads, most of whom are redeemably likeable and heroic. Just a mirror image of the real world, basically: lots of nice, heroic, non-violent guys; lots of violent, shitty, shrewy women.

Indeed this seasoned script assessor reckons that ALL the female leads in the big films of 2013 were shrews of one kind or another (read the article to see just how many kinds of shrew there are, according to Hollywood film writers and producers).

So what's a shrew?

In the English language, the word shrew is used to describe a woman given to violent, scolding, particularly nagging treatment... The animals of the same name were believed historically to behave aggressively and with cruelty, and to have a venomous bite;[1] the term "shrew" was then applied first to a person of either sex thought to have a similar disposition, then to women alone.[2] (Wiki).

So the aggressive and cruel 'shrew' mice are male and female, but the human equivalent 'shrew' is only female, that's how history (men) decided it and that's how Hollywood (mostly men) reinforces it. Shrew shmoo to you, men; it's not good enough what you do.    



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