5 Tough Women Who Debunk the Woke Narrative
Jennifer Lawrence’s recent comments show the brainwashing is real
You may have registered Jennifer Lawrence’s most recent foray into the realm of woke lunacy and been just as astounded as I was at her complete lack of self-awareness. I have in fact been conceptualising this piece for several months, but Lawrence’s recent outburst has provided the impetus to execute.
In an interview with Variety the 32-year-old Hollywood A-lister said, "I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead."
Lawrence went on to say, "It just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies."
If this is your first encounter with perhaps the dumbest thing a celebrity has ever said then by all means, take a minute to regroup.
Surely Lawrence, a showbiz heavy hitter of not incredibly tender years, must be aware of films such as The Terminator and Alien? No? Perhaps not. I guess it is entirely possible that someone as transparently vapid as she could have lived for 18 years in Los Angeles and remained unaware of these legends.
She could be forgiven for being a bimbo – she would hardly be the first. But her words are evidence of something far more troubling than the fact that morons tend to go far in Hollywood.
I don’t believe Lawrence is actually that stupid and, had she stopped for moment to think about these words, she would have quickly realised that they were utter bunk. But she didn’t stop to think because she was not expressing an opinion – she was reciting a pre-programmed talking point.
She was repeating a mantra that she has been brainwashed into believing – that women have always been oppressed and marginalized in all walks of life, Hollywood being no exception.
This simply isn’t the case.
Tough, gritty female characters have been around in film for as long as most of us can remember, and we’re talking blockbuster films, yet Lawrence blithely sits there and claims without a hint of irony that it hadn’t been done before 2012. The brainwashing is real. As an aside, take note of the above year and see my article about what happened in 2012 – I am not at all surprised she was soaking up this kind of messaging on-set at that time.
I myself remember being thoroughly impressed as a child by some of the female action stars of the day – more so even than I was by many of the leading men of the time. And we mustn’t forget that tough chicks in film were not restricted to the action genre, horror also regularly produced heroines of a totally kick-ass nature.
Let’s start in the 70s – is that far back enough for you Jennifer? I’m guessing yes – it was before you were born so that basically makes it prehistoric right?
Laurie Strode
Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween, 1978
The best thing about Laurie is that she is completely believable. She is established early on as a meek and agreeable character, even, dare I say it, in a stereotypical female way. But when it comes to the crunch, she gets her claws out, fights back, and becomes the archetypal unlikely hero. She wails and shrieks as she clumsily improvises her home defence measures against Michael Meyers, but she gives it everything she’s got and, in the end, manages to come out on top.
Laurie’s character is doubly appealing because she also personifies the fierce mother. While it would not have been appropriate, given the plot and the cultural norms of the time, to cast Laurie as an actual mother, she nonetheless functions as a surrogate through her role as the babysitter. In Laurie’s selfless defence of Tommy and Lindsay we see the indomitable resolve of the maternal instinct – a powerful and uplifting spectacle as gripping and worthy of reverence as the exploits of any male action hero.
Ellen Ripley
Sigourney Weaver, Alien, 1979; Aliens, 1986
Does this one even need an explanation? The picture alone would probably have sufficed. For me personally action heroes don’t come any cooler than Ripley – and I’m talking female and male. Like Laurie Strode, Ripley is an unlikely hero, and the irony that on a ship full of tough fellas, it is the woman who survives and finally defeats the monster, is pleasing, even to conservative guys like me.
But we are pleased to see Ripley survive not because she’s a woman, but because she’s likeable. Unlike Laurie, she presents from the beginning as confident and capable, and we are drawn to her character. The fact that she’s female is almost incidental. Ridley Scott and subsequently James Cameron invest production value in Ripley as a person, instead of just leaning on the fact that she has a vagina like most directors now do, making it easy for us to root for her, at a time when, yes – to give the wokies their due – movie roles of this type were mostly dominated by men.
Sarah Conner
Linda Hamilton, The Terminator, 1984; Terminator 2, 1991
What can I say about Sarah Conner that has not already been said? I love her… I’d have been like Kyle Reese, infatuated with her photo then going back through time to protect her. But seriously though, this is the coolest thing about Sarah Conner – again, the unlikely hero – she wasn’t some absurdly fictitious superhero like most of the female leads in action movies these days, she was scared and silly at times. She was vulnerable and needed protection and instruction, famously saying to Reese, “Come on. Do I look like the mother of the future? I mean, am I tough? Organized? I can't even balance my checkbook!”
Like Laurie, Sarah didn’t put her hand up to be a hero – “Look, Reese,” she says. “I didn't ask for this honor and I don't want it!” But she struggles and fights and by the end of the first movie she is arguably tougher in some ways than Reese, pulling him to his feet and forcing him to go on when he’s about to lie down and give up. And by the end of Terminator 2, she has established herself, unassailably, as the franchise’s toughest motherfucker. And throughout, her character remains believable.
Sidney Prescott
Neve Campbell, Scream, 1996
Few female leads stand out as starkly as Sidney Prescott does against the backdrop of unimpressive male characters in the 90s slasher classic. Apart from Billy and Stu who represent the very worst in coddled middleclass momma’s boys (and they do certainly exist), the others aren’t much better… Randy the horror film nerd, Dewey and the Sheriff… they’re all kind of dorks. This is probably deliberate, but again, this engineered feminism doesn’t detract from the authenticity of Sidney’s character. It isn’t that she is particularly extraordinary, it’s just that the male co-stars are lacklustre. We like her and we want her to win.
Like Laurie Strode and the legions of female horror stars who defeat the bad guy – the point of Sydney’s character is that good can triumph over evil. I don’t understand why feminists see it as somehow demeaning that female actors are typecast as representing good, and purity. To me this is a reverent salute to the divine feminine – the Madonna. The reason Sidney and the others are such compelling characters is because there are these two sides to them – the meek and the wrathful. We all know women have the fury of hell inside them – we can look at Sidney Prescott as the embodiment of ‘fuck around and find out’.
Rose DeWitt Bukater
Kate Winslet, Titanic, 1997
I bet you weren’t expecting to see Rose on my list, right? But think about it – she puts the toffee-nosed gentlemen at the dinner table in their place with her scathing repartee; she smokes and drinks and spits; she lets Jack do a nude sketch of her; she gives Lovejoy the finger; she punches the steward in the face when he won’t help her rescue Jack; then she swims through freezing water to save him and busts him out with an axe… and all this is before things get proper gnarly. By any measure Rose is a strong empowered woman.
Like the others on this list, with the exception of Ripley, she presents at the outset as prim and feminine. But through the confluence of circumstances and her gritty nature she finds in herself the martial resourcefulness usually associated with a man.
It is a fact that women on average are biologically weaker and less driven toward physical heroism than men – but we don’t need to deny this fact in order to have female action heroes. We merely need to create believable characters like Rose.
Modern Hollywood and the rest of the woke establishment want us to forget these women because they are inconvenient to the narrative. But the fact is that our culture has always deeply revered women and this has shone though not only in our movies, but in TV, books, music, and all forms of creative expression.
Women can do all the things that Rose did in Titanic, that Sarah and Ripley did, that Laurie and Sidney did – maybe not all women, but some can, and that is the point. For nobody ever claimed that all men can do the things John McClane does in Die Hard, did they? Heroes, whatever sex they are, are heroes for a reason – because they can do things that most other people can’t.
It’s an elite club but it has both male and female members.
And that is the kind of equity that I can get on board with.