karadinart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
karadinart) wrote2014-02-16 06:51 am
karadinart) wrote2014-02-16 06:51 am
Pacific Rim failed in giving us female heroes
The women in the film/comic are only given agency by men and only exist to serve men.
case in point - there are three female Jaeger pilots. Of these three, two pass out during a climatic battle, leaving the male pilot to struggle and win alone. (Pentecost and Raleigh) the other female Jaeger pilot from Russia gets a cameo, and dies with her husband.
In the comic, there are three women characters. One is the sister of Pentecost, who only flies (and then dies) as an impetus to get her brother into the war. The other is the friend of Pentecost’s sister, who then becomes a Jaeger pilot (passes out and later dies of radiation poisoning) but not before becoming part of Pentecost’s ‘family’ in a mother role to adopted daughter Mako.
Note: Mako is Pentecost’s daughter who is coddled, and only Raleighs intervention allows her to become a pilot.
The lone female scientist had an affair with her older married Prof, and he gives her a job on the Jaeger project so they can rekindle their affair. She falls in love with a pilot creating that pesky love triangle. Oh and by the way, she ‘creates’ the Drift by accident, leaping into the link blindly to save her lover, so at the end, it’s not scientific acumen that rescues humanity, it’s Lurv. The Prof literally says this at the end of the comic.
Note: Caitlin (the scientist) is explained as a naive dependent protege of the Prof, when he considers her ‘grown up’ she is allowed by him to join her lover Sergio. Blech.
In conclusion, if you are one of the few female characters in this universe, you exist as a sister, a lover, a mother, who is only given agency by a male character - it’s so blatant it’s silly - there isn’t a single instance of an independent female, or even a pair of female Jaeger pilots, so when this dreck is handed to you as an example of female empowerment, throw it all back.
case in point - there are three female Jaeger pilots. Of these three, two pass out during a climatic battle, leaving the male pilot to struggle and win alone. (Pentecost and Raleigh) the other female Jaeger pilot from Russia gets a cameo, and dies with her husband.
In the comic, there are three women characters. One is the sister of Pentecost, who only flies (and then dies) as an impetus to get her brother into the war. The other is the friend of Pentecost’s sister, who then becomes a Jaeger pilot (passes out and later dies of radiation poisoning) but not before becoming part of Pentecost’s ‘family’ in a mother role to adopted daughter Mako.
Note: Mako is Pentecost’s daughter who is coddled, and only Raleighs intervention allows her to become a pilot.
The lone female scientist had an affair with her older married Prof, and he gives her a job on the Jaeger project so they can rekindle their affair. She falls in love with a pilot creating that pesky love triangle. Oh and by the way, she ‘creates’ the Drift by accident, leaping into the link blindly to save her lover, so at the end, it’s not scientific acumen that rescues humanity, it’s Lurv. The Prof literally says this at the end of the comic.
Note: Caitlin (the scientist) is explained as a naive dependent protege of the Prof, when he considers her ‘grown up’ she is allowed by him to join her lover Sergio. Blech.
In conclusion, if you are one of the few female characters in this universe, you exist as a sister, a lover, a mother, who is only given agency by a male character - it’s so blatant it’s silly - there isn’t a single instance of an independent female, or even a pair of female Jaeger pilots, so when this dreck is handed to you as an example of female empowerment, throw it all back.