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Loading... Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen…by Susan Isaacs
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Less a book than an extended essay, this survey of female characters in movies and television carves out a swath of popular culture far too broad to analyze in its 60-odd pages. The analysis of individual characters is, as a result, too brief and shallow to be of much interest. The simplistic either-or division in the title makes matters significantly worse. Before long, Isaacs falls into a repetitive pattern: a paragraph or two of analysis, followed by summary judgment. "Wimpette--off with her head! Next case!" All this is doubly frustrating because, when she slows down and takes her time, Isaacs has interesting things to say. Tackled at five or six times the length, her take on this material would have been interesting. At this length, it's just frustrating. (  ) ABVR | Feb 10, 2008 |   no reviews | add a review
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So, what's a "brave dame"? "They're passionate about something besides passion," Isaacs writes. Take Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Katharine Hepburn, and Roz Russell, who prove "women are as competent and brave as the next guy." Her fave dame, Jane Eyre, "had high moral standards, stood up to injustice, and was willing to leave civilization and face the wild, even death, rather than do wrong."
Wimpettes, who outnumber dames in pop culture, believe in masochism, subterfuge, betrayal of women, and deriving identity from their man. "The world stops at the white picket of their fences.... larger causes--racial equality, justice--are left to the guys."
The book is a romp through books, movies, and TV, as Isaacs puts dozens of women in their place on the dame/wimpette spectrum. Anita Hill? Feh! "This über-wimpette testified before Congress how she endured vile sex talk from a superior rather than (1) report him for harassment ... or (2) tell him to shut the hell up." Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Frances McDormand in Fargo are dames; Ally McBeal and Anne Archer in Fatal Attraction are wimpettes. (Note, however, that Ethan Coen told Amazon.com McDormand is the bad guy in Fargo and Steve Buscemi the good guy.) Julia Roberts is a wimpette in My Best Friend's Wedding but a dame in Mystic Pizza and The Pelican Brief.
Ideally, Isaacs's book should start a lot of excellent arguments. Don't wimp out! --Tim Appelo
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:19 -0400)
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