THE RATIONALE

"In Nerd Movie Culture, women can never have their own agency — they are bystanders and sidekicks. Alien would never star Ripley today." -- somebody or other from THE BEAT. The above statement is, of course, pure bollocks. What I term the Amazon Archetype is one of the most interesting in popular culture (which I suppose must be the same as 'nerd culture.') It appears in genres directed largely at young males and would seem to run contradictory to expectations, insofar as most such genres are (logically enough) about male fantasies. I don't doubt that a lot of women, fans and otherwise, don't like this or that aspect of the representation of female characters in pop fiction, or the general trend that most of the female characters in pop fiction are created by males. But to say that none of these characters have 'agency' is one for the books. Or maybe for the blogs, since the lunacy of the statement has moved me to start this blog to highlight the "agency" of female characters, largely those within the action-adventure genres. Since the remark began on a comics-blog, I suppose I may as well start with comics...