I’m listening to an interview with Meryl Streep (on NPR’s Fresh Air) and she was talking about the occasional achievement of getting straight men to identify with her character (whatever character).
She says, and it seems so to me, that women have no problem putting themselves in the shoes of a male hero.
However men, straight men at least, do not usually see themselves as a female protagonist.
If your answer to the title question is “No” I would still be interested in hearing it.
Excluding girl-on-girl porn…
Sometimes. Not in movies, but I have identified with young female protagonists in several SF novels - Podkayne of Mars and Emergence being the first that come to mind.
Mildred Pierce, The Jorney of Natty Gann, Imitation of Life, Playing For Time… anything where the story doesn’t get hung up on romance. We can’t identify with wanting prince charming to come along.
I loved all the Judy Blume books as a kid, and a lot of them had female protagonists, so far as I remember. I also remember loving Harriet the Spy.
I should add, I mean that I also identified with the female characters, not that I just liked the books.
Hell, I could even find aspects of Bridget Jones I identified with.
Straight male checking in. In general, I think her point is well taken. However, I can think of counter-examples.
From movies:
Ripley from Alien
Ree from Winter’s Bone
Marge from Fargo
Lisbeth from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (the Swedish version more so than the American)
Sarah Polley in Dawn of the Dead
Catherine Mary Stewart in Night of the Comet
The last woman standing in any standard slasher movie.
TV:
Liz Lemon from 30 Rock
Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern) in Enlightened
But note that the movies I listed are not exactly melodramas.
Vin from the Mistborn trilogy.
Murcatto from Best Served Cold.
If videogames count then yes. Chelle from the portal games and Samus Aran from the metroid games come to mind. On the other hand the girl from the Tomb Raider games was mostly eye candy and i couldn’t identify with her at all, hell i even forgot her name and she was played by Angelina Jolie.
Well, I recently saw that Hunger Games movie. I identified with Catniss.
Absolutely; I actually prefer stories with female protagonists over males. Korra from Legend of Korra would be the most recent one.
I have no more difficulty identifying with female protagonists than I do with male ones. Streep is talking out of her ass.
I have no problem identifying with female protagonists. Offhand, there’s Buffy, Simone Simon in Curse of the Cat People, Jane Eyre, Clare and Janice from The Book Group, Caroline in Green Ward, Lessa in The Dragonriders of Pern, the women and daughter in The Kids are All Right, Coraline, and many more.
Probably Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility as I have a very similar personality. Also, my circumstances in High School were quite similar to Olive Penderghast from Easy A, as well.
I’m sure it’s happened on other occasions, it’s never really been an issue for me.
Ellen Ripley, natch.
:rolleyes: If it’s a delusion, it’s one that’s shared by many people in the entertainment industry. The expectation is that while women and girls are willing to view a work through the eyes of a male protagonist, men and boys are not willing to do so for female protagonists.
And of course, in my opinion it’s one thing to identify with a female protagonist. It’s another to give a man a vagina and pretend you’ve created a female protagonist. Chell? Samus Aran? I haven’t played Portal 2 but in the original, at no point was her gender relevant to the game and Samus spends 99% of any given game encased in gargantuan armor. She may as well be a robot for all it matters.
Well you know the old saying, “Give a man a vagina, and he’ll have sex for a day, Teach a man to vagina and…” wait, no, that wasn’t it, was it?
I would have to sadly admit it’s rare for me, and that probably says something about myself that I don’t approve of. But it does happen sometimes. Willow Rosenberg, Fred Burkle, Alanna from the Song of the Lioness series, Kivrin from the Doomsday Book, Susan Ivanova, Arya Stark…
I do not usually see myself as any fictional protagonist. I can empathize with them, but I still think of them as other people.
If it is a story I believe in with people I believe in I “identify” with the protagonist in the sense that I feel with him or her or it, understands and (at least in a way) sympathizes with the character, whether it is a man, a woman, an animal or a robot. Otherwise I wouldn’t care for the story and probably wouldn’t watch it to the end.
What ? Why would you be sad about that ? You’re male, and you identify more with male heroes, big deal. Nothing wrong with that, perfectly normal actually.
And why should her gender by relevant to the game? Is the gender of Marston in Red Dead Redemption relevant? Other than the role being tradationally expected of a man, the story does not centre around him being a man. The fact is those protagonists are women, and if someone can identify with them, then they fit the bill.
You seem to be suggesting that unless their gender is being made a deal out of, then it doesn’t count. I think it’s entirely the point that women can fill the ‘traditional’ role of men in video games and movies just as well as men can, and their gender can be utterly irrelevant.
Are you saying a female protagonist isn’t a true female protagonist unless only a woman could play her role?
There seems to be a few levels of being able to ‘identify’ with a character here.
Now, I don’t see myself as Katniss from the Hunger Games, but I certainly identify with her, looking after her family, willing to sacrifice her life to save her sister.
I don’t see myself as Sam Rockwell in Moon, but I identify with wanting to see his family again after being away for a long time.
Putting yourself in someone’s shoes doesn’t mean you want to be them.