Here's a trick question. Why do people talk about strong female characters and not strong male characters?
Isn't that a double standard?
Well, here's why it's a trick question.
We do talk about strong male characters, but we call them things like heroes or badasses or mentors.
We don't need to specify that they're male because people just assume.
There's this thing I've noticed in modern Western writing, where any trait that isn't white or male or straight
is kind of considered to be a modifier on a character.
Those three traits are considered kind of a default baseline.
Now, this is also why people will often say stuff like:
'Why did you have to make this character gay?'
or, not white, or female.
It's not strictly necessary for the plot, so why would you do it?
But most of those same people don't bother to ask why you would make a character a white straight male.
Although that is changing a little bit nowadays.
But basically, in America at least, that's often considered the "default" state of being in fiction,
even though there's no such thing as a default state of being in real life.
Now basically every culture and time period has this kind of thing,
everyone's got some default assumption about what a person is. But for the sake of this discussion,
we're going to talk about the modern Western conception of a default.
So we don't say 'strong male character' for the same reason
we don't generally talk about heterosexual representation.
"Masculinity" is assumed until proven otherwise.
That triple-trait-template is kind of considered to be a "blank slate,"
and people have all kinds of reasons to explain why that is,
but that's not what I want to talk about today.
See, we recognize a lot of potentially iffy stereotypes and characters that deviate from this perceived baseline.
A lot of people have noted that making a female character is a huge pain,
because she'll be criticized for any feminine traits she has, as well as any lack of feminine traits.
This is actually a very recurrent problem-- characters will be criticized for the stereotypes they fulfill,
and decried as unrealistic for the stereotypes they don't.
But you'd think this wouldn't be a problem for the perceived baseline right?
If you don't want to borrow any trouble, you just write a character that fits all the default demographics
and call it a day.
Because those three traits are seen as default settings, we don't really examine them
and we kind of assume that a "blank slate" wouldn't have associated stereotypes with it.
But they're not actually empty of assumptions,
we've just gotten so used to those assumptions that we hardly see them anymore.
So let's talk about a few of them.
Now before I get started, I want to say a couple things.
First of all, I basically never noticed this stuff before this topic was suggested to me.
Sure, I've read and watched tons of entertainment with dude heroes
but it never occurred to me to examine them for stereotypes.
See, it's easiest to notice weird assumptions or stereotypes in a character
when you otherwise relate to the character,
but that particular assumption doesn't gel with you for whatever reason.
I mostly got weirded out when characters kissed on screen,
or when girl characters were weirdly lacking in autonomy.
It frankly didn't occur in me to examine male characters with the same level of scrutiny,
probably because I was already used to not fully relating to the characters,
so it didn't really click that there might be more to that disconnect than just a difference in gender experience.
So I'd like to preemptively apologize that this episode is either too esoteric or too obvious.
This is all kind of new territory for me.
So to start us off with the first thing I noticed,
and something I was initially planning on making its own trope talk,
male protagonist characters, as a rule, seemingly have to be strong and physically competent
if they're in anything resembling an action context.
The rules are different for comedies, possibly because an easy source of comedy is a character
that doesn't conform to heroic ideals,
but I mean, why wouldn't an action hero be a physically badass dude?
Well, just because the average guy is stronger than the average girl
doesn't mean all guys are strong by any general metric,
and even the ones that are strong aren't necessarily combat-trained.
Strength is all well and good and I do my push-ups for exactly that reason,
but I know my fair share of totally lovable weedy nerds that never really saw the point in beefing up.
Now it might seem weird to complain about this trait in an action context,
because among other things, most stories take place in challenging circumstances
where stuff like physical strength and stamina comes in handy.
We don't go to the movies to watch Joe Schmo get winded trying to outrun a crashing helicopter.
Well, first off, I'm not actually complaining about this assumption, I'm just trying to draw attention to it.
I love badasses, but we sure seem to have a lot of them these days.
But more importantly, physical strength or prowess isn't the only way to entertain, and in fact,
this particular stereotype becomes more obvious as a stereotype, rather than a necessity,
when you look at the range of female characters,
because girls in action or adventure contexts are allowed to be strong in different ways.
They can be magical powerhouses, dexterous acrobats, skilled archers, Black Widow style martial artists,
Barrier Maidens, physical gods, computer geniuses,
indestructible robots or genetically-engineered soldiers, or even just emotionally strong.
You have your queens putting on an unbreakable brave facade in the face of political turmoil,
or the hardened broken bird military badass who doesn't let herself feel anymore,
or even the unshakably happy character who never drops her optimism even in face of mortal danger.
But guy protagonists generally have to be generically strong;
physically hardy, iron-willed, and on average, skilled enough to take down a single dude opponent in a fight.
This is supplemented by more specialist skills.
I mean Sherlock Holmes, even in the original literature, is explicitly a master at hand to hand combat,
but is of course mostly known for his detective work and propensity for ludicrous disguises.
But for the most part, male protagonists have to be almost implausibly badass as the default.
Now, there's one major action-specific exception;
if your hero is a Chosen One, he's allowed to not start out badass,
but it's generally expected that he'll become badass in the future,
most likely outstripping his mentors in the process.
It's also kind of notable that when male protagonists deviate from the stereotypical norm,
oftentimes they will be accused by the audience of being gay,
handily removing them from the default straight guy template altogether.
And look, I see the Frodo-Sam chemistry too,
but Frodo is also very much not a physically strong or iron willed character.
He's not, traditionally "masculine" in that regard, despite his incredible bravery.
Frodo, by all accounts, appears to fit the "default template" parameters,
but he doesn't fit the stereotype.
So people seem to find ways to deject him from the template, because he's not a badass
in the way we consider the template to be badass.
Or it could just be the internet, I don't know.
Anyway, trust me, I get it. I like watching badasses,
I don't know anyone who doesn't, but it shouldn't be like, a requirement, right?
It's got to be exhausting.
Speaking of exhausting: Romance.
Guy heroes are largely straight, which means guy heroes are largely into girls.
In anime, you do get a surprising number of asexual guy heroes, which I personally appreciate,
but for the most part in Western media, it's guy-needs-girl badly.
And there's nothing wrong with that, even if I personally could go my entire life
without watching another forced romantic subplot,
but for the most part, your dude protagonist is going to have a lady love, or a lady who wants to be his lady love.
If he doesn't, it's probably because he's either old or deeply traumatized,
or he had a loved one, but she's dead now.
Now, I am neither a guy, nor am I straight,
but it seems weird to me that fictional dudes are at all times either in a relationship,
trying to be in a relationship or trying to get over a relationship.
I mean, God, don't you get tired?
Anyway, somewhat related to that point, dude protagonists are also generally expected
to be bad at "girl-y" stuff,
whatever "girly" stuff is defined as at the time.
Traditionally, this involves child rearing, housekeeping, cooking,
and most notably, interacting with and understanding other girls.
If he's good at any of these things, he's generally either a comedic character in a rom-com,
or if he's only explicitly good at that last thing,
he's either a James Bond type ladies man who "knows the 'female' mind,"
or a character who is, for whatever reason, uninterested in or oblivious to romance,
and therefore capable of interacting with girls without any weird expectations in the way.
Now this is actually an interesting change.
There was a time not too long ago when guy protagonists were almost expected to be
smooth-talking ladies' men, which was itself considered a masculine trait.
But recently, girls have been kind to considered more incomprehensible than the older conception that
girls are simple, you just need to push the right buttons to get them to do what you want;
and as a consequence of this perception shift,
'smooth talker' has largely been replaced with 'awkward around girls' or just oblivious.
Relatable!
Also as a fun twist, sometimes female characters will be coded as more "masculine"
or just comedically inept by having them be bad at this traditionally "feminine" stuff too.
The Lethal Chef TV Tropes page, for example, is almost all girls.
And just to specify, this isn't universal, counter examples exist.
The star of Guillermo Del Toro's animated TV show Troll Hunters is a male protagonist who's an expert cook.
But tropes aren't like mathematical principles.
The existence of individual counter examples doesn't invalidate the existence or prevalence of the trope itself.
Proof by contradiction doesn't work on literature.
I can think of a number of dude heroes that are good cooks or good dads, but the general rule
is that those traits are "girly" and don't belong with "manly" men. Good? Good. Moving on.
Now it's important to note that the dude protagonist stereotypes have changed in the past few decades
as the cultural vision of masculinity has drifted.
One of the big changes, beyond a general decrease in playboy-ness,
is that your dude protagonist is now allowed to have PTSD without compromising his perceived manliness,
but it's not a requirement and it's probably worth its own episode
so let's leave that alone for now, because there's some other manly traits that are significantly less optional.
For one thing, dude protagonists can be subordinate to other dudes but very rarely to ladies.
Singular male protagonists might have a boss or a CEO or a mentor of some kind,
but it's far more common for that mentor figure to be male than female,
and I've actually noticed something else which is a little more complicated.
If you have a five man band, the leader generally has to fulfill most of the manly dude hero tropes,
and if he does, his subordinates are actually allowed a greater degree of freedom of characterization.
The lancer, big guy, smart guy, and chick can then be any gender
and the dudes don't have to all be physically badass or brave
The big guy can be a good cook, the lancer can be more on the effeminate side,
the smart guy can be utterly useless or cowardly in a fight...
So long as the group collectively fulfills the manly men quota,
and is helmed by a dude, you're generally good to go.
And I said this was a little more complicated, and it is,
because this video is about dude protagonists in the singular
but the five man band dynamics are generally collective and can actually be fairly complicated on their own.
From what I've seen, leaders of five man bands generally shoulder most of the responsibility
of fulfilling these guy hero tropes, which makes sense
since usually the leader is the hero and the other four members are his support,
meaning the leader falls into the category of dude protagonist
while the other four members are deuteragonists,
which are as a rule allowed greater freedom of characterization
because they're less central and we're not as expected to be in their heads.
But if the leader of the five-man band, or a group in general, is a girl, and the rest of the group isn't also girls,
you sometimes run into weird problems.
Sometimes it feels like she also needs to fulfill all those "manly" traits that the dude leader has.
For the only examples I can think of off the top of my head,
let's look at Olivier Mira Armstrong from Full Metal Alchemist and Mulan.
Both of these ladies, at one point or another, assumed leadership roles
and also out-"macho" the men in their stories.
Olivier commands Fort Briggs, the most densely testosteroned location in the entire series,
and commands an army of enormous manly men with ease by virtue of being unyielding ruthless, iron-willed,
terrifying in a fight, seemingly not into dudes, and easily swinging around opponents three times her size.
The characters under her command are all fully fledged macho men in their own right,
easily fulfilling every already established manly trait.
The whole establishment is practically oozing "manliness", and nobody in that group is manlier
than Major General, Olivier Mira Armstrong.
And in Mulan, which handily forms an explicit five-person group led by a girl in the climax of the story,
Mulan spends her training montage working her way up to the point where she
physically outcompetes everyone training alongside her,
effectively beating the dude archetype at its own macho game.
And though Shang is her commanding officer,
she ends up taking a leadership role in the finale and saving his life,
by referencing a previous act of badassery no less.
In both of these cases, female characters assuming leadership roles
also assumed or possessed explicitly manly traits, often exclusively referenced as such in universe.
And for a more mentor-student example, along with a convenient illustration
of the tension that can arise evenwhen the lady in charge fulfills her manliness quota,
in Edge of Tomorrow, Emily Blunt's character is explicitly in a mentor-leadership role to Tom Cruise's character,
but this is because her physical badassery is miles above everyone else in the army,
thanks to a conveniently placed time loop.
And on a somewhat related note, she's not very well liked
as a consequence of her power and single-minded drive.
The army calls her the full metal bitch even while the world hails her as a war hero.
In the army, the heart of the 'manliness is everything' paradigm,
the fact that she's qualified to be in charge on the battlefield still doesn't do a whole lot
to make the army cool with the fact that she's in charge on the battlefield.
It's a very convenient illustration of the tension you sometimes get with male protagonists
subordinate to female leaders, even if they are badass enough to pull their manly weight.
And I swear, I'm not trying to make this dude trope episode all about girls.
I'm sorry, it's just a really easy comparison to draw in order to bring attention
to the assumptions we're otherwise blind to.
Anyway, the point is, if your dude protagonist is subordinate to anyone,
it's liable to either be a dude, or in rare cases, an explicitly dude-y girl.
And to clarify, just in case I didn't earlier,
this is specifically a dude protagonist we're supposed to get into the head of.
It's not an issue if the character is secondary or support.
There's a non-manly lady in charge of a bunch of dudes in Jurassic World,
but she's not in charge of manly-male protagonist Chris Pratt.
Now I'm not fully certain why this no girl bosses rule is a thing;
it might just be the force of habit due to a long history of mostly dudes being in charge,
it might be a social tendency to equate already discussed traits like physical strength to leadership,
it might be some pseudo biology nonsense that boils down to
'Girls are untrustworthy harlots who won't date me!'
Who knows? The point is it seems to be a thing.
But I'd say the biggest, most story-centric characteristic that male protagonists generally have
is that they are, for the most part, not allowed to be wrong.
Or rather, they're not allowed to just be wrong.
There always has to be some kind of extenuating circumstance around the wrongness.
Maybe they've been tricked, or misled, or in a more classical example,
it's due to some deep inherent character flaw that the story is exploring.
As someone who's read a truly shameful amount of classical literature,
I know for a fact that heroes are definitely allowed to have heroic flaws like hubris or wrath,
and if those flaws lead to their ultimate downfall, so much the better.
Mistakes or errors caused by that heroic flaw are fair game, and don't really count as human error,
which is what I'm talking about here.
Or sometimes the pacing of the story allows them a small number of mistakes in specific circumstances.
For example, if they're in a detective role,
and they're allowed two wrong conclusions per episode before reaching the correct answer.
See my rule of three video for why that's allowed to happen.
And of course a lot of the time a character might seem like they were wrong
about something, but later turned out to be right.
Common example: maybe they didn't t rust a character everyone else liked,
and then it turns out that character's secretly evil.
or for the other variant, they did trust the character,
but it's because their heroic flaw was just being "too trusting".
You get the point. Now again, this character assumption,
that these kinds of protagonists are generally immune to simple human error,
becomes more obvious when we look at character types that don't have it.
For a recent and fairly well-known example, let's take a look at Moana for a second,
because Moana has one key moment in her movie where she's just plain wrong,
with no caveats or character specific motivators.
The first time Moana and Maui sailed to fight the lava monster Te Ka,
there's a moment when Moana realizes that Te Ka can't leave the barrier islands,
and if they sail through a narrow ravine, they'll be able to bypass her.
She thinks she can make it, Maui thinks she can't, she makes a break for it, Te Ka hawks a ball of lava at them,
and it turns out they couldn't make it after all.
As a consequence of this mistake, Maui's fishhook is badly damaged,
and he temporarily abandons the quest, and Moana has a full-on crisis.
Then there's a beautiful musical number and Moana goes back to try again, this time just
barely managing to make it through the rift with Maui running interference.
The first time around she was just plain wrong; she miscalculated.
It wasn't because she had a hubris problem, or she was misguided, she just screwed up.
Now obviously all works out in the end, because it's a Disney movie,
but that doesn't erase the initial mistake.
And for contrast, let's look at some of the Disney heroes,
because most Disney heroes don't generally make too many mistakes,
besides trusting dudes with eye bags that could blot out the sun.
Simba thinks he made a mistake that led to the death of his father, but as it turns out,
Scar orchestrated the whole thing and Simba's innocent, both of murder and of screwing up.
Hercules makes the quote-unquote mistake of giving up his strength to save Megara, but that's not a mistake,
it's a heroic sacrifice.
Roguish heroes like Aladdin or Flynn Rider tend to make mistakes in the form of falling into old habits
and immediately regretting it,
or going too far in the other direction and desperately trying to protect their new better identity,
but those are both explicit character defining bad habits,
and bad habits are definitely allowed as heroic flaws in heroic dudes.
None of them seem to just screw up, ever. No normal human mistakes happen.
It's either a personal failing the story is expressly about correcting or exploiting for maximum tragedy,
a trick, or not a real mistake anyway.
Now it's totally possible that human error in fiction is kind of like coughing-- happens all the time in real life,
but only happens in fiction when stuff gets really, really bad.
I don't know, don't take this as gospel or anything, I'm only saying what I think I've observed.
And despite the frankly unhealthy amounts of media I consume regularly,
it doesn't mean I've got a perfect perspective on even my own cultural sphere's tropes.
But basically, as far as I can tell, despite being perceived as a default character setting,
dude protagonist has a lot of trope-y baggage that's surprisingly hard to see clearly,
precisely because it's so ubiquitous.
So...
yeah.