The Problems With Pop Culture

Pop culture, everyone knows what it is, but how many people can actually explain why it’s so popular? There are so many things wrong with society; popular culture includes themes like misogyny and rape culture, yet nobody seems to see a problem with this. The lack of strong female characters in pop culture is startling. Take, for example, the Twilight Saga, Disney movies, Supernatural, and The Hunger games.

Bella Swan, the Regressive Woman

Most people seem to see an issue with Twilight, just from the way it’s written, but things get even worse the further you look into it. It’s a book written by woman, with a female protagonist, and written for women, so you would hope that it would be at least slightly progressive, but alas it is not.

The Twilight Saga teaches very dangerous and worrying lessons to its readers and viewers, such as:

1. Unhealthy, emotionally abusive relationships are desirable, even wished for.
2. Women’s only life choices are to get married, have children, and be a stay-at-home mum.
3. Sex is bad. Abortion is even worse.

Bella is hardly a “strong” female character, and neither are any of the other significant female characters in the books or movies. Think about it. Is there any important female character who does something as progressive as having a career? Renee, Esme, Alice, Rosaline… Nope.

Bella isn’t independent in the slightest; she relies on Edward for everything she does, and like the good archetypical little Mary -Jane character, she gets married and becomes “property” of Edward.

Not All Women Are Evil

Now, I’m a huge Supernatural fan, but even I can admit that the show has its flaws, one of the main ones being the fact that they kill off all of the women! I might seem like I’m overreacting, but if you look at it, each and every one of the female characters disappears. Mary Winchester, Jessica, Joe Harvelle, Ellen Harvelle, Ava Wilson, Bella Talbot, and many, many other female characters have been killed off, and all that haven’t died have disappeared due to lack of interest!

The female character that has appeared in the most ‘Supernatural’ episodes is Lisa Braeden, Dean’s love interest, who’s been in exactly 13 episodes. 13 out of 177, that can’t be normal.

While there have been a fair number of female characters over the years, they’re all remarkably similar. Usually they’re young and attractive, they rely on Sam and Dean to save them, and they all fit in to one of four categories: mother, daughter, love interest, evil. The only exception to this rule is Charlie, she is the only one who isn’t sexualized, she’s the only one who is there of her own free will, she is the only female character with a personality, how sad is that?

The above is just two examples, but the trope of weak female characters is alarmingly common in pop culture. The viewing audience of Twilight and Supernatural are generally very different which just goes to show how widespread this issue is.