True Grit's Masculine Ideal

I thought this was noteworthy. It's an argument from Anita Sarkeesian that Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) in True Grit is not a feminist character. I admire Anita's sand, to borrow a phrase from the film in question.

The points are pretty well made (though I'm not sure the existence of character arcs has much to do with masculine or feminine anything) and it's true that pop stories often labelled as 'girlpower' are really just drag exercizes. Though some, like Kill Bill which is visually referenced (negatively), do have relatively complicating issues involving the femaleness of their protagonists which I don't think she's giving enough credit to.

Still it's an interesting conversation to have and interesting even within the confines of the Coen Bros filmography. By Anita Sarkeesian's standards Fargo's Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), for example, is just about as feminist a creation as the movies have ever dreamed up... and that's even excluding her ginormous pregnancy. She never adopts "male" values so much as just making her way through a hostile violent world by her personal truths and unique cooperative funny relatively peaceful spirit.

She really is one of the best movie characters of all time. We love Marge, you betcha.