We
live in a world full of sexism against women and men with fragile
masculinities, and unfortunately, with men having a great majority of the
power, that means that their depictions of things will tend to be pretty
biased. As a way beef their egos and channel their masculinity, men tend to
resort to taking any idea of a female antagonist and do one of two things with
it: either the female is made to be overly disgusting (“ugly” if you will) or
some sort of “sexed-up” seductress. In
many cases, it tends to be the latter, and this stereotypical depiction
devalues the female character, because it judges the character simply based on
appearance, as men often tend to do with women.
This
trend can easily be seen with Grendel’s Mother in her depictions in the
“Beowulf” movies that have come out in recent years. Her original descriptions
in Beowulf describe her as monstrous, hair, ugly and other similar characteristics.
Already, we can see the first depiction of a women, ugly and monstrous, from
the original material. In addition to this, she is also given the purpose of
exacting revenge for her fallen son, something which is very uncommon for women
to do in this time period. She is also given acidic blood, just to drive home
the monstrous factor. However, in the movies, the “monstrous” depiction is
thrown out the window in favor of the sex factor.
Take
for example this picture of 1999’s Grendel’s Mother. She is portrayed by a
blonde, obviously attractive woman in racy clothing. It’s pretty easy to see
that they are going for sexy vibe. And if you couldn’t tell from just looking
at her, the director’s actually CAST a playboy playmate to play her! Her
purpose in this movie is not revenge, but a form of child support. She shows up
and explains to everyone that she had an affair with Hrothgar and that the
resulting offspring was Grendel. Gone is the story of revenge for her murdered
son, and is instead replaced by a story about her seducing the king. Now her
character has transitioned from a grief stricken mother, to a malicious
seductress. How can it get worse? The answer: the 2007 version of Beowulf
They
aren’t even being subtle here. Here is Angelina Jolie, who had been named the
sexiest woman alive at one point, nude and covered in gold paint (not shown in
the picture is her high heels). If you weren’t sure that they were going for
sex appeal yet, I think this makes a pretty good argument. And they went even
farther; Grendel’s mother proceeds to seduce and sleep with Beowulf. It is then
revealed that Hrothgar also slept with her, and again we find out that Grendel
was the offspring born out of this. To be fair,
in this movie she actually does react out of revenge for her son and that the
whole point of sleeping with Beowulf is so she can bear another son, but this
still deviates from her actions in the original text.
These
two depictions represent the exact opposite of the original: she was wild,
grief-stricken, vengeful, monstrous in the original, but is now instead
depicted as calm, collected, and sexy in these movies. But why? She was perfectly fine in the original, but Hollywood
is so obsessed with appealing to men’s sense of sex that they threw out the source
material. And this is only one example of the use of sex in media. They are
many, many more.
