{"id":45294,"date":"2015-02-03T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=45294"},"modified":"2015-01-28T15:35:39","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T20:35:39","slug":"damsels-distress-contrary-popular-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=45294","title":{"rendered":"Damsels in Distress: Contrary to Popular Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fuss has been raised<\/a> about this year\u2019s Academy Award nominations, primarily with respect to this year’s glaring lack of racial diversity<\/a>. It\u2019s also been noted, however, that there are also very few films that feature women as protagonists being pushed to the forefront of the awards conversation. Not that we\u2019re saying the 2014 films Oscar-nominated for Best Picture are simply filled with stereotypical damsels in distress.<\/p>\n

No, no, no\u2026after all, we\u2019ve come so far<\/em> from those bygone days when women were only good for batting their eyelashes or being tied to railroad tracks. That\u2019s how it was back then, yes?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m happy to lend this slot in my schedule, where I might ordinarily have posted a video of my own, to Fritzi Kramer\u00a0of Movies Silently<\/a>, who just co-hosted the Contrary to Popular Opinion Blogathon<\/a> that involved my piece about<\/a> Spencer Tracy\u2019s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.\u00a0<\/em>She does a really\u00a0enjoyable job here of disabusing movie fans of the common wisdom that the leading ladies of the silent era were all just a bunch of Paulines in Peril:<\/p>\n