When I rewatched some of the classic Scorsese movies a while ago, I noticed that there is a very obvious division of labor among the sexes: The men do the important work, and the women spend the money. Men make big, consequential decisions and women are either just there or they make dumb, small decisions that only indirectly but sometimes profoundly affect the main plot. In Goodfellas as well as Casino, you could even make the point that the criminal rackets the various men built only collapsed because of stupid decisions by women. These movies directly or indirectly put the blame on them. Nobody rose an eyebrow at the supposed “gender stereotypes” in Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995). Yet, there is a good chance that ten to fifteen years later, such plots would have faced significant opposition in Hollywood. Just look at Scorsese’s horrid Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) to see how much he bent over to placate Hollywood executives.
There are obviously some spoilers in this post. I assume that you are all familiar with Goodfellas and Casino. If not, then please watch these movies as they are among the best ever made. In Goodfellas, the pivotal moment is when a ditz whose task was to package cocaine speaks on a tapped phone line she was explicitly, and just moments before, asked not to use. She does not want to leave the house and go to a public pay phone, though. This gave the feds information they needed to bring down the whole crime syndicate. Of course, you could say that this was just a narrative element as the protagonist was so unreliable at this point that something else would have happened instead. Yet, it is the case that a highly unreliable woman is the catalyst for the downfall of a well-run criminal enterprise. Amusingly, later on, this ditz tried to defend her actions, showing not the slightest bit of remorse while refusing to take any responsibility. Such sexist stereotypes can no longer be put into movies anymore.
In Casino, we see a woman play a similarly negative role. The protagonist, played by Robert DeNiro, is married to a high-class hooker, played by Sharon Stone. He comes across as very reasonable whereas she betrays him endlessly, for instance by staying in touch with her pimp, fucking a close business associate of her husband, or stealing money. This woman completely fucked with the life of the protagonist, even asking the mobster she fucks whether he could do her a favor and murder her husband. She is nothing but a distraction and depicted in a highly negative way. On top, she even gets her just rewards at the end. It is only narrated instead of shown, though, that some low-lives take advantage of her, blowing her money, and eventually killing her with an overdose.
When you watch a more recent movie, it is exceedingly rare to come across women behaving erratically. Most often, they are pivotal for the plot as many Hollywood writers simply replaced the male lead with a female one. It is not at all common that the only competent characters in a movie are women. This may also explain why there is less of a need for male leads with masculine faces. Thus, I wonder if Scorsese could have pulled off Goodfellas and Casino in the 2000s. In a 2000s version of Goodfellas we would probably see a male doofus trying to sell cocaine to undercover policemen and in a 2010s Casino, the male protagonist would be depicted as deserving everything that was coming to him, and his wife would have been painted like an angel who had no choice but to cheat on her husband and steal his money.
We should be grateful we got these movies made in the 1990s.
Even cringe at the thought of the 2000’s Lord of the Rings (original trilogy) being made in the current year.
Critical Drinker did a movie review / comparison of some Danish film that got remade by Hollywood. Spoiler alert – in the Hollywood version, the guy is a total useless f*ggot who puts his family in harm’s way…while his wife suddenly becomes a girl boss. (https://youtu.be/p1pDOh4gJQ0?si=WDY6oHCW9WIpErP_ )
Lord of the Rings was turned into a TV series by Amazon, which has been affectionally referred to as “Lord dem Rangz!”. I rewatched the LotR trilogy quite recently and was surprised by some rather heavy-handed feminist plotlines. The most relevant one involves princess Éowyn who slays the ultra-powerful witch-king of Angmar. Shortly before his death, he proclaims that no man can kill him. She then takes off her helmet, announcing that she is “no man”, and cuts him down.
I wonder where else do you see any feminist plotlines in the original LOTR? I can´t blame the Éowyn scene on Hollywood, really, thats almost exactly how it went down in the books as well.
To be fair, her role in the Battle of Pelennor Fields, both in the books and film, is not depicted as the now infamous “girlboss”. From the beginning to the end of the battle she looks like she is in way over her head, and in the final showdown with the witch-king she is depicted as brave yet terrified in the face of almost certain death. She does not kill him by herself either, Merry backstabs him with some magic blade that made him vulnerable first.
BTW, the prophesy Tolkien puts in the mouth of the witch-king about no man being able to kill him is a not so subtle reference to Shakespeares Macbeth and his final showdown with McDuff (“no man born of woman…”).
In the books, and for most of the films, women are really depicted in rather traditional support roles. If you want to look where Peter Jackson applied the girlboss trope in his original trilogy, that would be the first scenes with Arwen, and even then it is limited enough that it does not come across as too unrealistic. In the books, the chase and standoff at the river crossing involve an entirely different character, an elvish warrior named Glorfindel. Jackson just simplified the story here and swapped him out with Arwen, but all she really does is ride a horse very fast and utter a magic spell at the right time.
Other than Galadriel who briefly shows up as a wise sorcerer/co-ruler (with her husband), I cant remember there being any other women of any consequence, either in the books or original trilogy.
Later, the Hobbit trilogy started going downhill. They did make up an elvish female warrior character, Tauriel, sort of a female version of Legolas. The filmmakers explicitly made her up because Tolkien had almost no female characters in his story. At least they did not gender swap any of the dwarves.
And the worst offender, of course, is the new Rings of Power piece of crap that Amazon shat out, which turns Galadriel into the quintaessential girlboss, and all male characters as dumb or ineffectual. I have only watched reviews of it (the aforementioned Critical Drinker channel has a good breakdown), but man does it look bad.
I’m pretty sure these depictions of these women are accurate. I’m a history buff, and a real stickler of “true stories.” Scorsese’s gift is that he seems to be the only director that simply puts what
happened onto the big screen. Most directors can’t pull it off, so they just make shit up. Take
Raging Bull (another masterpiece). Jake LaMotta
said he was even worse in real life.
GLAS,
A few weeks ago I wrote an article that was inspired by Raging Bull, which you may find interesting.