The Angry Woman Trope | Why She's Angry

coming together tell me to calm down whether she is staring daggers or actually using them hell hath no fury like the angry woman the angry woman is touchy are you calling me irrational because i'll tear your head off daniel i'll tear it off and i'll throw it over that fence she violates the norms of polite society always willing and ready to make a scene i will not calm down her outbursts are usually seen as overreactions what the hell was that you don't talk to me and then you say have a crush on me you just say you want to train alone is that how you want to play stop huh stop it let's start right now hey when her anger isn't belittled as cute and funny when you do that feminist thing your nose scrunches up and you look so cute it's treated as scary karen take it easy do you love her traditionally if the story pits her against a less angry woman we're encouraged to side with the more docile lady but to real women in the audience who might feel angry about something this doesn't send a very useful message beyond don't this is what you've reduced me to i guess you thought you'd get away with it well you can't the angry woman may not always be the person who's most obviously yelling some of our angry women have a quiet anger or a repressed anger that's eating them from the inside as they try to play the good nice girl i swear three days ago neither one of us would ever feel stunt like this but she was able to meet my husband you'd understand why recently more storytellers are putting us in the angry woman's shoes at last taking her rage seriously don't you calm down oh okay despite their historically bad in-story pr angry women have got a lot to be legitimately pissed about and while we might not always agree with their methods we often root for them to right the wrongs that life has sent their way i am gonna kill bill their anger can be channeled for good where you going to channel my anger into something productive here's our take on angry women why they're feared how they're a force for change and why they're at last owning their rage exciting news today we have a new episode of take two airing on netflix film club youtube channel in today's video we're talking about thunder force it stars two of our favorite actresses melissa mccarthy and octavia spencer as a crime fighting superhero duo click the link in our description below to watch the take two on which superpower is better super strength or invisibility and let us know what superpower you would want check it out on the netflix film club youtube channel [Music] a piece of [ __ ] standing on my pocket it's not [ __ ] lady like to be shouted in the street like this right studies show that the anger response is triggered in men and women at the same rate but women are taught to hold their emotions in starting very early in life conceal it don't feel it don't let it show boys are rewarded for being bold leaders in the same situation where girls are chastised for being rude or aggressive when i am assertive i'm a [ __ ] when a man is assertive he's a boss according to a 1993 women's anger study there are three common roots to women's anger powerlessness injustice and irresponsibility of other people but while these sound like pretty logical reasons to be frustrated in pop culture angry women are portrayed as having unjustified amounts of anger i lose and i burn this house down bordering on hysteria and you had a racer and you were drunk with a racer and racing we can see this tendency toward overreaction in the ur angry woman in western culture medea after the father of her children jason leaves her for some other princess to spite him she kills their children scheme with all your skill onto the deadly moment that she'll test your nerve in comedies the angry woman is often ridiculed you macho pig baby in ferris bueller's day off ferris's sister jeannie is portrayed as crazy and vindictive when she's annoyed that her brother fakes being sick to cut school and your problem is you you want to spend a little more time dealing with yourself a little less time worrying about what your brother does but she's right ferris shouldn't be able to waltz through life without doing any real work why should he get to do whatever he wants whenever he wants the police care more about ferris being a little bit sick than about genie being attacked in her own home look it's real nice that you hope my brother's feeling better but i'm in danger okay in stories about the angry young man a trope we also have a video on his anger is usually depicted as being based on deeply held principles we've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars but we won't we're very very pissed off but while the angry man is positioned as a mirror of a greater problem in society each angry woman is perceived as a unique aberration the creation of her own poisoned mind she's crazy and she needs to go down there's a frequent overlap in sitcoms between the angry woman and the activist character sisters don't sign up for the beauty pageant let belding know we're united against him yeah whose caricatured anger is used to discredit her causes and undermine women's entitlement to having a voice don't commit your hate crimes here hate crime the angry woman trope also has subtypes that feed racial stereotypes like the eroticized spicy latina and the angry black woman a pervasive caricature that discourages black women from expressing rational anger or challenging injustice lest they be reduced to this label well then why do you get so angry i don't get angry i keep trying to tell you and that you're that i do not get if somebody do something to me i do something to them this is common sense [Music] you think you're crazy i'll show you crazy when an angry woman is actually taken seriously she's terrifying i'm not going to be ignored dan we can see some of the angry woman's roots in the femme fatale both seek revenge on men and vent frustration that their gender doesn't allow them more agency in life he keeps me shut up he's always been mean to me the angry femme fatale shows up in a striking number of erotic thrillers that vilify a woman who doesn't take it in stride when a man cheats on his wife or girlfriend with her and then expects her to quickly forget about it you're sick why because i won't allow you to treat me like some [ __ ] you can just bang a couple of times and throw in the garbage in the template for the story fatal attraction after michael douglas's dan has an affair with glenn close's alex she stalks him kills his daughter's pet bunny and kidnaps his daughter came to get ellen ellen i thought you picked her up already well i'm sure she's left already but while there are reasons to feel for this woman and her reasons for being angry with dan test audiences hated alex so much that they panned a more sympathetic ending for the character and reshoots were commissioned to show her attacking dan's wife and getting killed as studio exec ned tannen reportedly said of audiences they want us to terminate the [ __ ] with extreme prejudice the audience wanted to believe that that family might be able to survive yeah so they got their catharsis by shedding my blood glenn closes said that men came up to her and said you scared the [ __ ] out of me sometimes they say you saved my marriage but others saw it as expressing the fear of letting women enter the workplace with all their tempting sex appeal reproductive urges and excessive vengefulness you're so sad you know that alex is lonely and very sad women's anger is so frightening that it's the engine of the supernatural horror genre part of her that's an earring rage in the craft nancy's power comes entirely from anger which she uses to get revenge on toxic men the only way you know how to treat women is by treating them like a horse when you're the [ __ ] and that's gonna stop carrie comes into her full telekinetic power after she's enraged by her humiliation at prom though not exactly a horror film batman returns shows michelle pfeiffer's catwoman being fueled by a vengeance so powerful it brings her back from the dead you're the second man who killed me this week but i've got seven lives left in the haunting of bly manor a woman's anger is the cause of centuries of paranormal activity viola lloyd refuses to die out of spite tell your god that i do not go and then refuses to cross over after dying while viola's initial anger at being murdered by her sister is obviously understandable it outlasts every other part of her personality just need need and loneliness and rage turns her into a complete monster and winds up tormenting a century and a half of total strangers a fate that befell anyone and fortunate enough to step into her habitual path similarly in the female revenge genre we can often recognize that the angry woman has been wronged and identify with her valid reasons for being pissed off at first perhaps some part of us also feels a vicarious thrill or catharsis from witnessing her bloody vengeance but this might also make us feel complicit in acts of violence that we find reprehensible angry women stories often put the viewer in a moral quandary female revenge stories that center on injustices that woman deserve better don't necessarily make these women unproblematic heroes you can take my word for it your mother had it coming in cary her rage fuels a bloodbath we could never condone yet in that moment when she first gets mad it's impossible not to root for her due to the abuse and cruelty we've watched her suffer likewise in prestige tv female anti-heroes or sympathetic villains who do terrible things may still speak to us because of the way they vocalize or fight against the way they've been mistreated due to their gender did it ever occur to you that i might be the one who deserves your confidence and your trust not your sons you want people to leave you alone mandy or better yet treat you with respect demand it make them anger is an emotional response that is designed to motivate us for example to fight back when fear would encourage us to run away you should be scared right now why you're gonna make another big speech psychology divides behaviors into the adaptive or useful in your life and maladaptive or not useful and downright unhealthy anger can be either the angry woman on screen has historically been used to show the maladaptive type of rage i choose violence her anger is either a huge overreaction or toxic for everyone around her don't you dare lie to me cut your fingers off the angry woman has long been misunderstood and often her inner frustrations do come out as maladaptive anger but when channeled properly her anger can be productive in mean girls it's implied that the reason queen bee regina george is such a mean girl at all is that she has a lot of anger without a positive outlet but once she finds the right place to put her rage she can channel the power it's always given her into achieving something constructive and her physical therapist taught her to channel all her rage into sports melissa mccarthy's comedic roles embody how a woman's anger can both be funny and constructive i guess stop feeling sorry for yourself because you're your problem annie and you're also your solution at the beginning of spy her character susan cooper isn't living up to her potential because she's holding in her anger pretending to be nice like women are typically conditioned to do but you have a certain tame demeter around the office that says you've never even held a gun so imagine my surprise when i saw footage from this drill back at the farm but after we witnessed her badass potential in a past training exercise we see her come into her own through unleashing her angry power as a spy i will destroy you and then after i'm done destroying you i'll take a picture of what's left of your body and i'm gonna text it to your mother her character megan in bridesmaids likewise expresses anger at annie for both being a bad friend and for not taking control of her life trying to get you to fight for your shitty life and you won't do it you just and this is exactly the confrontational pep talk annie needs to rouse her i'm glad to see you get a little bit of spark in you i knew that annie was in there somewhere we've long been able to get a sense of empowerment from women getting angry on screen from nine to five's door lee rhodes in 1980 if you ever say another word about me or make another indecent proposal i'm gonna get that gun of mine and i'm gonna change you from my rooster to a hand with one shot to thelma and louise in 1991 and i'm not sorry that summer [ __ ] is dead i'm just sorry it was you that did it not me to the sin city girls of old town in 2005 in 2014 gone girls amy while still occupying that confusing female revenge moral territory of being sociopathic and violent to the extreme spoke to women through her famous cool girl speech men always use that don't they as their defining compliment she's a cool girl and unleashed anger we might not all have fully known we possessed cool girl never gets angry at her man she only smiles in a chagrin loving manner 2019's dead to me shows it's possible to center the angry woman in a comedy you know what sometimes you just snap without belittling or laughing at her rage do you really need eight bottles of wine oh i'm sorry are you the wine sheriff because i am the dick police and you have the right to remain in silent and showrunner liz feldman indicated this signaled our changing attitudes quote women of my generation we've been taught that you don't show anger that you make nice i think there's a reason why you've up until really recently seen very two-dimensional nice-washed characters increasingly film and tv show us that a woman's anger can be relatable and justified even transformative that felt good especially in the wake of me too women's anger on screen gives voice to the frustrations women have long felt they didn't have permission to vent i mean it's every guy's worst nightmare getting accused like that can you guess what every woman's worst nightmare is today female storytellers are owning their angry voices and infusing their movies with constructive rage you have to stand up for yourself you have to go against society and what family expects of your role as a woman carrie mulligan's cassie in promising young woman won't accept how her society treats violence against women as the norm and she makes it her mission to change the status quo are you trying to say that i'm like a predator or something i don't know are you other stories are drawing our attention to how the black lives matter movement has long been fueled by women's anger and grief we have discovered discovered and rediscovered the ways in which we can overcome the fragmentation our people have suffered anger comes from a sense of injustice and a conviction that you're entitled to better i think the real question is why are we still reading this book i mean if the point is to learn about the american dream we should be reading about immigrants or the working class or black mother the metoo movement asserts that women are entitled to bodily autonomy black lives matter asserts that black people are entitled to live and move safely through the world and media made to remind us of these basic truths often posits that getting angry is a necessary step to achieving justice and heads up to campus security nowhere in the curriculum did any of us sign up for get a gun pulled on you and have your humanity stripped away 101 the angry woman is a rejection of the societal expectations of feminine behavior she's an expression of women's collective cry for a revolution a protest against powerlessness a call for change so here's to the angry woman for hell hath no fury like a woman with a voice expressing my opinion is not a terrorist action who would you pick as one of your favorites a favorite angry woman in cinema it's so complicated because is there justified anger or is it you know explosive reactive anger which sometimes could still be justified but maybe it was taken to an extreme a lot of these examples are useful for the question of where do you put your anger what do you do with it i mean regina george like we talked about you know her anger is a sort of power that she's just wasting on being a mean girl when she can put that into something more productive and anger can be um all-consuming and it can hold a lot of power over the person wielding that anger i always see a lot of anger in the old school femme fatales in those movies back then you know that leads to them not really getting much of redemption or catharsis but you know i think today you can relate to their anger a lot promising young woman that is an interesting one you know i found that powerful for making us look differently at this whole question of rape culture i was a nice guy are you i really liked olive kittbridge's portrayal of anger it's a quiet anger and it's sort of this question of as you get older and you hang on to things what happens if you don't cure your anger it makes you think kate blanchet and where'd you go bernadette too right i mean in some ways she appeared on the surface to have this perfect life and yet she was angry because she had lost her identity and so much of what stimulated her intellectually and it wasn't until she found that and was able to pursue it that she was able to find a little piece can you feel your anger and push through it the only way out is through and and put it into something because usually there's a power there [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: The Take

Views: 151,836

Keywords: angry woman, mad men, fatal attraction, thunder force, netflix, thelma & louise, i tonya, promising young woman, vicky cristina barcelona, madea, ferris bueller's day off, carrie, game of thrones, saved by the bell, the haunting of bly manor, the craft, spy, bridesmaids, midsommar, kill bill, hard candy, lovecraft country, small axe, moxie, waiting to exhale, gone girl, mean girls, dead to me, 10 things i hate about you, brooklyn 99, three billboards outside ebbing missouri

Id: EJaSMX1aYYo

Length: 19min 21sec (1161 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021