{"id":35496,"date":"2011-05-03T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T15:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=35496"},"modified":"2013-11-11T03:15:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T08:15:45","slug":"the-smurfette-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/05\/03\/the-smurfette-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Smurfette Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1991 writer and cultural critic Katha Pollitt coined the phrase “The Smurfette Principle” to draw attention to the tendency for movies, TV shows, and other cultural products to include one, and just one female (source<\/a>). For the unfamiliar, The Smurfs was a children’s television show, airing from 1981 to 1989, populated by a whole world of little blue men and one (sexy) blue woman:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In her latest in the series Tropes vs. Women, Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian<\/a> applies The Smurfette Principle to today’s movies and shows. \u00a0How far have we come?<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

——————-<\/p>\n

For more tropes, see Sarkeesian on The Manic Pixie DreamGirl<\/a> and Women in Refrigerators<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Transcript after the jump:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What do Inception, the Transformers, and the Muppets all have in common? \u00a0They all suffer from a trope called the Smurfette Principle. As defined by TVTropes, \u201cThe Smurfette Principle is the tendency for works of fiction to have exactly one female amongst an ensemble of male characters, in spite of the fact that roughly half of the human race is female. Unless a show is purposefully aimed at a female viewing audience, the main characters will tend to be disproportionately male.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1991 Katha Pollitt, a feminist essayist wrote an article for the NY Times because she was disturbed by the lack of substantive female characters for her young daughter to watch. \u00a0She found that most of the programming aimed at young people had a majority of male characters, with just one female included in the group, she called this The Smurfette Principle.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably guessed by now that this trope was named after the only female smurf in all of Smurfville.
\nOnce upon a time, the Smurfs were an hormonious\u00a0 all-dude miniature civilization comprised entirely of kind good natured little blue dudes living out their cooperative-dude existence somewhere deep in their dude forest utopia.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got\u00a0Lazy, Grouchy, Jokey, Brainy, Baby, and Papa Smurf and all their Smurf buddies living out their smurfy existence free from any of those meddling, divisive, controlling, manipulative, mean women folk.\u00a0 But one day the evil wizard Gargamel decided on a devilish plan to sabotage smurfdom. And how will he do that? yes that\u2019s right, by creating a female smurf!<\/p>\n

CLIP Smurfs \u2013 The Smurfette<\/p>\n

Gargamel: That\u2019s it, I\u2019ll get them through their hearts, I will send them a Smurfette<\/p>\n

So Gargamel sent in Smurfette to cause divisions between the lovable blue creatures so he can capture and eat their tender blue flesh in a nice honey lemon sauce.\u00a0 Long story short, love and understanding won out when Papa Smurf worked some smurf magic and transformed Gargamel\u2019s impostor into a real live smurf girl, \u201csexy\u201d blond hair, high heels and all!<\/p>\n

Down in the 100 acre woods, we follow the adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl and Tigger \u2013 all dudes of course\u2026 in fact there\u2019s only one female character, Kanga, who shows up occasionally as the mother of little roo.<\/p>\n

Even Jim Hensen didn\u2019t seem too keen on the women, along side Kermit, Gonzo, and Fozzie the Bear, Miss Piggy was the only female muppet.<\/p>\n

We can even see the Smurfette Principle outside of programming aimed at young people. So for example you have George Lucas\u2019 original Star Wars trilogy where Princess Leia is the only principle female character in the entire galactic empire.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re like me then you are probably thinking there\u2019s got to be something wrong, I mean, Star Trek has had a female captain, Buffy has saved the world from a demon apocalypse at least half dozen times, this trope has gotta be a thing of the past right?<\/p>\n

Ellen Page gets Smurfette\u2019d in Inception as her character is the only female dream team member.
\nBig Bang Theory has a primary main cast of brainy men plus the smurfette that lives across the hall<\/p>\n

While there\u2019ve been a small handful of female autobots in the Transformers universe, Arcee is the only regularly reoccurring female cast member and she only appeared in 8 episodes out of the original series. She was set to appear in the 1st Transformers live action film but she was dropped and replaced with Ironhide.\u00a0 She did however appear in the second film Revenge of the Fallen, which also happens to be one of the most sexist and racist films I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 This version of Arcee is either a hivemind with 3 different motorcycle components or the other two bikes are her sisters, it\u2019s not exactly clear.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t really matter anyway because they all get blown up at the end. Plus they only appear on screen for a grand total of exactly\u2026<\/p>\n

Clip: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen
\nFemale Autobot: Follow us to the pillars \u2014 AHHH!<\/p>\n

39 seconds.<\/p>\n

Even in most seasons of Jon Stewart\u2019s the Daily Show there has been only one female correspondent at a time.<\/p>\n

The Smurfette principle is especially important to remember now because Hollywood is currently trying to\u00a0 remake everything and anything that we even vaguely remembers from the 80\u2032s and 90\u2032s in an attempt to cash in on our collective nostalgia, you know, instead of maybe taking a risk on things that are new and exciting.<\/p>\n

We even have a live action Smurfs movie coming out.
\nWe\u2019ve had 2 big blockbuster movies based on the Transformers, and sadly there\u2019s another one on its way.
\nThe 2009 Star Trek reboot by JJ Abrams had Uhura as the only female character in the main bridge crew.<\/p>\n

And just like Star Trek we can be sure that hollywood is not going to try to bring gender equality into these reboots but rather just stick with their Smurfettes.<\/p>\n

The problem with narratives infused with the Smurfette Principle is not only the lack of women but as Katha Pollitt points out in her New York Times article, \u201cBoys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.\u201d\u00a0 Basically this means that men are the default and women get to be sidekicks or sexy decorations.<\/p>\n

Even when there\u2019s only one female primary cast member, as videoblogger Nostalgia Chick points out in her Smurfette Principle video, they are usually just \u201csexy\u201d female duplicates of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

Clip Nostalgia Chick \u2013 The Smurfette Principle
\nNostalgia Chick \u2013 Disney was the one that kinda really started this interest in the whole default and deviation from default complex, basically this idea that men seem to want a bagina\u2019d version of themselves.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an excellent point, thank you Nostalgia Chick.<\/p>\n

The Smurfette Principle is an alternative name for Tokenism or the Token Minority which is the inclusion of one cast member from a marginalized group in an otherwise, white, straight male ensemble. \u00a0We see this most often when writers include one person of colour and that characters is usually painfully stereotyped. \u00a0This is a little trick used by movie studios to pretend to appear \u201cmulticultural\u201d and \u201cdiverse\u201d when really they\u2019re just upholding the status quo and not changing anything substantially.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s a tip for all you Hollywood writers out there, it is in fact possible to have more than one woman in your script.\u00a0 Really, I swear it is.\u00a0 You could even have 2 or 3 women or even the majority of your cast be women.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a simple test you can ask yourself when you\u2019re writing your scripts: \u201cDoes my movie have more than one woman on the primary cast?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it, that\u2019s the whole test.<\/p>\n

If you answered \u201cNO\u201d then you need to go back to the drawing board.\u00a0 If you answered \u201cYES\u201d then we can proceed to the Bechdel Test.\u00a0 Once you\u2019ve got two female characters who are talking to each other about things other then men, then we can talk about fully developed female characters.<\/p>\n

Song \u2013 \u201cla, la, la, la, sing a happy song, la, la, la, la, smurf the whole day long\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1991 writer and cultural critic Katha Pollitt coined the phrase “The Smurfette Principle” to draw attention to the tendency for movies, TV shows, and other cultural products to include one, and just one female (source). For the unfamiliar, The Smurfs was a children’s television show, airing from 1981 to 1989, populated by a whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,343],"class_list":["post-35496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-tvmovies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35496"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58889,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35496\/revisions\/58889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}