Lakitha Tolbert
1 min readJan 5, 2024

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Actually that's an excellent illustration of the double standard really. Those who engage in retribution are either righteous white men who get to live, or white women who have to die at the end of the story. This isn't a hard and fast rule, there's always at least a couple f movies people can point to as examples for or against the argument I'm making.

Sometimes women get to live at the end of the story , but PoC mostly don't, at least that is not the pattern, and don't forget there is an entire genre of film (the Action/Revenge genre ) that is almost entirely starred by white men with guns. White women are almost always seeking revenge for some personal violation like sexual assault and the focus on the movie is on the horror of the assault and her surviving the assault, while men are often the avengers of the sexual assault (or death) of a white woman that's important to them. For most of Hollywood history it is white men killing men of color who hurt white women and white women who seek revenge often do so against white men! Women of color dont get to do vengeance at all as a general rule, and men of color can get vengeance but have to die as a result.

Omg! Now I just gave myself some homework! Do not get me started on the racist and misogynist stereotypes of the Action genre for the past 70 years. That's a whole other article!

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Lakitha Tolbert
Lakitha Tolbert

Written by Lakitha Tolbert

(She/Her) Busybody librarian from Ohio.

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