Through the years, we have seen a number of tropes emerge from the formulaic recreation of successful Hollywood stories. These tropes make it easier for writers, directors, and producers to tell stories from points of view that they may not easily identify with. It also allows audiences to better understand characters and how they move through society and the story.This type of writing can enable studios to count on the film being a success due to the reception of other films using those formulas. These formulas worked to create stereotypes for women, Black and Indigenous folks, and other people of color. These groups are often used as props in the development of a male or white lead’s story. According to Molly Haskell, an American film critic and author. “The preoccupation of most movies in the forties […] is the man’s soul and salvation rather than the woman’s” (424). According to Braudy and Cohen the central argument of Haskell’s essay is that films find their shape through the presence of strong female stars and that Haskell was really pushing back against the emphasis on the idea that male actors as artists who carry films all by themselves.

Haskell uses examples through films of how the various women actors, such as Doris Day, Jean Arthur, Donna Reed, and Katherine Hepburn, bring their interpretations of femininity to the characters that they played. Haskell says that the male character’s development relied on the women as a point of reference. This is still used for the arch of male characters today. Women are often referred to as the moral compass for films and television.

In her analysis, Molly Haskell explains the characteristics of the most commonly seen stereotypes in films. They are the superwoman, the bad girl, the superfemale, the enterprising woman, and the sex goddess.The superwoman is “a woman who […] has a high degree of intelligence or imagination, […] adopts male characteristics in order to enjoy male prerogatives, or merely to survive” (428). The superfemale is similar, but different. She is feminine and flirtatious. She is too intelligent and ambitious, and when she gets bored, she is a mean girl. The bad girl is the character who does things she knows she should not do. The enterprising woman is a woman who wants to work. Haskell discusses the period during World War 2 when a lot of women went to work. They want to stay at work, and when the men returned from the war, however, a lot of women were fired. Haskell notes that films in that era looked at the tension that happened thereafter. It was a push to send women back into the household rather than them working. The sex goddess is the woman who kind of pulls men under her spell. Haskell talks about this in reference to “the jinx” (430). These are women who use their sexual wiles to seduce men to get what they want. Alternatively, they are women whom men desire greatly and who have a lot of men chasing after them or fawning over them.

While these stereotypes still exist, they exist in a hybrid form. Woman no longer just a man’s girlfriend, wife, mother, or sister. She isn’t just a representation of his morals or his maturity. She is her own person. Films today attempt to create identities for women characters apart from how they relate to male characters. We are able to view and create more films with women as the lead actors. While the films still heavily rely on various stereotypes to travel through the story. They tend to present hybrid forms of those stereotypes in an attempt to create more complex characters.

I will be exploring the film, Someone Great, and looking at how each character pays tribute to the superwoman, superfemale, bad-girl, sex goddess, and the enterprising woman mentioned as defined by Molly Haskell.

In a comedy, filmmakers are able to poke some fun at the stereotypes that happen in various genres. Someone Great is a coming-of-age gal-pal comedy that gives the actors room to make light of the heaviness of growing up, of being vulnerable in relationships, and of letting go of the things that we think make us who we are and embarking on a true journey of self-discovery. All under the cover of jokes about drugs, sex, and stereotypes.

Jenny, played by Gina Rodriguez, is the main character. She is initially introduced with her love interest, Nate, as they walk down the street talking about the concert they just went to. They meet up with her friend’s Blair and Erin, played by Brittany Snow and DeWanda Wise, respectively. Her friends support her and Nate’s relationship.

Jenny is a writer, Blair is a social media strategist, and Erin works in real estate. All three are navigating stages of relationships, and they go on an adventure around New York City to get concert tickets, get marijuana, get high, get laid, and maybe find some sense of themselves through the process. Some scenes are intensely hilarious, and then there are scenes that are a little cringey. There are also spaces where you see the characters develop beyond the bad girl, superwoman, enterprising woman, femme fatale, sex goddess, and super female stereotypes. However, there are still moments where you can clearly see the characters embodying these tropes throughout the movie.

Jenny is introduced as the superfemale. She is highly intelligent, she is a University student, and she is quite boy crazy. She also embodies the “Bad girl” in other ways. Typically, in films, it’s for the male gaze, but in Someone Great, I noticed, it is for her friends so that they can recreate some of those fun times that they had when all of them were engaging in debauchery. Jenny’s story arc shows her becoming a superwoman. She is still highly intelligent, but now she is highly ambitious. Jenny gets the job of her dreams, clear across the country, and Nate, whom she calls her person, does not want to go on that journey with her. The film follows her as she first tries to mute her feelings and then, in a very pivotal montage, she accepts those feelings and decides that it’s her choice to heal from them so that she can be the best version of herself.

You first see Erin with her “not quite” girlfriend. They are in a very intimate space, and the “not quite” girlfriend is seeking greater intimacy by asking Erin to meet her friends. However, because Erin experienced heartbreak in the past, she was not prepared to be vulnerable with this new partner. So, she tries to distract her “not quite” girlfriend in order to avoid having the conversation about increased intimacy. You also see through Erin’s story arc that she is holding on to her youth as hard as she can. She wants to party and live free and not take on more responsibility than necessary. You see this through the messiness of her room, the fact that she was very ready to call out of work without any hesitation, and that she was happy to be in the space of irresponsibility. I would say that this shows that Erin is a superwoman-type character because she takes on a lot of masculine traits in order to get the same sort of excitement that a man would have. She shrugs off responsibilities and just wants to be with her friends in the same way that a lot of male characters have been written in the past. Erin is also a sex goddess because she uses sex to get out of having a difficult relationship with her partner. Through an exchange with Blair, you learn that she also uses sex to avoid feeling her feelings. By the end of Erin’s story, you see that she has matured quite a bit through this journey of drug use and debauchery. She’s realized that she’s ready to take on more responsibilities and to have greater intimacy and more vulnerability inside of her relationship.

Finally, there is Blair. Blair is seen at the opening of the film as the good girl. She does what she can to make safe choices. She has a plan for her future. She wants to be married by 30, and she stays in a relationship that she isn’t really happy in because she has a plan. The running joke throughout the film is that the girls want “Bad Blair” to come out and play with them on Jenny’s last day in New York City. Bad Blair does, in fact, come out to play. She engages in all the mess that her friends are also engaging in. This includes drug use as well as sexual intercourse in highly inappropriate places. However, this was part of her journey of loosening up and letting go of the idea that she had to be perfect in order to achieve her goals. I think that this character falls in line at first with the Super female and transitions into the superwoman character.

While the women in this film are not in perfect alignment with the the tropes am proposed by Molly Haskell they do meet a lot of the criteria of being super females or super women With all the complexities I’ve being a 20 something and a large city trying to figure out who you are and what you want to do in your life while coming to grips with the fact that things are going to change and that change is good.

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