Super Girl

[TheEmerged]

Why...?

Again Black Widow would do terribly as a romcom but it seems bizarre to assume a superheroine can't be a romantic comedy. We had a popular, successful male superhero romcom in the 90s starring Kara's cousin.

Other than 'hur, hur romcoms are dumb' is there any particular reason for ruling them out?

I honestly just can't understand this.

I completely understand not liking romcoms but why is a genre any less applicable to superheroes than any other genre? For a certain reading of romcom it has been going on since Action Comics #1.

Essentially: the point of the SNL Black Widow thing was not just that this setup was absurd for the character of Black Widow. It is *trite*, *predictable*, and so far beyond cliche it wrapped around to become original and then a cliche again.

Now, I do see things to like here.
1> Designated Love Interest(tm) already knows the secret? Good thing.
2> Ability to laugh at the absurdities of itself? Good thing.
3> Actress seems to be able to do "likeably earnest" without falling into "adorkable"? Good thing.
4> They address the superGIRL thing right at the outset? Good thing
5> Stunt casting, but stunt casting that suggests they appreciate the character's history? Good thing.

I also see causes for concern
1> STILL with the skirt? Seriously guys? The cape I can let slide but the skirt? Why does this have to be explained?
2> The "all the action scenes happen at night" thing? Meh, TV budgets I guess.
3> The bit with the DEO not wanting her help bothers me, especially since it is established Superman Exists(tm) and Is A Hero(tm).
4> The ratio of "New Girl In Town" versus "SuperHeroine" in the trailer also troubles me.

[dancrilis]

Not overly fond of it really.

I always liked Supergirl more as the more alien of the cousins -
Superman: Basically adopted as a baby and with no real understanding of his homeland - which no longer exists - beside what he got in a history book, so no real emotional connection.
Supergirl: A survivor of that lands destruction who remembers its dying days - so remembers all her dead friends - comes to earth as a adult/teenager, so more angry and flippant (but not really a depressed sort).

I would hope that she would be more:
Supergirl: "Do you have any idea why every impoverished clump of hovels you people call towns are so impoverished, clumped, filthy, and hoveled?"
Friend: "You threw filthy in there".
Supergirl: "I wanted to go with 'covered in the faeces of twenty generations of hideous, stinking ape-men', but I was running out of breath".

Good natured in general of course - just bitter and not actually nice.

[The Troubadour]

I've seen this complaint elswhere and honestly I'm puzzled by it. I thought the SNL joke was that such a movie would be ridiculous for Black Widow specifically, as a ruthless ex-assassin and spy with a lot of issues, not that it would inappropriate for all superheroines.

The joke was a bit more encompassing than that: it was about how ANY movie starring ANY female super-hero would be turned into a rom-com. Or, to put it in different terms: basically, male super-heroes can be whatever is appropriate for the character, but female super-heroes always have to be "the girls".

I've never been a fan of the Supergirl concept (I prefer the idea of Superman truly being the last son of Krypton) or the Kara character in particular, but I think it's problematic when the marketing for Flash and Arrow focus on their exploits as heroes, even though both series have more than their fair amount of teen drama, and the marketing for the super-hero show with a female lead focuses on her double life as an "ordinary" girl / extraordinary hero.

Also, could her boss be any more of a ridiculous " 'powerful' female" stereotype? And can anyone imagine an authority figure turning to Superman or Flash and saying the only thing they can do is go get coffee?!

4> The ratio of "New Girl In Town" versus "SuperHeroine" in the trailer also troubles me.

A perfect way to sum it up! :-)

[Starbuck_II]

I like the actor playing Jimmy, but I'm not keen on his skin being so non-white. I'm so used to Caucasian Jimmy.

What's next Asian Luthor with hair?

But I'm willing to watch this, it seems entertaining like Flash and not super dark like Arrow; though I did like the last few seasons of Arrow (never saw the first season).

[Lamech]

I'm afraid that being a redhead is just too integral to Jimmy's Character. They'll have to get the actor a wig. Only acceptable hair type for jimmy. ONLY ACCEPTABLE HAIR!!! Okay, I'm mostly being silly but I still think it would be a good choice.

I think it looks okay. Anyway she can dress however the hell she feels like since she's invincible and all. And flies. The boss lady is hilarious. That's totally something you would expect of a pointy haired boss. On a side note, her hair isn't pointy enough.

So basically their doing good except for the hairstyle department.

[Avilan the Grey]

1> STILL with the skirt? Seriously guys? The cape I can let slide but the skirt? Why does this have to be explained?

Yes actually I think it needs to be explained.
What's wrong with skirts? Unless you are somehow having a problem with women dressing however they want.

[RossN]

Essentially: the point of the SNL Black Widow thing was not just that this setup was absurd for the character of Black Widow. It is *trite*, *predictable*, and so far beyond cliche it wrapped around to become original and then a cliche again.

Alright, that makes more sense. I think it's it's picking a fight with a strawman personally but if that was the thinking behind the sketch I can understood why.

I also see causes for concern
1> STILL with the skirt? Seriously guys? The cape I can let slide but the skirt? Why does this have to be explained?

...?

What's wrong with skirts? They seem much more distinctive than the interchangable catsuits most other superheroines wear.

The joke was a bit more encompassing than that: it was about how ANY movie starring ANY female super-hero would be turned into a rom-com. Or, to put it in different terms: basically, male super-heroes can be whatever is appropriate for the character, but female super-heroes always have to be "the girls".

Except that simply isn't true. Female superhero shows and films are not exactly common so it is an admittedly small sample but I don't think Agent Carter is "the girl". Elektra was an awful movie but it could hardly be called a rom com, nor could Catwoman or even the old Supergirl movie. Conversely Smallville was obsessively focused on the male heroes love live and as I alluded to earlier Lois & Clark was an out and out romcom. Even the Rami Spider-Man films traded heavily in the ordinary, unlucky in love regular dude/amazing hero thing.

Again this seems like constructing a strawman idea about superheroines rather than something that actually exists.

I've never been a fan of the Supergirl concept (I prefer the idea of Superman truly being the last son of Krypton) or the Kara character in particular, but I think it's problematic when the marketing for Flash and Arrow focus on their exploits as heroes, even though both series have more than their fair amount of teen drama, and the marketing for the super-hero show with a female lead focuses on her double life as an "ordinary" girl / extraordinary hero.

Clark/Kal-El literally has not been the last son of Krypton since about 1950 and nearly every incarnation since has had other survivors - even Christopher Reeves faced off against Zod & Co.

I do kind of understand where you are coming from but in practice they fill different niches; Clark is Earth reared with a second hand glimpse of Krypton. Kara (in most continuities) is old enough to recall Krypton personally. He's an immigrant, she's a refugee.

Also, could her boss be any more of a ridiculous " 'powerful' female" stereotype? And can anyone imagine an authority figure turning to Superman or Flash and saying the only thing they can do is go get coffee?!

J. Jonah Jameson with Spider-Man? Even Perry white can be pretty dismissive towards Clark.

[Zmeoaice]

Yes actually I think it needs to be explained.
What's wrong with skirts? Unless you are somehow having a problem with women dressing however they want.

Well why doesn't Superman wear a skirt?

Someone needs to make a Superman comic series where he wears a skirt.

[Logic]

Well why doesn't Superman wear a skirt?

Someone needs to make a Superman comic series where he wears a skirt.

Where baby Kal-El's pod landed in Scotland?

[RossN]

Well why doesn't Superman wear a skirt?

Someone needs to make a Superman comic series where he wears a skirt.

There was a 1960 comic where Superboy was turned into a girl for a while. Ironically 'Claire Kent' did not wear a skirt while in costume (though she did in civies.)

[McStabbington]

Except that simply isn't true. Female superhero shows and films are not exactly common so it is an admittedly small sample but I don't think Agent Carter is "the girl". Elektra was an awful movie but it could hardly be called a rom com, nor could Catwoman or even the old Supergirl movie. Conversely Smallville was obsessively focused on the male heroes love live and as I alluded to earlier Lois & Clark was an out and out romcom. Even the Rami Spider-Man films traded heavily in the ordinary, unlucky in love regular dude/amazing hero thing.

No, actually the problem does exist, and it's not a strawman. And what is more, you inadvertently hit the nail on the head, but then you glanced off in another direction. There is a very small sample of female-led superhero films. Almost all of them have performed abysmally at the box office. Which has led studio executives to the conclusion that female-led superhero films cannot be done straight, because they do not sell. As a consequence, studio execs either do not greenlight them, or they do greenlight them as something else they are comfortable selling to women. Like romantic comedies.

This pattern is so ingrained that Agent Carter was close to revolutionary simply because they acknowledged the common tropes by subverting them. She most certainly was "the girl", but the show got huge mileage out of the fact that being "the girl" was a useful cover for the story that was actually going on.

And then comes along Supergirl, which takes all those same tropes and recycles them completely straight. Almost as if the studio executives had two completely different ideas about how to make the series work, and just demanded the writers weld the two plots together no matter how unwieldy the result. Now, this doesn't look anywhere close to Wonder-Woman-Pilot bad, but it's obvious what the execs demanded.

[Psyren]

4> They address the superGIRL thing right at the outset? Good thing

No, not a good thing at all. This looked like a very hamfisted "don't worry, we're feminists too guys" empowerment conversation that actually does the opposite. Kara has a problem with the name Supergirl, her Strong Independent Female Boss™ tells her not to be such a feminazi about it because Girl Power™, and then apparently she just quietly accepts the moniker because the rest of the trailer continues calling her that, and the matter is settled. That was the worst possible way they could have pulled this off.

Here's how you avoid the issue completely - she chooses the name Supergirl, and nobody brings it up because it was her choice to go by that name. Done. Not... whatever they were trying to do by having the Meryl Streep wannabe dress her down over it.

[BannedInSchool]

Although as a fictional character she technically doesn't have free will or choice in any of these matters in her depiction.

[Avilan the Grey]

Well why doesn't Superman wear a skirt?

Someone needs to make a Superman comic series where he wears a skirt.

{scrubbed} The problem is not that some women choose to wear short skirts. It's that men wearing women's clothing is still frowned upon far more than women wearing men's clothing (pants).

[Psyren]

Although as a fictional character she technically doesn't have free will or choice in any of these matters in her depiction.

Oh definitely - and for something inherently objectifying like her outfit I could see that being a problem. But I don't think "Supergirl"qualifies as that problematic since her character is in fact an ingenue.

They just have to leave the door open. I would have a quick conversation along these lines:

Kara: I was gonna go with "Supergirl." What do you think? I'm a girl, and I'm super!
Alex: I dunno. Wouldn't you rather be... "Superwoman?"
Kara: Well... I guess? Maybe? I dunno, I'm still figuring this whole thing out. Give me some time doing this, I'll grow into it.

(Unintentional pettanko joke )

However they do it can't be any more clunky/faux-feminist than her boss shutting down her discomfort by saying "So if you perceive 'Supergirl' as anything less than excellent, isn't the real problem.... you?" Followed by Kara meekly shutting up about the whole thing.

[Kitten Champion]

No, not a good thing at all. This looked like a very hamfisted "don't worry, we're feminists too guys" empowerment conversation that actually does the opposite. Kara has a problem with the name Supergirl, her Strong Independent Female Boss™ tells her not to be such a feminazi about it because Girl Power™, and then apparently she just quietly accepts the moniker because the rest of the trailer continues calling her that, and the matter is settled. That was the worst possible way they could have pulled this off.

Here's how you avoid the issue completely - she chooses the name Supergirl, and nobody brings it up because it was her choice to go by that name. Done. Not... whatever they were trying to do by having the Meryl Streep wannabe dress her down over it.

Yeah, that was bad. Not quite as bad as when the Wonder Woman unaired pilot decided to address feminism by having its titular hero rip the head off (though, for the sake of required clarification, not literally) her employees for making the doll she herself commissioned have an actual voluptuous figure. It was however, one of those really awkward moments where the show is looking at you through the camera and going "get it?! get it?!?" in an anemic sort of way.

That's one of the points that lead me to the conclusion that this show, however much I can get behind the premise, is being run by hacks.

[Zmeoaice]

Here's how you avoid the issue completely - she chooses the name Supergirl, and nobody brings it up because it was her choice to go by that name. Done. Not... whatever they were trying to do by having the Meryl Streep wannabe dress her down over it.

They should have Superwoman show up, murder a bunch of people, and then have Supergirl be relieved she didn't share the name with an evil psycho.

[Psyren]

They should have Superwoman show up, murder a bunch of people, and then have Supergirl be relieved she didn't share the name with an evil psycho.

...Wait, there really IS a Negative Wonder Woman? I thought that was just a Robot Chicken sketch...

[TheEmerged]

Yes actually I think it needs to be explained.
What's wrong with skirts? Unless you are somehow having a problem with women dressing however they want.

Flying person. In the air. In a skirt. Seriously, this doesn't take a dirty old man to figure out.

In the interest of full disclosure, my own personal favorite Supergirl outfit was the hot pants & shoulder pads one from the early 80's, your mileage probably varies and all that.

No, not a good thing at all. This looked like a very hamfisted "don't worry, we're feminists too guys" empowerment conversation that actually does the opposite. Kara has a problem with the name Supergirl, her Strong Independent Female Boss™ tells her not to be such a feminazi about it because Girl Power™, and then apparently she just quietly accepts the moniker because the rest of the trailer continues calling her that, and the matter is settled. That was the worst possible way they could have pulled this off.

Here's how you avoid the issue completely - she chooses the name Supergirl, and nobody brings it up because it was her choice to go by that name. Done. Not... whatever they were trying to do by having the Meryl Streep wannabe dress her down over it.

I'm more giving them credit for addressing it than that I like the answer (although for the record, I accept the answer). I like that they addressed it instead of trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

[Zmeoaice]

Seems to be wearing pants under the skirt tho

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FqE5q0vFs7...ries%2BCBS.jpg

Which still begs why she needs a skirt if she's already wearing pants.

[Kitten Champion]

Seems to be wearing pants under the skirt tho

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FqE5q0vFs7...ries%2BCBS.jpg

Which still begs why she needs a skirt if she's already wearing pants.

I'm actually glad they don't care. After seeing Man of Steel's design team arguing that Superman's red underroos broke the world's sense of realism and must be removed from the costume for the sake of consistency, I'm kind of over them worrying too hard about applying logic to live-action adaptations of superhero costumes. It should look good on camera, convey most of the iconography of the character, while being functional enough for the actor to act in -- because you're not going to convince me your physics-breaking superhero is more plausible by changing his/her attire.

I loved the way Lois and Clark handled Superman's costume - his mom sewed it for him over a weekend. That's just so Superman.

[Psyren]

I'm more giving them credit for addressing it than that I like the answer (although for the record, I accept the answer). I like that they addressed it instead of trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

I'd rather they didn't acknowledge it at all, than what they did - establish that Kara is aware of the pejorative/diminutive sense of the word, demonstrate that she does feel uncomfortable about it, and then have her concerns utterly dismissed and even pinned back on her by her straw feminist authority figure. And then you're left wondering: "Kara, you can fly faster than the speed of sound and bench-press a train. How badly do you really need this job?"

[RossN]

No, actually the problem does exist, and it's not a strawman. And what is more, you inadvertently hit the nail on the head, but then you glanced off in another direction. There is a very small sample of female-led superhero films. Almost all of them have performed abysmally at the box office. Which has led studio executives to the conclusion that female-led superhero films cannot be done straight, because they do not sell. As a consequence, studio execs either do not greenlight them, or they do greenlight them as something else they are comfortable selling to women. Like romantic comedies.

This pattern is so ingrained that Agent Carter was close to revolutionary simply because they acknowledged the common tropes by subverting them. She most certainly was "the girl", but the show got huge mileage out of the fact that being "the girl" was a useful cover for the story that was actually going on.

And then comes along Supergirl, which takes all those same tropes and recycles them completely straight. Almost as if the studio executives had two completely different ideas about how to make the series work, and just demanded the writers weld the two plots together no matter how unwieldy the result. Now, this doesn't look anywhere close to Wonder-Woman-Pilot bad, but it's obvious what the execs demanded.

I'm honestly not trying to troll you here, but where are all these romantic comedy superheroine shows and films? Literally the only example I can think of at all that even half way fits is my Super Ex-Girlfriend and even that is clearly a spoof. Pants to be Darkened was desperately flawed but you'd have to squint pretty hard to see it as a rom com.

The only show I can think of that would fit the superhero rom com is Lois & Clark, which is twenty years old and has a male superhero as lead.

Hence why I consider it a strawman argument. Supergirl is being blamed for being a cliche representative of a genre that doesn't seem to exist.

Seems to be wearing pants under the skirt tho

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FqE5q0vFs7...ries%2BCBS.jpg

Which still begs why she needs a skirt if she's already wearing pants.

Because she wants to wear a skirt but doesn't want an upskirt problem?

[BannedInSchool]

I'd rather they didn't acknowledge it at all, than what they did - establish that Kara is aware of the pejorative/diminutive sense of the word, demonstrate that she does feel uncomfortable about it, [...][/I]

Obviously she should just own it and call herself Super@#$%. "That's right. This @#$% just saved you from an unstoppable alien killing machine. You're welcome."

[LokeyITP]

RossN, it doesn't exist, it's a parody of what a comic property would have to be to get greenlit with a female lead. The movie is tough to pin down, it's 3 bad movies mashed together in a weird and horribly inconsistent way.

[zimmerwald1915]

I'd rather they didn't acknowledge it at all, than what they did - establish that Kara is aware of the pejorative/diminutive sense of the word, demonstrate that she does feel uncomfortable about it, and then have her concerns utterly dismissed and even pinned back on her by her straw feminist authority figure. And then you're left wondering: "Kara, you can fly faster than the speed of sound and bench-press a train. How badly do you really need this job?"

There really should be a way to convey non-diminutiveness while making the name a dactyl. Not even Diana can really pull off the two-trochee name, and she only gets as close as she does because of the alliteration.

[McStabbington]

I'm honestly not trying to troll you here, but where are all these romantic comedy superheroine shows and films? Literally the only example I can think of at all that even half way fits is my Super Ex-Girlfriend and even that is clearly a spoof. Pants to be Darkened was desperately flawed but you'd have to squint pretty hard to see it as a rom com.

The only show I can think of that would fit the superhero rom com is Lois & Clark, which is twenty years old and has a male superhero as lead.

Hence why I consider it a strawman argument. Supergirl is being blamed for being a cliche representative of a genre that doesn't seem to exist.

. . . Okay, let's back up a step and walk through some basic film marketing 101 to give you the necessary background for why it is a parody of a genre which doesn't technically exist.

Back in the long long ago of the early 1990's, film executives responded to a changing movie marketplace by introducing what is known as the "quadrant system". The quadrant system divides the movie marketplace into four groups (hence the name) divided by age and gender: women under 35, women over 35, men under 35, men over 35. Under this system, a movie is not greenlit unless one of two conditions can be met: either the movie is written to target one quadrant and can be made extremely cheaply, or the movie is written to target two quadrants. If a movie as written does not appear to meet either of these criteria, it does not get greenlit.

Now, just to be clear, this quadrant system has nothing to do with movie quality. Nor still does it have anything to do with movie profitability per se. The goal of this system is not to maximize profits, but to minimize the possibility of losing money on a film. As a side note, if you've ever noticed why certain genres of film like John Grisham courtroom dramas or prison dramas like The Shawshank Redemption don't get made anymore, the quadrant system is your answer: those were targeted primarily at the one demographic of men over 35, which not only does not reliably go to more than 2 or 3 movies a year, but doesn't bring dates with them, so they don't pull in a second quadrant. Not necessarily a bad investment, but a risky one. And risky films are what executives categorically do not want to greenlight.

Okay, so four quadrants built to minimize risk. How does this theory apply to our non-existent genre of rom-com superheroines?

Well, go back to the movies you mentioned earlier: Catwoman and Electra. These were early testbed models for marketing superheroines under the quadrant system. And while they were made fairly cheaply, they were marketed much as a male superhero film would be. Catwoman was explicitly targeted at the young male demographic, which is generally assumed to be able to bring enough of the young female demographic to get the coveted second quadrant (this, incidentally, is precisely why you see so many awkward love interest subplots in action films: gotta throw a bone to the young females that the young men dragged to the theater). Electra was more explicitly targeted towards young females, but was assumed to be action-y and softcore porn-y to pull in young males.

Both movies cratered. Now for a moment, forget everything you know about gender, even if that might lead you to ask why exactly a romantic subplot is supposed to mollify females under 35. And forget everything you know about quality film-making. After all, Transformers 2 was a legendarily bad film made without a script, and that made darn near twice its budget even before overseas receipts were counted. And forget everything you know about science, which tells you that only repeated tests of the null-hypothesis eliminate spurious results. What matters is that for executives, they've tested whether or not the under-35 female demographic will pull in enough to make a superheroine film profitable. Electra tanked. And they've tested whether under-35 males will go in sufficient numbers to a superheroine film to make it profitable. Catwoman tanked.

As such, the conventional wisdom is that superheroine films and television shows are too risky to greenlight because they do not fit well within the quadrant system. And absolutely no executive wants to be the one with egg on his face by greenlighting another and reinforcing what is already Hollywood conventional wisdom.

So, if you're a writer with an idea for a superheroine film or tv show, what are you to do? Well, the hilariously stupid thing to do would be to alter your plot to make it exactly like some movie or tv show that executives do feel comfortable with within the limits of the quadrant system. Like, and I'm just throwing this out there just purely on the basis of it being, purely coincidentally, right off the top of my head, a romantic-comedy that happens to star a superheroine. Rom-Coms are not super-profitable, but they reliably pull in enough of the women under 35 and women over 35 quadrants that executives feel comfortable with the risk.

Does the joke make sense to you now? It's not a joke about an extant genre, or at least, not one that was formalized until this show came along. It's a joke about the absurd lengths Hollywood executives will go to insulate themselves from risk, and the utter detritus that their system of minimizing risk ends up producing when you care about stuff like plot and character, to say nothing of feminist role models.

[Zmeoaice]

Where baby Kal-El's pod landed in Scotland?

No Kilts, those don't count. It has to be a real skirt.

[BannedInSchool]

Does the joke make sense to you now? It's not a joke about an extant genre, or at least, not one that was formalized until this show came along. It's a joke about the absurd lengths Hollywood executives will go to insulate themselves from risk, and the utter detritus that their system of minimizing risk ends up producing when you care about stuff like plot and character, to say nothing of feminist role models.

I was actually wondering if the old studio system of the Golden Age of Hollywood might have had its merits. While they produced a lot of mediocre films, it was because they were assured of making a profit with them through their monopolies. If you actually wanted to try to make a good movie based on artistic merit I don't know that the studios wouldn't have said, "yeah, whatever. Just make it on time and on budget," which in a way helps out making more good movies more than trying for the one big blockbuster mentality.

No Kilts, those don't count. It has to be a real skirt.

Ah, the No True Skirt fallacy.

[HardcoreD&Dgirl]

. . . Okay, let's back up a step and walk through some basic film marketing 101 to give you the necessary background for why it is a parody of a genre which doesn't technically exist.

Back in the long long ago of the early 1990's, film executives responded to a changing movie marketplace by introducing what is known as the "quadrant system". The quadrant system divides the movie marketplace into four groups (hence the name) divided by age and gender: women under 35, women over 35, men under 35, men over 35. Under this system, a movie is not greenlit unless one of two conditions can be met: either the movie is written to target one quadrant and can be made extremely cheaply, or the movie is written to target two quadrants. If a movie as written does not appear to meet either of these criteria, it does not get greenlit.

Now, just to be clear, this quadrant system has nothing to do with movie quality. Nor still does it have anything to do with movie profitability per se. The goal of this system is not to maximize profits, but to minimize the possibility of losing money on a film. As a side note, if you've ever noticed why certain genres of film like John Grisham courtroom dramas or prison dramas like The Shawshank Redemption don't get made anymore, the quadrant system is your answer: those were targeted primarily at the one demographic of men over 35, which not only does not reliably go to more than 2 or 3 movies a year, but doesn't bring dates with them, so they don't pull in a second quadrant. Not necessarily a bad investment, but a risky one. And risky films are what executives categorically do not want to greenlight.

Okay, so four quadrants built to minimize risk. How does this theory apply to our non-existent genre of rom-com superheroines?

Well, go back to the movies you mentioned earlier: Catwoman and Electra. These were early testbed models for marketing superheroines under the quadrant system. And while they were made fairly cheaply, they were marketed much as a male superhero film would be. Catwoman was explicitly targeted at the young male demographic, which is generally assumed to be able to bring enough of the young female demographic to get the coveted second quadrant (this, incidentally, is precisely why you see so many awkward love interest subplots in action films: gotta throw a bone to the young females that the young men dragged to the theater). Electra was more explicitly targeted towards young females, but was assumed to be action-y and softcore porn-y to pull in young males.

Both movies cratered. Now for a moment, forget everything you know about gender, even if that might lead you to ask why exactly a romantic subplot is supposed to mollify females under 35. And forget everything you know about quality film-making. After all, Transformers 2 was a legendarily bad film made without a script, and that made darn near twice its budget even before overseas receipts were counted. And forget everything you know about science, which tells you that only repeated tests of the null-hypothesis eliminate spurious results. What matters is that for executives, they've tested whether or not the under-35 female demographic will pull in enough to make a superheroine film profitable. Electra tanked. And they've tested whether under-35 males will go in sufficient numbers to a superheroine film to make it profitable. Catwoman tanked.

As such, the conventional wisdom is that superheroine films and television shows are too risky to greenlight because they do not fit well within the quadrant system. And absolutely no executive wants to be the one with egg on his face by greenlighting another and reinforcing what is already Hollywood conventional wisdom.

So, if you're a writer with an idea for a superheroine film or tv show, what are you to do? Well, the hilariously stupid thing to do would be to alter your plot to make it exactly like some movie or tv show that executives do feel comfortable with within the limits of the quadrant system. Like, and I'm just throwing this out there just purely on the basis of it being, purely coincidentally, right off the top of my head, a romantic-comedy that happens to star a superheroine. Rom-Coms are not super-profitable, but they reliably pull in enough of the women under 35 and women over 35 quadrants that executives feel comfortable with the risk.

Does the joke make sense to you now? It's not a joke about an extant genre, or at least, not one that was formalized until this show came along. It's a joke about the absurd lengths Hollywood executives will go to insulate themselves from risk, and the utter detritus that their system of minimizing risk ends up producing when you care about stuff like plot and character, to say nothing of feminist role models.

ok, lets play your way... 4 quadrants...

1) under 35 male wants to see hot actress in skimpy outfit fighting huge monster
2) Over 35 male wants to see hot actress in skimpy outfit fighting huge monster
3) under 35 female wants to feel empowered by strong character and wants sexy outfits they can duplicate

under your argument then a super sexy actress who is willing to do a hot tub scene, a almost see through toga scene, walk around in civilian cloths made form fitting, and the direct comic book costume of wonder woman, and fights a series of mythic like monsters with her magic sword and magic lasso would be green lit in 10 seconds...

get Linda Carter to make a cameo as her mom and it's a slam dunk