The more I'm pushed in a position of leadership and I know I have to be the mouthpiece for so many other people who can't speak for themselves, the more confidence I'm gaining.
So many women characters are extensions of male fantasy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how female characters in media often serve to fulfill male fantasies rather than being fully developed individuals.
Viola Davis's quote critiques the portrayal of women in literature and film, suggesting that many female characters are created primarily to satisfy male desires and expectations. This perspective highlights the need for more authentic and complex representations of women that go beyond the limitations of male-centric narratives, advocating for stories that empower and develop female characters as multi-dimensional beings with their own agency.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on gender representation in film, this quote can be used to highlight the lack of depth in many female roles.
More from Viola Davis
All quotes →What excites me is just taking some time to breathe in life. The mundane is very exciting.
I don't care if someone is new to acting or experienced in acting: you always learn something from them. It's just like people in life - whether they're young or middle-aged or old, you always learn something from someone.
I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.
And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.
There's no prerequisites to worthiness. You're born worthy, and I think that's a message a lot of women need to hear.
Similar quotes
Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'
Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit.
Music has the capacity to touch the innermost reaches of the soul and music gives flight to the imagination.