"Most women seem to be required to pit themselves against men in dramatic situations, and the men got to pit themselves against ideas or God"
About this Quote
It lands like an offhand complaint, but it’s really an indictment of who gets to be “big” on screen. Judy Davis isn’t talking about real life so much as the machinery of drama: the way stories hand men the cosmic problems (faith, destiny, ideology) and hand women the interpersonal ones (romance, rivalry, betrayal). The verb “required” is the tell. This isn’t a natural difference in temperament; it’s a job description assigned by writers, directors, and whole traditions of storytelling.
The line is slyly structured as a double-bind. Women “pit themselves against men,” which turns their ambition into a contest inside male gravity. Even when the woman is the protagonist, the conflict is often routed through a man as gatekeeper, obstacle, prize, or judge. Men, by contrast, get to fight abstractions: “ideas or God” are opponents that enlarge a character rather than diminish them. You can lose to God and still look monumental; lose to a man and you’re just “difficult.”
Davis’s phrasing also exposes how “dramatic situations” get gender-coded. Women are given emotion as plot, men are given thought as plot. That split flatters male interiority as philosophical while treating female interiority as reactive. Coming from an actress known for playing sharp, unruly women, the remark reads as professional fatigue: not with playing emotion, but with being denied the metaphysical stakes that let a role feel fully adult, fully human, and not merely relational.
The line is slyly structured as a double-bind. Women “pit themselves against men,” which turns their ambition into a contest inside male gravity. Even when the woman is the protagonist, the conflict is often routed through a man as gatekeeper, obstacle, prize, or judge. Men, by contrast, get to fight abstractions: “ideas or God” are opponents that enlarge a character rather than diminish them. You can lose to God and still look monumental; lose to a man and you’re just “difficult.”
Davis’s phrasing also exposes how “dramatic situations” get gender-coded. Women are given emotion as plot, men are given thought as plot. That split flatters male interiority as philosophical while treating female interiority as reactive. Coming from an actress known for playing sharp, unruly women, the remark reads as professional fatigue: not with playing emotion, but with being denied the metaphysical stakes that let a role feel fully adult, fully human, and not merely relational.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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