i can't think of any within the last 50 years. Even in the 1990's and 1980's female characters in Western media were pretty much all girl bosses.
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"Submissive" characters, aren't really any good storytelling, either as men or women. Because you're removing their agency, you are making them inherently forgettable. So, there's no reason you would remember them, even if they were there. They wouldn't have an impact on the story.
However, let's just go with feminine characters, rather than "submissive' only. Submissive isn't ever going to be useful. So when can I think of the last feminine protagonist?
Mrs. Brisby in the Secret of Nihm. She's literally a dutiful wife and mother. Thrust into a "fish out of water" adventure. She requires the help of men on her adventure, but she also demonstrates an apt way of navigating her way around the social environment that these men live in, while also still getting their help, but never actually attacking them directly.
Rather than a strong, female, protagonist. She's a strong FEMINE protagonist.
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Femi_nihm_?
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Here's a scene where she's helping a bit of an idiot man-child to help her. She still has to confront a "Force Of Nature" threat, but the moral of this confrontation shows that her generosity and kindness (or even her motherly instinct to care for a man who is a bit childish), along with her ingenuity, is what keeps everybody safe and her objective still available.
Anyways, I think media creators have lost the understanding of what strong femininity actually looks like. Partly because I don't think feminists understand what femininity is, nor do modern people understand why femininity is useful. It's the same reason modern writers think it's hard (and boring) to make heroic characters: they are so ideologically poisoned by nihilism and cynicism that they don't even believe in the concept. Similarly, femininity is seen as worthlessness and enslavement, rather than inspirational and dutiful. I don't think calling it "submission" is a good descriptor, either. Submission is only warranted with trust. You shouldn't submit to people you can't trust. A "submissive" person, is typically prey. Now, there's strong women in modern media, but they all have a kind of "Ripley" effect. The strong women become momma bears, or cunning manipulators, or "no wrath like a woman scorned" vengeance agents in a certain time of need.
But a strong feminine protagonist, that's pretty hard to find in the past 50 years.
They're fictional characters. They don't have agency to begin with.
Okay, positivist.
Brim, of course the characters are creations of the author's agency. That's not the point. It's about perceived agency within the story.
Anime/manga prove this wrong yearly for you. Most male characters in romcoms/SoL shows are submissive to a point where its a meme and yet people remember them. Gojo from Dress Up Darling earlier this year is a walking sub in every sense and he is a literal Gary Stu for the author to fawn over with her self insert. Shinji Ikari is the walking poster child for submissive character traits, and his weak nature is what drives the entire plot. Heck his lack of desire to take any agency is a constant conflict.
Japanese media as a whole is filled with examples of notable characters who are submissive beyond belief to a point where it barely feels realistic to our non-Collectivist mindsets. Osamu Dasai is one of their most famous writers ever and his autobiography is built on "I am physically unable to refuse any question given to me, I am too frightened."
Your point about submission and its inherently negative connotation being intertwined with femininity is very valid, but you shouldn't make Absolute Statements because a single example otherwise renders them invalid and wrong. If you meant this to only apply to Western works, you should specify because it sounds like you are making a very definitive universal statement outside the scope of OP's question.
In fairness, he said western media, but fine.
I would say that the eastern, submissive, asian, male thing is a strange cultural icon in japan, and I'm not sure why.
To be honest, whenever I see those characters, I find them actively repulsive, which is probably a cultural bias in the west.
He did, but you were speaking definitively as "submissive characters can never" which makes it sound universally applied regardless.
Also while I don't find them to be good characters and am pretty repulsed by them myself, they do impact the story and aren't inherently forgettable.
I could probably find some examples in Western media but, as OP pointed out, they are far rarer so the list to find and pick from is much smaller.
Slight disagree there, there's nothing narratively wrong with submissive characters. They aren't dynamic characters in and of themselves, but they do have an impact; as assets and obstacles for the more dynamic characters to navigate around. They're like the action equivalent of the comedy straight man.
Plus unless they're submissive to a fault, in which case they're bad writing for just being one dimensional not necessarily for being submissive, there's always interest to be had in placing them in rare situations where they would be spurred to action despite their typical inclination.
But you're not wrong that submissive characters aren't going to be the first names you remember in a story, they'll only stand out on a deeper look at the story.
I don't know that I've really ever seen submissive characters be written in the kind of nuance you've described.
At best they might be love interests, or a character that learns to become assertive, but then that's not the same thing as the femininity I was referring to earlier. The submission is seen as a masculine failing in that case. It could be done well in how you describe it, but I've never seen it done well.
They tend to have more use in the big space operas or fantasy epics. Anywhere you need someone who just does their job to make the wheels of the world(s) turn.
They're hard to think of easily because written well you don't usually think about their relative submissiveness first. The readiest example of one I can think of is Grey Worm from GoT, just because his slave conditioning took the submissiveness to an such an extreme it's hard to miss.
Chloe Sevigny in American Psycho.
Literally, the only person he doesn't kill that he originally intended to, because she is submissive, docile, and kind of pathetic, but also the only person who cares about him but not in a materialistic way.
That's true, but she's still an object of his affection (and is an intentional critique against modern materialism among the elites versus traditional femininity)
That is true, but we also see the opposite of this with a character like the bloody mute in The Apostle, who was a male, and submissive to the will of the patriarchs to protect and guard the [spoiler]. He was shown no affection, had no affection, but was an interesting character because of his willingness to submit to carrying out his role at all costs.
But that also leads to an interesting juxtaposition in storytelling related to this...
Right, but you can still tell very interesting stories around these characters whether trust is involved or not.
A few good examples of this is Sarah-Sofie Boussnina's character in The Absent One, she was submissive to someone she loved, willing to do heinous and depraved acts on his behalf, because she trusted him, even though he did not actually care about her. Her character was quite fascinating for two-thirds of the film up until the final act, which became ridiculous as they wanted to turn her into a girlboss out for revenge. But before then, there are definitely women like that in real life.
Patricia Arquette's character in The Indian Runner perfectly encapsulates a realistic portrayal of someone willing to be submissive for what she thought was love, even though it was to a completely unhinged character played by Viggo Mortensen. And in many ways, the logical conclusion of that relationship, had he stuck around, would have been similar to what happened in the film Kalifornia, where Juliette Lewis' character was completely submissive to Brad Pitt's character up to a point where, yes, she became prey (which ironically, was when she stopped being submissive to him).
But how the story resolves or how it unfolds involving these submissive characters is completely dependent on the intentionality of the writers.
Most writers these days do not have the intention to display these characters as having good traits while being submissive, even though ironically Sevigny's character in American Pyscho was the only character who was not reprehensibly amoral/immoral, and could be considered the only "good" person in the film.
It's entirely possible to write good, submissive characters with strong traits and qualities, without them being prey (like Boussnina's character in The Absent One), but that's not really something they are interested in. And sadly, most Westerners have become accustomed to thinking that submissiveness, femininity, and being docile are negative traits due to cultural programming.
I don't think The Bloody Mute character (from how you describe it) is a character in a normal story. Hell, that might not even be a submissive, but a martyr, like Christ. I think that's a whole different concept than submission.
As you describe Boussnina's character, well, I think you disproved your own point. It didn't actually try to espouse the concept of submission, but destroy it with a girl boss ending.
that we agree on, but it's why I'd prefer a focus on femininity rather than "submission" because of it's intense negative connotation. it also really doesn't fit because submission is what would happen at the end of the story. It's what happens when the woman can finally, safely, trust her man. It's post conflict.
shut up faggot