Probably why I like female "revenge" movies so much- from "Kill Bill" or "Death Proof" to I Spit on Your Grave". Two of these movies involve rape--the entire point of I Spit on Your Grave--But I don't kid myself; these movies don't change rape culture, they participate in it. They don't up uplift women, they fetishize them.
Still, when the bride slams her disgusting rapists head in the door repeatedly until he's dead, it's satisfying. It usually the other way around. As far as franchises -- sure there are successful women-- small boulders under the mountain of masculine run entertainment.
BTW Here's a good article on a theater
“Top Girls” is Top-Notch Feminist Theater
L to R, Linda Park as Lady Nijo, Karianne Flaathen as Isabella Bird, Sally Hughes as Marlene, Rhonda Aldrich as Pope Joan and Etta Devine as Dull Gret
Few women playwrights have garnered as much praise and generated as much controversy as Caryl Churchill. Her work has been called feminist, post-modern, post-colonial, Marxist, experimental, irritating, innovative, ludicrous and brilliant. She has worked with feminist collectives such as Monstrous Regiment and at establishment institutions such as the Royal Court Theatre, where she was the first woman to hold the position of resident dramatist. In both spaces, she has maintained her dedication to dismantling sexist, economic and colonial power structures through an ever-evolving exploration of dramatic form. Though she is still writing today, her early plays are already considered part of the Western canon.
Unfortunately, being included in the dramatic canon does not ensure that your plays will get produced on contemporary American stages, and even theaters devoted to producing the classics often avoid Churchill. This may be partly because she didn’t win inclusion in this elite, mostly male club by being one of the boys. If the traditional dramatic form, which proceeds in a straight line from exposition to climax, can be said to be “masculine,” Churchill’s writing is the epitome of the “feminine”: circular and multi-climactic. Likewise, if a masculine form can be said to be concerned with the individual protagonist’s psychological experience, Churchill’s feminine structures deliberately de-center the individual in order to explore identity as a product of social and historical forces.
Flaathen (left) as Mrs. Kidd, Hughes as Marlene
Churchill’s style, then, requires more of actors, directors and audiences than the typical canonical play. Yet a classical theater in North Hollywood, CA, has taken up the challenge: The Antaeus Company is running an engaging and highly relevant production of Top Girls through May 4.
Top Girls, which premiered in 1982, is best known for its opening act, during which an ambitious woman, Marlene, throws herself a dinner party to celebrate a work promotion. Her guests are historical and folkloric figures: Lady Nijo, a 13th-century Japanese concubine; Isabella Bird, Victorian world traveler; Patient Griselda of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Dull Gret, from Breughel’s painting of the same name; and Pope Joan, a medieval female Pope. The second act takes place largely in the employment agency where Marlene works. The third is set a year earlier in Marlene’s sister’s living room.
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/03/18/top-girls-is-top-notch-feminist-theater/
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