Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Psycho-biddy (2nd nomination)

Continued discussion

@Matt Deres: I was wondering about Sunset Strip as well, to be honest. As far as I can tell so far I think it has to do with the way women were generally depicted or used in film up until the 60s and the explosion of film popularity (specifically the talkies). Essentially, it was extremely hard for "older" women to get film roles and around the 60s there were now many actresses who were matinee stars but were too old to play the ingénue. Depictions of women around this time tended to stay within two categories: tawdry or pure. About this time universal producer Ross Hunter began to hire these older actresses. Depictions of women in film also began to get less strict.

The impression I get so far from the book - admittedly I'm not that far into it since I didn't get to read more last night - is that the reason Sunset Strip isn't credited as launching the genre as opposed to Baby Jane is because it doesn't quite hit all of the hallmarks that have been laid out. Part of what makes something psycho-biddy (per the descriptions given in the book) is that the lead be a bit of a victimized protagonist, which Norma somewhat isn't. I think it's also a bit of timing - it was created when there was still somewhat of that binary mentality when it came to depictions of women and it didn't launch other films in quite the way that Baby Jane did. This is all OR but it seems to be the general gist of why it's not considered to be the first film - although apparently it is considered to be an influence. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 12:08, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ReaderofthePack: When I initially clicked on the article, I was expecting something even more generalized than that, with maybe nods to Arsenic and Old Lace or even Cruella de Vil. Psycho Biddy is on our List of stock characters (as well as on our List of genres), along with potential merge candidates like Battle-axe (woman) and Crone. Maybe rather than trying to center an article around the genre, it makes more sense to see Psycho Biddy as a stock character and include her (them?) as a variant in crone? Matt Deres (talk) 14:20, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... let me read a bit more of the book and see - the author talks about it as both a character type as well as a genre, but more emphasis is put on genre. Part of the issue here is that there's no one singular name for the genre and people will have names they prefer, which I think kind of hampers the amount of coverage the genre gets. When the coverage is dispersed by different names it seems to make a topic have less coverage (and definitely harder to find) than if it had a single, "official" name. At least, that's why I think that there's not as much coverage as there could be.

I'm kind of hoping that this closes as no consensus, that way we can work on revamping the article. I'd like to be able to track down the other sources since right now I really only have the one book on hand. I can find little bits and pieces, but can't really deep dive. Then again, having the time constraint is motivating me a bit more than it otherwise would. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 15:53, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If we create a new article, what should it be named? I think that it may be worth starting an article on depictions of women in film, since that may be a good general starting place. The main issue with psycho-biddy is that while it's a type of character (so to speak) the characters aren't entirely elderly - the book mentions that some of the "older" women are in their 40s, so they would be more middle-aged at times than older or elderly. Making this a general page about depictions of women in film could be a good catchall. I do think that there's merit in having one specifically for depictions of women in horror, though. Psycho-biddy does fall under horror for the most part. I think a general page may be best to create for the time being, though. (Although honestly, the horror one would be more fun to write.) ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:02, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, there's actually Gender in horror films - I'll take a look at that. I forgot that existed. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:04, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Psycho-biddy would likely fit very, very well in the subgenre section! ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We have a women in film article, but that's maybe too broad. The Horror Film template used to have a "women in horror films" link, but I removed it just the other day since it only redirected to Gender in horror films. I started the AFD discussion, but a good article is much better than a deleted article; I'd be happy to suspend or withdraw the submission, though we may get more eyes on it if we leave it up for now. Matt Deres (talk) 17:32, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say suspend for now. Right now my general thought process is to try and work it into the gender in horror article. Reading the book kind of highlights the arguments for and against an article. The genre has always existed, but really didn't get a classification until relatively recently. I wouldn't consider it a neologism for the genre per se, but the coverage is more limited than I'd like. I'm hoping that the sourcing section in several of the RS we have will help us find other sources, but I'm also mildly concerned about potential OR.

This article still needs a lot of revamping as well. I think that it would be good to look at perhaps an article on the trope of elderly women in horror, as it does seem to be a topic that people have written about. That needs some research in general, though. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I just merged much of the content into the gender in horror article. I don't really think that much was lost, TBH. We can always refer to page history for any info we want to garner. On a side note, the article could just be portrayals of age in horror films - that might be easier to do as a general page. I'm kind of just throwing things to the wall and seeing what sticks, so if any of this sounds good or like too much, let me know. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The more I've gone through the book, the more I can see this being something that belongs in a page with other things rather than on its own. I'm going to change my vote/argument to merge and redirect and then slowly work on the potrayals of aging in horror draft. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 12:24, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]