Stock character

There is a wide range of stock characters, covering people of various ages, social classes and demeanors.

This notion has been considerably explored in film theory, where feminists have argued, female stock characters are only stereotypes (child/woman, whore, bitch, wife, mother, secretary or girl Friday, career women, vamp, etc.).

"[6] Ulrike Roesler and Jayandra Soni analyze "not only with female stock characters in the sense of typical roles in the dramas, but also with other female persons in the area of the theatrical stage..."[7] Andrew Griffin, Helen Ostovich, and Holger Schott Syme explain further that "Female stock characters also permit a close level of audience identification; this is true most of all in The Troublesome Reign, where the "weeping woman" type is used to dramatic advantage.

"[8] Tara Brabazon discusses how the "school ma'am on the colonial frontier has been a stock character of literature and film in Australia and the United States.

Polly Welts Kaufman shows that the schoolma'am's "genteel poverty, unbending morality, education, and independent ways make her character a useful foil for the two other female stock characters in Western literature: the prostitute with the heart of gold and the long-suffering farmer's wife.

A 1930s or 1940s film's stock characters include newspaper vendors, ice vendors, street sweepers, and cigarette girls; in contrast, a 1990s film has homeless "bag ladies", pimps, plainclothes police, business women, and Black and Hispanic stereotypes.

[13] Other groups more frequently represented as stock characters include women, Native Americans, Hispanics, Arabs, Gays/Lesbians, Jews, and Italians.

[14] Other briefly popular stock characters include the 1950s "overweight Communist cell leader" and the 1970s "Black Panther revolutionary".

[26] In the United States, courts have determined that copyright protection cannot be extended to the characteristics of stock characters in a story, whether it be a book, play, or film.