Please, Mr. Pseudo-Feminist Film Critic, Enlighten Me as to Your Unvalidated Opinions About Female Characters.

This article by a certain Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was reprinted in the Florida Times-Union this morning. Never mind that it's two weeks old as of this writing, there's bigger stuff going on here. For example, the title it was printed with in the FL T-U syndication: "Women are bringing the action in today's thriller movies: tough breed of female action heroes take over roles that used to be male." Which sort of implied that this article was going to make a point, right?

Hahaha no.

What Mr. Williams does instead is list female characters, drawing vague connections between them without ever really touching on what makes these roles iconic, culturally significant, or important, all the while infusing his article with a weird brand of faux-feminism that is actually, frankly misogynist in places. The implication that all of these characters come from the same basic stock (Ellen Ripley, of Alien and its many sequels) is interesting, but it oversimplifies the roles these characters play entirely, as well as any sort of historical precedence prior to Alien (1979) for a woman to be (gasp) competent - for example, both Anna and Giulia in The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970), who both manipulate the protagonist by weaponizing the femininity, and especially Anna, who sees right through Marcello's efforts at subterfuge. (And,  due to Marcello's ambiguous sexuality crisis, may present an even more masculine archetype than the protagonist himself)

Yes, Noomi Rapace's character in Prometheus is a deliberate reference to Ripley's role in the earlier series, but you could also say that Dr. Grace Augustine from Avatar has more in common with Ripley than just sharing an actress (Sigourney Weaver). Thesis papers have been written about themes of motherhood and creation in the Alien series. Prometheus plays with some of those same themes, though makes it more about parenting in general - the ability (or lack thereof) to create, and then responsibility towards those creations, whether you will see them come to fruition or whether they will destroy you. Williams seems more obsessed with violence in this article than concerned with the motivations behind these characters, and while he alludes to Ripley's connection to Newt, and the alien's role as a mother, he never really seems to get the parallels between the characters and instead gets bogged down in a moment of faux-feminism over the line "Get away from her, you bitch!"

....Which is actually a perfectly acceptable use of the descriptor "bitch." As is Molly Weasley's similar line in her showdown with Bellatrix Lestrange, "Not my daughter, you bitch!" The problem with the word "bitch" is when it is misapplied to mean "a woman in a position of power who makes men feel threatened on account of her competence and influence and the fact that she does not conform to traditional ideas about gender roles." For example, Hilary Clinton. Or Tina Fey. In fact, this fictional sort of application of the word bitch is probably the only appropriate application - excepting the possibility that you actually know someone as emotionally abusive and manipulative as Tangled's Mother Gothel in real life.

Moving on, we encounter a weird and problematic section where he glances over the fact that Aeon Flux was a horrible flop and Karyn Kusama also directed Jennifer's Body, (which is incredible in theory and horrible in execution and I've already written a term paper about and isn't really the point of this post, so I'm not going to go into it in detail and needless to say it has embraced and subverted thriller and horror tropes all over the place, and I love it for what it wants to be and hate it for what it is), and moves into some bizarre statement about how The Hunger Games "turned archery into a hip sport in which women can compete with men."


Because this isn't about how women can compete with men. This is about how we need to stop comparing female characters to male ones and judge them on their own merits and recognize that writing female characters presents its own tragedies and triumphs and the issues that are important to a male character are not the same as the issues that are important to a female character, and the whole reason the arc of Alien works so well is because Ripley is a woman, and having a male character do battle against an angry mother extraterrestrial from beyond the stars would be a completely different film with a completely different emotional center. And I could spend a really long time talking about menstruation and reproduction and why these are abject topics for men vs for women and where the horror derives in each, but that's not the point. Let's just leave it as "Prometheus and Alien are scary for women because they are about losing control of your reproductive ability, whereas they are scary for men because vaginas and uteruses are scary in general for men." (Which would bring us back around into a conversation about the concept of the abject and the uncanny, and menstruation and pregnancy in the horror genre, but again - not the point.)


Moving on to Mr. Williams's misguided statements about Kill Bill and female assassins, he again seems to miss the entire point of the duology, or of Quentin Tarrantino's body of work in general. Yes, The Bride goes on a bloody rampage in which she takes down a bunch of other ladies, all of whom are still employed by or willingly aided her former employer, Bill, in the brutal slaughter of her fiance and unborn child (this turns out not to be exactly the case, but I will refrain from spoilers). Somehow, Mr. Williams seems to ignore the series's title - Kill Bill, as well as the fact that there are some really repulsive male characters in the films (for example, "Chuck who is here to fuck"), and the fact that these various female characters have been complicit or accomplice in the various crimes committed against the protagonist makes them just as guilty, and all of the men get what they had coming as well? Somehow, the fact that the series is a feminist revenge fantasy completely escapes Mr. Williams's grasp.

I don't really understand Mr. Williams's decision to group Black Widow (The Avengers) and Catwoman (The Dark Knight Rises), when Black Widow would be more at home in the company of La Femme Nikita, Wanted, and Salt's heroines (or that Mr. Williams seems to omit Hanna or The Professional/Leon from this discussion entirely, despite their heroines most certainly being part of this trend). Perhaps it is because both characters wear black, leather catsuits? However, this is an oversimplification - Catwoman is a thief and historical love-interest of Batman. Black Widow is a former Soviet assassin who earns her keep at SHIELD by infiltrating Fortune 500 companies and tracking down fugitive scientists. As The Dark Knight Rises hasn't been released yet, I can hardly draw conclusions about Catwoman's motivations, but his description of Black Widow as "Although she's a bare-knuckle ninja, her super power emanates from her pout and posture" sort of makes me wonder if we were watching the same movie.


Yes, okay, Black Widow is pretty. However, she's also got the clearest motivations of pretty much any character in the Avengers - she has debts to repay. While the boys club behind her spends the first half of the movie bickering, angsting, trying to defend the actions of the villain, or being otherwise incapacitated, she is the only character to obtain useful intel from Loki, pilots a jet, brings Bruce Banner in from India, beats up some Russian mobsters (while tied to a chair), and turns Hawkeye from Brainwashed and Crazy into a useful member of the team once more. The femininity that Black Widow possesses is weaponized. She recognizes what people expect of her and uses it to advance her own goals.


In concluding his discussion of Catwoman (who he demeans by calling "kittenish" - pun or not, this adjective does not empower a character) and Black Widow, Mr. Williams states "A counter-balance to the sexy superheroine is the feminist ideal of self-sufficiency." What is problematic about this statement is that it implies a character cannot be both beautiful and self-sufficient. Catwoman is a world-class thief who I anticipate will seduce Bruce Wayne for some nefarious purpose and not because she needs a man in her life. Black Widow is a super-spy and master assassin, and she's nobody's love interest. I think that these characters are both demonstrably self-sufficient.


But it is perhaps in bringing the article around to arguably more "real world" heroines that Mr. Williams makes his most subversive point. No, Thelma and Louise does not have a happy ending. That doesn't make it any less of an iconic film - if anything, it should have been involved in the discussion of Kill Bill and not shuffled all the way to the end like some kind of sloppy segue. What are we supposed to take from the penultimate example in this list being two women who hit a "literal dead end" ? That female characters shouldn't take risks? Whether or not a story is a tragedy or a comedy in the Shakespearean sense doesn't determine whether or not it has merit as a story. If it were,  Measure for Measure and All's Well that Ends Well would be the Bard's greatest masterpieces while Hamlet and King Lear would be regarded as slop.


Are Thelma and Louise good role models? No, probably not, but the fact that their revenge adventure ends badly doesn't mean that little girls should be discouraged from looking up to characters who aren't afraid to kick ass and take names. Suggesting that we should settle for Norma Rae, who comes from a film in an entirely different genre, ultimately subverts the entire exercise of listing these characters. There wasn't a point to your article, Mr. Williams, except to vaguely imply that while the presence of female characters in action movies is an interesting trend, women should stick to tamer, more realistic fare.


The important thing to take away from most of these women (maybe not Laura Croft, who is basically Indiana Jones with tits and ass) is that although they take center stage (or something close to it) in a genre with traditionally male protagonists, they're still women. The idea that for a female character to be strong and powerful, she basically has to be a dude is erroneous and ultimately, movies that adhere to this notion wind up feeling patently false. These are characters whose strength comes from, in part, their femininity and the issues therein, whether it is the host of uniquely female reproductive fears, the responsibility of being a caretaker, or the ability to take society's expectations of you and defy them - or weaponize them. They are role models, and they are a fascinating trend in cinema, but to simply list them and draw superficial comparisons between them and pass these pedestrian observations off as genuine feminism distracts from their actual significance. You can't just take a script and change James into Janine and find-and-replace all the pronouns and have a good female protagonist - the best female characters embrace their inherent femininity and exist in story worlds that are built to showcase why these traits are strengths, and that's what these characters have in common, not superficial details like black catsuits or bows and arrows or revenge plots.

More thoughts on female characters in superhero movies

SPOILERS AHOY.

Dear Captain America,

THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE. You know how back in my Green Lantern review I was like "Carol is an awesome character when she's first introduced but sometime during act two/act three she gets turned into someone completely useless" ? Well, I see your supposedly-competent romantic interest and I raise you one badass british science officer. Peggy Carter is what all superhero movie love interests hope they can be. The people at the Bechdel Test can argue all they want about the dancing girls and their upskirt shots (which I honestly saw as an homage to the time period), but my primary focus on this blog when I get to ranting is love interests who are or are not fully developed characters in their own right. The Nostalgia chick has a term for it with a witty acronym and it's something like Love Interest Superfluous to Plot (LISP?) but here, I'm just going to go down the list and think of all the reasons why Peggy is such a cool character (or at least I thought so).

1. She's smart.
2. She's a woman in a male-dominated profession... and still gets shit done. Even in the military during world war II. Like, it's one thing to tell us your female character is an officer. It's another to actually have her go toe-to-toe with a superior and get what she wants because of sheer pluck and determination and not because she flashed him her tits.
3. She is more than capable of Punching You In The Face.
4. She knows how to handle a firearm, and rather than sitting back at base moping manages to help storm the Big Bad's base as part of a fucking assault team.
5. Her and Steve/Captain America's love story is really sweet. Someone got their ratios right, because it doesn't feel like a romantic plot tumor. This was actually something I really thought was kind of refreshing, was the total lack of emphasis on sex in this movie. It's been pointed out that nowhere between 98-lb weaking Steve and (SPOILERS) Down With the Plane Captain America does the hero find time to bed his love interest - and that's okay, because they spend most of the movie playing on this awesome romantic tension where he's still this awkward kid from Brooklyn at heart and she's too classy a dame to throw herself at him, which goes a long way to show that just because he's got the body of a hunk he's still the same person deep down. I really enjoyed that Captain America really has these "Greatest Generation" values and not this modern idea of oversexed masculinity, because that would have probably just turned him into another super-powered douchebag (CoughGreenLanternCough)
6. The way she's written, there's a lot of things she does that could just as easily been filled by some kind of male supporting character, even with very little changes made to the overall script (Well, at the expense of the love story, which would be a pity to lose). However, I don't think the movie would work as well if she were just another soldier - there's the Men In Uniform Maximum, and once you go over that line all of your characters get kind of muddled. Probably why all of the Captain's strike team have such distinct appearances - they get ethnicities instead of names because if he had a platoon of white guys, we'd never learn their names AND we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Stock the hero's team full of tokens, and they're still tokens but at least we can have a favorite character and get attached to them because we can TELL THEM APART.  The fact alone that Peggy is the only woman in this male-dominated environment... and she's there as a capable member of the team, whose capableness is never for a second diminished... is a huge part of her character.
7. The actress is listed next to a picture of Rosie the Riveter in the credits. Which given they were using old War Propaganda posters for their credit design in general was a nice touch. I'm sure someone out there is rolling their eyes, but seriously.

Basically, it's not enough to present a female character in a male occupation to make the audience buy her competence - it's all about what you do with the character, and really it seems like there are two directions to go with this: turn her into a screaming damsel, or continue to prove her competence. She is in that position because she earned it, and she probably had to work harder to get there than the men she's working with. Your female lead is not just a pair of tits, and if you're writing her as such it's probably indicative of a much bigger problem.

There's also the matter of emotional investment in a love story. What I think makes the romantic subplot in Captain America work so well is that it's always there, but at the same time it's seamless. In the final action sequence, who is the captain talking to? Peggy. And it makes the emotional stakes of the scene so much higher than if he were just talking to one of his commanding officers. Why? Because we're invested in this relationship, and we want them to get their dance. If we weren't invested in it, the movie's last line wouldn't have any emotional resonance at all. But then you realize... Peggy is probably dead of old age, and you're like, "Holy fucking shit, this is tragic" and want to hug Captain America.

Contrast this to Green Lantern where Blake Lively just disappears for the whole final act of the movie and you can probably understand why no one had any kind of emotional reaction to Green Lantern besides "I spent my money to see this shit?"

Having female characters does not make you a feminist.

Watch out, I'm about to make another misguided post about feminism and Hollywood gender standards. Also, we might start talking about superheroes and race, because, you know what? When I was a little kid, The Green Lantern was a black dude. I know that the Hal Jordan is the "original" character to hold the title, but John Stewart is the guy I watched on Justice League when I was a wee little nerdling.

SO, LET'S TALK ABOUT SUPERHERO MOVIES.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT, LEEZ?

LET'S TALK ABOUT X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

So, in general, X-Men as a franchise is pretty good about providing interesting, strong female characters. I mean, this is the series that brought us Rogue and Jean Grey and Storm and Kitty Pryde. Which is nothing to laugh at, because they're badass, but they're not in this movie. First Class has four main female characters, which is already more than most superhero films which will typically just have a love interest (we'll talk about that when we talk about Green Lantern. We're getting there.) And it passes the Bechdel Test, which is something not many superhero movies do.

So, is it feminist?

Let's look at the four female characters we get:

Angel: stripper.
Emma Frost: High-end stripper, like for governors and stuff.
Moira: FBI agent (masquerades as a stripper).
Raven/Mystique: Hero's sister, ends up naked by the end of the movie, may or may not sleep with Magneto, who may or may not grow up to be Sir Ian McKellen, who may or may not have played the character as militantly, metaphorically homosexual. (But probably did.)

So Angel is a stripper who defects to the bad guys at the soonest sign of a fight. She's not a very deep character and that's okay because she's mostly around to wear skimpy outfits and provide a bit of color to our otherwise pretty damn anglo-looking cast.

Emma Frost is a villainess, who runs around in her underwear, who gets chained to a bed, whose main power is turning herself into an incredibly cheesy diamond effect. Frankly I think January Jones is a really boring actress and the character was really flat beyond just hanging out and being eye candy for Kevin Bacon.

Moira... is in her underwear within five minutes of her first appearance. She is reasonably useful in a fight, but she shoots Charles in the spine and she winds up the butt of a joke that seems like it's trying to emulate Mad Men but the rest of the movie is so unapologetically modern that the 1960s setting feels like an afterthought, like they needed a reason to point nukes at each other.

Raven/Mystique is probably the most interesting female character, but she gets reduced as the plot goes on until she is A) naked and B) sleeps with Erik C) to distract from the fact that he and Charles are basically having the most epic bromance since Kirk and Spock. Or something. Actually, why the fuck did she sleep with him? Because he thinks its sexy that she's blue and Hank just rejected her, so her standards are lowered? I mean, not that Erik isn't good looking or anything, but there's something weird going on in the character motivations there and it seems to cheapen the character.

So what have we got here?

• A token.
• Fan service.
• A woman in a man's job, ultimately proven inferior and susceptible to emotions.
• A teenaged girl who isn't making rational decisions because the boy she liked called her ugly.

Bechdel test passing or not, this isn't actually looking all that good. We've basically got a bunch of stereotypes, and they're not really doing anyone any favors except maybe the fanboys. But at the same time, most stories don't work if you just switch the genders, because then they become all about the gender. Like, a story about a prince who goes on a quest during which he learns all kinds of things about himself and at the end rescues a princess can be about all the things he learns along the way. But if you switch it and make it about a princess who rescues a prince, all anyone is going to focus on is that it's now about a girl.

But moving on to Green Lantern.

I am not going to call this a great movie, but it's a fun movie and it was raining today.

Green Lantern has, like, two female characters. Maybe three because they made one of the masters of the universe a woman. I'm going to zero in on the love interest because, let's face it - here is a compelling character setup... who is of absolutely no relevance to the plot past the midpoint.

The character Carroll is a test pilot. The first time we see her, she's chewing out Hal for being late, and she's already suited up and ready to go. Awesome. She puts in some good moves out in the planes, but she doesn't win the day. But that's because this is character setup - Carroll plays by the rules, Hal showboats. Fair enough. And then she's a business genius - awesome! Good for her!

And then she nearly gets crushed by a bandstand, kidnapped by the villain, and is just totally absent from the final conflict. Wow. Did the writers just forget she existed? At least Mary Jane got to dangle over the Hudson. So, basically, this is a character who just kind of became useless and went away. And she had a promising setup, too.

There's kind of this line between "extraneous love interest" and "female character who happens to love," and Caroll hits the "extraneous" side hard. She serves no purpose to the plot. Her role at the beginning could just as well have been played by another male fighter pilot and it wouldn't have made a difference.

At the same time, though, it's stupid to take two characters who for the duration of the film have had little to no chemistry and throw them together for some misdirected moment of character development. Erik and Mystique? I mean I understood why she would go to him, but their conversation felt rushed and didn't come to any kind of character-appropriate conclusion. First he tells her she's too young, then he tells her he prefers her blue, and then he has sex with her. MAGNETO, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED YOUNG WOMEN SINCE 1962. Congratulations, you're a lech. The logical end to this scene would actually be him talking her out of his bed, instead of her talking him into it, but apparently when a girl sneaks into your bedroom and she's naked and she's blue and she wants someone to tell her she's pretty, the appropriate response is to have sex with her. Yes. Of course. And even though she's had interactions with Erik prior to this and they do have some sexual tension, he's never really built up as a viable romantic rival to Hank and asdfghjk this just really bugs me.

Superheroes and race will have to wait for another day because I wound up having a three-hour discussion about it with Lydia while I was typing up this post and it really does not fit here, but we basically figured out why making Peter Parker in to Peter Park doesn't work but rebuilding Spider-Man from scratch does.

The Oscars, Anti-feminism, and singing in the key of Awkward

Disclaimers first, I'm not a very good feminist. I'm part of this weird nineties generation of girls that has been brought up to think we can be whatever we can be without having to fight for it. Because when I was a little girl, Barbie could be a doctor, a teacher, an airline stewardess, and an astronaut. (Never mind that she was subliminally telling me that math was hard.) Because I was born post-Tereshkova, post-Sally Ride, post-Thatcher, pre-Palin. Because Lisa Simpson told me that the glass ceiling wasn't just invisible, it was imaginary. Because I was promised a post-gender world as a child, one where women wore shoulder pads to make themselves masculine and imposing, where they ran business meetings and answered clunky cell phones phones and wore leg warmers when they exercised and had feathered hair. (This is what I remember of my formative years in the 90s. I might have them mixed up with the 80s.) So I'm not a very good feminist. But I still know it when I see it.

So let's talk about the Oscars. First of all, I feel betrayed by Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SMARTER THAN THIS. You went to Harvard! You understand math that just looks like squiggles and lines to me! You are "one of the brightest stars of the generation" and I don't know who I'm quoting on that but I'm sure I'm quoting someone. Indie darling, blockbuster queen, gracefully transitioning from child phenom into leading lady. So you've just won an Oscar! How does it feel?

Great? Good. What are you going to do next?

Make a speech? Well, sure, everyone does. A really long, rambly speech? Again, everyone does. You're going to thank everyone who has helped you, ever, in advancing your career to this point? Great, good for you, I love a gracious winner!

You're going to thank your boyfriend for giving you "the most important role" of your life?

WHAT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

You are going to thank the dude for knocking you up, on national television, and belittle EVERYTHING you have done in your entire life in the process?

WHAT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

This is not me "hating on breeders." I have no problem with people who have kids. In fact, I think kids are great. I want kids someday! However I don't think that anyone should be defined, or allow themselves to be defined, or define themselves, by their ability to spawn. "Oh, yeah, I cured cancer, developed an interplanetary rocket that runs on cow pies, and published a novel. But I guess that's all peanuts now that I'm pregnant." Or this:

I don't think I would have cared if she'd said "my next great role" or something of the ilk. It was the phrase "most important role" that bothered me. We tend to criminalize women who put their careers ahead of their kids and put women who put their kids ahead of their careers up on pedestals. There doesn't seem to be any sort of happy medium between the two, at least not in society's general view of things, but I know from my own personal experience that there must be, because my mother managed to raise three intelligent, responsible members of society from birth to adulthood while still becoming a successful and influential member of her field. And while I'm sure she's proud of my siblings and I, and proud of herself for raising us, I don't think that the fact of us totally belittles every single thing that she's ever done professionally.

But moving on, because this isn't actually meant to be a blog post entirely about Natalie Portman and whether she did or did not totally invalidate every professional move she has ever made in one little Oscar speech. Let's talk about hosting! So this year's Oscar hosts were Anne Hathaway and James Franco... except, it was pretty clear that James Franco was blazed out of his mind and Anne Hathaway was carrying the show. In fact, it was almost less co-hosts and more Anne Hathaway, Oscar Host, and James Franco, her chaperone, requisite male body.

Just from the opening skit, it was really clear that this was Anne's show and everyone else just sort of lived there. She sings! She dances! She bitches at Hugh Jackman! She puts on a series of successively shinier dresses! Her enthusiasm introducing people is adorable! And James Franco just kind of squints at the lights like he's not sure what he's doing here because he's stoned out of his fucking mind. The only thing I got out of it was that the academy didn't trust a woman alone on stage to be able to keep the show moving, so they needed a guy to stand there and look manly.

My non-American friend who had never seen an Oscar telecast before pointed out, "But didn't Ellen [DeGeneres] host?"

The answer to this being that Ellen DeGeneres hosted the Oscars wearing a tux and sensible shoes, not a sparkly gown and heels. She's funny and manic and kind of butch. It's unthinkable to put Ellen DeGeneres in a sparkly dress and make her co-host with a man in a tux, but at the same time, if Anne Hathaway had put on a tux and sensible shoes and tried to host the Oscars by herself, it would have just been strange. She has to be in a sparkly dress, but I'm not sure that James Franco needs to stand beside her looking (very, very) confused and (very, very) pretty for the exercise to work. You'd think that a smart and self-assured woman could do the same job at a black tie event, regardless of whether she's wearing sequins or pants.

But what I get out of it is a statement that you cannot be both conventionally feminine and somehow emcee to a room of Hollywood's best and brightest, by yourself. The woman in the dress, with her coiffed hair and pretty necklaces, is weak. And this sort of goes back to the suit jackets with the shoulder pads from earlier - if you want power, you have to masculinize yourself.

Last point of the rant, Kathryn Bigelow. Kathryn Bigelow, you are a classy lady. Last year, all my friends and I cheered for you when you won Best Director. You were an inspiration. You had one of the prettiest dresses of the night. Everything I said earlier, about having to butch yourself up to gain influence? You defied it. You are a classy lady. So what was that fashion disaster you were wearing tonight ?

I know that my (and the rest of the country's, apparently) favorite pastime of snarking red carpet fashion is, on some level, fundamentally wrong, but you're so high profile, and it's because you're smart, and talented, and not because you're a pretty face who can look convincingly miserable. But if you're presenting an award to a bunch of middle-aged frat boys, in a category you took an upset win in last year, you'd better look amazing. And you didn't. And I was disappointed.

Okay, rant over.