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Caitlin Snow: It’s Time to Give ‘The Flash’s Overlooked Heroine Her Due

The decision to continually depict Caitlin as afraid of herself and her abilities is unsettling. Women are almost always taught to fear their own power, instead of embracing it or attempting to understand it. It’s sad to see that pattern repeating on a show that has so few leading women in the first place. … Caitlin’s journey shouldn’t be about whether she might turn into a monster, it should be about her becoming whole.

This guest post is written by Lacy Baugher.

There’s so much that The Flash does right. It’s probably the best example of a superhero series on TV right now, featuring fun stories, surprising twists, and strong, compelling relationships between its lead characters. It’s a joy to watch, most of the time. It has a ton of heart, and it generally remembers the most important thing about superhero stories: They’re supposed to be about hope. But for all the great things about it, The Flash has never particularly handled women well.

The show’s issues with how the writers have written superhero Barry Allen’s (Grant Gustin) girlfriend Iris West (Candice Patton) are already well documented elsewhere. She’s been frequently ignored in major stories, lied to by everyone she knows, and was the absolute last person to find out Barry’s secret identity. As a character, Iris has definitely had it pretty rough. But the way that The Flash often chooses to portray its other female lead is just as frustrating, and discussed far less frequently. Caitlin Snow has never gotten the storyline or attention she deserves, and it is well past time for that to change.

Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) is a brilliant doctor, a loyal friend and an integral part of Team Flash. She is brave, resourceful, and much more capable than she gets credit for; she’s been working to keep Central City safe since the show started, often at great personal sacrifice. Despite all this, she’s still the main character we know the least about, both on a personal and emotional level. The Flash is primarily about Barry Allen’s journey, so it makes sense that the show often prioritizes exploring his various levels of man pain. But we also get plenty of Joe’s man pain. And Cisco’s. And Wally’s. It’s possible this show has actually fleshed out more of recurring sometime-villain Leonard Snart’s inner life than they have Caitlin’s. And she’s one of the show’s female leads!

Instead, The Flash has struggled to give Caitlin any kind of storyline that isn’t somehow focused on the man in her life. She spent the better part of two seasons stuck in stories that almost solely revolved around her romantic relationship. Since the men in her life keep dying or disappearing, Caitlin has been trapped in a constant Greek tragedy of grief, as she’s buried or mourned two different love interests. When we first meet her, Caitlin is coping with the death of her fiancé Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell), killed during the particle accelerator explosion that kicked off the TV series. So, as viewers, we’ve actually never known Caitlin when she wasn’t shadowed by some terrible loss.

Of course, it turns out that Ronnie isn’t actually dead, and Caitlin’s season one storyline is focused on finding him, helping him, and then marrying him at the end of it. All of her actions and motivations are tied to him. When Ronnie dies again after their wedding, Caitlin is plunged back into her default state: grief. In season two, she was given another love interest, a Flash from an alternate version of Earth named Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears). Caitlin’s entire season two storyline revolved around Jay — helping him adjust to our Earth, searching for a cure for his mysterious speed illness, and falling in love with him. Sound familiar? It was. At least until Jay was revealed to be evil metahuman Zoom (voiced by Tony Todd), who then kidnapped Caitlin and held her hostage for multiple episodes, trying to force her to romantically accept him. Seriously, this girl cannot catch a break.

For a real sense of how Caitlin has been underused in virtually every way, compare her development to Cisco’s. Introduced at the same time as Caitlin, Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) was also a brilliant S.T.A.R. Labs employee. In the two and a half seasons since The Flash began, we have learned plenty about him beyond that, however. Cisco is a fully developed character with dreams, quirks, and fears. We learned about his childhood and met some of his family. He went on a season-long journey to discover and accept his powers as a metahuman. And while he has had a couple of romantic interests along the way, Cisco’s story has never been defined by them in nearly the same ways that Caitlin’s romantic relationships have defined her. We have learned little about her family, her past, or her personal desires, beyond how they connected to the man she was involved with at the time. On the rare occasions Caitlin got to be involved in a story that wasn’t about Ronnie or Jay, she was usually stuck taking care of one of the other Team Flash members who injured themselves in some way.

Until now.

Thanks to Barry’s creation of the alternate reality “Flashpoint,” Caitlin Snow has been transformed into a version of her comic book alter ego, the villainous Killer Frost. A metahuman with the power to manipulate frozen air, we have already seen one version of this character on The Flash, in the same alternate version of Earth that brought us Jay Garrick. In our reality, Caitlin’s powers slowly manifested themselves over time and she kept them hidden from her teammates out of fear that “Killer Frost” would take over against her will. Caitlin very clearly does not want to be like her evil self from Earth-2; she’s quite worried that she might hurt others with her abilities. In fact, Caitlin seems pretty determined to contain or, if possible, get rid of her powers, and is actively working toward both of those goals.

Theoretically, the Killer Frost twist should be a great development for Caitlin’s character, and in many ways it is. For the first time on The Flash, she has a story arc that is solely about her. Even though the writers have shoved yet another boyfriend in her plotline, Julian (Tom Felton) is very clearly a secondary feature in her story. (In fact, you could argue she’s only involved with him because she thinks he might be able to “cure” her.) Which is fantastic. Because it means that Caitlin finally gets the chance to be a real, three-dimensional person. Her behavior is wonderfully human; she’s selfish and aggravating and makes a lot of poor decisions. Her actions – bringing Julian on to the team, stealing a piece of the Philospher’s Stone – are incredibly self-serving. She’s lied and she’s manipulated people and she’s kept secrets. In short, Caitlin’s kind of a mess right now. And it’s awesome. We’ve never really gotten the chance to see her character like this before.

Unfortunately, The Flash has yet to really embrace the full potential of a metahuman Caitlin. While there were initial hints that she might learn to control her abilities and still maintain her sense of self, the show has recently doubled down on the idea that Caitlin deeply fears her powers. And she kind of has good reason to – because if she uses them, she basically becomes evil; not just a darker version of herself, which would be kind of interesting in its own right. No, instead, Caitlin basically just turns into Earth-2’s Killer Frost. It’s like she’s getting body snatched by someone from another universe. It appears as though she loses her real self completely.

This is problematic on multiple levels. For starters, no one else on The Flash is affected by their powers in a way that alters their core character in this way and there’s been no clear explanation as to why. (After all, Cisco’s Earth-2 doppelganger was also pretty evil. And he’s still fine whenever he “vibes” something.) Plus, the decision to continually depict Caitlin as afraid of herself and her abilities is unsettling. Women are almost always taught to fear their own power, instead of embracing it or attempting to understand it. It’s sad to see that pattern repeating on a show that has so few leading women in the first place.

Caitlin’s journey – whether she ultimately keeps her powers or not – should be about figuring where she fits within Team Flash, within her family, and within her own idea of herself. We have seen Caitlin unnerved by the darkness inside her. She has issues with her mother and even occasionally with members of her own team. She’s certainly lost enough to want to burn the world down twice over. But she’s never really gotten the chance to deal with any of those issues on-screen in a significant way. This Killer Frost arc offers a perfect opportunity for her to finally do so. Caitlin’s journey shouldn’t be about whether she might turn into a monster, it should be about her becoming whole.

While Caitlin has currently become her evil alter ego – a near-death experience necessitated using her ice powers to save her life – it seems unlikely that The Flash will turn her into a full-fledged villain for keeps. (Especially since we’ve already seen evidence that Caitlin is capable of controlling her abilities herself.) Whether this means she will ultimately lose her powers or come to accept them remains unclear. Maybe Julian will find a metahuman “cure.” Maybe Caitlin will end up fighting beside Barry, after she comes back to herself. Maybe Killer Frost really is here to stay. This story could go a lot of ways. But, no matter what happens, it should be about the person that Caitlin herself chooses to be. And The Flash needs to be brave enough to tell the kind of story that gives her that choice.

Lacy Baugher is a digital media strategist by day, and a lover of all things geeky all of the time. Her major interests include British period dramas, complex ladies in superhero stories, and the righteousness of Sansa Stark’s destiny as Queen of the North. Stop by and say hello on Twitter at @LacyMB.

‘Logan’: On Death and Dying. And Mutants.

‘Logan’ is a real film. In fact, it’s more real than any comic book superhero movie has business being. … It is a beautifully crafted film. If you still think that comic books and their offspring are incapable of being high art, I urge you to give it a chance.

Written by Andrea Morgan.

Have you ever cared for someone close to you as they were dying, slowly, from some dread disease? I have. It’s terrifying, and terrible. The anticipated grief, the pure sadness that comes with seeing someone you love torn down piece by piece, is often superseded by guilt. Caretaking is dirty, annoying work. By the hundredth time you’ve wiped someone else’s ass, you hate it, they hate it, and you know that they know that you hate it. You resent their illness, as if it was a punishment unjustly inflicted upon you as a result of their moral failings. But you know this isn’t true, so you feel guilty.

This is some real bleak shit.

Logan is a real film. In fact, it’s more real than any comic book superhero movie has business being. It opens with a semi-dystopian Southwestern scene filled with some rather graphic (and, admittedly, satisfying) violence, but then slides effortlessly into mutated human drama as the titular character (played by Hugh Jackman) heads south of the border to an appropriately-dusty abandoned power station. There, Logan, and another mutant, Caliban (Stephen Merchant), are caring for Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), aka Professor X, who is suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s. Logan, ill himself and looking much more his 100-plus years than in the previous X-Men films, houses Xavier inside of a toppled water tower. It’s a gorgeous and suggestive set piece, both expansive and confining, rusted and full of tiny holes backlit by the desert sun.

Hugh Jackman is excellent, but here, and throughout the film, Patrick Stewart is transcendent. His depiction of illness is absolutely authentic, as is the filial love between Logan and Xavier established through subtle tones, looks, and physical displays of vulnerability and sacrifice. That love shines brightly though the bitterness and pain. I came to the film already knowing that Stewart is one of the greats, but his performance still wrecked me like I was unprepared. More than once, I wept. During a Marvel movie.

We learn that Logan is a participant in the gig economy, working as a limo driver ferrying a stream of evermore repugnant white people to earn money to acquire pharmaceuticals. These drugs are needed to counter some of the more extreme manifestations of Xavier’s illness. During this setup, Logan encounters the film’s primary baddie, Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), who channels his best Val-Kilmer-as-Doc-Holliday — and does a damn fine job of it. Logan also meets Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez), who begs Logan to take her adolescent daughter, Laura (Dafne Keen), to a safe haven in North Dakota.

Of course, Laura is not just some random girl. Xavier clocks her immediately as a mutant, which is strange, because there aren’t any mutants anymore. They’ve been hunted down and killed as part of a government-sanctioned pogrom; no new mutants have been born in years. Logan reluctantly agrees to escort Laura, but Pierce and his crew of delicious hipster cyborg mercenaries (seriously, these guys use their blood money to buy craft IPAs and beard wax) have other ideas.

There is a fight, and Laura is outed as a Little Miss Badass. This trope, where a young girl, often a waif, displays combat skills incongruent with her small size and our culture’s gendered expectations, is not new. But Keen’s take on it is truly something to behold. Unlike similar characters, say Firefly’s River Tam (Summer Glau), who round out their episodic violence with adorableness and mercy, Laura is all hard, sharp, pointy bits. The ferocity that Keen brings to the role, coupled with John Mathieson’s unflinching camera work, James Mangold’s direction, and the story’s frequent violence, give the viewer plenty of opportunities to contemplate their discomfort at seeing an adolescent girl kill.

At times, Laura seems like a spiritual pair, or maybe predecessor, to Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. The parallels don’t stop there. Cormac McCarthy’s pitiless fatalism, and the Coen Brother’s reverence for the American West shown in No Country for Old Men (2007), clearly influenced Logan’s story and feel.

While there are several women with speaking parts, Laura is the only female character to be given much of an arc. Two older women, both mothers, are murdered by the bad guys to help establish their evil bona fides, and to perpetuate the film’s nihilistic aesthetic.

While Logan is set in 2029, the film is very much planted in the present. Things that concern us today, like rapid technological advancement (think genetic engineering, militarized drones, and driverless vehicles), and issues that consume us today, like authoritarianism, bigotry, and immigration policy, are checked. In fact, both the southern and northern borders figure largely in the story. Logan traverses a checkpoint, ominously crowded with armed Border Patrol agents, in his daily travels into Texas. Gabriela and Laura make the long journey from Mexico City to El Paso, with Gabriela receiving a painful wound while crossing the Wall. Later, Logan, Laura, and Xavier, an unconventional family to say the least, set off on a quest for a place literally called “Eden,” from where Laura and a group of young mutants of color will try to cross into Canada to escape persecution by the U.S. Government.

You are right to expect that Laura and company don’t have an uneventful road trip. People, good and bad, die, and often. As we watch the story unfold its familiar form against the backdrop of rural America, we are forced to face our own fears of regret, death, and of a future filled with cold tech and colder government.

Logan is a beautifully crafted film. If you still think that comic books and their offspring are incapable of being high art, I urge you to give it a chance.

Andrea Morgan is a Baltimorean currently living in Denver. A Bitch Flicks staff writer, they write about film and television. Andrea is a queer person of color, and their perspective stems from a life spent on the boundaries of race, class, and gender. Andrea’s writing has also appeared on The Bilerico Project and The Rainbow Hub.

How ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Crystallizes the Problems with Marvel Movies

I realized that while I had ultimately enjoyed ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ it exemplified the worst tendency of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — namely, the avoidance of dramatic risk and legitimate emotional stakes in order to create and maintain a sense of delight and entertaining status quo.

This guest post written by Deborah Krieger appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. | Spoilers ahead.

Recently I was discussing Captain America: Civil War with a friend, when he brought up the treatment of the character of T’Challa in the narrative of the film. Namely, he pointed out that the three Black male characters in the film — James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) — all serve comic relief purposes, fulfilling the stereotype of the wisecracking Black best friend. While I acknowledged that Rhodey and Sam — especially Sam — bore traces of this characterization, I was surprised that he viewed T’Challa in the same vein. After seeing the film, one of the aspects that stood out for me was Chadwick Boseman’s performance as the Black Panther, and how it brought an unexpected gravity to the proceedings of the film, and in a sense, he had the most complete character arc and greatest sense of closure in the film. Yet the more I thought about what my friend had pointed out, the more I realized that he was ultimately right: while some characters treated T’Challa with the respect his role as the King of Wakanda required (namely, Natasha), for the most part, he was a bit of a sore thumb in the way he interacted with the other characters, and tonally did not fit within the overall atmosphere of Captain America: Civil War.

Continuing this line of thought, I realized that while I had ultimately enjoyed Captain America: Civil War, it exemplified the worst tendency of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — namely, the avoidance of dramatic risk and legitimate emotional stakes in order to create and maintain a sense of delight and entertaining status quo. Upon seeing the highly-overrated Doctor Strange earlier this fall, this assessment was ultimately cemented, but I want to focus specifically on the faults of Captain America: Civil War in terms of how the Marvel Cinematic Universe plays it safe to a fault, and how the film suffers as a result.

Insufficient Stakes

When I was developing my argument for this piece, I kept coming back to the incredible commentary by my favorite film writer, Film Crit Hulk (I’m totally serious) about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In particular, Film Crit Hulk says of The Force Awakens (de-capitalized for easier reading):

“When discussing the film J.J. openly admitted that there was a popular mantra they used while crafting The Force Awakens, where they would stop frequently and ask themselves:

‘Is this delightful?’

“Which Hulk can certainly understand, for there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be delightful, nor with an audience wanting to consume something delightful… But boy howdy did the filmmakers go full-tilt in that aim and that aim alone. To the point that it seems they looked at every moment and worked backwards from the intended result.

“… And they never, ever cared if it was earned.”

When thinking about Captain America: Civil War, Film Crit Hulk’s point kept coming back to me as something that made a lot of sense about certain sequences in the movie; in particular, the much-vaunted (and extremely well-paced and choreographed) tarmac fight, when Team Cap and Team Iron Man are assembled and deliver the big fight every trailer and poster for this film promised. And it certainly is “delightful” to watch how smaller clusters within each team branch off to fight one another at varying points, how the action cuts deftly and swiftly from moment to moment: Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and Sam tackling the excitable, downright naive Peter Parker (Tom Holland) inside the terminal; Clint (Jeremy Renner) fighting both T’Challa and Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) at various points with both quips and arrows; Scott (Paul Rudd) flitting around inside Tony’s (Robert Downey Jr.) suit in his ant-size form, et cetera. Yet what should be an actual dramatic and tense sequence is undermined by the need for nearly every character to make jokes and self-referential comments, and as a result, we really don’t care what happens in this fight until Rhodes ends up its only true victim (more on that aspect later). Clint and Natasha’s exchange during the fight perfectly exemplifies the total lack of stakes:

NATASHA: “We’re still friends, rights?”

CLINT: “Depends how hard you hit me.”

Where is the danger for these two clearly-established fast friends who find themselves on opposite sides of an incredibly important and divisive conflict? Why isn’t there any risk or sense of worry that this issue might tear them apart? Even the immediate lead-up to this ultimate showdown is lacking in actual drama, opting instead to pander to the audience expectations that this scene is going to be cool and fun, which it really, really shouldn’t be. The half-hearted delivery of Steve’s (Chris Evans) attempt to convince Tony that Bucky was framed actually demonstrates a poor acting choice by Evans, and fails to match Robert Downey Jr.’s evident pain and desperation in trying to convince Steve to back down one last time.

Over the course of the fight, I kept finding myself “delighted,” to use J.J. Abrams’ word, but I wasn’t actually concerned that any of the characters were going to become a casualty of this conflict. Indeed, this entire sequence logically doesn’t even need to exist: Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), who has telekinetic powers, could have used her gift to freeze Team Iron Man in place, allowing Steve and Bucky to get to the jet while the rest of Team Cap handled Vision (Paul Bettany), whose powers (and personality) still don’t really have much definition. In order to satisfy the studio and fan demands for this ultimate Avenger versus Avenger fight, it seems, internal continuity and danger had to exit the equation.

Character (or Lack Thereof) Issues

In Marvel’s infinite quest to match and best DC films, what once was going to be a proper sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (still the best MCU film) was turned into a superhero-vs-superhero film, likely to compete with the then-upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film added more and more characters and gave them each important little moments of characterization and interaction, but managed to, as many have pointed out, turn Civil War into an Avengers story rather than a Captain America one. So while Civil War has been rightfully praised for introducing T’Challa and the third iteration of Peter Parker, it ultimately gave Steve’s and Bucky’s story short shrift, as well as Peggy Carter’s (Haley Atwell) passing and really anything to do with Sam Wilson — and let’s not forget Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), sadly reduced to a love interest, replete with a kiss absolutely no one in the theater was rooting for when I saw it. According to Emily VanCamp, the characters would spend Civil War “getting to know each other” — but what we got was a kiss that was totally unearned and completely lacking in chemistry, simply because we didn’t get much of Sharon and Steve getting to know one another. Additionally, the comics have turned Steve into a deep-cover Hydra agent and Steve has had more chemistry over the films with Bucky, Sam, or Tony, and it ultimately leaves a bad taste in my mouth: Marvel is more okay with having a Nazi Cap than a potentially bisexual Cap (who makes out with his old love interest’s niece for good measure).

Furthermore, Civil War does its titular hero a disservice by focusing so much on Tony Stark and his emotional journey at the cost of Steve’s own development. Take the crucial scene in which Tony learns that Bucky killed his parents. Somehow in Steve’s journey chasing down Bucky, he learned, off-screen, that Bucky killed his old friend Howard and Tony’s mother Maria. But we are robbed of Steve’s reaction to this news, as the film completely shifts its focus to how this secret affects Tony. When, exactly, did Steve learn this terrible truth, and when did he decide to keep it from Tony? It is, frankly, a lazy writing solution to what could have been a much more affecting climax of the film: say, for instance, that Tony and Steve both see the video of Bucky killing the Starks at the same time. Then not only would we get a glimpse at how Steve, the title character of this movie, must choose between defending Bucky or standing with Tony; additionally, if Steve and Tony find out at the same time, but Steve still chooses Bucky, that would have actually been more much more dramatic and affecting, because it would have allowed Steve to have to make this choice — this choice that defines the whole conflict of the film. Tony would still have been completely heartbroken and upset beyond all reason, but at Steve’s failure to choose his side rather than some off-screen moment where Steve decided not to tell Tony this truth we never saw Steve actually learn properly. But it seems that after the tarmac fight, Captain America: Civil War becomes, essentially, Iron Man 4, and forgets who its actual protagonist is.

The friend with whom I discussed T’Challa, and who ultimately prompted this essay, made this salient point about the way Captain America: Civil War: “His behavior played out tropes of this exotic figure doing strange/elusive things in a way that makes audiences entertained.” He also had this further general critique of the Black characters in Civil War as a whole: “The three Black characters are heavily reduced to comic functions.” These critiques are important: T’Challa’s seriousness and lack of witty quips at times makes him out to be from a different film entirely, occasionally framing him and his determined attitude as humorous, and the shroud of mystery around the whole character could be seen as an exoticizing touch. But the larger problem with the Black characters in this movie can be seen in the storylines (or lack thereof) of Sam Wilson and James Rhodes.

At least T’Challa has his own narrative and character arc; Sam, introduced in The Winter Soldier as a thoughtful ex-soldier who shares the pain of loss and the uselessness of civilian life with Steve, is in this movie to support Steve and make funny jokes the entire time, playing into the trope of the wisecracking Black sidekick friend (see: Frozone in The Incredibles). In a world in which the third Captain America movie didn’t have the Civil War plotline, we might have actually learned a little more about Sam Wilson, and his admittedly-entertaining antagonistic buddy relationship with Bucky would have had more prominence. But Sam is one of the characters from the Cap side of things, as are Bucky and Steve himself, who loses out by following this plotline.

Rhodey also performs the wisecracking friend role for Tony Stark, but also is the sole casualty of the tarmac battle — he is partially paralyzed — which is used not to develop Rhodey’s character or even give him something to do, but to create pain for Tony and incentive for him to stop Steve. Indeed, Sam’s involvement in Rhodey’s injury might have given both of these characters something more to chew on, as Sam lost his best friend to a similar kind of accident, but instead of focusing on this kind of aftermath, Rhodey’s suffering functions as motivation for Tony, who already has three-plus movies full of development and action. Where was the thematic parallel between Rhodey and Bucky, who both have military experience, similar ride-or-die relationships with their marquee-name best friends, and are both named “James”? (Where was the “Martha” moment in the final battle?!)

Lastly, the lack of an existing friendship between Steve and Tony for Civil War to destroy, makes the fact that these two square off not exactly emotionally fraught. After all, Tony and Steve, in the context of the MCU, have never actually been good friends, spending most of their interactions in the Avengers movies bickering and clashing with one another. While many fans read into these moments in shippy ways, textually, there’s no weight to Tony’s “so was I” comment: they never actually seemed to like each other, which is largely due to mischaracterization in both Avengers films, courtesy of Joss Whedon. But somehow X-Men: First Class managed to create an incredibly significant and loving friendship between Erik and Charles in just one film, only to exhaust audiences’ tear ducts at the end of the movie. But the lack of care taken with developing the rapport between Tony and Steve means that their falling-out just repeats earlier conflicts between these two, rather than actually creating something meaningful and sad.

Also, there are three women in this film with any significant screen time and they are all white. Although Florence Kasumba, as a member of the Dora Milaje, is a scene-stealer delivering the line, “Move or you will be moved.” Does Captain America: Civil War even pass the Bechdel test? Does Wanda’s and Natasha’s brief exchange about undercover work on the Lagos mission even count? Why doesn’t Natasha get more to do as Steve’s other new close friend??

Tone Problems, and What They Mean for the Future of the MCU

After a string of uniformly successful films, Marvel now has a massive problem as it plans to (hopefully) retire Steve and Tony and introduce new heroes like Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Doctor Strange. Namely, there’s so little tone variation among characters and films that when serious characters like Black Panther are introduced, they stick out like sore thumbs. With the exception of Black Panther and Tony, Steve, and maybe Natasha, pretty much every character in Civil War is the comic relief, particularly Peter and Scott, but also Clint and Vision. Nearly every single character in these movies has the same habit of throwing out one-liners in the middle of fight scenes, mingled with references to popular culture that will probably get dated in ten years. (Doctor Strange, which relies on Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) referencing Adele and Beyoncé, is a particularly bad offender). There isn’t any sense of trying to create a story that will stand on its own merits. Instead, people come out remembering the jokes and how cool the battles were; a trend that is generally true for all MCU films (especially Avengers, Ant-Man, and Thor). In contrast, Fox Studios’ X-Men movies, X-Men and X2: X-Men United, focus on characterization and the place of mutants within society and still hold up over a decade later. The scene in X2 where Bobby’s mutant “coming-out” scene poignantly resembles a painful coming out of the closet for LGBTQ people, and so it actually matters. Who is going to remember Ant-Man in ten years, despite Paul Rudd being a national treasure worthy of protection by Nic Cage?

In short, while Captain America: Civil War, is a competent, largely well-acted film, it’s far enough in the studio mold of the MCU that it is a major example of where the cracks are beginning to show. It presents the MCU with a major decision to make: will the next phase take T’Challa as its cue and focus on narratives with a more dramatic, serious tone, or will they all be light, pseudo-intellectual Doctor Strange clones (who is in turn a knockoff of Tony Stark in these movies)? “With great power comes great responsibility,” and with the cultural cachet and economic influence of the MCU, they arguably have the responsibility to do better.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Scarlet Witch and Kitty Pryde: Erased Jewish Superheroines

Why Black Widow Is the “Realest” Superheroine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Yes, Even After All Those Tropes)

Why Scarlet Witch May Be the Future of Women in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Deborah Krieger is a senior at Swarthmore College, studying art history, film and media studies, and German. She has written for Hyperallergic, Hooligan Magazine, the Northwestern Art Review, The Stake, and Title Magazine. She also runs her own art blog, I On the Arts, and curates her life in pictures @Debonthearts on Instagram.

Privilege Undermines Disney’s ‘Gargoyles’ Attempts to Explore Oppression

Yet ‘Gargoyles’ is also a fantastic showcase of what can happen when creators possessing privilege write stories about the oppressed without their input. … ‘Gargoyles,’ with its “protecting a world that hates and fears them and has been fairly successful in enacting their global genocide” premise, seeks to be about marginalized peoples. At the same time, it consistently centers and prioritizes the lives of the privileged over those of the oppressed, and places the burden of obtaining justice on the latter.

This guest post written by Ian Pérez appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

[Trigger Warning: Discussion of allegorical rape]

The Disney animated series Gargoyles, created by Greg Weisman (The Spectacular Spider-Man, Young Justice) is often noted for being progressive in an industry that often was even less so than it is now. Debuting in 1994, it expressed this primarily via its co-protagonist Elisa Maza (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), the Black, Native detective for the NYPD who served as the secret-keeper, partner, best friend, and love interest to gargoyle-out-of-time Goliath (Keith David) decades before Sleepy Hollow raised our hopes and shattered our hearts with Abbie Mills.

Elisa wasn’t just a fantastic character in her own right, although she certainly was that. A large part of what made her special was that she was not dropped into the world of Gargoyles alone and contextless to be an accent in a white narrative. She has a family, whose members all take part in the story — her father, Peter (Michael Horse), who belongs to the Hopi nation and like Elisa works for the NYPD; Diane (Nichelle Nichols), her mother, an academic who we eventually see in Nigeria, connecting with her roots; and siblings Derek (Rocky Carroll), who flies helicopters for the NYPD (being a cop is in the Maza blood) and Beth, off in college. In short, thought was placed into this. While Elisa was not conceptualized with her canonical heritage in mind, once established, the writers did not shy away from it, and it seems on its own like solid evidence that Weisman, to some degree, gets the importance of diversity and inclusivity.

Yet Gargoyles is also a fantastic showcase of what can happen when creators possessing privilege write stories about the oppressed without their input. Weisman and his staff had good intentions, and yet that didn’t stop them from writing “Heritage,” a perennial contender for the award of Most Racist Story That Tried Not to Be Racist (Television). In the episode, Elisa essentially tells the chief of a failing First Nation village, whom she’s only just met, that he’s performing his identity wrong, and is proven correct by the narrative. While that episode is an outlier, it is not alone — despite the show’s attempts to be about oppression and about being the Other, it falls down in multiple and consistent ways featuring more than one episode where the message they wish to send is not the message they are actually sending.

The first of these episodes is “Revelations,” an episode focusing on Matt Bluestone (Tom Wilson), who is Elisa’s partner on the force and a white man. A conspiracy theorist, his private investigation into the Illuminati society leads him to discover that Elisa has been lying to him as part of her attempts to keep the gargoyles’ existence from him. Incensed, he one night insists on driving Elisa’s car (something she normally never allows) and then threatens to send it careening over a cliff with them in it unless she tells him the truth. The gambit works and Elisa not only spills, but actually apologizes for keeping the secret. Matt apologizes for threatening her and the episode acts as if the two offenses were somehow equivalent, and as if both characters are equally worthy of sympathy.

It’s entirely possible Matt’s threat was just a bluff, that Elisa was never really in danger; she takes control before tragedy can strike, so we can’t know. It doesn’t really matter; he threatened her. The way the episode shoves it under the rug indicates that his concerns, priorities, and feelings are more important than Elisa’s. Matt doesn’t need to accept Elisa’s secret-keeping, despite the fact that she has every right to keep secrets from him; Elisa will have to accept that she’s partners with a man who feels entitled to threaten her, and the show won’t even allow her to be uncomfortable or fearful about it. She just has to be the better person and forgive him.

This sort of false equivalency is part of a pattern for Gargoyles. Elisa is just as bad as Matt because she kept a secret. As seen in the episode “Shadows of the Past,” the would-be ally and actual traitor responsible for the death of Goliath’s clan gets to move on to the afterlife because he saved Goliath that one time, minutes after abandoning his own attempts to kill the gargoyle.

In another storyline, a rapist gets to get back together with his ex because he feels really, really bad about raping her. Okay, so it’s not technically rape, although there are certainly enough parallels in “Mark of the Panther” to make the comparison inevitable. The episode focuses on Tea (Roxanne Beckford), a Nigerian villager who breaks up with her boyfriend Fara Maku (Don Reed) because she wishes to start a new life in the capital. Consequently, Fara Maku seeks and finds Anansi (LeVar Burton), the trickster spider god, and implores it to turn him into a were-panther, so that he may then turn her into a were-panther, forcing her to remain and binding her to him. Granted this boon, Fara Maku attacks Tea and marks her, causing her to uncontrollably take feline form during moments of great emotional stress. Furious, frustrated, and ashamed, she becomes a poacher and returns to her village to hunt down panthers, and it is then that she discovers the truth. Upon doing so, Tea lays the blame for everything not on Fara Maku, but on Anansi, and after defeating the trickster god (with the help of the gargoyles and Elisa, who are also in this episode) both were-panthers decide that, as penance for what they’ve done, they should get back together and use their powers to protect the jungle. Note that for Tea, “what they’ve done” is “illegally hunt animals” and “attempt to kill the man who ruined her life in a situation where justice by legal means is impossible” (and all but impossible, had it been an actual rape) while for Fara Maku, it’s “violate his ex in a way that prevents her from having the life she wanted so that she would stay with him.” The show insists that these are equivalent. The show is wrong.

One could, if one wanted to, surmise that Gargoyles — in presenting Matt Bluestone and Fara Maku’s actions as the result of frustration and ignorance rather than malice and entitlement — is attempting to express that things are not always simple and that good people can do harm. If that is the case, it misses the mark entirely. What it does instead is normalize the male characters’ entitlement, obfuscate the misogyny behind it, and then reward the characters with what they wanted in the first place. In the face of injustice, women’s — Black women’s, at that — only recourse is to forgive and be okay with things because, hey, at least the men feel bad about what they’ve done. Their lives, safety, and comfort are secondary.

Gargoyles, with its “protecting a world that hates and fears them and has been fairly successful in enacting their global genocide” premise, seeks to be about marginalized peoples. At the same time, it consistently centers and prioritizes the lives of the privileged over those of the oppressed, and places the burden of obtaining justice on the latter. It is on Elisa to de-escalate the situation by giving Matt what he wants. It is on Tea to get used to circumstances which she never asked for, and to be okay with living the life Fara Maku wanted for her. More generally, it is on the gargoyles to continuously be the better species, until humanity decides that it is willing to treat them like people.

Perhaps no one exemplifies how the writers reward privilege better than David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes). An Unscrupulous Billionaire™, he purchases the castle the gargoyles lived on and protected and breaks the spell that has kept them frozen in stone for a thousand years. He acts as their benefactor, but soon enough it becomes clear that his motives are not altruistic. What he actually wants is to have superhuman servants, and he’s willing to lie and manipulate the gargoyles in order to keep them under his thumb, or kill them if he cannot. Thanks to Elisa, Goliath and clan see the truth about who Xanatos is and leave him behind, although the plutocrat will remain one of their two core enemies, enacting multiple plots against them and Elisa — even hiring her brother Derek as his bodyguard so that he can then “accidentally” and permanently mutate him into a winged cat creature. (Derek, too, is forced to accept this turn of events.)

Eventually, though, Xanatos’ attitude towards the gargoyles softens, most notably after they help him save Manhattan from a spell that turned every person in it to stone — a spell whose execution he facilitated, if accidentally — and then even more so after the gargoyles prevent his son from being taken by the Faerie King Oberon, after which Xanatos considers himself to be in the gargoyles’ debt. Not long after, after the gargoyles’ second home is destroyed by gargoyle hunters, Xanatos invites his former enemies to return to their first one, in the process getting the super-human guardians he always wanted. He’s still the same bastard he always was; he’s just now the gargoyles’ bastard. (He is a fan favorite. He used to be one of mine.)

With the proper context, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem: a world in which the people with the most privilege are the ones who win most often, and where the underprivileged must often make moral compromises in order to survive is, disappointingly, an accurate representation of the one we actually live in. However, the show’s worldview is incomplete and one-sided. It delegitimizes anger as a response to injustice — the only gargoyle who is consistently angry at human’s genocidal instincts and consistently questions gargoyles’ protective instincts is the villain, Demona (Marina Sirtis), and initially the series’ only female gargoyle. The series argues that marginalized peoples will always be alright, in the end, eliminating the need for reparations or actual change: Matt is the perfect partner after learning the secret; Derek will eventually find a measure of contentedness, as will the gargoyles; we have no idea what happens to Tea, but she is presumably not again being abused by her former attacker. This is not actually the case in real life: being the better people and turning the other cheek has not, traditionally, been a recipe for large-scale social change. The show might have understood this, with more women and people of color behind the scenes.

I first began watching Gargoyles during college, long after the series had ended and I’d stopped being its target audience. It is in many ways my Buffy the Vampire Slayer, catching my attention with its character relationships and cleverness and what was then an attractive version of social consciousness. Like with Buffy, it took time for its limits to become apparent. My love for the series has survived a thorough examination of its flaws, although now it becomes impossible to praise it as I may have once done. Elisa is still fantastic, sure, and I love her to pieces; but the series is now also largely a reminder of how little things have changed since 1994 and how good intentions aren’t enough.

Years after its cancellation, Gargoyles got resurrected in comic book form in 2006, continuing Goliath and his clan’s adventures under the hand of their creator. It is in some ways an improvement, reflecting an increased understanding of the importance of diversity in world-building. In other ways, however, it is still problematic in the same places. Its first original story has Xanatos invite the gargoyles to a Halloween party at his castle, ostensibly as a way for the gargoyles to befriend the New York City elite in a safe environment at a time when anti-gargoyle sentiment has spiked. The gargoyles, still acclimatizing to their new situation, are nothing less than over the moon about this. Elisa, who has been invited to the party independently from the gargoyles, also attends, in costume and with a date. If she has reservations about attending a party hosted by the person who destroyed his brother’s life, and who has neither apologized or attempted to mitigate the harm he has caused, they remain unsaid. It, too, shall pass.

Ian Pérez is a Puerto Rico-based translator, editor, and writer currently working on doing at least one of those professionally. He thinks a lot about Gargoyles and writes about it at Monsters of New York and about other things, which he writes about at Chasing Sheep. He is also @DoKnowButchie on Twitter.

The Ironically Iconic ‘Wonder Woman’

With D.C. superheroine Wonder Woman recently named UN honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls and her forthcoming feature film building hype, her profile could hardly be higher as a feminist symbol. Yet Wonder Woman, who the U.N. hopes will focus attention on women’s “participation and leadership,” is an image entirely created by men. She represents, ironically enough, male domination of the struggle against male domination. … Far from a step forward, ‘Wonder Woman’ is worse than more simply offensive chauvinism, because it insidiously exploits the female audience’s desire to identify with Wonder Woman’s empowerment.

Written by staff writer Brigit McCone, this post appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

William Moulton Marston, who created the ironically iconic Wonder Woman, was an outspoken male feminist who seduced his own student, Olive Byrne, and used her as unpaid domestic labor while living off his feminist wife’s (Elizabeth Holloway Marston) wages. Though feminist cartoonist Lou Rogers has been identified as an inspiration for Wonder Woman’s imagery, it was the male cartoonist Harry G. Peter that Marston selected to draw her adventures. Marston’s disconnect, between the theory and practice of female autonomy, seems reflected in his comic strip’s disconnect between its ideal woman of “Paradise Island” and the real world; it was left to Alice Marble to write a “Wonder Women of History” feature that linked Wonder Woman to the historical achievements of women.

After Marston’s death, a takeover bid by his widow Elizabeth Holloway Marston was snubbed by D.C. Comics, and the strip was handed instead to the sexist stewardship of writer Robert Kanigher, who demoted Wonder Woman from warrior and presidential candidate to babysitter and love advice columnist. Following journalist/activist Gloria Steinem’s promotion of the “Original Wonder Woman” as a feminist icon, a television series — The New Original Wonder Woman (later shortened to Wonder Woman) — was developed by writer Stanley Ralph Ross and producer Douglas S. Cramer (Dynasty).

On his DVD commentary to the pilot, Cramer seems defensively aware of the disconnect between Wonder Woman’s fictional autonomy and her lack of actual female authorship:

“There were very, very few women on the set. The hair, the make-up and the clothes were all done by men… we never had a woman director. There weren’t many women directors out there in those days.”

Yet, back in 1916, Grace Cunard wrote, directed, and starred in the popular adventure serial The Purple Mask, as the swashbuckling Purple Mask who “robbed from the greedy to give to the needy.” Though producer Cramer presents Wonder Woman as progress, claiming, “There really were not a lot of women that were carrying their own shows, and after Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman, that’s when Charlie’s Angels was cast,” it is important to recognize that it is a step backward from a time when Grace Cunard and Alice Guy wrote and directed female action heroes. Are the subtly undermining distortions of a pacifying male-authored feminism not more harmful than an open chauvinism that provokes resistance? Though D.C. courted women directors for their Wonder Woman movie and hired Patty Jenkins, the departure of Michelle MacLaren over “creative differences” suggests that the female director has only limited control. Certainly, she is working within an established legacy that women have not created. Should such semi-liberated sex symbols really be celebrated as ambassadors and stepping-stones to female authorship?

“All Our Hopes Are Pinned Upon You” — Symbolism of the Super-Smurfette

The opening season of Wonder Woman — starring Lynda Carter in the superhero role — is set during World War II, an era of immense importance for women’s rights. While men fought on the frontlines, the women exemplified by Rosie the Riveter proved that they were capable of excelling even in heavy industry, and that factories could accommodate their childcare needs if motivated to do so, with women also serving in military units such as WAVES and WACS. World War II, then, offers Wonder Woman an unparalleled opportunity to ally her efforts with the ongoing triumphs of women across America. Instead, the show is at pains to reduce all other female characters to idiots (the ableist slur “idiot” here describes characters who are themselves stereotypical, ableist caricatures) or deviousness.

In the pilot episode, the on-screen representative of WACS is Marcia (Stella Stevens), depicted as a stereotypically vacant blonde and openly sexual flirt, who reacts to the news that Nazis are planning to bomb the continental U.S. with: “Will that be all, Steve? I have a chiropodist’s appointment this afternoon.” The revelation that Marcia is a Nazi double-agent seems calculated to authorize the beating of this stereotype of brainless blonde sluttishness (again, “slut” here refers to characters negatively depicted as caricatures of devious promiscuity). Cramer hails the pilot’s extended catfight as “a historic moment on television, ’cause I can’t remember any other moments with women fighting women,” citing it as inspiration for equally popular catfights on Dynasty. Other antagonists in the pilot include an older lady with a machine gun and a female taxi driver, while there are no female allies. In later episodes, WACS will be represented by Etta Candy (a feisty ally in the source comics), now a rolling-eyed fool whose incompetence and eating habits are presented as comic relief. Meanwhile, Steve Trevor’s continuous sexist quips are endorsed by Diana’s sighing that he is a “perfect gentleman.”

Wonder Woman constantly struggles to “balance” their positive portrayal of Wonder Woman by viciously misogynistic portraits of all remaining women. The result implies that women have failed to achieve equality only because of their own deviousness or foolishness. Wonder Woman’s heroism is also marked by unattainably extreme perfection, which Lynda Carter admits in her commentary to being concerned by: “People want to be her and they want to be able to identify, and if she’s too perfect…” All women who fail to meet Wonder Woman’s punishing standards are reduced to the level of the catty and unlikable chorus of girls dismissed as “a herd of sheep” in “Miss G.I. Dreamgirl.” Wonder Woman is therefore the ultimate Super-Smurfette, a living embodiment of the Smurfette Principle‘s urge to isolate female achievement. The fact that a television show which encourages girls to feel mocking contempt for all of its female characters, apart from a literal Amazonian goddess, should be hailed as a feminist milestone is as ludicrous as it is tragic.

Margaret Armen, the only woman credited with writing an episode in the first season, introduced the coolly intelligent, highly competent, and villainous Baroness von Gunther as Nazi antagonist. Though she too has a climactic catfight with Wonder Woman, she is notable for not embodying a stereotype of female incompetence or sexual promiscuity. Compare the male-authored episode “Fausta: the Nazi Wonder Woman,” who is yet another evil blonde without detectable personality. Fausta (Lynda Day George) is finally converted to Wonder Woman’s cause, which arguably shows superficial sisterhood but also implies that Fausta has been serving the Third Reich simply because the concept of female bonding had never, ever occurred to her, until she was exposed to the revolutionary banalities of Wonder Woman. The only other female authorship on the show’s first season is that of Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday, credited with devising the story for Jimmy Sangster’s script of “The Feminum Mystique,” the two-part episode which introduces Wonder Girl (played by a young Debra Winger) to showcase genuine female mentorship. Comparing its female and male authors thus reveals that the male-authored feminism of Wonder Woman is consistently, farcically compromised by its compulsion to isolate its heroine and undermine her female allies.

“In Your Satin Tights, Fighting for Your Rights” — Suffering Sexualized Suffragettes!

Wonder Woman is not only a Super-Smurfette, she is the original Fighting Fuck Toy (FFT). The essence of the Fighting Fuck Toy is her superficial empowerment through “kicking ass,” while being deprived of deeper agency and continually serving as a sexual object for the Male Gaze. Nowhere is this tendency more clearly shown than with Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman (Diana Prince), a character defined by her hypersexualization from bullet breasts to hot-pants, yet rendered unthreatening to male viewers by her total absence of sexual agency.

The titillation begins with Diana’s introduction, running along the beach with a female friend, giggling in extremely short and gauzy negligees. As Diana later declares to her mother, the Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Cloris Leachman), “There’s something missing, mother. When I look at Steve Trevor, I feel things. Things I’ve never known before,” it is made clear that lesbianism is an unknown pleasure on Paradise Island. It’s wonderful that a Latina woman played the role of a superhero, yet this is an unfortunate missed opportunity for LGBTQ representation, especially with the recent confirmation of Wonder Woman as a queer character in the comics. This means that these women and girls are running around in a state of hypersexualization, not as an expression of any personal sexuality, but in permanent readiness for the arrival of a male viewer. For whom, then, is Paradise Island a paradise? Certainly, male viewers are amply served by the Amazons’ tournament to determine who will accompany Steve to America, an alleged athletic spectacle filmed almost entirely through upskirt shots.

Producer Cramer makes clear not only that Wonder Woman’s sexy appearance was integral to her role, but that the Fighting Fuck Toy’s “ass-kicking” should not be convincing: “If they were a wonderful actress, they approached the job like a lady truck driver.” By “lady truck driver,” he surely refers to the actresses’ ability to appear credibly violent, ruining their titillation by making their empowerment uncomfortably real. The Queen Hippolyta rants against the “barbaric, masculine behavior” of men with comical lust. Yet, Diana’s own lust for Steve will remain demurely unvoiced, as she waits entirely passively for him to take the sexual initiative. This suggests that women’s traditionally presumed passive sexuality is natural and not socially enforced, if even a super-powered and invulnerable woman would never openly express her desires. Furthermore, Diana actively corrects Drusilla (Wonder Girl) when Drusilla comments on a man’s attractiveness. That is, Diana is pointedly shown schooling a younger, sexually outspoken girl into proper passivity and self-suppression, which is enforced by the show as hallmarks of the “good” femininity that distinguishes Wonder Woman from blonde Nazi “sluts.” Lynda Carter expresses regret over Wonder Woman’s lack of sexual fulfillment in the DVD extras: “She didn’t have love in her life and she didn’t have children. I would hope that that story would be told. That’s such a huge part of womanhood.”

“Make a Hawk a Dove, Stop a War with Love” — Make Love, Not Legislation

At the heart of Wonder Woman is the concept that women are essentially different from men, and that female power resides in their essential qualities of love and pacifism. William Moulton Marston went further, and posited submission itself as an integral feminine virtue. In the words of Diana: “On Paradise Island there are only women. Because of this pure environment, we are able to develop our minds and our physical skills, unhampered by masculine destructiveness.” That is, the superpowers of the women of Paradise Island are suggested to be the direct result of their total absence of heteronormative sexuality, and to be incompatible with the presence of men, rooted as they are in a traditional concept of femininity that has historically facilitated male domination. After centuries of disenfranchisement, segregation into the domestic sphere, and being traded as property, male-authored feminism suggests that women can empower themselves by being traditionally feminine harder.

Actual women’s liberation, however, involved riots, incarceration, hunger strikes, occupation movements, clenched fists and even, on occasion, an unattractive shrillness resembling that of a lady truck-driver. Actual liberation involved the collective organization that the Super-Smurfette pointedly avoids. Far from a step forward, Wonder Woman is worse than more simply offensive chauvinism, because it insidiously exploits the female audience’s desire to identify with Wonder Woman’s empowerment. As Lynda Carter puts it: “There’s something about the goddess within, that secret part that resides in every woman, that is a Wonder Woman, that yearns for that independence and strength.” That “secret part” is harnessed by Wonder Woman to push female viewers into aspiring to a failed model of womanhood, one characterized by its hostility to other women, its punishing perfectionism, its sexual passivity and its self-sacrificing submission. Our goddesses within deserve so much better.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_blOQEu9ws”]

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Wonder Woman Short Fan Film Reminds Us to Want This Blockbuster

Wonder Women and Why We Need Superheroines

Top 10 Superheroines Who Deserve Their Own Movies

Brigit McCone‘s campy superheroine of choice remains Xena until further notice. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and defending her unpopular opinion that Bloodhound Gang are a witty pastiche of masculinity.

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically — that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

This guest post by Ariel Smith originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby employs aesthetic strategies and themes from horror cinema in order to push back against stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and critique contemporary neo-colonial systems. Barnaby has been known to recall conventions from both body horror and dystopian science fiction in order to present dark, disturbing narratives in which Mi’gmaq characters navigate through gruesome representations of abjection and assimilation. In his first feature film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), we see Barnaby drawing from another sub-genre of horror cinema, that of the rape revenge film.

Revenge tropes in the hands of Jeff Barnaby are used to not only tell the story of the female lead’s experiences of violation, but also to articulate a visceral, rage-filled revenge fantasy on behalf of a violated peoples.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set against the backdrop of Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

For those who don’t know, from 1884 to 1948, it was compulsory for Indigenous children under 16 years of age living in what is now known as Canada to attend colonial government-funded, church-run day and boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed from their families by Indian agents, and families were threatened with fines or prison if they failed to send their children. Children as young as 5 could be kept away from their parents for months or years at a time, were prohibited from speaking their language, and were issued severe corporal punishment for any expression of non-Christian cultural, social or spiritual practice. The Indian Residential School System’s express and specific, methodical intention was to “Kill the Indian in the child“ and resulted in cultural genocide that Indigenous nations are only now beginning to heal from. Many children experienced heinous sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as being subjected to publicly documented sterilization efforts and starvation experiments. The last residential school closed in Canada in 1996 and this colonial system has resulted in multiple, consecutive generations with both stolen childhoods and parenthoods. Even Indigenous children who did not attend residential school are affected by inter-generational trauma, as their parents and/or grandparents most likely attended.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls takes place on a Mi’gma reserve in the late 1970s. The lead protagonist, 15-year-old Alia, makes her living dealing pot. One of her most pressing expenses is paying off the corrupt and evil Indian agent, Popper, in order for herself, and other kids from her community to not be taken away to the residential school, where they will undoubtedly be physically and sexually abused. Alia winds up being double crossed and taken against her will to the school, but she soon breaks out and on Halloween night, together with a posse of other kids from the rez, enacts violent, bloody, revenge against the school’s abusive staff.

For me, the violence and graphic nature found in Barnaby’s work is fitting and appropriate due to the themes he engages. Barnaby’s films trigger visceral responses by exposing the audience to poetic and raw depictions of colonial violence against Indigenous bodies. As Indigenous people, we understand genocide and trauma; we understand horror, we live it. Barnaby’s films frame a space where non-Indigenous people must look at the screen and feel repulsed, afraid, and unsafe by facing the terrifying and grotesquely violent truth and reality that is colonial nation building.

The sub-genre of rape revenge is often categorized under an umbrella of exploitation cinema, famous for its use of shock value and extreme scenarios. However, Indigenous filmmakers’ contributions to the rape revenge canon do not require exaggeration. We do not need to think up imagined incidents of vicious macabre torture. The Marquis de Sade has nothing on Canada’s residential schools. The horror, the terror — it’s all around us, it is the foundation that the colonial states are built upon. We walk in it every day, and prove our resilience through continued survival.

Another example of rape revenge themes within Indigenous cinema can be found in Niitsítapi/Sami filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers‘ short film, A Red Girl’s Reasoning.

Tailfeathers presents us with a narrative in which an Indigenous woman, who is raped, is failed by the justice system and becomes a vigilante, seeking and delivering violent revenge against her own and other women’s rapists.

As with Barnaby’s work, it is impossible for A Red Girl’s Reasoning to be read outside of a larger overarching social context, which in this case it is the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous woman and girls. There are over 800 cases of missing and murdered woman and girls in Canada which have been documented so far. Amnesty International Canada states:

“According to Statistics Canada the national homicide rate for Indigenous women is at least seven times higher than for non-Indigenous women… There are also a greatly disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls among long-term missing persons cases. In Saskatchewan, Indigenous women make up only 6 per cent of the population of the province, but 60 per cent of its missing women are Indigenous.”

Media coverage and police support is often far less for missing or murdered Indigenous women than in the case of a white woman. Rape and sexual assault have been used as a tool of colonial conquest since contact and the epidemic of stolen sisters is a reflection of how Indigenous women continue to be devalued and dehumanized by white settler society.

The vengeance scenarios portrayed in both Rhymes for Young Ghouls and A Red Girl’s Reasoning resonate deeply with Indigenous audiences as they tap into our collective pain and anger. These films serve to disrupt the dominant visual culture, which excludes Indigenous perspectives and representation and has all but erased Indigenous peoples from the imagination of settler consciousness. Indigenous filmmakers provide visual allegory for what feminist and author bell hooks has called the “killing rage,” which is described as, “The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism… and the finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change.”

Approaching and calling attention to the full depth of monstrosity that is colonial transgression is what makes Indigenous cinema, in general, such a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence. Indigenous cinema is bigger than the individual movies we make. Regardless of content or form, Native filmmakers have not yet been afforded the luxury to create work that is not automatically placed under a socio-political lens. As Indigenous peoples living in post-colonial/neo-colonial times, our presence — our very existence — is in itself a political statement, and our artistic expression is in itself a beautiful declaration of sovereignty, and self-determination.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Courage and Consequences in Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Ariel Smith (Nêhiyaw/Jewish) is a filmmaker, video artist, writer and cultural worker currently based on unceded Algonquin territory, also known as Ottawa, Ontario. She has shown at festivals and galleries internationally including: Images (Toronto), Mix Experimental Film Festival (NYC), Urban Shaman (Winnipeg), MAI (Montreal), Gallery Sans Nom (Moncton), and Cold Creation Gallery (Barcelona, Spain). Her film Saviour Complex (2008) was nominated for Best Experimental at the 2008 Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Ariel’s video Swallow (2002) was the winner of the Cynthia Licker Sage Award at the 2004 imagineNative Film Festival, and Jury Third prize at the 2003 Media City Festival of Experimental Film and Video. Ariel’s writing and has been published by The Ottawa Art Gallery, The Ottawa International Animation Festival, imagineNative Festival of Indigenous Film and Media Art, and Kimiwan Magazine.

Ariel also works in Indigenous media arts advocacy and administration and is currently the director of National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC).

10 Women-Directed Films for Halloween

Are spine-chilling films always in demand because they help us dialogue with and about death? … In the past year, I’ve been focused on seeing films directed by women because I participated in the “52 Films by Women” initiative.

This guest post written by Laura Shamas originally appeared at Venus in Orange. It is cross-posted with permission.

I’m not a horror film fan per se, but I’ve seen some scary, eerie stuff through the years, and Halloween is always a good time to view them. Are spine-chilling films always in demand because they help us dialogue with and about death? C.G. Jung once wrote: “Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such a completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.”

In the past year, I’ve been focused on seeing films directed by women because I participated in the “52 Films by Women” initiative. The 10 films detailed below (for adults, not kids!) have strong psychological components, too. I’ve divided them into well-known Halloween-ish folklore categories: monsters, strange illness, haunted house (ghosts), killer, losing one’s head (lost), witches, and vampires.

MONSTER

1. The Babadook (2014)
Written and directed by Jennifer Kent

This film is about a lonely widow, her young son, and their journey through grief. A mysterious book suddenly appears in their home, and launches a trajectory of events related to a home-invading monster. What a fascinating portrayal of aspects of motherhood in this film. The tone and cinematography are original; the key performances are strong. The conclusion is truly inventive, and, for me, unexpected. I can’t wait to see Kent’s next film. (Note: female protagonist. Available through streaming services, like Amazon and Netflix).

STRANGE ILLNESS

2. The Fits (2015)
Written and directed by Anna Rose Holmer

This film took my breath away. It centers on the extraordinary performance of Royalty Hightower as Toni, an eleven-year-old tomboy who hangs out with her older brother in the gym. When an all-girl dance troupe rehearses in the same community center, Toni becomes fascinated by the aspiring performers, and joins them. Then a strange sort of “illness” descends on the girls. As I watched the film, Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible came to mind; I’ve examined the film version of it before. I don’t want to give anything away, but the ending of The Fits was revelatory and mesmerizing. It involves a different sort of fear of the unknown and a transformation, but with tremendous female resonance. I eagerly await more of Holmer’s work as well. (Female protagonist, available on streaming platforms.)

HAUNTED HOUSE (GHOSTS)

3. A Cry from Within (2014)
Written by Deborah Twiss, co-directed by Twiss and Zach Miller

This is a ghost story with a particular feminine twist. Twiss stars as a married mother with two young kids. The film examines what happens when a city family moves into a drafty old mansion in a small town. This is a familiar set-up, and some tropes from the “haunted house” genre are used here predictably. Yet, as the film gradually turns towards its true theme, it held my interest: a spirited quest to heal a gruesome family history. Perhaps some of it is melodramatic, but I appreciated the different sort of twist in the third act; it concludes with a strong depiction of the “shadow” side of motherhood and ensuing generational repercussions. (Female protagonist, available on streaming platforms.)

4. The Invitation (2015)
Directed by Karyn Kusama

The film is about Will (Logan Marshall-Green), a grief-stricken man haunted by a past tragedy that occurred in his former house in the Hollywood Hills. As it begins, Will and his girlfriend hit a coyote in the rain on the way to a dinner party, hosted by his ex-wife and her new husband — a foreshadowing of what’s to come. At first it seems as if it’s going to be like The Big Chill: a gathering of old friends reminiscing, catching up, talking about what’s new. But then Will’s ex-wife and her new husband show a movie clip before dinner that sets the eerie tone of what’s to come. Let’s just say that if you’re invited to a dinner party in the Hills, this film will make you reconsider showing up. The house becomes a character of sorts, and old memories emerge like ghosts in flashbacks as terror reigns. (Male protagonist, available on streaming platforms.)

5. The Silent House (2011)
Co-directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, written by Lau

This 2011 film, an American version of a 2010 Uruguayan film titled La Casa Muda, is another “Haunted House” type of film with a twist at the end. Based on a “true story” from its Uruguayan origins, the movie is seemingly filmed in a single continuous shot, which gives it a lot of tension. The Silent House follows Elizabeth Olson as Sarah, a young woman who, along with her father and uncle, are moving out of a dark old family home near a shore, and encounter strange noises, specters, old photos that no one should see, and more. Of course, the power is not on. When Sarah’s father is knocked out on a staircase, Sarah knows there’s someone else in the house. The revenge component in the film’s conclusion will resonate with many. (Female protagonist, available to stream on Amazon.)

KILLER

6. The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Directed by Ida Lupino, written by Lupino, Robert L. Joseph, and Collier Young

As part of this initiative, I’ve tried to catch up on many of Lupino’s films. The Hitch-Hiker is considered the first mainstream film noir feature to be directed by a woman. It varies from standard film noir fare because of its desert locales (as opposed to urban settings). A tale of two American men who are ambushed by a terrifying killer in Mexico, and their attempts to escape danger, the film’s original tagline was: “When was the last time you invited death into your car?” (Male protagonists. You can watch it for free on YouTube here. A version with higher resolution also streams on Amazon.)

LOSING ONE’S HEAD (or LOST)

7. The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza) (2008)
Written and directed by Lucrecia Martel

Made in Argentina, it’s perfectly titled. The film’s ominous psychological atmosphere produces a slow burn sort of scare and a dawning realization as you watch it; it’s not a conventional horror “scream” viewing experience. A strange auto accident on a deserted country road is at the center of a mystery; the protagonist is the driver Veronica or “Vero” to her friends (Maria Onetto), a middle-aged married dentist. We wonder: who or what has been hit? Is the victim okay? As the movie continues, we come to understand the true identity of the Headless Woman. (Female protagonist, available on streaming platforms, including Hulu.)

WITCHES

8. The Countess (2009)
Written and directed by Julie Delpy

Starring Julie Delpy, the film is a bloody biographical account of Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Báthory, who lived from 1560 to 1614. The film depicts the Countess’ fascination with death; even as a young girl, Báthory declared: “…I would have to raise an army to conquer death.” Thematically, this period piece examines the possibility that unrequited love could lead to madness, and that an obsession with youthful appearance could launch serial killings, as the Countess searches for virginal blood as a magical skin elixir. Because of the focus on bloodletting and torture in her story, Báthory became connected to vampirism through legend. But witches figure prominently in the film in several ways: Erzsébet’s estate is successfully run by a witch named Anna Darvulia (played by Anamaria Marinca), who’s also one of the Countess’ lovers; the Countess is cursed by a witch in a key roadside scene that changes her life: “Soon you will look like me”; and later, when she is on trial, Báthory is notably not tried for witchcraft, although she might have been. The ending brings information that forces a reconsideration of all we’ve just seen. (Female protagonist, available to stream on Amazon).

VAMPIRES

9. Near Dark (1987)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, co-written by Bigelow and Eric Red

I’ve long wanted to catch up on Bigelow’s earlier films, and have watched two so far as part of this initiative. But no Halloween film list is complete without a vampire movie, let alone a vampire Western like this one.

A lesson you learn quickly in Near Dark: never pick up hitchhikers at night in Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas. The movie is campy, bloody and violent; it debuted in October 1987, a part of the 1980’s vampire movie trend. The story revolves around Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), a young cowboy in a small mid-western town who inadvertently becomes part of a car-stealing gang of southern vampires. The frequent tasting of death in the film, and its repeated reverence for nighttime, reminded me again of Jung’s quote about death: “But once inside you taste of such a completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.” The ending of this one also pleasantly surprised me. (Male protagonist, available on DVD.)

10. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour

This is a highly stylized, fascinating film. It’s a unique Persian-language film that follows a mysterious vampire figure named The Girl (Sheila Vand) who haunts the rough streets of “Bad City” at night in a chador, and encounters a young gardener named Arash (Arash Mirandi). Arash’s father is a heroin addict and his mother is dead; Arash is under threat from a tough character who keys his car as the film starts, and after that initial sequence, Arash befriends a beautiful stray cat who becomes part of the action. Amirpour’s film is so atmospheric, beautifully shot in black and white. The plot is untraditional; the ending was also unexpected. Some of the images are unforgettable, and the acting is strong. (Male and female lead characters, available via streaming.)

These ten “scary” films richly explore a range of psychological and social issues: grief; the arrival of puberty; abuse and repressed memories; the aging brain; unrequited love and growing old; justice; and becoming an adult. Most have plot surprises at the end, which makes the viewing all the more worthwhile.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Why The Babadook Is the Feminist Horror Film of the Year
The Babadook: Jennifer Kent on Her Savage Domestic Fairy Tale
Patterns in Poor Parenting: The Babadook and Mommy
“The More You Deny Me, the Stronger I’ll Get”: The Babadook, Mothers, and Mental Illness
The Babadook and the Horrors of Motherhood
The Fits: A Coming-of-Age Story about Belonging and Identity
Male Mask, Female Voice: The Noir of Ida Lupino
9 Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies
Kathyrn Bigelow’s Near Dark: Busting Stereotypes and Drawing Blood
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Scares Us
Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women

Laura Shamas is a writer, myth lover, and a film consultant. For more of her writing on the topic of female trios: We Three: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters. Her website is LauraShamas.com.

Bi Erasure in Film and TV: The Difficulty of Representing Bisexual People On-Screen

As frustrating as our erasure and stereotyping is, however, I’d like to go beyond the question of “good” and “bad” representations of bisexual characters to ask this: exactly what it is about bisexuality which makes it so hard to represent on-screen? And why, when bisexuality is visible, is it so likely to collapse back into dominant stereotypes of bisexuality as either promiscuous or merely a phase?

This guest post written by Amy Davis appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Positive and complex representations of bisexual and pansexual characters on-screen are so few and far between that film critics discussing bisexual representation are often left lamenting our erasure, or – on the rare occasions we are represented – our stereotyping and demonization.

In the 100 top-grossing domestic films in the U.S. in 2015, out of 4,370 characters (speaking or named), only 32 characters or .7% were LGBT, and only 5 of those characters were bisexual, according to USC Annenberg. According to GLAAD, 4% of regular characters on primetime broadcast television series are LGBT characters. Of the 271 LGBT characters (regular and recurring) on primetime, cable, and streaming television series, 76 or 28% are bisexual. According to Stonewall’s report on the representation of LGB people (unfortunately they did not include statistics on trans characters) on television series watched by young people in the U.K., in over 126 hours of programming, bisexual people were portrayed for just 5 minutes and 9 seconds, compared to 4 hours and 24 minutes for gay men, and 42 minutes for lesbian women.

When we do appear on-screen, bisexuality is often used to indicate hypersexuality, such as Bo from Lost Girl and Doctor Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. At its most extreme depictions of reinforcing biphobic tropes, the character’s bisexuality is also used to code “evil” or “dangerous” or “murderous,” using their (hyper)sexuality as a method of manipulation and control, for instance Sharon Stone’s character in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct.

Narrative film and television, with its emphasis on conflict and resolution, is poorly equipped to represent bisexuality. The committed, monogamous couple continues to represent the pinnacle of romantic fulfillment in contemporary Western culture. As such the familiar romantic plot in narrative film and television involves some kind of conflict – usually an erotic triangle – which is resolved when the protagonist makes a choice between potential suitors and becomes part of a couple (see, honestly, any rom-com ever made). Within this format then, bisexuality can often only be a disturbance to the status quo. In 2010 comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right, for example, the lesbian relationship between Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) is disrupted when Jules begins an affair with Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the sperm donor of their children. Throughout the film, Jules identifies as a lesbian, never declaring she’s bisexual or questioning her sexuality. So long as Jules’ infidelity persists, bisexuality has a spectral presence in the film. The narrative conflict presented by bisexuality/infidelity is resolved, however, when Jules ends the affair and the lesbian/monogamous status quo is restored. In the final scene, Jules and Nic are shown smiling at each other and holding hands, the threat of Jules’ bisexuality effectively repudiated. At best, bisexuality is depicted in The Kids Are Alright as a temporary phase, at worst, as non-existent; a mere moment of weakness within an overarching narrative of monogamous lesbian couplehood.

Of course the widespread misconception of bisexual desire as triangulated and therefore always split between two object choices is demonstrably false. Many bi spectrum individuals see themselves as attracted to people rather than genders and do not feel unfulfilled when they are in a relationship with a person of a particular gender. What’s more, many queer people reject the notion of the gender binary altogether, having relationships with people all over the gender spectrum, including genderqueer and non-binary people. Nonetheless, the notion that gender is binary and the overwhelming importance placed on (binary) gender as object choice in our society means that bisexuality is inevitably viewed as dichotomous desire within our society. In The Kids Are All Right, and numerous other films with bi potential, bisexuality then gets mischaracterized as an unstable, dichotomous desire which must be subsumed back into the monogamous, monosexual (straight or gay) status quo.

But to understand the mechanisms through which this occurs, it is necessary to understand the dominant logic of monogamy. In its most perfect and pure form, a narrative of monogamy involves the notion that there is one true partner for everyone. The truth for many of us, however, is that we have several romantic relationships and sometimes even several marriages in the course of our lives, which is described as “serial monogamy.”. For the logic of the “soul mate” to work alongside the realities of serial monogamy, however, is it necessary to de-emphasize the importance of past relationships or disregard them as mere mistakes on the road to finding one’s eventual life partner (“I thought I was in love but I didn’t know what love was”).

Within this dominant paradigm of monogamy, depictions of characters who have serial, monogamous relationships with men and women are rarely read as bisexual since their past relationships (with a particular gender) are dismissed as not meaningful. A classic example of this is Willow (Alyson Hannigan) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who is depicted as straight for the first few seasons, during which time she has a relationship with boyfriend Oz (Seth Green), and upon entering a relationship with Tara (Amber Benson) is subsequently depicted as a lesbian. Her past relationships with and interest in men becomes re-written as “not real” (or not as as “real” as her newfound lesbian love) and thus any potential bisexuality is erased.

Too often bisexual visibility requires individuals to trace relationship histories which subvert the dominant ideals of monogamy, even if they themselves are consistently monogamous. Alan Cumming, actor and bi advocate, said in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2014:

“I used to be married to a woman. Before that I had had a relationship with a man. I then had another relationship with a woman, and I since then have had relationships with men. I still would define myself as bisexual partly because that’s how I feel but also because I think it’s important to — I think sexuality in this country especially is seen as a very black and white thing, and I think we should encourage the gray. You know?”

I was struck, reading this quote, by just how familiar this form of bisexual storytelling is. I’ve told a version of this story myself when talking about my bisexuality, and heard it from friends and strangers alike. It’s a story designed to make one’s bisexuality visible and legitimate with full awareness that it could slip through the cracks, becoming subsumed into heterosexuality or homosexuality, at any moment. Cumming is all too aware that his expression of desire for men and women is insufficient in itself to make his bisexuality visible, and that in the context of his marriage to a man his “mere” desire could be easily dismissed to create a coherent homosexuality. His bisexual narrative instead involves emphasizing the importance of his past relationships and marriage, describing them alongside his current relationship and implying that while they are not current they are nonetheless still meaningful in his sexual identity.

Further, Cumming’s narrative involves relationships with men and women which are dispersed throughout time, rather than a series of relationships with women followed by a series of relationships with men, which could be easily subsumed into a gay (rather than bi) “coming out” narrative similar to Willow’s plotline. And although none of these relationships are depicted as non-monogamous in themselves, Cumming’s narrative disrupts the “one true love” logic of monogamy at the same time as making his bisexuality visible over time. In making explicit reference to his past relationships as significant to his current sexuality, Cummings refuses to be dismissed, revised, or excluded by monogamy’s “one true love” narrative or bi erasure.

Similar disruptions accompany other moments of bisexual visibility in film and television. How to Get Away with Murder, for example, successfully depicts Annalise Keating’s (Viola Davis) character as bisexual or pansexual by bringing a past relationship into the present. In the course of season one, Annalise’s love interests are male. However, early in season two, it is revealed that she had a relationship with law school classmate Eve Rothlo (Famke Janssen) and the two briefly rekindle their relationship in the course of working together.

Given the dominant ideals of monogamy, had it merely been revealed that Annalise had a college relationship with a woman, it would have been too easy for audiences to dismiss her past relationship in order to reinscribe a current straight identity. On the other hand, had she kissed a previously unknown woman, audiences would likely have read it as a loose erotic triangle – involving the woman and on-again-off-again boyfriend, Detective Nate Lahey (Billy Brown) – probably requiring resolution into a straight or lesbian identity. However, Annalise’s sexual and emotional intimacy with Eve in the present avoids the bisexuality-as-narrative-disruption trope and instead functions to draw our attention to the importance of Annalise’s historic relationship with Eve. The previous relationship cannot (and should not) therefore be easily dismissed as a “phase,” simultaneously disrupting the logic of monogamy which relegate previous relationships to the past only and allowing Annalise to remain visible as a bi character.

As bisexual people, we get tired of the persistent association between bisexuality and non-monogamy, demonstrated through popular stereotypes which position us as promiscuous, confused, dangerous, greedy, deceptive, cheaters, and unable to commit. A familiar response to this charge is the reminder that, like straight and gay/lesbian people, bisexual people can be (and are) both monogamous and non-monogamous. While this refutes the myth that bisexual people are necessarily non-monogamous, it does little to explain how the association between bisexuality and non-monogamy emerged in the first place. And more importantly for our representation on-screen, the ways in which dominant narratives of monogamy create the conditions of both our erasure and our visibility.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bisexual Representation
Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Willow Rosenberg a Lesbian or Bisexual?
Exploring Bisexual Tension in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
LGBTQ Week: The Kids Are All Right
How to Get Away with Murder Is Everything “That” New York Times Review Said It Is
How to Get Away with Dynamic Black Women Leads

Amy Davis is currently completing a PhD on bisexual erasure at the University of Wollongong. Amy is interested in feminism, queer and trans politics, animal rights, law, ethics and, most importantly, cats.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Bisexual Representation

But the clearest example of the Buffyverse’s discomfort with bisexuality, in my opinion, appears in the character of Faith Lehane. … Despite what was at the time a groundbreaking portrayal of a loving lesbian relationship, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ still had many issues in its messaging surrounding queer sexualities, in particular bisexuality. In my opinion, a few material changes could have gone a long way in removing at least some of this negative messaging.

This guest post written by Lisa Ward appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired, it was considered to be a groundbreaking, feminist television show. Its nuanced portrayals of girls and women stood out in a genre where girls and women were generally portrayed as one-dimensional victims, not three-dimensional heroes (and villains). And for a generation of young people (myself included), this representation was vital and growing up with Buffy had a lasting positive impact on their lives.

However, from the perspective of intersectional feminist criticism, the series was far from unproblematic: its portrayals of people of color and in particular, women of color, were sparse, generally poorly handled, and all too often ended in untimely death; many of the underlying attitudes the show reinforced with regards to sexuality, in particular female sexuality, were deeply troubling; mental illness was portrayed in a very stigmatizing way (despite, in my opinion, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)’s Season 6 arc with depression being handled fairly well); and the show sends a very mixed message regarding its gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters.

It is this final topic — bisexuality and bisexual characters — that I want to explore. While bisexuality is also inclusive of people outside of the gender binary, I will be primarily using the term bisexual, rather than related terms, such as pansexual, as the Buffyverse does not seem to recognize the existence of more than two genders (except perhaps in its non-humanoid characters).

Willow Rosenberg

A piece on bisexuality in the Buffyverse cannot be written without discussing Willow Rosenberg.

There is a lot of debate from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans on whether Willow (Alyson Hannigan)’s character counts as a triumphant case of lesbian representation (at least until Tara’s murder which fulfills the classic Bury Your Gays trope and facilitates Willow’s, admittedly temporary, jump into the Psycho Lesbian trope), a sad case of bisexual erasure, or a nuanced example of sexual fluidity. I can see merits in all of these arguments.

Willow was deeply attracted to and formed physical relationships with men before meeting Tara (Amber Benson) and coming out as a lesbian. Even after coming out, Willow goes on to make comments that imply an ongoing attraction to men as well as women — for example, she describes both Dracula (Rudolf Martin) and Giles (Anthony Head) as “sexy” during Season 4. And Willow’s vampire self, as seen in “Doppelgangland” is quite clearly openly bisexual, making sexual overtures towards both men and women (and her own alternate universe self, because she is a Depraved Bisexual trope – a trope Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a very damaging relationship with indeed). It is these plot points that tend to lead to accusations of bisexual erasure for the character of Willow Rosenberg.

However, as is rightly pointed out by those who disagree, there are several in-universe of Watsonian explanations available for these plot points. For example, sexual identity is about more than just sexual attraction. It is known that many people who identify as straight have had same-sex fantasies or experiences, and for some, do not see these fantasies or experiences as changing their fundamental heterosexual identity. The same can apply for those who identify as gay or lesbian. Being queer is strongly correlated with behavior and attraction (as well as self-identification), but not strictly defined by these things. This explanation allows us to interpret Willow as a nuanced portrayal of a lesbian woman, not an erased bisexual woman.

Another in-universe explanation for Willow’s characterization is that sexuality is fluid and sexual identity can change over time. It’s not unusual for someone to identify as straight throughout their teen years and come to realize that they are queer later in life. Willow Rosenberg could be a nuanced example of this true to life scenario. Not everyone realizes their sexuality as a teen or even a young adult, and sexual fluidity is a perfectly acceptable explanation for her character.

Personally, I like both of these in-universe explanations. Sexual identity is complex and nuanced; if we explore Willow’s character from a real-world perspective, then it’s perfectly acceptable to say that she provides a realistic representation of a complex lesbian woman who at one point in her life identified as straight.

However, when we explore the character of Willow through an out-of-universe or Doylist lens, looking at the Buffyverse as a whole and how the writers choose to represent bisexuality in other characters, the accusations of bi erasure in the case of Willow gain a lot of validity.

Bisexuality and Evil in the Buffyverse

From the outset, bisexuality is regularly associated with evil in the Buffyverse.

Often one of the key signifiers that a human has been turned into a vampire is sudden hypersexual — and frequently bisexual — behavior. This is particularly true for female vampires, who quite often fit the Depraved Bisexual archetype.

Some key examples include, of course, vampire Willow — who aggressively flirts with human Willow, including groping and licking, while maintaining her hypersexual relationship with vamp Xander (Nicholas Brendon) — and Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters)’s lovers Darla (Julie Benz) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) — who, in a flashback scene, are shown in their underwear discussing a shared sexual encounter followed by bathing together and implied oral sex.

For male vampires, this is less explicit — most likely due to taboos concerning sexual behavior between two men on-screen versus sexual behavior between two women. On-screen, male characters’ sexuality tends to become more overtly predatory towards women in order to signal their change from good (human) to evil (vamp), but nonetheless we also get allusions to off-screen bisexual behavior. For example, Spike confirms he and Angel have slept together saying, “Angelus and I were never intimate, unless you count that one time…” Angel expresses a mutual interest claiming, “I love the ladies, but lately I’ve been wondering what it would be like, to share the slaughter of innocents with another man. You don’t think that makes me some kind of a deviant do you?”

Other evil characters are often portrayed as both bisexual and/or hypersexual as shorthand for evil, bad, or wrong throughout the series. Some examples include: Glory (Clare Kramer) licking Tara’s hand before mind-raping her and flirting with Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) before bleeding her; Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs)’s sexually charged dialogue with Giles (a relationship which writer/producer Jane Espenson confirmed did take place in their younger, “dark magic” days); Andrew (Tom Lenk)’s ambiguous attractions expressed towards men such as Warren (Adam Busch), Jonathan, and Spike, and women such as Buffy, Anya (Emma Caulfield), and a woman at a bar; and Forrest (Leonard Roberts)’s angry, possessive behavior towards Riley (Mark Blucas) and unreasonable jealousy of Buffy, even though he finds her “so hot.”

But the clearest example of the Buffyverse’s discomfort with bisexuality, in my opinion, appears in the character of Faith Lehane.

Faith Lehane

Despite never actually being referred to as bisexual or sharing any openly sexual moments with any women on-screen, many Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans consider Faith (Eliza Dushku) to be a bisexual woman who falls in unrequited love with Buffy. Personally, I think there is subtext in the television series that supports this view (and writer/producer Jane Espenson, writer/producer Doug Petrie, creator Joss Whedon, and actor Eliza Dushku all agree); this qualifies as both queerbaiting and bisexual erasure, all while playing into the Depraved Bisexual and Psycho Lesbian tropes.

Faith is, in the words of Andrew, “the dark slayer” and is supposed to represent a counterpart to Buffy’s lighter, more conservative nature. This means that, unlike Buffy, she is overtly sexual and open about her desires — and later, after her switch to the dark side, she becomes unacceptably sexually predatory.

When she first appears, it seems like Faith’s approach to sexuality might be positive – in fact, Faith’s pronouncement that slaying always makes her hungry and horny results in the other characters covertly shaming Buffy for being so repressed when she claims in return that sometimes slaying makes her “crave a non-fat yogurt afterwards.” However, as the series progresses, it’s made clear that Faith is a bad influence, and by the time she joins the forces of evil, Faith is slut-shamed by the main characters on a regular basis.

When Faith and Buffy first meet, there is a lot of tension between them, with Buffy in particular feeling threatened by Faith. But as their relationship progresses, this tension moves from rivalry into something more romantic in nature.

All of this culminates in what I would describe as the three key points in Faith’s character arc: Season 3’s “Bad Girls,” Season 4’s “Yesterday’s Girl / Who Are You,” and Season 7’s “Dirty Girls.”

In “Bad Girls” (an episode title that tells us a lot about the show’s attitude to Faith’s “deviant behavior”), the chemistry between Buffy and Faith reaches its climax. Faith is set up as “seducing” Buffy into her way of thinking and, despite herself, Buffy responds. The sexual tension between them is sizzling… until everything goes wrong, of course. Faith accidentally kills a man and doesn’t trust Buffy to protect her from the harsh punishment she knows will follow. Thus begins Faith’s descent into evil.

After this, Faith and Buffy behave more like scorned exes than nemeses (“Is that how you say the word?”) until their final showdown (which mirrors the previous season’s showdown with ex-turned-evil, Angel) where Buffy puts Faith in a coma.

Faith awakens from her coma in Season 4’s “Yesterday’s Girl / Who Are You,” and again, acts like a scorned lover when she finds out Buffy has “moved on” from her, grabbing her chance to finally possess Buffy, quite literally, by stealing her body using a body-swap spell. However, she discovers that even total possession of Buffy cannot heal the pain of her rejection. Faith leaves at the end of this episode to seek redemption and does not return to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although she does appear on Angel) until Season 7’s “Dirty Girls” (another interesting name choice for an episode focused on the return of Faith).

In “Dirty Girls,” we meet a reformed Faith, whose new-found maturity is almost immediately tested by a barb to her sorest spot – another rejection from Buffy, who failed to warn her that there’s a new evil afoot that specifically targets slayers. But Faith rises above and we start to believe that perhaps she has managed to move on. We even get to see her turn down an opportunity that the old Faith would never have been able to resist – a chance to try to seduce Buffy’s love interest (Spike). The audience gets to marvel at reformed Faith’s growth and maturity as a character, that is, until she utters this seemingly throwaway line, “I just spent a good stretch of time locked away with a mess of female-types. Kinda had my fill.”

The unfortunate implication becomes that Faith has quite literally “straightened out.” Faith no longer has “deviant” bisexual urges; Faith is no longer a “dirty girl”; Faith has reformed.

Conclusion

Despite what was at the time a groundbreaking portrayal of a loving lesbian relationship, Buffy the Vampire Slayer still had many issues in its messaging surrounding queer sexualities, in particular bisexuality. In my opinion, a few material changes could have gone a long way in removing at least some of this negative messaging.

The first crucial step would have been to remove the show’s tendency to use bisexuality as a shorthand for evil. The second step would have been to introduce some positive examples of bisexual people who fight on the side of good – here, the idea of Willow’s character identifying as bisexual (while Tara and Kennedy still identify as exclusively lesbian) feels like a hugely missed opportunity. However, this character wouldn’t necessarily have to be Willow. There were plenty of opportunities for other bisexual characters, male and female, within the show’s seven season run. And finally, bringing Faith’s sexuality and unrequited love arc from subtext to text, with the proviso that when she reforms, it’s not because she’s no longer bisexual, would work well, provided it wasn’t set to a backdrop that codes bisexuality as depraved. With better representation of bisexuality in the Buffyverse generally, Faith’s arc would be the story of an individual who happens to be bisexual, not a classic Depraved Bisexual stereotype.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Willow Rosenberg a Lesbian or Bisexual?
Exploring Bisexual Tension in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine

Lisa Ward is a Faith fangirl who works in PR, writes songs, and lives on a wind-blasted island in the North Sea. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a bunch of other places she’s probably forgotten about as @sheltielisa.

‘Person of Interest’s Sameen Shaw Stamps Her Place in TV’s Bisexual Landscape

She is a victor, a fighter, and a survivor. Shaw is a queer, neurodivergent, woman of color, and she was allowed to be all of these things without ever being judged or punished for them. Though ‘Person of Interest’ never used the label, and Shaw herself is not likely to ever use such labels, she is unmistakably a bisexual character, and her status as such is treated by the narrative with matter-of-factness, but also with respect and compassion.

This guest post written by Sophie Willard appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead for all 5 seasons.

Bisexual people are familiar with erasure, vilification, and demonization. We live in a world where most people think Freddie Mercury was gay and Lady Gaga is straight; where Amber Heard’s bisexuality is held to blame for the abuse she suffered from her husband, Johnny Depp. There is an ever-present need for positive bisexual representation within media, be it found in film / book / television characters, pop stars, actors, writers, or other media makers. The continued scarcity of such representation only renders what is out there even more important. Every instance of bisexual representation, intentionally or not, serves to combat misconceptions and dismantle myopic attitudes towards bisexuality. Of course, not every example of bisexual representation is favorable, and certainly there exist characterizations that reinforce toxic stereotypes and a harmful misunderstanding of what it means to be bisexual.

Nonetheless, there is an increasing number of positive portrayals that we can look to for inspiration, comfort, strength, and affirmation. Sameen Shaw of the CBS television series Person of Interest is one of those portrayals. Sameen (more commonly referred to by her surname) is played by Iranian-American actress Sarah Shahi, originally familiar to many queer female fans for her recurring guest role on The L Word. Shahi herself has spoken of her pride in providing representation for lesbian and bisexual fans with her characters, and brought with her to Person of Interest an earnest maturity and an awareness of the struggles faced by members of the LGBTQ community.

Yet, interestingly, when her character was first introduced on the show, there had been no specific intention for her to be queer. Fans are more than familiar with this story, but for those unaware, it’s helpful to first know a little about the character of Shaw. A government operative when she first appears in the show’s second season, Shaw tracked down and killed terrorists. Her partner in these operations, Michael Cole, was carrying out his own off-the-books investigation into a prior mission of theirs, having reservations about the culpability of the target they had killed. When his findings suggest a government cover-up, his and Shaw’s employers decide they must be dealt with — permanently. Cole was killed but Shaw escaped, and — seeking revenge — resumes his investigation. This leads her to a chance meeting that has serious repercussions for the rest of the series. Though she thought she was meeting with Cole’s CIA contact, Veronica Sinclair, Shaw was in fact meeting with a woman who had taken Veronica hostage and interrogated her. This woman was Root (portrayed by Amy Acker), who had already been established within the show as an antagonist to the heroes. Shaw, however, was none the wiser and conversed with who she thought to be Veronica, until Root took her by surprise, tasered her, tied her to a chair, and threatened to burn her with a hot iron. Thus followed a now infamous exchange between the two women:

Shaw: One of the things I left out of my file … I kind of enjoy this sort of thing.
Root: [smiling] I am so glad you said that. I do too.

Both actresses at this point were only guest stars on the show, with the future still uncertain for Shahi’s character in particular. But the chemistry between them when filming this scene proved undeniable, and was picked up on by those writing and producing the show. Though nothing in the script or direction hinted at a sexual tension between the two characters, it nonetheless sparked in that scene, and the foundations of subtext were laid in that moment. Both actresses were subsequently promoted to series regulars, and the writing team took advantage of their chemistry to craft a relationship that forever changed both characters. It was a refreshing decision; few TV series take care to develop relationships that were not originally planned for, particularly those involving queer characters.

Nonetheless, the relationship between Shaw and Root took its time to develop, and was by no means conventional. This was a show that did not prioritize romantic sub-plots or sexual escapades. On Person of Interest, platonic friendships were always regarded with as much importance as romantic and/or sexual relationships. While series lead, John Reese (Jim Caviezel), had lost the woman he loved before the events of the show began, his new employer, Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) was still grappling with the loss of his best friend, Nathan. The way the show portrays their sense of loss and pain is equal — no more weight is given to one personal connection than the other. While over the course of the series, Reese enjoys a casual sexual relationship with a woman they sometimes enlist the help of, Zoe, their rendezvous are only ever hinted at subtextually, with not even a kiss shared between them on-screen.

With this in mind, it is even more remarkable that Root and Shaw’s relationship was allowed to flourish as it did. Certainly there was animosity between them to begin with, and Shaw was eager to exact her revenge for almost being tortured, but Root was clearly quite smitten from early on and soon began to unabashedly flirt with Shaw. For a long time, Shaw would roll her eyes and brush off Root’s advances, though her own attraction to Root could be inferred from the occasional comment. There came a point, however, when Root’s come-ons belied deeper feelings for Shaw, beyond simple attraction. Sameen Shaw, with a self-diagnosed personality disorder, experienced a limited range of emotions, and at a much lower potency than most people. As Root began to express her feelings for Shaw more frequently and honestly, Shaw recognizes that Root would have an expectation for a connection that went beyond the physical. It was something that she thought she could not offer, yet as she later learned, Root appreciates Shaw exactly for who she is.

Though Shaw is unable to express emotionally what Root means to her, she conveys enough through her actions. In the season three finale, when Root embarks on a solo mission into what was deemed the belly of the beast, Shaw cycles into the next state in the middle of a blackout to help her. “Root’s going to get herself killed,” she tells John, though when she eventually catches up with the other woman, she instead tries to suggest that she was worried about the mission more than anything else.

In the show’s fourth season, unspoken words between these two finally bubble up to the surface, and Root tries to convince Shaw that they would be perfect together. Shaw admits that she’s undeniably attracted to Root, but again brushes her off. Moments later, however, she makes the decision to sacrifice herself to save her teammates, and when Root tries to dissuade her, Shaw pulls the other woman in for a brief kiss, partly to give Root some sort of confirmation of her own feelings, partly to distract Root, and no doubt partly for herself. Though her departure from the show was for practical reasons (Shahi was pregnant with twins), Shaw remained alive and Root searched furiously for her whereabouts.

It was not until the fourth episode of the show’s fifth and final season that we were finally gifted with Shaw’s return, in an episode that proved to be not only dark, action-packed, and heart-breaking, but also conveyed to audiences that Shaw truly feels deeply about Root too, despite her inability to express as much. The entire episode places her within a virtual reality simulation crafted by the malevolent Artificial Super Intelligence that held her captive. Within the simulation, Shaw seeks comfort in small ways, despite the simulation mandate to kill her teammates and locate their base of operations. One way she comforts herself is through finding a taxi driver who’s a fellow Persian. Though Shaw’s Persian heritage had been established on the show, and she had spoken before of her mother’s immigration from Iran and early experiences in New York City, the only time that she spoke Farsi was within this simulation. This small interaction seems to speak to a subconscious desire to find something safe and familiar, while feeling an intense pressure to carry out a task she didn’t want to do.

The other way in which she sought comfort within the simulation was to have Root find and rescue her. In the simulation, Root calls her numerous pet names. Root gives Shaw her jacket when Shaw feels cold. Root takes Shaw back to her ‘apartment,’ and though none of it was real, we saw them consummate their relationship — quite explosively. Later in the episode, Shaw ends the simulation by shooting herself in the head, but not before admitting to Root that the other woman was her “safe place,” and that Shaw always thought of her whenever the psychological torture grew too difficult to bear. We learn in the episode’s closing moments, that Shaw had actually undergone 6,741 of these simulations, all with the same outcome: rather than shoot Root and betray her friends, she killed herself every time.

“It was all a dream” is an oft-ridiculed and rather dated trope in storytelling, and certainly had this episode focused on any other character, it would have been a waste of time. But with Sameen Shaw — a character who rarely emotes, who’s difficult to read, and up until this point, had not been especially clear on whether or not Root meant much to her — this episode was invaluable in opening up her mind. It allowed us to see that, yes, Shaw did reciprocate Root’s feelings, certainly just as intensely, even if they were all internalized. After nine months of capture and torture, Shaw longed to be with Root again, to feel safe in her arms.

Root and Shaw were eventually reunited, and though the reunion was sadly short-lived, Root did get a chance to open up to Shaw, and Shaw let her in. They held hands for a brief moment — no doubt the first time Sameen Shaw had ever allowed anybody to hold her hand — and Root shared that what they had between them was good enough for her, and better than anything she had ever hoped to experience in life.

Shaw had expressed physical attraction to men before on the show, and there was certainly enough subtext to suggest that she was attracted to women other than Root, but Root was the person she was tethered to, and certainly the only person we ever saw her intimately involved with. Root provided action, excitement, and unpredictability — elements that sustained Shaw. Yet, at the same time, it is important to remember that queer people are not defined solely by their relationships, and Shaw certainly has enough personality to go around. She’s often terse, frequently blunt, and exercises a moral flexibility, but she also has a strong sense of wrong and right; she is highly capable, protective, intelligent, and heroic. She ended the series as a one-woman team, accompanied solely by her dog, Bear. She is a victor, a fighter, and a survivor. She is a queer, neurodivergent, woman of color, and she was allowed to be all of these things without ever being judged or punished for them.

Though Person of Interest never used the label, and Shaw herself is not likely to ever use such labels, she is unmistakably a bisexual character, and her status as such is treated by the narrative with matter-of-factness, but also with respect and compassion. She is a source of strength for queer viewers, and a solid, positive representation of how bisexuality can be expressed by some people. Everyone wants a hero they can identify with — queer women no less — and Sameen Shaw is one of our very own.

Sophie Willard is a 20-something gal currently residing in the East of England. She has a BA in English Language with Creative Writing. You can follow her on Twitter @cake_emu where she discusses film, TV, current affairs, and more. She writes about TV and film from a queer, feminist perspective on her blog, The Television Will Be Revolutionised.

Is ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg a Lesbian or Bisexual?

So is Willow bi, or is she a lesbian? Well, I guess it’s your choice. I personally believe she’s bisexual; it makes more sense to me, a bisexual woman, that Willow is also a bisexual woman, just with a preference for women. But I have read that many lesbians connected with Willow’s story on such a fundamental way, and I can’t wholeheartedly take it away from them; they have just as much of a right to her as I do.

This guest post written by Gail Wald appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

For many people, labels matter. Humans put labels on everything, from gender to interest groups to clothing styles to sexuality. These labels define not just each individual person, but also our culture as a whole. We are the culmination of all of these groups: the groups we accept, the groups we detest.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, at its center, supposed to be about the groups we don’t accept. It centered on three unpopular geeks who hung out with a librarian. And sure, they were all very pretty – but everybody’s pretty on TV; at the end of the day, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) wasn’t winning any popularity contests, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) was a computer nerd, and Xander (Nicholas Brendon) seemed to spend all of his days watching every single movie in the history of Hollywood. This group – the Scoobies – were mocked by Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) and the rest of the popular crowd; they were losers.

And so they were outsiders. Willow, especially, seemed to never really get over that outsider feeling, always eager to prove herself, to be better – her greatest fear: failure; her deepest secret: self-loathing. In this light, it makes so much sense that Willow was Gay All Along. After all – it fits with her character so well. Trying to hide herself away only to realize she never could.

Of course, the fact that Willow is attracted to women is hardly debatable – in fact, it’s hard canon. The relationship between Tara (Amber Benson) and Willow is nothing if not as genuine – definitely sweeter – than every other romantic relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even though it took the series more than a season to have them share a kiss (one of the first lesbian kisses in prime-time television), the show was hardly ever hiding the relationship. While Kennedy (Iyari Limon) is controversial at best and openly despised at worst, Willow is definitely attracted to her – in a major way. Willow likes girls. End of story.

The problem with this, of course, is that Willow spent more than three seasons forming romantic and sexual attachments to, well, men. First, Xander; then, Oz (Seth Green). And then she cheats on Oz with Xander, seemingly motivated for no reason other than lust. And she has sex with Oz, not divulging to us, the viewers, that she felt any discomfort with the act. These are definite signs of attraction to the male gender, after all.

So wait, what is going on here?

Well, as I said, labels are important. Willow calls herself a lesbian. And if a woman who had been with men stood in front of me in real life and called herself a lesbian, I would believe her. After all, there are several reasons why this could happen. She could be, in fact, a lesbian who experienced compulsory heterosexuality; she could have decided to try sex with guys but realized she didn’t want to do it again; she could be a woman who decided that she was only interested in relationships with women, and therefore identified with the label more than with any other label. And since she is a real human being with her own unique experiences, it isn’t my place to tell her she isn’t a lesbian because she had sex with a man, or a relationship with a man, or any other experiences with a man. She is a lesbian. End of story.

But Willow Rosenberg isn’t a real person. She’s a character, open for interpretation. And them’s the facts: Willow Rosenberg liked having sex with men and women.

But! Somebody screams. Willow seems to never experience attraction towards men after she starts dating Tara!

Not true. Even if we ignored the whole episode in which she shows she’s still attracted to Oz after his return, despite being with Tara at the time, there is still this scene in season 4, in which Giles sings “Behind Blue Eyes” and the gang are left in shock, each with their own unique reaction. “Now I remember why I used to have such a crush on him” seems to me at least to not be the most homosexual line ever.

So is Willow bisexual then?

Well, the truth is, Willow does call herself a lesbian, and like I said twice already, labels matter, especially self-identified labels. But the thing is, she never dismisses the label of bisexual, either; she simply assumes she is a lesbian since she is interested in relationships with women. And as I said, Willow isn’t a real person – she was written by other people, imperfect people, people like Joss Whedon who might do good, positive work, and still be biphobic, whether intentionally or not.

Willow never brings up the possibility of being bi. Had she brought it up and dismissed it – well, firstly, the word “bisexual” would have been uttered on television, which seems to be a difficult feat to accomplish, and secondly, it would be a lot easier to accept that she was a lesbian for us bi folk. Because there are real bisexual people out there who experience bi erasure, who are told they’re gay or lesbian when they’re with a person of the same gender and heterosexual when they’re with a person of the opposite gender, who are told they’re confused, who are told they must choose. And it would be so easy to bring it up on the show, as well. It could go something like this:

Buffy: So, you’re gay now?
Willow: Yeah. I thought I might be bisexual, but I’m a lesbian.

See? So easy. These two lines turn Willow from bi erasure to pure lesbian representation.

So is Willow bi, or is she a lesbian?

Well, I guess it’s your choice. I personally believe she’s bisexual; it makes more sense to me, a bisexual woman, that Willow is also a bisexual woman, just with a preference for women. But I have read that many lesbians connected with Willow’s story on such a fundamental way, and I can’t wholeheartedly take it away from them; they have just as much of a right to her as I do.

She’s anything you want her to be, at least until we invent a machine that allows us to travel into fictional universes.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Exploring Bisexual Tension in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted

Gail Wald is a recent high school graduate who has wished to become an author since the age of seven. In her spare time she writes books and essays about Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which she has been a fan of since seventh grade), complains about the patriarchy (in the newly opened Facebook page Gail Complains About the Patriarchy), and plays with her cat.

What ‘Steven Universe’ Creator Rebecca Sugar Means to Me as a Writer and a Bisexual Woman

The creator and showrunner of this popular, groundbreaking, and beautiful show is an openly bisexual woman. That is historic and thrilling, and it means that could be me (alas, if only I could write something half as brilliant as ‘Steven Universe’!). … Yes, we need bisexual characters. But even more importantly, we need bisexual creators telling stories…

This guest post written by Heidi Teague appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Identity is fundamental to writing. The stories we tell, the stories we absorb, are vital to our sense of self.

I am a writer. I have been an avid reader and consumer of stories of all kinds, as well as writing in one form or another, for my entire life.

I am also a bisexual woman. I didn’t know or understand this about myself until a couple of years ago, because I never really felt this was an option. It was something some other people were, and not many of them at that. It wasn’t something a slightly dull academic girl who liked poetry and Shakespeare and Doctor Who would be. Bisexual didn’t look like me, so how could it be me?

Character and identity is key to my writing; I love creating nuanced, interesting, and deeply flawed characters and watching them overcome the obstacles I throw in their way. Any truly intersectional feminist writer knows that the best stories are full of beautifully diverse people of different identities and walks of life. What the best TV dramas do, what the best stories do, is find a way to create empathy with people whose lives, identities, and experiences are vastly different to the viewers’ own. To see yourself and your own experiences reflected in a story is a deeply reassuring, transcendent human experience; being erased, seemingly invisible, or mythical is isolating and creates a disconnect where people are able to disassociate people who are different as ‘other.’ Erasure not only breeds hatred and intolerance, but it also means that the people who don’t fit the dominant narrative are unable to understand and express their difference and feel a sense of belonging. That can have a profound effect on a life; mental health issues among those that identify as LGBTQ are troublingly high.

Writing is exposing yourself, opening yourself up to criticism and ridicule, and that is even more pertinent if yours is a marginalized voice and if your stories challenge the dominant discourses, tropes, and cultural hegemony of traditional narratives. Few (out) queer writers have success or freedom within mainstream television networks, with many creatives curbed by executives who fear that anything too radically different might lose money. But every so often, a beacon of brave storytelling on a mainstream network shines the path for others.

Steven Universe is an animated television series on Cartoon Network of 10-minute episodes charting the coming-of-age of half-human, half magical gem Steven, and his unorthodox family of alien Crystal Gems: Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet. Steven and his best friend Connie learn how to fight together and use Steven’s protective and healing powers to help the Crystal Gems protect Earth. It is a highly creative and finely detailed world, with complex character development and story arcs to rival hour-long dramas. It has already explored depression, anxiety, abusive relationships, grief, and PTSD, as well as teaching its demographic-spanning audience to meet hatred, fear, and ignorance with love, compassion, and forgiveness. This is a show that cares, and wants to make the world a better place, and encourages love of all kinds as being central to this vision.

Steven Universe is progressive in many ways. The Gems, despite being sexless space rocks, use she/her pronouns and have femme presentations. They are all voiced by women of color and have shown what could be potentially read as romantic interest in other Gems and also sometimes in humans. The show uses a narrative conceit known as fusion to indicate a relationship of trust and understanding between two or more Gems as they become one being; this has been shown to be anything from platonic to explicitly romantic, with two Gems being outcast from their society for their taboo love which they express through being permanently fused; they literally are a relationship. Outlawed on their Homeworld, and seen by some as a dangerous threat to the hierarchy of Gem society, the parallels with queer marriage are unabashedly apparent.

The Disney-esque episode charting the origins of this love story, The Answer, was nominated for an Emmy this year, and has just been adapted into a children’s book of the same name.

This cartoon queers more than just one relationship however; there is no tokenism here, as a queer perspective permeates the whole show. Female characters are drawn with visible leg hair and shown to be desirable within the same episode; the main character is a 14-year-old boy who has been shown wearing a skirt, crop top, heels, and make-up and it wasn’t played even slightly for laughs.

A boy and girl fuse together to become a beautiful genderqueer character that is flirted with and admired by both men and women that are otherwise coded as straight, and this is never questioned, lampshaded, or ridiculed.

It has some of the most inclusive and progressive characters on TV as a whole, let alone children’s TV; beautiful characters of different sizes, shapes, genders, presentations, races, and sexualities; characters that are fully rounded, flawed, and story-worthy, not just curiosities or a lazy stab at inclusivity.

Steven’s mother, Rose Quartz, is a large, curvy Gem that was seen as unquestionably beautiful by everyone who encountered her. There is also a lot of subtext to suggest she was not monosexual; in so far as we can label the sexuality of a sentient rock from a matriarchal alien race, it is not binary. She had a highly charged relationship with Pearl, who has openly admitted she loved her, and Rose also loved Steven’s human father, Greg Universe, amongst other humans.

Although there are no characters on the show that are explicitly labelled as bisexual, this is undoubtedly a show with a beating, queer heart.

I already adored Steven Universe, and found joy and solace in it. When I heard Rebecca Sugar publicly identify as bisexual (at Comic Con, filmed here by Felipe Flores, relevant part at approximately 46:30), I simultaneously went, “Of course!” and whooped and punched the air. The creator and showrunner of this popular, groundbreaking, and beautiful show is an openly bisexual woman. That is historic and thrilling, and it means that could be me (alas, if only I could write something half as brilliant as Steven Universe!).

Characters can be inspiring and life-affirming, but giving and seeing real life bisexual folks out in prominent and powerful positions, especially in the entertainment industry is part of creating an environment where queer characters can have full and rich stories that aren’t only centered on coming out or perpetuating harmful tropes. Instead of straight writers profiting off the relative zeitgeist of queer characters, with bisexual characters often falling foul of this as they are seen as the “easy option” — ‘Janet can leave her husband, have an affair with a woman, have a breakdown as she is outed to her children and work colleagues, then go back to her husband… that’s the LGBTQ quota met!’ — having actual bisexual writers allows truth in television, and gives us the honest and complex characterizations we deserve.

Yes, we need bisexual characters. But even more importantly, we need bisexual creators telling stories and letting those nerds in the middle of suburbia know that there are people out there like them that they can aspire to emulate.

Rebecca Sugar, if you’re reading this, know you are loved and admired by so many. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Strong in the Real Way: Steven Universe and the Shape of Masculinity to Come
The Revolutionary Fatness of Steven Universe
Steven Universe: Many Dimensions of Fat Positivity
Steven Universe: A Superhero Team We Can Believe In

Heidi Teague is an aspiring British screenwriter and an accomplished nerd. She sporadically updates her feminism and pop culture blog Shrewish Thoughts and writes for Debut online.