Barrett Vann – Bitch Flicks

‘Withnail and I’ and the Danger of the Feminine Man

Withnail and I promo — *Withnail and I* promo

This guest post by Barrett Vann appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

In the film Withnail and I, there are a grand total of four women, only two of whom have any lines, and even then, only a handful. That considered, the film is actually quite interesting from a gender standpoint. Its two protagonists, Withnail, and “I” (named in the script as Marwood), are out of work actors in 1969, strung out and skint broke. Within the world of the film, which deals largely with people who are “outside” mainstream society in one way or another, the stereotypically feminine serves as a marker for the other, and in some cases, the deviant.

Both the two protagonists are marked as feminine in various ways. Withnail is effete and dandyish; Marwood is given to sensitivity and introspection. Both have hair which, while not hippyish by any measure, is nonetheless longer than standard; Marwood’s a tumble of Pre-Raphaelite curls, whilst Withnail’s is viciously slicked back. At one point, Withnail sneers that he’s been turned down from a job because his hair is too long. Their drug dealer, Danny, has hair to his shoulders, and in one scene, expounds on the virtues of long hair, saying, “I don’t advise a haircut, man. …Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”* Even though this is clearly drugged-up nonsense, it’s a moment of great symbolic significance at the end of the film, when we see that Marwood has shorn his curls in favour of a 1914 cut.

In a scene early on in the film, Withnail throws up over Marwood’s boots after drinking anti-freeze, and to get rid of the smell, Marwood scrubs them with essence of petunia. Later on, down their local boozer, a huge drunk calls Marwood a “perfumed ponce” as he’s on his way to the lavatory. Now, paranoia is one of Marwood’s consistent character traits, but it’s interesting that his reaction to this is a very near cousin to the way a woman might react to similar harassment. He doesn’t snap back, or get annoyed or defensive at the implication; instead, he tries not to react visibly, whilst internally he panics, very aware of the potentially sexual danger the man might present.

As he stands in the toilet cubicle, he notices graffiti on the wall reading I FUCK ARSES, and his voiceover-ed internal monologue seizes on it immediately. “I fuck arses? Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses. Maybe he’s written this in some moment of drunken sincerity. I’m in considerable danger; I must get out of here at once.” Similarly, later in the film, in the face of Uncle Monty’s uncomfortable advances, he adopts a tactic recognisable to probably any woman. Smiling compulsive, nervous smiles, he tries desperately to deflect Monty with politeness and changes of topic.

Marwood is therefore not only perceived by others to have feminine qualities, he reacts to that perception in what is not a stereotypically masculine fashion. When he thinks about the drunk, it is to cast him as comparatively more masculine than himself; “I don’t consciously offend big men like this. This one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you’d have to live up a tree.” Even the phrasing, “I don’t consciously offend big men like this,” implies that this is something that happens even when he doesn’t have essence of petunia all over his boots.

Another heavily feminised male character is Withnail’s Uncle Monty, whose cottage in the Lake District Withnail and Marwood go to stay at. Monty is instantly recognisable as a caricature of the faded old theatre queen; he lives alone with his cat and his memories, his manner of speech is elaborate and affected. He giggles and simpers and emotes at the slightest provocation. He also ticks all the boxes of the predatory homosexual. In his first scene, he remarks with relish that “There is a certain je ne sais quoi – oh, so very special – about a firm… young… carrot,” to the obvious discomfort of Marwood, and later in the film, once he’s joined Withnail and Marwood at Crow Crag, sexually harasses and assaults Marwood.

It is interesting to note that prior to the scene of the attempted rape, though his behaviour is marked as feminine in appearance, Monty seems to be nothing but a thoroughly average English gentleman. When he comes to Marwood’s room, however, he’s dressed in a silk dressing gown and velvet slippers, and wearing makeup. Not garish makeup either–delicately applied rouge, a little bit of eyeshadow, a smudge of lip colour. The contrast between his appearance and his behaviour in this scene is striking, whilst visually coded as very feminine, Monty is aggressively sexual, physically looming over Marwood, backing him into a corner and growling that “I mean to have you, even if it must be burglary!” This is not to say, of course, that feminine people cannot be sexually aggressive and dangerous, but that societal standards have designated this kind of behaviour as the extreme of masculine.

Consistently, then, femininity in men is dangerous. It may be actively dangerous, as in Uncle Monty, who assaults Marwood whilst in near-drag, or passively dangerous, in that it makes the feminine man a target for harassment, as in the lout at the pub who calls Marwood a perfumed ponce. Ultimately, it is dangerous because it marks the other, and to be other is to be in danger. When Marwood cuts his hair, it is because he’s landed a leading role in a play and is leaving Withnail’s kind of life for the safety of employment, of making a living in a socially-sanctioned fashion.

Do I think this portrayal of femininity in men as dangerous is intentional? No, I don’t. Withnail and I is in a lot of ways a love letter to a certain period in Bruce Robinson’s life, and to his friend Viv, off whom Withnail is based. A cynical, twisted sort of love letter, certainly, but one that feels to me sad, and fond, and which looks with affection at those who are marked as other within it. It’s still very interesting, though, to look at this pattern and what it says about our society, where femininity is simultaneously vulnerable and sexually dangerous, and to be feminine is automatically to be outside the norm.

*All quotes used in this article are from the screenplay, rather than the film itself, and so may differ in places from the dialogue as it is in the movie.

Barrett Vann has just graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in English and Linguistics. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. Now that she’s left school, she hopes to find a real job so in a few years she can tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: Gendered Values and Women in Middle Earth

This is a guest post by Barrett Vann.

Several weeks ago, I was trawling the internet for reviews of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, when I came across this one, by Rhiannon at Feminist Fiction. In it, she says:

The film was … a retelling of one of the oldest, most classic, and so most male and white modern fantasy tales we have. And in that context, the film was actually quite an interesting achievement.

I’m not going to try to argue that The Hobbit was a feminist movie — with only one female character in the whole film, that feels a bit of a stretch. I’m not even going to claim that the film was perfectly executed, because I think it had many flaws. But I think it presented the all-male fantasy adventure in a somewhat new way, valuing strengths other than sheer might and blunt, obvious bravery.

… I’m not going to claim that these are “feminine” strengths. But I think they are traits that many other adventure movies would brush over, or present as weaknesses, a lack of proper, adventurous masculinity. The fact that the Hobbit focuses on these traits and integrates them into its adventure is admirable.

The fact that Rhiannon drew attention to this gave me pause, not because it’s not true—quite the contrary—or because I hadn’t noticed it myself, but because that is something so consistently true of Tolkien’s works that it would never have occurred to me to mention it. The value system in Tolkien’s Middle Earth consistently favours “softer” strengths, putting emphasis on gentleness, scholarliness, empathy, and patience as qualities that heroes possess. Indeed, it’s written into the very mythology of the legendarium. In The Silmarillion, one of the mighty of the gods of Middle Earth is Nienna, who “is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. … But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope” (Tolkien, p. 19). Gandalf in his younger days is described as having learned pity and patience from her. This value placed upon empathy, of sorrow as a virtue, endurance of the spirit rather than the body, resonates throughout all of Tolkien’s works.

In The Lord of the Rings, whilst there is a war to be fought, and manly men like Aragorn and Éomer to fight it, the true heroes of the story are Frodo and Sam—a scholar and a gardener. In Fellowship, Frodo and Gandalf have this telling exchange in the Mines of Moria:

Frodo: It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him when he had the chance!

Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or evil before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. [1]

Indeed, characters who embody more traditionally masculine values are more often the ones at moral fault, more apt to fall prey to the deceptions of evil or act rashly and in pride. To take things back to The Silmarillion once more, Fëanor, the Noldorin prince and gemsmith, is “the mightiest in all parts of body and mind: in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and subtlety alike: of all the Children of Ilúvatar” (Tolkien, p. 109). Fëanor is characterised by his might, but he is also rash, prideful, selfish, quick to wrath, and heedless of consequences. His actions result in horrific civil war and centuries of bloodshed and pain.

In The Lord of the Rings, a lesser example is Boromir, who is Captain of the Tower of Guard, and widely regarded as a great warrior among men; large and strong, doughty in battle, and fiercely patriotic. In The Two Towers and Return of the King, he is posthumously contrasted to his brother Faramir, who is the more gentle and scholarly of the two, and who, it is said, is “more Númenórean” than his brother. Boromir possesses many “masculine” virtues, but it is he who first of the Fellowship falls prey to the Ring, as it plays on both his fears for his city and his pride in his own skill. [2]

So, if we’re looking at traditionally gendered values and strengths, Tolkien’s works (and subsequently Jackson’s movies) often subvert them. Which is great! But what about the actual women of Middle Earth? Here, for those readers less geeky about Tolkien than I, I shall cease reference to The Silmarillion, and focus solely on The Lord of the Rings, and the differences between women in the books and the movies.

The Lord of the Rings books are not exactly overflowing with women; Galadriel, Éowyn, Arwen, Goldberry, Rosie Cotton, and a few bit players like Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and Ioreth the Gondorian healer. The three most significant of these, and those who survive into the movies, are Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn. The first two have their roles expanded for the movies, sometimes with more success than others.

Galadriel is the character who stays closest to her book incarnation, and is, let’s make no bones, awesome. The Queen of Lothlorien, Galadriel is one of the oldest Elves in Middle Earth, and a powerful sorceress who bears one of the three Elf-rings. In the book, she appears only once, when the Fellowship stops in Lothlorien after losing Gandalf in Moria. She is a reader of thoughts, and speaks to the hearts and minds of each member of the Fellowship, testing their weaknesses. She also possesses the Mirror of Galadriel, in which can be seen “things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to pass.” She invites Frodo and Sam to look into the Mirror, something which foreshadows events to come and helps to harden their resolve. She is tempted to take the Ring when Frodo offers it to her, envisioning a future in which “Instead of a Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All will love me and despair” (Tolkien, p. 356). The Ring tempts those of power, and as an immensely powerful woman, it is a hard test, but she overcomes it. She also gives gifts to the Fellowship, many of which are of immense use later, particularly the ones given to the Hobbits.

Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) is tempted by the Ring

It is of note, I think, that the Ring Galadriel bears is Nenya, the Ring of Adamant. Through her ring, she is characterised as a figure of strength.

The movie’s Galadriel is little changed, but her role is expanded. She provides the voiceover at the beginning of Fellowship, as one who was there and remembers the events of ages past, and in Two Towers, she and Elrond converse on the subject of the rising evil of Sauron and Saruman, and how best to subdue it. She also sends a host of warriors to the battle at Helm’s Deep. In Return of the King, Frodo imagines he sees her as he struggles through Cirith Ungol, and her reminder, “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future,” serves as a sort of tagline for the trilogy. She embodies strength, wisdom, and experience, and is seen frequently in a role of support for other, more obviously active characters.

“Will you look into the Mirror?”

It can be said without much argument, I think, that Galadriel is an excellent feminist character. Though she is married, it is she who is the leader of the galadhrim; she is powerful, compassionate, and wise, but she is not without flaws; temptation, and a certain withdrawal from the events of the world which Tolkien implies is the result of mistakes made when she was younger.

Arwen is a different case. Aragorn’s love, she is the daughter of Elrond, and in the books is more or less a nonentity. Frodo sees her at dinner in Rivendell, and she is described as fair and wise, dark-haired and grey-eyed, and she appears again, at the end of Return of the King, to marry Aragorn. Her only dialogue is a short exchange with Frodo in which she gives him a pendant to wear, to draw strength from when his experiences are too hard to bear. She is meant to be an echo of Luthien, the elf-maid in the First Age who married a mortal man; Luthien was an enchantress who, among other things, glamoured herself to look like a vampire, snuck into the fortress of Angband and put the Dark Lord Morgoth into an enchanted sleep so she could snatch a Silmaril from his very crown. However strong and fabulous Luthien was, though, all the resemblance we see in her descendant is that Arwen also loves a mortal man. Her entire character centres around Aragorn.

Now, Peter Jackson knew, at least, that if you’re going to have a love story, the other half of that love story has to show up more than once before she gets hitched. The way he goes about that, however, doesn’t always work.

In Fellowship, she takes the role of Glorfindel from the books, showing up to bring a wounded Frodo to Rivendell, outrunning Black Riders and summoning the flood of the River Bruinen to drown them after she crosses it. She’s competent, fearless, she even teases Aragorn at one point. Later on, the two of them share a romantic moment, reminiscing about the moment they met; Arwen assures him that she has faith in him, and pledges to forsake immortality for him. All that is fine.

Arwen (Liv Tyler) faces off against the Ringwraiths

In Two Towers, things start getting a little wobbly. With the introduction of Éowyn, a pseudo-love triangle is formed, and Aragorn spends a lot of time being woeful and having flashbacks about Arwen, in one of which he gives her back her Evenstar pendant, the symbol of her choice to become mortal for his sake. Unfortunately, this memory serves only to show Aragorn completely ignoring the agency of the woman he loves and adopting a paternalistic role in which he knows what’s best for her. Never mind the fact that they both knew this was always in the cards. The one element of this scene which might salvage it is the perfect chill of Liv Tyler’s delivery of the line, “It was a gift. Keep it.”

There are also scenes of Arwen and Elrond, in which Elrond takes on this same role, attempting to convince Arwen that there is nothing for her in Middle Earth, and that she would do best to stay with her family and depart to Valinor. Again, Arwen’s agency is undermined, and further, though she is a mature woman—indeed, over two-thousand years old—she is made childlike, as she trembles and weeps in her father’s arms.

In Return of the King, she is on her way to the Grey Havens until she has a vision of the child she might one day have with Aragorn, and rushes back to accuse Elrond of keeping his foreknowledge from her. It is then that the weakest element of the Arwen subplot commences; her mortality has (apparently) taken a very immediate form, and her fate somehow tied to that of the Ring. She is reduced to lying on cushions and weeping whilst Elrond rides to tell Aragorn that she is dying, and will die unless Aragorn wins this war for them. It’s utterly illogical, and worse, practically turns Arwen into a Sleeping Beauty figure.

Like a Victorian consumptive, Arwen dies prettily

All in all, the movies’ version of Arwen is a curious thing. She is shown to be competent, wise and compassionate and loving, but all that is largely undermined by extraneous plot points which strip her agency from her and serve to make her into merely a motivation for Aragorn. This is unfortunate, as she has the potential to be so much more—someone old and wise, strong and brave enough to willingly accept her own death, when death is something so alien to her.

The third of these women, Éowyn, is one of my favourite characters in The Lord of the Rings, because she is a mass of contradictions. She is a young woman, only twenty-three, whose parents have died, whose uncle has sunk slowly into dotage, whose country is being encroached on by enemies; she is fragile, injured, deeply sorrowful—indeed suicidal—but she responds to this by being as strong as she possibly can—and the way she knows to be strong is the way men are strong. She is trained as a warrior, but because she is a woman (more likely, because she is a royal woman), she is not allowed to fight. And so she rages, furious at herself for her uselessness, and at everyone else for making her so. The metaphors through which she is described are of ice and steel—beautiful, but cold, sharp, distant. When she rides to war, hers is “the face who rides seeking death, having no hope.” She is at once strong and deeply vulnerable.

Though the movies do at least allow her a few rare moments of happiness

In the books, she appears to develop an infatuation with Aragorn, but it is clearly grounded more in the fact that Aragorn is someone she wishes to emulate; he symbolises strength, and also the possibility of escape. She would follow him, but as a soldier follows his captain, not a girl pining for love. This is one respect in which the movies misstep. Miranda Otto’s Éowyn is much tearier, more delicate, where the Éowyn of the books is stubborn and dignified, and in introducing the love triangle element, her feelings for Aragorn are depicted as more genuinely romantic, and therefore she also becomes jealous of Arwen. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a woman having romantic feelings for someone she cannot have, but I feel that in this case, it rather misses the point.

Éowyn (Miranda Otto) weeps over the death of her cousin and the treachery of Wormtongue

In the books, Éowyn is left to rule at Edoras when Aragorn, Theoden, and his men ride off to war, and in a touch I appreciate, is actually nominated for the position by one of Theoden’s guards when Theoden is left in doubt over whom he ought to entrust with the role. ‘‘’I said not Éomer,’ answered Háma. ‘And he is not the last [of the House of Eorl]. There is Éowyn, daughter of Éomund … She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone’” (Tolkien, p. 512). Though she is young, she is known by her uncle’s men to be strong and intelligent enough to command, to be entrusted with defending the capital of their realm. Éowyn, however, does not take it as such, and chafes that she is not allowed to ride with the men.

Concerning war, there are a few points to make concerning the movies’ depiction thereof. Éowyn tells Aragorn, “The women of this country learned long ago; those without swords can still die upon them.” The implication here ought to be that there are other shieldmaidens of Rohan; perhaps not in the court, but in the smaller hamlets away from Edoras, that Éowyn is not an anomaly. However, the only other women of Rohan we see seem to be either old women or young children, fleeing from burning settlements or cowering in the caves at Helm’s Deep. I was disappointed that they only nominally normalised the idea of women fighters, rather than actually showing it.

Éowyn after the defeat of the Witch King

Éowyn’s best known moment, understandably, is her defeat of the Witch King; riding to the battle of the Pelennor Fields disguised as a man, she faces off with an immortal creature so terrifying he can fell men with a mere scream, beheads his draconian mount, and then, with the assistance of Merry the hobbit, kills him. My personal preference is for the book’s version of that scene, but that’s only because I have an unabashed fondness for Éowyn’s speech before she beheads his steed.

But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him. (Tolkien, p. 823)

The movie, perhaps understandably, shortens that to “I am no man!,” but the point remains. Éowyn is strong here not because she’s trying to be a man, but because she is a woman. It’s a triumphant moment.

Overall, I would say women in the movies actually come off rather worse than they do in the books, if only by a little. While scenes like Lothlorien and the Battle of the Pelennor fields are truly excellent, the writers seem to struggle in knowing how to depict women who aren’t strong or powerful in obvious ways, as shown in the unfortunate choices made regarding Arwen, and the way Éowyn shines less than she does in the books when she’s not cutting the heads off monsters. Considering the books, Tolkien’s world, although it is not a feminist one by any stretch, does to some extent restructure a gendered value system, and does contain dynamic and thoughtfully written female characters. If only there were more of them.

[1] This is the movie’s version of this dialogue, though a similar one occurs in the book.

[2] Note: I am not hating on Boromir! I feel I have to point this out, because people so often do, but he is actually one of my favourite characters. All those delicious flaws and a redemptive death; I’m a sucker.

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Barrett Vann has just graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in English and Linguistics. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. Now that she’s left school, she hopes to find a real job so in a few years she can tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’: Feminism and Crosscasting

This is a guest review by Barrett Vann.

Initially, a feminist reading of Jesus Christ Superstar might not seem to turn out particularly in the musical’s favour. Although the ensemble is composed of men and women fairly equally, there is only one female character of any significance, Mary Magdalene. In addition to being the only named woman in the show, Mary is a prostitute, and in love with Jesus–the marks against her seem to add up. However, considering the show’s source text (the Bible, natch), this is not actually as bad as it sounds.

It’s a matter of loose scriptural interpretation as to whether the Biblical Mary was a prostitute, but this version of her is. It’s never stated outright, but it is alluded to, surprisingly not in a disrespectful fashion. When Judas sneers at her that ‘It’s not that [he objects] to her profession, but she doesn’t fit in well, with what you (Jesus) teach and say,’ Jesus immediately (and angrily, for JCS’s Jesus has something of a temper) slaps him down as a hypocrite. ‘When your slate is clean, then you may throw stones/ If your slate is not, then leave her alone!’ It’s notable, and unfortunate, that Mary doesn’t speak up for herself in this scene, instead allowing Jesus to come to her defence, but her profession–which it’s implied she still practises–is never shamed by the larger narrative.

Further, though she may be in love with Jesus, it’s not a one-dimensional, love-interest kind of emotion. Indeed, the show makes plain that she has no idea what to do with it. In her song aptly titled ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him,’ she’s shown as someone used to being in control of a situation, in control of her own emotions. Again, her profession as a sex worker is referenced when she rationalises to herself that she’s had lots of men, she knows how to deal with men, Jesus ought merely be one more. But for some reason, he’s not, and that scares her. As the song goes on, she even says, ‘Yet, if he said he loved me/ I’d be lost, I’d be frightened/ I couldn’t cope/ Just couldn’t cope.’

Refreshingly, though we see the positive aspects of her love in her behaviour toward Jesus, it’s also portrayed as what love often is; an overwhelming emotion. Mary is an independent, rational, controlled woman with an inner life who is, frankly, freaked out and doesn’t know how to deal with her own reactions.

Mary (Yvonne Elliman) washes Jesus’s (Ted Neeley) feet in the 1973 film

Later in the show, Mary is the one who confronts Peter about his denial of Jesus, sure where he is scared, and in the film, they have a duet, ‘Could We Start Again Please?,’ in which they lament that things have gone too far, and beg an absent Jesus to let them start over and do it again. Although in the scene with Peter, Mary is the strong one, she’s still fallible and unsure, and while in previous scenes, she’s seemed separate from the Apostles, here she is Peter’s comrade.

So, for a show and film with only one real female character, not bad. Not amazing, but certainly not as bad as it could be. However, where JCS really becomes interesting is in other respects.

Though this is intended to examine the show through a feminist lens, intersectionality is key, and so mention must be given to race. Though the practise of colourblind casting has been open to some debate as to whether or not it’s actually a good thing (allowing, for instance, such un-self-aware gaffes as all-white productions of The Wiz with the argument that they’re being colourblind, they’re being progressive), in the 1973 film of JCS, it’s practised about as truly as I have ever seen. The ensemble of disciples is about as diverse racially as they are among gender lines, and of what one might term the ‘main’ cast, Judas and Simon Zealotes are played by black men, Mary Magdalene a woman of mixed Irish, Chinese, and Japanese descent, and the actor who plays Herod is Jewish. Somewhat ironically, come to that. Actors of colour are not relegated to unimportant side characters; they can be anyone.

Simon Zealotes (Larry Marshall) and a group of disciples encourage Jesus to a militant revolution against the Romans

Carl Anderson (Judas), Ted Neeley, and Yvonne Elliman on set

One of the things which I find most interesting, though, is that, due to the fact that many of the significant male parts are written for high tenors, the show has a not-insignificant history of crosscasting. I’ve seen productions in which Judas is played by a woman, another where Jesus is. I’ve heard of Herod being played by a woman. Something about the show means that people seem to feel no compunction about such castings, which raises the question, do they invite new readings of the core text, or simply emphasise qualities that are already there?

One such reading is the relationship between Jesus and Judas. In the show, Judas is the main character, flawed but sympathetic, a tragic tool of destiny. He is written explicitly as a foil to Mary Magdalene; they both love Jesus, but Judas is challenging, afraid, untrusting of Jesus’s ability to handle what he’s started; he even gets a reprise of her song, ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him,’ as if the comparison wasn’t already clear. JCS makes it clear that Judas does love Jesus. Whether or not the role is crosscast, his scorn for Mary Magdalene is often played as the result of his jealousy over her. Some people might say that a crosscast show makes a strained romantic or sexual relationship between Jesus and Judas more obvious, but I would argue that a queer reading of a non-crosscast show is just as valid, and indeed it is occasionally played that way. Productions have been known to make Judas’s betraying kiss less a brotherly brush of the cheek, and more a desperate, angry, farewell kiss on the mouth.

When Jesus is crosscast, that also has the potential to change the relationship between himself and Mary Magdalene, as the only two women in a crowd of men. It also, perhaps more significantly, makes the prophet and leader of a cultural and religious movement female. It is all too common for works of fiction, as well as real-life movements, to revolve around men, and changing such a male leader to a female one is making a statement about gender and power, not to mention the trope of ‘the chosen one,’ a character type almost exclusively male. Thanks to ingrained cultural conventions about gender, it also changes the dynamic of things like the reasons behind the Sanhedrin’s decision to arrest Jesus, or the scene in which Pilate has him stripped and flogged. If Jesus is a woman rather than a man, such scenes will almost inevitably read differently.

The answer to my question, then, would be: both. Some things, mainly the interpersonal relationships, have precedent in the text, and crosscasting largely affects only how queer they are or aren’t, whereas larger societal issues which may crop up genuinely are not there in the original text.

Ultimately, Jesus Christ Superstar is interesting and feminist not necessarily because of what the text of the show itself presents, which may change from production to production, but because of the convention it carries which allows for queering of the text, of changing the gender of characters, of being free with the race of those cast. It would be difficult to imagine that happening with a show like The Secret Garden or Les Miserables.

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Barrett Vann is an English and Linguistics student at the University of Minnesota. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. After she graduates in December, she hopes to tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types.

Women in Science Fiction Week: In Defence of Jo Grant, Beyond Screams and Miniskirts: The Women of Classic ‘Doctor Who’

Guest post written by Barrett Vann.

Let’s talk about Doctor Who. Let’s talk, in fact, about the Doctor’s companions. Back in the day of 2005, when Doctor Who came back to the airwaves, there were a lot of inevitable comparisons between this New Who and the Classic Who that ran from ‘63 to ‘89. People talked about the Doctor himself, about the plots, the monsters– and they talked about his companions. Rose Tyler was lauded as a new kind of companion– not so much an assistant as a partner, wearing baggy jeans and using her wits and determination, not one of those screaming, knicker-flashing ninnies from the old series back in the sexist sixties and seventies.

Well, wait just a bloody minute. Certainly the stereotype exists that companions back in the day were nothing but a bit of eye candy to entice the dads into watching a family show, and no-one is going to argue that feminism and gender issues haven’t advanced in fifty years. But were the women of Classic Who really nothing but a load of scantily-dressed damsels who screamed at the first sign of danger or imminent alien invasion?

They certainly were not.

I’m going to start with the Third Doctor, because I love him, and because two of his companions make a wonderful illustration for the variety of why and how the women of Classic Who were awesome. The Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee from 1970-1974, had several companions, but it is the first two I want to compare here, Liz Shaw and Jo Grant.

Dr. Shaw, being serious

Jo Grant, being a nature child

Dr. Liz Shaw was a Cambridge-educated scientist, and expert on meteorites with at least two degrees, one in physics and one in medicine. Although young and fashionable (fashionable here meaning improbably short skirts and equally improbable heels), she has no romances whilst on the show, and grows impatient with being treated like the Doctor’s errand-girl. A career woman (and undeniably a woman not a girl), she’s part of UNIT before the Doctor showed up, and though they do develop a good relationship, he’s never the end-all be-all of what she’s doing with her life. Indeed, when she does eventually leave UNIT to return to her research, she cites as her reason that the Doctor did not need a capable assistant, what he really needed was “someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was.” Amusingly, this rather meta observation does indeed reflect what was often the role of the Doctor’s companion, a role Liz often deviated from.

Her successor, Jo Grant, would seem initially to fit much more comfortably into that role. When she first hit the screen, Josephine Grant was young, 19 or 20, inexperienced, and only got the job at UNIT because she had an uncle in the ministry. She’s blonde, bubbly, and at first appears to be a bit of a ditz. She flirts with the UNIT men, she giggles, she admits (often) that she doesn’t understand things; when she’s frightened, she screams. In her first appearance, she accidentally wrecks an experiment the Doctor’s working on, and then is hypnotised into almost blowing up UNIT. In stark contrast to the very scientific Liz, and the Doctor himself, she’s a New Agey 70’s girl, open to the possibilities of magic and superstition, and occasionally the show mocks her for this. On one occasion, she actually ends up dressed in white and strapped to an altar as a virgin sacrifice. A more potent image of objectified, powerless femininity it would be hard to find. Unlike Liz, who leaves the show to further her career, Jo leaves because she’s fallen in love and wants to get married and study mushrooms in the Amazon.

So it might be easy to dismiss Jo as one of those useless female companions. A pretty bit of skirt to be an audience stand-in for the Doctor to explicate to. Except for the fact that Jo Grant is awesome. She’s a trained escapologist, she can fly a helicopter, she can abseil; in ‘The Mind of Evil’, she karates a prison riot leader out of his gun. On numerous occasions, when the Doctor’s got himself locked up somewhere, she comes to his rescue. Though in her first appearance, the Master hypnotises her, the Doctor teaches her how to resist it, so that in later confrontations, the Master is utterly frustrated by his inability to dominate her mind. In ‘The Time Monster’, when they run into the Master, again, and he finds himself unable to find anything to say, she mockingly suggests, ‘How about, “Curses, foiled again”?’ She’s also bold, capable of making hard decisions under pressure. Again in ‘Time Monster’, the Doctor threatens their mutual destruction by initiating a Time Ram, shoving his and the Master’s TARDISes into the same temporospatial coordinates; but when the Doctor hesitates, Jo’s the one who makes the final move to press the big red button.

Jo Grant is unimpressed by your gun, Master

Ultimately, though, even disregarding her badassery, Jo is a great character. It’s easy to dismiss her because she is, in many ways, very girly. And as anyone knows, girliness is too often considered one and the same as weakness; girly characters have to ‘make up’ for themselves by compensating with more masculine traits if they are to be considered strong. But are Jo’s girly qualities weak? Not at all. She’s good with people, certainly better than the Doctor; she’s emotional and empathetic– and if she screams when she’s frightened? I call that a perfectly reasonable response. She is sometimes gullible, ditzy, she did fail her science A-levels, but all that means is that she’s flawed, as all good characters should be.

One of the things about the women in Doctor Who that’s wonderful is that, like Liz and Jo, they’re strong in different ways. Another interesting dichotomy appears with the Second Doctor, when he travelled with Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. Jamie– short for James Robert– is a Scottish Highlander from the mid 18th century, while Zoe is a scientist who lived on a space station in the 21st. Despite the fact that Jamie was snatched, literally, out of the middle of a battle, and is still quick with his knife, it is he, not Zoe, who spends the most time physically clinging to the Doctor in times of danger.

Jamie McCrimmon does not know the meaning of personal space

Here, while Zoe is the competent scientist, Jamie is the volatile, emotional party who depends on the Doctor. Being a Scot, there are, of course, also the obligatory jokes about which member of Team TARDIS is the one wearing the short skirt this time.

And the list continues. Travelling with the Doctor’ fourth incarnation, there’s Romana, a Time Lady. Cool, arrogant, sharp-tongued, the Doctor’s intellectual equal; as she’s quick to point out, she did graduate from the Academy with a triple first. Romana is also eager to see the universe, despite coming from a highly insular society. Later, Leela, a knife-wielding warrior, all instinct and impulse, who doesn’t care for being treated like the Doctor’s own personal Pygmalion project. With the Fifth Doctor, there’s Nyssa, an alien, a scientist and pacifist; with the Seventh Doctor, Ace McShane, an emotionally troubled teenager who puts on an unfailingly tough facade and likes blowing things up. Or beating up Daleks with baseball bats. Even Peri, the American who travelled with the Fifth and Sixth Doctor, and who fairly obviously was there to be little more than a lot of bouncing cleavage, is a botanist, clearly intelligent, and refuses to take down-talking from anyone, whether the rather bombastic and volatile Sixth Doctor, or the Master, whom she famously tells, ‘I’m Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you can!’

Most of the Doctor’s companions, Old and New (if you don’t include non-televised media)

All these characters have strengths and weaknesses, but one thing they certainly are not is a homogeneous mass of legs, high heels, and helplessness. Another wonderful thing about Doctor Who is that the universe is a living one. In non-televised media (the Big Finish audioplays, and Doctor Who novels, which, incidentally, I wholeheartedly recommend), characters who were short-changed in canon, like Peri, are expanded, and others who were a little one-note, like Tegan and Ace, are allowed to develop. But even without that, there’s far more to the women of Doctor Who than might at first meet the eye, and there are no few who’d give you a proper talking to for saying otherwise.