Death – Bitch Flicks

‘Penny Dreadful’: Departure from Heroine

We do not see the warrior that we have come to know and love, for her ability to not just fight battles, but to align others to fight against their darkest selves and moments for a better world. … Her death becomes a part of their story and creates an allegory of her character; she is not a woman anymore, but a figure to them, something they now own.

This guest post is written by Cassandra A. Clarke. | Spoilers ahead.

In battles, there’s an importance not just on the victor but on the amount of effort given by both sides. Perhaps this is why it’s the longest boxing matches that we remember, not for the score, but for the sake of the perseverance in those who step into the ring; that’s what we remember. It is no wonder that Penny Dreadful’s season three finale (and unexpected series finale) left viewers with a bitter aftertaste in their mouth.

“The Blessed Dark” episode was framed as the show’s last battle (including an epic slow motion shot of the team assembling on their way to face Dracula in his Gothic hideout in the dregs of the city), one that viewers had been waiting for since the series’ introduction of Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), as the doomed to be cleverest person in the room, facing an eternal battle against the Devil and Dracula, both vying for her soul and flesh. Yet, we received a forfeit: a bequest to finish with all of the battle, with all of the effort, in exchange for calm; or, in more literal terms, she asks Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) to kill her in order for her to find redemption in heaven and leave this earth. Vanessa, the same woman who punched the Devil in the face, who fought for her soul back, relinquishes her life.

In an interview with Variety, Penny Dreadful creator/showrunner John Logan and Showtime president David Nevins, claimed that this ending for Vanessa was actually a message of empowerment for the audience. In Logan’s words, he said Vanessa Ives “owns her death.” While it’s true that Vanessa did ask for her death, the two are missing a bigger point about the show’s view of agency. The series does a marvelous job at toying with the idea of possession to make us question the view of agency for the characters: Are they acting like themselves or another? Are we imagining them to be better than they are? In Vanessa’s last moment, it’s unclear whether or not her agency is fully there or not as moments before she is shot, she tells Ethan, “Vanessa is long gone.” This begs the audience to wonder whether or not her death was something she truly wanted or the desire of her darker parts inside herself and we received no answer. The moment is too brief to provide more clues to her state of mind and wishes; it ends with someone taking her life in their hands and ending it in order to prevent her from having to be hurt (or have others hurt) to survive.

Even if Penny Dreadful is saying that this death, this kind of redemption from her life, is what she sought after, there is still another question that goes unanswered: Why did Vanessa’s death come so easily? In the finale, we see no battle with Vanessa, no decision to harm the creatures that have harmed her. Although she has leveled up to be the Queen of Darkness, we do not see her actually wield her power nor use it to take advantage of Dracula. We are led to believe that she is seduced by him and not of herself, and yet, we see her escape the clutches of this darkness to ask Ethan for help? All of her battle happens under the surface and off-screen, so that we as a audience cannot actually see any of Vanessa’s planning or will or desire, and that is where her death failed us. We do not see the warrior that we have come to know and love, for her ability to not just fight battles, but to align others to fight against their darkest selves and moments for a better world. She has no team to lead, no mission to complete.

The team exists, but we do not see Vanessa lead them like she has in the past to help defeat witches, demons, and toxic people. Her team is almost completely destroyed by the hands of the creatures of the night and they have no real power in which to defeat Dracula without her assistance. Instead of her power, we see a docile, white-dressed maiden, asking to be sent back to her creator. This feels so wrong because the series tended to show us how sometimes the darkest parts of ourselves can be aligned with good intentions and used for something more. We see that motif exercised plentifully through Ethan, who is able to kill an entire bar of people and yet is still shown to struggle emotionally, returning to London for the good fight. Yet, we do not get a chance to really see Vanessa struggle in and through her darkness. And this also begs another uncomfortable question to ask that the show avoids of her darkness: Did she do enough to win back her God’s faith? Because we don’t see her fight and do see Dracula flee back into the night, we’re left wondering if she earned her redemption. Did she do enough good?

The series carefully avoids answering that question by putting us into a hazy London where we can only imagine the thousands of deaths that Vanessa caused. We do not see her confront that. We see her choose to join Dracula and then hear of her casualties but we do not see Vanessa reconcile these consequences. We do not see her team assemble to do everything they can for her. Instead, we are left with an ending of her friends gathering at her grave, talking about what they learned from her. They are all given a second life to live, post-Vanessa, and she has taught them how to be more wicked than good. Her death becomes a part of their story and creates an allegory of her character; she is not a woman anymore, but a figure to them, something they now own.

Although Logan says this is a “shocking” ending for a show in 2016, as it shows a woman dying for what she believes in, it is not at all shocking to me. Plenty of women characters have been used as a prop to tell other men’s stories, to be their emblem of hope and fear. Penny Dreadful perpetuates the idea that in order to be strong and overcome the life that you were born into, even if it’s unfair, even if it’s theoretically doomed to cause you pain over and over again, it’s more worthy and noble to sacrifice yourself for others as opposed to learning how to channel your efforts into creating a stronger world. Each of the male characters who create monsters literally and kill innocents (including their children and siblings) are able to gain a chance at a new life, but Vanessa was never granted this option.

Logan argues that the only two choices that Vanessa had were eternal Hell on earth or Heaven. I think that is where the show ultimately failed Vanessa and us, because there was no thought to a third alternative for her, to a last battle, or, dare I say, the vanquishing of both evil male-oriented forces in her life. Could we imagine in 2016 a woman who was able to defeat the evils and traumas that plagued her and while changed, becomes stronger? Could we even further imagine a world in which she is not quite all innocent and certainly not eternally good, but a force to be reckoned with and one that could be called upon for future battles of good and evil, thereby earning redemption?

I imagine the Penny Dreadful showrunners heckling, “But you can’t defeat evil!” Yes, Vanessa living through her darkness would be hard. And the forces that seek to control her will always be there, but that’s where her will gets to come in and thrive. Vanessa is the kind of woman who believes that while fighting is harder than succumbing to temptation, it is the more interesting choice to court the impossible for the sake of friendship. If Penny Dreadful aims to thematically tackle oppressive forces, why use her freedom of choice to leave the story? If the show is willing to reanimate a corpse to fight the patriarchy, it could have let Vanessa live to rebuild herself. Yes, oppression will always persist, but that is why her life’s work as an ally to and against evil would offer more power for her and others.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Sex and the Penny Dreadful

A Feminist Guide to Horror: Torture Porn TV

Cassandra A. Clarke’s work’s been previously published in Electric Literature, Word Riot, Entropy, and other speculative places. She has an MFA in Fiction from Emerson College and is the Editor in Chief of the new-weird literary magazine, Spectator & Spooks.

‘Fleabag’ and Finding Comedy in Life After Losing a Best Friend

A particular focus in women-driven TV comedy is the importance of female friendship. … ‘Fleabag’ breaks from this pattern by exploring the effects of losing a best friend, and continuing to live in the world without her. Fleabag talks to us like we’re her new best friend because she can no longer talk to her real one. That the series is so funny while telling a tragic story about a very sad woman speaks to the power of comedy in addressing such difficult topics.

This guest post is written by Holly McKenzie-Sutter. | Spoilers ahead.

“It’s kind of a funny story, actually,” the titular character of the television series Fleabag explains, when asked by a taxi driver if she is running her independent business on her own. “I opened a café with my friend Boo. She’s dead now. She accidentally killed herself.” This exchange, during the final moments of the series’ first episode, is as much of a shock to the driver as it is to the viewer. He doesn’t find it funny, and neither do we. This moment is probably the first time that we haven’t shared Fleabag’s sense of humor, in the unsettling reveal that her best friend, who we have also met this episode, is dead.

“So yeah,” Fleabag concludes her anecdote, “I’m kind of on my own.”

The audience has spent the last twenty-five minutes befriending the unnamed protagonist, played by writer and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“adapted from her award-winning Edinburgh play“), through fourth-wall breaking, Frank Underwood-esque asides and glances. These moments, interjections where she comments on her interactions with dates, bank managers, sexual partners, dogs, cucumbers, family members, and everyone in between, “turn the viewer into Fleabag’s new best friend,” as Emily Nussbaum writes for The New Yorker.

A particular focus in women-driven TV comedy is the importance of female friendship. Broad City, Insecure, Parks and Recreation, Golden Girls, Girlfriends, Orange Is the New Black, Sex and the City, Living Single, and countless others fit this description. Fleabag breaks from this pattern by exploring the effects of losing a best friend, and continuing to live in the world without her. Fleabag talks to us like we’re her new best friend because she can no longer talk to her real one. That the series is so funny while telling a tragic story about a very sad woman speaks to the power of comedy in addressing such difficult topics.

In an interview with Paste magazine, Waller-Bridge says:

“I guess it’s an articulation of something I see [around me] and very simply just makes me laugh. Like people openly lying to each other: ‘I’m fine, I’m fine’ and both these people can see that they’re not fine, and that the other person’s not fine. And that just makes everyone feel calmer: that they’re all lying. It’s so funny, I don’t know what it is, but it just makes me laugh.”

Finding humor in pain, and in lying, is at the heart of the series – and it’s a character trait of Fleabag’s that comes under criticism from her family and from herself. When driving to a mother’s day “silent retreat” in memory of their late mother, Fleabag’s sister Claire (Sian Clifford) cracks up at one of her sister’s inappropriate jokes, only to immediately start crying. “Don’t make this fun,” Claire says.

Their inability to not have fun, or to be silent, results in the two of them nearly being kicked out of the weekend program. Fleabag makes Claire laugh by mocking the faux-seriousness of the retreat activities, which mostly entail silently doing household chores for the mansion hosting them. The impossible task of being silent, and Fleabag’s inability to “shut out the noise” as she had hoped, is ironized by the “Better Man” retreat happening on the grounds at the same time. This group’s activities involve a repeated exercise where the attendees work through their aggression by yelling “slut” at the top of their lungs, punctuating Fleabag’s silent retreat with sexist descriptors that deep down, she feels might true about herself.

This joke is consistently funny throughout the episode, and the idea of intrusive, inappropriate thoughts punctuating serious moments is a recurring one in Fleabag. In one scene, Fleabag and Claire’s horrendous godmother-turned-stepmother (“She’s not an evil stepmother, she’s just a cunt.”) bustles around and interrupts the family gathering while the girls’ father (Bill Paterson) memorializes their mother. “Ignore me,” Stepmother (Olivia Colman) demands in a dramatic stage whisper as she loudly pops a champagne bottle. Clearly, Stepmother is there, she cannot be ignored and her awful intrusive presence in the would-be sentimental family moment, while very uncomfortable, is also just really funny. Pretending that the very loud, horrible thing is not present, when it clearly is, is one of Fleabag’s go-to joke formulas. It’s consistently hilarious, except when it’s horribly sad. For Fleabag, her relentless joking banter with us is her attempt at drowning out the very loud, horrible thing that constantly threatens to overwhelm her – the reality of Boo’s death.

Boo’s character (Jenny Rainsford) appears in every episode of Fleabag, in flashbacks that offer us a glimpse of the close bond the two women shared. These scenes are the only ones in which Fleabag does not directly address the audience, indicating that it was a time before she needed us. Many of them take place in Boo’s apartment, an unfamiliar space we can never access in our own relationship with Fleabag. The presence of these memories in every episode demonstrates that this was an irreplaceable relationship, one that will stay with Fleabag for the rest of her life. In the only somewhat tender scene between Fleabag and her father, he compares the way he misses the girls’ mother to the way Fleabag must miss her friend – in a way that the two of them will never fully get over.

With the recent losses of her best friend and her mother, Fleabag is living with the reality of death constantly on her mind. The cold open of the third episode is a visual gag on Fleabag jogging into frame – in a graveyard. She meets Claire there for her birthday, implicitly to visit their mother’s grave. Claire tells Fleabag that it’s “really inappropriate” to jog through a graveyard, “flaunting your life,” and is later shocked to learn that Fleabag comes there every day. The episode concludes with Fleabag cordially nodding to a fellow regular visitor on one of her jogs. This space of memorializing the dead is a part of Fleabag’s daily routine.

The void left in the wake of Boo, and Fleabag’s mother, cannot be easily filled. For most of the series, Fleabag is lying to her family, and to us, her “new best friends,” about the fact that she’s fine. But the show makes an argument for “flaunting your life” in the graveyard, by finding a way to laugh with people in the inappropriate moments, even when you’re very sad.

Waller-Bridge tells Paste:

“In my heart, for any of these characters to succeed they need to make human connection and be honest and open with each other. To know that success is something that will come and go. It’s not something you can hold onto tight enough. It’s not something that will keep you safe forever, whereas family and friends often will.”

In a review for Indiewire, Ben Travers writes that “by the end of just six episodes,” Fleabag’s use of direct address “pays off in a bigger way than House of Cards has provided in four full seasons.” The direct address “pays off” because, by the end of season one, we understand why Fleabag is speaking to us directly: she is desperate to connect.

We don’t see Fleabag break down fully until the last scene of the series. Her café is about to go under – and with it, the remnants of the passion project she started with Boo. She is losing her livelihood and the most significant physical reminder of her best friend. In this moment, Fleabag unloads all of her true feelings of guilt about hurting Boo, about hurting her family, and about her fears of being a selfish person. “Either everyone feels this way a little bit and they’re not talking about it, or I’m completely fucking alone, which isn’t fucking funny,” she says.

After spending six episodes with her, we know the answer to this. Everyone feels that way a little bit, and it’s definitely fucking funny.

Thankfully, the first season ends on a laugh. The bank manager (Hugh Dennis), who denied Fleabag a loan necessary to save her café in the first episode, happens upon Fleabag at her lowest point. After hearing her break down, he reopens her loan application on the spot. “Let’s start over,” he says, about the application he found “funny” because he thought it was a café for guinea pigs (it’s actually “guinea pig themed”). Hearing her loan application read back to her, Fleabag laughs, too. The bank manager delivers the last line of the series by saying, “See? I told you it was funny.”

Despite its tilt towards tragedy, Fleabag is a funny-sad comedy about a lonely woman who has lost her best friend, that makes a convincing case for laughing with each other about the fact that everything is not fine, until maybe it starts to be fine again.

Holly McKenzie-Sutter is a Vancouver-based writer, journalist, and graduate student. She recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a double major in English and Cinema Studies, and is currently working on a Master’s of Journalism at the University of British Columbia. Follow her on Twitter @hollerdoller.

‘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.

‘Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny

Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency. … This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places…

This is a guest post written by Elyssa Feder. | Spoilers ahead.

In season two of Daredevil, Elektra Natchios, international assassin and part-time debutante, is one of a pair of foils the show introduces to contrast with the series’ hero, Matt Murdock. While season one saw Matt wrestling with if he should kill Wilson Fisk, season two puts Matt among two antiheroes who have chosen the other side of the ethical line Matt won’t cross — Elektra, and Frank Castle, aka The Punisher. While Frank is given a detailed backstory, Elektra’s motivations are suspiciously obscured. The show then reveals that she is “The Black Sky,” a weapon that a shadow organization called The Hand has been searching for for centuries. Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency.

This should leave a sour taste. I watched season two of Daredevil in around two days and then I watched it again, mostly because I have a terrible memory and usually need to watch shows twice to retain what happened. But going back and watching with the knowledge that Elektra is a weapon, that that is a designation handed to her by men, that she doesn’t get to choose any of it, and that it serves to explain her characterization while Frank Castle gets all the internal motivation he seeks — that’s very troubling to me.

There are a lot of moments to make your skin crawl about this, but the one that kicked off my concerns about this is all the way in 2×12, “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel.”

Here, Stick, the mentor to little Elektra (and little Matt, as the latter will later learn), explains there is some violent force inside Elektra, one she will have to learn to control. Though I’m not in principle opposed to women having innate power, there’s something off-putting about the way Elektra’s power is described here, and in other parts of the episode. Stick suggests that Elektra and her power are unwieldy, something dangerous and unnatural. And this line comes directly after Elektra almost kills someone — and she ultimately does kill him, later in the episode, an act Elektra explains she did “just to prove she could.” What a sociopathic little girl, we are left to believe.

But the show makes a pretty bad case that Elektra’s a sociopath, which might have let them off the hook for laziness. She’s reticent to leave Stick, her adoptive father figure, and her love for Matthew is genuine. Rather, the show reveals that Elektra is the Black Sky, a strange and mysterious weapon we still haven’t had fully explained. Rather than a real woman with choices, she’s an object. Her violence is, as Stick suggests, deeply a part of her — not because she chooses it but because, at least as most of the men of Daredevil would like to suggest, she’s not really a person. She’s just a shell for something sinister.

There are some fairly grotesque examples of this objectification. Nobu, one of the leaders of “The Hand” repeatedly refers to Elektra as “it.” Nobu is part of a cult that worships the Black Sky, so while one might think he’d be nicer to Elektra, the woman is just a shell, the container of the weapon. Stick, when tied up in Matt’s apartment says, “The Black Sky cannot be controlled, manipulated, or transported.” (Stick seems to have done quite a bit of controlling, manipulating, and transporting of Elektra over the last 3ish decades of her life, but I digress.) There’s a moment after Nobu reveals her identity where you can see the trauma and self-loathing Stick brought to her play out, and she seems to entertain this destiny, even for a moment.

To be fair to Elektra’s internal world, I think we can chalk this up to the trauma of her father figure trying to kill her. Furthermore, Elektra is raised by an older white man who taught her that she was out of control for unknown reasons, her violence is given no rationality, and then it’s ultimately revealed she’s violent because surprise! She’s not a person; she’s a weapon. Destiny and a bunch of guys who worship her said so. But they don’t really worship her. They worship some sort of weird mystical weapon they think is inside her. They see her as an “it.” And, at least for a moment, Elektra thinks, “Makes sense.” After all, was she not raised to believe she was a monster? A thing without reason? A creature out of control?

This sort of burden of destiny — and the irrational, innate violence that goes along with it — is something her natural season-long foils, Matt and Frank, are spared. Though I have my own struggles with the writing of Matt’s motivation (a subject not for this post), one cannot doubt that he is hyper-rational about them, with probably too much thinking and self-flagellation for my taste. Frank is given enumerative motive and rationality in the form of his murdered family, and a personal champion Karen Page who makes sure those motives and rationales come to light.

I should be clear here, when I say rationality I don’t mean, “Frank Castle makes good choices.” What I mean is that there is an internal logic to them; he is a Rational Actor. It is this rationality that allows Karen to argue he wouldn’t target the DA’s family; it goes against Frank’s internal code. I know why Frank Castle does everything he does, in a way I don’t with Elektra because it’s never offered. And there’s a reason this matters too, in the basic vein of “women are people,” and the fact that their choices are circumscribed or erased in all sorts of media is not only a common trope, but a disturbing one. We all know women in the real world make choices, good and bad, moral and immoral, that are grounded in experience. Elektra, the show suggests, makes choices because she can’t help it. Elektra kills people because she was born a weapon. Not much of a choice.

Though there moments where Elektra makes choices in this series, particularly ones that reject her “destiny” and the violence it sparks in her, that unseemly destiny thing has a tendency to intervene. One example is in 2×08, “Guilty as Sin”:

Matthew: Where’s Stick?
Elektra: I made my choice. He didn’t like it. I want to be with you. The only person in this world who believes I’m good.

Then, around three minutes later, Matthew gets attacked by a young member of The Hand and, after beating him single-handedly, Elektra still kills him in this bloody homage to “crazy” lady slasher films.

This line is the most unhinged Elektra is all season by my estimation, not three minutes after she decided to hang up her evil sword and pick up her noble one. Guess that uncontrollable violence got in the way again. She and Matt call it quits for a few episodes, until they’re mostly back together in 2×12, after she decides against joining up with The Hand.

It is in the finale that Elektra makes her last choices, at least for now. When Stick says her decision to fight The Hand is a mistake she says, “Maybe. But it’ll be my mistake, because this is my life.” This is the clearest pronouncement of her own choices and agency Elektra makes all season. It is a choice she makes not because she wants Matt to see her as Good ( I should note the paternalism and white savior complex in this dynamic are important to explore), nor a choice she makes because she’s the Black Sky. It wouldn’t be good characterization or good writing for her to suddenly become a white hat, but she chooses to fight a war because she wants to fight it, because there is something personal and at stake for her in its victory, and because she seeks to reject the destiny the men around her have told her is fated.

This is, of course, for naught. She and Matt fight The Hand on a roof, during which she declares they will kill him “over her dead body,” just to heavily foreshadow what was obviously going to happen. And then, in the latest case of unseemly lady deaths, she runs into a sword to save Matt, taking The Hand’s precious weapon out of the equation. It seems Elektra can only have agency over her destiny by throwing herself on a sword.

These are the few choices Elektra is allowed in Daredevil that contradict her destiny to be a weapon instead of a woman. The final chain of events — choices that are truly Elektra’s and no one else’s, and ones she makes to reject her destiny — leads to her death. The show even has the audacity to suggest her death, one of her few (and problematic, obviously) choices, will be rendered useless in the face of that destiny. Season two ends with Elektra in a coffin designed by The Hand for “the rising.” We are safe to assume Elektra, or something in Elektra’s skin, will return.

This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places, each of which could merit their own post, but I’ll give a few examples. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the premise of the show is that Buffy wanted to be a normal girl and no longer can be, because a few millennia ago, a bunch of men forced superpowers into a girl, and now Buffy doesn’t get any choice in the matter. On the spinoff series Angel, though Cordelia is initially given a series of painful visions without her consent, the show suggests in the episode “Birthday” that Cordelia is destined to have the visions. In making the choice to accept some mystical intervention into her life, she sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to her death (also in the interest of saving the man she loves). In Battlestar Galactica, Kara Thrace is given the destiny of leading humanity to Earth and nearly loses her mind because of it, only to disappear and die (again) once that mission is completed; Laura Roslin’s similar destiny is inextricably linked with her illness and death.

On the other hand, when men are given great destinies, from Harry Potter to Buffy and Angel and beyond, their choices are not sublimated in the face of that agency. Rather, those choices are portrayed as steps along a greater path. Their agency remains intact, and their deaths are rare. Yet, we see patterns where women’s destinies cut off their choices, or where the choices they make in the face of destiny leads to their deaths. (I will note that Dawn Summers, also in Buffy, faces a similar ‘you’re a mystical creation’ scenario as Elektra, but is allowed to retain and enhance her agency throughout the rest of the show.)

It is also worth noting that Elektra’s death appears amongst a series of disturbing choices to kill off women this spring. A few weeks ago, The 100’s decision to kill Lexa, a lesbian character, sparked deep outrage in the fandom, as well as critiques from the broader media as part of a larger pattern of killing off LGBT women on television. This past week on Sleepy Hollow, the show decided to kill of lead Abbie Mills, played by Nicole Beharie. Sleepy Hollow has faced critiques for a few seasons for the continued sidelining of Beharie’s character, a Black female lead on a major network, in favor of white characters on the show. The show’s decision to not only kill off Abbie, but to construct her death as in the service of white lead Ichabod Crane (played by Tom Mison) and his destiny (one they were supposed to share, but seems to have been summarily robbed from Abbie in the service of his), has been roundly criticized, with fans of the show creating a hashtag to cancel the show entirely (which, agreed). Elektra, a woman of color (played by Elodie Yung) who the show forces to sacrifice herself to save a white man, is part of this larger disturbing pattern.

Conveniently for Daredevil, they, unlike many of these shows, have the opportunity to fix the problem they created. When Elektra does return, the writers have a choice as to who they bring back. She can be a thoughtless monster, a weapon known as the Black Sky with no consciousness, and which Matt will inevitably have to either kill or save with his love (dramatic eyeroll). Or she can be Elektra, a woman who tells the men who both put her in the grave and raised her from it to go to hell, and take destiny with them. It would be this Elektra who could be given the opportunity to make the choices she wants, to have an inner world explained by more than “she’s a weapon.” A real, live, breathing woman.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Daredevil’ and His Damsels in Distress

Elyssa Feder has a BA in Women’s Studies and International Affairs from George Washington University, where one day she decided to write a paper about women in the military (on scifi television) and it was all downhill from there. By day, she is a political person doing political things; by night, she can be found lecturing friends and coworkers about television. She also does this by day, if anyone lets her.

The Dreamscapes and Nightmares of Jamin Winans’ ‘Ink’

Like many fans of this film, I initially watched ‘Ink’ (2009) on Netflix and immediately conducted some research to learn more about the making of this independent picture. It’s also a narrative that lingers with you after you’ve finished watching it, so I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the film’s acting and score, as well as the pivotal moments that merge with a complex plot that unfolds somewhere between reality and fantasy. After maybe a half a dozen viewings, this story never fails to evoke tears for me.

Written by Jenny Lapekas.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Like many fans of this film, I initially watched Ink (2009) on Netflix and immediately conducted some research to learn more about the making of this independent picture. It’s also a narrative that lingers with you after you’ve finished watching it, so I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the film’s acting and score, as well as the pivotal moments that merge with a complex plot that unfolds somewhere between reality and fantasy. After maybe a half a dozen viewings, this story never fails to evoke tears for me.

This independent film by Jamin Winans is structured around the story of a father and daughter, alongside breathtaking visuals, ethereal yet warrior-like beings, and an amazing, ambient soundtrack. Comparable to the existential terror of Donnie Darko and the romantic beauty of Eternal Sunshine, Ink is a masterpiece in terms of storytelling, artistic integrity, and the craft of merging humor with the spiritual and the potential darkness lurking in the subconscious. Winans’ vision will make you question where you go when you close your eyes to sleep and how you find your way back to waking. Ink also instills a sense of philosophical well-being, suggesting that some events in our lives may be pre-determined while we maintain the ability to step in and incite change if we would like.

John (Chris Kelly) falls apart and loses his way after his wife dies, leaving him and his young daughter Emma (Quinn Hunchar) behind. However, with the help of otherworldly companions and foes, father and daughter find each other in the dark, traversing through the world of dreams and nightmares, reminding us that we are our own worst enemy. In this reality, those who bestow pleasant dreams watch over us as we sleep and fight the evil incubi who attempt to burden us with nightmares. These two forces battle as we sleep, and John and Emma find themselves in the crossfire in Ink.

Liev, the “Storyteller,” acts as a sort of spirit guide and helps to save both John and Emma through her kind patience and gentle push for John to remember who he used to be.

Via flashbacks, we discover that John grew up poor and is now obsessed with fortune and success in his career, so much so that he has become a cold shell of the person he once was. We are also shown glimpses of the love story between John and his late wife. However, rather than cherish the piece of Shelly still in this world–Emma–he abandons his entire life and embarks on a downward spiral of depression and oblivion.

Most central to the plot of Ink is the conflicted father-daughter relationship we see between John and Emma. We are shown the dark implications of suicide when we watch John shoot himself and become the grotesque figure, Ink, whose name reminds us that we are always capable of changing our own story, taking initiative and owning our lives and our choices. Emma also shows immense courage as she loses her father and then helps him to recall his former life.

In an especially critical scene toward the beginning of the film, Emma pleads with her father to play with her, and he is reluctant, claiming that her mother can entertain her when she wakes. Here, we see the prototypical image of the bumbling, single father who feels uncertain about his parenting abilities, but is in fact doing well raising a daughter (see Casper, My Girl, and Dan in Real Life). However, after some resistance, John gives in and leaps into Emma’s make-believe world where he must rescue her from “the monster,” which we later discover is indeed John himself.

Making the transition from monster to father, John fights off the incubi and saves his little girl.

I think it’s important to recognize Allel as a fierce guardian over both father and child, and also a wonderful role model for young viewers. In this dimension, we see multiple fight scenes between Allel and male-gendered incubi. While saving Emma is truly a group effort, it’s always refreshing to spot a woman who isn’t afraid to swing a dangerous weapon–in Allel’s case, a staff she carries on her back. Liev, the beautiful and ethereal woman who is willingly taken prisoner by Ink as he and Emma journey to hand over the girl’s soul, is a prominent feminist character in the film, as well; she encourages Emma by explaining that she is transforming into a lioness in this new world and she had better practice her roar. Unlike Allel, Liev carries no weapons and teaches Emma that her voice is her weapon.

Allel and Liev both act as spirit guides in their quest to protect the innocent life of Emma, who is suffering due to her father’s neglect and drug and alcohol use. Liev is more of a maternal, pacifist figure in the movie while Allel gets pretty down and dirty beating up the forces of evil. Both characters are feminine forces the film can’t do without; Allel is part of Emma as she infuses her unconscious with pleasant dreams while Liev lends the resilient Emma the strength to cope with her kidnapping at the hands of her unrecognizable father.

The gang battles their enemies in another dimension, never causing physical change or destruction in our world.

We’re so invested in cycles and rhythms, whether it’s in our own lives or in film or literature–which mirror our lives–it’s provocative to find a scene in Ink that depicts the halting or disruption of flow in favor of necessary disorder so that change can be reached. Jacob, the “Pathfinder,” easily recognizes the chain of events and tells us that “one thing begets the next.” In an intense and memorable scene, Jacob demonstrates how sometimes the steady and predictable rhythms of life must be interrupted to jar us so that we can experience a personal revelation and recall what we value and who we are.

Jacob orchestrates an “accident” so that John is sent to the same hospital where his daughter is in a coma.

The set of metaphysical beings who travel alongside John and Emma in their quest to be reunited are so likable in their efforts to protect father and child, and we fret that they can be defeated at any moment, and all will be lost. With the combination of bad ass fight scenes, magnificent imagery, and the sense that these guardian spirits are reflections of our own spiritual imaginations and longings, it’s shocking that Ink’s budget was a mere $250,000. This low-budget sci-fi drama certainly exceeds viewer expectations, and the irony of a blind seer with a chip on his shoulder adds a dimension of comedy to an otherwise somber film. Ink’s cinematography is impressive, and the film’s score–also developed by Winans–is exquisite and accompanies the film’s juxtaposition of action and quiet nurturing nicely.

Allel tries to hold off the incubi from entering Emma's hospital room. — Allel tries to hold off the incubi from entering Emma’s hospital room.

Realizing his error and that he almost abandoned Emma for good, John fights off the evil incubi who merely capture the little girl. Something awe-inspiring happens as we watch this narrative unfold in two opposing dimensions, one in the clinical environment of a hospital and the other in a world where our souls may be lost if we lose our way. The merging point is brilliant; John rescues his daughter when she needs him the most, and the film offers us both dream-like metaphor and concrete reality, which work alongside one another well. John’s decision to seek Emma at the hospital works as Ink’s denouement in a deeply visceral fashion. We also come to discover that when John is jolted out of his own coma or temporary self-exile, in choosing to father Emma, he chooses himself.

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Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.

‘My Sister’s Keeper’: Anna and Kate Growing Up On Screen and On the Page

My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.

My Sister's Keeper poster — *My Sister’s Keeper* poster

This guest post by Wolf appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

My Sister’s Keeper is a film based off of a book of the same name. Books that become movies follow a set sequence of events: the book fans anticipate the film, new-comers are targeted by the studios, the choice of what to cut/what to keep is made, some movie fans read the book, and the endless debate over which is better ensues. Both versions of My Sister’s Keeper take the wonderful approach of letting the main characters take turns telling the story. Some people, myself included, learn to love both based on their own merit. The book has a goal and story to tell that differs from the movie. The movie has its own unique story and goals. The biggest difference is the main characters; the movie focuses on Kate and the book centers on Anna. The storyline of two sisters whose lives are entwined stays intact in either case.

Anna exists because of Kate, literally. Kate has cancer, leukemia to be specific, and was diagnosed when she was under 5 years old. She is almost certainly terminal. Her parents aren’t a match, much to their shock and dismay. Jesse, her older brother, isn’t a match. They are given the suggestion to create a designer baby, one who will be the perfect genetic match for Kate. This brings us to our second character, Anna (Andromeda in the book, named by her father, Brian, who is a firefighter and amateur astronomer). Kate takes the cord blood first, stem cells, blood, other small donations later, and by the time the story really begins Kate needs Anna’s kidney. Anna files a lawsuit for medical emancipation to prevent the forced donation.

I could honestly write half a book about the portrayal of this fictional family in both the book and film (Kate, the cancer-stricken crux of the family; Sara, the supermom; Brian, the level-headed father; Jesse, the forgotten child; Anna, searching for who she is). The idea that there is a pro-life/pro-choice metaphor (suggested by Roger Ebert in his review) is also interesting and perhaps a good subject for another day.

But the objective here is Anna and Kate, two children who are growing up and having to act more grown-up than they really are.

Kate is a child, but she faces an event typically reserved for adults: death. Kate knows she is dying. She holds no illusions. She has even tried to kill herself. She also suffers for others, but not like Anna does; she lives through the agony of cancer for the sake of her family. She has a mature acceptance of death most of the adults around her do not. At times in the movie, she seems to be the only one living in reality. Her parents fail her in this aspect–they want to save her, even if that means denying the reality of her situation and keeping her in pain. She doesn’t only suffer physically. She has the emotional trauma of knowing her cancer is harming her parents’ marriage, her brother is ignored in lieu of focusing on her (in the book, Sara admits she gave up on him), and Anna’s life revolves around saving Kate.

Both daughters must grow up because their parents fail them. They love them, undoubtedly, but they do not always act in their best interest nor are they often granted agency. Sure, when Kate wants to miss school in the books because of her cancer-stricken appearance Sara allows this. She understands a teenage girls’ vanity. But her desire to end her suffering is ignored. Anna is granted small choices as well based on her desires, but despite her mother’s claims she is being forced to donate her body parts. By the very fact that Sara pushes her to donate and fights the case in court shows she doesn’t care about Anna’s wishes.

Anna’s well-being (the procedures are painful and dangerous) is not taken fully into account. In the books, Brian didn’t want her to donate again when Kate’s cancer reemerged. She didn’t remember the blood draws or injections, but if they had her donate again she would be old enough to remember. He is overruled and concedes to save Kate. The judge doesn’t find her parents guilty of any neglect or indifference but can see that this choice is complicated and Anna needs a voice of her own. (Sara and Brian will speak for Kate’s best medical interest; her wish to die isn’t considered valid.)

Kate wasn’t expected to live past 5. Sara plans as though she will survive in both versions, even telling Dr. Chance that he will come to her wedding one day. Brian stopped dreaming of milestones to avoid the pain when her cancer came back or became more aggressive. In the movie, Kate doesn’t talk about her future; even while “dating” Taylor they talk about their impending deaths. Kate is taken aback in the book when she is asked about her future plans–no one asks her that, even as they fight to keep her alive. She confides that she wants to be a ballerina because they have “absolute control. When it comes to their bodies they know exactly what will happen.” These small situations are more drawn out in the books. Kate hemorrhages from the leukemia; blood is gushing out every opening it can find, from head to toe. Sara gives her a pad and wonders if she will live long enough to get her first period. She will likely not live to experience growing up the way most people do before they die.

For this reason, in both versions, her parents allow her to go to a hospital dance for patients. Taylor, her “boyfriend,” is a rare joy for Kate. In the movie, she finds the perfect wig and dresses like a princess. In the book, she can’t stand wigs and must wear a mask because she is so compromised. Her sexuality is treated differently than it would be if she were cancer free. In the movie, Taylor and she either have sex or “do stuff” that is sexual in nature. But it’s hard to be upset by this. We can’t after all ask her to wait–she’s already living past her life expectancy. Fertility and STDs are not concerns for a girl with cancer. In the book, they only kiss. Sara allows this despite the medical risks, despite the fact that it might kill her–because she knows Kate needs this moment. Every girl needs her first kiss.

This point is driven home when Taylor dies soon after the dance.

It’s only a matter of time before Kate dies as well.

Anna could in theory save Kate. If she were willing, if the hospital signed off, if Kate’s body could handle surgery, and if her kidney functioned well in her sister’s body. Anna files the lawsuit because her sister wants to die and she was asked to “set [her] free.” Anna in all actuality would give her kidney or her right arm or everything she had to save her sister. But the guilt is real. Whether it’s cheerleading and soccer (movie) or hockey and studying abroad (book), Anna really does want her own life and future. She isn’t just expected to save her sister at her own expense but agrees with this prescription for her life. She doesn’t have any real friends nor does Kate. They have each other and that’s enough. But Anna had to give up hockey camp in the book because they wouldn’t let her leave the state in case Kate got sick and needed her. If she gives her kidney, no coach will risk her joining the team. She might have to forgo children of her own if the risks of pregnancy are deemed too severe for her with only one kidney. Anna had to choose between herself and her sister. Kate made the choice for her.

This still doesn’t mean Anna is an adult. In the books Anna throws tantrums, serious tantrums, like opening a car door while it’s in motion to run away. Movie Anna has an outburst here and there but is far more composed and mature. She still falls asleep in her mother’s arms and is most distraught by people being disappointed by her. She wants her parents, but she doesn’t want them to make medical choices against her will. This still doesn’t mean she has adult foresight. When Campbell offers to make Sara stop talking to her about the case, she doesn’t stop to think that this means her mother will be removed from the home. Campbell, who was fine with referring her to Planned Parenthood before he knew the specifics of her case, forgets the fact that she is an adolescent and not a typical client.

The final change from book to movie is the ending.

In the movie, Kate dies. It’s expected and is so spot on for those who have lost a loved one. Kate never gets to grow up. Anna has to grow up without her sister, her best friend, her identity. And the family must come together without Kate’s gravitational pull holding them in and propelling them through their lives. We don’t know what Anna becomes as an adult; we only know the family gets together on Kate’s birthday and Anna gets to have all the choices every other girl does.

In the book, the last words we hear from Anna are about her future: “Ten years from now, I want to be Kate’s sister.”

Anna dies in a car crash on her way home from court immediately after her proclamation. Campbell is also injured, but since he holds medical power of attorney he sends her kidney to Kate upstairs. Her other organs go to help other families. Kate almost dies despite this, but claws her way back to life. She hates herself for this–for surviving. Sara falls apart and must live without the child she never thought she’d lose. Brian works overtime to avoid going home. He falls into alcohol. Somewhere in the mist of this tragedy, Jesse finds a way to turn himself around and becomes, of all things, a cop. Kate eventually becomes a dance instructor and takes Anna, by extension of her kidney, with her wherever she goes.

These girls are very relatable. They are more realistic in the books, but that’s also because there is more time and room to get to know them. Movies must be trimmed so they don’t run too long. Some cuts and differences are there to emphasize points that can’t be dwelled upon, but must be understood quickly. Sisterhood is a constant theme (Anna/Kate; Sara/her sister). The film is female-centric (Judge DeSalvo), despite cutting out a female character, Julia, and merging her role into a preexisting male character, Campbell. This may be one of the few films where common female tropes–the martyr, the mother, the savior–are displayed in a non-offensive, realistic manner. They are furthermore examined and challenged in the same fashion. Women do not have to be saviors or martyrs, but we understand why Anna and Kate fall into these roles. We also understand why they both feel so much guilt, especially Anna, who wonders if she is “rotten” for wanting a future, for wanting the things all girls growing into adulthood long for. Super-Mom is often hard to empathize with because of how single-minded she is about saving Kate. In both versions, it’s a miracle Jesse isn’t dead or in jail due to her and Brian’s lack of parenting. But we understand both her love and her fear of what will she be if she loses her daughter; can she go on if Kate dies and all of her sacrifices, namely her other two children and marriage, were for nothing?

My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.

Wolf is known to her friends as the Pop Culture Queen and loves to read books, watch movies, and keep up on her TV shows. She is a perpetual psychology student who hopes to finish her schooling before she’s 90. She occasionally finds the time to write for fun and win trivia contests. Criticism, questions and suggestions are always welcome in her email: hairdye_junky@yahoo.com.