Female Superhero – Page 2

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and the Humanization of the Superheroine

Often carrying the burden of representation in a genre overrun with male characters, superheroines were strong or weak, clear-headed or in constant need of saving, but rarely complex or allowed complicated internal lives, and even more rarely truly relatable. Buffy changed all that.

This guest post written by Kaitlyn Soligan appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Before there was a girl on fire, or a woman in an office with a drinking problem and a dark history, before there was, even, a cheerleader whose salvation could save the world, there was the chosen one. She alone would stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She was the slayer.

Our generation’s slayer was Buffy Summers, and she was a mess. By turns bubbly and serious, flirtatious and driven, insecure and confident, Buffy Summers worried about boys and her birthright, rising demons and her parents’ divorce, algebra and the somehow ever-present threat of global apocalypse. While there were superheroines on page and screen long before Buffy – the iconic Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and X-Men like Storm were represented on both – none had ever been allowed to be so human, particularly on television and in movies, where they were mostly absent. Often carrying the burden of representation in a genre overrun with male characters, superheroines were strong or weak, clear-headed or in constant need of saving, but rarely complex or allowed complicated internal lives, and even more rarely truly relatable.

Buffy changed all that.

Buffy worried about make-up, her curfew, whether or not a boy liked her, and how she would ever get her homework done on time in the moments between plunging a stake into the heart of multiple attacking vampires. Over the objections of her guardian Giles, a stand-in for the stuffy and outdated rules about how superheroines should behave, she made friends and went on dates, and still managed to slay demons and kill monsters. She was funny and goofy and sweet and deadly serious when occasion called for it. Buffy broke hearts and had hers broken, said things she shouldn’t to lovers and friends and family, hurt people and stood beside them when they needed her most. She was phenomenally imperfect as a woman and as a heroine.

Buffy’s battles, real and metaphorical (and occasionally metaphorically revealing what was all too real), panned the camera to the battles of girls more generally and forced it to linger on what was uncomfortable and almost always previously unacknowledged. In “Out of Mind, Out of Sight,” Buffy fights an invisible foe who turns out to be a fellow classmate who disappeared for lack of attention. The episode examines the visibility of the female and the female body – and the ways these related to the feminine – in multiple ways, with Buffy and her classmate Cordelia battling for the title of May Queen before battling for their lives. Many episodes dealt with intimate partner violence; in “Ted” Buffy battles her mother’s violent boyfriend, while in “Beauty and the Beasts” she faces a classmate abusing his girlfriend. Throughout all of these episodes and arcs, Buffy is both average – experiencing jealousy, vulnerability, the need for company and compassion, pushing her friends and family away and then pulling them back in close – and superhuman, fighting against unnatural forces with equally unnatural strength.

Buffy’s humanity also marked one of the earliest moments of feminism brought to bear on the superhero genre – not a mere personal feminism limited to character portrayals, but a structural feminism, with an acknowledgement of structural systems of oppression, played out within and on characters and throughout story lines. In “Out of Mind, Out of Sight,” Buffy faces the structural systems that exploit women’s bodies and turn them against one another as competitors. In “Ted,” her mother’s boyfriend is controlling and manipulative, gaslighting her, an eons-long practice even before we had a succinctly encompassing term for it. In “Beauty and the Beasts,” Buffy faces her classmate’s reality as a victim of assault while simultaneously exploring her own past as a survivor of abuse. Buffy and the other female characters were constantly underestimated because they were women. No episode ended with a neat lesson in which every male character realized the error of their ways and repented, and this underestimation often had long-term, structural, and painfully realistic consequences for the characters.

While Buffy’s humanization broke new ground for superheroines, it also brought into relief against that image the limits of what was still possible on television. While the many white female characters on the show were deliberately complex, the first featured recurring Black character, Kendra, was largely two-dimensional. Bearing the burden of representation, Kendra’s efforts to find acceptance through perfection reflected the limits experienced by women of color, a choice between being “good” and acknowledged, or not good enough and ignored, pushed further back into the margins both visually and narratively. While Black male characters on the show – most notably the cool and organized Mr. Trick and the steady and almost unbearably sexy Principal Wood – were good and evil, kind and ruthlessly ambitious, flawed and righteous by turns, Black female characters came in by inches and retreated just as quickly back outside the frame.

In Season 7, at the end of the series’ television run, Buffy discovers that her powers come from a spell cast long ago by men in Africa who needed a protector. One girl was chosen – likely not voluntarily – to be that protector: the First Slayer. And her power passed from one generation to the next. Buffy’s power is literally drawn from a history of Black women around the world; their sacrifices over thousands of years have enabled her rebellion from girl soldier to human being over the objections of a system designed to imprison, use, and discard her. As a white woman in her own place and time, Buffy could do what they could not.

In the end, Buffy enlists another woman, Willow, a powerful witch and, not incidentally, one of the first recurring LGBTQ characters on television, to reclaim and redistribute that first power, allowing every girl in the world with the potential to become a Slayer to rise up simultaneously, together. The act was at its heart a symbolic gesture hearkening to the notion that white women whose privilege has been gained at the ongoing expense of many other women, particularly women of color, have a responsibility to both destroy the system and build a better one, one that has far more universal benefit. In her final moments, Buffy chose between being special – one girl in all the world – and building a platform on which she would be only one of many, only as special as she made herself, meaningful not at the expense of others’ lack, but of her own making – as her own woman.

She went to prom and saved her classmates from a giant dragon. She mourned the loss of her mother and fought a fallen God. She fell in love and died and got aggravated with her roommates and worked in fast food and slayed demons. 2017 will mark 20 years since Buffy first aired, and Buffy would be truly old for a slayer now – nearly 40. If she felt all her years and more at sixteen, with her outsized responsibilities, one can only imagine how she would feel today, and it’s understandable: Buffy is the grandmother of the modern superheroine. These dark, flawed, occasionally failed, damaged, traumatized, real girls and women onscreen and in comics – from Katniss Everdeen to Jessica Jones to Joss Whedon’s own later heroines like Firefly’s Zoe – owe a great deal to the strides Buffy made in her complexity, her humanity, her failings, and her growth alike, as do we. After all, she saved the world. A lot.

Kaitlyn Soligan is a writer and editor from Boston living in Louisville, Kentucky. She writes about that, and bourbon, at www.ivehadworseideas.com. You can follow her on twitter @ksoligan.

Daisy Johnson, Superheroine of ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ — And Why She Matters

What makes Daisy special among superheroes is that she embodies all of these tropes as the centerpiece of a network television series — and is also a woman. Not only that, she is a mixed-race woman — and not a token one, but one surrounded by other women, of various ages, races and backgrounds.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines. | Spoilers ahead.

Much more family-friendly and comic-book kooky than its dark, disturbing and acclaimed Netflix siblings, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is often treated like the black sheep of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by critics, audience members and even Marvel itself. Having just wrapped its third season, S.H.I.E.L.D. boasts one of the most underrated ensemble casts on television — not to mention one of the most diverse. Said cast features many amazingly complex, flawed, and fantastic women heroes who juggle trying to save the world with their own personal quests for family, love, acceptance, and peace of mind. In a television landscape where female characters frequently suffer and die just to further the storylines of their male co-stars, S.H.I.E.L.D. consistently gives these women their own stories and allows these stories to drive the show forward. Chief among them is Daisy Johnson, an ace computer hacker who joins S.H.I.E.L.D. to dig up information on her unknown parents and ends up discovering that she is a superpowered Inhuman.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. debuted in Fall 2013, the advertisements implied that it was a vehicle for Agent Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg, who was mysteriously raised from the dead after meeting a tragic end in The Avengers. I eyed these ads with trepidation, looking forward to an opportunity to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe every week but worried that Coulson wouldn’t be able to carry a show. Turns out, the reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. excels is because he doesn’t. The true star of S.H.I.E.L.D. is Daisy, who over the course of three seasons goes from having no family to being torn between two — S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans — to finding herself alone again. This tumultuous inner conflict is what cements Daisy as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s emotional center and one of the more complicated characters in the male-dominated Marvel Cinematic Universe. She is not a perfect superheroine, but as one of only a few currently gracing our screens, she should not be taken for granted.

Daisy, played by Chloe Bennet, has evolved so much since the show’s pilot that she no longer goes by the same name. The series introduces her as Skye, a member of the hacktivist group Rising Tide who spent her childhood getting passed around a series of foster homes. Skye is trying to dig up information on her birth parents, who she believes were connected to S.H.I.E.L.D.; it is revealed partway through the first season that she was dropped off at an orphanage by an unknown S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. It says a lot about the lack of diversity in television that for awhile, everyone assumed that said S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and Skye’s mother, was going to be Melinda May, played by Ming-Na Wen. (Bennet’s father is Chinese-American; her given name is Wang, but she now uses her father’s first name as her surname.) Two Asian-American actresses on the same program? There must be a connection, many fans mused, despite not wondering the same about all of the white actors on the show.

At first, Skye is little more than a vehicle for the audience’s entry into the covert world of S.H.I.E.L.D. Many of the early episodes spend too much time debating Skye’s loyalties, and the repetition grows exhausting. Audience members who survived this slow-moving, low-stakes freshman year were rewarded with a much more exciting sophomore season and a much more well-rounded Skye, now a full-fledged S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with the trust of her team and top-notch training from known badass Melinda, definitely the most competent agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Another shout out to Ming-Na Wen, who beats up men twice her size and half her age on a weekly basis.) Skye has not yet found her birth parents, but in S.H.I.E.L.D., she has finally found some form of family and identity.

That long-sought sense of stability doesn’t last for long. Soon, Skye is introduced to her birth parents, given her real name — Daisy Johnson — and transformed into an Inhuman. Her power is a literal embodiment of the upheaval and instability that plagues her life — the ability to create earthquakes. As the only Inhuman member of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daisy finds herself once again feeling alone; her powers are viewed as a potentially dangerous liability while she is still struggling to gain control over them. Daisy turns to the Inhumans to find a new sense of belonging as well as an understanding of her powers, only to find herself with divided loyalties when her vengeful Inhuman mother tries to sell her on a war against S.H.I.E.L.D. In the end, Daisy sides with S.H.I.E.L.D., but not without a great sense of loss and regret for what might have been in regards to her all-too-brief time with her mother. Daisy comes away with a desire to use the powers of S.H.I.E.L.D. to find, train and protect other Inhumans; the conflicts that desire causes within both groups becomes one of the driving forces of the series. Literally everything that follows ties into this uneasy alliance, brokered by a driven and determined Daisy, which devolves into conflict when the ancient Inhuman Hive shows up with the goal of coercing other Inhumans to help him conquer humanity.

The arrival of Hive subjects Daisy to a horrific brainwashing experience that turns her against S.H.I.E.L.D. and makes her content to follow Hive’s every order — even if it meant nearly killing her old partner, Mack. The storyline is eerily reminiscent of Jessica Jones’ experiences at the hands of Kilgrave, but without the overt references to rape — though, watching Daisy contently nestle her head on Hive’s shoulder while he plots the downfall of humanity is enough to send shivers down one’s spine. Even after being cured of Hive’s brainwashing, Daisy suffers from aftereffects similar to a drug withdrawal, while simultaneously berating herself viciously for having put her team in danger. Her sense of personal responsibility for actions she committed without having any control over them is heartbreaking, to the point that it would verge on melodramatic if Bennet was not such a capable actress; like the character she portrays, she has definitely developed better control over her abilities over time. By the end of the finale, Daisy abandons S.H.I.E.L.D.– but, it’s not all bad. She returns to a state of isolation and mistrust similar to the one we first found her in, but there’s one big difference: now she knows who she is. That identity as an Inhuman, and the desire to use her powers to help others and to atone for her misdeed while under Hive’s control, is what drives her forward. Daisy might be a fugitive from justice, but in the moment that the woman who newspaper clippings refer to as Quake uses her powers to escape S.H.I.E.L.D., hot on their former agent’s tail, she truly comes into her own as a superheroine.

The character of Daisy is not perfect; some think that others save her too frequently, though I think she returns the favor just as often. Nor is her storyline terribly revolutionary; struggles of identity and the need to reconcile both the heroic and non-heroic sides of one’s personality are not uncommon in superhero stories. What makes Daisy special among superheroes is that she embodies all of these tropes as the centerpiece of a network television series — and is also a woman. Not only that, she is a mixed-race woman — and not a token one, but one surrounded by other women, of various ages, races and backgrounds. In the Marvel movies, there are hardly ever enough women to have a conversation together, while on S.H.I.E.L.D. the women converse regularly, and about all sorts of topics unrelated to men. They mentor each other and challenge each other. They frequently are the ones giving the orders (and defying them) and are respected by their peers. None of these things should be extraordinary any more — and yet, they still are. Dee Hogan sums up S.H.I.E.L.D.’s sense of equality pretty well in this description of a scene in the season three finale for The Mary Sue:

“During this stretch, the ladies to do [sic] a whole lotta butt-saving without having to die in the process, which helps maintain gender parity in terms of who saves whom this week while thankfully not adding to the year’s Dead Female Character tally.”

What can Marvel’s movies learn from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s small-screen superheroines? Why do the films, as enjoyable as I find them to be, always tend to disappoint in their depiction of women, and how can they improve? Representation at the highest levels definitely helps — co-showrunner Maurissa Tancharoen is an Asian-American woman, and Marvel’s other women-centric series, Jessica Jones and the dearly departed Marvel’s Agent Carter, had women literally running the show. It might seem like a deceptively easy solution, but it’s one that DC, at least, has taken to heart in giving Monster’s Patty Jenkins the reins on the much-anticipated Wonder Woman. One hopes that the perpetually-delayed Captain Marvel, adapted from Kelly Sue DeConnick’s iteration of the comics by Guardians of the Galaxy’s Nicole Perlman and Inside Out’s Meg LeFauve, will fill some of the void (if it ever makes it to the multiplex). Until then, I’ll continue keeping company with Daisy Johnson, superheroine of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

Elektra in ‘Daredevil’: Violence, White Masculinity, and Asian Stereotypes

Elektra is in some ways, the most problematic character. … Yet there is something strangely compelling about Elektra, not as an extension of the show’s tired prejudices against Asian people, but as a woman who despite her questionable origins transcends the limiting Strong Female Character trope. …Her presence in and of itself disrupts the masculine hegemony of violence in the show.

This guest post written by Kelly Kanayama appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

When it comes to sensitive depictions of people of color, Marvel’s Netflix show Daredevil has a fairly terrible record. There’s Claire Temple, portrayed by Afro-Latina Rosario Dawson, who helps the white male hero but can never be with him; that privilege is reserved for Karen Page, the embodiment of pure, white womanhood. There’s Madame Gao, who checks all the boxes of the Inscrutable Asian stereotype: the exact nature of her Asianness can never be revealed, she appears to spend her time sipping tea and painting whatever this is, and her communication mostly consists of vague pronouncements. Then there are the hordes of nameless and – as a result of their face coverings – literally faceless ninjas, whose sole purpose is to be dispatched by Daredevil, as his skill in their own martial arts is just that impressive.

And then there’s Elektra Natchios, half-Asian, half-white, sexual, violent, dangerous, and in some ways, the most problematic character on the show.

Elektra functions partially as a contrast to Karen: the femme fatale of color tempting a moral white man away from his virtuous path and, because the two are linked, away from a good-hearted, white woman. To underscore this dichotomy, Karen typically wears whites, neutrals, and blues, like the Virgin Mary would, whereas Elektra’s wardrobe consists of red and black (the vamp’s colors) with accents of gold or the metal of a blade.

Although the series presents Elektra as Daredevil’s equal in terms of fighting prowess, the show disempowers her by attributing this to her status as a living weapon of the Hand. As a woman of color, she is inherently an empty vessel to be filled, with ultimately no agency regarding her actions. Even more worrying, the responsibility for her lack of self-determination lies with her fellow Asians; the Hand may have the occasional non-Asian member, perhaps highlighted to sidestep accusations of racism, but its operation and aesthetics are pure East Asian stereotype. This dynamic ties into other media depictions of people of color suffering the most oppression at the hands of their own – such as any Western news story about South Asian, Middle Eastern, and/or Muslim women – which often serves as justification for the exercise of white privilege over non-white individuals or communities. We might not be perfect, but we’re not as bad as them. It’s fine to bomb their countries, because otherwise they’ll just keep on oppressing.

It must also be noted that the only named Asian characters besides Elektra are Madame Gao and Nobu, whose name no one bothers to mention for most of Season 1 (I resorted to calling him Hot Suit Guy until then). For the most part, Asians in Daredevil are a monolithic mass, the menace of the Other against which a powerful white man must rise.

To meet this challenge, white men repeatedly prove their worthiness to rule by mastering Asianness. Daredevil and Stick are more proficient in Asian martial arts than the warriors of the Hand, while the Kingpin demonstrates his intelligence by speaking to Madame Gao and Nobu in their own languages. These men are thus “better” than their Asian counterparts, as seen in the Kingpin’s ability to convince Gao and Nobu to cooperate with him, or in the fact that both Elektra and Daredevil are both trained by Stick but the latter manages to not become a killer, due to a morality that the Asian Elektra can never have.

Daredevil is a white man’s world. Asians are just getting beaten up and dying in it.

Yet there is something strangely compelling about Elektra, not as an extension of the show’s tired prejudices against Asian people, but as a woman who despite her questionable origins transcends the limiting Strong Female Character trope. In addition to being half of a white woman/woman of color romantic polarity for Daredevil, her presence in and of itself disrupts the masculine hegemony of violence in the show.

Here’s a drinking game I wouldn’t recommend playing with Daredevil: take a sip every time the title character growls “my city.” You’ll pass out in the first fifteen minutes. It’s a key phrase in deciphering his motives behind defending Hell’s Kitchen, which aren’t simply rooted in the desire to stand up for victims of crime. If that was all he wanted, he would have stuck to his day job as a lawyer for the poor and the otherwise marginalized, without the need to sneak out after dark to break some bones. “My city” connotes ownership and, in turn, the right to treat the city’s occupants however he sees fit, since they as part of the city belong to him. The Punisher also comes to this situation from a (former) position of institutional authority. As a former Marine who was deployed in the Middle East, he represents the exercise of U.S. and largely white male-dominated power with the goal of establishing order, and still refers to himself as a “soldier.” This is the language of possession and imposition, spoken by the show’s white male leads.

Elektra displays little concern for such ideologies. Her accent marks her as an outsider in Hell’s Kitchen and in the U.S., and the phrase “my city” is absent from her conversation, as is its more neutral variant “this city.” She is a foreigner, a woman, and a person of color who is at least somewhat removed from her male counterparts’ battles of ownership and authority – and is their equal at what they do best in their efforts to impose the order of white patriarchal institutions upon their surroundings. To drive this point home, Elektra’s most sexualized moment is inextricable from her first display of physical power, as these are combined in that boxing ring scene – first through a fight where she and Matt are evenly matched, then through a passionate coupling where she spends most of her time on top.

In a show where violence equals authority, being the living weapon of the Hand grants her a status similar to those of Daredevil‘s male leads, investing her with the ability to fight alongside or against them as an equal. While Elektra’s is a different type of violence from that carried out by the Punisher or Daredevil with a different source, it is nonetheless effective.

Granted, this part of the plot is still highly objectifying. Perhaps I’m trying to justify my love for a character whose own backstory undercuts her power by finding alternate readings of the indefensible; even in 2016, as an Asian-American woman, I often have to settle for the problematic and compromised or nothing at all. It is a rare occurrence to see a powerful woman on-screen who looks like me and who isn’t entirely composed of racially fetishized tropes: the clingy schoolgirl, the murderous geisha, the dominatrix ninja, or some unholy combination thereof. Elektra may bear aspects of these tropes, but she is by no means reduced to them – in a show where authority is reinforced by successful acts of violence and such acts are the purview of white men, she undermines this supremacy through her own violence and her existence as a female Other of color among the male, the white, and the powerful.

Kelly Kanayama was born and raised in Honolulu but now lives in Scotland, where she is pursuing a PhD in comics research. She has written about comics and superheroes at Bitch Media, SciFiNow, NPR: Code Switch, Women Write About Comics, and Mindless Ones. Her poetry on comics and pop culture has appeared in Room Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and the British Science Fiction Association magazine Focus. You can follow her on Twitter @kellykanayama.

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

Having a superhero grapple with the right use of their power is hardly a new theme and it’s central to the broader narrative of ‘Captain America: Civil War.’ But allowing a female superhero to tackle the same dilemma on a deeply personal level feels quietly subversive. …Women superheroes can be inhumanly powerful without being reduced to a boringly infallible female badass caricature.

This guest post written by Maddie Webb appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines. | Mild spoilers for Captain America: Civil War.

There is a lot to dissect in Captain America: Civil War, which is what makes it so compelling to watch. It’s a film overflowing with political allegory and highly anticipated character introductions, building to perhaps the most emotional climax to a superhero film ever seen. It is therefore understandable that most of the reviews and buzz around the film don’t seem too interested in the small role Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch plays in the greater plot machinations of the superhero showdown. This is kind of a shame because her character arc gives me hope for the other women superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), whose treatment of their all too few female characters in the past has been checkered at best.

Introduced in Avengers: Age of Ultron alongside her brother Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff)’s entrance into the MCU seemed to be more of a result of Marvel’s endless pissing contest with Fox rather than anyone actually wanting to do something interesting with the character. Sure, she gets to mess with the Avengers’ minds and rips out Ultron’s mechanical heart, but she never feels like a three-dimensional human. Instead, she exists more as a tool to move pieces into place and create conflict within the team. Though not at quite the same level as the treatment Black Widow gets in the film, which some people saw as tantamount to character assassination, Wanda’s introduction is, like the rest of the film, a bit underwhelming.

Imagine my surprise when leaving Civil War, the first thing I wanted to do was read House of M so I could fall in love with Scarlet Witch’s comic counterpart as well as her movie form. In Civil War, Scarlet Witch doesn’t just drive the plot forward but she’s allowed to exist as a fully formed young woman, all without undermining the fact that she is the most powerful character that has been introduced into the MCU so far. That is so exciting to me it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s also no small feat considering incredible unbridled power in the hands of a young woman is something that pop culture often fails to portray with any nuance. As film critic Bob Chipman commented, in traditional storytelling, “Male characters that get power can be destructive if they abuse it, but female characters with power will be destructive period.” This is not the case here.

In the opening of Civil War, an incident in Lagos results in major civilian casualties due, at least in part, to Wanda’s actions. Although, Captain America himself admits that he, as their leader is responsible, the wider world decides that Scarlet Witch is the one who cannot be trusted, perhaps since she isn’t the all-American hero Steve Rogers is. For a short time, she is public enemy number one and she reacts in a deeply emotional and human way, questioning her own actions and purpose as an Avenger. One of the worst tropes of modern action screenwriting is the “strong woman,” the omni-competent badass who on the surface is empowered but realistically is devoid of any complexity or characterization. Here Wanda is the antithesis of that, a young woman who is at once undeniably strong but emotionally complex, perhaps even a little fragile. It may be a small plot point in the broad scheme of the film but it’s a moment of subtle and important character development. Rather than breaking down entirely or being completely without remorse, the film presents Wanda’s guilt as both understandable and authentic, but most importantly, something that strengthens her as the plot progresses.

Having a superhero grapple with the right use of their power is hardly a new theme and it’s central to the broader narrative of Civil War. But allowing a female superhero to tackle the same dilemma on a deeply personal level feels quietly subversive. Wanda’s powers aren’t a curse and haven’t corrupted her, like with so many female characters, but she also learns that as her abilities grow so will the consequences of her actions. “With great power comes great responsibility,” is a well-worn superhero trope but it’s normally one reserved for men.

Even the traditional and potentially problematic elements of Wanda’s relationships with the other characters are resolved in a satisfying way. Her relationship with Vision is sweet, genuine, and has none of the clumsy melodrama of Black Widow and Bruce Banner’s forced romance (despite how I sound, I don’t actually hate Age of Ultron). Their relationship is based on mutual experiences of feeling like the “other” in a world that doesn’t quite know how to react to them and the burden possessing a greater power they don’t quite understand. Furthermore, when it becomes clear that Vision is willing to keep Wanda in the Avengers compound against her will, in one of the coolest moments in the film, Wanda makes it abundantly clear that even Vision isn’t strong enough to stop her from doing what she wants.

In fact, Tony Stark and Vision not trusting Wanda is a huge part of why she chooses Team Cap; she’s strong enough to leave a team when she knows she’s not respected. In one of my favorite interactions in the film, Wanda accuses Tony of trying to lock her in her room and when he tells her it was for her own good, she responds by dropping a car park on his head. While her surrogate father figures, Captain American and Hawkeye, refer to her as just a kid, Wanda’s heroic displays in the now legendary airport scene show that she can handle herself and her powers just fine.

Maybe this is what really gets to the heart of why I’m so jazzed about Scarlet Witch in this movie and the potential of Captain Marvel, the Wasp and the future women in the MCU (personally, I’m praying for Squirrel Girl). With the right script and actress — Elizabeth Olsen really is stellar here — Civil War proves that women superheroes can be inhumanly powerful without being reduced to a boringly infallible female badass caricature. The conclusion of Wanda’s mini character arc consists of learning and empowerment. As Vision warns her, that choosing Captain America’s side will mean people will never stop fearing her power, she replies, “I cannot control their fear, only my own.” Forget Team Cap or Team Iron Man, that sounds like a woman whose team I want to be on.

Maddie Webb is a student currently studying Biology in London. If she doesn’t end up becoming a mad scientist, her goal is to write about science and the ladies kicking ass in STEM fields.

‘Catwoman,’ ‘Elektra,’ and the Death of the Cinema Superheroine

Now, don’t get me wrong – neither ‘Catwoman’ nor ‘Elektra’ are by any means good movies. The first is silly, the second dull, and both are confusing and ugly, with little interest in their source material and an odd propensity to give characters magical powers. They deserved to fail – but they didn’t deserve to take an entire gender down with them.

This guest post written by Heather Davidson appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Cast your mind back, if you can, to a time before superhero films dominated the box office. A time before the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight revolutionized the genre and made no summer complete without half a dozen comic book adaptions hitting screens. This was the world Catwoman and Elektra premiered in. The latter a spin-off from 2003’s Daredevil, the former inexplicably completely unconnected to the following year’s Batman Begins, both were complete flops. Catwoman failed to make back its budget, Elektra barely did, and they both received a critical mauling.

When movies fail, studios go looking for explanations. In this case, they looked at the failure of Elektra and Catwoman, as well as the failure of the film Supergirl back in 1984, and they came to a conclusion: superheroines don’t sell. It’s a conclusion that Hollywood seems to have adopted as gospel; last year, Wikileaks published a 2014 email exchange between the CEOs of Marvel and Sony with the subject line “Female Movies,” in which Elektra, Catwoman, and Supergirl were cited as “disasters.” The reluctance among the big studios to greenlight any more “female movies” is obvious – when Wonder Woman premieres next year, it will have been twelve years since we last saw a movie with a woman superhero in the lead role.

Now, don’t get me wrong – neither Catwoman nor Elektra are by any means good movies. The first is silly, the second dull, and both are confusing and ugly, with little interest in their source material and an odd propensity to give characters magical powers. They deserved to fail – but they didn’t deserve to take an entire gender down with them.

All the complaints you can make about Catwoman and Elektra can be levelled against so many other superhero movies (with the possible exception of the whole magical powers thing): Green Lantern, Daredevil, Superman Returns, and Jonah Hex. Like Catwoman, Elektra, and Supergirl, the protagonists of these flops shared a gender – yet you would never see them in a list entitled “Male Movies.” The reasons given for their failure are many and varied: they had poor scripts, dull action scenes, bad special effects. This isn’t a privilege afforded to women-led movies; everything comes back to the gender of their protagonist.

However, calling Catwoman and Elektra “female movies” is disingenuous. Both movies were directed by men, with male screenwriters and an almost all-male team of producers (Catwoman does give a producer credit to Denise Di Novi). The lack of women’s voices on the production teams is blatant. Elektra is interested in its protagonist’s gender only so far as it creates the opportunity to put Jennifer Garner in a revealing outfit and have her kiss another woman. Meanwhile, Catwoman’s idea of womanhood is that of a boardroom full of men desperately trying to appeal to women aged 18-39, complete with a ‘sassy’ best friend and plot revolving around face cream.

We’ve never had a superheroine movie engage with gender and womanhood in the way TV series like Jessica Jones or Supergirl have in recent years; all it takes is a woman in a visible role (outside the male protagonist’s love interest, of course) for a film to become a “female movie.” For Hollywood, the experience of the white, straight, man is universal, but he can’t empathize with anyone else. As such, even in ensemble pictures like the X-Men or Avengers franchises, the superheroines are marginalized in the movies and their marketing in favor of their male co-stars. Of the 60 items produced to tie-in to the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron last year, Scarlet Johansson’s Black Widow featured on just 3. The issue was obvious enough for Mark Ruffalo, who played her love interest in the film, to publicly demand Marvel produce more.

This marginalization extends to women behind the camera as well, as Anne Hathaway noted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times’ Rebecca Keegan in 2014:

“A male director can have a series of failures and still get hired. Sometimes movies don’t work, and I feel like if it stars a woman or is directed by a woman, the wheels can’t fall off the train. If this movie directed by a woman does well and this movie directed by a woman does well and then one doesn’t, it’s ‘oh, people don’t like movies directed by women.'”

It’s been sixteen years since X-Men kicked off the superhero boom of the 2000s, and we have yet to see a comic book blockbuster directed by a woman. That’s not to say women have been entirely absent from the director’s chair – Lexi Alexander (who repeatedly advocates for women filmmakers in Hollywood) directed the low budget Punisher: War Zone in 2008, and Patty Jenkins was hired to direct Thor: The Dark World, but left during pre-production. Marvel Studios, at least, gained a reputation for being willing to take risks on unproven directors, like Marc Webb and the Russo brothers, or those whose previous projects had lost money, like Joss Whedon, and James Gunn. However, this approach evidently only extends to male filmmakers. While Marvel claims to be in talks with women directors about the upcoming Captain Marvel movie, and Jenkins is currently overseeing post-production on Wonder Woman, we’ve spent a decade and a half without female representation in a genre that has come to dominate Hollywood. The failure of Catwoman and Elektra may have erased women’s faces from the superhero film, but they never even gave our voices a chance.

With the first female lead in over a decade and first female director ever, the pressure is high on Wonder Woman to succeed. Protest over the lack of representation for marginalized groups in Hollywood has, thankfully, gained enough mainstream prominence in the last few years that, even if the movie crashes and burns, it’s untenable for the studios to continue excluding women as they have. However, you can be sure that if the film does flop, fingers won’t be pointed at its bizarre scripting system, its troubled production, or its ties to an equally unsettled cinematic universe. The reasons for its failure will begin and end with the gender of its star and director.

In linguistics, there’s a concept known as ‘markedness.’ Out of two paired terms, one will be ‘unmarked’ and other ‘marked.’ The unmarked term is the norm – walk, host, lion. In contrast, its marked equivalent stands out – walked, hostess, lioness. ‘Superheroine’ is a marked term. The actresses who play them are marked, as are the “female movies” they star in. For the past decade, they’ve been marked for failure, by a studio system dominated by short-sighted male executives who can’t see past previous failures. We’re entering a new era for superheroes on-screen, where women again have a seat at the table. We can’t let them take it away again.

Heather Davidson is a web developer-cum-graphic designer-cum writer, with as much of an attention span as that implies. She writes about tech, the niche corners of pop culture and radical activism – preferably all at the same time. Follow her on Twitter @heatherlauren.

‘Supergirl’ and Room for the Non-Brooding Superhero

This guest post written by Allyson Johnson appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

It would seem that as of late the superhero genre has taken a turn for the dour and morally dubious. Dark Knights battle Men of Steel, a genius, grieving billionaire clashes in ideologies with a soldier out of time which leads to violence; mutants bring the end of days as Hot Topic gets free advertising in what could be the big surprise in Suicide Squad. Hell’s Kitchen offers up a bloody and bruised vigilante and a psychologically scarred heroine and even The Flash, the previous home to the peppiest characters, has had its hero battling demons and facing past traumas. The joy of Barry’s world has dimmed as of late as Zoom has vowed to take everything and everyone that he loves.

Then, across multiple worlds, there is Supergirl, and she is delightful.

It’s hardly a reach to call Melissa Benoist’s Kara Danvers a genuine ray of sunshine. While many may have enjoyed Henry Cavill’s scowling, apathetic Superman, I’d much rather watch Benoist light up the screen with her optimism. Embodying all that is good, honest and hopeful in superheroes; she bursts onto the screen beaming with satisfaction in getting the chance to save the day.

There is an indisputable charm to Kara’s strong will that can go toe to toe with the might of her fist. Here is a young woman that believes so strongly in her fellow being that she tries talking to many of the baddies of the week rather than immediately resorting to fighting. Her kindhearted and giving spirit is ultimately what sets her apart from the other heroes that have populated television and movies for the last few years (with exceptions, obviously.) Kara has more in common with Steve Rogers than Clark Kent in terms of media representation. While she and Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen certainly share attributes (rendering adorable results) the latter is more prone to wallowing than Kara who deals with her problems head on. This is highlighted in the follow-up from the events in “Falling” where Kara has been affected by red kryptonite. Out of control for an episode while her very worst thoughts come snarling out of her, she is branded as a threat to the city. When she awakens from the trance, she sobs out of despair (add Melissa Benoist to actresses who make me cry by crying) and it’s all due to the grief she experiences at how mean-spirited she had become. She doesn’t waste time by ruminating or talking about how it’s all her fault (ahem Arrow). Instead, despite being admittedly shaken, she goes about her day with the mindset of doing anything and everything in her power to regain the trust she worked so hard to earn.

Kara isn’t without her trauma, having left a planet minutes away from destruction and having to willingly leave everyone she’d ever known and loved. Rather than wear her tragedies as a burden (and this is something she shares with Gustin’s The Flash) she utilizes her sadness as a way to help others from enduring the same pain. She thrives on her city’s ability to find hope in the darkest moments, both becoming a beacon for it while also turning to them for courage. Young, unabashedly gleeful about what her powers embolden her to do while striving to better herself, Kara Danvers is the embodiment of what we all expected to see in Superman when we stepped foot into the theater for Man of Steel.

So often in our superhero origin stories, the hero faces a tragedy that influences who they become. It just so happens that rather than allow hers to burden her with a sense of guilt, Kara instead utilizes it as a catalyst for purpose. Where Oliver Queen in Arrow was led down a path of self-righteousness and murder all in the name of “protecting his city,” Kara helps out the girl facing down a schoolyard bully. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent seem to believe that the humans they save are a mere nuisance in Batman v. Superman, while Kara believes every problem from worldwide mind control to saving a girl’s pet snake out of a tree is worthwhile.

Even the supporting characters, who typically would have been reduced to one note, antagonistic foils for our protagonist, are given a sense of directive purpose. Lucy (Jenna Dewan Tatum) could have been stuck in love triangle hell but instead the two women share a mutual respect. Then, there’s Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), a journalism mogul who ends up not only mentoring Kara and Supergirl but also proves to possess the warmest heart of any of the characters on the show.

It’s a shame that such richly drawn characters could be buried in such tiresome plots and story development. One of the reasons I’m excited about Supergirl jumping stations from CBS to The CW is the creativity that will now be allowed for its writers. Greg Barlanti, Ali Adler, and Andrew Kreisberg have gone to great lengths to depict characters with love and respect. Now they have time to flourish on a channel with a less restrictive model. Regardless, it would have remained a staple in my weekly roundup, largely due to its leading lady.

There is a larger than life quality to the characters of Zack Snyder’s DC Universe and even in Marvel’s current run where heroes such as Scarlet Witch and Vision join the rankings. Supergirl, despite her otherworldly origins, feels human. Despite her weekly battles with aliens from other worlds or meta-humans from earth, she’s grounded by her optimism and her caring relationships with others. Perhaps there is more drama to be derived from angst and anger, but when we look to Supergirl, we see the face of a hero we would want to see rescuing us, and also, a hero we can all strive to be. I don’t know when it became “uncool” to have heroes who find it burdensome to help others (and in fear of exacting a hyperbole, this isn’t the case all across the board) but while it’s certainly fashionable to have the antihero in the lead or carry a chip on their shoulder, it’s equally as satisfying to watch a hero come speeding into sight, grin in place, and ready to save the day.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Supergirl’s Feminism and Why the TV Series Works

Allyson Johnson is a 20-something living in the Boston area. She’s the Film Editor for TheYoungFolks.com and her writing can also be found at The Mary Sue and Cambridge Day. Follow her on twitter for daily ramblings, feminist rants and TV chat @AllysonAJ.

‘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.

Rape, Consent and Race in Marvel’s ‘Jessica Jones’

Marvel’s ‘Jessica Jones’ is the latest, best example of white feminist fiction: excellent on sexism, terrible on racism.

This guest post is written by Cate Young and originally appeared at her site BattyMamzelle. It is cross-posted with permission.

Trigger warning for discussion of rape and rape culture.

Marvel’s Jessica Jones is the latest, best example of white feminist fiction: excellent on sexism, terrible on racism. There are a lot of great things about this series that speak directly to the ills that women face on a daily basis. Kilgrave, the central villain, is chillingly terrifying, specifically because the only difference between him and your garden variety abuser is his total power to enact his will. The examination of male entitlement in ways both large and small (by contrasting Kilgrave and Simpson for example) are excellent and poignant. But as I watched the 13 episode first season, I was struck by how callously black people’s lives were treated on the show, rendered into convenient plot devices in service of the white female protagonist’s character development. As a black woman viewing the show, it was easy to see that the active pursuit of liberation from abuse was not a struggle that this show believes includes me (an ongoing struggle for Marvel). Ironically, the best parts of the show are its treatment with its villain, while the worst are its treatments with its female anti-heroine.

While I do have several critiques of the show, there were a number of things that I thought were handled exceptionally well. Firstly, this is a show driven by women about the fears and terrors that women must navigate in the world shrunk down to a micro-level, enabling us an intimate look at the various levels of abuse women routinely endure. The contrast between Kilgrave and Simpson is genius, as it helps demonstrate the full scale of abuse that men knowingly and unknowingly enact on the women around them. The two men are flip-sides of the same coin. While Kilgrave simply takes what he feels he is entitled to by means of his powers of enhanced persuasion, Simpson initially takes a less forceful but no less sinister approach, exemplified in his treatment of Trish after he realizes that Kilgrave has compelled him to murder her. As Stephanie Yang writes in a Bitch Magazine review:

The warning signs are there early on. Under Kilgrave’s control, Simpson assaults Trish inside her own apartment. Once Kilgrave’s control wears off, he’s wracked with guilt and comes back to apologize. The problem is that Trish doesn’t want Simpson’s apology; she wants him to just leave. Trish doesn’t want to be reminded that she was attacked in her own home, or feel trapped by her own high-end security system while her attacker lingers outside. But Simpson is insistent, sitting in her hallway and talking to her through the intercom. Simpson makes his apology about his needs and his absolution, not about Trish’s needs, safety or mental health. It’s entirely understandable, but it’s still wrong.

Simpson and Kilgrave certainly have different motivation for their destructive actions. But as Jessica points out, intent doesn’t matter. Their actions and consequences are what matter. That’s an important distinction that needs to be made at a time when courts and media alike dismiss many real-life cases of abuse because the abuser “couldn’t know” what they were doing was wrong. Violence is a symptom of a culture that indulges bad behavior as being inherently and unavoidably part of masculinity, or even a romantic expression of desire and protectiveness.

I would go a step further and name Simpson’s insistent apologies to Trish as outright abusive on their face, specifically because they prioritize his need for absolution over her need to heal. Trish is the victim in the situation, and yet Simpson manages to find a way to center himself in the story of this trauma. As with Kilgrave and Jessica, Simpson’s abuse is rooted not in a cartoonish hatred of women as we are often led to believe, but rather in prioritizing his own will and desires over Trish’s.

The show’s exploration of rape and consent is also spot-on. Through interaction with Kilgrave’s superhuman abilities, Jessica Jones is able to make plain text of the subtext of rape culture. In one episode, Jessica makes plain that what Kilgrave did to her was rape. She says the word and invokes it over and over, explaining to him that by revoking her ability to consent, he violated her in a profound way that he can never make up for, nullifying any “kind treatment” during that time. For Jessica (and many other victims of sexual abuse) she was raped not only when Kilgrave forced sexual consent by rendering her suggestible, but also by forcing her to display trust and affection for him against her will. We see this idea replicated when Hope demands that she be allowed to abort Kilgrave’s fetus, because “every moment it’s in me is like he’s raping me all over again.”

The other great thing about Jessica Jones is that it is a show ostensibly about rape, that never depicts a rape. It can be argued that the entire engine of the show is powered by the actions of a serial rapist with many, many victims in his wake, and yet the show never feels the need to indulge in crude depictions of trauma to demonstrate how horrifying rape is. Instead, we spend extensive time examining the fallout; following Jessica and Hope as they try to cope with being violated on such a profound level, grapple with their own feelings of guilt and culpability and make it to the other side with their faculties intact. One of the things that made Kilgrave so scary in the initial episodes was the way the memory of him haunted Jessica, always lingering at the edge of her thoughts, out of sight, but never out of mind. It masterfully depicted the way that rape trauma is a burden that doesn’t go away once the act itself is over. In a year that’s been replete with depictions of rape in television, it was refreshing to see a show tackle the true emotional weight of sexual assault without using the violation itself to titillate.

On the other hand, the treatment of people of colour in Jessica Jones is often anti-intersectional and openly anti-black. Vulture‘s year end “Best of Television” list cites the show as demonstrating “a racially diverse cast, heavy on women,” a construction that belies that for many people, diversity means “add black men and stir.” To me, it is borderline disrespectful to call the show racially diverse when the only significant, named woman of colour character is dead before the narrative begins and never speaks a word, while the black male characters are all subjected to incredible violence in service of the white female protagonist. This force frames feminist representation as the representation of white women and yet again, erases women of colour from our popular narratives.

With Reva’s character, this is especially glaring. Her death at Jessica’s hands is essentially the inciting incident of the story; the act that allows Jessica to free herself from Kilgrave’s control. Reva is fridged to motivate Jessica’s escape and eventual confrontation with Kilgrave. As Shaadi Devereaux writes in Model View Culture:

[…] One has to wonder what metaphor is offered, that she has to kill a Black woman in order to finally obtain that freedom. She must literally stop Reva Connors’ heart with a single blow in order to experience her moment of awakening, enabling her to walk away from a cis-heterosexual white male abuser. It brings to mind how white women liberate themselves from unpaid domestic labor by exploiting Black/Latina/Indigenous women, often heal their own sexual trauma by performing activism that harms WoC, and how the white women’s dollar still compares to that of WoC. Like Jessica’s liberation is only possible through the violence against Reva, we see sharp parallels with how liberatory white womanhood often interplays with the lives of WoC. Were the writers consciously aware of these parallels, or was it just the same script playing out in their heads?

It’s disappointing that the show, knowingly or not, replicates the same cycles of abuse that routinely play out within the feminist movement, by positioning violence against black women as the justified cost of white women’s liberation. Jessica eventually enacts the same cycle of abuse against Luke Cage, her main love interest. Shaadi notes:

After killing Reva, Jessica goes on to stalk Reva’s husband, Luke Cage, in a compulsive and boundary-violating cycle of guilt. She finally sleeps with him…without disclosing how she was implicated in Reva’s death. She both withholds and actively obstructs him from finding out information about his own life, so that she can continue to get what she needs intimately from him. In dealing with her own demons, Jessica violates an invulnerable Black man and lays him a blow that no other character in their universe has the power to. Was this another nod to a complex understanding of gender, race and power, or another trope surfacing in insidious ways?

The issue here is that the show does not give any indication as to whether this is commentary or trope, so we are forced to assume the latter, interpreting the text as presented to us. Jessica makes a habit of using the black men around her, in service to her own ends treating them as interchangeable and disposable, a glaring and problematic oversight given the current political climate, and the historical context of black men being subjected to undue violence for the protection of white women. Jessica’s pursuit of Luke despite her knowledge of her involvement in what we are led to believe in the most painful event of his life replicates the same disregard for his feelings that we saw Simpson demonstrate with Trish. To Jessica, her own need to be in Luke’s orbit because of her overwhelming guilt and self-loathing, supersede his right to be fully informed about the circumstances of his wife’s death, and as Tom and Lorenzo astutely write in their review:

[…] Like it or not, she has the capacity to be a bit hypocritical about Kilgrave’s abilities choosing to think that there’s actually a right way to take people’s control away from them.

And Jessica very literally takes Luke’s control away by not disclosing her involvement in Reva’s death. She takes away his ability to choose not to be with the person who murdered his wife. Later, his choice to forgive is later revoked by Kilgrave, as he is forced to reconcile with her under Kilgrave’s control. Again, the invulnerable black man’s pain is not respected, but rather toyed with and manipulated by the narrative to serve the needs of white characters. As Shaadi again points out, the pattern becomes more uncomfortable and glaring as the series continues:

When her neighbor shares how Black people are more vulnerable to others’ perceptions, it invokes not sympathy but an idea of how she can use it for her own ends. The result is several scenes where she pushes Black men into people to create a scene of chaos, using the opportunity to go unseen as she breaks the law. Instead of challenging oppressive systems directly, she uses them to get what she wants and to center her own survival. We see that she has some guilt about it, but sis willing to do it for her survival and the survival of other white characters.

These scenes demonstrate that as people marginalized along a spectrum, we often leverage violence against others for our own survival, sometimes with full awareness. But is awareness enough? Or as long as power remains unchallenged, will we always be lured by self-priority, the hierarchy of own safety and access? Our hero is willing to take on the mindcontrol of Kilgrave, but not those dangers most affecting the two most important men in her life – both Black. She intimately understands that no one will believe her, but capitalizes on the hierarchy of who has enough humanity to be believed – against other marginalized identities. She can finally walk away from the mind of her abuser, but the gravitational pull of racism is still too much.

As a black woman, I’m left to wonder, is Jessica worse than your garden variety racist for acknowledging systems of oppression only to exploit them? And on a real world level, why is this behaviour heralded by viewers as feminist when it actively takes advantage of people that the feminist movement is meant to protect?

My last issue is less a problem with this show specifically and more a general trope in fiction. I expect that very little can be done about this considering the source material, but truly abhor narratives in which a black person’s “power” is that they cannot feel pain or be hurt. It is a direct callback to very pervasive superhumanization bias and stereotypes that still exist and are perpetuated today. As I have written before about this characterization, it feeds into the idea that violence against black people is not traumatic or dangerous as they can withstand the pain, and that this ability positions them as protectors of white characters who often also do them harm. It explains why young black boys are coded by white people as much older than they are, or why they think black people feel less pain. With Luke, we see this reflected in Luke’s fight scenes as person after person escalates the violence against him to no effect. He is easily able to trounce several men at once. Earlier, we also see him take a circle saw to his abdomen in order to demonstrate his power to Jessica. Later still, we see doctors poke and prod him with needles and other penetrating devices ostensibly to save him, but the scenes only reinforce what we have already been told; nothing can hurt him, and so violence against him is justified.

In the end, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the show. The way Jessica Jones deals with consent resonated with me on a deep level, but it also made me question why the show didn’t identify with me as a black woman, when I so easily identified with it. Hopefully in the next season we will see a more intersectional approach to the struggles that women face that treats its black characters with the same care that it affords the white women in the cast.

Cate Young is a Trinidadian freelance writer and photographer, and author of BattyMamzelle, a feminist pop culture blog focused on film, television, music, and critical commentary on media representation. Cate has a BA in Photojournalism from Boston University and is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications so that she can more effectively examine the symbolic annihilation of women of colour in the media and deliver the critical feminist smack down. Follow her on twitter at @BattyMamzelle.

‘Supergirl,’ “Fight or Flight”: No One Puts Kara in a Refrigerator

Its blend of superpowered silliness and reflexive cultural commentary with a sincere emotional core is nearly Whedon-esque. And no, that’s not a bad thing at all.

Supergirl takes another solid step with its third episode, “Fight or Flight.” The special effects (a nuclear lightning bolt duel, our hero grabbing a handful of molten lava) still look cheap, but Melissa Benoist still shines as Kara/Supergirl, whether she’s playing goofily smitten (with James Olsen, played by Mehcad Brooks), brokenhearted, or spoiling for a fight, and this was the most well-paced and exciting episode yet.

It features a cameo from Kara’s cousin, Superman, who steps in when Kara takes on Reactron (Chris Browning) a nuclear-powered bad guy out for revenge against him. Revisiting a familiar comic book trope, Reactron decides to get to Superman by murdering his cousin. His plot comes surprisingly close to working, but this is Kara’s story. She’s not destined to die in order to motivate the male superhero’s transformation, as she makes clear.

Reactron flees from his first encounter with Kara after she short-circuits his nuclear core. He kidnaps engineering genius and asshole boss Maxwell Lord (Peter Facinelli, lining up another plum role after his great work on Nurse Jackie) and forces him to help fix his nuclear suit. With the help of scary glowy red-eyed Hank Henshaw (David Harewood), Alex (Chyler Leigh), Winn (Jeremy Jordan), and James, she tracks Reactron down, but with his newly repaired suit (thanks, Mr. Lord!), he gets the best of her, and seems about to finish her off when Superman steps in.

When Kara finds out that Supes arrived at James’ behest, she expresses not gratitude, but hurt and disappointment. She makes it clear to James that she needs to learn to stand on her own, to make her own story, and not be a supporting character in her cousin’s tale. Which is all great, especially when she proves that her faith in herself is well-placed.

Better still, the script, by Michael Grassi (Lost Girl) and Rachel Sukert is a little sharper than usual, and the direction, by Dennis Downs, a bit snappier. Kara also has to deal with the interview she gave, as Supergirl, to her unwitting boss, Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart, proving herself as integral to the show as Benoist). Cat isn’t running a puff piece, and the whole office is on edge because she’s writing it herself and getting hilariously stressed out in the process. (Nice plug for Bulletproof Coffee there.)

Hank gets annoyed with Kara for giving the interview, especially for mentioning that Superman is her cousin (after being goaded into it by Cat’s sexist questions). He wonders if she’ll do a reality show — “Keeping Up with the Kryptonians” — next.

Lucy Lane (Jenna Dewan Tatum), Lois’ sister, James’ ex, and a possible romantic rival for Kara, made her debut this episode, but Maxwell Lord is a more intriguing new character. I haven’t read the comics, but I did read Lord described as a villain in stories about Facinelli being cast. He does seem like a villain, but he’s a clever one. While James Frain chews the scenery as Theo Galivan over on Gotham, Facinelli’s Lord is surprisingly subtle and complex. Like Cat Grant, he’s an overly demanding and dismissive boss, but also like Grant, his arrogance isn’t completely unearned. It’s not surprising when the show hints at a romantic history the characters share.

This all bodes well for the series, which is actually starting to build some narrative momentum, in addition to hitting all the right notes about empowerment and representation that we want to see in a superhero show about a young woman. Its blend of superpowered silliness and reflexive cultural commentary with a sincere emotional core is nearly Whedonesque. And no, that’s not a bad thing at all. If this keeps up, I could easily go from merely admiring the show’s not-so-subtle subversion of a misogynistic culture to flat-out enjoying the damn thing.

Recommended Reading

Supergirl Premiere: The Enemy of My Enemy Is Super

Supergirl Episode 1.2, “Stronger Together”: Boozing with RGB and Saving Snakes

‘Supergirl’ Episode 1.2, “Stronger Together”: Boozing with RBG and Saving Snakes

Overall, the show remains a fairly entertaining hour, with a refreshing take on femininity and power. In 2015, a superhero show with a likeable female lead and assorted other strong women characters and a little girl who loves her pet snake should not really be groundbreaking, but the sad fact is, it is, and while it has its flaws, I’m still grateful that it exists.

Supergirl is a hit! Despite a lot of whining from male comic book geeks and MRA types about its SJW attitude, the show had great ratings for its premiere, and pretty decent reviews as well, overall.

This week, the DEO investigated a chemical robbery that turned out to be a feeding, as a Hellgrammite (Justice Leak), one of the aliens that Kara/Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) accidentally brought with her when she passed through the Phantom Zone. It turns out the Hellgrammite eats DDT like it’s going out of style (which it has), which annoys supervillain Astra (Laura Benanti), who wants her alien underlings to keep a low profile on Earth until her plan is in motion. Astra decides to use him as bait to lure her niece Kara to her doom. Kara has other plans.

In fact, after causing an embarrassing oil spill while trying to keep a tanker from exploding, and getting her ass kicked by her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) in a kryptonite-infused DEO fight room, Kara decides to take a step back and handle lower-level disasters like armed robberies and pets in trees (a little girl’s snake named Fluffy, to be precise). So when the Hellgrammite strikes, the DEO are the ones who go after him, and when Supergirl doesn’t show, he decides to bring Alex to Astra, hoping it will get the alien queen off his back.

Naturally, Kara steps up to rescue her sister. She’s shocked to run into her aunt, whom she assumed died on Krypton, because mom never told her that Aunt Astra was a baddie, and was sent to the Phantom Zone. Alex dispatches the Hellgrammite pretty easily, but things look dicier for Kara until DEO chief Hank Henshaw (David Harewood) shows up with a kryptonite knife and pokes Astra pretty good. Sure, Hank saves the day this time, but a glimpse of him at the end of the show reveals that he has scary red demon eyes. Or maybe they’re cyborg eyes? If you’re a fan of the comic book version of Superman, you might have an idea. In any case, it’s clear that Hank is not the gruff but lovable commander he appears to be.

The second episode of CBS’s Supergirl had pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as the first. It’s full of likeable, attractive characters, and even the less likeable characters at least seem to be, well, characters.

Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) not only eats boozy breakfasts with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she also has pretty solid ideas about how Supergirl might improve her public image, which she unwittingly reveals to Supergirl herself. She’s also a pretty terrible boss, treating Kara like a stooge, and threatening to fire James (not “Jimmy”) Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) if he doesn’t get her an exclusive interview with Supergirl. Flockhart has fun in the role, and for a superhero TV show, the character and our feelings toward her are fairly complex.

Kara’s confrontation with Aunt Astra also has a surprising emotional element to it, thanks to the strength of the two actors. While she’s mostly evil incarnate, Astra seems to feel a genuine connection to Kara. She also claims that she’s trying to save the Earth, after having let Krypton be destroyed, and aside from the fact that her plan involves wiping out humanity, one suspects she may have a point, eventually.

Kara’s pep talk to James, who despairs of ever being able to get out from under the shadow of superheroes, is fairly affecting, too. The writing is pretty standard stuff, but again, the actors are strong enough to put it across with some genuine emotion. And Supergirl’s inclusive approach to fighting for good has a less fascistic bent to it that that lone wolf Superman’s.

On the negative side, the show’s plotting is contrived. The Hellgrammite just happens to grab Alex, and he gets away with it far too easily. Hank is sharp enough to bring a kryptonite knife to face Astra, but for their attempted capture of the superpowered Hellgrammite, the DEO only brings standard handguns. The special effects are far too cartoony, probably partly due to budget limitations, and the action is mostly indifferently choreographed and shot. That heat vision battle between Supergirl and Astra was an embarrassment. The fight between Alex and Kara was an exception, in that at least it didn’t feature characters transforming into animated blobs to fly across the room at each other.

Recommended Reading

Supergirl Premiere: The Enemy of My Enemy Is Super

“Did I Step on Your Moment?” The Seductive and Psychological Violence of Female Superheroes

This style of fighting codes our female superheroes as half menacing and half attractive – we are meant to be afraid of them, but also enticed by them. Their violence is inextricably linked to their sexuality.

This guest post by Mary Iannone appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

How do we recognize a superhero? The word itself implies strength, power, and, most often in today’s saturated market, traditional masculinity. Tony Stark builds dozens of stand-ins for his Iron Man persona, each bigger and more high-tech than the last. Steve Rogers dons red, white, and blue and acts as an all-American symbol of dominance. Thor, a literal god, fights with the power of lightning and an indestructible hammer which only he is worthy to yield. Where then, is there room for the feminine interpretation of superheroism? And why must there be such a sharp distinction between our heroes?

The heroic body is a necessary qualification for superhero status. Physical strength connotes capability. A victim can only trust a stranger who comes to their aid if the stranger looks like they are able to get the job done. Vigilante-type figures can only be accepted within their cities if they look the part and never fail to live up to that standard. This is why the superhero film is not yet inclusive of women – we have not yet accepted the physical strength of women as an equally valid type of heroism.

Within the popular Marvel universe of films, women must exhibit a form of violence that stands in opposition to that which is demonstrated by the traditional male superhero figure. Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, and Maria Hill do not wield immediately recognizable symbols such as those displayed by Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. Their style of violence relies not on external weapons but on their own bodies; Black Widow is introduced in Iron Man 2 as a physical powerhouse, taking down a hallway full of enemies in mere seconds using nothing but her body and a can of mace. This style of fighting codes our female superheroes as half menacing and half attractive – we are meant to be afraid of them, but also enticed by them. Their violence is inextricably linked to their sexuality.

Women in this universe do not get to display traditional modes of violence; the final act of heroism is always performed by a man. Not only do the men deal the final, killing blow, they perform acts of sacrifice that underscore their worth as a hero. In The Avengers, Tony Stark directs a missile away from New York City, fully expecting that he could die. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers confronts the Winter Soldier in the third act’s final battle. In Age of Ultron, Quicksilver sacrifices himself for the team.

In all of these scenarios, Black Widow is part of the action, but is relegated to a supporting role, never getting a huge moment of heroic sacrifice or a moment that causes the audience to burst into applause. She is an integral part of the success of the Avengers team. She tricks Loki into telling her his plan and she closes the portal allowing the alien invaders into Manhattan. But the flashy heroics – Stark’s self-sacrifice, Thor’s battle with the Hulk, and the Hulk’s takedown of Loki – are left to the men. Black Widow is the one who is initially attacked by the Hulk; Thor steps in to save her, leaving her huddled in fear. On one hand, Black Widow does not simply erase her emotions and the potential trauma that this encounter has caused. She is able to remain a hero while still allowing herself to feel victimized. But simultaneously, it devalues her place in the hierarchy of the group and makes her dependent upon a male savior.

It is implied that women are unable to handle the truly horrific violence; Betty Ross is shielded from the Hulk, and both Iron Man 3’s Maya Hansen and Age of Ultron’s Scarlet Witch have a change of heart before the final showdown. Pepper Potts, while not a part of the Avengers team, is still only traditionally violent – using a weapon to take down Aldrich Killian – after she has been injected with Extremis in Iron Man 3. The insinuation is that women can only be physically violent or deal the killing blow when under the influence of a destructive force. Pepper even expresses surprise at her own strength, gasping, “Oh my god…that was really violent!” After Killian’s death, Tony Stark vows to “fix” Pepper – in other words, to return her to her healthier (read: less aggressive) self.

Women in the Marvel Universe can only be directly violent when working on the side of good. Female villains are scarce to begin with, and even then are mostly an assistant to evil rather than the mastermind. Heroes are meant to be idolized; they are set on a plane above true human empathy. But these villains, even with their impossible powers, are still able to be identified with, even in a perverse way. The emotions of anger, resentment, and spite are more potent, and therefore more readily accessible to the layman, than the hero’s complex burden of responsibility and strict adherence to a moral code. But when the villains are female, these negative emotions are perceived not as coolly subversive but as simple complaints. Thus, their violence becomes caustic and reactionary, a nuisance to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

The coding of female superhero violence as less physically destructive than that of their male counterparts reminds audiences that this environment of all-out war is still not a space that is inclusive of women. Each of the title characters is a white, heterosexual, handsome male who acts as an icon of masculinity. The superhero genre reflects many of the same cinematic tropes as the classic war genre; this has left little room for the representation of female superheroes. But at the same time, the multifaceted methods of violence exhibited by these female characters make them the most feared within this universe.

As the Marvel phases continue, Black Widow is joined by Maria Hill and, later, Scarlet Witch. With each addition, our female characters turn more and more towards psychological violence as their most destructive weapon. Black Widow allows herself to be captured in the beginning of The Avengers, giving her male adversaries a sense of dominance before knocking them all out. But she escapes in the superhero genre’s stereotypically “female” way; she does not kill, she only incapacitates. Most notably, she does so in a way that exhibits her entire body. Scarlet Witch looks physically unimposing, but has the power to incapacitate the entire team with one theatrical movement of her hands.

This style of violence is meant to destabilize the enemy – to lull them into a sense of victory before knocking their legs out from under them (often literally). By presenting less of an immediate physical threat, they have access to a wider range of psychological violence against their enemies. Scarlet Witch’s hallucinatory attack against the Avengers in Age of Ultron sends the team into hiding; her potential personal destruction weighs more heavily on the Avengers than Ultron’s plans of world domination.

So why is it that we are still waiting for a female-fronted superhero film? When removed from the team atmosphere and pushed into a leadership role, the characterization of female superheroes seems to falter. It’s time for a female superhero who kicks ass, ends the fight, makes sacrifices, and gets the big cheers.

Mary Iannone holds a Master’s Degree in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU, where she studied genre film, Hollywood archetypes, and pop culture’s representations of mental illness. Follow her on Twitter at @mianno.

Seed & Spark: “Not Even Once”

I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

Bre Mueck and Matthew Luret at the park in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

This is a guest post by Ryan M. Moore.

My first memory of being exposed to a feminist film (and one of my first memories, period) is of my mom setting up a projector in our basement (8mm? 16mm? I am old), loading it with a reel she had borrowed from the library (yes, you could do that!) and showing my brother and me an animated film called Reverse-a-quake! It was set on an island which was hit by a big earthquake, which caused all of the men to have to switch to doing what had previously been women’s work, and vice-versa. That there was anything political about this storyline sailed right over my 6-year-old head, but knowing what I know now, it must have sunk in a little.

I call myself a feminist without reservation, but I didn’t set out to make a feminist statement, or any kind of political statement, when I wrote and directed my feature film debut All Earthly Constraints. The lead character, Emily (played by the amazing Bre Mueck) is a struggling screenwriter (“Write what you know!”) who works in a gelato shop. Emily’s screenplay is about a struggling screenwriter named Emma (“Write what you know!”) who works in a coffee shop, and is also secretly a superheroine named Emmageddon. Emma is Emily’s “Mary Sue” (a character that is a thinly veiled, idealized version of her author), and Emmageddon is Emma’s. It’s Mary Sues all the way down.

In one scene, Emily has just left her writer’s group in tears after having her script “Emmageddon” savaged (“Self-indulgent! Masturbatory!”) by the sadistic self-proclaimed group leader, John. Soft-spoken Dylan goes after Emily, and they end up talking and drinking at a local park. In the course of their first-ever real conversation, this happens:

DYLAN: I guess I just think about… sometimes, you know, a real job, a family, stability. No “someday when I make it.” Is that so wrong? I mean, haven’t you ever thought you might be worthwhile, or good enough, or whatever, just how you are—just being you?

EMILY: Not even once.

DYLAN: (after a long pause) Me neither.

Shooting this scene was incredibly strange. To hear and see the most honest thing I’ve ever written about the creative process brought to life by two amazing actors, seemed, at the time, like an affirmation of all the choices I’ve ever made. I fell largely on Emily’s side as I thought, “Yeah, I’m doing the right thing with my life.”

Three months later, mired in the post-production process, I can see Dylan’s side too. Maybe it should be enough to just work your job and live your life and be happy with you are. Maybe I would’ve been happier that way. Maybe it’s just my ego that tells me I can’t possibly ever settle for “normal.” It’s been an incredibly difficult process trying to finish this film—making a movie is hard. Trying to do anything well is hard. Life is hard.

Bre Mueck as Emmageddon in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

But what I learned in the process of shooting that scene (and of tangling up my reality and emotional state with that of my character’s to a frankly disorienting extent that I hope would make Charlie Kaufman proud), was this: Emily is not a “strong female character.” Emily isn’t “strong,” at least not exclusively. She starts the scene in tears, and continues by admitting her deepest self-doubts to Dylan, not because she has any real connection with him (yet), but because he’s there and willing to listen and pay for the booze.

And Emmageddon isn’t always “strong” either, even though she’s a self-proclaimed superhero. Who would be interested in seeing a story about someone who was nothing but “strong,” all the time, in every situation? It would be like watching a film about a slab of granite. I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

I have a lot of problems with the current crop of superhero movies. While the artistry and craft that goes into their creation is almost literally unimaginable, all too often they exist exclusively in the realm of black and white, “good guys” and “bad guys,” strong, wise-cracking male heroes and female sidekicks who exist mostly as window-dressing, or as sexual conquests for the men. One of my goals in creating All Earthly Constraints was to create a female superhero who was also human: Yes, she kicks, punches, and slaps people who deserve to be kicked, punched and slapped, and she’s good at it. But she has no special powers and she can be hurt, physically and emotionally. Under the costume, she’s still a person. I’m not quite delusional enough to believe that All Earthly Constraints will ever be playing in your local multiplex next to the latest Summer tentpole, but I hope it starts a few conversations, or adds a little bit to some that are already happening.

You can learn more about All Earthly Constraints, and follow or support our crowdfunding campaign at Seed & Spark.

Ryan M. Moore is a writer and director living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. All Earthly Constraints is his first feature film.