Young Women and Heroism in ‘The Host’

Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations.

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

Whether or not The Host is “feminist” or not has been covered by Dr. Natalie Wilson in a particularly interesting piece, as Stephanie Meyers identifies as a feminist. I’m not too into the idea of calling the movie an anti-feminist piece, but its portrayal of young women and their relationships to men is deeply problematic. As Dr. Wilson has questioned and criticized this movie well,  I don’t have too much to  add except some thoughts about young women and heroism.  I do feel obligated to say that this movie is duller than toast and the onslaught of negative reviews it received was well-deserved.

So, this movie is about an Alien race called Souls that invade all the bodies of humans and turn the planet into a peaceful place. One Alien named Wanda gets put into the body of a young girl named Melanie. Melanie does not have control over her body but her presence is still there and she manipulates Wanda into running away from the Soul community to find her little brother and her boyfriend. They find them living with a bunch of other humans who are hiding from the Souls and just trying to get by. Wanda and Melanie work to protect this community from the Souls, but mostly their purpose and justification for their acts of heroism are largely done for the men they love or have fallen or are falling in love with. Very typical and trite, but there are some elements at play that tend to deviate from a traditional hero’s journey.

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Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations. It is hard to understand why Wanda is a “female” as the audience is given very little information as to what Souls are, where they came from, what their motivations are, or how this parasitic species procreates. Maybe it is covered in the book? Maybe Stephanie Meyer never really thought about it (unlike some authors I know).  Either way it a missed opportunity for talking about gender vs. sex or doing anything somewhat subversive.

The dynamic between the two female protagonists in this movie who have to work together and collaborate to be successful for their shared end goals (which is boy saving) is what is most interesting to me when thinking about their roles as heroes and the typical myth of the hero. Melanie is almost a mercenary type. Determined, very occupied with the preservation of her humanity, resistant, manipulative, brave and adept at lying and stealing. Wanda is naive and lost but operates under a strict moral compass of nonviolence and pacifism. The two react to most situations very differently but they learn skills and behaviors from one another. It is the collaboration of these two very different teenage girl characters that allow them to be successful in protecting and aiding the human community.

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As mentioned before, Wanda is a pacifist; her actions as a “hero” are conducted nonviolently. In fact her nonviolent action inspires her new community to start acting in the same way. This is a sort of nice refresher to all the kick-ass action heros that have been featured on the big screen.  Nonetheless, her character is extremely self-sacrificing and puts herself last in almost every situation. Would have been nice to see a hero who strikes a good balance between operating under a strong moral compass without that being overshadowed by their seemingly low self-worth.


Sade Nickels is a toddler teacher in Seattle who enjoys getting tattoos, reading children’s books and thinking about radicalism.

 

 

Animated Children’s Films: 101 Dalmatians!

This is a guest post from Sade Nickels.

Could it possible be an animated Disney movie that has ladiez in it that isn’t about princesses!?! Yes, but this movie’s treatment of women is still distasteful at best. When I first thought about writing about this movie, I thought the question that I wanted to address was of what qualities or characteristics Disney uses to mark Cruella de Ville, the individual, as a villain. However, after watching the first 15 minutes of the film, I realized that the problematic portrayal of women in the movie extends far beyond Cruella. The real question is of what aspects or lifestyle choices of women does Disney want to villanize in the form of Cruella DeVille. 
Cruella is a single, loud, independent woman who is bad, bad, BAD! We know this because of her older, androgynous appearance, misandry and verbal harassment of men, poor driving skills, disinterest in the nuclear family, obsession with material items…oh, and her love of skinning helpless, small animals. We know she is especially bad when she is compared to her “school chum” Anita (the owner of Perdita–the mom dog). 
Anita is everything Cruella is not: married and pursuing a nuclear family, kind, loving, quiet and beautiful. The audience knows that she is a “good” character after the male dog protagonist approves of her to be his “pet’s” mate based on her wide-eyed, willowy and naive beauty. Helene Stanley provided the live-reference to Anita’s physical form just as she did for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella characters (maybe this is a princess movie after all). 
The only thing that we know about the relationship between Anita and Cruella is that they are friends from school. Cruella drops by Anita’s house to degrade her husband and home, and to size up those puppies for their fur (though the two’s conversation did manage to pass the Bechdel Test). Anita and Cruella are polar opposites despite both being young, seemingly well-off, educated women. Just as Cruella’s obsession and insatiable need is for material goods, Anita has an inexhaustible desire to love and help all living things (probably because of that whole maternal need thing, amirightfellas?!?). 
This movie was released in 1961 and grossed the most money out of any film that year. These two facts are interesting because 1961 was one year after birth control had been legalized and was right before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. When One Hundred and One Dalmatians came out, new pathways were being forged for and by women in a highly publicized way. Perhaps this movie is a reaction to current changes in the country. To Disney, “the world was such a wholesome place until Cruella, Cruella de Ville.” If only ladies would stop being deviant and get back to those good, old, traditional family values! 
What sucks, sucks, sucks the most is that Cruella isn’t even a formidable villain in this movie (which she should be since her character was based off the ever-impressive Tallulah Bankhead). It is never expressed if she has a career. She is a bad driver (lady drivers, right?!). Heck, she can’t even skin the puppies herself. Though that would have been a little too explicit. Her hired henchman don’t respect her: Her hired henchman don’t respect her: Cruella’s comeuppance is being told to “shut up!” by one of her hired helpers. Zoinks!
Jeez, oh man, does this movie have lots of problems. In case anyone else is interested in revisiting this movie, there are other interpretations to be had of it. 
Queer Reading

Race and Class

  • First! There are SO many racial and class problems in this movie. My MAIN issue are the race ones. The first being that Pongo, the dad dalmation, is only attracted to another dalmation. Hmmm…
  • Second! When the dogs are running back to London and they are escaping Cruella, they meet up with a labrador who gets them a ride to the city. In order to sneak onto the van the dogs get covered in soot to look like labs (as Pongo says, “That’s the stuff the blacker the better!”). Dog blackface? 
  • Third! When the dogs arrive back home Rodger (the human dad character) starts singing about how they (the humans) will start a Dalmatian Plantation. Ok, so I know the words rhyme and all, but it is still in poor taste. Oh great, there is a song about it. 

Whew! Well, that is all folks. Would LOVE to read your comments.

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Sade Nickels is a toddler teacher in Seattle who enjoys getting tattoos, reading children’s books and thinking about radicalism.