Science Fiction – Page 3

Ripley, Sexism, and Classism in ‘Aliens’

However, it was not until 1986 that her status as a female badass was truly confirmed in the follow-up, ‘Aliens.’ Yet, in-universe, it took Ripley much of the movie to gain any respect. The mix of classism and sexism Ripley faced is something that I think made many women identify with her even more.

This guest post written by Adam Sherman appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

One of the most enduring female action heroes in the eighties is Ellen Ripley. In the 1979 movie Alien, we were introduced to her as a competent, no-nonsense space trucker who survived where the rest of her crew did not. However, it was not until 1986 that her status as a female badass was truly confirmed in the follow-up, Aliens. Yet, in-universe, it took Ripley much of the movie to gain any respect. The mix of classism and sexism Ripley faced is something that I think made many women identify with her even more.

Ripley’s struggle to be taken seriously began almost as soon as she wakes up from cryosleep. As soon as she recovers from her physical injuries, she’s sent in front of the Weyland-Yutani board to account for the loss of her ship. If the titular Alien’s reproductive cycle is a metaphor for rape, then that scene is possibly a metaphor for the often hostile legal process survivors of rape go through. Ripley is thrown into a room with overtly hostile men (and one hostile woman), where they pick apart every detail in her story.

Her one (not very vocal) defender in that room is Carter Burke, a low-level board member. The first time I watched Aliens (I think I was in high school,) I thought he was a decent guy… until he stabbed everyone in the back, of course. Now, rewatching the movie for this article, I realize that he wasn’t. From his introduction, he reeks of corporate pandering. His way of speaking seems to be straight-talk, but upon closer inspection, it seems like just a bunch of buzzwords thrown together to make Ripley do what he wants. Speaking of buzz words and manipulation, compare his recruitment of Ripley to how for-profit-schools recruit students. Throwing the shame of working at the docks in her face and reminding her she used to be a lieutenant on a starship is some pretty good use of pain points.

Speaking of “the shame of working at the docks,” the way Burke treats Ripley parallels how our society treats blue-collar workers. It makes sense. After all, her previous job was basically being a trucker… IN SPACE! While not glamorous, Ripley seemed to think that job was fine, just like dockwork was fine. And if Burke was going to look down on her for that… well, she would just tell him what to do with his classism and Scrooge McDuck piles of money. The only reason she returned to LV-246 was that people were in danger.

That brings us to the marines. Despite a surprising number of female marines in the team, they are obviously fueled by hyper-masculinity and testosterone and, in Sergeant Apone’s case, nicotine. Of course, some of that aggressive bravado might just be for show. After all, it is hinted that nothing they do is completely safe. On the ride down, it is subtly suggested that their drop ship could blow up randomly.

The marines are also quite dismissive of outsiders. They complain that the colonists they are supposed to rescue are “morons” who probably broke the transmitter by accident; either that or the emergency is actually that “their daughters need to be rescued from their own virginity.” Ripley, at the start, is treated dismissively, as if she’s merely rambling about aliens. During her briefing, it is readily apparent that the marines think she is wasting their time. They start to warm up to Ripley when she shows that she’s ready to roll up her sleeves and get dirty alongside them by piloting a power loader to arm the dropship. (By the way, this is a nice bit of foreshadowing to the final battle. But I probably don’t need to tell you that.)

The marines are also particularly disdainful of their fearful leader, Lieutenant Gorman. During the drop (which was established as dangerous) he annoys his subordinates by showing fear and his lack of experience. But his worst crime before setting down was refusing to eat with the marines, as if he’s better than them. Instead, he sat with the two civilians, conveying his elitism.

On the other end of this spectrum is Vasquez. Vasquez is one of the three female marines, yet she appears to be attempting to be the most stereotypically masculine. While most of the other marines groggily awake from cryosleep and put their clothes on, Vasquez is already doing chin-ups, using the ship’s structure as a gym. She also adopts her comrades’ prejudices to a greater degree. Before Ripley is accepted, Vasquez is one of her harshest critics. She also goes so far as to attempt to beat an unconscious Gorman, only restrained by her fellow survivors.

Yet underneath much of the marines’ seemingly emotional outbursts is a cold logic. Cowardice is despised because when one person panics, others will quickly follow. And if the person panicking is high enough in rank, like Gorman, lives are more likely to be lost. Both points were proved effectively in the masterfully shot first battle between the xenomorphs and the marines. They are quick to call for the incompetent Gorman and the treacherous Burke to be executed because both men proved to be a liability. They distrust civilians because, well, civilians don’t know anything about military operations. The marines eventually listen to Ripley not only because of her prior experience, but also because of her quick thinking and decisiveness; she fits the mold they believe makes a good leader.

Ripley eventually earns the marines’ respect. The first sign, as stated before, was Ripley’s willingness to step up and get on the power loader when the least-liked Marine, Hudson, refused. What really earns their respect, however, is Ripley taking control of the APC to save the marines, despite Gorman’s orders to wait. If Ripley hadn’t acted, all eight of the marines who went down into the xenomorph nest would have died. Losing almost sixty-three percent of the combat-ready troops may seem unsustainable (which it was). But you have to remember: it was better than what Gorman could have done. Ripley is even able to keep the momentum of her victory going by coming up with a plan to survive after the destruction of the dropship. In doing that, the only person who could legitimately challenge her leadership would be Hicks. Between the two of them, they manage to mount an effective defense against a highly intelligent foe that both outnumbered and outmaneuvered them.

This journey from marginalized victim to survivor to respected leader is I think one of the more subtle reasons why people love Ripley. People will talk about her killing xenomorphs, or her motherly instincts towards Newt, or that awesome gun she jerry-rigged together when fighting the queen. Yet people don’t always discuss how Ripley earned the respect of people who previously dismissed her. Many of us believe that if we can be smart enough, strong enough, funny enough, creative enough, talented enough, or some other simile for good enough, everyone who ever doubted us will be forced to accept us. Ripley isn’t just an action hero in Aliens, she’s the embodiment of that belief. And so many of us love her for that.

Adam “T4nky” Sherman is the writer of Nowhere Island University and also doessemi-related blog stuff. You can also follow him on Twitter @NowhereIslandU.

Did Gender Alter the Tone of the ‘Alien’ Series? Narrative Implications of Femininity

It is science fiction fact however, that Ellen Ripley should not have been “Ellen Ripley” at all. Dan O’Bannon’s original script for ‘Alien’ stated: “The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men and women.” … In ‘Aliens,’ both Ripley and the alien are further solidified as female. …We come to an implied understanding that is wholly complicit in their both being mothers, adding a subliminal layer that would not have been present had either Ripley or the alien been male.

This guest post written by Kayleigh Watson appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

When Ridley Scott cast Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien, he created The First: The First Action Heroine; The First Female in a Science Fiction Film That Did Not Have To Be Rescued or Was Not Brunch for a Swamp Monster. Such titles may as well be monikers attached to her name. Ripley was important, and still is, her legacy living on in many an action heroine that followed: Buffy (the Vampire Slayer), The Bride (Kill Bill), G.I Jane, Trinity (The Matrix), Furiosa (Mad Max: Fury Road) and Sarah Connor’s transformation in Terminator 2.

It is science fiction fact however, that Ellen Ripley should not have been “Ellen Ripley” at all. Dan O’Bannon’s original script for Alien stated: “T he crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men and women.” In the climate of the time, it is wholly plausible that Ripley was intended to be a male, as despite the script’s stated gender ambiguity, the original name for the character was still “Martin Roby.” So far so standard for horror and sci-fi, for the genres had always been male-dominated whether it be characters on-screen or in literature or those who create them. After all, it was not until the New Wave of sci-fi that women began to truly stake their claim on the genre, birthing feminist science fiction and writers such as Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy, Ursula K. LeGuin and the singular entity that is Octavia Butler — C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett being exceptions in the “Golden Age,” and Brackett went on to contribute to the screenplay of The Empire Strikes Back.

O’Bannon once stated that:

“I don’t see it as that revolutionary to cast a female as the lead in an action picture,” said O’Bannon. “It didn’t boggle me then, and it doesn’t boggle me now. My conception from scratch was that this would be a co-ed crew. I thought there was no reason you had to adhere to the convention of the all-male crew anymore.

After all, Star Trek had already had a mixed gender crew for years, and Ridley Scott had a similar reaction when the prospect of making the character female was pitched to him (“I just said, ‘That’s a good idea.”’). Scott later said in an interview:

“My film has strong women simply because I like strong women… It’s a personal choice. I’m no male chauvinist, nor do I understand female chauvinism – I just believe in the equality of men and women. It’s as simple as that.”

In Alien itself, Ripley – portrayed by the then largely unknown actress Sigourney Weaver – blended into the background of the team of the Nostromo crew; she was straightforward in conduct, voicing her opinion, making decisions, contributing to physical work and not waiting for someone else to save her. It can be intrinsically interpreted that these factors are entwined with the fact that Ripley’s character was intended to be male and, should “Martin Roby” have existed in her place he would have led the way as a main protagonist, one that is ultimately smarter than crewmembers with more authority.

Except nobody expected that of Ripley, solely because she was female. She was the ultimate unexpected protagonist, with the audience wholly expecting her to be snuffed out somewhere between the second and third act – because they had been conditioned their entire lives to do so. Her gender made her disposable – one only has to recall the aforementioned damsel vs. swamp monster scenario to consider how this should have played out. Yes, Ripley was female, but she was not feminine. That is the distinctive line here; she was not overtly sexualized (until she strips to her underwear near the culmination of the film: you can’t have it all, it seems), she fought back, she did not need to be rescued by a male, she wielded weapons: she defeated the “bad guy.” Due to the duality of the writing, Ripley became an androgynous entity in a fictional universe so symbolically enveloped in gender.

The Alien universe is primarily constructed around the perception of the “monstrous feminine” and plays into a lot of male-centric fears to do with gender alienation, with an aesthetic to follow suit. Renowned artist H.R Giger was in charge of designing the alien and set, and his explicit and sexually symbolic imagery can be viewed throughout, with phallic monsters hiding in a womb-shaped interior ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims. The Nostromo is the monstrous womb that births death, the gestation of that alien creature involving male rape – orally, impregnation and birth via the destruction of the male body; who can forget that iconic scene mid-film where the baby alien bursts through John Hurt’s chest, takes a look around at the crew’s horrified faces, before scurrying off into the unknown?

This narrative decision turns gender roles on its head and plays into male fears of human reproduction and that which they will never experience. It also draws from 1970s fears of “no longer being in control of our bodies,” as film studies professor Mark Jancovich asserted, thanks to “pollution, pesticides, food additives, man-made cancers” causing mutation. Extrapolating and combining the two sure makes for one horrific film. This monstrous amalgamation is culminated in a predatory creature that was designed by Giger to be both vaginal and phallic with a mysterious omnipresence onscreen. No character is sure what it is that they are facing.

Yet gender implications are reinforced in the making of the antagonist – the alien itself – female. Had Ripley’s character been “Roby” and the alien been male, the conflict would have been conventional. Had there been a binary gender-based conflict, e.g. Roby fought a female alien or had Ripley been a woman and the alien been male, it would have played into the perception of the “monstrous feminine” on alternate sides; the alien being primarily grotesque and man eating, with Ripley being similarly so for possessing male attributes of character. However, both Ripley and the alien are female, which makes for an interesting dilemma: both are considered to be “monstrous” and “feminine” despite neither possessing attributes of human femininity. Both are also capable of deploying death, to which men are either a spectator or a victim, which sparks Freudian psychology, simultaneously castration anxiety in males and possession of the phallus in females. So even though Ripley is female, are viewers actually still watching a protagonist that is essentially male?

This crisis of gender is complicated further as the Alien series progresses, as in Aliens – the 1986 sequel directed by James Cameron – both Ripley and the alien are further solidified as female. Cameron pushed the series into being specifically feminist, having Weaver reprise the role in more extreme circumstances. She gained a surrogate daughter – Newt – to protect, more men to fight and an Alien Queen – one who breeds – to defeat. Both the protagonist and antagonist (not the same alien) have graduated from being maidens to mothers. Both have dependents to protect. We first saw this side of Ripley when she went to find Jones – the Nostromo’s cat – in Alien, however it is important to point out aspect was part of the original script and not dependent on Ripley being female. Through the course of the film, we come to an implied understanding that is wholly complicit in their both being mothers, adding a subliminal layer that would not have been present had either Ripley or the alien been male.

By the time Alien 3 rolls around, it is quite clear where we stand, for whilst Alien subverted the genre and Aliens showed itself to be intrinsically feminist, Alien 3 fulfills the cycle of female purpose by casting Ripley as the “crone” of the “maiden-mother-crone” of the Triple Goddess interpretation of the female life cycle. She chooses to perish after discovering she is hosting an alien queen inside of her body, and as such, despite the franchise being perceived as a feminist one, the female protagonist has still been dragged back into a trope. It is an end that feels almost inevitable for the character – one that could have still been plausible had Ripley been “Roby” instead – yet is far more telling: the genre has to regain control of this strong female protagonist. Perhaps, in that manner, the real winner in this is the alien itself, for despite its specified gender, both it and its children continue to persist as a threat to humankind. Perhaps, the alien queen is the true exemption of this 1980s franchise.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Ellen Ripley, a Feminist Film Icon, Battles Horrifying Aliens… and Patriarchy

Kayleigh Watson is a writer and occasional illustrator from the UK. After realizing that her childhood ambition of being a vet would mean she would actually have to cut up pets (ew), she decided life would be better spent absorbing art and telling others about it. Her years spent studying for her BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing also involved music blogging, reading SF, and watching lots of Buffy. She currently writes about music for female-centric site The Girls Are as well as talking film and TV (or trying to) at her new blog Post-Modern Sleaze. A collection of her work can be found at what kayleigh said, and she tweets about all of the above under @kaylwattson. Her GIF game is strong.

‘Videodrome’ and the Pornographic Femme Fatale

David Cronenberg’s sci-fi-horror-noir ‘Videodrome’ updated the femme fatale as a response to media-saturated late twentieth-century culture. …The femme fatale is reborn and unleashed to warn of contemporary dangers, including how women’s media representation as sex objects is connected to capitalist propaganda, often with the intent of making a violent agenda seem pleasurable.

This guest post written by Stefan Sereda appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

“The beams become my dream
My dream is on the screen.”
— Blondie, “Fade Away and Radiate”

In Paul Schrader’s 1972 article, “Notes on Film Noir,” the soon-to-be screenwriter-director predicted with accuracy that the noir style would experience a revival in the decade ahead. While the list of New Hollywood noir films is too extensive to list here, encompassing everything from Point Blank (1967) to Blade Runner (1982) and several of Schrader’s own efforts, the Hollywood Renaissance is also known for genre revisionism, and one film noir convention that all but disappeared in the 1970s was the femme fatale.

Critics and audiences argue about whether classical femme fatales were “progressive” representations of American womanhood. From one perspective, fatales such as Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner) in The Killers (1946) and Kathie (Jane Greer) in Out of the Past (1947) embodied paranoia about crime, urban decay, family collapse, capitalist competition, and the sexual promiscuity associated with mid-century American womanhood. Of course, the villainous femme fatale archetype gained popularity in a decade wherein men found themselves competing with women in the workplace. On the other hand, femme fatales exercised agency and autonomy, unlike women found in most classical genres and especially in contrast to their domesticated “good girl” foils in noir. Although femme fatales were always destructive manipulators punished for their transgressions, these bad girls were resourceful and ambitious drivers of their own agenda who weaponized their sexuality.*

In the 1970s, film noir’s women were recast as social victims. The most glaring example of the femme fatale’s reformation takes place in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), where Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is a false suspect who only lies to protect her daughter, the offspring of an abusive, incestuous relationship with her father. Deadly women lurked off to horror films such as Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1973) and Carrie (1976). By 1981, the femme fatale came sauntering back wearing ironic virgin white when Kathleen Turner appeared as Matty Walker in Body Heat (1981). Blade Runner (1982) featured two fembots-turned-fatale (and another faux–fatale) whereas David Cronenberg’s sci-fi-horror-noir Videodrome (1983) updated the femme fatale as a response to media-saturated late twentieth-century culture.

A Postmodern Fatale

Andy Warhol hailed Videodrome as “A Clockwork Orange of the 80s.” The Canadian film stars James Wood as Max Wren, a television producer-turned-amateur detective looking for “something that will break through,” until he finds “Videodrome,” a pirate broadcast showing only detached scenes of torture and murder. Max is captivated, but “who would want to watch a scum show like Videodrome?” Max’s casual girlfriend, Nicki Brand, played by Deborah “Debbie” Harry of Blondie fame, is certainly an enthusiast.

Max first meets Nicki on a talk show, where they debate mediated sex and violence. Nicki bemoans contemporary Western existence as “overstimulating times,” but Max challenges her for wearing red (it’s worth noting the famous blonde appears with red hair in Cronenberg’s film), suggesting, “You know what Freud would say about that dress?” Nicki confesses Max is right about her — she also hosts the “Emotional Rescue” show, a talk radio advice program where she blithely addresses her callers as “lover,” signaling her detached post-sexual revolution approach to intercourse and personal attachment, if not her listeners’ attitudes as well. Nicki is a forward first date: the scene cuts to Max’s apartment, where she flippantly inquires, “Got any porno?” Nicki finds a copy of “Videodrome,” which she admits is a turn-on, despite it having no ostensibly sexual content. Max quips, it’s “torture, murder… not exactly sex,” but Nicki answers, “Says who?” She also reveals a history of S&M with “a friend” who she let cut her, and encourages Max to pierce her ear as foreplay while “Videodrome” plays in the background.

It soon becomes apparent Nicki is more sexually versed than Max and beyond his containment, as she progressively seems less naïve than she first appeared in each of her scenes. When Nicki announces she’s going to audition for “Videodrome,” Max warns her “these mondo weirdo video guys… they play rough… rougher than even Nicki Brand wants to play.” Nicki responds with a fatale’s obstinacy, extinguishing a cigarette on her breast. The next time Max sees Nicki, she’s performing on “Videodrome.”

Besides what Freud might call the subconscious “death drive” apparent in her masochism, Nicki shares superficial characteristics with the archetypal fatale. Her makeup and dresses recall the 1940s. As with many fatales, and Harry in real life, Nicki is self-aware of her status as a sex object, to the point where she craves objectification. In a screenplay loaded with double entendres, the name “Nicki” sounds sharp, but also resounding with the false innocence of fatale names like Kathie, Kitty, and Matty. “Brand,” on the other hand, connotes medieval torture and image commodities. Eventually, Max learns a corporate brand, Spectacular Optical, developed “Videodrome” as a mass brainwashing device in preparation for global warfare. Through “Videodrome,” Nicki — or, at the very least, the fatale’s simulacrum — ensnares, tortures, and directs Max.

Moreover, Cronenberg casts Harry to perfection. Before appearing in Videodrome, Harry was already a postmodern shapeshifter, the only woman to be a Playboy Playmate, a punk rock phenom, a pop star, and a household name big enough for The Muppet Show. A New Yorker up on the trends, she was even rapping as early as 1980. Blondie sprinted along a razor line between punk and pop, attracting Andy Warhol’s attention: his likeness of Harry graces the cover of Phaidon’s Andry Warhol Portraits.

Several Blondie songs, some with Harry-penned lyrics, demonstrate what made Harry an ideal choice for the role of a thrill-seeking sex obsessed woman adrift in a consumer-capitalist landscape. On the BDSM-themed debut album opener, “X-Offender,” she plays a sex worker who threatens to “perpetrate love” with her cop crush after he slaps the cuffs on her. “One Way or Another” relates post-sexual revolution mores to consumer excess, with Harry in stalker-mode, ready to pounce on a love-object in the supermarket and discard him thereafter like any other replaceable commodity. Of course, the song title, “Die Young, Stay Pretty,” offers a paradox that parallels Nicki’s early demise and uncanny life thereafter as a televisual seductress. “Fade Away and Radiate” is more specifically about screen performers surviving death as image commodities, with bandmate Chris Stein’s lyrics beating both David Cronenberg and Jean Baudrillard to the punch with regard to commenting on the hyperreal. Despite their sneering punk credentials, several Blondie songs are about gleeful abandonment to the consumer culture landscape of postmodernity — “Platinum Blonde,” “I’m on E,” “Rapture,” and the American Gigolo theme, “Call Me.” “Roll me in designer sheets,” Harry purrs, “I’ll never get enough.”

Pornography and Propaganda

Cronenberg’s techno-horror film is partially a response to porno chic, released a little more than a decade after Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat (1972) broke through to mainstream audiences. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Toronto television station Citytv — the basis for Videodrome’s CIVIC TV — broadcast softcore adult films. Nicki becomes the film’s personification of pornography’s seductive and desensitizing potential.

Unlike the majority of horror films, Cronenberg’s ouevre torments male protagonists (by contrast, horror auteur Dario Argento made the sexist, objectifying remark, “I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”). In Videodrome, much of the terror results from Max discovering his capacity for sadism. Yet the narrative and its iconography also interpret the media as a penetrative force. Max eventually learns “Videodrome” is not fiction but snuff, and that the violent imagery is meant to lubricate the brain to be more receptive to a signal that causes hallucinations. The film refuses to distinguish between these hallucinations and the narrative proper. Soon Max hallucinates/grows “new flesh”: a vaginal wound in his stomach that conspirators use as a tape player to remold him as an assassin. In other words, Videodrome also locates its horror in a man discovering in himself “feminine” traits such as openness and vulnerability for mass media to exploit. Cronenberg, the so-called “Baron of Blood,” likens violent media’s propagandist assault on the senses to rape when various parties forcibly penetrate Max with videotapes.

Nikki’s first appearance on Videodrome marks what Federico Fellini would call the film’s volta: its pivot-point between a narrative “reality” and the surrealist (or hyperreal) events that follow where “reality” becomes an outmoded concept. Soon after McLuhan-esque figure Dr. Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) finishes telling Max via video, “Television is reality, and reality is less than television,” Nicki is strangling him, and then seducing Max to consummate with his writhing tv set. Later, she appears to him via a VR headpiece, handing him a whip to encourage his penchant for violence in a dreamlike S&M scenario.

Similar to many fatales, Nicki has a “good girl” foil in Brian O’Blivion’s daughter, Bianca O’Blivion (Somja Smits), who runs a “Cathode Ray Mission” to give derelicts their fix of time in front of a television screen. Yet Bianca is as ruthless as Videodrome’s creators when it comes to brainwashing Max, and she turns him against the conspirators who sent him to kill her. Before Bianca sends Max off to kill while reciting the dictum, “Long live the new flesh,” she shows him an image of Nicki being strangled, insisting the “Videodrome” people killed her and used her image to seduce him, not unlike what she herself is doing to Max. It would seem Videodrome’s femme fatale is indeed punished for her transgressions.

Yet after Max believes he has put an end to “Videodrome,” he wanders to an “abandoned vessel.” There, he finds a television showing Nicki’s image. Nicki tells Max that to become “the new flesh” he must leave “the old flesh” and displays a scene of him shooting himself in the head. The film ends with Max saying, “Long live the new flesh,” and a cut to black synced with the sound of a gunshot.

The finale is ambiguous: is Bianca behind Max’s suicide or is “Videodrome,” and how much of what transpired was “real” or hallucinatory? Will Max have a second life preserved as a simulacral image? Regardless, in Cronenberg’s prophetic film, the femme fatale is reborn and unleashed to warn of contemporary dangers, including how women’s media representation as sex objects is connected to capitalist propaganda, often with the intent of making a violent agenda seem pleasurable.

References:

*For a more thorough academic reading of the classical femme fatale and “nurturing woman,” see: Janey Place, “Women in Film Noir,” in Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: BFI, 2001.

Dr. Stefan Sereda is a writer/researcher with a PhD in English and Film Studies and an MA in Literature with a focus on gender and genre. His publications on American cinema and global media have appeared in A Companion to Martin Scorsese, The Memory Effect, Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, the Directory of World Cinema: Africa, and ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature.

Scarlet Witch and Kitty Pryde: Erased Jewish Superheroines

Not only is erasing Judaism a disservice to both Scarlet Witch and Captain America, it’s also disrespectful to the Jewish writers who invested so much in making a statement about Jewish resistance in their artistic expression. … What’s aggravating about the omission of Kitty Pryde’s faith is the fact that the filmmakers didn’t do this to Magneto’s character…

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Captain America: Civil War was released earlier this month, marking it as Marvel’s 13th feature film and it satisfied critics and audiences alike. Not only did it pass the billion dollar gross mark, it passed the DuVernay test, having not two but three Black superheroes (Falcon, War Machine, and introducing Black Panther), making it one of the few superhero films to do so.

Sadly though, the film was let down by its superheroines (and I’m not just talking about it failing the Bechdel test.) The two female superheroes we are presented with are Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff and Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff; don’t get me wrong, both are distinguished heroines in a film overstuffed with testosterone, with the filmmakers taking their time with them in establishing their flaws, strengths, vulnerabilities and powers. The problem, then? The pair are similar in race and religious ambiguity — and they shouldn’t be. While Black Widow’s portrayal remains true to her comic book origin, Scarlet Witch’s does not, as her comic book counterpart is Romani and Jewish.

In a featurette for the film Avengers: Age of Ultron, actress Elizabeth Olsen who portrays Scarlet Witch states that writer/director Joss Whedon “is really interested in creating another female character that is strong” for his sequel. This is understandable; Black Widow had been the only prominent female character thus far to receive any sort of a storyline outside of being a love interest or revolving solely around a man.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33dnL_TSP5k”]

However, given the fact that the whole team (at this point), including Black Widow are white and religiously ambiguous, why did Whedon feel that Judaism and a ‘strong female character’ were mutually exclusive? Whedon could have used Scarlet Witch’s Romani heritage as a visual and cultural exploration of her powers, benefiting her character as on the whole.

Not only does Whedon erase Scarlet Witch’s religion in his portrayal — he has her go against it. When the audience is first introduced to Scarlet Witch’s character in Age of Ultron, we discover that she and her twin brother Quicksilver have willingly volunteered to be experimented on for the Nazi organization Hydra to gain powers. Their motivation for this was so that they could seek revenge on Iron Man/Tony Stark, whom they feel is responsible for the death of their parents — but does the end of this narrative choice justify the means? Because that’s a huge creative license to reconcile with the superheroine’s comic book origins.

Some may see keeping Scarlet Witch’s Jewish heritage as not only a duty, but a necessity, if she is to be an Avenger under Captain America’s leadership. In an article on Captain America’s character conception, Jessica Plummer at Panels writes:

“He was famously depicted punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first appearance, in Captain America Comics #1 — which hit stands in December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and before the United States joined World War II, making that cover a bold political statement. […]

“Like most of the biggest names in the Golden Age of comics, they [Captain America creators] were Jewish. They had family and friends back in Europe who were losing their homes, their freedom, and eventually their lives to the Holocaust. The creation of Captain America was deeply personal and deeply political.”

Not only is erasing Judaism a disservice to both Scarlet Witch and Captain America, it’s also disrespectful to the Jewish writers who invested so much in making a statement about Jewish resistance in their artistic expression. With these brave Jewish writers using their art to combat anti-Semitism, respect and inclusion of the religion should always outweigh a filmmaker’s personal creative preference.

Similarly to Scarlet Witch, another superheroine whose Judaism has been erased in their cinematic portrayal is Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat of the X-Men universe. In the comics, Kitty Pryde is a feisty, spirited, and proudly Jewish member of the X-Men. Yet disappointingly in her 2006 big screen debut in X-Men: The Last Stand, her religion is never mentioned and she’s part of a love triangle designed to progress the character of Bobby Drake/Iceman.

What’s aggravating about the omission of Kitty Pryde’s faith is the fact that the filmmakers didn’t do this to Magneto’s character (who ironically is Scarlet Witch’s father in the comics.) The Jewish faith was necessary for them to progress a male character’s storyline but not for a female character. Supervillains can keep their faith whereas superheroines can’t.

Kitty Pryde and Scarlet Witch went on to have another screen outing each, but their faith was still nowhere to be seen. Civil War did a great job at progressing Scarlet Witch’s character (read Maddie Webb’s brilliant Bitch Flicks article). However, without her faith, she is just another white superheroine alongside Black Widow and Sharon Carter, adding nothing new for viewers to take in.

Where Scarlet Witch was blessed with complexity, Kitty Pryde was cursed with none in her on-screen follow up, X-Men: Days of Future Past. In the comic book storyline on which the film is based, it is Kitty who travels back in time to stop the sentinels from creating an apocalyptic-like future in wiping out not only mutants, but most of humanity. The film adaptation? Of course it was Wolverine sent back, a reliable character for a box office draw. Not only was this a missed opportunity for a superheroine to truly shine on the big screen, but the filmmakers missed out on a more poignant story. Kitty Pryde would have faced what her ancestors faced generations ago; where they were targeted for their religion, Kitty was now being targeted for her mutation. The story would have showcased a seemingly endless cycle that this heroine actively fights to end.

More troubling still was who replaced Kitty Pryde as the female lead in X-Men: Days of Future Past; the blonde haired, blue eyed (and occasionally blued skinned) Mystique, played by global superstar Jennifer Lawrence. Critic Helen O’Hara at Digital Spy highlights the inconsistency of making Mystique the leading superheroine of the recent X-Men films:

“It’s a sea change for the character. In the entire history of the comics she joined the X-Men precisely once, only to betray them almost immediately and reveal herself as a double-agent. During the comics’ Age Of Apocalypse saga, she at least didn’t work against them, but she was basically a war profiteer, ferrying mutants to safety in return if they could afford the price.”

Likewise with Wolverine taking Kitty’s role in the film, it’s easy to see why Mystique would be given center stage over her character. Jennifer Lawrence has an Oscar and the Hunger Games franchise under her belt, proving that she too is reliable in filling seats in a cinema. Still, the studio replacing a pivotal Jewish heroine with two reliable crowd pleasers goes to show how easily they will forgo significant storytelling for easy money.

Given the overall treatment of Scarlet Witch and Kitty Pryde, will we ever see diversity progress for superheroines? In the newest X-Men entry, X-Men: Apocalypse, the front and center superheroine is again Mystique, with Jean Grey appearing as her ally. However, the film poises the two women of color (Storm and Psyclocke) as the antagonists; seeing as the white western heroines are the heroes, you can guess who will most likely dominate the screen-time. The female characters who are minorities get sidelined while the white superheroines shine.

For Disney owning two franchises, they are much slower with female diversity in Marvel than with Star Wars. Granted, the heroines in The Force Awakens were white, but the follow-up Episode 8 will have another female lead played by Asian-American actress Kelly Marie Tran. That will be Disney’s third Star Wars feature, whereas Marvel still only has white women as lead and supporting characters in their 13th feature, which is why Scarlet Witch’s Jewish identity was missed more than ever.

On the other hand, Lupita Nyong’o has been cast in an unspecified (but hopefully badass) role in the upcoming Black Panther film. The character of Valkyrie will be played by the talented Tessa Thompson in the upcoming Thor sequel (presumably due to the backlash of Tilda Swinton’s casting in the upcoming Doctor Strange film). However, I still can’t help but feel a bit bittersweet about this; we should already be basking in the afterglow of diverse heroines, instead of playing what seems like a never-ending waiting game.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Why Scarlet Witch May Be the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Sophie Hall is from London and has graduated with a degree in Creative Writing. She is currently writing a sci-fi comic book series called White Leopard for Wasteland Paradise Comics. Her previous articles for Bitch Flicks were on Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, director Andrea Arnold and Game of Thrones. You can follow her on Twitter at @sophiesuzhall.

‘Barbarella’ and the “Savagery” of Futuristic Sexual Politics

One version of Barbarella draws her as a progressive, sex-positive, and role model-worthy character that saves the universe. … Barbarella the character might be the worst example of a superheroine by many of our contemporary expectations for a female lead not least because of the ambiguous dynamics of her (sexual) agency. … ‘Barbarella’ as a film remains a superheroine movie with a mission: save the future of sexual politics.

This guest post written by Olga Tchepikova appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Oh Barbarella Psychedella… notorious campy Queen of the Galaxy and a retro sci-fi enthusiast’s dream come true. In my mind, she exists in two distinct versions: One — the more permanent one that I find to be true for the longest time between refreshing my memory — draws her as a progressive, sex-positive, and role model-worthy character that saves the universe. The other — which I become aware of every time I refresh my memory — reminds me that although Barbarella may be at the center of every scene during her mission she is not always the catalyst of action. Based on this conflict, I am hesitant to call Barbarella a superheroine. However, I think it is valid to label Barbarella a superheroine movie. But what exactly is the difference?

Barbarella has been praised for parodying the image of a hyper-sexualized astronaut woman especially with regard to the sexist organization of space travel programs in the 1960s and often classified as a feminist film for its display of a sexually active female protagonist. Lisa Parks wrote a wonderful essay on space programs and Barbarella in the book Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s (1999) edited by Hillary Radner and Moya Luckett. Indeed, the heroism we find in this movie seems inevitably bound to a fixation on sex. But precisely because the film’s iconography so strongly predicates Barbarella as intergalactic sex kitten, it is important to acknowledge that contrary to the popularized image of her promiscuous pursuit, she almost never actively seeks out sexual partners. Rather, she responds to other people’s sexual desire for her. But instead of dwelling on questions about erotic agency, I would like to point out that the sexual heroism we might associate with Barbarella is strongly contingent on the futuristic setting of the story — a setting we are completely detached from, but cannot help but read through our internalized socio-cultural conventions regarding sexuality. Consequently, in the story’s terrain, it is especially intriguing that sex as we know it has become irrelevant, or — in the characters’ own words — even “savage.”

In Barbarella’s version of the future ‘making love,’ or that which we refer to as romantic physical intimacy, does not exist anymore. “Love” may be the official motto of the Republic of the Earth, but there is no sex in it. In fact, the sexual future we see here is a neoliberal dystopia. Sex has been deemed too distracting — a threat to maximum efficiency. With the help of science, people in the 41st century take pills and touch hands for one minute “until full rapport is achieved.” For the best possible effect, their “psychocardiograms” must align. And to further emphasize the routine of this practice, we find out that only the poorest of the populace — the ones who cannot afford pills and psychocardiogram readings — have sex in the form of ‘genital intercourse with their clothes off.’

In a future shaped by such conventions, Barbarella is requested to find Durand Durand who is, as it turns out later, a scientist-turned-megalomaniac that wants to take over the universe. Her search leads to Sogo (the future’s abbreviated version of Sodom and Gomorrah) — a city where the “primitive state of neurotic irresponsibility” (Barbarella’s words) is alive and well. In Sogo, pleasure and death are the two main forces in action, making it an exceptional location in the pacified, hyper-scientific universe of 4000+ AD. And it is here that we realize that the “neurotic irresponsibilities” Barbarella is worried about strongly resemble the 1960s fantasies of counter-cultural hedonism and excess. Only in Barbarella’s era, their bad reputation is grounded in the disturbance of efficiency, not a lack of moral conventions.

Certainly, Barbarella’s main agenda is not to lay out the path our society might be taking in the coming centuries. It is a campy sci-fi film after all. But can we really fully dismiss that this could be our future? One where there is, as a rule, no sex in love and no love in sex?

There are plenty of ways in which sexuality (and love, for that matter) has been and continues to be regulated for the sake of a random status quo maintained through directed shaming and punishment. Aside from the long tradition of monitoring and restricting women’s physical, mental, and emotional faculties, ‘those in charge’ have also been persistently harassing individuals and communities displaying non-(hetero)normative desires and identities. And this rigid tenaciousness causes the personal to remain political until further notice, or at least until we live in a time like Barbarella’s day and age — where you don’t have to bother putting on clothes for discussing a diplomatic mission with the president because ‘naked’ is not synonymous to ‘sexual’ anymore. And even if it was, ‘sexual’ would merely mean a match of psychocardiograms, allowing for the best possible experience of touching hands for a minute.

The separation of sex and love exemplified in Barbarella’s universe is not as uncommon as it used to be — at least in newer public discourse and social behavior. Casual sexual encounters, or ‘hook-up culture’ in the mouth of people who disapprove, can be both a means to ridicule people who are interested in bonding with their sex partners — as suggested in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — or a convenient code to avoid the distracting nature of romance and emotions for the sake of personal fulfillment and success in other spheres of life. As of now, we like to exhibit emotionally detached sexual encounters for the sake of efficiency as a personal choice — something that can or even will be reversed if we choose. But what if, indeed, it were possible to achieve ‘full rapport’ with another person without going through the trouble of physical intercourse and being exposed to the dangers of disease contamination and emotional attachment?

The definite separation of sex and physical sensation à la Barbarella takes this idea far out of the already tense and fragile comfort zone defining our culture’s progressive and inclusive attitudes towards sexuality. From where we stand now, a social norm that dictates this separation seems almost dehumanizing. Do we really want to be that progressive? It is one thing to think sexual intercourse without emotional attachment, or sexual sensation without sexual partner(s), but it is hard to think sexual sensation without the respective physical, and maybe even emotional stimulation. However, the over-exaggeration of this idea, to me, is fundamentally what defines the sexually heroic nature of Barbarella from the vantage point of a culture that recycles this film’s iconography on a regular basis — not least because somewhere along the way, she makes the ‘efficient sex’ of the future look ridiculous.

Barbarella was created during a time of social and sexual revolt but placed in an age where the hyper-civilized earth community overrode this one human trait that continuously has been causing trouble throughout history. Despite being a strong believer in the futuristic world order, she reverts to ancient practices that go against a lot of the principles working to maintain the 41st century’s social order and recognizes the productive potential of sexual distractions. She chooses body fluids over pills, feeling over pragmatic ritual, quality over quantity. In the eyes of the future, she becomes “savage.” In other words, she becomes like us. Her choice for ‘the old-fashioned way’ champions sex — even the casual type — as an important form of social activity, not a disturbing call of nature.

Barbarella the character might be the worst example of a superheroine by many of our contemporary expectations for a female lead not least because of the ambiguous dynamics of her (sexual) agency. But that is now, and this was then. Barbarella as a film remains a superheroine movie with a mission: save the future of sexual politics. Indeed, it seems like the sexual libertinage of counter-culture might be a smaller evil than time-efficient, pharma-induced orgasms to be received through fingertips. But then again, it is another 2000+ years until the 41st century — more than enough time for sexual intercourse to be declared “savage.”

Olga Tchepikova has lived, studied, and worked across various places in Europe and the U.S.. Her mind in free time, as well as in research, is mainly occupied with films about and critical theory on subculture, outsider figures, horror, violence, death, sexuality, and the sex industry.

‘Supergirl’s Feminism and Why the TV Series Works

Even with her powers, Kara is the underdog who has to evolve to overcome insurmountable odds, thus making her relatable to viewers. With the series being entitled ‘Supergirl,’ it shouldn’t be a surprise that feminism is a prevalent theme. What is a pleasant surprise is how well the series tackles it.

This guest post written by Dennis R. Upkins appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

At 8 years old, I would wake up early every Saturday morning to tune in and watch Superboy. Over the years, I’ve been a faithful viewer of the original George Reeves Superman series, Lois & Clark, the Bruce Timm animated series, the live action films, and of course the comics. I’m a comic book guy through and through. For me, Superman isn’t just a superhero. He is THE superhero. I’m very protective of the Man of Steel’s mythos and legacy. Suffice it to say, I had my concerns when the CBS series Supergirl was announced.

Somehow when I wasn’t paying attention, my reaction evolved from, “The pilot was cute, I guess I’ll tune in,” to “Jesus Christ is it Monday night yet? I need my Maiden of Might!!!!”

There’s a number of reasons why the series works and works well. For starters, the cast. Actress Melissa Benoist embodies the essence of the eponymous heroine much like Christopher Reeves and Lynda Carter respectively encapsulated Superman and Wonder Woman. In addition, the series is a fresh take on Supergirl and her alter ego Kara Danvers. In previous incarnations, Kara was often depicted as headstrong, impulsive, reckless and angsty, often as a foil for her older and more mature cousin, Clark. For that matter, the same can be said for Conner Kent aka Superboy.

Whereas Clark’s meek and bumbling demeanor was often a facade to conceal his identity, for this Kara, it is who she is and her powers don’t change that fact. Case in point, the girl can’t keep her secret identity to save her life as the series illustrates numerous times. Kara is an ingenue with a huge heart. She often finds herself in over her head whether battling Fort Ross escapees or navigating through minefields often known as life.

Even with her powers, Kara is the underdog who has to evolve to overcome insurmountable odds, thus making her relatable to viewers.

With the series being entitled Supergirl, it shouldn’t be a surprise that feminism is a prevalent theme. What is a pleasant surprise is how well the series tackles it. Sadly in 2016, positive portrayals of powerful women outside of Shondaland continue to be rare. This is especially the case for speculative fiction. Too often, female characters are developed by undercutting other female characters. Not the case with this series. Whether it’s Kara, Lucy or Alex, all of the heroines and villainesses are different but formidable in their own right.

If there is a breakout MVP for the series, the title easily goes to Kara’s snarky boss and unlikely mentor, Cat Grant, played flawlessly by Ally McBeal herself. Calista Flockhart effortlessly steals virtually every scene she’s in with her performances. The sharp-tongued heart-of-gold mentor archetypes are typically reserved for male characters, thus making this iteration of Grant and her relationship with Kara rare for television and all the more amazing.

As the Flash crossover, “World’s Finest,” illustrates, this is a series that knows how to have fun and be creative. New fans and Kryptonian OGs like myself are on the edge of our seats wondering what surprises are in store: the introduction of Martian Manhunter, the Cadmus tease, or hints that Alex Danvers might one day evolve into this universes’s Alex Luthor. It is my hope that Vasquez’s role is beefed up next season and other marginalized DC alums are introduced be they Alysia Yeoh and/or Natasha Irons.

If I have one complaint to register about Supergirl it would be this is one of those times I wish I was a father. I wish I had a young daughter to watch the show with. Just as I tuned in religiously every Saturday as a kid to watch Superboy, it would be cool to pass along a family tradition to the next generation. Supergirl is a heroine that young girls can watch and look up to. Just as importantly, she is a heroine young boys can watch and learn from. One thing is for certain, season 2 can’t get here fast enough.

Is it Monday night yet?

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Supergirl’ and Room for the Non-Brooding Superhero

Dennis R. Upkins is a speculative fiction author, equal rights activist, and proud Atlanta, Georgia native. His writing credits include Stranger Than Fiction, Hollowstone, and West of Sunset. Upkins was a former staff writer for Comicbook.com. He regularly critiques and analyzes the representation and portrayal of minorities in media and has been a contributor to Prism Comics, Bitch Media, Black Girl Dangerous, Geeks OUT, and The Nerds of Color.

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.

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.

‘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.

How the ‘X-Men’ Films Failed Iconic Black Female Superhero Storm

To me, this is where the ‘X-Men’ films utterly fail Storm as a character. While her comic form is definitely a sympathetic and understanding person, more importantly, she is a warrior trained in hand-to-hand combat, an orphan, a divorcee, a Black woman in a leadership role on a team of mostly white men, a wife, a mentor, and an activist.

This guest post written by Sara Century appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Originally introduced in 1975, Storm is widely celebrated as the first Black female superhero. Although The Butterfly in comic magazine Hell-Rider is technically the first. While the first Black male recurring character in a Marvel or DC comic predates Storm by 12 years, it’s impossible to minimize the importance of even her first appearance, especially as she is the first Black woman “to play either a major or supporting role” in Marvel or DC comics. To dissect how the X-Men film franchise fails the previously established iconic character of Storm, we must first view her other incarnations.

In the comics, Storm (Ororo Munroe) is a mutant who has the power of weather control and the ability to fly on wind currents and control lightning. She has been a recurring character in the X-Men for the last 41 years. Storm is introduced as a girl who was orphaned at age six, thereby thrown into a world where she had to fend for herself. She fell in with a group of children who were also pickpockets, and she lived in Cairo until she set out on her own. Discovering her mutant powers around puberty, she was worshiped as an African goddess by what amounted to being a fairly problematic depiction of rural Africans before being discovered by Xavier. At that time, she joined the X-Men.

At first a serene pacifist, life with the X-Men forced her to encounter multiple ethical quandaries. She grew slowly more comfortable with violence, leading into the famous storyline in which she fights Callisto of the Morlocks, kills her, claims leadership of the Morlocks, completely forgets about them, and ultimately returns leadership to turns-out-not-THAT-dead Callisto. There’s a lot going on in that storyline, but it did give us punk Storm. Disavowed by the costume’s designer Paul Smith as “a bad joke that went too far,” he obviously has no grasp of how that look more than anything else ignited an undying love for Storm in artistic, queer, and feminist subcultures that lasts to this very day. She led the team even after she temporarily lost her powers, up until she took a brief hiatus to hook up with a character named Forge in one of the better early Storm stories, “Lifedeath” and “Lifedeath II.”

The 1990s saw Storm’s development meander under the traditionally listless direction of writers like Scott Lobdell, culminating in a marriage between her and Black Panther that was severely out-of-character for them both. The move was another example of the common mistake comic book companies make, where they think that marrying one of their most powerful female characters to an established male character and making her more or less his sidekick/wife will make women want to read comics. Sidenote: it pretty much unfailingly doesn’t. Black Panther annulled their marriage behind her back, Marvel lost it’s only Black couple, and Storm rejoined the X-Men.

Importantly, and seldom mentioned, Storm is one of the X-Men who shows the greatest ability to change her methods of operation over time; Storm’s versatility sets her apart. In comparison with other female comic book characters, whose moments of growth often come off as stilted and out of character, Storm developed into a completely different person via a logical chain of events. Writers used her fear of enclosed spaces for years as her “kryptonite,” but in recent years, we see that Storm is no longer afraid to be trapped, having undergone about a decade of therapy to deal with the problem. She mentored the X-Men character besides herself that is most known for her queer subtext, aka Kitty Pryde. When Kitty reacted negatively to her punk look, Storm struggled until she found a way to reconnect with her. Storm went to the desert to find herself again after she lost her powers, fell in love with Forge, and then went to Japan and had a fling with a woman named Yukio when things didn’t work out. She lost her powers, and yet remained the leader of the X-Men. She was queer-coded for decades, and finally Marvel writers admitted to her bisexuality in the last couple of years. She is consistently one of the few characters in the X-Men universe that examines herself with any kind of objectivity.

Because the character has existed in multiple different mediums under the dictates of dozens if not hundreds of different creators in her time, there have been multiple takes on her. The version of Storm in the animated television series X-Men that ran from 1992 to 1997 shared few similarities with Storm in the comics. Rather than the street tough child that became a goddess and then an X-Man like in the comic, in the animated series, while a similar background remained, writers played up Storm’s trauma more than the skills she learned as a thief on the streets of Cairo. I believe it was this early on that the image of Storm in public consciousness began to go awry. Don’t misunderstand, I love animated TV series Storm. Her theatrical nature is absolutely true to the comics, and it’s one of her most important traits; every sentence she speaks is a declaration of her awe-inspiring power. Even though I tend to sort of chuckle at the melodrama in her grandiose, booming voice, it is consistent with everything I love about the character. However, in the animated series, Storm’s only settings are 1 or 11, there is no mid-point. Even the seemingly casual sentence, “I’ll meet you at the monorail,” becomes “I SHALL MEET YOU – AT THE MONORAAAAIL!” She’s great, but she lacks in human characteristics, and appears as larger than life in even the most relaxed contexts. She’s either yelling or she’s asleep, there is no third option.

In the 2000s animated television series, X-Men: Evolution, Storm is portrayed as a teacher, older than most of the other X-Men, with the exceptions of Professor Xavier, Beast, and Wolverine. In the show, she is the aunt of Spyke, and the recruiter of new X-Men, which puts her in a supporting role. This is a Storm based more closely to her original version, and not the current comic book form. She was not the Storm that stabbed Callisto, led the Morlocks, or married Black Panther, but, rather, simply a teacher at the Xavier Institute, and thereby just so happens to occasionally be involved in skirmishes with supervillains. Storm is authoritarian and even disciplinarian, but, consistent with the comics, she is also the voice of reason.

Famously, the X-Men films have been the worst to the character, treating her as a B-lister. Played by Halle Berry in X-Men, X-Men 2 (X2), X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, thus far her film version’s most memorable moment is regrettably the universally cringe-inducing line, “Do you know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? … The same thing that happens to everything else.” The context for the line is worse, as it occurs immediately after getting beaten up by the notoriously useless villain Toad, and before getting stabbed by Wolverine as shapeshifter Mystique has taken her form. Halle Berry’s time as the focal point in all the fight scenes of the X-Men franchise combined clocks in at around two minutes of screen time, most of which is spent slowly levitating while her eyes change color. Her role in X-Men 2 is essentially to empathetically listen to Nightcrawler talk about his problems.

To me, this is where the X-Men films utterly fail Storm as a character. While her comic form is definitely a sympathetic and understanding person, more importantly, she is a warrior trained in hand-to-hand combat, an orphan, a divorcee, a Black woman in a leadership role on a team of mostly white men, a wife, a mentor, and an activist. I don’t believe that the movies have to follow the comic to the letter, but I don’t feel like I’m going that far out on a limb to say that any attempts to add even just one of these facets to Storm’s movie persona would be deeply appreciated by X-Men fans. That is to say, I hope that X-Men: Apocalypse will give Storm a better turn, but likewise I feel my skepticism is warranted, given the previous history of the franchise neglecting the awesomeness of all of its female characters, Storm most notably of all.

References:

Born to the Queen: Why Can’t the X-Men Movies Capture the Majesty of Storm

Storm and the X-Men as Racial Projects

Sara Century is a multimedia performance artist, and you can follow her work at saracentury.wordpress.com.

The Manipulative Woman in Sci-Fi: Bending Time and People to Her Will

Individually, each film presents interesting, tough, somewhat complex female characters – which could be considered feminist in its own right. Taken together, however, I can’t help but see a pervasive trend that doesn’t reflect well on women. Why do filmmakers see women as master manipulators so readily? Is it simply because they believe women to be cold and calculating? Or, conversely, are they relying on audiences not seeing how tricky these women are, banking on their innocent façades to make the ending a real surprise (i.e. the ‘Basic Instinct’ effect)?

This guest post written by Claire Holland originally appeared at Razor Apple. It is cross-posted with permission. | Major spoilers ahead for the films Blood Punch, Coherence, Time Lapse, and Triangle.

I’m a huge fan of time travel thrillers, and some excellent ones have come out in the past several years. In fact, the four films I’ll be talking about today – Triangle, Time Lapse, Blood Punch, and Coherence – are four of my all-time favorites within the genre. As a disclaimer, I have to say that I deeply enjoyed all of these films, and wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone. But we’re allowed to think critically even about the things we enjoy, right? Despite loving these films, I couldn’t help but notice while watching these films that there was a conspicuous trend uniting them all – manipulative female characters. In every one of these films, a deceitful woman acts as a catalyst for the (generally unfortunate) events of the film. To be fair, some other event out of the anyone’s control causes the rift or bend in time, but it’s always a female character that underhandedly uses that time loop/lapse/rift to her advantage.

Before we get into it, though, a quick primer on the four films (although, seeing as these are time travel movies, and therefore complicated and confusing by nature, I recommend actually watching them). Time Lapse involves three friends – Callie and Finn, who are dating, and their roommate Jasper – who find a camera in their missing neighbor’s apartment that faces the window of their apartment. They soon discover that the camera’s photos show events 24 hours into the future, and try to use this to their advantage. Triangle is about Jess, a single mother who goes on a boating trip with her friends. They hit some bad weather and are forced to board what appears to be an abandoned ship, where a masked figure begins stalking and killing them. It turns out the masked figure is another version of Jess herself, trying to put an end to a time loop they’ve all been stuck in for quite some time. Coherence is the story of Em who, while at a dinner party with friends, experiences a rift in time that opens up parallel universes – some of which seem better than the one in which Em currently lives. Finally, Blood Punch revolves around Skyler, Milton, and Russell, who are stuck repeating the same day over and over again due to a Native American curse, until blood is spilled and only one person is left alive.

First of all, don’t misunderstand me – I’m not positing that any of these films set out to make an anti-feminist statement, or any statement at all, necessarily. Individually, each film presents interesting, tough, somewhat complex female characters – which could be considered feminist in its own right. Taken together, however, I can’t help but see a pervasive trend that doesn’t reflect well on women. Why do filmmakers see women as master manipulators so readily? Is it simply because they believe women to be cold and calculating? Or, conversely, are they relying on audiences not seeing how tricky these women are, banking on their innocent façades to make the ending a real surprise (i.e. the Basic Instinct effect)?

I think it’s a combination of both. The stereotype of women as emotional manipulators goes back all the way to Shakespeare (can I get a Lady Macbeth monologue?) and further. Google “women are manipulative” and you’ll find all kinds of research claiming it’s part of female biological makeup – being the “weaker” sex, women supposedly had to find other ways to survive, chief among those tactics being the manipulation of men. And society has reinforced this for, well, forever, by disempowering women and shackling their choices to the whims of men. Before 1974, a woman would have had trouble getting a credit card without her husband’s approval, so it’s no wonder if women employed a little manipulation to get what they needed. In short, the stereotype certainly still exists, even if only subconsciously, making it an easy archetype to draw on while writing a character.

Then there’s the surprise factor. Even though Basic Instinct pretty well shattered the notion that women can’t be cutthroat decades ago, these films employ the reveal of a shrewd, often merciless woman quite well. So much of each film’s runtime is spent watching men bloodily, showily batter one another in the most basic grapples for power; we’re distracted from figuring out that a woman is the one pulling all the strings, engineering the situation to her advantage, until much later. Of course, after four movies, I’d think the jig is up by now, but who knows.

While I would guess that pragmatism is most often at the root of the manipulative female character, I still find this trend troubling for one glaring reason: there is always an aspect of punishment to the character’s treatment. More often than not, the word “bitch” follows the word “manipulative,” and these stories reinforce that by indicating that the female character is bad and she deserves her situation – more so than the male characters. It’s as if attempting to shape the outcome of the situation in a way that’s favorable to her is a mortal sin, and being left to deal with the worst consequences is her penance.

Take Callie in Time Lapse, for example. Even though every character uses the photos of the future to their advantage in selfish ways that cause harm – Finn uses them to overcome his artistic block, neglecting his girlfriend in the process; Jasper uses them to gamble, putting everyone in the crosshairs of a dangerous bookie – Callie is the one who is most punished for it, when her goal is perhaps the least selfish, or at least the most sympathetic: she uses the photos to try to reignite the passion in her relationship with Finn by making him jealous. A photo shows Callie and Jasper kissing, and because the trio believes the events shown in the photos have to occur in order to avoid a paradox and keep time going along as normal, Callie and Jasper are “forced” to kiss in front of Finn. As it turns out, Callie has been secretly changing the order of the photos she shows to Finn and Jasper, presenting old photos of past transgressions (we discover she cheated on Finn with Jasper weeks ago, and the camera caught those moments) as new.

The most superficial way of looking at the situation is that Callie is a cheater who deserves everything she gets, but it is just that – superficial. The fact that Callie cheated on Finn once or twice, months ago, also points to the fact that Finn has been neglecting Callie for quite some time before the discovery of the photo machine. When Callie first finds the photo machine, she is so frantic to hide the evidence of her indiscretions and win back Finn’s love that she immediately forms a plan to do so. It’s not a malicious plan, but a desperate one, for which she is harshly punished.

Callie ends up killing Jasper in order to save Finn’s life, but when the entire scope of her manipulation is revealed, Finn rejects Callie and she kills him as well. Callie plans to warn herself of this course of events by using the photo machine so that she can change things and Finn won’t be dead or know about her manipulation, but she is interrupted by a police officer and unable to carry out the warning. Thus, Callie is doomed to her current timeline, where the love of her life is dead by her own hand, and where she will certainly be found guilty of murdering at least two (and as many as four) people. The manipulative woman is always the final witness, forced to live out the consequences of her actions – and the actions of all those around her. It is the most serious punishment, worse than death, doled out in this case for the grave sin of wanting to be loved.

The most complicated character of these three movies may be Jess in Triangle, but her motivations are only explored briefly, making the handling of her arc difficult to parse. As the single mother of an autistic child, it is revealed at the end of the film that Jess has become abusive towards her son. Jess is forced to watch herself – or rather, another version of herself in a separate time loop – abuse her son again and again. Horrified at seeing herself this way, she murders the other version of herself and takes off with her son in the car, where her frenzied driving results in his death. This sequence ends with her restarting the loop by going on the boating trip (yet again) in an effort to get to another time where her son is still alive – which spurs on the events in which she’s forced to kill her friends, and alternate versions of herself, ad nauseam.

On the one hand, Jess abuses her child – is there any adequate punishment for that? However, the Jess we see throughout most of the film seems entirely divorced from the Jess we see abusing her son at the end of the movie, and for that reason, I have a problem buying into her character as a whole. She appears to be a kind person throughout the film, and when she sees herself yelling at her son, she looks deeply dismayed and repentant. She kills the other version of herself without hesitation in an effort to protect him. For the majority of the film, she shows herself to be a loving mother who has simply been stretched too thin (it’s also hinted at that she may have been abused by her late husband), who spends every ounce of energy she has attempting to save her child’s life. There’s a disconnect between the character we get to know for 90 minutes and the one we see hitting her child for two minutes that seems mainly in place to make the viewer believe that Jess deserves to relive this agonizing loop forever.

Then there’s Em, whose fate is foreshadowed early in on Coherence. During dinner at the beginning of the film, Em explains that she lost out on an opportunity to dance the lead in a big show because she turned down the understudy part. The dancer who was supposed to do the part got sick, and the understudy who did take the job became famous. Another female guest at the dinner remarks, “So basically she stole your entire life.” Immediately, the female characters, both onscreen and off, are depicted as jealous and conniving. That depiction is reinforced when, during a comet passing that opens up alternate realities, Em finds a better reality in which she did take the understudy part, and proceeds to murder the version of herself living in that reality so she can take over. As it turns out, there are two other versions of Em wandering that reality at the same time, and though she attempts to murder them both, she only succeeds once. At the end of the film, her boyfriend receives a phone call from the other version of her that she failed to kill, and it is implied that she is about to be outed as an imposter in her own life – a feeling she already knows too well.

Once again, the punishment seems overly moralistic and self-flagellating. While other characters reveal unflattering secrets and pummel one another out in the open to little consequence, Em is, both literally and figuratively, only hurting herself throughout the film – and yet she is penalized most harshly for it. Em has obviously spent a lot of time berating herself for losing out on big opportunities. It’s unclear whether she really feels like the life she was meant to have was taken from her by someone else, or if she faults herself alone for letting it slip through her fingers, but either way, she’s not going to let opportunity pass her by yet again. She kills the alternate version of herself in an ambitious, albeit ruthless move, and she is punished dearly for that ambitiousness.

Finally – and I’ll try to keep this one short, because boy is this post getting out of hand – we have Skyler in Blood Punch, whose biggest fault appears to be that she’s smarter than the two male characters, Russell and Milton. Stuck in a time loop where the same day is played over and over again, Skyler is the first to realize that the only way out is by killing everyone else – the last person left standing will then be freed. Since she’s not strong enough to physically overcome either of her male counterparts, she uses her wits to manipulate the two men into fighting to the death. Unfortunately, her plan doesn’t go as smoothly as it could, and even after Russell and Milton are dead, she ends up trapped in the time loop again with two new people. Skyler, like Jess, is condemned to her terrible situation, possibly forever, and the audience is left feeling like she deserves it. But does she really? Because she wanted to survive – the most basic, relatable human instinct there is – and she was smart enough to figure out how to do that?

Muddying the waters further is Milton, who is a supremely likeable character, making Skyler seem all the worse. Milton thinks he loves Skyler, and is content with the idea of existing together in the time loop forever, even if it means killing Russell himself every day for eternity. Skyler recognizes what a bad idea that is – even the best couple would likely go insane being trapped in that situation forever, and Milton and Skyler barely know each other – but Milton comes off as a sweet, selfless romantic nonetheless. He serves as a foil to Skyler, highlighting her narcissism and disingenuousness, even though his motivations only take his own feelings into account and are therefore selfish as well.

Perhaps all of these films are simply metaphors for Hell, where the characters’ worst fears and traits spur on the cycle they’re doomed to live out over and over again. It’s an effective illustration, to be sure, but why is it always the women who are seen getting the worst of it? Why are they so often blamed for the very existence of Hell? In essence, the female characters are viciously punished for not being selfless every minute of every day – for sometimes being desperate, or ambitious, or for breaking down – despite the fact that the other characters surrounding them are overwhelmingly selfish as well. Even if the case can be made that these women do deserve what they get, why is it always the women who are written as the most self-centered and conniving of all characters? It’s not flattering to men, either, who populate these films as oafish idiots, lovesick dopes, and pawns.

As I’ve said, taken individually, the depictions of women in these films don’t seem nearly as damaging. Viewed together, however, I think they represent a concerning tendency to stereotype women as deceitful and untrustworthy, while men are regarded as too decent or too dumb to defend themselves. In these films’ defense, it’s the way the world has been depicted for a long, long time. In defense of women, however, I don’t think it’s all so cut-and-dried.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Coherence’ Is the Best Movie You Didn’t See Last Year

Claire Holland is a freelance writer and author of Razor Apple, a blog devoted to horror movies and horror culture with a feminist bent. Claire has a BA in English and creative writing, but she insists on writing about “trashy” genre movies nonetheless. You can follow her on twitter @ClaireCWrites.

Interracial Relationships in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: The Importance of Finn & Rey

This guest post by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

It’s been over a month since Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released. Nonetheless, it’s still being discussed as if people just got out of its opening midnight screening, high on sleep depravity and Red Bull. The most popular topics seem to be that Han Solo scene, Rey’s parentage, Kylo Ren’s tantrums, etc. However, one of the topics that I feel hasn’t received the acknowledgment, let alone coverage, that it deserves, is Finn and Rey, the film’s two young leads, as a romantic couple. Sure, the pair have received attention (and controversy) over their race and gender. But them as a couple? Not so much. And I feel that’s a shame as for me, they’re a major step forward for portrayals of interracial couples in mainstream cinema.

Not only is it great to have two franchises dominate the box office featuring prominent interracial relationships in the same year (the other being Fast and Furious 7), but The Force Awakens also delivers on another level. Whenever children are treated to a trip to the cinema, they are almost always fed the same message from the big screen — that the most important love exists between two straight white people. More often than not, those on-screen romantic relationships are unhealthy or downright toxic. Finn and Rey aren’t part of the typical ‘Blockbuster Couples Club’, where the man is a lovable misogynist and the woman is a sexualized ‘badass’ who still needs saving. Not only does The Force Awakens show children that relationships can actually exist outside of two white people, but more importantly, it demonstrates that they can have emotionally healthy ones too.

Let’s start by analyzing one of the most refreshing aspects of this burgeoning relationship: Finn’s treatment of Rey. Soon after they first meet, Finn grabs Rey’s hand to escape an oncoming group of Stormtroopers. However, Finn’s intention isn’t asserting his masculinity as expected. He knows that Rey can handle herself, as he already witnessed her putting two attackers in their place single-handed. The reason he takes her hand is because, as he confesses to her later on, she had “looked at me like no one had.”

If you consider Finn’s backstory, this line is very vital to his character arc. Separated from a family he can’t remember and having been raised and trained to kill, Finn had been stripped of all identity. When Rey thinks that he is in the Resistance and looks at him with admiration and respect, little does she know that she is the first person to ever do so. From that one act, Finn becomes irrevocably tied to Rey. When Finn saw danger approaching he took her hand, but he did it because he will protect her at all costs but doesn’t doubt that Rey is capable of protecting herself. He may even have wanted her to protect him.

Now, let’s compare this scene to the main couple of Jurassic World’s introduction, Owen and Claire. When Claire arrives at Owen’s house to talk business, Owen suggests they take it into the bedroom. Claire says that his remarks aren’t funny, while Owen disagrees. Now, imagine how easy it could’ve been for Finn to lie to Rey about being in the Resistance to get into her pants rather than being afraid of rejection because that’s the intention of most heroes, isn’t it? Look at Peter Quill with Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Kirk with any female character in Star Trek, James Bond with, again, any female character in any of his films. With The Force Awakens though, children not only witness a man of color being a hero; the film also tells them there is more to seeing your potential love interest than as a sex object.

This mutual respect and commitment is evident throughout the entire film. When he sees Rey taken hostage by Kylo Ren, Finn discards his weapon (even with Stormtroopers still present) and futilely chases after her. When Kylo Ren knocks Rey unconscious, he again drops his weapon and rushes to her side, even with the enemy a meter or so away. When the Resistance tries to figure out how to disable the weapons on Starkiller Base, Finn lies and says that he knows how, just so he can go and help Rey escape. The need to ensure Rey’s safety overwhelms his own survival instinct every time.

For a leading man to treat the leading woman in this way is a feat in itself, but it’s also important for interracial relationship representation in cinema. On the website Fat Pink Cast, there is an article titled ‘Yes, Finn/Rey is heteronormative, but not all straight romances are created equal.’ One of their writers Jonelle states:

“Black male characters aren’t always like Finn, who is well-rounded; fearful, yet brave, gentle, but strong, earnest and a total goofball at the same time. He’s the antithesis of a tertiary smooth-talking walking racial stereotype.”

To have a Black character like this to not only be the co-lead in an iconic franchise but to also include him in a healthy, positively portrayed relationship with a white woman is a brilliant statement. Finn and Rey can be just as adventurous as William Turner and Elizabeth Swan, bicker as much as Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, wax as poetic as Aragorn and Arwen and take as many names as Rick O’Connell and Evy Carnahan. Finn and Rey’s difference in race doesn’t put any limitations on what this couple can and do achieve.

While Rey treating Finn with kindness is what won him over, this isn’t just a one-sided relationship. When Finn recovers from unconsciousness after an explosion on Jakku, he immediately asks Rey if she is okay. In the script, it states that, “And that very question touches her — having never in her life been asked it.” Like Finn, Rey grew up in an environment void of love, having to depend on herself for survival. Also like Finn, this is her first experience of intimacy and after that exchange, it is she who offers him her hand. When Rey discovers that it was Finn’s idea to go back to Starkiller Base to save her, the script states that, “She is speechless — this is all she’s ever wanted anyone to do,” and Finn is the first one to do it.

Their longing for affection is something that they recognize and connect with in each other, but they don’t hold this over each other to emotionally manipulate one another. Chewbacca tells Rey that it was Finn’s idea to come back for her while, when Rey saves Finn from the rathtars, she doesn’t divulge that she did. Rey reciprocating Finn’s caring concerns helps to make this relationship so special. This isn’t a Black character worshiping the white lead; their feelings are mutual. They both recognize how significant they are to each other, they both face their fears for each other, and they both make sacrifices for each other. Finn returns to the place he’s been running from the entire film for Rey, and Rey finally embraces the force that she’s been running from the entire film in order to save Finn.

Finn and Rey’s relationship is a step forward for portrayals of interracial relationships, and relationships in general, as it doesn’t diminish Rey’s agency. Even though Finn consistently tries to save her throughout The Force Awakens, that doesn’t mean Rey isn’t capable of saving herself. She’s able to withhold information from Kylo Ren and break herself out of his cell without Finn’s — or anyone’s — aid. The film depicts positive representation for both the men of color and the women characters.

Again, let’s compare Rey and Finn’s relationship to some other recent blockbusters. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Bruce Banner had to save Natasha Romanoff from a cell in order to make him seem the hero, even though it makes no sense that Natasha’s character wouldn’t have been able to break out of there herself (she’s a skilled enough spy to be an Avenger!) The film forsakes Natasha’s agency in order to progress her romantic relationship. The Force Awakens doesn’t make these compromises; Rey’s character never weakens in order for her counterpart to succeed, and vice versa with Finn.

For Finn and Rey, their relationship can also be seen as a timely arrival, and hopefully their relationship can pave the way for other cinematic interracial relationships. Yes, the Harry Potter franchise may have been an integral part of our generation’s childhoods, but that doesn’t erase the fact that the film adaptations’ treatment of people of color wasn’t the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x67OjOLj11g

With such a wide range of characters, not one of the characters of color was given a substantial role. We barely even know anything about Harry’s first love interest, Cho Chang. She exists as more of a reaction to ‘It’s about time for Harry got a girl’ than actually about fleshing out why they were attracted to one another. As you can see in the video above, Cho had Harry at, “two pumpkin pasties please.”

The Force Awakens features more than one central interracial relationship. There’s also Finn and resistance pilot Poe Dameron, and I swear there is more to it than Poe biting his lip at the sight of Finn wearing his leather jacket. In the Marvel cinematic universe, we see plenty of interracial relationships… between supporting characters who are people of color and the white superheroes of the films. Every Falcon has his Captain America, War Machine his Iron Man, Luis his Ant-Man…

But this time, it’s not just the fact that it’s a Black man who has the superior narrative role in a relationship; it’s that his friend is a person of color too (Poe is played by Guatemalan American actor Oscar Isaac). Very rarely are people of color friendships showcased in blockbusters, so to have it in 2015’s most anticipated film is a welcome surprise. Their relationship doesn’t solely exist to fill the bromance quota, as it holds crucial significance for each character. Poe continuously helps Finn with his identity narrative and as for Finn on Poe’s behalf; we’ll get to that in a minute. We don’t witness a person of color existing onscreen to support a white character, but rather two characters of color build each other up.

Despite the similarities this pair shares with other male friendships in cinema, what sets Finn and Poe’s relationship apart is that their bromance could possibly turn into a romance. Even though Finn expresses a romantic interest in Rey (“You got a boyfriend? Cute boyfriend?”), on more than one occasion, Poe seems to express a romantic interest in Finn. Critic Helen O’Hara points out in an article for The Telegraph that:

“Poe gives Finn his name, replacing the Stormtrooper designation FN-2187, and then gives him a jacket. When reunited after believing one another dead, Poe runs towards Finn and throws himself into an embrace; if Finn were a woman, we’d be in little doubt that that was enough to signal interest. Should we doubt it just because they’re both men?”

If Disney romantically connected Finn and Poe in the next Star Wars, it would be yet another achievement in giving people the LGBTQ representation that the mainstream media deprives us from seeing onscreen. Even if the next Star Wars doesn’t pair the two men but acknowledges Poe’s queer sexuality and displays a straight/gay friendship between two men of color — that would still be a major accomplishment.

Ultimately, this leads us to what makes The Force Awakens so special; the effect the trio will have on the younger generation. A woman is a Jedi in training, a Black man is a Resistance fighter and a Latino man is the greatest pilot in the galaxy. More importantly, they all helped each other fulfill these roles. The sky is the limit for these characters, and the sky should be the limit for the children watching too.

Sophie Hall is from London and has graduated from university with a degree in Creative Writing. She is currently writing a sci-fi comic book series called White Leopard for Wasteland Paradise Comics. Her previous article for Bitch Flicks was ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’: Violence Helps Our Heroines Have a Lovely Day.