Sophie Hall – Bitch Flicks

Elektra Natchios (‘Daredevil’) Is the Most Underrated Character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes. … This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Elodie Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. | Spoilers ahead.

When Daredevil’s first season debuted in the spring of 2015, comic book fans were basking in a nerdy afterglow. Not only were they given Marvel Studios’ first piece of R-rated entertainment, fans and casual viewers alike were captivated by Vincent D’Onofrio’s portrayal of Kingpin, now considered to be Marvel’s greatest villain since Loki.

The hype train for Daredevil gained even more passengers when the fan favorite character Frank Castle aka The Punisher was confirmed to appear in the show’s second season. Expectations were met; actor Jon Bernthal’s portrayal was loved so much that he now has his own spin-off set for 2017.

The character that I feel fans forgot to love though? Elektra Natchios.

Elektra makes her first appearance at the end of episode four in season two. Since purring her first line, “Hello, Matthew,” audience reactions have been divisive on the character. Some found her a breath of fresh air in this mainly white male-dominated show; some found Elektra’s plot problematic, particularly the series’ depiction of race, women of color, and Asian stereotypes; others found her a reduction of The Punisher’s screen time, responsible for a storyline that many viewers found muddling and worse, un-noteworthy. Not only do I strongly disagree with the latter, I believe that she is needed not only in the show, but also in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general.

Elektra exists within a show titled Daredevil, so a lot of her story is unfortunately tied to his and we are meant to perceive her the way stringent Matthew Murdock, the titular character, does. Elektra and Matthew are old flames and after the end of their relationship ten years prior (when Elektra’s idea of a fun date turned out to be Matthew’s from hell), the pair reunite to take down the Yakuza in Hell’s Kitchen. Matthew says that if they team up, Elektra must abide by his no killing rule. She reluctantly agrees. A few episodes later, she of course breaks it (unfortunately for a teenage ninja) and the pair call it quits again. However, Elektra isn’t the one who has to ultimately transform for Matthew; Matthew ultimately has to accept Elektra. Most importantly, this implies the audience is meant to accept her too.

In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes.

In one of my favorite scenes, Elektra is leaving New York after her second breakup with Matthew with a new booty call in tow (until he tries to assassinate her). Not only does she then win a fight to the death, she wins her signature weapons (sai), and wastes no time in tracking down the man who placed the hit on her. This moment is reminiscent of practically any male lead in any superhero movie ever, yet is happening to an Asian woman instead. It shows us that her story doesn’t end after hers and Matthew’s does, it merely evolves.

Similarly to anti-heroes, Elektra’s sexuality is treated with respect. In her flashback with Matthew, she is shown to be dominant and a tad kinky in the bedroom. Coincidentally, after Elektra returns into Matthew’s life, he’s just started a rather quixotic relationship with the sweet-natured, sexually tamer Karen Page. Elektra’s sexuality could easily have been used as a way to slut shame her or mark her as inferior, yet she remains unscathed. The problems that Elektra faces are many but her sex life is not one of them. There easily could have been a scene where Elektra uses her sexuality to turn Matthew away from Karen but their most intimate moments this season involve hand-holding and touching each other’s scars (whatever floats their boats).

This leads to another thing I love about Elektra’s character: her motivations are not influenced by and do not rely on a history of sexual violence. The topic is even part of her comic book lore, yet the TV series still chose to omit it. As noted by pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency when she reviewed Jessica Jones:

“Just like Veronica Mars and many other “strong female characters,” Jessica Jones’ rough edges, the aspects of her character that fuel her internal conflicts and make her tough, badass, and emotionally wary, originate in her history as a survivor of rape and psychological abuse. Of course, we need stories about survivors, models of women (and men) who do the heroic work of putting one foot in front of the other and trying to heal after suffering traumatic experiences. But too often, a history of abuse is used as part of a female hero’s origin story, part of what gives them their strength.”

Elektra Natchios’ story runs parallel with The Punisher’s plotline. If audiences don’t question the fact that he doesn’t have sexual trauma to motivate his story, why should they question hers?

Furthermore, Elektra’s anti-heroine status adds more diversity to the female characters of Marvel. You wouldn’t place her in the same ranks as ‘Black’ Mariah Dillard and Whitney Frost, but she’s not up to the heroics of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Misty Knight, or Agent Carter either. Elektra may kill for kicks in one scene, but in the next she contemplates suicide after discovering that she is the lethal weapon the Black Sky to protect innocent lives lost. She’s flawed, seriously so, but deep down, she ultimately strives towards the greater good.

However, this complexity isn’t solely attributed to the showrunners and writers but also to the actress playing Elektra, Elodie Yung. In a promotional interview for the show’s second season, Yung states that:

“The writers told me that they see her as a sociopath… I didn’t want to reduce her to a sociopath because I don’t think she is. I tried to combine the sociopath that they wanted with her essence from the comics and a bit of myself in her to try and get her a bit more human.’”

This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g9CjhcNEWk

In some ways I found Elektra Natchios’ character more of an accomplishment than The Punisher’s, as I feel she breaks stereotypes while he conforms to them. The Punisher is a hyper-masculine, ex-military soldier on a bloody rampage for those responsible for the death of his family. His daughter seems to be at the center of his grief though, as he divulges the most about her when he breaks down to Daredevil in his graveyard monologue; his “penny and dime” catch phrase is a line from her favorite book. The Punisher’s emotional core relies on the common trope of fridging, using a woman’s death to fuel a male character’s motivation, whereas I feel Elektra breaks free of any tropes thrown her way.

I feel like I’m in the minority who feel this way though (hence this “unpopular” think piece). Thousands view Elektra’s scenes on YouTube, whereas hundreds of thousands view The Punisher’s scenes. Critic Bob Chipman at Screen Rant, wrote an article titled “How Marvel’s Daredevil Got Elektra Wrong.” He states:

“Miller/Marvel’s Elektra’s life may be a long list of unfortunate decisions, but at least they’re hers – born of her own agency and comprising her own identity. In fact, that’s the core of the tragedy on Daredevil’s end: His tortured, self-flagellating moral code can’t rationalize away the evil things Elektra does because there’s nothing external to blame. She is what she is because she’s chosen to be so. As reimagined for Netflix, just about all of that is gone.”

Although his points are reasonable and well explained, I have to disagree. Yes, Elektra from the Netflix series has many things placed upon her instead of her seeking them, but it’s how she reacts to those things that I find the most intriguing. If she were to follow Miller’s comics storyline faithfully, her death would occur to propel Matthew’s storyline. However, in the show, she dies because she chooses to die for something. When she is dying in Matthew’s arms, her dialogue isn’t, “I died for you, Matthew,” or some other tripe, instead she says, “I now know what it feels to be good.” The attention remains on Elektra.

Her choice wasn’t all for naught either. Yes, she was resurrected, so her decision to sacrifice herself was taken away. But the reason she died was to save Matthew’s life; that wasn’t taken away. For once, a female character can have her cake and eat it too: she gets what she wants, which is to save Matthew’s life, yet she doesn’t have to suffer the long-term consequences for it.

Granted, Chipman is correct in that the last two episodes prove the most troubling for her agency. After it is revealed that Elektra is the Black Sky, the men around her see her as an object to be controlled. Stick, the man who raised Elektra for most of her childhood, throws out lines like, “I tried to housebreak her,” and tries to have her killed when she breaks their alliance. Villain Nobu calls Elektra “it” and says that she “belongs” to The Hand. However, I feel credit is due to how she reacts to this objectification. In her final conversation with Stick, she tells him to stick it that “this is my life” and ignores his advice. She snarls at Nobu, “Call me ‘it’ again and I’ll cut you in half.” When Nobu states that she belongs to The Hand, she fights Nobu and The Hand. No matter what situation is placed upon her, her voice will always be heard.

Even though Elektra’s thrill for killing could be the cause of her being the Black Sky, it hasn’t been confirmed and more importantly, shouldn’t be. Elektra states that they could just want to lock her away “and do terrible things in my name,” using her as an excuse for The Hand’s actions rather than a literal weapon. We need more flawed women, female characters who have committed terrible acts but aren’t necessarily terrible people. Also, we have an abundance male characters that unnecessarily kill and their motives are rarely critiqued. As dire as it sounds, killing on-screen shouldn’t be a boys club. If it’s solely Elektra’s murderous nature that causes audience indifference to her character, why are so many male anti-heroes beloved for the exact same thing? Han Solo kills his enemies without a second thought and fans love him for it. In the “who shot first argument,” what are the fans most overwhelming answer? Han Solo is getting a prequel trilogy on his youth. Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead used racist language and called a grieving mother a “stupid bitch” (more than once) yet his character is a fan favorite.

As Elektra is confirmed as a series regular for The Defenders, the Avengers-esque team up with more blood, sex, and cursing featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, we should all be excited to see how her character evolves. Daredevil season two was an exciting set up for one of the most underrated characters to be introduced to the MCU. Everyone should be excited too. In the words of Matt Murdock, “What if this isn’t the end? What if it’s just the beginning?”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

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

Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny

Daredevil and His Damsels in Distress

Sophie Hall is from London. She is a barista trying to perfect her latte art by day and perfect her writing by night. You can follow her on Twitter @sophiesuzhall.

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.

“Love No One But Your Children”: Cersei Lannister and Motherhood on ‘Game of Thrones’

Cersei Lannister is cunning, deceitful, jealous and entirely about self-preservation. Yet, her show self seems to tie these exclusively with her relationship with her children… Why is motherhood the go-to in order to flesh out her character? Why can’t she be separate from her children, the same way the father of them, Jaime Lannister, is?

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. | Spoilers ahead.

Love her or hate her, Cersei Lannister is definitely one of the most intriguing characters in Game of Thrones, both in the novels and the TV show. Her popularity was enough to earn actress Lena Headey two Emmy nominations and spawn endless Cersei reaction gifs. However, if you were to run her character’s actions and motivations in the novels alongside that of her show counterpart, you can notice one major difference; how motherhood impacts her character in each medium. Cersei Lannister is cunning, deceitful, jealous and entirely about self-preservation. Yet, her show self seems to tie these exclusively with her relationship with her children, whereas in the books, she is a lot more separated from them in her motivations.

In the first novel of the series, A Game of Thrones, Cersei uses manipulation, her sexuality and murder in playing “the game of thrones.” She toys with Sansa Stark’s aspirations and naiveté in order to get her to inadvertently aid the Lannisters. She tries to seduce Ned Stark in order to keep his silence (long enough to kill him, anyway) on vital information from her husband Robert Baratheon and, when that failed, takes the King out of the picture herself.

However, show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt the need to add another weapon to her arsenal in order for her to play the game: her children. After her lover and brother, Jaime Lannister, pushes child Bran Stark from a tower and he becomes comatose, Cersei visits his grieving mother Catelyn Stark. She sympathizes with her pain, recalling the heartbreak she suffered when she lost her child she had with Robert. It’s obvious that Cersei’s intentions here were to throw Catelyn’s suspicions away from the Lannisters, but Cersei’s pain was also plainly earnest.

What I find problematic with this, though, is the fact that the creators felt the need to add this weapon to this character in order to give her more depth, as if why she uses her other weapons wouldn’t be enough. There are reasons deeply explained as to why she targets women and uses them for her own gain; the troubling reason why she uses her own sexuality and what she feels she gains when ordering the death of others. Why not just explore those aspects? Why is motherhood the go-to in order to flesh out her character? Why can’t she be separate from her children, the same way the father of them, Jaime Lannister, is?

The fact that the showrunners fabricated the fact that Cersei gave birth and grieved the loss of her and Robert’s child in the show remains problematic for another reason. In the novels, when she once got pregnant by Robert, she had an abortion. If the creators feel that Cersei exercising her right over her own body isn’t a valid enough reason for her decision, is the fact that she conceived the child through rape not enough? Are the creators of the show really trying to suggest that revealing Cersei to have had an abortion too much of a flaw, that her show self must selflessly love her children from conception, no matter the father or circumstance?

Cersei using her children as a weapon is apparent throughout the entire series, whether it’s for her own motivations or to garner audience sympathy. In season 2, there is a storyline where Cersei’s son King Joffrey orders the execution of his late “father” King Robert Baratheon’s bastard children in order to secure his place as ruler of the seven kingdoms. Cersei laments this to Tyrion later, breaking down over the fact that she has raised a monster.

Conversely, this devastating act is actually committed by Cersei in the novels. The prospect of power is so vital to her as she feels she has been denied it due to her gender her whole life. Now that her husband is dead, she doesn’t want to lose this newly acquired power and jeopardize the survival of her children. Also, the fourth novel, A Feast for Crows, reveals the act was partly motivated by revenge against her husband for his flagrant infidelity which humiliated her.

Again, these flaws disrupt David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s black and white view of motherhood; that if you are a mother who does not care for children, you have no substance. This rings true in how they made Catelyn Stark seek repentance for not loving Jon Snow as her own child and how the Wildling mother Karsi would not kill wights to save her own life, as they happened to be children. Complexity in motherhood seems to be a flaw that the creators always have to right.

The most simplified version of Cersei in relation to her children came in season 4. After the death of her eldest child, Joffrey, she immediately believed that her younger brother Tyrion was responsible. Cersei’s way of ensuring that he was found guilty was to manipulate the other players of the game to her side. She visits Margaery Tyrell, who’s betrothed to Cersei’s youngest child Tommen, asking for her aid in making sure Tommen is supported ruling the seven kingdoms. Her showing concern over her son’s well-being is honest, but genuinely trying to gain Margaery’s sympathy over the situation isn’t. Cersei does the same again when she visits Oberyn Martell to supposedly discuss her daughter’s well-being while she resides at Oberyn’s residence in Dorne. Later in the episode, Oberyn calls Cersei out by stating, “Making honest feelings do dishonest work is one of Cersei’s many gifts.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZKgxzW4J3o”]

However, in the novel A Storm of Swords, the way that Cersei plays the game has nothing to do with her children at all. Aside from making Tyrion lose the support of his friend Bronn, which was included in the show, one of her most devastating schemes was using Shae, Tyrion’s lover, against him. In Cersei’s first chapter in A Feast for Crows, upon finding Shae’s corpse in her father’s bed, Cersei recalls how she promised Shae security if she would testify with damning evidence against Tyrion in court. Yet, Cersei doesn’t follow through on her promise and discarded Shae when she got what she wanted from her.

Cersei’s move was omitted from the show, where if handled right, could have revealed a lot about Cersei’s character. Throughout the book series, Cersei suffers from internalized misogyny, as even though she is the first-born child of the family, her father had no respect for her because she’s a woman. Her whole life, Cersei vies for power in a society where it is so easily given to men and in doing so, she comes to loathe her own gender because of it. Even though she believes that she should be queen of the seven kingdoms, she feels that she is the exception because of her family status and she mistrusts women in general.

Cersei wants power so desperately but she’s never been taught how to use it and therefore makes a mess of things when she gets it (hence her season 5 storyline). She makes enemies of women she should have made her allies. Cersei is a walking disaster of a character, with the book series delving into her psyche and giving a critical commentary on the effect growing up in a misogynistic environment can have on a woman. Despite this, her number one priority that the show creators keep reinforcing is the safety of her children.

Likewise, a vital piece of Cersei’s backstory was discarded. In the opening scene for season 5, there is a flashback of Cersei receiving a damning prophecy that a younger, more beautiful queen will take all that she holds dear and that her three children will die before she does. Given the Cersei from the show’s devotion to her children, this is obvious motivation for Cersei to believe that Margaery will be a threat to her family. However, the show chose to omit this line from the prophecy:

“And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands around your pale white throat and choke the life from you (A Feast for Crows, page 611).”

Cersei later discovers that ‘valonqar’ means “little brother” in High Valyrian. Cersei believes that it’s Tyrion (she never considers Jaime) and that’s why she harbors so much hatred for him. This information was clearly not necessary for the showrunners, as it has no direct tie to her children.

This ultimately leads us to the mishandling of Cersei Lannister’s defining scene: her walk of shame. As mentioned previously, author George R.R. Martin has shown us that Cersei will do whatever she feels necessary to her to hold onto power. In A Feast for Crows, Cersei laments her son and his new wife ruling the seven kingdoms:

“I waited, and so can he. I waited half my life. She had played the dutiful daughter, the blushing bride, the pliant wife. She had suffered Robert’s drunken groping, Jaime’s jealousy, Renly’s mockery, Varys with his titters, Stannis endlessly grinding his teeth. She had contended with Jon Arryn, Ned Stark, and her vile, treacherous, murderous dwarf brother, all the while promising herself that one day it would be her turn. If Margaery Tyrell thinks to cheat me of my hour in the sun, she had bloody well think again. (A Feast for Crows, page 387).”

From then on, Cersei embarks on a narrative driven to garnering the respect she never received due to her gender. She imprisons Margaery, partly due to her being a threat to her power and mostly due to her belief that she is the younger queen in the prophecy she received when she was a child. She refuses help from her uncle Kevan, believing she is capable enough to rule single-handedly. Cersei tries to manipulate religious organization The Faith Militant, which dramatically backfires. This causes her own imprisonment, and what is the first thing she is punished with? Her sexuality.

After admitting to sex outside of marriage, she is made to walk the streets of King’s Landing naked, whilst its people throw garbage at her and hurl gendered slurs. Cersei isn’t receiving the punishment of a lifetime for being a terrible ruler; she is being shamed for the thing she feels has been hindering her entire life: for being a woman.

Even though the show keeps this scene, the context is different. Cersei has Margaery imprisoned mainly due to her overprotectiveness of her son Tommen, less so for her insecurity of her status. Therefore, when she is arrested and punished, it doesn’t ring with the theme that Martin originally intended. You still understand as an audience member of the television series that what happens to Cersei is sexist, but the whole event seems more of the outcome of Cersei’s plunders rather than a greater commentary.

The Cersei Lannister in the A Song of Ice and Fire series is desperate for people to see beyond her gender. Maybe David Benioff and D.B. Weiss should listen to her.

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 forWasteland Paradise Comics. Her previous articles for Bitch Flicks were on Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and director Andrea Arnold. You can follow her on Twitter at @sophiesuzhall.

‘Game of Thrones’: Catelyn Stark and Motherhood Tropes

Catelyn Stark’s main function in the show is to be a mother to Robb Stark, a prominent male character, whereas in the book series, ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,’ she is so much more than that. … The show creators are here relying on mother tropes in order to set up the characters; Catelyn is now the nag who only cares about her family and nothing else, whereas Ned is now the valiant hero who wants to seek justice.

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. | Spoilers ahead.

Season 5 of Game of Thrones proved to be the most controversial season to date, where the show’s already notorious sexual violence escalated to an all-time high with the non-canon rape of the teenage character Sansa Stark, as well as Cersei Lannister surviving rape. This sparked endless debates on whether the show’s treatment of rape was only to be there as shock value, or whether show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were trying to expose the hardships that women endure in a patriarchal society (I’m in favor of the former). Although this is a topic that has rightfully been brought to light and criticized, there are many other troubling issues that the creators handle awkwardly in Game of Thrones. One of the most troubling for me? Motherhood.

Let’s start with one of the first point of view character to be introduced in the novels: Stark matriarch Catelyn Stark (née Tully). Whenever someone asks me who my favorite characters are in Game of Thrones, I’m usually met with quizzical looks when I reveal one of them to be Catelyn Stark. Their responses I usually get vary from, “Why?” to ‘Really, she’s one of my least!” But the one that I found irks me the most is, “Who, Robb Stark’s mother?” Catelyn Stark’s main function in the show is to be a mother to Robb Stark, a prominent male character, whereas in the book series A Song of Ice and Fire, she is so much more than that.

Let’s cover Catelyn’s overall arc in the first novel, A Game of Thrones. Towards the beginning, Catelyn receives a letter from her sister Lysa saying not to trust anyone in house Lannister as they killed her husband. This prompts Catelyn to beg her husband Ned to go to King’s Landing with them to act as Hand of the King so he can spy on them. After her son Bran was pushed from a tower and crippled, this only added fuel to the fire and caused her to kidnap Tyrion Lannister as she believed him to be the culprit. Towards the end of the novel, after discovering Ned had been executed, Catelyn realizes that war is not worth it when innocent lives are lost, and pleads against her son Robb and his supporters going to war: “Ned is gone… and many other good men besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we have more deaths still?” (A Game of Thrones, Page 769).

However, in the pilot episode of the television series, Catelyn and Ned’s roles are reversed. She begs her husband Ned to stay with her and the family in Winterfell whilst he insists on discovering the truth. The show creators are here relying on mother tropes in order to set up the characters; Catelyn is now the nag who only cares about her family and nothing else, whereas Ned is now the valiant hero who wants to seek justice. Although, as season 1 was the most loyal season to its source material, a lot of Catelyn’s agency was retained. She still imprisons Tyrion Lannister in order to seek justice for her son and she acts as a strategist for her son Robb. She is the one to even organize the marriages between her children and Walder Frey’s, showing that she is willing to sacrifice her children’s personal wishes for the greater good.

However, when the creators started to veer from the novels, Catelyn’s arc became less relevant to them. In the second novel in the series, A Clash of Kings, Catelyn is informed that her two youngest children, Bran and Rickon, have been murdered at their home in Winterfell. Overwhelmed by grief, Catelyn makes the impromptu decision of releasing Jaime Lannister as a trade for her daughters who are being held hostage in King’s Landing. This is a continuation of Catelyn’s arc; she was the one to beg Robb not to go to war for fear of further death, and when her greatest fears were realized, she went behind his back in order to preserve life.

However, in season 2, Catelyn releases Jaime Lannister without hearing of her children’s demise. The reason? She wanted her daughters back. In the show, we have not heard Catelyn objecting to going to war or how she is constantly haunted by the prospect of innocent lives lost. For the creators, the only reason given for Catelyn’s actions are that she’s a mother, and therefore wants her children returned. The show even seems to go on and demonize Catelyn’s motherly reason, as Robb then imprisons Catelyn for this betrayal until the end of season 3, an act he never commits in the novels. Instead of the fact that she has seen what war does and how senseless it is, they removed her character development and had her commit an on the surface illogical act because she only cares about her children.

Also, the creators removed Catelyn’s sexuality. The show is known for having exploitive sex scenes (the term “sexposition” was coined from this show), yet the sex scene with Catelyn and her husband Ned Stark was mysteriously cut. Healthy, consensual sex (with the only thing missing being Beyonce’s self titled album playing in the background) between a middle-aged married couple with children is apparently too much for audiences of a HBO show to handle.

Then, season 3 happened and proved to be the final nail in Catelyn’s mother-shaped coffin. Her screen time and prominence to the narrative was reduced drastically, with her son Robb overtaking her, even though he is not a point of view character in the novels. Hell, even Theon’s character, who didn’t even appear in the third book A Storm of Swords, had more screen time than Catelyn. His narrative consisted getting repeatedly tortured, mutilated and sexually assaulted by his captor Ramsay Snow. Even though this could be seen as important to Theon’s overall arc in the show, the fact that Catelyn’s story was given prominence over his in the source material should indicate to the creators which character to focus on.

In the second episode of the season, Catelyn converses with Robb’s new bride, Talisa Maegyr, over her late husband’s bastard son Jon Snow. It has been made apparent in the show and in the books of Catelyn’s dislike of Jon; he is the walking reminder of her husband’s infidelity during the early years of their marriage. In the novels, this is something she never apologizes for or even questions. This is one of the prominent flaws that readers have found with the character.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k_HWCIT8nY”]

However, in said episode, she shows remorse over her treatment of Jon Snow and even blames herself for the current war due to the fact she couldn’t love “a motherless child.” Now, the fact that she feels so much death and destruction because she refused to mother a child that was a result of her husband’s affair is problematic enough in itself. But the fact that the creators felt the need to dedicate Catelyn’s minimal screen time to absolving this flaw in herself shows how they view motherhood. They feel that a female character’s maternal instincts need to take center stage of her storyline, even if there’s no real call for it.

The majority of the characters’ flaws on Game of Thrones have been altered from their original sources. But if we compare the removal of these flaws in comparison to Catelyn’s, it’s quite disturbing. For example, in the show: Tyrion Lannister killed Shae out of self-defense rather than in cold blood, Theon Greyjoy never raped serving girl Kyra when he took Winterfell, and Oberyn Martell never physically assaulted the mother of Obara Sand when he took his daughter away from her. Are the creators hereby suggesting that murder, rape and domestic violence are on the same page as not being maternal to a child that is not yours?

The most pivotal scene for Catelyn in season 3, nay the whole series, was the Red Wedding. In the novel A Storm of Swords, after Walder Frey ambushes the Stark army and Robb, Catelyn pleads for Robb’s life — and is denied. After losing what she thinks is all of her children save Sansa, she pointlessly kills one of Frey’s grandsons and is then killed herself. However, finding Catelyn’s corpse discarded in a river, character Beric Dondarrion resurrects her using the powers he inherited through his religion. The Catelyn we are greeted with is not the same Catelyn, though — she has turned into the thing that she was trying to avoid since the end of A Game of Thrones –– a senseless, bloodthirsty source of destruction; the epitome of war itself. She becomes Lady Stoneheart.

The importance of the continuation of Catelyn Stark’s storyline is highlighted by this interview with the novels’ author George R.R. Martin:

“Well, I wanted to make a strong mother character. The portrayal of women in epic fantasy have been problematical for a long time. These books are largely written by men but women also read them in great, great numbers. And the women in fantasy tend to be very atypical women… With Catelyn there is something reset for the Eleanor of Aquitaine, the figure of the woman who accepted her role and functions with a narrow society and, nonetheless, achieves considerable influence and power and authority despite accepting the risks and limitations of this society. She is also a mother… Then, a tendency you can see in a lot of other fantasies is to kill the mother or to get her off the stage. She’s usually dead before the story opens…”

Here, Martin shows us that even though Catelyn is a female character who has accepted the problematic gender roles of her society, she is no less important than the willful Arya Stark, the warrior Brienne of Tarth, or the conquering Daenerys Targaryen.

But this is how it went down in the show: after Robb’s storyline comes to an end, so does Catelyn Stark’s, and she never reappears in the show again. Save for the added sexual violence, the removal of Lady Stoneheart’s character after she did not appear in the season 4 finale was one of the greatest disappointments for fans of the novels. By removing her arc, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss removed the crux of what A Song of Ice and Fire is about: that war makes monsters of us all. The director of the finale, Alex Graves, had this to say about the character’s disappearance:

“Well, she was never going to be a part of it. I know it caught on on the internet, and people really started to believe it. I think the bottom line is that there was so much going on, at least from where I stood, that it wasn’t something to get into because, you know, when you get into taking Michelle Fairley, one of the greatest actresses around, and making her a zombie who doesn’t speak and goes around killing people, what’s the best way to integrate that into the show?”

In a show that added not only one but two rape scenes that arguably contributed nothing to the plot, I think it says a lot about how the creators feel about the mothers of the show: if the characters have no children to mother, then there’s no point in them being on the show at all.

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 and director Andrea Arnold. You can follow her on Twitter at @sophiesuzhall.

Andrea Arnold: A Voice for the Working Class Women of Britain

British director/screenwriter Andrea Arnold has three short films and three feature films under her belt, and four out of six of those center on working class people. … [The characters in ‘Fish Tank,’ ‘Wasp,’ ‘Red Road,’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’] venture off away from the preconceived notions they have been given, away from the stereotypes forced upon them, and the boxes society has trapped them in.

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

If we were to play a game of word association with the offensive word ‘chav’ (a pejorative term that “demonizes” working class people), what would immediately spring to mind? If you’re aware of how the word makes appearances in British tabloids, your words are probably going to be less than savory. ‘Uneducated,’ ‘racist,’ ‘unemployed,’ ‘scroungers,’ and ‘breeders’ are unfortunately likely to be the first among them — horrible stereotypes of poor people. British director/screenwriter Andrea Arnold has three short films and three feature films under her belt, and four out of six of those center on working class people. But Arnold does something unique with this; instead of avoiding the offensive ‘chav’ label, she embraces it and all of its connotations to the characters’ very core, all the while asking the audience: when is it okay to mock these people?

In her Oscar-winning short film Wasp (2003), Andrea Arnold takes on the stereotypes of working class women to an almost unbearable extent. The film focuses on a single mother and her four children over the course of a day. Our protagonist Zoe, a white working class woman in her twenties, drags her kids (and herself) half clothed to a neighboring house so she can attack the mother of a child who attacked her own. When Zoe discovers that the only edible thing she has in her council flat (public housing apartment) is moldy bread, she gives her children a bag of sugar to satisfy their appetites. Later, she leaves her children unattended outside a pub for hours while she stays inside on a date. At first you may be mistaken for believing this is more an advertisement for contraception than a short film.

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

While doing press junkets for the release of Fish Tank, Arnold stated in an interview:

“There’s a lot of press on hoodies and gangs and single mums and a lot of simplistic things said about these people. Every single person is complicated and if you look at everyone’s life they’re complex… you shouldn’t make assumptions about people, you should look at everyone individually and make no judgments.”

Arnold doesn’t just present these extreme flaws in Zoe; she also grants her the benefit of context. Zoe has four children, but she can’t even be in her thirties yet and there is no mention of support in her life. Where is the father(s) of her children? Zoe’s flat is decorated with glittery memorabilia, she compares herself to Victoria Beckham and hopes to one day find her David (with a magazine picture of him stuck to her wall). Zoe isn’t a grown woman, she’s a teenager stuck in the body of one. No one is there to realize this though, as Zoe’s mother “has a better social life than I do,” and the unasked question on absent men lingers in the air again — where is Zoe’s father in all of this? From the locals inside the pub, she gets criticized for her skills as a mother instead of support. Arnold presents these bread crumbs, not sob stories, to emotionally manipulate the audience. Here are her flaws, and these are the reasons why she has them. She presents us with three-dimensional characters, something absent from the headlines of The Daily Mail centering on working class people.

In the book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, writer and political commentator Owen Jones refers to a speech Prime Minister David Cameron gave:

“We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things — obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction — are purely external events, like a plague, or bad weather. Of course, circumstances — where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make — have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequences of the choices people make.”

Jones comments that:

“Cameron was tapping into sentiments that Thatcherism had made respectable: the idea that, more often than not, less fortunate people had only themselves to blame (page 74).”

This theme pulses through Wasp; is Zoe’s life the consequence of her own choices or of the society that has neglected her?

In Andrea Arnold’s feature length debut Red Road (2006), she doesn’t deconstruct stereotypes like in Wasp, but she still makes working class life visibly present. The film centers on Kathy, a working class woman in her thirties who is a CCTV operator. Through her loneliness, she observes the lives of the people she monitors with more than a professional interest. One day, she notices a man from her past who caused a great trauma in her life. This man is also working class. Kathy has her trials and tribulations to face over the course of Red Road, but being a working class woman isn’t one of them (nor should it always have to be). Arnold exposes viewers to working class life; instead of a drama set in a semi-detached Victorian house, why not a block of flats for a change?

Andrea Arnold’s follow up film was Fish Tank (2009), or as I like to call it, Wasp 2.0. The fish of the story is fifteen-year-old Mia. She spends her days stuck in the tank that is her council estate (public housing complex) in Essex, which just got smaller as she recently fell out with her best (and only?) friend Keeley. There’s not a lot for her to do in the fish tank — she dreams of one day becoming a dancer and practices in empty rooms. When she’s not doing that, she’s leaning against the glass of the tank, staring enviably at families and groups of friends, all the while binge drinking cheap hard cider and chain smoking.

Arnold taps in to David Cameron’s previous statement with the way she uses cinematography to stalk Mia. We the audience follows her, hand held, uncomfortably close like a documentary. We feel Mia’s claustrophobia and how she — and us — beg to break out of the confines of the tank.

The character of Connor preys on the working class. He uses Mia’s mother and emotionally toys with Mia. In one scene, Connor and Mia are in a lake trying to catch a fish. Connor tells Mia to walk slowly towards him so that the fish will go to him also. It is not just the fish that is hypnotized by Connor. The next day, Mia spots the caught fish dead on her kitchen floor, being devoured by her dog. This is a reflection of Connor’s degradation of the working class women at the end of the film. When he realizes that he could be arrested for statutory rape after sleeping with Mia, he discards both women without a word.

What I also admire about Arnold’s direction is that in both Red Road and Fish Tank, both Kathy and Mia’s characters envy other characters that are seemingly fulfilled, but are also working class. I find this detail pivotal, as it shows that Arnold isn’t saying that even though the characters face certain economic and social status restrictions, they aren’t striving to abandon their class. One class is not superior to the other.

In today’s society, the working class are consistently expected to be striving towards the middle class instead of being proud of their own class. In the book Chavs, Jones states that:

“Those labeled ‘chavs’ became frequently ridiculed for failing to meet lofty middle-class standards in what they wore, or how they ate. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver was rightly applauded for his crusade to bring healthy food to the British school dinner menu. But it was a campaign marred by tut-tutting at the eating habits of the lower orders. On his Channel 4 programme, Oliver referred to parents who failed to sit around a table for dinner as ‘what we have learned to call “white trash”’. Jonathan Ross asked him on BBC1: ‘Well, do you ever think that some people shouldn’t be allowed to be parents? Like people from council estates?’ It was a ‘joke’ met with cheers (page 144).”

Arnold continued to explore themes of classism in her most drastic departure from her usual style yet, in her adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2011), her first take on a costume drama. Brontë’s Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned.” Yet the ambiguously mixed race character is usually played by white actors. Arnold cast Black actors Soloman Glave and James Howson to portray the young and adult versions, respectively, of Heathcliff in her interpretation. The film introduces Heathcliff as a working class boy found on the streets of Liverpool. Like Mia and Zoe, the words that recur most in Heathcliff’s vocabulary are ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt.’ Arnold constructs the narrative to be solely through Heathcliff’s viewpoint, rather than housekeeper Nelly’s gaze of the pair’s relationship.

Throughout his childhood, the cantankerous Heathcliff always had Cathy as a rock to lean on. It didn’t matter how he spoke or what words he said, because he didn’t need to say anything with her. They communicated with delighted shrieks as they played in the moors. They spoke by holding each other as they shared a bed at night. At one point when Heathcliff’s back is beaten bloody, Cathy shows her sympathy by licking his wounds clean. That changes when Cathy is introduced to middle class society. She distances herself from Heathcliff by withdrawing her body from him and speaking to him condescendingly in her newly adopted manner.

Even though the film is a love story between Cathy and Heathcliff, it is Heathcliff’s narrative that Andrea makes us live through. She deemed the narrative of a working class man of color more vital than that of a white middle class woman. Like the audience feeling claustrophobic with Mia in her fish tank, the audience feels every whip that Heathcliff suffers, every burn from the stick that hits his flesh, every curse that’s thrown his way. The cinematographer isn’t concerned with capturing Cathy’s pain, who is screaming for mercy on behalf of Heathcliff off-screen.

Arnold’s overall message for Heathcliff’s story, and overall her main characters’ entire stories, becomes plainly evident in where she decided to end the film. In Brontë’s novel, we see Heathcliff spiral into villainy over his toxic love for Cathy and eventually die years later. However, Arnold’s version sees Heathcliff walking off into the moors, the fog making his path uncertain, just like his future, after he failed to open Cathy’s coffin to join her in death. Though seemingly grim, this is the optimistic ending that Arnold always offers her characters.

Zoe, Kathy, Mia and Heathcliff all venture off away from the preconceived notions they have been given, away from the stereotypes forced upon them, and the boxes society has trapped them in. Whether those boxes are council houses, fish tanks or Wuthering Heights.

External Sources: Jones, Owen. Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class. Verso, 2011.

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 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You can follow her on Twitter at @sophiesuzhall.

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.

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’: Violence Helps Our Heroines Have a Lovely Day

Furiosa, stabbed and wounded yet still persistent, takes down the main villain Immortan Joe. “Remember me?” Furiosa growls just before ripping his breathing apparatus–and half of his face–clean off. That quip may seem like your average cool one-liner, but for me it is so much more than that. It’s Furiosa, our female protagonist, who takes out the bad guy. Not Max. Not Nux, or any other male character. Her.

This guest post by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

This article contains spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Jurassic World.

Is Mad Max: Fury Road the greatest feminist blockbuster of the year? Or is it simply, in the words of Immortan Joe, mediocre? This has been endlessly debated over the past few months since the film’s release in May and though opinions may vary, I feel that this is one of the more successful attempts at female representation in a blockbuster and my favourite of the year so far. This is largely due to how violence and female characters in Fury Road intertwine, like how the characters both embrace violence and reject it.

Furiosa ready for battle

Let’s start with the most obvious character to analyse: Furiosa. What struck me most about violence and her character was how it kept her in the limelight. By that, I mean she didn’t have to teach Max or Nux to fight so that they could save the day. In an article at Black Girl Nerds titled “Strong Characters are Barely Strong and Rarely Characters” (about female characters in general), writer Bijhan Valibeigi states that

“In the first act we meet her and she seems rude and dismissive, saying ‘whatever’ and rolling her eyes. In the second act we are shown that she secretly has a feminine and caring side – almost universally in the process of learning that she secretly cares for the male protagonist, and is too insecure to admit it. In the third act she learns to reconcile her feelings for the protagonist with her tough-as-nails identity and uses some typically ‘for boys’ skills – usually combat, but also often hacking or deductive science – to save the male protagonist… so that he can save the day.”

But in Fury Road, this is more the case for Max than Furiosa; she uses violence for herself and herself alone. Max and Nux’s characters are not blessed with Furiosa’s pearls of violent wisdom so that they can excel and save the day. There’s even a scene in the film that were it given to your everyday Hollywood writer, it would have panned out differently (and disappointingly). When their rig is stuck in the bog, Max’s character is trying and failing to shoot an approaching enemy. This would have been the perfect opportunity for Furiosa to guide Max and let him save the day. She could have given him your typical supportive BS like, “relax,” “just breath,” “we believe in you,” “take your time,” “use the force,” etc. Instead, Furiosa uses Max’s shoulder as an armrest as she hits the target with a single shot.

Furiosa telling Max to sit down

For Furiosa to not let another male character steal the scene with heroic violence but instead to rely on her own self-confidence and do it herself is a breath of fresh air for the audience members, particularly female ones. Furiosa doesn’t have to tell how violent she is; she shows us.

Max’s character is actually a complement to the violent women of the film. He never once treats Furiosa’s violence with disdain over the fact that she’s a woman. He always treats her as his equal. He treats her with hostility when they first meet not because he underestimates her, but because he understands that she’s his physical equal and a threat. There is no condescension. As he is the co-leading protagonist of the film, the way that he perceives Furiosa is vital as it is how the audience will be guided to see her through his gaze.

Furiosa having control and using her own violence is again highlighted in the final showdown of Fury Road. Furiosa, stabbed and wounded yet still persistent, takes down the main villain Immortan Joe. “Remember me?” Furiosa growls just before ripping his breathing apparatus–and half of his face–clean off. That quip may seem like your average cool one-liner, but for me it is so much more than that. It’s Furiosa, our female protagonist, who takes out the bad guy. Not Max. Not Nux, or any other male character. Her. It’s as if she’s saying it directly to the audience as well as at Immortan Joe. Even though the scene is extremely brutal, the violence of it can again be seen as to empower women. Our representation defeats the bad guy!

This gives our female audience members a pleasure that we so far haven’t really experienced this year (granted, Star Wars and Mockingjay Part 2 are still yet to be released). We almost had it in Age of Ultron when Scarlet Witch rips out Ultron’s heart, apart from the fact that his doom was moments away anyway and that Vision’s character was the one to destroy Ultron’s final form. We kind of had it in Jurassic World when Claire’s character releases the T-Rex on the Indominous Rex, but the moment is dampened when she tells her male colleague to “be a man for once in his life” and help her beforehand. Furiosa doesn’t have to discredit her violence in order to use violence to save the day, whereas Claire had to.

Even though Furiosa’s link to violence can be seen as empowering to her gender in Fury Road, one of the more interesting things I found writer/director George Miller doing was having The Wives not be inherently violent. When Furiosa tried to kill Nux in self-defense, The Wives intervene and remind Furiosa that they had agreed to “no unnecessary killing!” Now, Miller could have easily made The Wives bloodthirsty characters with no substance like this years Sand Snakes on Game of Thrones, but Miller did the opposite, giving them more depth and intelligence.

The Wives’ reasoning for sparing Nux was the he’s “kamakrazee,” which means he’s one of Immortan Joe’s war boys. This implies that The Wives know that Nux is just brainwashed by Immortan’s regime and is a victim of his rule. I found this one of the more profound moments of Fury Road, as The Wives have more reason than any to want to inflict violence on others as so much of it has been inflicted on them, yet they do not.

Miller even has a scene where one of The Wives, The Dag, discusses the reasons for violence- with another female character! Yay for no mansplaining! “I thought you girls were above all that,” The Dag says to one of the Many Mothers as she described how she shoots her enemies. Even the topic of violence helps to develop the pairs characters, as the Many Mother entrust The Dag her seeds she’d been keeping to plant one day as she’s dying.

The Dag saying goodbye to one of the Many Mothers

Better still, Miller doesn’t directly state that Furiosa and the Many Mothers’ use of violence are wrong and The Wives’ lack of violence is right. He hints more at that they need to co-exist with one another. For example, as a result of The Wives having Nux spared leads to their survival, as Nux later sacrifices himself to protect them and Furiosa needed to be violent in order to save the day and defeat the bad guy.

The mix of these two stances the women have on violence leads to them creating a peaceful matriarchal society at the end of Fury Road. Which brings me to what I most love about how violence was portrayed in this film: both the traditionally feminine characters against violence and the traditionally masculine characters who use violence are all meant to be treated with respect by the audience–one isn’t right, one isn’t wrong. The violence in Fury Road doesn’t make the women at odds with each other, but helps bind them together.

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 the website http://www.wpcomicsltd.com.