Superheroines – Bitch Flicks

The Ironically Iconic ‘Wonder Woman’

With D.C. superheroine Wonder Woman recently named UN honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls and her forthcoming feature film building hype, her profile could hardly be higher as a feminist symbol. Yet Wonder Woman, who the U.N. hopes will focus attention on women’s “participation and leadership,” is an image entirely created by men. She represents, ironically enough, male domination of the struggle against male domination. … Far from a step forward, ‘Wonder Woman’ is worse than more simply offensive chauvinism, because it insidiously exploits the female audience’s desire to identify with Wonder Woman’s empowerment.

Written by staff writer Brigit McCone, this post appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

William Moulton Marston, who created the ironically iconic Wonder Woman, was an outspoken male feminist who seduced his own student, Olive Byrne, and used her as unpaid domestic labor while living off his feminist wife’s (Elizabeth Holloway Marston) wages. Though feminist cartoonist Lou Rogers has been identified as an inspiration for Wonder Woman’s imagery, it was the male cartoonist Harry G. Peter that Marston selected to draw her adventures. Marston’s disconnect, between the theory and practice of female autonomy, seems reflected in his comic strip’s disconnect between its ideal woman of “Paradise Island” and the real world; it was left to Alice Marble to write a “Wonder Women of History” feature that linked Wonder Woman to the historical achievements of women.

After Marston’s death, a takeover bid by his widow Elizabeth Holloway Marston was snubbed by D.C. Comics, and the strip was handed instead to the sexist stewardship of writer Robert Kanigher, who demoted Wonder Woman from warrior and presidential candidate to babysitter and love advice columnist. Following journalist/activist Gloria Steinem’s promotion of the “Original Wonder Woman” as a feminist icon, a television series — The New Original Wonder Woman (later shortened to Wonder Woman) — was developed by writer Stanley Ralph Ross and producer Douglas S. Cramer (Dynasty).

On his DVD commentary to the pilot, Cramer seems defensively aware of the disconnect between Wonder Woman’s fictional autonomy and her lack of actual female authorship:

“There were very, very few women on the set. The hair, the make-up and the clothes were all done by men… we never had a woman director. There weren’t many women directors out there in those days.”

Yet, back in 1916, Grace Cunard wrote, directed, and starred in the popular adventure serial The Purple Mask, as the swashbuckling Purple Mask who “robbed from the greedy to give to the needy.” Though producer Cramer presents Wonder Woman as progress, claiming, “There really were not a lot of women that were carrying their own shows, and after Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman, that’s when Charlie’s Angels was cast,” it is important to recognize that it is a step backward from a time when Grace Cunard and Alice Guy wrote and directed female action heroes. Are the subtly undermining distortions of a pacifying male-authored feminism not more harmful than an open chauvinism that provokes resistance? Though D.C. courted women directors for their Wonder Woman movie and hired Patty Jenkins, the departure of Michelle MacLaren over “creative differences” suggests that the female director has only limited control. Certainly, she is working within an established legacy that women have not created. Should such semi-liberated sex symbols really be celebrated as ambassadors and stepping-stones to female authorship?

“All Our Hopes Are Pinned Upon You” — Symbolism of the Super-Smurfette

The opening season of Wonder Woman — starring Lynda Carter in the superhero role — is set during World War II, an era of immense importance for women’s rights. While men fought on the frontlines, the women exemplified by Rosie the Riveter proved that they were capable of excelling even in heavy industry, and that factories could accommodate their childcare needs if motivated to do so, with women also serving in military units such as WAVES and WACS. World War II, then, offers Wonder Woman an unparalleled opportunity to ally her efforts with the ongoing triumphs of women across America. Instead, the show is at pains to reduce all other female characters to idiots (the ableist slur “idiot” here describes characters who are themselves stereotypical, ableist caricatures) or deviousness.

In the pilot episode, the on-screen representative of WACS is Marcia (Stella Stevens), depicted as a stereotypically vacant blonde and openly sexual flirt, who reacts to the news that Nazis are planning to bomb the continental U.S. with: “Will that be all, Steve? I have a chiropodist’s appointment this afternoon.” The revelation that Marcia is a Nazi double-agent seems calculated to authorize the beating of this stereotype of brainless blonde sluttishness (again, “slut” here refers to characters negatively depicted as caricatures of devious promiscuity). Cramer hails the pilot’s extended catfight as “a historic moment on television, ’cause I can’t remember any other moments with women fighting women,” citing it as inspiration for equally popular catfights on Dynasty. Other antagonists in the pilot include an older lady with a machine gun and a female taxi driver, while there are no female allies. In later episodes, WACS will be represented by Etta Candy (a feisty ally in the source comics), now a rolling-eyed fool whose incompetence and eating habits are presented as comic relief. Meanwhile, Steve Trevor’s continuous sexist quips are endorsed by Diana’s sighing that he is a “perfect gentleman.”

Wonder Woman constantly struggles to “balance” their positive portrayal of Wonder Woman by viciously misogynistic portraits of all remaining women. The result implies that women have failed to achieve equality only because of their own deviousness or foolishness. Wonder Woman’s heroism is also marked by unattainably extreme perfection, which Lynda Carter admits in her commentary to being concerned by: “People want to be her and they want to be able to identify, and if she’s too perfect…” All women who fail to meet Wonder Woman’s punishing standards are reduced to the level of the catty and unlikable chorus of girls dismissed as “a herd of sheep” in “Miss G.I. Dreamgirl.” Wonder Woman is therefore the ultimate Super-Smurfette, a living embodiment of the Smurfette Principle‘s urge to isolate female achievement. The fact that a television show which encourages girls to feel mocking contempt for all of its female characters, apart from a literal Amazonian goddess, should be hailed as a feminist milestone is as ludicrous as it is tragic.

Margaret Armen, the only woman credited with writing an episode in the first season, introduced the coolly intelligent, highly competent, and villainous Baroness von Gunther as Nazi antagonist. Though she too has a climactic catfight with Wonder Woman, she is notable for not embodying a stereotype of female incompetence or sexual promiscuity. Compare the male-authored episode “Fausta: the Nazi Wonder Woman,” who is yet another evil blonde without detectable personality. Fausta (Lynda Day George) is finally converted to Wonder Woman’s cause, which arguably shows superficial sisterhood but also implies that Fausta has been serving the Third Reich simply because the concept of female bonding had never, ever occurred to her, until she was exposed to the revolutionary banalities of Wonder Woman. The only other female authorship on the show’s first season is that of Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday, credited with devising the story for Jimmy Sangster’s script of “The Feminum Mystique,” the two-part episode which introduces Wonder Girl (played by a young Debra Winger) to showcase genuine female mentorship. Comparing its female and male authors thus reveals that the male-authored feminism of Wonder Woman is consistently, farcically compromised by its compulsion to isolate its heroine and undermine her female allies.

“In Your Satin Tights, Fighting for Your Rights” — Suffering Sexualized Suffragettes!

Wonder Woman is not only a Super-Smurfette, she is the original Fighting Fuck Toy (FFT). The essence of the Fighting Fuck Toy is her superficial empowerment through “kicking ass,” while being deprived of deeper agency and continually serving as a sexual object for the Male Gaze. Nowhere is this tendency more clearly shown than with Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman (Diana Prince), a character defined by her hypersexualization from bullet breasts to hot-pants, yet rendered unthreatening to male viewers by her total absence of sexual agency.

The titillation begins with Diana’s introduction, running along the beach with a female friend, giggling in extremely short and gauzy negligees. As Diana later declares to her mother, the Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Cloris Leachman), “There’s something missing, mother. When I look at Steve Trevor, I feel things. Things I’ve never known before,” it is made clear that lesbianism is an unknown pleasure on Paradise Island. It’s wonderful that a Latina woman played the role of a superhero, yet this is an unfortunate missed opportunity for LGBTQ representation, especially with the recent confirmation of Wonder Woman as a queer character in the comics. This means that these women and girls are running around in a state of hypersexualization, not as an expression of any personal sexuality, but in permanent readiness for the arrival of a male viewer. For whom, then, is Paradise Island a paradise? Certainly, male viewers are amply served by the Amazons’ tournament to determine who will accompany Steve to America, an alleged athletic spectacle filmed almost entirely through upskirt shots.

Producer Cramer makes clear not only that Wonder Woman’s sexy appearance was integral to her role, but that the Fighting Fuck Toy’s “ass-kicking” should not be convincing: “If they were a wonderful actress, they approached the job like a lady truck driver.” By “lady truck driver,” he surely refers to the actresses’ ability to appear credibly violent, ruining their titillation by making their empowerment uncomfortably real. The Queen Hippolyta rants against the “barbaric, masculine behavior” of men with comical lust. Yet, Diana’s own lust for Steve will remain demurely unvoiced, as she waits entirely passively for him to take the sexual initiative. This suggests that women’s traditionally presumed passive sexuality is natural and not socially enforced, if even a super-powered and invulnerable woman would never openly express her desires. Furthermore, Diana actively corrects Drusilla (Wonder Girl) when Drusilla comments on a man’s attractiveness. That is, Diana is pointedly shown schooling a younger, sexually outspoken girl into proper passivity and self-suppression, which is enforced by the show as hallmarks of the “good” femininity that distinguishes Wonder Woman from blonde Nazi “sluts.” Lynda Carter expresses regret over Wonder Woman’s lack of sexual fulfillment in the DVD extras: “She didn’t have love in her life and she didn’t have children. I would hope that that story would be told. That’s such a huge part of womanhood.”

“Make a Hawk a Dove, Stop a War with Love” — Make Love, Not Legislation

At the heart of Wonder Woman is the concept that women are essentially different from men, and that female power resides in their essential qualities of love and pacifism. William Moulton Marston went further, and posited submission itself as an integral feminine virtue. In the words of Diana: “On Paradise Island there are only women. Because of this pure environment, we are able to develop our minds and our physical skills, unhampered by masculine destructiveness.” That is, the superpowers of the women of Paradise Island are suggested to be the direct result of their total absence of heteronormative sexuality, and to be incompatible with the presence of men, rooted as they are in a traditional concept of femininity that has historically facilitated male domination. After centuries of disenfranchisement, segregation into the domestic sphere, and being traded as property, male-authored feminism suggests that women can empower themselves by being traditionally feminine harder.

Actual women’s liberation, however, involved riots, incarceration, hunger strikes, occupation movements, clenched fists and even, on occasion, an unattractive shrillness resembling that of a lady truck-driver. Actual liberation involved the collective organization that the Super-Smurfette pointedly avoids. Far from a step forward, Wonder Woman is worse than more simply offensive chauvinism, because it insidiously exploits the female audience’s desire to identify with Wonder Woman’s empowerment. As Lynda Carter puts it: “There’s something about the goddess within, that secret part that resides in every woman, that is a Wonder Woman, that yearns for that independence and strength.” That “secret part” is harnessed by Wonder Woman to push female viewers into aspiring to a failed model of womanhood, one characterized by its hostility to other women, its punishing perfectionism, its sexual passivity and its self-sacrificing submission. Our goddesses within deserve so much better.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_blOQEu9ws”]

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Wonder Woman Short Fan Film Reminds Us to Want This Blockbuster

Wonder Women and Why We Need Superheroines

Top 10 Superheroines Who Deserve Their Own Movies

Brigit McCone‘s campy superheroine of choice remains Xena until further notice. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and defending her unpopular opinion that Bloodhound Gang are a witty pastiche of masculinity.

Superheroines Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Superheroines Theme Week here.

How the X-Men Films Failed Iconic Black Female Superhero Storm by Sara Century

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.

‘Supergirl’ and Room for the Non-Brooding Superhero by Allyson Johnson

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…

Catwoman, Elektra, and the Death of the Cinema Superheroine by Heather Davidson

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

Top 10 Superheroines Who Deserve Their Own Movies by Amanda Rodriguez

So few superheroines are given their own movies. I’m officially declaring that it’s high time we had more superhero movies starring women. The first in a series of posts, I’m starting with a list of my top 10 picks for super babes who deserve their own flicks.

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

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.

Elektra in Daredevil: Violence, White Masculinity, and Asian Stereotypes by Kelly Kanayama

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

Daisy Johnson, Superheroine of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — And Why She Matters by Lee Jutton

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.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine by Kaitlyn Soligan

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

Supergirl’s Feminism and Why the Series Works by Dennis R. Upkins

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.

Barbarella and the “Savagery” of Futuristic Sexual Politics by Olga Tchepikova

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.

How Hawkgirl Saved Me by Maggie Slutzker

This is about my favorite chess-playing, mace-wielding, war-crying, winged superheroine role model: Shayera Hol. … Hawkgirl taught me to be observant. She taught me that it’s possible to come through trying times. She taught me that being able to think was just as important as being able to fight, and that good and evil aren’t always absolutes.

Why Black Widow Is the “Realest” Superheroine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Yes, Even After All Those Tropes) by Kayleigh Watson

It is this factor alone why Black Widow is so important. She is the longest standing female protagonist within the Marvel film franchise, having starred in Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron and most recently, Captain America: Civil War. She was the only female Avenger in both Avengers films (until Scarlet Witch switched sides at the end of Age of Ultron), and as such was subject to being the onscreen vessel of female representation in a superhero super-team otherwise occupied by straight white men.

How Does Vixen Collide with Race, Gender, a Black Sense of Home, and the Video Vixen? by Tara Betts

…There is more to be said about how essentializing African identities around myth, folklore, the continent, and animals can impose limits on how Black people, particularly Black women, can be written, and how those Black characters are experienced in a more accessible, mainstream outlet. In other words, even Black superhero characters, carry the burden of limitations if the racial stereotypes outweigh the plot and character development. In this case, Vixen has room for more episodes, a potential live-action series, and delving deeper into a host of issues on identity, power, and defining home.

Brown Girls Can Be Heroes Too: Why We Need a Ms. Marvel Movie by Bhavna Vasnani

I’d internalized the rather damaging notion that only white girls deserve to have their stories told. Only white girls can slay the patriarchy without breaking a nail. Only white girls get to be the heroes, and get to be heroes of their own stories. And the rest of us? We don’t matter. … It’s important for young South Asian girls to see that just because they’re South Asian doesn’t mean that they have to be relegated to the sidelines, to being the sidekick, to being the brainy Indian doctor, and so on. They can be superheroes too.

Stop the Fridging: The Invisible Feminism of Arrow by Becky Kukla

So while Arrow seems pretty reluctant to move away from the traditional stance on women existing to be love interests and to be rescued, the individual female characters themselves sometimes show some hints of progressiveness… if only they’d be allowed to live long enough!

Show Me a (Woman) Villain by Mary Iannone

We all recognize the gross disparity of women superheroes, in the Marvel canon and beyond. But I would argue that the cinematic landscape is even less primed to allow women supervillains. … Women are generally presented as easily manipulated and too emotional to be true villains. It is yet another characterization of the “soft” woman, dictated by her emotions, propelled by a propensity to nurture rather than destroy. But we need stories of women who hunger for power, who are willingly selfish, and who stick to their principles, no matter the cost. … No more scenes of men talking women into saving the world. Let them try their best to destroy it.

Batgirl / Oracle: A Superheroine with a Disability and Representation by Adam Sherman

There aren’t a lot of superheroes with disabilities; many of the ones who do gain powers from their disabilities. … Barbara Gordon as Oracle is a more accurate and positive representation of people with disabilities. She’s way more real because despite the fact that she sometimes needs the help of more able-bodied people, like a real person living with paralysis from the waist down, she still lives a positive and active life.

Where Are All the Superheroines Who Are Getting Too Old For This Shit? Ageism and Superhero Movies by Celey Schumer

Even in the rare superhero films with more gender-balanced casts, the age gap between male and female performers can be seen time and time again. Men are allowed to age, to become grizzled, world-weary with experience, or stew for years on a plot of vengeance. … Their women counterparts, however, must remain lithe, “hot,” and never over the age of 40.

Go ahead, try and find a superheroine or female supervillain over 40. I’ll wait. Great. Now that we’re all done pointing at Halle Berry as Storm — who was 46 at the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past — and Famke Janssen as Jean Grey/Phoenix — who was 41 at the release of X-Men: The Last Stand — let’s look at the bigger picture.

Scarlet Witch and Kitty Pryde: Erased Jewish Superheroines by Sophie Hall

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. … 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. …

In the comics, Kitty Pryde is a feisty, spirited, and proudly Jewish member of the X-Men. …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.

Superheroines of Color and Empowerment in Fantasy on TV by Constance Gibbs

It’s a rare sight to see women of color as superheroes, but rarest, probably, on television. … Superheroines are important. The desire for women to be seen as heroes, as strong, as capable, as desired, as everything transcends race. But when women of color are constantly told they have to wait or aren’t given the same chances, it does the same thing as when it’s men vs. women. …

Why can’t we have a Black or Asian or Latina or Arab or Native heroine acting as a universal hero for all girls of all races? Why must white continue to be the universal standard and everyone else is relegated to a niche audience? People of color want the empowerment fantasy too.

Superheroines of Color and Empowerment in Fantasy on TV

It’s a rare sight to see women of color as superheroes, but rarest, probably, on television. … Superheroines are important. … Why can’t we have a Black or Asian or Latina or Arab or Native heroine acting as a universal hero for all girls of all races? Why must white continue to be the universal standard and everyone else is relegated to a niche audience? People of color want the empowerment fantasy too.

This guest post written by Constance Gibbs appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

It’s a rare sight to see women of color as superheroes, but rarest, probably, on television. There are so many books and indie movies and even half-hearted attempts in mainstream superhero movies, but television has been starving for women of color superheroes for a while now. A google search of “Women of Color on Superhero Television” gives one result of a woman of color from a superhero TV show among the top 15 results — Iris West — who doesn’t actually fight crime.

Two of the most popular superheroines of color — Wonder Woman’s Linda Carter (whose mother was of Mexican descent) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Chloe Bennett (nee Wang) — aren’t even acknowledged as such because of Hollywood pressure to change or hide their ethnicity. There are only a handful of others: Ming-Na Wen’s Agent May on S.H.I.E.L.D. kicks enough ass to be considered a super, but Daredevil’s anti-hero Elektra — spoiler alert — doesn’t even survive the end of the season. There was a blink and you miss it episode of The Flash where Linda Park became the anti-villain Doctor Light and Vixen’s equally quick appearance on Arrow, (which we’ll talk about later). That’s about it.

We know it’s hard for women superheroes in general. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are still a ways off, the Black Widow movie has been consistently teased but never confirmed, Agent Carter just got cancelled, Supergirl went from a Top 4 network to The CW (admittedly the superhero network), and Jessica Jones still doesn’t have an action figure. Ultimately, none of these examples have been intersectional or inclusive of women of color. This photo of the crew for Wonder Woman shows exactly the problem.

If you squint, you can count the women of color on one hand. The “Where’s Phillipus?” twitter hashtag showed that people are paying attention to the lack of women of color on their screens. We, of course, want equity between men and women in these franchises, but women of color must be included in the conversation.

Superheroines are important. The desire for women to be seen as heroes, as strong, as capable, as desired, as everything transcends race. But when women of color are constantly told they have to wait or aren’t given the same chances, it does the same thing as when it’s men vs. women. While white women want Black Widow, women of color want characters with speaking roles. In terms of television, just because Supergirl and Jessica Jones exist, doesn’t mean that there is no room for a woman of color to have a superhero series too. Look at what Supergirl does for Girl Scouts.

The Super Girl Scouts of Oklahoma dropped by National City today… #girlscouts

A photo posted by Melissa Benoist (@melissabenoist) on Aug 20, 2015 at 6:24pm PDT

In this early Atlantic article about Kamala Khan’s debut, the writer says that the new Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, is getting to live out the “empowerment fantasy.” She is a young kid, who is teased for her religion and her nerdiness and who aches to fit in and one night she gets to become Ms. Marvel, one of her favorite heroes. The empowerment fantasy, which white heroes have gotten to live out for decades (centuries if we’re honest), lets people who aren’t in positions of power to see themselves as heroes, to envision themselves as someone worth looking up to. This is something women of color struggle with on a daily basis. As a Black woman, we are the highest educated, but are paid $20,000 less than white men and the statistic that Black women are the least messaged and least preferred on dating sites come to mind. Women of color are fetishized or ignored. It’s no wonder that this has currently translated to superheroine fiction.

Television is the best medium for this problem to be fixed. TV moves a little bit faster than movies do. It’s still one year before Wonder Woman, and two years before we get Captain Marvel and both have been in production and pre-production for years already. A television pilot written in the fall, on the other hand, could be on air the following fall. Sadly, my hopes are not high. After the way women on science-fiction/fantasy shows were treated this season (most notably Abbie Mills of Sleepy Hollow, as close to a superheroine woman of color lead we had), and with the lack of women of color in superhero shows so far next season, it doesn’t seem we’re getting a woman of color lead anytime soon.

Which is a shame, because television is most suited to telling comic stories, which are often episodic and involve long arcs and tons of character development. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is great, but there are small moments between characters or within the stories they tell that TV tells better. We get to spend more time with these characters. The Nerds of Color article on the failures of X-Men: Apocalypse with regard to its three women of color heroes and villains, points out that Storm (Alexandra Shipp) is underused, as is Olivia Munn’s Psylocke, and Jubilee (Lana Condor) doesn’t even display her powers in the film — those scenes apparently got cut. While television isn’t perfect — at all — there is still more of an opportunity for those characters to get their day in the spotlight. Then, the fans have a chance to fight for that character to get more screentime — see the increase of Felicity Smoak on Arrow and the improvement in writing for Iris West on The Flash. Television tells in depth stories better, we are able to truly live the empowerment fantasy with these characters, feeling their successes and struggles on a weekly basis (or mainlined into our bloodstream during a 3am binge session).

We do have some upcoming women of color supers coming to a TV show near you: Simone Missick is playing Misty Knight on Luke Cage this fall; Jessica Henwick will be playing Colleen Wing on Iron Fist — which has it’s own separate issues with race; we may get more Linda Park on The Flash, based on *spoiler* the finale hitting some sort of reset button; and hopefully Supergirl hears its fans and adds a woman of color as a superhero. As we know, however, this isn’t enough. None of these ladies are leading their shows, some are barely recurring characters.

What women of color can we get to headline a superheroine TV series? The two shows I think have the closest chance right now of becoming women of color led superhero shows are Vixen and Ms. Marvel. Both are already a part of established TV universes. Vixen’s 30 minute (total — 5 minute episodes over 6 weeks) cartoon debut on CW Seed led to an appearance on Arrow last season (with, hopefully, a visit to The Flash’s Central City in the future), and Ms. Marvel could definitely be a teen show set in the same Marvel Television Universe (connected, however distantly, to their movie verse).

With Vixen, there is already an actress attached to the role, Megalyn Echikunwoke, and if you saw her live-action debut, she was fantastic (even if the sloppily-written backdoor pilot dialogue was not). Her experience connects to the mainstream American woman — someone living in America, trying to make sense of her foreign/immigrant roots, trying to live her best life, while also trying to be brave and strong and a hero. Seeing her overcome her trials, while also kicking ass with the strength of an elephant or the flight of a bird would be awesome. This year, at The CW Upfronts, it was announced there would be a season two on CW Seed, but what about her live action version? Does she not deserve an hour of live-action like her DC TV Universe compatriots? (Let’s be honest, Legends of Tomorrow totally could have been a cartoon on CW Seed.) If there’s no room in the schedule, a live-action Vixen could air on Fridays, during mid-season hiatus for the four main shows, or in the summer. The fact is, she deserves as much of a chance as Green Arrow received, as much support as Supergirl. Let her story be a universal empowerment fantasy for women, but inclusive of the experiences of women of non-white descent.

With Netflix’s Defenders-verse of grown-up, M-for-mature supers, I think that Netflix is long overdue for some teen supers. 10 episodes of South Asian, Muslim teenage Kamala Khan trying to fit in at school and save Jersey City, just across the river from Matt Murdock and Jessica Jones. Plus, like Wolverine in the comics, the adults could crossover into Kamala’s world every so often, giving advice and mentoring the young, new superhero. It’s all one big MCU, right? Kamala’s story is the classic teen show, filled with boy, body, and parental angst, but also the hope of getting past all that. She’s a superhero!! She saves her city and her friends on a regular basis! For a young girl, but especially for a young girl of color, this is something to look up to. Something to make you feel like, “if Kamala can do all of that and stop that villain, I can probably get through junior year.” The same thing that Supergirl’s Kara Danvers does for young girls, Kamala could also do — on Netflix.

These are hardly the only characters deserving of a lead role on a TV show, just the ones closest to the door. The difference between diversity and inclusivity is diversity is being invited to a party, inclusivity is being asked to dance. No one is asking women of color to dance yet. Vixen twirled with a jock and his nerdy friend on the dance floor for a whole song, but is now the wallflower waiting for her next invitation. Daisy Johnson and Agent May are turning up, but they’re looking around for some friends to form a dance circle. Misty Knight is still on-line outside the gym, the principal is checking her ticket because she’s from another school. Linda Park got asked to dance, but no one’s seen her since. When these girls aren’t asked to dance, no one wants to come to the next dance. This hurts their self-esteem and it the dance isn’t nearly as fun. I’ll stop with the metaphor, but I hope you understand what I mean. Lack of diversity and inclusion doesn’t just hurt those excluded, it hurts everyone.

We have to force action. We have to support the ladies of color we do have in superhero fiction and demand for more. We have to tell the producers when we are upset about the treatment of a woman of color — even when they don’t listen, ahem, Sleepy Hollow. And in the face of resistance, we have to go out there and write our own. We have to see the lack of empowerment fantasies to inspire us and create it ourselves for the future. That’s what the original superhero comic writers did; many of those Jewish writers came from a post-World War II world and saw that they needed to empower themselves after all the tragedy they faced. It’s time television reflected our struggles and our ability to overcome them. If they won’t let us in the door, we’ll just have to kick it down. We are superheroines, after all.

Constance Gibbs is a nerd culture writer, editor, aspiring TV writer, and Hufflepuff living in New York City. She is the Black Girl Nerds TV Editor and has written for The Nerds of Color, The Mary Sue, and Hello Giggles. You can find her mostly on Twitter (@ConStar24) or her website constarwrites.tv.

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.

Where Are All the Superheroines Who Are Getting Too Old For This Shit?

This guest post by Celey Schumer appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Sexism in Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. At this point, girl power, famous women starting their own production companies, and the call for more (and more three-dimensional) female characters, are all reaching fever pitch. Whether this cultural spotlight will result in an improved landscape for women in film and TV remains to be seen, but the optimist in me believes the needle is pointing generally upward.

Ageism is a natural part of this sexism conversation, yet it often gets added as one sentence of a larger “viral video.” The average age of leading women is 33 years old whereas the average age of leading men is 42 years old. In Dr. Martha Lauzen’s Celluloid Ceiling report looking at the top 100 grossing films of 2015, “the majority of female characters were in their 20s and 30s,” while “the majority of male characters were in their 30s and 40s.” Men 40 and over were “54% of all male characters” while women 40 and over were “34% of all female characters.” Looking at dialogue in film by gender and age, dialogue “decreases substantially” for women as they get older. The problem with this is that when we limit the ages (not to mention race, sexual orientation, and size) of characters that women can play, we severely limit our talent pool of badass female actors, and the longevity of their careers. It also erases the visibility of older women, underscoring the notion that only younger women matter.

Superhero films, the beast that keeps on beasting, are among the worst perpetrators of this double-standard. Here is one category for which the argument, “Well, what about Meryl Streep?” does not apply. Even in the rare superhero films with more gender-balanced casts, the age gap between male and female performers can be seen time and time again. Men are allowed to age, to become grizzled, world-weary with experience, or stew for years on a plot of vengeance. Lookin’ at you Ian McKellen, Robert Downey Jr., and Alfred Molina. Their women counterparts, however, must remain lithe, “hot,” and never over the age of 40. Seriously. Go ahead, try and find a superheroine or female supervillain over 40. I’ll wait. Great. Now that we’re all done pointing at Halle Berry as Storm — who was 46 at the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past — and Famke Janssen as Jean Grey/Phoenix — who was 41 at the release of X-Men: The Last Stand — let’s look at the bigger picture.

The most recent superhero behemoth, Captain America: Civil War features a leading cast of 11 men and 3 women. Don Cheadle/War Machine and Robert Downey Jr./Iron Man are the oldest male heroes at 51, with the youngest being 33-year-old Sebastian Stan/Winter Soldier and 19-year-old Tom Holland/Spider-Man. Scarlett Johansson/Black Widow is our oldest female hero, just edging out the TEENAGER Holland, at a ripe old 31 years of life. Elizabeth Olsen/Scarlet Witch is 27, and Emily VanCamp/Sharon Carter (not a superhero, but an important character who will seemingly get to kick ass later on) clocks in at 30. While Batman v. Superman features more women over 40 (Amy Adams/Lois Lane, Diane Lane/Martha Kent, and Holly Hunter/Senator June Finch), the only woman superhero is Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman, who is 30 years old.

We could run down the list of all major superhero releases of the past 15 years, but the script stays shockingly stable. Men play villains and heroes. Do-gooders and power-hungry scientists. Spry teens and grizzled vets. The women play heroes (sometimes), girlfriends (mostly), mothers (occasionally), and villains (rarely), usually between the ages of 23 and 37, and always before their mid-life crises. This is true for Guardians of the Galaxy where Glenn Close/Nova Prime’s 4 minutes of screen-time is almost single-handedly holding down the fort for women over 60, and isn’t even a “hero” per se; Sally Field/Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man films is the only other woman over 60. It is true for Ant-Man, where Evangeline Lilly — noted 36-year-old land-mermaid and future superhero Wasp — plays the ONLY female character that is not a 5-year-old child or nagging ex-wife. It is true in The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, every Thor film, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Man of Steel, and The Amazing Spider-Man reboots. Even the X-Men film series, the ensembliest of all ensembles, features male characters with a huge age range — from venerable older men Patrick Stewart/Professor X and McKellen/Magneto in their 70s, to bright-eyed teen Tye Sheridan/Cyclops — and female characters with a range from… uh… Halle Berry/Storm, Famke Janssen/Jean Grey, Rebecca Romijn/Mystique (under 40 for all films she was in) to 20-year-old Sophie Turner/Jean Grey. Wow, such range, very diverse. Ten points to Slytherin!

Now, I’m not saying these young, gorgeous, badass women should not get to play superheroines and supervillains, and that we need to recast every role with older women for the sake of age-diversity. Like much of Hollywood, and perhaps more than most, the superhero genre is built on pleasing aesthetics, tight costumes, and muscles, muscles, muscles. I get it. It’s why you bought the ticket. And I swooned as much as anyone during the Civil War helicopter scene.

The lack of diversity (gender, racial, LGBTQ, and disability) in Hollywood sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters is “staggering.” But why oh WHY can films manage to fit in a wider range of roles on only the male side of the script?! And shit, it’s not as if the male side of superhero movies are beacons of tactfully executed diversity, but they’re certainly “better” than the ladies, with more ages, body types, and races/ethnicities represented in men’s roles. Could it be because there are just MORE roles for men? That certainly helps. Or, is it because we can make our peace with a graying gentleman kicking ass, yet cannot fathom a “cool,” dangerously competent woman who is not also inconceivably fit, young, and gorgeous? If the absurdly tight leather costume fits…

There are fewer film roles for women, even fewer for women over 40, and EVEN FEWER for women over 40 in what is arguably the entertainment industry’s most profitable genre. With that in mind, is it any wonder so many actresses are willing to inject a little extra collagen or shave a few years off their high-school graduation date? We can do better. It’s about damn time we did.

Celey Schumer is an actress, comedian, and writer. She is embarrassingly good at Harry Potter and Friends trivia. Her degrees in physics (Middlebury College) and structural engineering (University of Washington) look very impressive while they collect dust. She was definitely not eating chocolate as she wrote this. You can follow her on Twitter @CeleySchumer.

Batgirl / Oracle: A Superheroine with a Disability and Representation

Barbara Gordon as Oracle is a more accurate and positive representation of people with disabilities. She’s way more real because despite the fact that she sometimes needs the help of more able-bodied people, like a real person living with paralysis from the waist down, she still lives a positive and active life.

This guest post written by Adam Sherman pears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

There aren’t a lot of superheroes with disabilities; many of the ones who do gain powers from their disabilities. Now, something many superhero stories never really have is permanence. Injury, in real life, can be quite permanent. But superheroes can often come back from the dead. So it was quite amazing to me that superhero Barbara Gordon (Batgirl/Oracle) was paralyzed from the waist down for twenty-three years.

Now, before I begin with why this is so important, I need to explain some things about my life and my family’s history. In 1952, paternal grandfather, Irving Sherman (who I know as Grandad,) came down with polio. Ironically, this was the same year that the second polio vaccine came out. In the very early days, he was even on an iron lung for a little while. In the end, he was unable to walk without crutches, yet still worked to support my grandmother and my father at Edgewood Arsenal. He is still alive, yet he was mostly deafened from his time in Europe during WWII and his polio leaves him unable to move from the living room to the dining room of his house without the aid of my grandmother.

My other grandad, Donald St. Germain (known to me as Grandpa St.,) also used crutches for most of his life as well as using a wheelchair at times. For the first part of his life, he was somewhat hard of hearing (and, we suspect, suffering from an undiagnosed learning disability.) Then, in the early sixties, he suffered a complicated series of accidents, diseases, and botched treatments. By 1964, the VA declared him a hundred percent disabled. Due to his lack of education, he was forced into the role of homemaker and stay-at-home dad while Grandma St. was the sole breadwinner.

I’m not sure when I noticed that popular media didn’t have very many people like my grandparents. I rarely see someone in popular media struggle to get up from a chair because they can’t work their legs or need to be helped into a car because their knees don’t bend, or need help getting dressed because they can’t stand. Film and television rarely depict characters with disabilities.

Like both of my grandfathers, people with disabilities do their best to support their families and themselves, despite being unable to do many of the things able-bodied people take for granted. My grandparents are heroes to me. People with disabilities deserve to see heroes that represent them.

Barbara Gordon is one of the few fictional characters I have seen that has provided an example of this type of heroism. From The Killing Joke, to DC’s 2011 recent reboot, she has been an active member of the DC universe. She led the Birds of Prey. She spied on supervillains. She has even coordinated The Justice League on many occasions. Yet some are not happy by Barbara Gordon’s transformation from Batgirl to Oracle.

The big issue, from what I understand, is how she lost the use of her legs, and what she was before that incident. Both of which are very thorny issues, and I can see how her transition from Batgirl to Oracle would upset people. She wasn’t the first female character in popular fiction to be brutally maimed or murdered just to shock an audience or motivate a male hero, but this, I think, was special. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl is a feminist icon. There is no getting around that. She could do anything Batman and Robin could do, from something as physically dangerous as kicking gun-wielding criminals in the face to things as mentally demanding as solving one of The Riddler’s terrifying traps. Not only that, but she did it well enough that Batman, a character not exactly famous for his reasonable expectations, deemed her worthy to wear the Bat-symbol.

In the comic The Killing Joke, The Joker shoots Barbara, causing her paralysis. Not only was she maimed, but it was to motivate her uncle, Comissioner Gordon. As pointed out by Barbara’s most iconic writer, Gail Simone, this isn’t an uncommon practice, as “Women in Refrigerators” is unfortunately a common trope with female characters killed (or raped or injured) for the sole purpose of motivating male characters. In fact, Alan Moore’s plot shocked artist Brian Bolland so much that he even mentioned it as one of his biggest regrets of The Killing Joke in his 2008 afterword.

Still, I think that the events of The Killing Joke made Barbara Gordon a much more interesting character. In her second act, she, like many real life people who suddenly find themselves disabled, had to struggle to find her place in the world all over again. For someone physically active like Barbara, the sudden struggle to deal with a lack of mobility is a huge blow to her self-esteem.

In Suicide Squad #23, Barbara reintroduces herself as Oracle. She goes on to become an information broker “gathering and disseminating intelligence to law enforcement organizations and members of the superhero community.” She continues to train and uses weapons such as firearms, fighting sticks, and batarangs.

Many superheroes with disabilities gain extra abilities. Daredevil can perceive the world in ways we can only dream of. Cyborg gets an awesome robot body that enables him to fly as well as have superhuman strength and stamina. You can even be forgiven for forgetting that Luke Skywalker is a cyborg, his artificial skin is so convincing.

Yet people who lose their limbs, or don’t have sight or hearing, or have any other physical or mobility or sensory disability, they don’t gain powers, they instead find ways to live with their disabilities. The characters mentioned above were power fantasies that rely on miracle cures or Stan Lee radiation. There’s nothing bad about that, it’s just Barbara Gordon as Oracle is a more accurate and positive representation of people with disabilities. She’s way more real because despite the fact that she sometimes needs the help of more able-bodied people, like a real person living with paralysis from the waist down, she still lives a positive and active life.

When I was first reading comics in the early 2000s, it felt like in certain comics it was inevitable that Oracle would show up and help with whatever needed doing. One of the biggest instances was during Infinite Crisis, when Ted Kord was running down a vast conspiracy (you know, average superhero stuff) one of the few people who believed him was Barbara Gordon. Early on in Harley Quinn’s spin-off comic, Barbara is even mentioned as a sort of boogeyman to costumed criminals. She also was the founding member and leader of The Birds of Prey.

However, the way I discovered her was that any time in the 1990s and 2000s that Batman got into trouble (Knightfall, Warzone, No Man’s Land, and Contaigon, to name a few), Oracle was one of the first people he would turn to for help. In every single Batman/Oracle team-up I’ve read, it has been outright stated that Batman completely trusts Oracle’s cyber abilities and it’s been implied that his investigations wouldn’t get anywhere without her help.

As a person who’s known people with disabilities, not just my grandparents but classmates as well, it is somewhat disturbing to notice that there are so few people with disabilities in popular media. Barbra Gordon filled a void in that area. I loved the idea that people who could literally break the world with their bare fists became reliant on someone who couldn’t move without the aid of a wheelchair. I also loved the idea of people like my grandparents getting someone to represent their identities and struggles. Yet, like a lot of comic lore I like (and a lot I don’t like,) this too has passed, as Barbara returns to being Batgirl, her mobility restored. I must admit, Gail Simone’s current run on Batgirl looks excellent, and I’m hearing rumors about a new Oracle. But we need more positive media representations of people with disabilities like Barbara Gordon.

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

Stop the Fridging: The Invisible Feminism of ‘Arrow’

So while ‘Arrow’ seems pretty reluctant to move away from the traditional stance on women existing to be love interests and to be rescued, the individual female characters themselves sometimes show some hints of progressiveness… if only they’d be allowed to live long enough!

This guest post written by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines. | Spoilers ahead for seasons 1-3.

Is TV series Arrow feminist? Being brutally honest, it almost certainly is not. Does Arrow have characters with feminist undertones, or female characters with more depth than meets the eye? Well, that’s where it gets more interesting.

The premise of Arrow reads incredibly similarly to that of Batman; rich and spoiled son of millionaire family undergoes a grueling, life-changing event which forces him to become a ‘good guy’ (unlike the playboy he was once) to save his city. Pre-Arrow Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) is a cheater, drug-taker, party-goer, and generally not a great guy. He is the epitome of the whole silver spoon thing, and not only this but he treats everyone in his life terribly. His parents (as he later learns) are both semi-responsible for a plot to destroy the poorest parts of Starling City, and this becomes his motivation to try and right the wrongs that his father (and his mother) did. It’s also clear that pre-Arrow Oliver didn’t have a lot of respect for women — cheating on his then girlfriend Laurel, with her sister Sara — and consequently almost getting himself and Sara killed in the boating accident that left him stranded on an island.

So where am I going with this? All things considered — Arrow is clearly not going to win any feminist awards any time soon. This is mostly because pretty much every single female character in the show is either related to Oliver (Moira, Thea) or has been romantically involved with him in some way (Helena, Laurel, Sara, Felicity, Shado, and Isabel have all had romantic relations with Oliver to some degree). The show also has a worrying trend of having its villains use the women characters as some sort of bait. I’m only on season three, but poor Laurel has been kidnapped 4 times since the show started! However, the representation of female heroism in Arrow starts to get a little more interesting from the end of season 1 with the introduction of at least 3 superheroine-type characters. Oliver also regularly comes into contact with supervillains, many of whom are women.

Shado

Chronologically, the first superheroine to appear in Arrow is Shado (Celina Jade). Technically, she isn’t actually a superheroine, but she is certainly super and saves Oliver’s life several times on the island so I think it’s safe to put in the category of superheroine. Shado is the daughter of Yao Fai — the man who first rescues Oliver when he is dying on the island. Her main reason for existence seems to be to ensure that her father toes the line, otherwise she will be killed. However, Shado quickly reveals that she is every bit as tough as her father when it comes to fighting — and single handedly rescues Slade and Oliver from certain death. She then goes on to teach Ollie pretty much everything he knows, including the whole slapping the water thing, and generally being useful with a bow and arrow. Shado is tough and strong, she’s obviously had some intense training and she’s a pretty cool character in general. That is, until two things happen. First, Oliver falls in love with her. We can understand this from Oliver’s perspective — at this point, he still behaves somewhat like the playboy he once was and in general terms, Shado is the only woman he has been in contact with in a long while. The issue is that 1) Shado falls for him (he’s a spoiled brat, ammiright!?) and that Slade also falls for Shado. Instead of seeing Shado as the strong and tough woman that she is, she becomes steadily reduced to the crux of an odd love triangle with one immature playboy and a man old enough to be her father.

Shado is also brutally murdered when Ivan forces Oliver to choose between saving her or Sara. This is the first of many ‘choose between two women you love’ scenarios that are set up for Oliver throughout the series, and this one is quite possibly the worst. Oliver doesn’t so much as choose Shado, but the whole event sends Slade spiraling into revenge city where he blames Oliver for the murder of the ‘love of his life.’ Reality check here; Shado is only the love of his life because Slade literally knew no other women. And also, she didn’t even love him back. Either way, Shado’s death is the sole reason for pretty much all of the events in the second season — so I guess it might be the most successful fridging of all time?

Fridging itself is boring, old, and a great waste of time but it feels even worse when you have a really wonderful female character with huge potential, who is killed only to further the storyline of a male character. It also doesn’t help that Shado was also murdered so that Sara (another superheroine type) could live. Which brings me to…

Sara (The Canary)

Sara (Caity Lotz), sister of Laurel and part-time lover of Oliver, was presumed dead along with Oliver when their boat sank off the coast of the island. Imagine everyone’s surprise when it turns out (like Oliver) Sara actually survived and is back in Starling City, also fighting crime. Imagine our even greater surprise when Sara turns out to be a fighting machine, fresh from The League of Assasins. Surprise!

Our first actual introduction to the new and improved Sara 2.0, is as her alter ego (fondly named The Canary). She saves a woman from a group of menacing looking men in a dark alleyway. I don’t believe this is by accident. Sara also takes care of Sin, Roy’s friend from The Glades, and it’s this protection of the women around her that make Sara an almost-feminist superheroine. As soon as her and Oliver are reunited in Starling City, it becomes immediately clear that Sara has been through a bit of a wringer – possibly even more so than Oliver. Sara (at some point in the last five years) was taken in by The League of Assassins and is riddled with guilt and anger about some of the things she was made to do whilst under their command. Sara wants to let her parents and Laurel know she is alive, but she is consumed by the things she has done to survive and is convinced she isn’t worthy of love from anyone — even her own family.

As we see in flashbacks, Sara was incredibly savvy to survive her ordeal aboard what was essentially an illegal prison ship. She knew how to play the game, and waited patiently for an opportunity to escape. Though her and Oliver reunited on the island, Sara has clearly changed and is prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive. The Sara that returns to Starling City five years later is equally prepared to do what is necessary – and this causes friction with Oliver’s sudden ‘no killing’ rule. Similarly to how Oliver’s family are often used as bait to coax him into situations as the Arrow, Sara’s family are also kidnapped and used as bait when The League of Assassins try to force Sara to rejoin them. Of course, it is the women members of Sara’s family that are kidnapped (her mother and Laurel).

Sadly, Sara’s story comes to an incredibly abrupt and untimely end. She makes it a few minutes into season 3 before she is killed, as witnessed by Laurel. For a character who had so much potential, and a captivating backstory — her demise was a little more than cold on behalf of the writers.

Felicity Smoak

Ah, Felicity Smoak . Poor, lovely Felicity. Oddball, geeky Felicity (played by Emily Bett Rickards) who somehow went from obscure computer girl to the object of Oliver’s affections within about thirty seconds at the end of season 2. Felicity is employed at Queen Consolidated (Oliver’s family’s company), and consequently joins team Arrow when Oliver realizes a) how smart she is and b) that she knows too much to not be on the team. If Diggle, Roy, and Oliver are the brawn of the group then Felicity is certainly the brain. She is proficient at hacking, tracking, and generally getting into other people’s computers or CCTV cameras when she shouldn’t be.

Something really odd happens to Felicity between working in the IT department in the basement of QC, and becoming part of team Arrow. It has a lot to do with the way she dresses. When Felicity is at QC, she dresses… well for work. She looks comfortable, she is wearing flats and she looks smart but not overdressed. As soon as Felicity begins working with Team Arrow, she is suddenly turning up to their basement lair in five inch heels and a dress suitable for a nightclub scenario. You could argue she is trying to blend in (the lair is situated underneath Oliver’s nightclub) but I can’t help thinking it’s more to do with Felicity (as the only recurring woman in Team Arrow) needing to be eye candy. Eye candy, which coincidentally ends up on Oliver’s arm. Which in itself isn’t inherently an issue, but Felicity’s character then became far less about her abilities and talents in the IT department — and far more about her relationship with Oliver. Apparently, as a woman, you cannot have both a career and a boyfriend.

I am only on the third season of Arrow but I’ve heard rumors that not many good things happen beyond that. Moira’s death at the end of the second season seemed to serve only to motivate both Oliver and Thea onward, which is just truly original use of fridging by the show’s writers. I guess the saddest thing about it is that Arrow has (or had) some truly unique and interesting female characters, but refused to do anything worthwhile with them.

Becky Kukla lives in London, works in documentary production/distribution to pay the bills and writes things about feminism, film and TV online in her spare time. You can find more of her work at her blog, femphile or on her twitter @kuklamoo.

Brown Girls Can Be Heroes Too: Why We Need a Ms. Marvel Movie

This guest post written by Bhavna Vasnani appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Fans of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow rejoiced when Marvel’s Kevin Feige finally raised the possibility of a Black Widow movie, which fans have been asking for for a long time now. It certainly is a cause for celebration: Black Widow has played a very significant role in almost all the Marvel movies so far, and she certainly deserves a full-fledged movie of her own. I was probably one of the few who wasn’t excited about this, though, because to me, a Black Widow movie just means yay, more movies about white superheroes!

Marvel may pride themselves on their diversity, but anyone taking a closer look at the racial makeup of the movies that have already aired would find them sorely lacking. Of the superheroes we’ve already seen on-screen, we have nine white characters, three Black men, three non-human characters voiced by white men, a green alien played by a Black woman, and a sentient tree voiced by a person of color (Vin Diesel, who is of ambiguous ethnicity). The recent Captain America: Civil War is an example of how overwhelmingly white the ensemble is, with only three non-white actors in the primary cast. Looking at the dismal number of women, the only Black actress in a major role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) so far is Zoe Saldana, who is painted green as Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. The others — Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Sharon Carter, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, and Peggy Carter, to name a few — are all white women.

Good job on your diversity, Marvel.

Anthony Mackie, who portrays Sam Wilson/Falcon in the MCU, has spoken up on the importance of having a diverse cast:

“I think we live in a day [and] age now where little black kids feel like they can’t connect to a character who doesn’t look like them. Or little girls feel like they can’t connect to a character who’s a guy, because they’re just different…It’s more so connecting about someone [sic] who looks like you, you know?”

As a Singaporean Indian, I grew up mostly on western media, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Angel, Sabrina the Teenage Witch… a lot of media with white leads and a predominantly white cast. Yet it never occurred to me until very recently in my 25-year life that I’d internalized the rather damaging notion that only white girls deserve to have their stories told. Only white girls can slay the patriarchy without breaking a nail. Only white girls get to be the heroes, and get to be heroes of their own stories. And the rest of us? We don’t matter.

The MCU in itself doesn’t do a very good job in diversity, but we can argue that the lack is somewhat made up in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The show has several people of color in prominent roles, including Asian-Americans, Black people, and Latinx characters. Chloe Bennet’s Daisy Johnson can be seen as the first Asian-American superhero on television, even though Bennet herself wonders why no one seems to consider her a superhero.

Yet despite the diversity, there’s still a lack of South Asians.

Yes, South Asian representation in Hollywood has increased in recent years, and, more importantly, has gone beyond the racist stereotypes we see in shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons — just take a look at Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Priyanka Chopra and Rahul Kohli, to name but a few. But there is also a need for South Asians to be represented in the superhero genre as well — why should we be left out of a genre that has blown up in popularity in recent years? China may be a major market for Marvel, but the Indian market is also important.

The Bollywood film industry is undoubtedly huge in India and is a part of every South Asian’s life, whether or not they actually live in South Asia. But it doesn’t offer much for women: in many, many films, women are relegated to the role of the sexy love interest, although there’s been a slow rise in the number of films that do away with this and bring in more rounded female characters in stories that do not revolve around the guy getting the girl. There have also been a lot of recent discussions on how Bollywood movies contribute to rape culture in India.

This is where we bring our discussion to Ms Marvel.

Kamala Khan is a Pakistani American teenage girl who discovers that she has superhuman powers after being exposed to Terrigen mist and takes on the name of Ms. Marvel, after her icon and role model Carol Danvers, who now goes by Captain Marvel. She’s a Muslim girl treading the lines between being American and Muslim and Pakistani, growing up in a house where her Muslim values seem incompatible with a typical American high school experience. She is a huge fan of the Avengers and writes fanfiction as well.

The first time I came across Kamala, I was blown away by how similar she was to me. This wasn’t the first time coming across a fangirl in fiction — Rainbow Rowell took care of that — but this was the first time a South Asian girl was depicted as a fangirl. Kamala’s struggle with the conflicting facets of her identity — Pakistani, American, Muslim, teenager, and later, inhuman — were so much like what I experience — minus the whole inhuman thing. And in a world rampant with Islamophobia, it is Kamala’s faith and religion that guide her when she’s lost.

Later on, she joins the Avengers, fighting alongside established names like Sam Wilson’s Captain America, Tony Stark’s Iron Man, and Jane Foster’s Thor, and fellow teenagers Miles Morales as Spider-Man and Sam Alexander as Nova — that’s a Black man, a white man, a white woman, a Black teenager and a Latinx teenager. With the inclusion of Kamala, that’s more diversity in the All New, All Different Avengers than we’ve seen in the MCU so far.

The issue with comics is that they aren’t as accessible as television shows or movies, which is why those who need Ms. Marvel may not have access to her… unless she makes the transition to the MCU. And she needs to make this transition, because it’s important for young South Asian girls to see that just because they’re South Asian doesn’t mean that they have to be relegated to the sidelines, to being the sidekick, to being the brainy Indian doctor, and so on. They can be superheroes too.

Kamala is also important because her struggles with the differing aspects of her identity are something that kids of South Asian immigrant parents deal with, especially when your parents are a Buzzfeed article come to life. The first issue sees Kamala sneaking out of her room at night to go to a party even though her parents have explicitly forbidden her to. Her desire to be a normal American teenager from Jersey City is at odds with her Pakistani heritage, and in embracing her superhero self as Ms. Marvel — rather than an imitation of Carol Danvers’ old identity — she embraces her identity as a Pakistani American teenager as well.

Since Iron Man was released in 2008, the MCU has become a brand name. What this means is that Marvel can afford to take risks in casting and in its lineup of movies. All we have to do is look at Guardians of the Galaxy for proof of this: Marvel took a risk with a lesser-known comic series, and it paid off, grossing $733.3 million. Marvel can afford to take risks, and yet, with the exception of Black Panther, they are sticking with the same formulaic stories revolving around white characters. We’re getting tired of the same old, Marvel — please give us the Ms. Marvel movie that we need and deserve.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Superheroines of Color and Empowerment in Fantasy on TV

Bhavna Vasnani is a Singaporean Indian, an English graduate, a former journalist, and a feminist. She’s also been a fangirl since before she knew what a fangirl was. She can be found tweeting @bhavvyyy intermittently and tumbling frequently.

How Does ‘Vixen’ Collide with Race, Gender, a Black Sense of Home, and the Video Vixen?

There is more to be said about how essentializing African identities around myth, folklore, the continent, and animals can impose limits on how Black people, particularly Black women, can be written, and how those Black characters are experienced in a more accessible, mainstream outlet. In other words, even Black superhero characters, carry the burden of limitations if the racial stereotypes outweigh the plot and character development.

This guest post written by Tara Betts appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

The web series Vixen, which will air a second season, started airing on CW Seed in August 2015, which led to a live-action appearance on the TV series Arrow. Vixen is the superhero alter-ego of Mari Jiwe McCabe (voiced by Megalyn Echikunwoke), whose powers involve taking on the abilities of animals. Unfortunately, Vixen is often cast as a hero collaborating with other superheroes and this rendering of Vixen is no exception. In some ways, she follows the tropes of previous superheroes. Comic book fans have definitely seen her as part of such animated and comic book coalitions as Suicide Squad, Checkmate, and Justice League Task Force. Mari is from a fictional African village called Zambesi, much like Black Panther’s home of Wakanda or Storm of the X-Men. Vixen is also bound to archetypes and folklore of African mythology with references to Vodun, Yoruba mythology, and Anansi the Trickster, a spider often evoked in storytelling who passes the Tantu Totem on to Mari’s people. Mari uses the power of the Tantu Totem to become the superhero Vixen.

Mari Jiwe McCabe/Vixen was created by Gerry Conway and Bob Oksner. Although many sources insist she appeared in Action Comics #521, she originally appeared in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #2, and was supposed to have her own series in 1978. Vixen eventually got a brief 5-issue comic series Vixen: The Return of the Lion written by G. Willow Wilson and drawn by Cafu, who also worked on Black Panther between December 2008-April 2009. Since then, Vixen has appeared in a host of different animated series, including Cartoon Network’s Justice League Unlimited, the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode “Gorillas in Our Midst,” and an episode of Teen Titans Go! Vamp, a variation on Vixen, appeared in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

In CW Seed’s rendition of Vixen, Mari’s older sister, Kuasa (voiced by Anika Noni Rose), attempts to assume the power of the totem by killing her with a spider bite in the village of Zambesi. This idea of protecting and maintaining the heritage of the village also appears in the comic book, and is stated by Mari when she returns to Detroit to get closer to her past and her identity with her foster father. In the first episode, The Arrow and The Flash pursue her and she evades them. The potential alliance between the three heroes is considered from the beginning, as well as Professor Macalester.

One telling moment occurs when Arrow names her “Vixen” as part of her sexiness, beauty, and athleticism, which becomes mildly problematic. Oliver/Arrow calls her “Vixen,” and Barry/Flash immediately wonders if he is referencing a smaller or medium female fox, but Oliver says, “No, she IS a fox. Look at her!” In that moment, he is talking more about her sexuality and beauty, rather than the powers she assumes as the show progresses. Although Oliver/Arrow does begin to gradually express awe for her abilities, the comment may make some women think of video vixens in hip hop videos, like bestselling author Karrine Steffans, Melyssa Ford, Buffie Carruth, Darlene Ortiz, and many, many other women. These women are feminine, curvy, and fashionable, much like our shapeshifting superhero Vixen. The sexual connotations of the cat forms she assumes, like the lion or cheetah, are emphasized less and placed on par with the forms of the eagle, elephant, rhino, and other supernatural giant beings that assist Vixen in battle. Yet Mari’s vocational choices (a model in most plotlines, and a budding fashion designer in the CW Seed series) point to the parallels with the aforementioned sultry vixens, who are often seen as silent, powerless, and sexually available by the hampering efforts of respectability politics.

However, Mari is consistently compelled to learn her history, protect her village, and find her strength, whether she is confident in her power, recurs frequently in these storylines, and she is often encouraged by male peers and protectors. In the comics, she meets Brother Tabo, an elder outside Zambesi who guards the shrine to Saint Amica. Vixen is startled to see that animals of all species, predators and prey, peacefully gather at the shrine. This plot alludes to how Saint Amica (Latin for “friend” or a “female friend”) practiced her faith by syncretizing a Christian god with other gods, which is another parallel with Vixen’s ability to call on the strengths of various animals. However, Brother Tabo is one of many men who assists Vixen in her adventures. Superman is affectionate with her and comes to her aid with the Justice League, even though she has to save him. In this new series, Mari’s stepfather bails her out of jail and then treats her tenderly as she confides in him about her frustrations with work and learning more about her own identity.

In January 2016, Laura Prudom at Variety noted that “Vixen is the first female superhero of color to headline her own show, albeit in animated form…” Representation and the need for diversity and inclusivity is a pivotal issue in media. This question of representation plays itself out in comic book conventions across the country, not to mention on social media. Even Ororo Munroe/Storm of the X-Men has yet to receive a headline in a movie of her own in spite of widespread recognition and popularity. While the argument may be that Vixen, Storm, and other women of color cannot hold their own in terms of maintaining an audience, the reality is that an audience cannot be built if the stories are never offered, developed, produced, and inevitably challenging some of the stereotypes and representations of women and Black people as these characters do (actually and potentially).

The social and political issues in Vixen have only begun to be addressed. In Vixen: The Return of the Lion, readers can see how the villain Aku Kwesi colludes with the external colonizing forces to attempt to make Zambesi a central point of control on the African continent. The CW Seed series centers on how Mari considers post-industrial Detroit as her village and home that requires her protection. So, what does that mean to protect your people, even if she is often in situations saving people she does not know? As an adopted daughter on the CW Seed show, there is room to broach the impact of defining oneself in a family structured through interracial adoption. Although Vixen’s animalistic appearance has been discussed in books like The Blacker The Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics & Sequential Art and Deborah Elizabeth Whaley’s Black Women in Sequence, there is more to be said about how essentializing African identities around myth, folklore, the continent, and animals can impose limits on how Black people, particularly Black women, can be written, and how those Black characters are experienced in a more accessible, mainstream outlet. In other words, even Black superhero characters, carry the burden of limitations if the racial stereotypes outweigh the plot and character development. In this case, Vixen has room for more episodes, a potential live-action series, and delving deeper into a host of issues on identity, power, and defining home.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Superheroines of Color and Empowerment in Fantasy on TV

Tara Betts is the author of two full-length poetry collections Break the Habit and Arc & Hue. She is also the author of the chapbooks 7 x 7: kwansabas (Backbone Press, 2015), the upcoming Never Been Lois Lane (dancing girl press, 2016), and the libretto THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali (Argus House/Winged City Press, 2013). Tara’s writing has appeared in FreezeRay Poetry, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, and PAC’N HEAT, an anthology of poems about Ms. Pac-Man. You can find out more about her work at her website. You can follow her on Twitter @tarabetts.

Why Black Widow Is the “Realest” Superheroine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Yes, Even After All Those Tropes)

It is this factor alone why Black Widow is so important. She is the longest standing female protagonist within the Marvel film franchise, having starred in ‘Iron Man 2,’ ‘The Avengers,’ ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier,’ ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and most recently, ‘Captain America: Civil War.’ She was the only female Avenger in both Avengers films (until Scarlet Witch switched sides at the end of ‘Age of Ultron’), and as such was subject to being the onscreen vessel of female representation in a superhero super-team otherwise occupied by straight white men.

This guest post written by Kayleigh Watson appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Black Widow: the original female Avenger. Actually, up until recently, she was the only female Avenger. Scarlett Johansson had her work cut out in carrying the unspoken burden of representing women everywhere in one of the highest profile, highest-grossing franchises to ever exist onscreen.

To date, her character has only ever been written by and directed by men. It is apparent that the linchpins of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are very male skewed, with the only woman currently having contributed to screenplays being Guardians of the Galaxy’s Nicole Perlman, who is returning for Captain Marvel alongside recent recruit Meg LeFauve. Perlman herself stated that writing Captain Marvel has been a far more stressful project than Guardians of the Galaxy ever was, and that she and LeFauve will catch themselves saying:

“‘Wait a minute, what are we saying [here] about women in power?’ Then we have to say, ‘Why are we getting so hung up on that? We should just tell the best story and build the best character.'”

As nice – and preferable – as that would be, it simply is not possible currently. Every woman onscreen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is a minority compared to the sheer amount of male characters and therefore automatically complicit in representing every woman, everywhere, all at once.

If there were more women, then this would be less of an issue, but with one female lead protagonist per area or sub-franchise within the MCU, it is simply not the case.

Let’s break it down; first, the love interests: Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, Iron Man franchise), Betty Ross (the never-to-be-seen-again Liv Tyler, The Incredible Hulk), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, Thor franchise), Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell, Captain America franchise); the “super-heroines”/allies: Gamora (Zoe Saldana, Guardians of the Galaxy), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen, Avengers: Age of Ultron/ Captain America: Civil War), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly, Ant-Man), Maria Hill (Colbie Smulders, as part of S.H.I.E.L.D).

And the antagonists: um, Nebula (Karen Gillan, Guardians of the Galaxy).

Of course, there is some crossover in the above – Scarlet Witch was once an active antagonist, whilst Peggy Carter morphed from Captain America’s (Chris Evans) sidekick to valued, rounded lead protagonist in the TV series Agent Carter (now regrettably cancelled after its second series) – but when it comes to the film series itself, female character progression is largely limited, unlike that of the male characters.

It is this factor alone why Black Widow is so important. She is the longest standing female protagonist within the Marvel film franchise, having starred in Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron and most recently, Captain America: Civil War. She was the only female Avenger in both films (until Scarlet Witch switched sides at the end of Age of Ultron), and as such was subject to being the onscreen vessel of female representation in a superhero super-team otherwise occupied by straight white men.

A lot of pressure rested on her shoulders and, for the most part, Joss Whedon — director and screenwriter of The Avengers, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, and a writer renowned for strong female representation in his work – got it right. Black Widow was proactive and strong; professionally, she was not treated any differently onscreen by any male character (outside of an aside near the start of the film where a Russian captor declares her “nothing but a pretty face”). She embodied a typically male approach to the role – a spy, a fighter, trusted with liaising and retrieving individuals. She was not referred to in a sexual manner. She was valued for what she brought to the table as an active participant in the narrative, which is, quite often, a rarity in itself.

Yet when we step back from the film itself and regard Black Widow, her relations, backstory, and aesthetics in regards to the wider narrative of the character, it is clear that not everything is as perfect as it initially seems.

Yes, she is the only woman serving in the Avengers in an Avengers film to date – though no doubt that is set to change with Scarlet Witch joining the fray in Captain America: Civil War. That’s tokenism, and let’s not even get started with the lack of racial representation within the two Avengers films. Next door to that, we find voyeurism, for as wonderfully as Scarlett Johansson manages to pull off that skin-tight cat-suit, do varying camera angles of her rear really benefit, well, anything (the same goes for the bare male torso, to a degree)? She is a visual Fighting Fuck Toy for the Male Gaze in a manner that Johansson has been for a large portion of her acting career, her attractiveness having her very often typecast as various femme fatales in films including The Spirit, Under The Skin, Her (yes, even her voice is that sexy).

Black Widow manages to be sultry in a subtle way, yet one of which her male counterparts never feel the need to be, for even when they are removing their shirts (hello Thor and Captain America), their partial nudity is never really as overtly sexual as the implied, fully-clothed, alluring physicality of Black Widow. Male nakedness, even when recognized by other characters – such as Portman’s reaction as Dr. Jane Foster in the first Thor film – is presented in some practical purpose, even if it’s merely a change of shirt. Black Widow’s sexual allure is ever-present, to the point of it making her a femme fatale, which is itself apt, given her implied dalliances with, at some point, every member of the original Avengers team bar Thor.

First appearing as Natalie Rushman, the sexy secretary alias (yes, really) of Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2 of whom Tony Stark takes an interest (Pepper Potts declares Rushman as a “very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit” waiting to happen), then as Black Widow in The Avengers, she flits from thereon in between that femme fatale mode to mothering figure. Following Hawkeye’s (Jeremy Renner) possession by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Black Widow makes it her personal (she owes him a debt) mission to wake him from his reverie, hinting at a less-than-professional past, whilst in Captain America: The Winter Soldier she and Cap share a tense bout of therapy whilst on mission.

Age of Ultron sees Johansson’s character haphazardly paired as the “beauty” in a “Beauty and the Beast” romance with green-eyed angry-guy the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); she is the only one capable of calming him — thanks to her womanly ways — and the two bond over perceiving themselves as a “monster,” she due to her forced sterilization as part of the Black Widow program and subsequent inability to bear children (thanks Joss Whedon, for this clumsy handling of backstory vs. sideplot) and he for more, er, obvious reasons.

So yes, we are left as of yet with a monstrous, mothering femme fatale. We appear to be ticking off tropes here, so it almost appears laughable that a single character has somehow managed to embody every perceivable onscreen female threat towards men. In Black Widow being such a threat to masculinity – via the presumptuous attempts to consume with her monstrously suffocating, simultaneously mothering and seductive ways – it is only natural that the camera attempts to regain control of her via its voyeuristic lens, right?

Wrong. For in their attempt to expand on Black Widow’s backstory – something that intrigued many fans due to her persistent lack of a solo venture – all Whedon and company have resulted in is a fetishization of her emotional trauma. As stated by Johansson, Black Widow “never made an active choice. [She’s] a product of other people’s imposition.” The fact that her backstory contains emotional trauma and systematic abuse is not a surprise. But for it to be so trivially handled in a high-octane superhero menagerie instead of a solo film presumes that the perceived (aka Male 60%: Female 40%) target audience merely has no time for women matters, but in reality perhaps that is just the writers. Even had it been handled as part of a Captain America or Iron Man sequel, odds are that it would have fared better, given there being less clamor per character for screen time, and for it to have been handled instead during one scene of an Avengers film is simply lazy.

So yes, in trying to regain control of the female Avenger, the lens has to make her a sexual object whilst the narrative fetishizes her as emotionally damaged and such, less than. Black Widow’s past is her weakness, and she always tries to make up for her dark days as an assassin; as both she and Loki allude to in The Avengers, she has red on her ledger. In working for espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D, she gets to make up for some of her murky past. She also serves the patriarchy, with it being an international, militarized organisation: this is a reconcile-or-die situation, and as such the character of Black Widow has effectively been tamed.

All of this sounds very ominous and, in reading this, you are probably wondering exactly why and how Black Widow can be perceived as the “realest” heroine within the MCU. The unfortunate truth is, despite her being the embodiment of so many tropes, she is the original female Avenger and equal (minus her and Hawkeye’s lack of supernatural ability – or expensive suits) to that of her male Avenger peers. She is not typically made a Damsel in Distress as love interests often are; she saves the other Avengers, albeit, occasionally in a mothering fashion. Throughout films she has been rounded out in a manner that many other token women of other MCU sub-franchises simply do not have the privilege of, and in that way, is it better that her character be fleshed-out in a contrived and melodramatic manner or not at all?

It is a tough call, but in Marvel films (not the television series) she is the only female character who surpasses one-dimensionality, and as sad as it is to say, in the MCU this is the best that we get.

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.

How Hawkgirl Saved Me

This guest post written by Maggie Slutzker appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

As a teenager, I was strictly a DC girl. My comic collection was World’s Finest, the Justice League, and everything Batman. I loved Justice League, Batman the Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and just about all of the accompanying movies. In my twenties, I still look back to those books and even watch those movies on occasion. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had, as an adult, about Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. (If you don’t know who Andrea Beaumont is, you need to check it out.)

But something’s happened to DC. They just can’t seem to get it together. They have embraced that gritty “realist” style that’s so fitting of Batman, and yet they seem to have forgotten the core values of their most prominent heroes. When I was fourteen, nothing would have made me happier than a Batman/Superman movie. And for Wonder Woman to be involved? I would have cried sweet tears of joy. My friends and I would have flocked to the theatre, and then celebrated afterward by watching all the animated movies.

Now, things are different. When DC announced Batman v. Superman, I only felt worry in the pit of my stomach — worry that, I might add, turned out to be completely justified. (Killing off Mercy Graves before we’ve even been introduced to her? Why don’t you kill all my hopes and dreams before I live them, too?) And with a Wonder Woman movie on the horizon, well, I have my hopes…but I know better than to expect greatness from DC’s live action movies anymore.

Does it sound like I take comics too seriously? Maybe so. Definitely so. But if you’re a fan yourself, you can understand how important heroes are, and the part they play in our lives. So while I’m apprehensively excited for (FINALLY) a Wonder Woman movie, this isn’t going to be about her. This is about my favorite chess-playing, mace-wielding, war-crying, winged superheroine role model: Shayera Hol.

Hawkgirl.

Say it too fast and it sounds like you’re saying “hot girl.” This was very frustrating to me as a kid when I tried to tell people who my favorite superhero was. Sometimes I would just give up and say “Batman,” because technically I knew more about him anyway. But my entire obsession with superheroes and comics stemmed from watching the Justice League cartoon, and loving Hawkgirl. Let me clarify here and now that the Hawkgirl I’m talking about is the hero from the TV series, and not the comics. When I became a fan, it was about 2005. At that time, I really wasn’t interested in learning about Hawkman. I couldn’t find a lot of comics that were solely about Hawkgirl, and when she was involved she wasn’t quite the Hawkgirl I knew from the cartoons. I had the damnedest time finding Hawkgirl action figures, which I was only able to track down at theme parks and the Toys R Us at Times Square. And why was she Hawkgirl instead of Hawkwoman? I can’t speak to that. Still, I loved her so much.

Martian Manhunter couldn’t read her mind. Batman couldn’t beat her at chess. Dr. Fate’s magic couldn’t touch her. Even Aquaman, that irritable Atlantean snob, had a healthy respect for her. She wielded her Nth metal mace with a war cry. She saw faith as a crutch, a sort of oppression, and she expressed confusion about it to Wonder Woman and Aquaman. She stood up to the evil god Exthultu when he came for Earth and Solomon Grundy’s soul. Her bond with Solomon Grundy would later draw her back to the show, after being cast out.

Wonder Woman was the explicitly feminist character on Justice League, and in a way one could argue that Hawkgirl was made out to be the stereotypical “cool girl” of the group. Some might say she was the yellow Power Ranger to Wonder Woman’s pink, but their personalities and their relationship developed beyond that. Both women were foreigners, but Wonder Woman was more warrior princess, where Hawkgirl saw herself as a soldier. While they were different, they were both always totally willing to go into battle for their friends, including each other. Hawkgirl had a stronger bond with the Flash, and of course, Green Lantern. She could also identify with Superman and Martian Manhunter, the other lost “aliens” of the group. And she had some of the best lines. When Wonder Woman said, “[Men] can’t possibly be that essential to your life,” Shayera said, “Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it.” When, for the millionth time, Flash said he was the fastest man alive, she said, “Which might explain why you can’t get a date.” And, for Toonami fans who remember, “You think I need this mace to take you down?”

Hawkgirl also fell for John Stewart, the Green Lantern. Thanks to the Joker, their love was fulfilled, unlike that of Wonder Woman and Batman. Theirs was an interracial relationship, and while the show never mentions race or explicitly makes it a source of conflict, it was meaningful that it was shown and that fans became invested in it. The two came, literally, from different planets, but both were fighters with military experience, strategic minds, and truth to their own selves. For cartoon characters, they shared amazing chemistry.

Hawkgirl’s storyline on the show became more important as Justice League came to its end, and Justice League Unlimited began. (Amazing opportunity, or huge mistake? I’ll let you decide.) Within the confines of the TV series, Shayera Hol turned out to be a spy sent from her home planet, Thanagar. In “Starcrossed,” everything the Justice League has come to know and trust crashes down on them. Just in case there’s someone reading this who plans to watch the series, I won’t go too deep into detail. I will only say that Shayera has to choose between destroying her new home, Earth, and leaving her old home completely vulnerable to death in battle. To get critical, the writers made it a little too much about Hawkgirl choosing between two men, but as we know from popular YA fiction, movie producers can’t get enough of love triangles.

As someone who would later try her hand in fields related to justice, I was taught some important lessons by the “Starcrossed” episodes. The first is that, no matter what mask you wear, Batman will always know who you truly are. The second is that when you’re torn between two people, places, or situations that you care about equally, you must be able to objectively look at what is right, and what is wrong. When Hawkgirl realizes that Earth will be destroyed, she changes course completely. She makes this final decision without religious faith, without unfair bias, and, first and foremost, with the protection of Earth’s citizens in mind. We have human politicians who can’t even do that.

For all of her flaws and perceived treachery, Hawkgirl’s faith in her team inspired me. In the episode “In Blackest Night,” John Stewart is accused of an unthinkable crime. This is before any romance, and Hawkgirl isn’t the first of the group who is certain that John didn’t do it — that would be Superman, ever the boy scout. But when Hawkgirl leaves the courtroom to find that John’s friends deserted him, she’s enraged at their near-instant abandonment. She fights them, and not long after, the Green Lantern Kilowog goes to John’s defense. Something glossed over in the series is that Hawkgirl is a detective; that was her job on Thanagar. Hawkgirl follows and investigates a witness that she can immediately tell is a liar, and this is ultimately what saves John from a completely unbelievable mistake. (I have many more thoughts about this episode, mainly that the justice system in space is just as unorganized as the ones here on Earth.) She goes on to earn the respect of the entire Green Lantern Corps.

Because of her skill, her loyalty, and her ethics, nearly everyone Hawkgirl ever came into conflict with in a work-related capacity would eventually come to respect her. Aquaman, for instance. Dr. Fate. Amazo. Wonder Woman, twice. The Green Lanterns. The connections and reconnections she made after “Starcrossed” speaks volumes. And when her Hawkgirl disguise is no longer an option, Shayera becomes a superhero without an alternate identity: she is simply herself.

Watching Justice League enhanced my female friendships. I specifically mention female friendships because there’s an overarching idea that when young girls get into comics — and video games for that matter — they do it to impress boys. Nothing could be further from the truth. (The only boy who influenced my love of superheroes was my little brother, who as a three-year-old spent at least a year dressed as Batman. We still call my dad Robin.) I forced my friends to watch Justice League with me, because that’s just what I did with shows and books that I love. Guess what? They loved it, too. My best friend and I decided we were Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl.

My best friend and I had long debates about different episodes. We spent hours upon hours creating our ideal live-action cast. When Hawkgirl addressed that Wonder Woman had to be magic to fight in that outfit, we appreciated it. We definitely shipped Batman and Superman. And, since Netflix wasn’t an option, my whole family got involved when I watched Justice League and Justice League Unlimited every week. When I excitedly anticipated Shayera’s return to the show, they understood. My mother was particularly furious when Shayera and Green Lantern’s romance didn’t get neatly wrapped up. Super powers or not, a good story is a good story.

It’s simple, really. Hawkgirl and superheroes lead us to love and inspiration. Even as fictional characters, they give us hope. It means a lot to be guided in that direction by someone who in some way shares your identity. Hawkgirl taught me to be observant. She taught me that it’s possible to come through trying times. She taught me that being able to think was just as important as being able to fight, and that good and evil aren’t always absolutes.

And when all else fails, grab your electric mace.

Maggie Slutzker is a writer and feminist living in New York. Check out her Facebook page, “A Little Something for the Ladies,” or follow her on Twitter @suchaslutzker.

‘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.