Transcript of Heroines
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1 You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief, I’m Eric Molinsky. There’s a term that gets used a lot in sci-fi fantasy criticism: the strong female character. And that’s with air quotes. JAN: Well, there’s usually only one, you can’t have more than one because then that will upset power of the entire universe. Jan Combopiano is a senior vice president at Catalyst, a non-profit that works to advance women and business – and she’s a big sci-fi fan. JAN: It feels like oh she’s there so we can move on. We don’t have to know anything about her, She doesn’t have to have a history. LINDSAY: She don’t need no man. But she will find one. That will be part of her arc. Lindsay Ellis is a media critic. LINDSAY: She often likes to shit on other women to prove what a badass she is, and she tends to resent whenever people point out her woman-i-ness. A lot of time the quote strong female character is like you’re playing a video game and she just drops out of the sky. And she’s just standing there. LINDSAY: Da da da da. Yeah, she’s just standing there with fists up already, her ponytail, she’s just ready to fight. CAROLYN: A trope I hate, I have five brothers, my Dad was in the army, her abilities were always explained away she got them from a man. And here’s Carolyn Cox, an editors at the website, The Mary Sue. CAROLYN: And she’s gorgeous and flawless at the same time, no matter what life- threatening situation she’s in, she has time to shave her armpits. And after all her tough talk and great hygiene, she ends up being a damsel that the hero has to save. 2 JAN: She has to earn his attention. And once she’s earned it. She’s the chick, she’s the girl, she’s the thing he has to save to prove his manhood. He becomes a better hero because he saves such a strong person. Look, I’m a guy, and this really bugs me. I love these movies, and I get frustrated when one of the main characters is boring and underwritten, and it’s obvious that their lack of character development comes from a place of fear. And I’m honestly shocked at the way the studios refuse to make toys of the female heroines. The execs argue well, girls don’t buy action figures – and everyone who complains is just citing anecdotal evidence. Well, here’s some anecdotal evidence. I was at New York Comic Con last fall and there were there several huge displays of every Lego mini figure you could imagine – of the male characters. While I was there looking around, several girls came up and asked for Batgirl, Supergirl, Wonder Woman – and even the villains, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. They had only made a few and sold out that day -- the first day of Comic Con. The girls walked away disappointed. The studios also claim that women will see movies about men, but men don’t see movies that star women. When you bring up the Alien franchise or The Hunger Games, they dismiss them as flukes. So that was the state of frustration until this summer, when something happened that was really surprising to me. A few films came out featuring “strong female characters” – and who write about sci-fi and fantasy, who I like to read regularly, disagreed with each other about these characters, and whether they should even rethink the whole problem. Now the only way to talk about this subject to go heavy on the spoilers because this debate is all about what happens in these films. So first I want to talk about Avengers: Age of Ultron. Since Iron Man 2, Scarlet Johansson has been playing Natasha Romanov, aka Black Widow, a former Russian spy who now works for us. In the first Avengers movie, the villain Loki tells her that he knows all the bad stuff she’s done. CLIP: AVENGERS 3 A lot of Black Widow fans were curious – what is this big weight that she has on her shoulders? The answer was not what they were expecting. In the sequel Age of Ultron, there’s a budding romance between Natasha and Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk. And when he tells her they can’t be together because he could never be a husband or father. She reveals that the final stage of her training to be an assassin – she was sterilized. And then she says, “You’re not the only monster on the team.” JAN: And all I can think of is wait, what? You’re a monster because of what? No, this is really not happening, this isn’t her. Jan Combopiano was one of the many Black Widow fans that were upset. JAN: It’s not saying that it’s bad, that she wants to be a mother, if that was the story and we had seen steps in previous movies that she wanted to be a mother then it wouldn’t have been so shocking, but it came out of nowhere. That reveal about what happened to her in red room was awful and if stopped there without the monster comment, I don’t think we would’ve had this Twitter war. I don’t know that we would’ve had quite as much vehemence about it. Although the “are we gods and monsters?” theme does come up, like all characters at some point do wrestle with am I a god or a monster? JAN: I mean they both could be considered a monster, especially him. He’s a big green guy who destroys city – that’s probably the definition of a monster. Her because of her red ledger, she’s being going around killing people for the KGB or whatever all these years, she could be a monster but the fact she’s a monster because she can’t have children? I don’t know, the connection that you’re a god because you create something? That’s Tony Starks story, he creates Ultron, and he creates The Vision. Right, Jarvis. JAN: Right. Thor is a god! But Black Widow and Hawkeye, they’re supposed to be people. She’s an awesome person. She’s always quick with a quip, she’s very funny, she’s very smart. To me it felt like a slap in the face to her as a character. But a lot of women saw that scene differently, like Carolyn Cox. 4 CAROLYN: That scene in particular didn’t offend me, the way it was framed, it wasn’t being shown all women feel this way, one individual sharing her experience as opposed to Jurassic World, Bryce Dallas Howard is firm she doesn’t want to be a mother, everyone makes her out to be a monster for that and I appreciated Age of Ultron one woman’s perspective. But that wasn’t the end of it. During the press junket, a reporter asked Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans if they were bothered that after fans speculated that she might hook up with either of their characters, now she’s being paired up with Bruce Banner. They were clearly bored and punchy after a long day, and joked that she was a slut and a whore. And that sparked a social media firestorm. Chris Evans issued a sincere apology, but Jeremy Renner thought the whole thing was ridiculous. They were joking, she’s a fictional character, why is this a big deal? CAROLYN: I think it was very clear how little grey area is afforded to her. In that interview called her a slut that is how women, we’re not allowed to go in between to be ambiguous about what partners in real life humans flirt with someone, wind up with someone lese, lone female character is a slut or promiscuous, that would never happen with Tony Stark. JAN: There are so many double binds for women. They can’t be too caring and soft because then they’re wimps and they’re not a strong female but if they’re too strong and too ballsy then people don’t like them, so they have to navigate this really narrow bridge between both of those. Male characters can be complete assholes and no one cares. What surprised me most about this whole discussion was that I didn’t know so many women felt a strong connection with Black Widow. I thought she was another “strong female character” that had to be perfect. I didn’t get the nuance of what made her special – that so few heroines ever get a dark past with a redemption story. I felt the same way about Furiosa, Charlize Theron’s character in Mad Max: Fury Road – I thought she was just another strong female character. So I asked Lindsay Ellis, what did I miss? LINDSAY: She does get hurt and physically really feels it and she needs Max like that last really long chase scene of them saving each other 26 times, which I thought was 5 great, they defeat the bad guy together but it’s ultimately Furiosa’s story so she pulls the thingie out of the bad guy’s mouth. The thingie is his menacing breathing apparatus. In that movie, Furiosa has escaped the clutches of a post-apocalyptic warlord called Imorton Joe.