Television Has Long Upheld an Unspoken Rule: a Female Character May Be Beautiful Or Angry, but Never Both

PRETTY HURTS Television has long upheld an unspoken rule: A female character may be beautiful or angry, but never both. A handful of new shows prove that rules were made to be broken BY JULIA COOKE Shapely limbs swollen and wavering under longer dependent on men to be effective.” Woodley’s Jane runs hard and fast, flashing water, lipstick wiped off a pale mouth with a These days, injustice—often linked to the back to scenes of her rape and packing a gun in yellow sponge, blonde bangs caught in the zip- tangled ramifications of a heroine’s beauty— her purse to meet with a man who might be the per of a body bag: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s gives women license to take all sorts of juicy perpetrator. Their anger is nuanced, caused by 2016 short film What Happened to Her collects actions that are far more interesting than a range of situations, and on-screen they strug- images of dead women in a 15-minute montage killing. On Marvel’s Jessica Jones, it’s fury at gle to tame it into something else: self-defense, culled mostly from crime-based television dra- being raped and manipulated by the evil Kil- loyalty, grudges, power, career. mas. Throughout, men stand murmuring over grave that spurs the protagonist to become the The shift in representation aligns with the beautiful young white corpses. “You ever see righteously bitchy superhero she’s meant to increasing number of women behind cameras something like this?” a voice drawls. be. When her husband dumps her for his sec- in Hollywood. Harron points out that the ex- Conventional female beauty on crime shows retary, Midge Maisel on The Marvelous Mrs. ecutives who greenlit Alias Grace at both Net- has usually been treated more or less like this— Maisel—a woman who spent four years wak- flix and the CBC were women. Witherspoon, even when a woman doesn’t end up dead, she’s ing up before her husband to put her face on— Dern and co-star Nicole Kidman all recently a plot point that serves a man with a motiva- funnels her rage into a coarse and hilarious launched production companies. Last year tion. But these days, a lot of beautiful women on act as she pursues a career in stand-up com- marked the first time three women were nomi- television are getting angry instead of getting edy, a double no-no for a 1950s mother of two. nated for a best director Emmy—one of whom, killed. Anger is no longer an exclusively male On the Netflix/ Canadian Broadcasting Cor- Reed Morano, won for The Handmaid’s Tale. emotion or a flaw for a female character to over- poration series Alias Grace, the titular char- And if these shows conjured a zeitgeist come before finding her happy ending with a acter may or may not have helped kill her male throughout 2017, now, in the post–Harvey handsome man. Several recent series are prov- employer, but the show’s true pull is how the Weinstein moment, they look not only cathartic ing that a woman’s anger can be her own plot 19th century domestic servant twists and re- but prophetic. Anger, when expressed by such a point, a source of strength, a galvanizing force. vises tales of daily abasement and violence range of female characters, amplifies the point Shows starring angry heroines range from for the psychiatrist who hopes to understand that reacting to injustice doesn’t make a woman arty to commercial, realistic to fantastical, and possibly exonerate her. We see the anger crazy, no matter what she looks like. On-screen, “The thing about angry women is they’re just talking about it: ‘This is what was done to me.’ ” and they’re set in the past, present and future. shimmering beneath her placid expression, as in life, anger is a powerful energy that can And they’re garnering ratings, reviews and her milky skin and blue eyes. If she did com- begin the change by which one moves through awards—HBO’s Big Little Lies and Hulu’s The mit the crime, would we blame her? the world as agent rather than victim. Handmaid’s Tale took every major drama tro- “I didn’t think of anger as a motivating force, Their lessons spiral outside the TV universe phy offered at last year’s Emmys except best probably because I think women are always in strange and interesting ways. The second lead and supporting actor. Add in Amazon’s angry women,” says Alias Grace director Mary season of Jessica Jones will be helmed exclu- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, starring another Harron, whose previous films include Ameri- sively by female directors, and women—black angry woman, and the three shows dominated can Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol. “It’s a nor- women in particular—have reported negoti- the Golden Globes too. The list goes on: Alias mal response to circumstances.” ating pay raises after watching Molly do so on Grace, Jessica Jones, Insecure, Top of the It’s that very normalcy that makes the cur- Insecure. The cycle continues: women in posi- Lake, The Crown. rent surge of angry women on television so re- tions of power putting complex female char- Historically speaking, women on-screen markable. Even when anger is not the point of acters on-screen, encouraging more women to chose between anger and conventional physi- a plot or a character’s central trait, even when claim more power. cal beauty, and anger made beautiful women realism is cut by fantasy, on-screen women The lesson, pertinent to men and women, is crazy. Consider the snappy Carla from Cheers face situations that the average female viewer that the way toward change is through and not or the intimidating Dr. Miranda Bailey on early will recognize immediately. On Insecure high- over anger. But there’s more to it than that. Grey’s Anatomy, as opposed to the statuesque powered attorney Molly discovers that her white “The thing about angry women is they’re just women of Melrose Place, acting on their fury male colleague makes a whole lot more money talking about it,” says Harron of the current in lusciously insane ways. Columbia Univer- than she does. Big Little Lies, last year’s most moment in Hollywood. “Are they talking about sity film professor Hilary Brougher points out visible conflagration of entirely normal female it in extraordinary ways? No. They’re just talk- that MASH’s Major Margaret Houlihan became anger, cuts between the competitive moms of ing about it. ‘This is what was done to me.’ Peo- “pretty” within the show only in later seasons, Monterey, California. Reese Witherspoon’s ple think, Oh, it’s women with pitchforks. No, when her anger was no longer a plot point. Madeline seems to live in a highlighter-bright they’re just saying, ‘This happened.’ ” “We’re beginning to see angry women in a shimmer of barbed quips lit by her frustration Sometimes what’s labeled as anger, when it range of modalities—angry TV heroines can and uncertainty. Laura Dern’s fierce Renata comes from the fairer sex, isn’t anger at all; it’s be strategic, passive-aggressive, revolution- Klein, the doyenne of the working moms, just women asking to be heard, asking to nar- ary or compassionate,” says Brougher. “And throws her phone into the pool when cracks ap- rate their own stories, to shift What Happened while they may have male allies, they’re no pear in her finely cultivated all-ness. Shailene to Her to “what happened to me.” ■ PHOTO COLLAGE BY GLUEKIT 67.

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