"What we're engaged in is trying to distill whatever aspect of the human condition is appropriate for the story, and present it. I've always thought of acting as a kind of extra-dimensional anthropology. By which I mean we're in the business of people. People interest me: what motivates them; what inspires them and what makes them happy, what makes them sad. And we're all united by it, we're all united by it. We're all united by these feelings that we all feel at different times. The reason I became an actor is that I sat in the audience - in the cinema audience and also in audiences at the theatre, and I love it when you go to see something, and you enter as an individual and you leave as a group. Because you've all been bound together by the same experience."
Tom Hiddleston, on creating art
(Nerd HQ, SDCC 2013)
So I was driving home and something occurred to me that I want to write about real fast, because i am apparently incapable of experiencing moments of learning and NOT sharing it here.
I have been, over time, fond of making jokes about Kieron Gillen killing off Kate Bishop. To me, it’s a joke about cavalierly spoiling another writer’s work and filling that writer’s inbox up with concerned emails and asks. I do this because I love Kieron. He’s one of my dearest friends in comics and out and I am on any given day at any given time in awe of something he’s said or written somewhere. And because Actually Feeling Stuff is hard this is how I show affection. Or at least it was.
For whatever reason I was chewing it over in my head and I started to feel like Lucy with the football. I dunno about you or who you are or what you like but I don’t like feeling like Lucy with the football.
It doesn’t matter what I thought the joke was, it occurs to me that because Kate is Kate and not, say, Karl, it occurs to me that there’s another angle from which to view that joke from that makes it seem… well, mean-spirited. Because this is a thing that comics does to Kates. Frequently.
Which, uh, which is bullshit. And I’m sorry for not sensing that sooner.
So I’m not going to make that joke any more. And I promise nobody’s gonna off Kate so Clint can feel bad about it and do what needs to be done.
Not right now, I mean. Not while she’s carrying that baby.
KIDDING! KIDDING!
Okay, that was the last joke like that. I promise.
For those who don’t know, Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye (not to be confused with Clint Barton aka Hawkeye aka Hawkguy) has been featured pretty prominently in two popular marvel titles. One of them is Hawkeye which Matt Fraction (the OP) writes, which is about Kate and Clint being Hawkeye and what that title and role means (and also about pizza dogs and adorable things) and the other is Young Avengers, written by Kieron Gillen, which is about a group of young super heroes (and gay love).
What Mr. Fraction is saying here that is so awesome and so wonderfully insightful into the medium he is writing in, is that the jokes he makes about Kate being killed off in the other series she is in are far too reminiscent of a real problem in comics - the killing off of women for the pain and motivation of men - as he puts it, “so Clint can feel bad about it and do what needs to be done.”
The next line is a lovely jab at both plot twists and conservative politics, because Mr. Fraction is a wonderful man.
Even if death in Marvel comics doesn’t mean much, the idea that female characters, and the violence enacted on them are tools to further the plot of male characters is a problem, and it is one that Mr. Fraction clearly understands.
It just makes me really happy when people show awareness of the problematic tropes of their medium, and vow to work against them. Also of course that Kate will be around for a while longer.
Teen Wolf is often under fire around Tumblr for being as casually misogynistic as they come. The central women are all love interests or mothers. The female villains die horribly, where the male villains get backstories and development. Sometimes women seem to be gratuitously murdered just because. These accusations all may be true, but I think to call the show as a whole misogynistic is to miss one of the central themes of the show: matriarchy.
Teen Wolf, as far as I can tell, is about matriarchies. Specifically, it’s about matriarchy as an ideal and about the problems that arise when men grab for power that belongs by right to women. Which is to say, all the problems in the show.
This actually explains a lot. Everyone who’s raved about Frozen should read this.
Oh my god, this article. The writer of this article seems legit disappointed that the two mains of Frozen are not the Kate Beatonian “Strong Female Character.” While it doesn’t send me into belching globs of rage like I thought it might, I am tempted to waste the afternoon writing a strongly-worded rebuttal.
…but I won’t. Because today is sportsball.
Female characters that make mistakes = anti-feminist, ladies!
A good portion of what she writes is true about Frozen, but her strikes against it doesn’t have much to do with why I like that film. I like the film because, to me, it’s about escaping from your dumb well-intentioned-but-actually-friggin’-abusive biological parents and putting yourself in a place that you can heal. I don’t especially care if any other Disney movie managed to do that first. I like the way this movie did it, and it speaks to me and makes me feel stronger and less alone as a person.
Sometimes you just have to run away from everything, hide yourself in an ice castle, and learn that what you are isn’t terrible. Seeing this reinforced has made me a better, happier adult. The rest of the movie is just details.
Complaining that Elsa is a bad character because she doesn’t “take responsibility” both dramatically misses the point of her character arc completely and suggests to me a certain disturbing lack of empathy for people who actually deal with severe anxiety…
And saying that for Anna fixing her relationship with Elsa is a secondary goal because her second song is about love is… I mean… wow. Just. Wow.
Okay, kudos to everyone who got to the end of this piece of crap article. Wow.
This author, on top of whatever everyone else here said, clearly has no idea what theme and contrast are. What is Anna clumsy? because Elsa is too contained. They are contrasts. Duh? Like. What movie was this person watching?
Elsa doesn’t take responsibility? What - did she have to say those words on camera? Or does this author not know how to read emotion, motivation, or anything that isn’t stated.
And um. Love being Anna’s primary objective? Maybe this author was busy checking her watch when the conflict was resolved, what with the “true love” in the film being that between sisters.
But yeah, nothing outgrosses the fact that this author needs women to be perfect idealized “strong” characters with no flaws or actual traits.
Look at me, I am not a good female character (gender shit aside).
Oh, and the fact that they don’t think that showing that a male love interest can be predatory is important and a feminist message? Psh. John Smith was shown as nonpredatory. And Naveen, who came looking for money, ended up being a god guy after all.
More than half the questions I am asked are about the politics of the way I look. What it feels like to be not skinny/dark-skinned/a minority/not conventionally pretty/female/etc. It’s not very interesting to me, but I know it’s interesting to people reading an interview. Sometimes I get jealous of white male showrunners when 90 percent of their questions are about characters, story structure, creative inspiration, or, hell, even the business of getting a show on the air. Because as a result the interview of me reads like I’m interested only in talking about my outward appearance and the politics of being a minority and how I fit into Hollywood, blah blah blah. I want to shout, “Those were the only questions they asked!?
killing of women for a man’s pain is so lazy though, like it’s the easiest “character development jump starter” out there. it’s so formulaic. the woman—a daughter, a sister, a lover—dies. The man who loves her, be it her father or her brother or her husband or boyfriend, undergoes intense pain and radical change. Boring.
Instead of killing women, let them live.
Let Jennifer Blake survive Peter Hale and burn Beacon Hills down around them, forcing Derek to chose where his loyalties lie. Let her grow even stronger among the magic in Beacon Hills and slaughter anyone who would dare take what’s hers.
Let Andrea Harrison make it through Woodbury colder and harder and still stunningly compassionate; she won’t make the mistake of trusting a stranger again but she’ll also become a symbol, the woman who won a war with kindness and understanding rather than bullets.
Let Tara Knowles survive Gemma and fight again for her sons, and her husband, and her own life; force her husband to chose between his mother and the club that’s killed his fathers and his friends or his wife who will leave him and his sons. Let Tara live and put her life back together; let her raise her boys right, to be good and proud and strong.
Let Debra Parker outlive Joe Carroll and dismantle his cult by pieces; let her rescue the ones he’s taken and go out into the world and do it again and again and again.
Let Shmi Skywalker walk out of the desert unbroken; let her kindness save her son and spare the galaxy 25 years of darkness.
Let Padme Amidala rise from the ashes of Mustafar; let her fight a war with as much strength and fervor as her fallen husband; let her raise her children to be good and just and true but to never forget where they came from; let her triumph over the Sith and see her Republic returned to her.
Let Frigga slip past Malekith’s blade; let her see through Loki’s illusions and take her son in hand again; let her keep the nine realms safe and balanced through her wisdom and cleverness and magic.
Let Mary Winchester shove a magic knife through Azazel’s chest in their bedroom; let her drive away the hellhounds; let her raise her boys to normal, happy lives.
Let all the women who are murdered for their crime-fighting husbands live; let them defeat their would-be killers and put their angsty husbands to same.
Let all the superheroes’ girlfriends escape a villain’s revenge; let them dodge bullets and death rays and assassin’s knives; let them unmask those villains, let them talk those villains down, let them trample those villains to dust so they never, ever rise again.
Stop cutting women into pieces for a man’s tears. Stop hacking us apart to spur men into action. Stop choking us, stop beating us, stop slitting our throats in our sleep.
Be interesting. Let the woman live. Give her her own strengths and weaknesses and flaws and motivations instead of a knife in the back.
Just think, how much more interesting is the story if the woman’s out on the battlefield instead of stuck inside the refrigerator?
sometime I just think about how easy it would be to market superheroes toward little girls and I am filled with rage
like do these people not realize how fucking easy this shit would be
there’s the dazzler she’s like a popstar and a superhero do you know how many 4-12 year old girls would dig that shit
there’s the wasp and her superpowers are seriously like zapping jerks, flying, and being cuter than everybody else. also she’s a famous fashion designer. and she’s better than you. (like she shrinks and stuff too but mainly her power is being better than you)
she-hulk is like this nerdy chick with the power to get bigger and greener and be spontaneously tougher than everybody in the vicinity like I don’t even know a little girl who wouldn’t slit someone’s throat for the ability to be stronger than all the boys when they pissed her off
little girl likes magic? scarlet witch
little girl likes science? invisible woman
little girl likes spies? black widow
little girl likes aliens? karolina dean
little girl likes bionic arms? misty knight
little girl likes flying horses? wow. guess who has one of those? valkyrie. valkyrie does.
My point is that’s it’s so fucking easy so chop-chop, Marvel, get on it. Seriously, I went ten years of my life thinking superheroes were boys. That’s ten years of you not profiting off of my inability to refrain from buying even the crappiest merchandise you offer if it has a character I love on it. Little girls are an enormous market; they will buy all your shit if you just suggest to them that maybe they’d like to.
or you could just keep on not profiting when you could be making money selling literally any object that has enough space to plaster a female superhero’s face on it. that’s cool too.
how can you complain about “mary sue” characters when 90% of mainstream male characters are perfect strong heroes who save the day and “get the girl” but you can’t let a female character be the same without being mocked or having something fucking horrible happen to her you whiny fucking babies
I’m allowed to complain about Mary Sues because 1) I complain about those male characters all the time 2) those male characters are giving unequal depth to the female ones I’m complain about 3) Gary Stus are called out ALL the time - Batman’s Gary Stu-ness is an IN CANON JOKE 4) asking for well-written female characters is not anti-feminist like I can’t believe I even have to say this and insisting that we treat badly written women characters as equally awesome as well-written male ones will not help the cause.
My 5-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl.
The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.)
But my daughter was determined. She liked the story pretty well so far, but Bilbo was definitely a girl. So would I please start reading the book the right way? I hesitated. I imagined Tolkien spinning in his grave. I imagined mean letters from his testy estate. I imagined the story getting as lost in gender distinctions as dwarves in the Mirkwood.
Then I thought: What the hell, it’s just a pronoun. My daughter wants Bilbo to be a girl, so a girl she will be. And you know what? The switch was easy. Bilbo, it turns out, makes a terrific heroine. She’s tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits to make off with a spectacular piece of jewelry. Perhaps most importantly, she never makes an issue of her gender—and neither does anyone else.
This is something of a dead horse, but while we are posting our definitive opinion on things, we might as well have at it. This issue is not just important to me, it’s a necessary step towards creating good narrative, so it really must be covered. It would be an understatement to say I feel passionately about this. Women and storytelling is pretty much all I care about, because “female characters” and “characters” are one and the same thing.
The (not) in the title of this post indicates an order of operations, as in mathematics. Pretty much, it’s to call attention to the way in which Mako Mori is not your “strong feminist heroine,“ according to some, and why this is a problem with the way we think and speak about “strong feminist heroines.”
Several of the feminist critiques of Mako Mori have expressed the opinion that Mako is somehow less of a character due to the fat that she has fewer lines compared to her male co-stars. The argument appears to run that, despite being front and center for the entirety of the movie, in order for Mako to be considered a “strong feminist heroine,“ she needed to be talking as much as Stacker, Raleigh, Chuck, and Herc in addition to the way in which she is established as a character in her own right.
This strikes me as odd: Mako Mori, who ostensibly embodies a kind of warrior archetype that is less common in western media; who demonstrates martial and technical skill exceeding, or on par with, her male counterparts; who helps provide the emotional ground for the whole narrative; and who demonstrates a strength that, in my opinion, is exceeded only by Stacker Pentecost, is not a “strong feminist heroine” because she doesn’t have many lines? I am not sure that this is a critique that we can carry to it’s logical conclusion.
One of the primary problems that I see with this critique is that it assumes a certain kind of strength is necessary for the presentation of a “strong feminist heroine,“ and the expression of that strength is not only through the actions that the character takes within the narrative, but how vocal the character is within the narrative. To this end, these critiques seem to make the argument that the actions Mako takes during the narrative of Pacific Rim (piloting a Jaeger, accepting the loss of her family, accepting the loss of stacker) are somehow diminished because she didn’t contribute to the dialogue.
Against this, I offer that Mako’s very silence is what defines her strength. Too often we assume that strength is assertive, it is something that pushes out into the world. In the case of the “strong feminist heroine” articulated by critiques of Mako, she lacked the strength (some might even say agency) to project her voice out into a narrative dominated by men. However, this ignores the possibility of an internal, non-assertive strength, the kind possessed by Mako and made manifest in several scenes throughout Pacific Rim.
As I, and others, have pointed out, her statement to Raleigh, “It’s not obedience, it’s respect,“ indicates a kind of inner strength to set aside ones desires for the sake of the group. Students of Japanese culture will note, generally, that this is the kind of internal fortitude that makes up some of the best Japanese characters, and I would count Mako Mori among them. As an example from Japanese literature, I would point to Tomoe Goezen (one of the more notable onna-bugeisha) in the Heikei Monogatari. At the defeat of her commander’s army, she was willing to lay down her life so that she could die honorably with her commander. In turn, her commander orders her to depart the field against her wishes. Granted, in the context of the Heike Monogatari, the order was given because the commander did not wish to be responsible for her death, however, the implication was that her life (as a warrior) was too valuable to waste in seppuku at that battle.
Out of respect, and against her wishes, Goezen flees the battle. This is the kind of strength that Mako Mori possesses, and it is a characteristic of all good Samurai and all good deshi to their Sensei. We can see this kind of strength emerge again when Stacker is preparing for his final ride, just before declaring that they are “cancelling the apocalypse.” When Stacker asserts that he will be piloting the mission, despite it leading to his death, Mako accepts his decision without question, and further assents to defend him (to the death is implied) while he completes the mission. To knowingly allow your commander, your Sensei, and your father to walk to his own death and simply accept his decision requires a kind of strength that cannot be articulated in mere dialogue, it must be demonstrated through action.
This strength through respect is further demonstrated by the way in which she accepts, rather than protests, Stacker’s decision to ground her following the near disaster in the synchronization test with Gipsy Danger. We, as American viewers, are used to our “hero" characters fighting for their chance to prove their value, to prove that they are right. Raleigh embodies this kind of mentality when he argues for Mako (actually, we might read Raleigh’s staunch defense of Mako as recognizing that she possesses the kind of strength needed to do what is necessary) to be his co-pilot, throwing everything he has against Stacker. We’re used to seeing this assertive strength as “true strength" as opposed to Mako’s more internal, composed strength.
To belabor the point, Mako further possesses enough mental strength to suck Raleigh into her own memory. There are some who might deride an “in universe" plot exposition point as a example of a female character’s strength, with something like, “oh, we needed that scene to explain Stacker’s relationship with Mako.“ However, the dialogue in the sequence clearly indicates that Mako’s connection to Gipsy was too strong for them to disconnect. Let me put it another way, Raleigh is the more experienced pilot, and has “flown” Gipsy before so it would be logical to assume that his connection would be stronger than Mako’s. In fact, it appears the reverse is the case: Mako, on her first connection with Gipsy, manages to overpower Raleigh’s own connection and draw him into the memory.
Now, again, since Raleigh fell out of synch with Gipsy and Mako first, it would be logical to assume that Mako (as the inexperienced pilot) would be pulled into Raleigh’s memories. Instead, Mako’s falling out of synch pulls Raleigh into her own memories, despite the fact that he had regained his connection with Gipsy Danger and was aware of what was going on. I may be overly charitable to the film, but all in universe evidence points to Mako being a stronger and more capable pilot than Raleigh himself: “51 drops, 51 kills" in the simulator. I’m willing to hazard that Mako’s lack of dialogue as a factor which denies her the status of “strong feminist heorine,“ is on shaky legs.
The deathblow to this critique of Mako Mori does not come from within the narrative, but is aimed at our presuppositions about strength. Again, in our Western framework, we assume strength must always equate to assertion, a kind of aggressive devil may care attitude that is embodied by characters like Raleigh and Chuck Hanson. In contrast, Mako Mori provides us with a kind of inner cultivated strength that stands out in stark relief to our cowboy hero archetype. For me, this points to the insufficiency of the characterization of strength always pushing outwards against the world, seeking to enforce its will upon the world. Strength, of character, of will, can be internal: a control over oneself and one’s emotions despite the turmoil that one finds themselves embroiled in.
This is the kind of strength that we see in Mako. Even at her most “emotional” during the compatibility dialogue, a point that Stacker notes, she is still in control over her body, her feelings, and the fight itself. We might further see this internal strength resulting in the focusing of her desire for revenge, her emotional trauma, into the deathblow that takes down otachi: when Raleigh seems all but willing to give up as Gipsy is dragged into the air, it is Mako who finds the way, and Mako who delivers the deathblow as the articulation of her emotions into a single focused strike: “watashi no kazoku no tame ni,“ indeed.
I make a point of the single strike for a good reason: typically, when one exacts revenge for the death of one’s family, we see it as “the beatdown.” The character in question vents their trauma in a rain of blows that often continues after the object of their vengeance is dead. We see this in movies all the time: the hero empties an entire magazine into a fallen foe or continues to pummel the enemy long after they are unconscious. For Mako, it is a single, focused strike that ends the battle: she has the strength of character not to waste energy venting her rage on Otachi, she gets the job done, and has her satisfaction.
For all of the above reasons Mako Mori is (not) your “strong feminist heroine,“ and it is not out of any deficiency in her characterization, but an inability of the concept of “strength” to recognize the kind of strength that Mako embodies. In short, Mako Mori demonstrates the degree to which our notion of a “strong feminist heroine" is insufficient and needs to be adjusted.