This post is a response to this
brilliant, BRILLIANT article in the New Statesman about Strong Female
Characters. I agree with every word in that article, but I also have
problems with large sections of it.
To summarise, the author of the New
Statesman piece points out that many female characters these days are
apparently “strong”, in that they know kung fu and don't need to
be rescued that often, but are nevertheless much more simple,
one-dimensional and boring than their male lead character
counterparts. Moreover, there are still many fewer female characters
of all kinds, including lead characters, villains and smaller parts,
and they tend to represent a much smaller segment of possible
character traits and are generally less interesting overall. Just
having a few token “strong” characters is no substitute for
proper equality. Plus, to even establish their “strength” in the
first place, they often have to do crazy stuff that a man would never
have to do (a point made with reference to the Captain America
movie).
I couldn't agree more. It's so
frustrating to watch film after film where the token love interest
has a scene at the start where she beats up a few bad guys to
establish her “strength” and then does nothing else for the rest
of the film other than serve the plot requirements of a story
entirely about the male lead. Take the new Wolverine film, where that
happens with both the female leads. Or Pacific Rim. Or Despicable Me
2. Or Now You See Me. Or the latest Star Trek. I'm literally just
naming the last films I've seen in the cinema (other than Alpha Papa
and The World's End, which are both about men), and they all fit that
mould.
Still, I couldn't help feeling like the
New Statesman article was aimed at these mainstream films more than
at pop culture spheres where anyone actually cares about concepts
like Strong Female Characters. The SFC term itself is most closely
associated – at least in my mind – with the works of a certain J
Whedon, who has created dozens of brilliant and multi-dimensional
women characters. It was a little irksome, truth be told, that the New
Statesman piece used one of them – Buffy Summers – as its
accompanying image, when it could easily have chosen a much more apt
faux-strong character. Buffy is genuinely strong - not just in that she knows kung-fu and
has super-strength. She's also strong in every other aspect of
her character, including in her weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which
are manifold. She's a cult hero not because she kicks ass, but
because her fans have followed her for seven series (nine if you read
the comics) and are deeply invested in her epic and fascinating
character development and story arc. Unlike the useless kung-fu
princesses of the big screen, Buffy is the main character in her show
– she defines the world she lives in rather than vice versa.
My point is not to disprove the rule
with a rare exception, but rather to suggest that the New Statesman
piece has perhaps redefined the Strong Female Character concept in
order to make a different – if completely valid and useful –
point. The redefinition is useful for making this point, but it's
perhaps unintentionally counterproductive in other regards. “Strong Female
Character” was a term that Whedon fans adopted in order to rave
about Buffy Summers (and Willow. And Cordelia. And Fred, Zoe, River,
Echo and everyone else from the Whedonverse) – it was a term used
to express the radical and exciting idea that female characters could
be just as awesome and amenable to fan-obsession as male ones. It was never supposed to be used to praise the simple, one-dimensional "strength" discussed in the New Statesman.
And this Buffy-inspired SFC idea has
had a lot of success. In the geek circles in which it has currency,
it has had a huge amount of influence. Writers inspired by Buffy and
similar characters have gone on to create a proliferation of *real*
SFCs – each as wonderful as Buffy. Take comic books. To read
post-Whedon X-men comics, for example, is to dive into a magical
utopian parallel universe where character gender parity has been
utterly achieved. Leads, supports, minor characters, villains and
everything in between are just as likely to be female as male. The
current cast includes heroes such as Storm, Kitty Pryde, Rogue,
Husk, Psyloche, Emma Frost, Danger, Danni Moonstar, Magma, Wolfsbane,
Karma, Magik, Jubilee, Polaris, Domino, Armour, X-23, Mercury, Dust, Surge, Hope and Rachel Summers and more (to
just scratch the surface) – every one of whom represents an
extremely well-developed and unique SFC who fits into an important
part of the X-men story. Together they cover the whole spectrum of
possible character traits. Christ, there's even one X-men title that's an entirely female line-up, and it doesn't feel weird at all!
Proper
SFCs have appeared in all kinds of (mostly nerdy) media, from TV to
webseries to videogames to novels, and they are beloved by fans at comic cons
across the world. The problem is not that SFCs don't work, or that they inherently represent inequality. The problem, as the New Statesman piece shows,
is that they aren't yet in Hollywood. Marvel's cinematic universe is
still completely SFC-free, which is insane considering the range of characters it could draw on. DC almost made it with Anne Hathaway's Cat Woman, but lost
it again with a rubbish Lois Lane.
What's
needed is not a dismissal of or hatred towards SFCs, but a call for
mainstream films to embrace them and to properly understand what they entail. Yes, we must hammer home the point
that knowledge of kung fu alone does not qualify. “Strength” in a
female (or any) character was never about physical power, it was
always about the depth of a character and how much the film made us
care about them. It's time to take the Buffy revolution to a wider
audience.
