beehammer | On the many permutations of female characters

I think one of the biggest problems I have when it comes to writing about female characters is the difference between the character herself and the handling of the character by the (usually male) writer/director/etc.*

You criticize a particular writer or director's handling of the character, and it very easily gets read as a critique of the character herself. (Which may or may not be warranted, but it's a little besides the point in that particular moment.) I mean, I've actually seen a few essays now that complain about the fact that a director's paid a fair amount of attention to making a female character a meaty character instead of a literal prop (yay, right?), but then hasn't bothered to actually do anything character-y with her. Like, "Yeah! You've got a complicated backstory and a morally ambiguous motivation and relationships that don't involve the hero! Why don't you go stand in a corner until the action is over and you can kiss somebody?"

It's an improvement, but it kind of misses the point of asking for female characters that work as characters instead of just some sort of weird ambulatory reward system for the male protagonists.

I think one of the most recent examples is Gamora, who's a fantastic character. I mean, the script literally gives her a hero's journey. She is unambiguously the moral center of the film. She's the most selfless and noble character in the entire movie. Like, the Novas? At least are defending their home planet. She's just out to save billions of strangers at great personal cost because fuck letting the genocidal maniacs win. She's getting her crew together and going to save the goddamned galaxy, in the face of her entire (death-cult) adopted family. Everyone she actually knows and cares for personally is lined up against her. Or at least, that's what's going on with the script.

The director somehow seems to find it way more interesting to focus on whether or not a space-age dude-bro gets to kiss her.** We're stuck watching "I May Not Have Explained The Consequences of Failure to This Primate Well Enough, As He Keeps Being Distracted by the Possibility of Mating with Me: The Gamora Story."

And none of that is actually an indictment of the character! The treatment of the character is another story. Which, honestly? I get it. This can be a weird conversation to have. Most of us are used to dealing with a sort of closed system, where the person writing the character and the person who created the character are the same person.

But once you're talking about corporate-owned characters, the bets are kind of off. If JK Rowling or JRR Tolkien or Anne Rice fucks up their characters, there's not a lot of daylight between authorial intent and what's on the page. But with television and movies and comics, you're dealing not just with authors and artists and producers and directors, and all of them having something to say about how a character is presented. The studios and networks are throwing their weight around, too.

You get a dyed-in-the-wool misogynist running DC, Lois Lane's going to act very differently than she did before he took over. You get a writer who's into women's lib doing storylines for Fantastic Four, Susan Storm's going to be a lot less interested in cleaning up after the boys and giggling ineffectually when Reed forgets they have kids because Science!.

One executive can be the force behind a show having this Amanda Waller:

instead of this one:

(Apologies for not being able to find a screenshot of her personally ordering that President Luthor be arrested for treason immediately after he tries to make out with her/recruit her to his evil plan for post-apocalypse world domination. Because that happened.)

The original creators for both characters can start spinning in their graves for all DC or Marvel care; they're the ones running the show currently. Hell, look at Gene Rodenberry's treatment of Kirk and Uhura compared to Abrams's.

And it is difficult not to hear "This character sucks" when someone says "This director's portrayal of this character sucks." We're primed to hear that. Female characters get bagged on all the time, for pretty much every reason under the sun. Too feminine/not feminine enough? The same character can be both! Did the exact same thing an immediately-forgiven male character did? What an irredeemable bitch! Sexy-lady mouthpiece for the dude-writers' anti-femme misogyny? Ugh, Strong Female Characters are awful. Everyone's a Mary Sue!

But it's not especially difficult to write a script that avoids lazy misogyny or being super-shitty to your female characters, so I'm probably going to keep complaining about directors and writers who pull some bullshit at female characters' expense for no real reason.

*Which isn't to say that this is a problem unique to female characters. I mean, god knows how many pixels I've spent over the years talking about this effect with pretty much any long-standing character. I think my personal favorite that this shows up with most frequently is Batman, for fuck's sake.

**Yes, Peter Quill. I've also written an embarrassing amount about Peter Quill. But that doesn't alter the fact that the movie shortchanges Gamora's character to focus on his arguably less interesting character for no apparent reason.