Strong Women: Perverted By Choice

WARNING: I’m using the Avengers film as a running example in this post so there will be spoilers. This is not a review and I’m not attempting to comment on how well I think the team of creators responsible for it did. It’s just the most recent example of “strength” I’ve seen.

Anyway, it’s safe to say that the speculative fiction post code – divide the genres and subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror anyway you like – is considered to be a boys’ club. At the very least, there’s a general assumption that the main characters are male, that we’re talking about boys’ toys, and that we’re aiming it at straight men. This is not always so and there are a number of very successful “brands” that have lead women. But, without any real statistics to prove myself, I think it’s safe to say that representations of men outnumber representations of women. (Sexuality and other differences also apply but I’m not directly discussing them.)

This goes for most forms of entertainment when we shove it all together. Even the stuff dismissed as “chick lit” and “chick flicks” tends to have at least one male character of secondary to primary importance in there somewhere – because we expect there to be a love interest of some description, and we have to prove he exists by having him appearing at least once. Yet there are plenty of works that have no women, not even as background characters and extras. In some cases, this is understandable. After all, women have not been allowed on the front line for some time and it’s difficult to pass as male in those circumstances, so there are few women in war movies – and when they are, they are generally the girl back home and only mentioned, not seen.

The lack of women as main characters leads to the multiple calls for strong women – also described as “decent role models”. There is even a TV Trope for it: Girls Need Role Models [External Link]

However, it’s equally valid to point out that women are generally token characters and vastly outnumbered, so any flaws shown by these fictional women are amplified, taken to be representative of women in general, and may become insulting. More precisely, what the producers, editors or publishers feel may get a backlash is removed to make a more flawless character (read “boring”) with an amazing skill-set (because “capable” equals “strong”). This is rarely something heard about male characters simply because men are so well represented, so then you have the strong calls for multiple women, in order for a greater range of characteristics to be shown – and normal behaviour to be shown as, well, normal instead of focussing on idealised characteristics or nonsense. (See Overthinking it: Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women [External Link]

Some films come out better than you might think from a count up of main characters. I recently watched The Avengers (The Avengers Assemble here in the UK). When I first heard about it, I rolled my eyes somewhat at the Black Widow being the only female Avenger present – despite knowing the source material has the same imbalance. That said, I found the background characters (i.e. the extras) more numerically balanced, even if I’m pretty certain it was only unnamed men seeing combat duty (but this reflects current practice and the overwhelming proportion of stuntmen, I imagine). Then I got distracted by the pretty blond men and stopped paying attention to things like non-pretty non-blond non-male extras.

I digress (and not just in brackets). What I mean to say is that fiction actually needs is a little bit of both: more women in general, and more strong female leads.

What Makes (A) Character?

Let’s start by doing two things. I’m going back to gender neutral, or at least referencing men as well as women, for a bit and I’m going to re-use my character analogy from the initial Women’s Roles in Fantasy post. To paraphrase and clean it up a bit:

Real people are like an ongoing stone sculpture. The basic block of stone is a product of genes, how they’re expressed and, as said before, maybe that little something extra if there is such a thing as a soul. I like to thinks so. The shape, the character, is made by life and experience knocking chips off, exposing flaws or a new surface. Someone may be born with a quick mind, a desire to express themselves and even a certain way of thinking, but it is learning to talk, learning how to talk and attention from the people around them that makes them a wit and a raconteur. Further flaws and facets make them bitter, or charming, or positive, and so on. Every choice, every experience is another chip off the block but this is not necessarily a bad thing – this is how stone sculptures are made.

There’s a definite argument for saying (real) character is the greatest piece of art anyone will ever work on. Most of us do so without ever realising it and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone (myself included) who goes through life fully conscious of the fact, or approaches each decision in terms how it can best help our character development and so on. As a result, our artwork is abstract and tends to have the odd, dissonant surface – where we decided to do something slightly out of character, where we apparently did something random that would probably make sense if we remembered the dream we woke up to on the morning four days previous, where we made a resolution to try a new interest but didn’t stick with it, and so on.

Fiction, whatever medium it’s about to be consumed in, doesn’t have the time to develop character in the same way as real life – and probably wouldn’t want to as the character might not turn out to be useful to the story being told. A writer and their associates can’t just pick up a random block of stone and mimic the natural processes. For a start, the dissonant surfaces will be rejected – as “out of character”, or “too much for one character”, or “weak”. Secondly, the story won’t start with an untouched block with nothing to latch on to. Even if the story starts with the baby that will grow up to be the “Saviour of the All Mankind”, we know the basic characteristics and roughly what we’re going to put them through by the end of the work. In other words, we already have a sort of character shaped hole in our plot before we start work and we’re looking for the right shape to go in it.

There are ideas that spring from characters first but, even in those circumstances, the idea will have presented itself with something like a “Now this is a person you just have to meet”. Some of these characters can never be imagined as being anything less than the finished work they initially present themselves as and some of them end up with a childhood or youth thrust upon them – but these are retrofits and hindsight, not letting a character develop in response to the original story idea.

For an example, let’s take Tony Stark / Iron Man as shown in the Avengers. There’s a lot of back story missing from this movie, so there’s no explaining how Tony Stark became Iron Man (it’s been done in the earlier films) but we know several key things about the character by the end. He calls himself a “genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist”, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know: he’s good with technology, money and witty replies, he’s playful and likes his toys. This is not a real person but he has much the same surface appearance as one and responds to the situation and circumstances around him.

And “Strength” Is?

There are a number of ways of talking about “strong characters” and so it’s understandable that there can be some confusion about what is meant when one is demanded. Exactly what is what will come up more thoroughly later in the post but here’s a quick run down:

  1. A well-rounded character – or one who more closely resembles a real person.
  2. A capable character – or someone who has a useful skill-set.
  3. A role model- or someone with admirable character traits.
  4. An obvious leader – or someone who takes and holds the attention of the creator(s) and the audience, which we will pretend is the same thing.
  5. A survivor – or someone who keeps getting up to take what life throws at them, despite knowing it won’t turn out well.

These are not mutually exclusive and how the combination works out in practice depends on more than just how the character is written. There are numerous interpretations to be made by intermediaries and the audience – and someone will always be upset. This is essentially the choice of the creator(s), and only really limited by their abilities. While an individual writer may excuse themselves with getting over-ridden by the rest of the creative team, it’s very clearly something that the entertainment industries as a whole expect to be acceptable to the audience.

Making the Visible Invisible

There are rhywbeth-rhywbeth billion (in the American thousand million sense) people in this world. If you register with even a fraction of them as existing, it’s typically as background – and the same for them with you. In the movies of just about everyone else’s life, you are an extra. And so am I. This has nothing to do with you being a very special piece of art and shouldn’t detract from it, so somehow we have to keep these two ideas together in our heads. (Cognitive Dissonance, anyone? Wikipedia article: [External Link])

It’s more about the fact that we, as humans, can’t cope with lots of detail and large numbers of anything. Dealing with more than a handful of people as “important” – and thus being required to remember a huge amount about them – can send us a little bit nutty. Seriously, try thinking of exactly how many people live on your street, or in your village if you’re lucky enough to be rural. Put names to them. Try to remember their full address, the cars they drive, the pets, the kids, the jobs, the clothes they were wearing the last time you saw them, the – See?

If you’re now saying something to the effect of “I know lots of people, just not my neighbours”, try doing the same with all your work colleagues and friends. And no making notes so that you can “remember” without even trying.

We get around this by generalising – either blurring the details until we need them (so-and-so lives in such-and-such town, rather than remembering the full address all the time) – and grouping things together – i.e. age banding, common interests, clothing styles. We back all this up with written records as memory cues or replacements so that we can get on with life. You may notice that this is all played out larger in things like marketing information and HR departments.

Fiction, unsurprisingly, also follows the same approach – or, at least, the current style(s) do. Details are very rarely mentioned or shown unless they serve some purpose. While there are some people who get away with showing details that do not later become plot points, where they do this it shows us something about the world or the people that helps the audience’s understanding. There is only so much time and space available in a story, and only so much the audience can take in so anything that doesn’t add to the story probably shouldn’t be there.

Where anything with pictures has an advantage is that the extras, the background people, can be shown as any mix of gender, age, status, whatever, the responsible people feel necessary without adding in extra wordage or taking up precious space and time. If one wants to reflect life on a typical street of, say, East London, there are enough records that can give proportional breakdowns and it’s therefore possible to build up an extras crowd that at least looks similar. Or they can invent an idealised mix of their preference. Or they can go with whatever’s easiest. Or they can make a statement. If you choose to fill a command centre with tall, fit, pretty blond men (and damn the unfortunate implications), it’s possible to employ people who look like that. I promise not to be upset with you, at least while I’m distracted by them. In this way, visual representations can show a balanced (or unbalanced) world through numbers – if the people involved realise this and choose to do so.

To go back to The Avengers (again) for an example, I remember thinking that crowd scenes and military base scenes tended to have an even mix of genders. I can’t remember noticing colour of skin – which doesn’t mean it was all white, I may just not have noticed. People in uniforms don’t suggest any particular religious affiliation, though Steve Rogers / Captain America’s dialogue remains steadfastly but quietly Christian (Protestant), and I didn’t notice anything outside of “standard Western crowd scene” type clothing in the civilian shots – which may, in itself, perhaps be discriminatory but it is an American movie, after all, and is therefore reflective of American life to some degree.

The written word doesn’t have it quite so easy in that our current societal assumption when dealing with generalised people is to assume white male. Words like “mob”, “villagers”, “crowd”, “gathering” and even “people” may have readers assuming a bunch of white men. I would also say middle income but “mob”, at least, tends to make me think of low to no income. It can be difficult to slip in words that imply a mix because any comment will often be applied to everyone in the group, the simple binary version of gender being the one exception. We can write “the men and women of the …” and get a slightly more balanced feel to the group but saying something like (sorry, this one’s going to be horrendously bad) “the blacks and whites of the …” is likely to upset people. And with good reason. Age can be snuck in occasionally but it is generally the outliers – “the young and the old” – or non-typical specific age bands – “the children”, “the teens”, “the old” – that get mentioned. Basically, there’s an assumption that everyone is in a (non-)grey area somewhere between twenty and forty-five.

Do we really need to explain the age, colour, creed, sexuality and (more complex than binary) gender identity of every person in a crowd? No. But we need to consider giving the audience the cues to know that in this fictional world it is acceptable be an old homosexual, transgender, Muslim, Vietnamese woman (for example). Or even not, depending on the fictional society being presented. By the same token, if the creator(s) means an all white, male group of people, they should probably point that out, too, to make sure it’s clear that this is exceptional – at least to the creator(s) and audience, if not the fictional world. This could be a small, but meaningful, manipulation of the audience’s way of thinking. And most of them won’t consciously notice that the background has changed.

(Note to self: pay attention to crowds more often. Also, should I have mentioned height and weight?)

With respect to showing details that don’t further the plot but do show more of the fictional world, one nice trick is to imply that a character is a person with a life outside of the story the audience is currently seeing – i.e. a well-rounded character. It’s a very fine line to walk, though, as the attention lifts a background character / extra to something more. But what is the something more?

Why me?

What we’re basically asking is “How many levels of characterisation are there?” or “How long is a piece of string?” It depends quite a lot on the type of story being told and the medium being used. In the most basic forms, there are two: main or lead characters, and extras or background characters. The top level – with the most attention and development – can also be described as primary. I shall try to avoid using “lead character” further, not because I have anything against the movie industry but because it’ll get confusing with “lead” and “leader” and “leadership” all being flung around.

The longer and more detailed the story gets, the more parts can be added, so if a primary character gets a best friend whose seen and heard from a number of times, and may even become important to the plot, the best friend is a secondary character. With more detail and time, you can add extra layers of characters that can be labelled “tertiary” and so on through the numbers to your heart’s content. The almost lowest level are people who get to speak a line or maybe two, then the lowest level is an extra or background character who basically exists to show that there are other people in the world.

The more real and fully developed a character appears to be, the easier it is for the audience to identify with them and the more important they are considered to be. Simply being in view – on screen or the focus for the chapter, or whatever – is the obvious part of this but true strength is in also allowing the character to develop and grow, to be more than a vehicle for the story. Therefore, if this is the strength being asked for it’s often about proportional representation and ensuring that those representations are not just servants of the plot.

So, a main character – i.e. consider that The Avengers had eight or nine people highly billed and advertised – can be anywhere in the top levels, depending on how many levels are available. So a primary character is obviously a main character in any movie but ensemble movies and epic novels can have secondary or lower characters who are mains (i.e. the plot can’t function without them). Conversely, some works even have tertiary level characters that can be classed as mains because they are pivotal to the story and some secondary characters are not.

In the simplest readings or viewings, a character effectively rises through the ranks based on the amount of attention that’s being paid to them, so spending a lot of time on someone who should “just” have one sentence to say can give them an appearance of being something more. And if the audience likes a particular character, they can find themselves elevated in a sequel or spin-off work. Killing off someone who has otherwise seemed like a primary or secondary character (one of Joss Whedon’s regular tactics, and it does turn up in The Avengers) can pull the rug out from under the audience. Particularly if they have been made likeable or are shown to be liked by the other characters in the work. It can be a stroke of genius or it can turn the audience against the creator(s).

What a character is intended to be depends on their role in the story. As laid out in the Women’s Roles in Fantasy posts, these roles can be pared down to:

  1. Protagonist or hero.
  2. Antagonist or villain.
  3. Ally or the hero’s friend.
  4. Advisor or a mentor, or parent, or anyone who provides guidance to the hero.
  5. Unexpected Ally or someone who is won over to the hero’s side. They may have been “good” all along but pretending to be “evil”.
  6. Henchman or the villain’s ally, or a person who has to be defeated before the villain can be faced.
  7. Traitor or the inverse of the unexpected ally.

In the other posts, I referred to “a cast of secondary characters” beyond this, but it really depends on how long and detailed the story involved is as to whether further characters would be called secondary. In some films, anything other than the hero is secondary. In most works, there are several levels of importance between the main character(s) and the people who need to deliver one line of dialogue, die in the action sequence to show how kick-ass the hero or villain combatants are, or generally make up crowd scenes.

In a large story, with more than one plot line and several heroes, it’s possible for a character’s (potential) role to change with each scene, or even for them to fulfil more than one role at a time. Using The Avengers, we have five or six obvious main characters – the people in the Avengers team. What makes them potential “strong” characters depends on which definitions are in use. They already have an advantage in that the Avengers are the characters with the most screen time – and they are written well enough to make good use of that to show them as individuals. They are also all capable characters, having the skills needed to fight supervillains hand-to-hand.

The three totally unquestionable heroes / protagonists remain Tony Stark / Iron Man, Steve Rogers / Captain America, and Thor – in that they are never shown as particularly edgy or with questionable allegiances. They are also shown as alpha male types, jostling for leadership – or at least questioning command decisions and someone else’s right to command them. So, in several scenes, they are actually each other’s Antagonists. Not in the sense of being a pure villain but in the sense of in-fighting and bringing out the worst in each other. This does not last and it’s hardly a spoiler to point out they’re brothers-in-arms by the end of the movie (complete with more but less aggressive bickering) with Captain America clearly the team-leader.

And this is why I didn’t want to use the term “lead”, because it implies a main character has to be a “leader”, which isn’t always the case. It works better if they are so in a large cast of characters but there are plenty of works that don’t require “leaders” (i.e. non-combat) or where the hero is a sole survivor or lone wolf type. However, in The Avengers situation (ensemble, action / combat), it does equate.

The remaining three Avengers are almost secondary characters at points because they take on roles outside of the standard Protagonist / Antagonist dichotomy in some scenes, don’t take the lead (heh!) and don’t spend as much time getting audience attention by squabbling – sparking off each other being a great way of keeping the audience’s attention with small talk (in the worst case scenario, not The Avengers, a stand in for “chemistry”). This shows both the time / attention aspect of “strength” and the tendency to associate leadership, and attempting to take leadership, as being a strong character.

Anyway, one might expect Bruce Banner / Hulk’s flips between Protagonist / Antagonist to be more obvious in that he typically changes size and colour when he moves between them. But this Hulk is also an Ally and Advisor. His real character strength, in this case, is in a couple of truly admirable character traits: self-awareness and self-control. (I also, incidentally, found Ruffalo’s Banner oddly sexy despite the lack of blond, probably because of this.) While the other five show a certain amount of self-awareness, it’s Bruce Banner who’s got it cracked because he has accepted the Hulk as part of himself and working with it (as oppose to Tony Stark, who knows he can be pretty shallow and chooses to joke about it). In this instance, he displays “strength” through being a role model.

The other two leads, Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow and Clint Barton / Hawkeye, are played with a lot more moral ambiguity. It is implied that they have been very very bad and they can be very very good. They move around the moral spectrum quite a bit, with one thing and another, and don’t get as much audience attention due to lack of super powers and bickering. They do have a fair share of screen time, considering, and I suspect that anyone who disagrees about Hawkeye probably didn’t pay much attention to what he was doing before we realised he could shoot without looking at his target. So, they have a measure of well-rounded-ness, if only because moral ambiguity implies an interesting character, and capability. It’s the capability, standing alongside superheroes, that otherwise makes them “strong”.

This is without going into how politically loaded secondary characters like Nick Fury and SHIELD in general are – as one would expect of a large, internationally, quasi-governmental, military organisation – with flavours of Advisor, Unexpected Ally and Traitor. Or, for that matter, how Samuel L Jackson is turning into a fantastic scene stealer and has probably won enough hearts to get his character ratcheted up to “primary”.

One of my favourite performances from the support characters was Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill (Look! Woman!). Not because Hill did much but because the way she was presented seemed to show her on the verge of doing this or that or responding outside of the script. At best she could be considered a tertiary character in this sea of potential heroes. But the camera and the actor’s actions implied that she did quite a lot off-camera to help the characters on-camera.

A Moment of Weakness

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is the survivor-type strength and I am now about to. In fact, what I’m going to do is demonstrate the need for this kind of “strong” women using (male) Loki from The Avengers. This will be spoilerish and more than a little weird. Look away now if you don’t want to see either of those.

Right. For those of you who remain…

There were hints through the movie that Loki would prove to be not the worst thing out there. These hints can be split into three key points:

  • Loki had less screen time. For a lead character, Loki didn’t have an equal share of the running time. This means the audience has less encouragement to buy into him and allows them to focus on the heroes.
  • Loki has issues. Seriously, how many times did he talk about how he’d been done out of his “rightful” inheritance? Actually only a couple of times but this cut into any role model status, as this is not an admirable trait.
  • Loki’s not as big as he thinks he is. As ably demonstrated by the look on Tom Hiddleston’s face after the Hulk had finished using him as a rattle. Thus Loki was not as capable as his opponents.

(He also showed moments of doubt but the character was played to his trickster roots, so it’s hard for me to judge whether these were intended to be genuine or a trick.)

So, Loki is shown to be weak in comparison to the other main characters – and, in particular, the other men.

This was very clever on the part of Whedon and everyone else involved in putting Loki together. Why? Because a typical super-villain is larger than life and without doubt, and thus actually less technically developed than Loki but possibly with more screen time and thus more involvement with the audience. They may have issues but these don’t show signs of crippling the character until the moment when their latest attempt to take over has crumbled, not when their attempt is in full swing. Such doubt, such weakness is reserved for less-than-primary characters, either villainous or morally-ambiguous-and-in-the-process-of-changing-sides. This is even reinforced by the choice of Bruce Banner / The Hulk to be Loki’s final opponent. Although Hulk is often shown as something resembling an unstoppable force of Nature, he’s rarely shown as traditional Alpha male material (for which, look to the undisputed three male leads).

Why do this? Because with The Avengers being an ensemble film, another big, strong, demanding alpha male type would have distracted from the heroes building the team. It was also done in such a way that it didn’t actually lessen the threat of Team Evil – an infinite number of aggressive and possibly unstoppable soldiers coming through a portal being somewhat more threatening. Finally, in weakening Loki’s character – by making him more “human”, they diffused the outright evil necessary for a supervillain.

So what has this got to do with female characters? Actually, it might not be much because female characters are viewed through a different set of expectations than male characters – and different behaviours are acceptable or not with just a gender flip. I am not trying to say that men and women aren’t different but should this affect, say, a Norse God with villainous tendencies?

First of all, there are shows and books that have evil women of some description but it’s a rare thing for this not to be excused in some way – in much the same way it just was for Loki, only more so. Loki may have never gotten over the fact that he didn’t get to be king (bless) but he only mentioned this a few times and didn’t turn into an emotional mess over it. There is no trying to claim the behaviour was simply down to abuse – the “rightful” bit was couched in adult terms and could be handwaved as referring to the previous Thor film or something further into back-story. It’s also done in such a way that it is clear that this treatment is the source of man-Loki’s drive, rather than just an excuse.

Following on from this, we know that drive implies choice. Man-Loki chooses to behave like this. He had several opportunities to back down and didn’t take them – he may have expressed regret, or even just have been trying to get Thor to believe that, but that is something else. In choosing to take the “wrong” turn (and, to get the right amount of larger than life, he even revelled in it a time or two), man-Loki remains active. Excusing woman-Loki’s behaviour implies she is being forced into her path by her weakness – whether that be fear of reprisal from the alien army, a need to compete with and prove herself to her adoptive brother, or just getting caught up in the situation having had a bad idea at some point.

Basically, women are not expected to make a stand against impossible odds without someone else beside her (I’m in two minds as whether this counts as insulting or proof of sanity), to be a leader (proven to be nonsense many times over), or attempt to take control of a situation. In order to make this less insulting, modern women characters are offered up as sexy (fan service), capable (until leadership is required), and possibly well-rounded (they have interests outside of hair and make-up) as well as potential role models (right up until the plot makes them give someone less capable control). So woman-Loki without changes would basically become the strongest woman villain ever recorded on film and it all stems from choice.

Of course, there’s no real choice for a character in work of fiction – because the plot needs to be completed – and (apparent) choice on its own doesn’t actually make survivor strength. Choice, or the appearance of it, is just an enabler, giving the character the opportunity to show their strength. Which is why it becomes a problem for women characters when they need excuses for their behaviour. Would woman-Loki’s claims become a whine? Would woman-Loki have the conviction to stay with the consequences of her actions or would she, when Thor tried to talk her round, tearfully switch sides? None of which are bad, per se, but would definitely show the character as lesser stuff, taking the main villain of the show from secondary character to tertiary or lower.

So, what makes the difference? What is this survivor strength and who needs it? A strong personality, ignoring all other characteristics, skills and allegiances has the three important characteristics:

  1. They have conviction (or determination, take your pick);
  2. They roll with the (metaphorical and otherwise) punches;
  3. They accept responsibility for the results of their decisions.

Rolling with the punches does not mean that they accept difficulties and do not fight back – but it doesn’t mean they necessarily will, at least in real life and “realistic” worlds, because sometimes just staying on one’s feet is hard enough. It’s the level of conviction that pushes the character through the “pain barrier” and into action – belief in themselves, their ambitions, or the greater good forcing a(n apparent) choice. The third characteristic is a sign of maturity, of realising that there are consequences. Associated but not always seen is focus and almost obsessive behaviour.

These are qualities are often assumed to be part of (good) leadership and social dominance – which is why it can automatically be assumed that Tony Stark / Iron Man, Steve Rogers / Captain America and Thor have this simply by being leadership material, and may get to show it. They’re not so obvious in a character who is not considered leadership material (typically secondary or lower). Again, this doesn’t mean that they won’t have it but it does imply that they are less likely to get a chance to show it, or for it to be shown clearly. It’s also a necessary form of character strength for an action hero.

A villain or antagonist starts just as strong as a hero or protagonist becomes (if they’re to be considered an equal) but the villain must show some collapse in apparent strength in order to be defeated – a form of short hand for showing that the hero is better. Expect them to blame those pesky kids or the equivalents. Typically, a villain starts off apparently strong and, when they fail, is unable to cope – therefore proving themselves without strength characteristic 2 – and intent on blaming someone else – so point-3-less.

A Moment of Strength

Another The Avengers spoiler coming up. Skip a section if you don’t want to know.

So, the full hero’s path is typically an inversion of the villain’s, with the hero learning that they have the strength to do what is necessary before doing it – and winning. This is also known as the Hero’s Journey or the Monomyth (Wikipedia article: Monomyth [External Link]). A lot of fantasy stories, whatever medium, are modelled on this and there are clear points of self-doubt for the hero. (Rather than write it all out, I’ll let you read the Wikipedia summary and maybe pick up some of the books mentioned.)

There are exceptions. In The Avengers example, all six Avengers have already proven themselves (even if they haven’t all had solo films) and this doesn’t need to be established because we already know that they are superheroes. This is a movie about superheroes, they’re in it as the main characters, ergo… There are other fictional characters whose very first appearances have been much the same: Druss the Legend was a relatively old and famous man, Strider / Aragorn was an experienced ranger, and so on. However, they still have to prove themselves heroic in the story with the use of a small sequence. We have a moment of exposition to prove their heroism even if they’ve not gone through the full journey in front of us. In the Avengers, the three alpha males growled at each other and I think everyone had a moment of kick-assery when they were first introduced in the movie.

Whedon’s joyful killing off of loved characters is both a super fast Hero’s Journey and a standard device in anything “heroic”. The standard part is the death of a someone important to the hero – i.e. family member, lover, mentor – to spur them into undertaking heroic acts. This spur makes more impact if the audience has the chance to know the person getting killed as more than just a relative, lover or mentor or the hero – as more than just a background character. Whedon takes it a step further by killing quite well developed secondary characters and making it a heroic moment, not just a tragic one.

Whedon gives almost everyone that he kills off a chance to be heroic, even if they can’t be the primary character. Consider Phil Coulson in The Avengers. As pointed out by both Steve Rogers / Captain America and Nick Fury, Coulson knew he couldn’t win. But he knew trying was the right thing to do (conviction), accepted he had minimal probability of surviving (rolled with the punches), and did it anyway (accepted responsibility for the outcome). And of course, although there was heavy handed manipulation involved, Coulson’s death helped bring the team together. Whedon is good at making the ultimate sacrifice seem almost worth it.

And, of course, it can be turned on its head. Like Tony Stark / Iron Man showing his turn is more than just having high powered fun by being prepared to sacrifice himself – and surviving. Technically, this is another Whedon convention but it’s been widely used on and off for years, usually a variation of the stopping the bomb a few seconds before explosion. It’s about testing the hero and proving to the audience that there is a level of jeopardy so the victory wasn’t as easy as it may have otherwise seemed.

Strength As Choice

This survivor-type strength of character, then, is independent of good and evil, and it can last a moment, until the first test, or for the whole story. By its nature, it can’t actually last a full lifetime but we don’t get to see fictional characters for that long. It’s about (apparently) making the choice to do something and damn the consequences, which is necessary for a primary character but can be useful in any character that is more than just background. It may also be something that can be enjoyed: the hero celebrates his victory, the reward for his strength, just as the villain enjoys sticking the boot in.

It does not, on its own, make a role model as it doesn’t mean the character has to be right. Nor does it make them well-rounded, although that moment of quiet heroism can wipe out a multitude of sins. In role terms, they can be misguided or outright wrong (i.e. the antagonist). It doesn’t stop them changing their mind (i.e. unexpected ally or traitor), although this moment of doubt will probably pull them down from a primary to a secondary or lower character in media or works with limited amounts of time to build them back up in the audience’s eyes.

We tend to feel cheated when we are given a villain who has little self-confidence and suffers from doubt from the beginning. We use the term antagonist more often than villain if the character is too normal or too “human”. If their behaviour is excused by extenuating circumstances – i.e. childhood abuse, trauma, a bad day at work – we feel that it wasn’t their choice. And they lack conviction, they’re whining about the punches and not rolling with them, and they’re sure as dammit aren’t accepting responsibility. They didn’t choose this path, they’re just on it.

It’s more appealing to have a character who does choose to take their path, right or wrong, and who does enjoy it. Whether this means choosing to be normal, or right, or good, or nice, or wrong, or bad, or nasty, or even outright perverted. It speaks of being able to take control of a situation and characters that do this are more entertaining and well received than those who don’t – another reason why Whedon’s ultimate sacrifices touch the audience.

Of course, a fictional character doesn’t really make the choice but the work needs to show that a character’s moments are in line with their way of thinking and that there is an equivalent – that it could work out differently, that a lesser person might have taken the opportunity to walk away – in order for this to really work. In extreme action cases the walking away is accepting the big bad monster is unbeatable and accepting death while, in less extreme cases, it’s about turning down the mission or accepting what happened previously at face value. These can be explored with lesser, lower level characters and messy deaths if required. Aside from that, strength of character is not about being perfect, or having a lethal skill set, or looking good in a lycra suit. Having some of these things simply helps improve the chances of a positive outcome – which, in an action based story, is survival.

Being memorable is often taken for being strong and characters really make a good impression when they seem to revel in the “damn the consequences” extreme of the survivor-type strength and choose to enjoy their actions in spite of any negatives that might follow. Tony Stark / Iron Man is best loved when he shows his most boy-in-a-toy-shop behaviour – he knows he can afford to fix almost anything he might break, The Avengers’ version of Bruce Banner / The Hulk is great because he’s accepted that he is a whole person and knows he’ll find a way to cope regardless of how much trouble he causes, Nick Fury is just cool because he has accepted that the ends justifies the means and he doesn’t waste time on “what if”, as well as for being Samuel L Jackson.

Putting the Women Back in Strong

I wouldn’t consider Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow a (survivor-type) strong female character. As an individual, she was well turned out, exceptionally fit, bilingual (at least), and lethally skilled. She was capable and, occasionally, caring. Granted, she didn’t care too much about consequences but she didn’t seem to have accepted them as a result of her choices but rather to have shrugged them off. She also did a pretty good job of rolling with the punches, both literal and metaphorical. She didn’t, however, seem to have much in the way of conviction – her own beliefs, her own drives, her own ambition, or whatever – and seemed content to accept SHIELD’s instruction without much thought. When she did defend or explain her actions, I didn’t feel (but I may not be the person to grasp this, anyway) that she believed it, that she had conviction. Maybe she cared more than she was willing to let on but I also didn’t take that from the exchanges. It left me feeling as if she was simply doing these things because the script told her to – and it would – rather than because it was particularly in, or even out of, character.

So, she was kick-ass and capable, she often appeared to be a secondary character rather than a primary (but that, in itself, is not a problem), but she wasn’t survivor strong. Despite being referred to as a survivor of bad situations and surviving The Avengers film. In terms of role models, I’d still rather grow up to be Iron Man. But who wouldn’t, with all those toys? The Black Widow was equally capable of combat (with allowance for lack of power armour) but her area of accepted expertise was in extracting information through manipulating conversation (in a manner that the audience could follow, so not all that clever in comparison to a technological genius).

One thing I am grateful for is that the Black Widow was not set up as an apparently capable, independent and well-rounded character, only to find that she must defer to the male lead in all things because there was supposed to be a relationship – even if he is not as capable. For a start, no-one will be accusing the other five Avengers of being incapable any time soon. I guess we’re back to choice. What takes the strength away from primary or secondary women characters is lack of choice, the lack of personal control over their actions, because it is pre-determined that the woman will take second place to the hero who is also the love of their life, try her hand at manipulation (grey moral area because physical combat is considered cleaner and better), and probably trade on their sexuality (essentially fan service). Maybe, like Black Widow, she could choose someone else or no-one at all. Maybe, just once, the male lead could admit he’s not all that and say “thank you for the help”, which would adjust the apparent balance of power a bit. It would be asking too much to ask that a fit young woman didn’t show cleavage, especially as I’d appreciate more of the female gaze equivalent.

The Black Widow appeared to enjoy both fighting and her weird form of interrogation – but got to imply that she had not only done terrible things but was terribly scarred by them. Her closest moral equivalent in the film, Clint Barton / Hawkeye, didn’t ever show he actually enjoyed combat but got to allude to having less than happy memories. Of the others: Steve Rogers / Captain America is painted as a more clear-cut hero, Tony Stark / Iron Man’s approach is more like a big kid on a grand adventure, Thor is, well, a Norse God so somewhat above these considerations although he seems to be ashamed of the fact that he used to enjoy fighting. So the next closest is Bruce Banner / Hulk who is somewhat bitter but adjusted. Only as Hulk does he have fun in the fight and, boy, does he have fun. It doesn’t really equate to the Black Widow’s position at all. With other women in directly comparable positions, it might be easier to decide whether this was a function of gender expectation or her character as a whole.

If it is due to her gender, this need for guilt and an excuse in female villains, or even in someone who is expected to be morally ambiguous, is a shame. Imagine a distaff version of Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham. Just how cool would that be? I don’t want all villains to be that over the top, but now and again would be nice. (Hence the post title.) To have made the choice to be bad, and to celebrate the fact that they are just the kinky side of normal, is a very strong statement if not necessarily a strong character.

So, what am I going to do about it? I can write developed characters – both male and female – or try. When there is action, I can give them the three points of strong survivor character – when heroism is required:

  1. Conviction;
  2. Accept the situation and move on from there;
  3. Accept responsibility for the results of their decisions.

This will not get around the fact that there will be situations where they will lose or die because, sometimes, they’re the sacrifice not the actual hero. I can also do my best to give them choice so that the sacrifice really is a moment of heroism, not a throw-away plot point. I can create well-rounded, capable characters who are in the right place at the right time to undertake the “quests” I hand out in my plots – because strength is not enough on its own. If that means that they have to accept that an alpha male-type is apparently in charge, so be it. Particularly if I create an alpha male-type who has admirable character traits like the ability to admit they had help. And, purely for my own enjoyment, I can create heroes and villains who have fun when things work out their way – even if that means they seem perverse.

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