It's that time of year again: time for my annual round up of fantastic female characters that I've discovered in film, on television, and throughout a variety of novels. Though I featured the twelve stand-outs for each month of the year, there are plenty more women who made the runners-up cut, and it's always fun to feature them in their own blog-post.
As it happens, there are three major themes to this year's women: Difficult Women, Superhero Women, and East-Asian Women.
In the first group we had a surplus of ladies who were given personalities and storylines that up until pretty recently only straight white males could get away with. Think Don Draper or Tony Soprano or Walter White or Dexter Morgan.
But my reading/viewing this year ran the gamut from women who are downright despicable (Villanelle from Killing Eve, Mary Anne Mowbray in Dark Angel, Serena Joy of The Handmaid's Tale, Gone Girl's Amy Dunne) to ambiguously unlikeable (Becky Sharpe in the new Vanity Fair miniseries, Grace Marks in Alias Grace, Annalise Keating in How To Get Away with Murder) to broken and/or complicated women struggling to do the right thing despite their spiky, brittle personalities: Camille Preaker in Sharp Objects, Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train, Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space, the assorted housewives of Big Little Lies).
Heck, even Disenchanted's Princess Bean with her drunken irresponsibility fits in here.
And though I haven't checked in with them in ages, three major shows ended this year (or will next year) that starred women who could fall into any of the above three subcategories: Elizabeth Jennings from The Americans, Olivia Pope from Scandal, and Carrie Mathison from Homeland.
It demonstrates two things: firstly that actresses are getting better, juicier and more challenging roles, and secondly that female characters are being recognized as having just as much capacity for complexity and moral ambiguity as male ones. Of course, all but two of these women are white (unsurprisingly, the two exceptions feature on a Shonda Rimes show) so there's still plenty of progress to be make – and yet I'm an optimist.
All send a clear message: women don't have to be nice to have interesting stories to tell.
Then there's the ever-increasing roster of female superheroes emerging from the shadows to enjoy the spotlight. In the wake of Wonder Woman's 2017 debut came a host of other crime-fighters, and this year alone I had Woman of the Month posts focusing on Sara Lance (Legends of Tomorrow), Shuri (Black Panther), Misty Knight and Colleen Wing (Luke Cage/Iron Fist).
We're now into our fourth season of Supergirl, and the second of Jessica Jones. We got our first look at Batwoman on Arrow, and an exciting new trailer for Captain Marvel. Sequels were also kind, with Ant-Man sharing the spotlight in Ant-Man and the Wasp (the first Marvel film to have a female superhero in the title), Helen Parr returning as Elastigirl in The Incredibles 2 and Domino being an unexpected delight in Deadpool 2.
And though I haven't caught up yet, I heard Iris West had a great season of The Flash along with her time-travelling daughter Nora, a host of animated girls in Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors, and news on the development of films involving the likes of Silk, Black Cat, Batgirl, Black Widow, Birds of Prey and the Gotham City Sirens.
Heck, there were even YA novels by Sarah J. Maas and Leigh Bardugo that explored the backgrounds of Selina Kyle and Diana Prince before they took on their superhero (or villain) mantles.
And of course, though it stretches the definition of "superhero", we finally debuted our first female incarnation of the Doctor on Doctor Who.
After so many previous disasters to bring superhero women to the big (and small!) screen, they have finally ARRIVED.
And finally, an increase of East-Asian women, from the runaway success of Crazy Rich Asians to my revisit of Grace Nakimura in the Gabriel Knight games of the nineties. Kelly Tran penned a passionate defence of her right to exist in The New York Times after increasingly gross attacks, and so many more Asian faces appeared on my radar:
Jessica Huang in Fresh Off the Boat, Mia in Humans (whose actress will also be Minerva in Captain Marvel), Constance in Ocean's Eight, Lara Jean in All the Boys I've Loved Before, Hazel Wong in the Wells and Wong detective series, Colleen Wing in Iron Fist, Sun in Sense8, Anna Fang in the Mortal Engines film (and book Night Flights that was inspired by her fantastic performance) and even Nagini in the Harry Potter verse, contentious though that development may be.
It sounds as though Michelle Yeoh is getting her own spin-off for her character in Star Trek: Discovery (hopefully not her evil counterpart) and let's not forget the upcoming live-action Mulan starring Liu Yifei, or the short Pixar film Bao involving a Chinese-Canadian mother dealing with empty nest syndrome.
 |
| Okay, so bottom left is a picture of Katie Leung from a Poirot mystery, BUT she was the inspiration for Robin Stevenson's Hazel Wong, so she's featured here honorarily. |
And on a personal note, I even saw a Beauty and the Beast ballet this month which featured Sophia Bae as an Asian Belle.
Oh, and a special shout-out to Artemis from Young Justice, who'll be returning early next year and who manages to fit into ALL THREE of the above categories.
On a broader note, I also ended up reading a lot of children's fiction this year (and watching their subsequent film adaptations), and found they involved a great deal of young heroines: Arietty Clock from The Borrowers, Mary Smith from The Little Broomstick, Princess Cimorene in Dealing with Dragons, Anna Sasaki from When Marnie was There, Maria Merryweather in The Secret of Moonacre, and even an unnamed little girl in the adaptation of The Little Prince.
Women negotiating power, women who were difficult without being villains, women from classic literature, women facing the relentless difficulties of male-dominated spaces – there was something for everybody. So perhaps in place of Difficult Asian Superheroes, I should simply say: this was the year of Unapologetic Women.
Here are the rest of the standout women I discovered in 2018...
Princess Elizabeth Charlotte " "Lieselotte" Palatine from Versailles
Versailles ended this year without much fanfare, despite it ticking all the period drama boxes: opulent sets, lavish costumes, beautiful actors in various states of undress, and a plot that adhered only tenuously to the history it was meant to be portraying.
Its treatment of female characters was rather hit-and-miss: bodies were exploited, fridges were stuffed and the Madonna/Whore dichotomy was certainly utilized, but unexpected grace was afforded to Sophia de Clermont, and I suspect I enjoyed Madame de Maintenon more than most (an over-forty woman who catches the eye of the king and struggles with the subsequent tension between her own piety and ambition? Yes please!)
But a true delight was Princess Palatine, who is accurately described by another character as "bouncing through life". Just look at her – she's adorable!
Introduced as the second wife of the introverted, inscrutable Philippe, Duke of Orleans, she makes a deeply unfortunate first impression when he approaches her as she's relieving herself on the side of the road. She's also acutely aware of how graceful, charming and altogether lovely her predecessor was, and that her husband has zero sexual interest in her, despite a wife's prerogative to provide an heir.
But when life gives her lemons, she makes lemonade. Despite her insecurities, she soldiers on and begins to win the hearts and minds of the people at court. She's not all sweetness and light, as she certainly has her moments of sharpness to go with her compassion, though she's dignified and gracious in defeat (some of her best scenes are with Maintenon – they're not romantic rivals, but political ones. That's how you pit two women against each other!)
She's a ray of light amidst the backstabbing and treachery of the Versailles court, though is thankfully allowed to be more than an irreproachable angel.
Laura Hawkins from Humans
This show has always revolved around its ensemble cast, with each character given their own independent subplot, but there's no doubt that its central relationship was the one that existed between synth Mia and human Laura. Even their names are similar, which can hardly be a coincidence.
As it happens, Laura's character arc is one of deep irony: she begins the series with a mistrust of synthetics, and is opposed to her husband's decision to bring one into the house, believing it'll have a detrimental effect on the minds of her children. Not helping is that her marriage isn't exactly rock-solid, and the synth that Joe has chosen is a beautiful young model.
Yet Laura is intrigued despite herself. How does a synth operate? Is it capable of independent thought? Does it feel? But the more questions she asks of Mia, the more convinced she becomes that her household synth has attained self-consciousness.
Of course, the great irony of the story is that Laura needn't have been worried about Mia coming between herself and Joe – it was Joe who should have been concerned about Laura and Mia's burgeoning friendship. By season three the marriage has dissolved and Laura has become a "synth's rights" lawyer, advocating for their freedom and facing all sorts of harassment in her struggle to improve their social standing.
As another character says of her: "you saw their humanity before any of us."
Alanna of Trebond from The Song of the Lioness
This year I finally completed Tamora Pierce's four-part The Song of the Lioness, featuring one of the most important feminist icons in YA history: Alanna of Trebond, who gains the moniker of The Lioness after becoming the first female knight of Tortall.
I've no idea why it took me this long to read all four books: I've read the first maybe three times, the second twice, the third once, and the fourth never. I was (and still am) a huge fan of Pierce, and copies of the story were readily available; in fact, I was first introduced to Alanna in the sequel series The Immortals, which featured the character in a supporting role.
But why is Alanna so important? First published in 1983, there are many aspects of her character that would be dismissed as Mary Sueish by today's standards: red-headed, violet-eyed, gifted with magic, favoured by the Goddess, accompanied by a talking cat, wooed by two princes (one royal, the other a prince of thieves) and successful in disguising herself for years so she can fulfil her dream of becoming a knight.
And yet she had some very real flaws, from a grouchy temperament to susceptibility to the cold, and Pierce certainly makes her shed blood, sweat and tears in her ongoing efforts to become a knight. Despite her Sueish accruements, she never feels anything less than real. In fact, perhaps the most astonishing thing about Alanna is the chapter devoted to her getting her first period and (after becoming sexually active) subsequently organizing birth control measures.
It was the first time (as far as I know) that such things had been discussed so openly in a fantasy novel aimed at teenage girls, and in such a matter of fact way. It's this blend of feminist wish fulfilment and down-to-earth realism that keeps these books in print nearly thirty-five years after their initial publication. The only question is: where's the television adaptation?
Hera Syndulla from Star Wars Rebels
This year I churned through all four seasons of Star Wars Rebels, and found myself liking it a lot more than the franchise's most recent film offerings. One thing that stood out was its commitment to diversity in race and gender without making a song-and-dance about it, or forgetting that equality isn't an automatic stand-in for quality. And in its two lead female characters Hera Syndulla and Sabine Wren (plus the recurring Ahsoka Tano), the show really excelled.
In the case of Hera, I'm sorely tempted to call her the best Star Wars heroine – ever. As this article points out, the character is built on the Mother Archetype, only for her characterization to transcend the usual boundaries of the role and make her a fascinatingly three-dimensional woman who is so much more than just the Team Mum.
Certainly, there are mum components to her: she delegates chores and punishments among the younger crew members, she uses full names when she's reprimanding someone, she's always the first to offer a hug or helpful advice, and she has an intrinsically gentle nature beyond her no-nonsense demeanour.
But she's also her own person, with story-arcs revolving around her promotion to general, managing communications with Fulcrum, and dealing with the pain of her own past. She's also a fantastic pilot, a skill-set that's born out of a passion for flying, which naturally leads to something of that hot-shot persona that's so prevalent in the pilots of this particular franchise. When she moves into light-speed while still in the vicinity of several Imperial ships... well, it's something to behold.
She's also a Twi’lek, which is the franchise's go-to species for sexy Green-Skinned Space Babe, and yet I can attest that in none of the four seasons is Hera ever made to wear a revealing outfit, despite her obvious beauty. She never even gets a She Cleans Up Nicely moment – the practical pilot gear she wears in that picture is all she ever wears.
Hera Syndulla is awesome in every conceivable way. That's all there is to be said about it.
Maureen Robinson from Lost in Space
It was with mounting frustration that I read through the comments on the Lost in Space message board on Previously TV. What to me was an interesting, exciting adventure story that wasn't afraid to throw our main characters into genuinely difficult situations and use actual science to solve their problems, was being criticised within an inch of its life by other viewers.
And despite a great performance, Maureen was more often than not dismissed as a bitch and bad mother, despite each term not being remotely true. Maureen is certainly a forceful woman, who is in no doubt that she's the one who gives the orders in the family unit... which is exactly what was so enjoyable about the character.
I loved what this review had to say about her:
It's clear that Maureen looms so large for all of her family that, even as she encourages them to achieve their fullest potential with endless love and support, she sets a path before them that it is difficult, nearly impossible, for any of them to rebel against. It's so rare for female characters—and especially mothers—to get to express this kind of ambiguity, neither nurturing angels nor stifling monsters but something in between, that it's almost worth watching Lost in Space just for the opportunity to see one.
It's true what they say: fandom wants complex female characters until it actually GETS them.
Marcia Clarke from American Crime Story
I'm always a little hesitant to put real-life women into these retrospectives, as this is meant to be a celebration of well-written fictional characters, and of course, no real woman could ever be described as "well-written."
So consider this an entry for the depiction of Marcia Clarke in American Crime Story, as played by Sarah Paulson. The series has a very clear purpose when it comes to her character: to depict a woman in a man's world, struggling not only to prosecute a famous person and bring justice to his victims, but against the irrelevant sexism she has to face in doing so, from the incessant focus on her hairstyle to comments from random store clerks.
Most importantly, she's far from perfect. She's frustratingly obtuse about the subject of race and how it will affect proceedings; wrongly assuming that the black women on the jury will vote in favour of their sex over their race, and she refuses to listen to the black man she brought on specifically to offset any perceived racism in the prosecution (as he says: "you wanted a black face, not a black voice.")
And yet her mistakes are based on ignorance, not malevolence. From the very start, Marcia is in this fight to bring justice to a woman of domestic violence, having experienced it herself in her youth, and you can't say she doesn't fight tooth and nail every step of the way – all while juggling a messy divorce, the media circus, and her own self-doubt.
Okoye from Black Panther
So I usually limit myself to one female character per book/show/film, and yet every now and then I have to make an exception. This exception is Okoye from Black Panther, despite having featured Shuri as Woman of the Month back in March (though since both also appear in Infinity War, maybe that's my loophole).
She's an incredible character, and easily my number one favourite in the entire MCU. As the head of the Dora Milaje, she's a formidable warrior and general, but one that possesses a sense of humour and lack of fear about expressing her opinions and emotions.
Her relationship with T'Challa is the best thing in Black Panther: she's incredibly loyal to him, yet is also comfortable enough to tease him when the occasion calls for it. She's a nationalist who loves her homeland and is committed to its safety, but grudgingly concedes to world-wide cooperation when the need arises. She's loyal to a fault to the Wakandan throne, having a fascinating conversation with Nakia after Killmonger seizes power, and ultimately even choses her duty to her country over love for her husband in a battle that pits them against each other. It's a glorious moment – maybe the best in the whole film.
She fights in a billowy red dress, she throws her wig at people, she unapologetically speaks her own language when around English speakers, and she leads the charge when alien forces attack her home. I just love everything about her – everything, and having survived Thanos's snap it's fascinating to ponder what her role will be in Endgame.
Have I mentioned that I love her?
Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables
I watched both seasons of Netflix's Anne With an E this year, and though I have mixed feelings about how they've gone about adapting the book, it at least gave me the excuse to go back and flick through L.M. Montgomery's original text. And what I discovered was surprising: that it's the story of how a social misfit learns to conform to society's expectations.
It's right there in the opening paragraph, which provides a metaphor for Anne's development: "a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream..."
By today's standards, this story of self-improvement is frowned upon: we admire individualism and non-conformity. Anne's act of smashing her slate over Gilbert's head is something to be applauded, not a display of temper that she has to outgrow (regardless of whether or not she was provoked).
Montgomery's Anne is wilful and short-tempered, vain and proud – and like Jo March and Emma Woodhouse, we like her for these flaws, but at the same time understand that their character development involves moving past them.
Naturally, it's a double-edged sword: all three of these heroines become less interesting as they grow out of their flaws (this bittersweetness is in the text itself, when Marilla points out that Anne no longer uses big words as she gets older) but they are also more mature, more self-aware, and therefore happier.
Still, there's a reason why Anne of Green Gables is the undisputed best of the Anne books, as it's the one where most of her growth actually happens. She's a wonderful literary creation, and Montgomery (who is forever teetering on the edge of sentimentality) finds the right balance between pathos and humour, worldliness and innocence, dreaminess and practicality when it comes to Anne Shirley.
Jo March from Little Women
Ah, Josephine March. Is there a more beloved feminist heroine of 19th century literature? Well, maybe. After all, I can't be the only one saddened by the fact she (like Anne Shirley) eventually gives up her literary ambitions in order to be a wife, mother and teacher. (This was apparently rectified in Jo's Boys, but – c'mon, nobody reads that far).
But we love her in every other respect. She's awkward and honest, hot-tempered and passionate, kind-hearted and open-minded – easily the most popular of the March siblings and the one we would most like to be our best friend.
There have been dozens of Little Women adaptations across the years, but the reason Jo appears on this list is because I was pleasantly surprised by the BBC's take on the material, which featured my favourite depiction of Jo thus far. Maya Hawke captures a certain something about Jo that I've always imagined but never seen on-screen: a low, almost deep voice, and rather mannish, ungainly mannerisms, which all contribute to the sense of a tomboy struggling not only with petticoats and frills, but her own growing body.
I never thought to ever see such a clear portrayal of my personal head-canon in a real-life actress, and Hawke is attractive without being a stunning beauty (like Winona Ryder), brash without becoming obnoxious (Katherine Hepburn fell into this a couple of times) and allows Jo's essential goodness shine through in everything she does.
She's everything I could have wished for in a Jo, and so I'm already feeling cynical about the next big Hollywood adaptation.
Queen Elizabeth II from The Crown
Another real-life person, and this one has to come with even more of a disclaimer. As I've said many times before, I'm not a monarchist, and though I don't have any beef with the royals on a personal level, as an institution I think they're pretty much obsolete.
And yet when you consider the situation to which Elizabeth II was born and the position that she's held for over five decades... well, how could that be anything but fascinating material for a drama? Crowning a twenty-five year old girl the Queen of England and watching as she tries to handle prime ministers, the public, the press, demanding family members, royal protocol, the changing times, foreign delegates – heck, even natural disasters, all makes for riveting television, even if you're simply watching two high-ranking officials converse in a parlour.
Claire Foy was deservedly praised for her performance here, and what's perhaps most impressive is her ability to convey a dozen shades of disappointment, sadness and/or contempt through her eyes alone. Tell me you didn't fist-bump when she gave the Duke of Windsor a well-deserved dressing down after his involvement with the Nazis is exposed, or squirm when she debates whether or not to allow the marriage of her sister and Peter Townsend, or hold your breath just a little at the stunning complexity of the relationship that forms between her and Jackie Kennedy.
Every word she says, every action she takes is scrutinized and judged and debated, leading to a life that’s lived with absolute self-control by its owner. It may be fascinating to Queen Elizabeth, but we'd never want to trade places with her.
Tahani al Jamil from The Good Place
SPOILERS
It was a close one between the two leading ladies of The Good Place, but the reason Tahani won out was that even though I love a good redemption story, Eleanor Shellstrop's is weakened by the fact that her terrible behaviour is usually played for laughs, rather than as something she legitimately needs to grow out of, for her own sake as well as others. (For instance, we see that she's okay with selling fake pills to gullible old people, but there's no indication that this actually harmed any of them).
On the other hand, Tahani poses a much more interesting moral quandary. Though she's beautiful and charming and has raised billions for global charities, she still ends up in the Bad Place. Why? Because despite doing real good in the world, her motivations were not pure – she was just trying to get validation from her parents and show up her more popular sister.
But is that fair? Is motivation really that important that Tahani would be damned just because she was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? And unlike Eleanor, who we're eager to watch grow out of her flaws, Tahani's vanity and self-absorption is what makes her so entertaining. Do we really want to watch her leave behind her incessant humblebragging and dramatic posing?
Granted, I'm looking at this from a Doylist perspective rather than a Watsonian one. Tahani is my favourite character, one played with such gusto by Jameela Jamil, so I love her just as she is: pampered and prissy and full of self-loathing despite her beauty and success. Yikes, when I put it that way, perhaps it's a blessing that she got over herself, made amends with her sister, and committed to becoming a better person.
Domino from Deadpool 2
I can't say I was hugely interested in seeing Deadpool 2. As with the first movie it was on my "watch eventually" list as opposed to my "watch immediately" one, but when I finally tuned in I ended up loving what they did with Domino.
As I understand it, Domino's mutant power is of judging the outcome of any given situation with lightning speed. If someone fires a bullet at her, she knows exactly how to side-step it. If she tumbles into a shark tank, she instinctively knows how to survive the experience. According to Wikipedia, she has: "the ability to subconsciously and psionically initiate random telekinetic acts that affect probability in her favour by making improbable (but not impossible) things occur within her line of sight."
In the movie, this ability is translated somewhat ambiguously into "lucky", which – after a short argument over whether or not this constitutes a legitimate power – is portrayed as her, well, getting really lucky. When she falls from a great height, she's positioned just right to land on a giant inflatable panda. When someone takes a shot at her, the gun malfunctions. When she needs a ride, a bus comes crashing through the wall.
Granted, this does take away some of her agency – after all, she doesn't have to put any effort into her success, but as was pointed out a number of times, there was something extremely liberating to a lot of viewers about seeing a black woman stroll through traffic, gunfire and other assorted chaos without a care in the world.
To give a character superpowers is one thing, but you also have to give them set-pieces in which they can utilize and have fun with those powers in a creative way. Everyone knows what I'm talking about when I say "Quicksilver's scene" from Days of Future Past, but did they ever do anything particularly interesting with Storm's powers, or Jean's, or Scott's? Not really. But Domino is a joy every time she's on-screen: you can't wait to see how the universe will bend itself to accommodate her safety.
The lassie from East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that female characters get blamed for a lot of shit. Eve ate the apple and got us all chucked out of Paradise. Pandora opened the box and unleashed all the evils of the world on us. On Merlin, Kara is blamed for Arthur’s demise, even though nearly every shitty thing that happened to Merlin and Arthur was a direct result of their own procrastination.
Recently I saw a Tumblr post that stated Galadriel was to blame for the War of the Silmarils because she refused to give Feanor a strand of her hair when he asked for it. And of course, we all know that every bad thing that ever happens in Westeros, whether it be a gruesome massacre or a broken nail, is all down to the fact Catelyn Stark didn’t love Jon Snow.
Fandom has a way of collectively demanding flawed female characters that make mistakes… only to openly despise them when they behave as anything less than perfect at all times. Which is why stories like East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon are so refreshing, because they involve a girl who makes a mistake, and is then given the opportunity to rectify that mistake. She’s not soiled forever, she’s not damned for eternity, she’s not chucked off her pedestal and punished non-stop for the rest of her life.
Here the nameless lassie has to face a fate often dealt to women in these types of stories: marriage to a monstrous (or at least mysterious) groom. It’s as old as Cupid and Psyche and as popular as Beauty and the Beast, but in this story the groom takes the form of a talking polar bear. He takes her from her family to a magnificent palace where he can visit her every night in human form. But there’s one caveat (there always is): she’s not allowed to see what he looks like. Like Psyche, she can’t resist temptation, and lights a candle while he sleeps in order to catch a glimpse of him.
Shit hits the fan and it turns out that her husband was under a curse that only she could break by not looking at him for a set number of years. Since she succumbed, he’s now doomed to marry a troll in the wastelands of the north and must depart that very night.
What’s a girl to do but go in search of him? Armed with three magical gifts given to her by three old crones, the lassie reaches the castle that lies at the edge of the world and a battle of wits with the Princess of the Trolls commences – a competition that is won through a decidedly feminine skill (not telling what though).
The lassie is one of the best female characters in all of folklore, simply because she makes a terrible mistake, and then works her butt off in order to fix it. It's essentially a redemption story, and it only comes about because the girl in question is willing to put in the hard yards to achieve it. That's an arc that's still very rare when it comes to female characters; off the top of my head I can only think of Merida from Brave and Princess Lili from Legend who follow in the lassie's footsteps (also fairy tales – coincidence?)
Honorary Mentions:
The girls and women of Picnic at Hanging Rock
The miniseries based on Joan Lindsay's novella aired earlier this year, and though it missed the point of the original story in several respects, it reminded me of just how much I loved it. It's not just the deliciousness of a mystery that never gets solved or the 19th century Australian atmosphere, but the fact that the story is so utterly, absolutely feminine in nature.
All the main characters are women, and those that aren't are completely consumed by the mystery of them. The inherent femininity of the tale is found in almost every facet of the text: it's in the location, the time period, the dialogue, the plot, the prose, the relationships – it's hard to describe but it's there all the same, in every word. It's in the reappearance of the corset, the unspoken period-pains, the removal of gloves on the outskirts of town, the inexplicable disappearance that touches the lives of all those left behind.
And it's relationships between the women, whether they be teachers or students, friends or rivals, mistresses or servants, that the web of intrigue is woven. Men are baffled in the face of it, and whatever secrets these girls have, they manage keep them in a world frantic to pry them open.
Jodi Whittaker from Doctor Who
Jodi Whittaker doesn't strike me as an out-of-touch person, and so I'm sure she was well-aware of the histrionics from the usual crowd when it was announced she would be taking on the mantle of the Doctor. It must have therefore been quite daunting for her to step into the character's shoes, knowing that her performance would be scrutinized within an inch of its life. Just one girl-power comment, one silly expression, one moment of weakness and fandom would consider her a complete write-off.
But instead something wonderful happened: Jodi proved herself to be really, really good. She had the Doctor's curiosity, compassion, intelligence, tenacity and drive, and though not much was made of her new body outside the promotional material, her presence brings a whole new perspective to the stories – a female Doctor building her own sonic screwdriver or fighting against the inherent misogyny of the witch-trials simply has a deeper resonance.
So congratulations to her success, and we'll see her again in the New Year!
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente
I waxed lyrically about this book earlier in the year, so let me recap briefly...
The title is a riff on The Vagina Monologues, and contains the testimonies of five women who have been Stuffed in the Fridge – that is, killed off in order to further the storylines of their male counterparts.
They tell their stories from a glittery, grungy Underworld, each woman roughly aligning with a familiar figure from comic books (Alexandra DeWitt, Karen Page, Gwen Stacey, Jean Grey and so on) detailing their dreams and ambitions before the inevitable villain comes along to take them hostage, taunt their boyfriends, and cackle evilly over their demise.
You can almost feel Valente's anger and frustration emanating from the pages, which isn't surprising given she was inspired by Gwen Stacey's fate in The Amazing Spiderman 2, which not only killed off the character, but did so right after she was given the line: “Nobody makes my decisions for me, nobody! This is my choice. Mine.”
I mean, wow. There's killing off a female character, and then there's punishing her for having a mind of her own.
So The Refrigerator Monologues comes as a tonic and a bandage and a big middle finger to the trope that's still picking off female characters left, right and centre. It's also just a fascinating read, and I recommend it enough to feature it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment