The Avengers: Thought on Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
I had a bit of an adventurous homeward commute today, but that's a story for another post. (I will most likely make it tomorrow.) This post, I want to talk about Natasha Romanoff.
There's this one bit of The Avengers that's always stood out to me.
Towards the end, when Natasha meets Dr Slevig on the roof of Stark Tower, he says something along the lines of, "You cannot defend against yourself."
Natasha's response is along the lines of, "I know, Doctor, you didn't know what you were doing, it's OK."
I find that a fascinating response. Now, I know she's disorientated (from the battle, the bleeding head injury, and the fact she just leaped off a speeding Chitauri craft) but that seems like a strange leap of logic to me. It may be that I'm mis-hearing Selvig's line (I don't actually know what he says prior to the bit I quoted above, despite seeing the film umpteen times) ... but why would she assume he's referring to what he did under Loki's influence?
Natasha knows Selvig was under Loki's control. What he did or didn't do between Loki's arrival and coming around on the roof wasn't anything to do with 'defending against himself' - if anything, he couldn't defend against Loki/Tesseract energy.
I can't answer that question.
But the fact that her response to 'you can't defend against yourself' (for whatever reason) is 'you can't help what you did' - that's what I find really fascinating.
We don't know a lot about movieverse!Natasha's life before Iron Man 2. We know she's with SHIELD because of Clint, and we know she did some terrible things before that - all of which puts a lot of red in her ledger. We also know that she knows "what it's like to be un-made". (Another fascinating line.)
I think (and we're delving into 'personal headcanon' territory here) that Natasha isn't able to defend against herself. "I've got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out," might be a line she feeds to Loki to get information from him. (I think it's fairly obvious that her responses in that scene are all an act, so we can't take any real character cues from it: she's reacting to Loki's words the way he expect her, as a woman, to react; not the way Natasha Romanoff, fully developed female character who uses her gender to fox people into telling her things thank you everyone who made this a thing, would react if she wasn't putting on a show.) But that same line - I think it's got a grain of truth in it. There are things in her past - things in her - that she has no defence against.
The way she responds to Clint asking, "You know what it's like to be un-made?" - her voice heavy, her words measured, a lot of bottled emotion behind them that we can't figure out because we don't know enough as viewers, that maybe Clint doesn't even know enough to figure out because I doubt she even lets her friends in on that ... yeah. There are things about her and her past and who she used to be that she can't shield herself from.
I don't really know where I was going with this. I just have a lot of thoughts about this stuff! And I wanted to share them, and see what you all think as well!
I look forward to your opinions, if you have them. :)
.
There's this one bit of The Avengers that's always stood out to me.
Towards the end, when Natasha meets Dr Slevig on the roof of Stark Tower, he says something along the lines of, "You cannot defend against yourself."
Natasha's response is along the lines of, "I know, Doctor, you didn't know what you were doing, it's OK."
I find that a fascinating response. Now, I know she's disorientated (from the battle, the bleeding head injury, and the fact she just leaped off a speeding Chitauri craft) but that seems like a strange leap of logic to me. It may be that I'm mis-hearing Selvig's line (I don't actually know what he says prior to the bit I quoted above, despite seeing the film umpteen times) ... but why would she assume he's referring to what he did under Loki's influence?
Natasha knows Selvig was under Loki's control. What he did or didn't do between Loki's arrival and coming around on the roof wasn't anything to do with 'defending against himself' - if anything, he couldn't defend against Loki/Tesseract energy.
I can't answer that question.
But the fact that her response to 'you can't defend against yourself' (for whatever reason) is 'you can't help what you did' - that's what I find really fascinating.
We don't know a lot about movieverse!Natasha's life before Iron Man 2. We know she's with SHIELD because of Clint, and we know she did some terrible things before that - all of which puts a lot of red in her ledger. We also know that she knows "what it's like to be un-made". (Another fascinating line.)
I think (and we're delving into 'personal headcanon' territory here) that Natasha isn't able to defend against herself. "I've got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out," might be a line she feeds to Loki to get information from him. (I think it's fairly obvious that her responses in that scene are all an act, so we can't take any real character cues from it: she's reacting to Loki's words the way he expect her, as a woman, to react; not the way Natasha Romanoff, fully developed female character who uses her gender to fox people into telling her things thank you everyone who made this a thing, would react if she wasn't putting on a show.) But that same line - I think it's got a grain of truth in it. There are things in her past - things in her - that she has no defence against.
The way she responds to Clint asking, "You know what it's like to be un-made?" - her voice heavy, her words measured, a lot of bottled emotion behind them that we can't figure out because we don't know enough as viewers, that maybe Clint doesn't even know enough to figure out because I doubt she even lets her friends in on that ... yeah. There are things about her and her past and who she used to be that she can't shield herself from.
I don't really know where I was going with this. I just have a lot of thoughts about this stuff! And I wanted to share them, and see what you all think as well!
I look forward to your opinions, if you have them. :)
.