Long and Rambling Notes on TDW: Jessica Pontificates

[borderline_mary]

So I'm back from basically nowhere! Mostly for you, Anne. I like you. Also I feel like you might discuss all the below stuff with me, because.

Disclaimer: I liked this movie. The first big chunk of stuff below makes it look like I hated it, but I’m just getting the bad stuff out of the way first.

Comments

[silent_lorelei]

I hate watching a movie with a female character in it who I should love, and realizing that her scenes and dialogue are the most boring part of it. I hate seeing someone I could maybe see myself in and then seeing how much her inner journey doesn't affect what's happening on the screen. I hate seeing a character be given all these tools and facets and amazing possibilities, and then put in a corner and ignored except for when those tools might be of use to the males who are really the stars of the show. And yes, detractors will say, this movie is about Thor, not Jane, so of course things are Thor-centric, but that's not some kind of universal constant and excuse. Someone wrote this movie specifically to not be about Jane. Someone wrote it intending for her to be there but to not be too important, for her to be an accessory to Thor but not to come into her own, and that's something that was decided, not handed down by God. It's what happens to characters like Jane all the time.

And you're right, in the end, Jane is just a placeholder for Thor, too - he loves her because of what she represents, not really who she is, because his feelings for her have also never been explored. They are, as always, less important than his feelings for his family and universe and responsibilities. Jane is here because the hero has to get the girl, and she's given the hallmarks of being neat because there would be complaints if she weren't, but she's still paper-thin.

This is one of the reasons I love coming to tumblr to read about Jane, actually. Fan-works have fixing this kind of bullshit at the forefront of their mission most of the time; posts about Jane delve into her thoughts and feelings and motivations in ways the source material never bothers to, build her up into the character she was meant to be and unleash her across fiction and art as an awesome and every bit as important person as everyone else in the movies. They read into all the things she does and construct what she might have thought and felt; they write those pivotal, beautiful scenes she deserved that would have given us windows into her soul; they give her the attention she deserved directly from the people who most need to see her and characters like her given their due. I love that. We should never make the mistake of thinking that because writers treat Jane poorly, Jane is herself a poor character. We should celebrate Jane. She freaking traveled to a different planet by accident through the power of science. She is awesome.

[silent_lorelei]

SO I promise this is in relation to things you said, I just sort of drifted. Where I was going at the start of all this was toward Jane's god-slappin' hand.

So, yes: slapping Loki, also slapping Thor, what is she doing. Actually, I don't think she's really stupid enough for this to be a stupid move. I think it's more of a statement. I actually kind of like her slapping rampage, because I think it's one of the few places in the movie she actually gets to have and act on a real emotional moment.

Jane's a smart person, and she knows she can't physically do anything to anyone from Asgard. She's seen Asgardians fight and knows how many truck-tons of force they can take without flinching; she knows slapping them won't do a single goddamn thing. Hitting Thor when he comes back is an emotional expression, a way of letting him know how deeply upset with him she is without screaming or breaking down, and where it would be unacceptable against another human who could be hurt by it, she knows it's going to bother him about as much as a slap from a fly would. In fact, when dealing with a dude from a warrior culture who could benchpress fifty of her with one hand, giving him a slap when she comes in is almost the best she can do to be part of that: she's asserting her physical presence, letting him know in no uncertain terms that she's pissed off, and doing both within a cultural framework he can understand and one that doesn't actually have even the remotest chance of causing him injury or discomfort. I wouldn't be surprised if she hits him a lot; if I were her, I'd probably be worried he wouldn't notice me unless I did.

[silent_lorelei]

Slapping Loki is a little more complicated, but it's also one of the few genuine emotional outbursts Jane ever gets to have. She wasn't directly involved in the attack on New York, but I have no trouble at all believing that she knew a lot about it, watched it on the news in spellbound terror like the rest of the country, except for her it might actually have been worse, since she has firsthand alien experience and knew how bad things could have gotten. Her response here reads to me like the responses I saw out of many people after the bombing of the World Trade Center - her anger at him and the destruction he caused is so great for a second that she can't control herself. And, of all the people in this scene, Jane is the one who has that burning right to be angry; to the other Asgardians, Loki's actions were disobedient and naughty, but they don't really touch them and they don't really have any conception of what happened to the mortals destroyed by it. They have the typical problem of not really being able to conceptualize mass-scale loss of life they didn't see, multiplied by the general Asgardian attitude toward humans as lesser, kind of unimportant beings. Like small, stupid animals, pigeons, maybe; I mean, you shouldn't step on them because that's mean, but most people wouldn't bat an eye at a news report that thousands of pigeons died in some other country because of something they weren't involved in.

But Jane is a pigeon, and she has a right to be mad. Her planet was attacked, many people - possibly even people she knows, we don't know! - were killed, maimed or had their lives destroyed, national peace and security will never be the same, and the guy who did all that is standing right in front of her, lookin debonair and unconcerned as shit. I'm surprised she only slapped him, and didn't devolve into a screaming fit right there. (Actually, I would have enjoyed it if she had.) Yeah, from the Asgardian perspective, what he did on earth was practically a misdemeanor, and it's really disobeying Odin that he's most guilty of. From her perspective, he's an evil mass murderer who thinks of her as cattle and the fucker is smiling at her.

And honestly, I'm not too down on her for the stupidity of hitting Loki (who, again, she knows she has no prayer of actually hurting). I mean, yeah, he's a crazy psychopath who kills humans without even noticing and that's probably not the best idea she's ever had, but at the same time, he's clearly in chains and surrounded by people who would blow his head off if he tried to retaliate, starting with Thor. It's probably the only time ever, no matter what happens, that she can strike out against him for what he did without either being instantly murdered or totally ignored. And I think there may even be a level of ethical imperative there; she's the only human on Asgard right now, might be the only one ever, and at the moment it doesn't look like Loki's ever going back to Midgard, so this is also the only time humanity, represented by her, can face its attacker and in some small way strike back for what he did. Jane, the Everywoman.

Jane's not stupid, but she is a person with emotions and knee-jerk responses. I probably wouldn't have done what she did, but I can kind of admire her for it anyway.