The female counterpoint
TW: genocide
This post has been bubbling in my head for a long time.
The other, or at least the face of the other, seems like it’s almost always female.
I first realized this while watching Legions of the Guardians, which, I realize, is about owls. Yes, the birds. But it’s a surprisingly complex populated-by-anthropomorphized-animals children’s movie since it’s basically about eugenics and genocide. In any case, we naturally have the mysterious evil dude who wears the mask for he is deformed and is also evil (oh the abilism here, in a movie trying to make a point about eugenics… I just can’t sometimes) contrasted with the snow white owl of the mysteriously far away good guys (oh god, coded racism in anthropomorphized animal characters, in this movie… about eugenics… I just… can’t). More approachably, we have two brothers from the same middle of nowhere family with the same noble, privileged pedigree and what they do with their social and physical capabilities. There’s also the bad guy (male) who’s actually a mole for the good guys and the good guy (male) who’s actually a mole for the bad guys and the old, wise (male) mentor who traumatizes inspires the hero into reaching his full potential. Like most movies, it’s a sausage fest if you cut down the plot to the basics.
But what about the actual targets of eugenics? Who (haha, hoo, geddit?) does the imagined kyriarchy of owls actually want enslaved, killed, eradicated? Well, seemingly almost everyone who’s not a very specific type of owl - and leading the actual process of effectively lobotomizing the owls, the confirmed villain we see most frequently throughout the movie? One of the few female characters. The only recurring character belonging to one of the despised owl species slated for enslavement or extermination? One of the few female characters. The only average person owl we see from the mystical kingdom of racial integration? One of the few female characters. While the male characters are seemingly defined with character archetypes relating to their actions and their role in the story, the female characters are static others.
Each of the factions that differ from the hero’s originally isolated family are effectively summarized a generalized female character. To make clear that the eugenicists are deceptive yet dangerous, we get a female character that seems prim and proper until it’s shown that she’s building an army and more or less turning hordes of children into mindless, enslaved automatons because they’re the wrong subspecies. To make clear that the targeted owls have worth and should have rights, we get a female character that helps our protagonist escape and actually uses her differences to her (and his) advantage (she then more or less disappears). To make clear that things are different in the mystical land of integration across the sea, we get a female character who gives the hero a tour of her society while doing the owl equivalent of batting her eyelashes (one of my moms after the movie asked where that romantic subplot disappeared to). They don’t have selves - they just embody larger groups or thematic points. They don’t act, they represent. When they do something, it’s inevitably tied to their single character trait - of belonging to some other social group than the hero.
Once you notice this in one movie, any movie, it honestly starts feeling ubiquitous. Avatar: The Last Airbender has all sorts of female characters, but Aang’s own society was extremely gender-segregated, so we conveniently very rarely see female Air Nomads. While we’ve seen earth kingdom citizens be slightly imaginative, most notably the villagers living near to Aunt Woo and the Earth King himself and naturally King Bumi, Toph, the usual resident earth kingdom female, only alternates between stony silence and sardonic quips. So much of her personality seems defined around her attributes of strength, resilience, and unstoppable nature - concepts that keep coming up when we talk about what the Earth Kingdom is always supposed to be. Katara, the most visible water tribe character, is continually defined in terms of how her community has been affected by the Fire Nation. She recasts herself as the daughter of a woman they murdered, the daughter of a soldier fighting against them, the first volunteer of the first elemental nation to support the avatar again, and the recipient of secret and nearly lost knowledge from the only other southern water tribe bender. Not only is she constantly reexamined as a case study of the troubles of the water tribe, but she is constantly defined by her relationships in an elemental nation that we’re told is nothing but interlocking push-and-pull. Within the avatar’s band, the most recurrent female characters are trapped to some extent as having to be reflections of their cultural background.
More subtly, this plays out in the contrast between Zuko and Azula. Siblings with an equal shot at inheriting the title “Fire Lord”, Zuko eventually does a face-heel-turn, leading to the inevitable comparison between his pluralistic idea of the Fire Nation and Azula’s idea of raining death on the other nations before enslaving the survivors (which her father, the big bad, shares). With Azula initially forming an all-female elite team against the avatar’s forces, it’s difficult not to see some gendered element to this. We’re clearly supposed to identify more fully with Zuko than Azula, just as we’re supposed to identify more fully with the genocidaires trying to make amends than those gearing up for round two, but to what extent does this relate to their genders? If we’re supposed to see Zuko’s plans as compatible, even identical to the avatar’s, in contrast to Azula’s, is this being communicating to us by Azula being the gender of the “other”?
Today, as I escaped the humdrum of daily work with a little Doctor Who, this struck me again. The companions are always human women, who provide a crucial counterpoint to the Doctor, usually relating pretty directly back to their humanity (in contrast to his often more powerful and certainly more durable life as a Time Lord). To even the scales of who the audience identifies with, it seems to me, we’re given the allegedly even choice between the non-human man and the human woman.
What do you think? Are female characters frequently written as a contrasting social perspectives, rather than individual characters?
This post has been bubbling in my head for a long time.
The other, or at least the face of the other, seems like it’s almost always female.
I first realized this while watching Legions of the Guardians, which, I realize, is about owls. Yes, the birds. But it’s a surprisingly complex populated-by-anthropomorphized-animals children’s movie since it’s basically about eugenics and genocide. In any case, we naturally have the mysterious evil dude who wears the mask for he is deformed and is also evil (oh the abilism here, in a movie trying to make a point about eugenics… I just can’t sometimes) contrasted with the snow white owl of the mysteriously far away good guys (oh god, coded racism in anthropomorphized animal characters, in this movie… about eugenics… I just… can’t). More approachably, we have two brothers from the same middle of nowhere family with the same noble, privileged pedigree and what they do with their social and physical capabilities. There’s also the bad guy (male) who’s actually a mole for the good guys and the good guy (male) who’s actually a mole for the bad guys and the old, wise (male) mentor who traumatizes inspires the hero into reaching his full potential. Like most movies, it’s a sausage fest if you cut down the plot to the basics.
But what about the actual targets of eugenics? Who (haha, hoo, geddit?) does the imagined kyriarchy of owls actually want enslaved, killed, eradicated? Well, seemingly almost everyone who’s not a very specific type of owl - and leading the actual process of effectively lobotomizing the owls, the confirmed villain we see most frequently throughout the movie? One of the few female characters. The only recurring character belonging to one of the despised owl species slated for enslavement or extermination? One of the few female characters. The only average person owl we see from the mystical kingdom of racial integration? One of the few female characters. While the male characters are seemingly defined with character archetypes relating to their actions and their role in the story, the female characters are static others.
Each of the factions that differ from the hero’s originally isolated family are effectively summarized a generalized female character. To make clear that the eugenicists are deceptive yet dangerous, we get a female character that seems prim and proper until it’s shown that she’s building an army and more or less turning hordes of children into mindless, enslaved automatons because they’re the wrong subspecies. To make clear that the targeted owls have worth and should have rights, we get a female character that helps our protagonist escape and actually uses her differences to her (and his) advantage (she then more or less disappears). To make clear that things are different in the mystical land of integration across the sea, we get a female character who gives the hero a tour of her society while doing the owl equivalent of batting her eyelashes (one of my moms after the movie asked where that romantic subplot disappeared to). They don’t have selves - they just embody larger groups or thematic points. They don’t act, they represent. When they do something, it’s inevitably tied to their single character trait - of belonging to some other social group than the hero.
Once you notice this in one movie, any movie, it honestly starts feeling ubiquitous. Avatar: The Last Airbender has all sorts of female characters, but Aang’s own society was extremely gender-segregated, so we conveniently very rarely see female Air Nomads. While we’ve seen earth kingdom citizens be slightly imaginative, most notably the villagers living near to Aunt Woo and the Earth King himself and naturally King Bumi, Toph, the usual resident earth kingdom female, only alternates between stony silence and sardonic quips. So much of her personality seems defined around her attributes of strength, resilience, and unstoppable nature - concepts that keep coming up when we talk about what the Earth Kingdom is always supposed to be. Katara, the most visible water tribe character, is continually defined in terms of how her community has been affected by the Fire Nation. She recasts herself as the daughter of a woman they murdered, the daughter of a soldier fighting against them, the first volunteer of the first elemental nation to support the avatar again, and the recipient of secret and nearly lost knowledge from the only other southern water tribe bender. Not only is she constantly reexamined as a case study of the troubles of the water tribe, but she is constantly defined by her relationships in an elemental nation that we’re told is nothing but interlocking push-and-pull. Within the avatar’s band, the most recurrent female characters are trapped to some extent as having to be reflections of their cultural background.
More subtly, this plays out in the contrast between Zuko and Azula. Siblings with an equal shot at inheriting the title “Fire Lord”, Zuko eventually does a face-heel-turn, leading to the inevitable comparison between his pluralistic idea of the Fire Nation and Azula’s idea of raining death on the other nations before enslaving the survivors (which her father, the big bad, shares). With Azula initially forming an all-female elite team against the avatar’s forces, it’s difficult not to see some gendered element to this. We’re clearly supposed to identify more fully with Zuko than Azula, just as we’re supposed to identify more fully with the genocidaires trying to make amends than those gearing up for round two, but to what extent does this relate to their genders? If we’re supposed to see Zuko’s plans as compatible, even identical to the avatar’s, in contrast to Azula’s, is this being communicating to us by Azula being the gender of the “other”?
Today, as I escaped the humdrum of daily work with a little Doctor Who, this struck me again. The companions are always human women, who provide a crucial counterpoint to the Doctor, usually relating pretty directly back to their humanity (in contrast to his often more powerful and certainly more durable life as a Time Lord). To even the scales of who the audience identifies with, it seems to me, we’re given the allegedly even choice between the non-human man and the human woman.
What do you think? Are female characters frequently written as a contrasting social perspectives, rather than individual characters?