weighing in on the female characters flowchart
I'm not going to beat the dead horse with what's wrong with the female characters flowchart, but I do want to say a couple of things about how what could have been at least a decent idea might have gone so terribly awry. (If for some reason you've been under a rock for the past little while and don't know what I'm talking about and why it's pretty failtastic in a lot of ways, there's something of a round-up here, among other places. Some of the responses, such as 
dagas_isa's How to be a Nuanced Male Character, are hilarious.)
I agree with everyone else that cramming characters into stereotypes, being extremely racially problematic, and using real people as examples of tropes is SO not the way to go about critiquing the writing of female characters in the mainstream media. Lots and lots of problems with the flowchart! On the other hand, I'll give the writer of the flowchart at least a tiny bit of credit in that part of what I presume was her initial impulse was probably sound: a lot of female characters in mainstream media aren't well-developed, and we should critique that (which means critiquing the writing and not the characters themselves, I'd argue). Unfortunately, pretty much everything that happened after that premise was a train wreck, as plenty of other people have pointed out.
I'd propose that the train wreck happened in the first place because of two main fallacies:
1) Tropes =/= Stereotypes
Since I'm on a bit of an Irina Derevko kick at the moment, let me tell you about my ambivalent motherhood button. I can't quite explain or justify it, but let's just say that Irina had me from the moment she walked onscreen and shot her daughter.
chaila sold me on the idea of watching Alias The Irina Derevko Show in the first place by saying, "If you liked Xhalax Sun, you'll love Irina Derevko." Because oh, do I like Xhalax Sun! Easily my favourite minor characters in Farscape, and that's saying something. And then there's Sarah Fucking Connor, who wears her maternal ambivalence a bit differently than Xhalax and Irina, but who still falls soundly in the category of ambivalent mothers. We might, in short, call "ambivalent mothers" a trope. But none of those characters--not even Xhalax, with her 3 1/2 episodes--is a stereotype.
Stereotype, as you may or may not know, is originally a printing term (we've got lots of fun expressions derived from printing--"to be out of sorts," "mind your p's and q's," etc.). A stereotype plate is an exact replica of composed type, usually made from a harder metal than the type, so that it doesn't wear out as quickly in printing; it is useful primarily because it can be stored and pulled out later, if you need to print more copies of a book, long after the composed pages of type have been distributed. The key words there are "exact replica": no individuality, no nuance, no differentiation of any kind. A trope, on the other hand, might hit some common themes, but there's room for nuance, individuality, and characterization. Not that this always happens--some characters participate in a trope and are stereotypes--but it can happen. The trick is to recognize when the character participating in a trope is also a stereotype and when she's a fully-realized character (and also to realize that there's a continuum between these things).
2) The use of "strong" as a criterion when we might talk about "agency" instead.
I wrote a rambly post a few years ago (that I have not been persuaded to hunt down) in which I ultimately concluded that "strong" and "weak" are not particularly helpful adjectives, at least for me, when discussing female characters. There are too many tendencies to stuff characters into boxes that way, I think: characters who embody traditionally male characteristics, characters who do not conform to traditional female roles, characters who are protagonists (acc. to the flowchart, for instance), etc. Plenty of non-traditional, gun-wielding, female protagonists are awesome characters whom I love (see also: Sarah Fucking Connor, though, of course, she landed on the flowchart and is not entirely non-traditional). But this kind of definition of a "strong" female character leaves out all the awesome female characters who are perhaps more traditional, who don't hold military or political power, who are supporting characters rather than protagonists. It leaves out Tami Fucking Taylor, for instance, who should not be left off of ANY list of awesome female characters!
I'm less interested in what a character does and more interested in why she does it. I want to know what makes her tick, what drives her choices, and I want to feel like she's made her choices for a reason--whatever those choices might be. Tami Taylor is a happily married, heterosexual mother with a traditionally female job (high school guidance counselor and later principal). She doesn't kill anyone or save the world, and she spends a whole lot of time taking care of her family. But she's a wonderful, three-dimensional, well-rounded character because I am totally convinced that she has chosen the life she leads with her eyes wide open: she has agency. She's not a stereotype, but another character with her external characteristics might be, if that character lacks agency, and she's been slotted in to the "wife, mother, high school principal" slot because some writer assumes that of course that's the kind of life women like without thinking about why that particular woman chose that life.
This segues into another familiar rant of mine: far too often, the quickest way to ruin a female character's characterization is to give her a baby. All sorts of writers seem to be so blind to the fact that women choose to have children (or not to have them, or sometimes have them without a choice, or can't have them when they want them, or have them without being happy with that choice, which comes back to my thing for ambivalent mothers) for MANY DIFFERENT REASONS. Maybe Dana Scully does want a baby, and hell, maybe even Aeryn Sun does, too, but I want to see why (and obviously I didn't feel like I was given sufficient motivation for the sudden maternal urges of either of those characters--agency is not one size fits all, after all). Giving a character a baby does not automatically veer into stereotype-land; failing to consider her agency in the situation because you assume that all women want babies does.
In short, I do suspect there was part of the initial impulse behind the flowchart that wasn't a bad idea: female characters are often badly and stereotypically written, and as a fan of female characters, I do not like to see that. But the flowchart writer threw out the baby with the bathwater, I think, largely through a failure to recognize nuance.
**
On a related note, how on earth did I not find out about the BECHDEL TEST COMMENT FICATHON until today?!?!?!?!?!? Internets, you have failed me a little bit!!! Lots of fantastic stuff there, and still time to play, I think.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
dagas_isa's How to be a Nuanced Male Character, are hilarious.)
I agree with everyone else that cramming characters into stereotypes, being extremely racially problematic, and using real people as examples of tropes is SO not the way to go about critiquing the writing of female characters in the mainstream media. Lots and lots of problems with the flowchart! On the other hand, I'll give the writer of the flowchart at least a tiny bit of credit in that part of what I presume was her initial impulse was probably sound: a lot of female characters in mainstream media aren't well-developed, and we should critique that (which means critiquing the writing and not the characters themselves, I'd argue). Unfortunately, pretty much everything that happened after that premise was a train wreck, as plenty of other people have pointed out.
I'd propose that the train wreck happened in the first place because of two main fallacies:
1) Tropes =/= Stereotypes
Since I'm on a bit of an Irina Derevko kick at the moment, let me tell you about my ambivalent motherhood button. I can't quite explain or justify it, but let's just say that Irina had me from the moment she walked onscreen and shot her daughter.
chaila sold me on the idea of watching Alias The Irina Derevko Show in the first place by saying, "If you liked Xhalax Sun, you'll love Irina Derevko." Because oh, do I like Xhalax Sun! Easily my favourite minor characters in Farscape, and that's saying something. And then there's Sarah Fucking Connor, who wears her maternal ambivalence a bit differently than Xhalax and Irina, but who still falls soundly in the category of ambivalent mothers. We might, in short, call "ambivalent mothers" a trope. But none of those characters--not even Xhalax, with her 3 1/2 episodes--is a stereotype.
Stereotype, as you may or may not know, is originally a printing term (we've got lots of fun expressions derived from printing--"to be out of sorts," "mind your p's and q's," etc.). A stereotype plate is an exact replica of composed type, usually made from a harder metal than the type, so that it doesn't wear out as quickly in printing; it is useful primarily because it can be stored and pulled out later, if you need to print more copies of a book, long after the composed pages of type have been distributed. The key words there are "exact replica": no individuality, no nuance, no differentiation of any kind. A trope, on the other hand, might hit some common themes, but there's room for nuance, individuality, and characterization. Not that this always happens--some characters participate in a trope and are stereotypes--but it can happen. The trick is to recognize when the character participating in a trope is also a stereotype and when she's a fully-realized character (and also to realize that there's a continuum between these things).
2) The use of "strong" as a criterion when we might talk about "agency" instead.
I wrote a rambly post a few years ago (that I have not been persuaded to hunt down) in which I ultimately concluded that "strong" and "weak" are not particularly helpful adjectives, at least for me, when discussing female characters. There are too many tendencies to stuff characters into boxes that way, I think: characters who embody traditionally male characteristics, characters who do not conform to traditional female roles, characters who are protagonists (acc. to the flowchart, for instance), etc. Plenty of non-traditional, gun-wielding, female protagonists are awesome characters whom I love (see also: Sarah Fucking Connor, though, of course, she landed on the flowchart and is not entirely non-traditional). But this kind of definition of a "strong" female character leaves out all the awesome female characters who are perhaps more traditional, who don't hold military or political power, who are supporting characters rather than protagonists. It leaves out Tami Fucking Taylor, for instance, who should not be left off of ANY list of awesome female characters!
I'm less interested in what a character does and more interested in why she does it. I want to know what makes her tick, what drives her choices, and I want to feel like she's made her choices for a reason--whatever those choices might be. Tami Taylor is a happily married, heterosexual mother with a traditionally female job (high school guidance counselor and later principal). She doesn't kill anyone or save the world, and she spends a whole lot of time taking care of her family. But she's a wonderful, three-dimensional, well-rounded character because I am totally convinced that she has chosen the life she leads with her eyes wide open: she has agency. She's not a stereotype, but another character with her external characteristics might be, if that character lacks agency, and she's been slotted in to the "wife, mother, high school principal" slot because some writer assumes that of course that's the kind of life women like without thinking about why that particular woman chose that life.
This segues into another familiar rant of mine: far too often, the quickest way to ruin a female character's characterization is to give her a baby. All sorts of writers seem to be so blind to the fact that women choose to have children (or not to have them, or sometimes have them without a choice, or can't have them when they want them, or have them without being happy with that choice, which comes back to my thing for ambivalent mothers) for MANY DIFFERENT REASONS. Maybe Dana Scully does want a baby, and hell, maybe even Aeryn Sun does, too, but I want to see why (and obviously I didn't feel like I was given sufficient motivation for the sudden maternal urges of either of those characters--agency is not one size fits all, after all). Giving a character a baby does not automatically veer into stereotype-land; failing to consider her agency in the situation because you assume that all women want babies does.
In short, I do suspect there was part of the initial impulse behind the flowchart that wasn't a bad idea: female characters are often badly and stereotypically written, and as a fan of female characters, I do not like to see that. But the flowchart writer threw out the baby with the bathwater, I think, largely through a failure to recognize nuance.
**
On a related note, how on earth did I not find out about the BECHDEL TEST COMMENT FICATHON until today?!?!?!?!?!? Internets, you have failed me a little bit!!! Lots of fantastic stuff there, and still time to play, I think.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.