Feminism at the Movies, Part 2: "Use the Talking Pillow"
Every self-respecting feminist has a female character stereotype that drives him or her to distraction. For Nathan Rabin, it's manic pixie dream girls. For sabotabby , it's "the Intelligent and Hot but Boring and Responsible Woman Who Must Teach the Manchild Maturity". I had an anonymous commenter on my last post articulate why a steady diet of traditional femme fatales gets pretty obnoxious. I have managed to circumvent the boredom associated with watching such stock characters by avoiding romantic comedies and blockbuster action flicks and limiting my film noir consumption to special occasions only. But if you want to know what archetype really gets under my skin lately, it's the Wife of the Anti-Hero.
Let's start by defining the anti-hero. He is a man with the violent actions and cynical mindset of a traditional villain, but the motives of hero. He is the head of an organized crime family, a suburban drug dealer, a dirty cop, a corrupt bureaucrat, an advertising executive, or a serial killer who justifies his crimes as a means to provide for his vulnerable family, protect the innocent, or rid the world of things that are more evil than him. He begins his journey as a man with more traditional values, uses his intelligence and skill to find a questionably ethical shortcut out of a bad situation, swells with hubris and escalates his dangerous activity, experiences unanticipated consequences of his transgressions, and risks losing his way spiritually. Dostoyevsky would be proud. Or baffled. When the character is on the verge of losing audience sympathy, we are subtlety reminded that the society that has produced the Anti-Hero is deeply hypocritical and we are encouraged to live vicariously through him as he bravely (if not quite heroically) dares to disturb the universe and rage against its reigning moral order. If you recognize this characterization, then you, like me, probably spent the last decade perversely enjoying The Wire, The Shield, Dexter, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, and/or other complex shows in an era of what has often been called moral relativism. In fact, I've dubbed the 00's "THE DECADE OF THE ANTIHERO!" Perhaps the Anti-Hero is the projection of a country grappling with a crippling economic recession. Or maybe we've reached a point in human social history where we are self-aware enough to recognize our own sins and want to identify with characters who don't represent who we want to be, but characters who represent us all as we are, warts and all.
Did I say "us all"? Because by us all, I mean men. Not women. Enter the Wife of the Anti-Hero. She is an attractive but very boring woman with 2 or 3 kids and a rigid moral code. She is either a housewife or has a menial job that is inconsequential to the plot of the story because the husband is the real economic provider. While she appears sweet and subservient, we get little clues in the form of "talking pillows" and mandatory attendance at their unborn child's pre-natal yoga class that her influence is dull and emasculating, further necessitating the Anti-Hero's clandestinely thrilling activities. She is not creative or clever enough to plan and execute the hair-brained illegal schemes her husband revels in in order to pay the mortgage/medical-bills/therapy-program-for-special-needs-child, and would naturally disapprove. Because she is too delicate and simple to understand that the world is a complicated and dangerous place, she must constantly be lied to and manipulated to keep her from learning The Truth about the drug-deals/infidelity/vigilante-serial-killing. For the sake of plot, she must be significantly less intelligent than the Anti-Hero and thus easily duped for a season or two, or alternately a couple of botched assassination attempts.
The Anti-Hero's confidence in his Grand Scheme is so strong that he does not ever imagine in his wildest dreams that his wife will grow skeptical of his late nights out, pathological lying, army of Italian bodyguards, and bloody garage tools. She always finds out eventually, but by the time she does, it is far too late. Her position in their marriage is so depressingly inequitable, she soon realizes she has no power to stop what he is doing. If she did, we'd have no Drama. When she tries with good intentions to stop him/protect him, she causes Pandora-like trouble by interfering in His Business, causing the knowing male audience to wring their hands in frustration and exclaim, "If only she knew that The Anti-Hero was a good man who was only lying to her to protect her and the special needs kids, she'd shut up and passively accept her role as helpless victim who validates the male ego by being protected through testosterone-filled adventures!" Okay, so the majority of the American male audience wouldn't be that eloquent, but c'mon. Y'all know better. So she reacts to her powerlessness vindictively through some combination of forced separation, infidelity, ratting out her husband to the cops, or worst of all, severing access to his children, born or unborn. These cruel actions of course confirm the male suspicion that all women are dishonest and evil deep down.
Admittedly, my cinema memory doesn't go back all that far, but I'm tentatively naming Kay Corleone as the Original Wife of the Anti-Hero. The role was exceptionally well acted by Diane Keaton, who lent some amount of subtlety and grace to the role before it became a predictable television stereotype. In contrast to the unconditional acceptance and trust of Vito's wife, Kay's quietly mounting anger and revenge could be seen as a cautionary tale of the perils of futilely trying to maintain a traditionally male-dominated, paternalistic marriage in an age of change and independence for women.
This early optimism might have seemed validated in the 1989 British miniseries Traffik (infinitely superior to the American film version). When the pampered wife of a German shipping magnate first discovers her husband's illegal lifestyle, she weighs the moral ramifications against the survival of her family, and plunges into a web of danger and intrigue. When she emerges relatively unscathed, we realize to our surprise (and perhaps even hers) that the woman we had pegged as a spoiled, shrinking violet is actually far more intelligent, ruthless, and capable of running her husband's business than he ever had the potential to be. Yes, I know that this is pretty much the plot of the American film, but fans of Rome know that Lindsay Duncan could act the pants off Catherine Zeta Jones any day.
Sadly it's been all downhill from there. Today's Wife of the Anti-Hero is far less ambitious. With each new "edgy" drama series that graces my DVD player, I watch otherwise talented actresses portray women who appear more trapped, deluded, and abused as the episodes progress. I'm struggling to really articulate my reason for disliking this archetype. You have to remember that all women are irrational feminazis, and some of use get really unjustifiably bent out of shape when confronted with portrayals of our gender that are soul-shatteringly boring and depressing. Okay, blistering sarcasm aside, the Wife of the Anti-Hero is certainly a more multi-faceted creation than the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and her character leaves some room for growth (Betty Draper may break the mold, time will tell). There's enough truth and realism in many of the portrayals to make these characters almost relatable. It's more of a visceral reaction for me. Put it this way, if you're having trouble understanding why I find powerless female characters hard to swallow, imagine your daughter being married to Vic Mackey with two autistic children and Vic's enemies periodically showing up at her door to threaten her sexually and otherwise. Wouldn't that make you want to put a gun to your head (or Vic's)? That's how I feel.
There's something very Victorian about these shows. The idea of the husband as the logical, flawed, sinning protector and the wife as the frail, pure, immaculate moral compass of the family life. To me, this is grossly unrealistic. I often wonder with incredulity why while Walter White is mathematically calculating the number of meth batches necessary to pay for 2 kids at a respectable state college (adjusted for inflation), mortgage, chemo, and cost of living for the next 20 years, a heavily pregnant Skylar drifts dreamily through the house, seemingly trusting that life or the universe, or Jesus, or hard-work will make everything work out, absolving her from getting a job or taking ANY sort of action to protect her family against an ocean of debt that is about to descend upon them. I've never met any woman in the waking world like that.
What it all boils down to is agency. You didn't think I'd get through a sprawling post like this without pointing out Nancy Botwin, the most obvious exception of this decade to the Anti-Hero gender rules, did you? If there's one thing I've learned from television, it's that they best way to make a female character independent and interesting is to kill off her husband or land him in prison. Weeds certainly isn't as well-written or developed as The Shield or The Wire, but it is very refreshing to see the wife eschew the mousy ball and chain role for the more glamorous position of The Godmother. Indeed, one of my favorite moments of the series was a parody of the Al Pacino and Diane Keaton's infamous closing door scene as Nancy bold-faced lies to her son. At worst she's entitled, short-sighted, and materialistic, but I prefer to watch a corrupt woman who is the master of her own destiny than the stated alternative and I do get a perverse thrill out of seeing her craftily avoid the terrible consequences of her actions for the same reason I watched 7 seasons of evil machinations of Vic Mackey.
I know, I should probably learn to relax and enjoy television for what it is, but...I can't. If I wanted to watch women being lied to and manipulated, I'd watch The Jersey Shore (Oh, Sammi. When will you learn that Ron Ron just isn't good for you?). I expect better from my television dramas. Skylar White has officially jumped the shark as far as I'm concerned. In case you're reading this, Vince Gilligan (yes, I am self-important enough to fantasize about TV writers reading my blog and taking my advice because I am a sad, lonely individual) I'm not going to stop watching Breaking Bad, but can you and all the extremely talented other writers at HBO and AMC and all the other stations I like agree to a moratorium on the Wife of the Anti-Hero character? She's run her course and it's time to get creative and come up with something genuinely real and different in a female character that's going to help renew my faith in television.
Wow, I just spent 2 hours of my life on this post. Please, please validate my pointless nerdery by posting lots of thoughtful commentary so I can pretend I'm Alan Sepinwall. Also, gentle on the Breaking Bad spoilers. I'm still in season 2.