Jul 31, 2010 00:19
DISCLAIMER: Not to be read *only* by those familiar with the Buffyverse, therefore there may be some concepts from AtS/BtVS that seem skimmed over because I wanted to focus more specifically on how Angel's hero-status is part of a larger cultural definition of heroism. Therefore, there are many different perspectives presented here, all working towards questioning (not Angel-as-hero) but the cultural consciousness that allows for a hero like Angel to be created and accepted as a hero and what the problems are with that. If it seems convoluted in any place, let me know: because I don't want it to be.
Also: LONG. Just a warning :)
Angel's "She" : A Call to Re-Name the Hero
There is a common misconception that modern television and film production is useful for only mere entertainment value. However, the representations that occur in television and film are culturally significant, not in that they accurately portray the "real" world (no one would mistake a Lady Gaga video as a representation of reality, for example) but in that they use themes, motifs, stereotypes that we understand without being taught. Representation is never fully "real" but always an "intervention, an act of signifying which reality itself can never make" (Easthope 52). In other words, anything that attempts to represent reality uses familiar signs in order to create meaning. Films, then, using images that are similar to and represent a version of reality, signify upon what is real: or, use the images that we perceive as being real and use them to create new meanings. For example, the dark, enclosed castle on a hill often signifies for a film/television audience horror, monsters, Byronic heroes, etc. In film, meaning that is created presents the audience with "a perception of social reality (even and especially in films not apparently about social reality at all)" (Dyer 6). In other words, a television show depicting cops and lawyers is no closer or further from a television show depicting teenage aliens on the run. In fact, by removing the audience from reality one further step (such as aliens vs. lawyers or doctors), screen writers are able to manipulate and explore reality from a metaphorical perspective, and therefore discuss contemporary problems with much more ease.
However, as the metaphor separates the audience one more slight step from "reality" or, from their day to day lives, there is a danger in which a television series can rely too much on the metaphor, and therefore stop commenting on or questioning social reality. In the television show, Angel (a spin-off from the earlier series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both created by Joss Whedon) the protagonist is a 200 year-old vampire with a soul, seeking redemption for his past crimes while "helping the helpless" in modern-day Los Angeles. Although a vampire is in no way a "realist" hero, Angel (like Buffy) functions narratively in metaphor, dealing with social and cultural issues by placing them onto an outside, demonic force(s) that is easily fought, though never truly defeated. However, in using the metaphor, the series gives startling representations of reality without having the burden of exploring their implications.
In one particular episode, "She" (1.13 written by Marti Noxon and directed by David Greenwalt), a repressed female demon seeks to free her fellow females from a world of subserviency. Although the episode uses imagery and narrative to fully explores cultural issues of race, sex, and gender, the world within the series does not take note, it does not change nor recognize the message hidden within the body of Jheira, the rebellious demon. For, although the hero of the series is depicted as a handsome loner, unable to form relationships, he is dependent upon the symbolic structure that places him within White patriarchal power and therefore when confronted with Jheira, who represents that which is outside his power-source, he is unable to see connections between her fictional world and his own: shutting the audience out of an identification with Jheira's world as well. For, if Angel's world is a metaphor of our own, and he is the hero of that world, he then is the hero of ours and that which conflicts with his world must conflict with our own. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that Jheira's world is other-than ours, when in fact Jheira represents startling truths about the repression of the other within our own culture, truths that should not be represented without question.
Angel is not only the protagonist of his tale, but also is a hero. The contemporary American hero is slightly different from the classic hero. Today, the American hero is largely defined in relation to the service that he provides his community. In their study The Myth of the American Superhero, John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett describe the "selfless superhero" as one who "restores the community to its paradisiacal condition" after is has been "threatened by evil [which] normal institutions fail to contend with" (6). The community begins and ends in a "harmonious" state, suggesting that the "evil" which threatens the community comes from without and therefore the "normal institutions" within must fail as they are not equipped to deal with the outside evil. Angel's community fits this definition perfectly, in that his Los Angeles is plagued by demons and evil lawyers whom operate by exploiting the "innocent" humans.
Angel's path to redemption is dependent on his restoring Los Angeles to a state in which the demons and other soulless beings are no longer in occupation. Angel works to protect the innocent occupants of LA, while also keeping himself at a safe distance from the opposite sex. Angel's ensouled status is highly dependent on his chastity, he will literally lose his soul if he has a moment of true happiness, or has sex. Lawrence and Jewette further describe the modern American heroes as "lonely, selfless, sexless beings who rescue an impotent and terrorized community" (8). Angel has only his redemption to seek in helping the innocents of LA, for unlike the ancient hero, Angel cannot be rewarded with a beautiful young wife at the end of his battle. This further places Angel in the tradition of the modern American hero who rides away into the sunset alone (or in Angel's case, lurks away from the sunrise) after re-establishing order. This paradigm suggests that there is an original "order" that must be protected and also, that the "innocents" that Angel and other heroes protect, base their subjectivity on the belief that there is an order and norm to their lives and world that is only disrupted by outside "evil" forces.
Angel's redemption, since it contains a desire to rid the world of demons, is partially based on erasing his own deeds by erasing other creatures like himself from the present. In his essay "The Caucasian Persuasion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Ewan Kirkland argues that Angel's angst is reminiscent of white-guilt in America today. He writes, "Consumed by guilt, Angel's angst represents white misgivings over its genocidal past" (Kirkland 14). Though Kirkland's essay focuses only on the characters in Buffy, his reading of the character Angel is only partially true, for Angel's history takes place primarily outside of the Americas and has little or nothing to do with American history. In fact, though Angel lives in America for several decades, his experiences there are only shown or revealed as passing thought. Although episode 2.2 "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" places Angel (post-soul but pre-redemptive quest) in LA during the Civil Rights movement, he shows little interest in the racial struggle surrounding him. This impassivity for any circumstance that is not demons vs humans is repeated throughout the series, with Angel focusing primarily on protecting the human system that is ignorant of demon-culture. Placing such a large emphasis on the protection of the "innocent" or the "helpless" assumes that the norm Angel is ostensibly fighting for is safe and paradisiacal, without any internal problems: certainly none that Angel need worry about.
However, there is a sense of willful ignorance that pervades the world beyond Angel's Los Angeles. Many sociologists, theorists, and political activists today argue that there is still a separation of reality between white and nonwhite. Activist and lecturer Tim Wise argues precisely that, urging his predominantly white audiences to rethink their own construction of reality. He writes in his text, White Like Me, that "the ability of whites to deny nonwhite reality, and indeed to not even comprehend that there is a nonwhite reality… determines the frame, the lens, through which the nation will come to view itself and the events that take place within it." (Wise 60). Wise suggests that living in a state that ignores any reality but the hegemonic reality is almost too easy. Kirkland explains the white identity as "representing everything and nothing," or as an identity that so pervades the social consciousness that nothing else can simultaneously exist. Wise would argue further that nonwhite reality is beyond comprehension by those who create their reality and identity based on white hegemony. In her text, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, bell hooks argues that contemporary television creates a space which denies living racism. She writes: "I know of no studies that have examined the role television has played in teaching white viewers that racism no longer exists" (112). Television is the perfect medium through which to perpetrate myths that deny racism and nonwhite realities, for the screen is in "intimate living spaces" and therefore gives a "false reflection" of reality (Killing Rage 112). In other words, since the experience of television is one which is part of the domestic sphere, it becomes more influential than many are able to recognize.
This, then, is the greatest myth of our time: and Angel is the hero who protects the status quo from disruption. Lawrence and Jewett explain that "both high and popular culture can show self-conscious attentiveness to the myths of their time, each revealing them in distinctive ways" (9). Cultural artifacts, therefore, are not separated from the larger cultural myths, and though each film or television series will create its own version of social reality, it is in no way completely separate or removed from the culture as a whole. Therefore, when Angel is presented with Jheira, a symbol of nonwhite reality, he rejects her claims to identity and victimhood. In a particularly insightful comment, hooks argues that we should see "white women and black men as siblings engaged in a rivalry for the attention of the father" (Killing Rage 56). Although this paradigm does not include black women, or any other races, hooks' argument maintains that all marginalized bodies are in a battle against the White Patriarch.
Jheira, played by Chinese actress Bai Ling, represents the disenfranchised, both as a racial-other and as a woman. Dominant hegemony is not just of a caucasian persuasion, but also prioritizes the masculine. As such, Jheira is separated from Angel by her race and her sex, her status as demon is not a point of commonality between them, as she comes from another dimension. Before the audience even sees Jheira, She is talked about and around. The members of Angel's team, Cordelia and Wesley, discover through visions (Cordelia) and research (Wesley) that a man was burned alive and that the demons from Oden Tal are "fierce warriors and the women live enslaved to them" (Noxon). Angel also knows, from a discussion with Tae, a warrior of the Oden Tal played by blonde-haired and athletic Colby French, that what burned the man alive is "more than a mere demon" and a foe that the warrior Tae threatens him against (Noxon). It is not until a third of the way through the episode (literally 16 minutes into a 44 minute episode) that the audience or Angel actually sees Jheira. This has the effect of making Jheira's body a place-holder for plot development, rather than as part of her own identity. In her article "Oedipus Interruptus" Teresa de Lauretis explains that in cinema "narrative discourse, which specifies and even produces the masculine position as that of mythical subject, and the feminine position as mythical obstacle" (90). Teresa de Lauretis suggests here, that the masculine body in a film (or television series) creates his subjectivity by using the feminine body as a place to get to or overcome. In a sense, then, women in film have been unable to create or form their own subjectivity, as they exist only as an object in the male's subjectification process. Likewise, cultural theorist Stuart Hall argues that the black subject have inhabited the same space as women in cultural creations. He writes, "blacks have typically been the objects, but rarely the subjects, of the practices of representation" (Hall 442). Just as the female body has been only an object, so too the black body and there the logic follows that any other-than white body has been just as used in representation. Jheira, therefore, is marginalized into an objectified state by both her body as woman and her body as Asian.
Women, according to a larger psychological and semiotic tradition, are outside of the symbolic order (or, language) and as such, have no clear definition. In his text on psychiatrist Jaques Lacan The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, Bruce Fink describes women as existing completely outside of language. He writes: "With respect to the symbolic order, a woman is not whole, bounded, or limited … her relationship to [the symbolic] allowing her to step beyond the boundaries set by language and beyond the pittance of pleasure language allows." (Fink 107). Fink is explaining here, that as women are outside of language, they are able to more fully explore their desires (since language separates us from the real and therefore creates desire- see Fink 98-125). Jheira is painted in this episode as being so fully outside of language while in Oden Tal that she does not have the ability to even possess a name. Tae says to Angel, in reference to Jheira and an unnamed red-haired woman (who will be explored more fully later), "The traitor 'it' and the other are ours" (Noxon). Tae and the other Oden Tal males take away women's power by forcing them into language but not allowing them names. In Fink's presentation of Lacan's work, women are outside of language and therefore have more freedom than men, but in Oden Tal women are completely separated from their desire and therefore their power and identity. This is a metaphorically a moment in which the patriarchal hegemony forces its will upon the marginalized, or a case in which the dominant perspective denies the marginalized an identity or voice (such as in Wise and Kirkland's discussion). In her essay "Slaying the Patriarchy: Transfusions of the Vampire Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Holly Chandler cites feminists Adrienne Rich and Jill Johnston when she asserts that "the structure of American society was intentionally built and maintained by men, who wanted to keep women out of power (Chandler 7). The construction of the Oden Tal society is quite obviously a representation of that extreme: a place in which women are so disenfranchised by the reigning masculine power that they are completely subservient to them.
Though Jheira is not described by any other characters within the episode as Asian, Bai Ling's small stature, short cropped hair, Chinese features and accent work to separate her from the rest of the cast: all of whom are labelled as caucasian. It is not merely that Bai Ling stands out against the human(ish) cast members (David Boreanaz, Charisma Carpenter, and Alexis Denisof) but the other demons from Oden Tai are also coded as "white" (Colby French and Heather Stephens specifically). Tae, the warrior whose mission is to capture Jheira, is performed by Colby French, a tall, athletic blonde man. Interestingly, the other Oden Tal females that the audience is shown are also coded as white, and certainly none of them are of Asian descent. Jheira is the only female from Oden Tal shown to have mastered control over her body and powers. She is strong, powerful, and intelligent. However, this works against her in many ways, or at least, it works against Bai Ling. In her text, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies, bell hooks asserts that the females who are sexually active are usually played by nonwhite actresses. She writes: "it is clear that the non-white-skinned females are cast (as is typical in Hollywood cinema) in ways that conform to racist, sexist stereotypes. They are the females who are depicted as sexually loose and wild. They are the freaks” (hooks 62). In other words, hooks argues that part of the stereotype that the "non-white-skinned" female actress must contend with is that they will be portraying women who are unnatural. Jheira is the opposite of the other women from Oden Tal, she is even portrayed as very different from the show's heroine, Cordelia Chase, whose primary function in the episode is to serve Angel. Jheira, embodied by Bai Ling, is other-than the reoccurring characters by her status as woman and as Chinese. As sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant point out in their text, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s that: "We expect people to act out their apparent racial identities; indeed we become disoriented when they do not" (Omi and Winant 59). If this is true, then there is very little wiggle-room for the Chinese actress to be anything but other-than and therefore can be nothing but the representation of stereotypes that the white patriarchal consciousness expects. It is not surprising, then, that Angel does not questions Jheira's appearance, presence, or power: as his social reality is very similar to our own.
Jheira's presence, though, is not of just-feminine or just-nonwhite, but as a female nonwhite character who is also a demon: she therefore is the representational equivalent of all otherness. Together, the stereotypes of Jheira's body work together to associate her with the monstrousness that Tae speaks of when Angel first confronts him. Her position within the narrative as something dangerous, forbidding, and unknowable (Tae and Jheira repeatedly tell Angel to stay away) serve to inscribe her body with that which is fearful. However, what Tae and the rest of Oden Tal fear is not so much the personal power of Jheira, but what her power represents. Tae describes Jheira as the "bringer of chaos" (Noxon). More is at stake in Tae's battle than just a missing princess and a few runaway slaves. Jheira is a threat that could destroy through change. In her article, "Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection," Barbara Creed argues that the monstrous feminine found in horror films is a representation of that which is outside of language and therefore is threatening to the system. She writes that the monstrous feminine, "highlight[s] the 'fragility of the law'" (Creed 39). In other words, the monstrous feminine reveals the weakness in the symbolic order. Creed's argument also suggests that women always have the power to disrupt the symbolic and when they do, they are painted as monstrous. Jheira, though, does not only work in a system that depends on a conflict between the masculine and the feminine. As bell hooks argues, it is easy to get caught in "that white male gaze, which seeks to reinscribe the black female body in a narrative of voyeuristic pleasure where the only relevant opposition is male/female and the only location for the female is as victim" (hooks 212). In other words, it is easy to believe that the only conflict that remains is between the masculine and feminine. Jheira's body, as both Chinese and feminine, signifies for the audience a larger battle between white patriarchy and all minorities, a fact that Angel chooses to ignore.
One of the most startling examples of Angel's active disallowance of Jheira's victimization, is in his staunch defense against the men who died trying to rape the women Jheira frees from Oden Tal. Jheira describes the source of her power as a part of her body: the ko, which is at first uncontrollable and is usually taken from the women by the males of Oden Tal. Jheira describes her entrance into Angel's world from her own as a kind of birth through fire. She says: "We come to your world in a fever […] And your people--your men? They react to the ko involuntarily. They tried to force themselves. It wasn't safe for me" (Noxon). Jheira is describing her entrance into the world as dangerous, not because of the actual birthing process, but because she is immediately attacked by a human male. Her difference is inscribed on her body for Angel and the audience to see. During her explanation of her life, she turns her back to Angel and the camera, allowing the ko to be the main object of the gaze. However, the ko is deemed also responsible for the human male's uncontrollable desire. Linda Williams, in her article " When the Woman Looks," describes the monster of the horror film and the heroine to be connected because of a shared sexual difference. Clearly this point is important in understanding Jheira's place in the narrative of this episode. Williams writes that, "clearly the monster's power is one of sexual difference from the normal male. In this difference he is remarkably like the woman in the eyes of the traumatized male: a biological freak with impossible and threatening appetites that suggest a frightening potency" (Williams). In other words, the monster and the woman are the same in that they are both dangerously sexual. Jheira is both monster and woman: her source of sexual power and difference lies on her neck, allowing the male protagonist and audience to see and be horrified by it. This ko, then is "a power-in-difference … a sexual power whose threat lies in its difference from a phallic 'norm'" (Williams 22). Jheira is dangerous not only because she holds a power within herself, but because men "cannot help themselves" when they are confronted with her sexual power: they also desire it. It is this point that causes Angel to no longer see Jheira as a victim, and it is an important moment.
This episode effectively is able to place the blame of rape on the victims themselves and in turn, to also place them with the guilt of harming the male perpetrator. When Angel and Jheira talk in his underground apartment about her life and mission, he is primarily interested in the ways in which Jheira has disrupted his "paradisiacal community" and not on her status as innocent victim. Their conversation quickly turns from an informational meeting of minds, to Angel insisting that Jheira and her "girls" are dangerous:
Jheira: "He tried to touch one of my girls. It was his own fault."
Angel: "From what you're saying he probably didn't mean to hurt her."
Jheira: "And the girl couldn't help killing him, it was an accident."
Although it seems as though Jheira ends the conversation with the upper hand, Angel insists that she fight her war away from his people. What is most interesting about this conversation is the insistence that neither party in an attempted-rape turned murder is guilty. This idea that a man cannot be blamed for his desire and subsequent rape is similar to a long-standing stereotype in America in regards to black women specifically. In her text, Black Sexual Politics, Patricia Hill Collins discusses the racist stereotypes that are used against Black women and Black men in different ways. In particular, the Black woman as the jezebel, mammy, and "un-rape-able body" (Collins 120). Although Collins speaks specifically about the black female in American culture, any nonwhite female is seen (as bell hooks states) as a sexual "freak." The "un-rape-able body" is understood primarily as a female who is so sexual that she could never deny a man sex, and therefore could never be raped: she will always want sex. This is the space that Jheira and her rescued Oden Tal women occupy: a space in which they can never be raped because they are always in a state of sexual want.
However, it is not just that Angel is arguing that the women of Oden Tal are un-rape-able, but also that they have victimized their attackers. Angel believes that, since the ko is powerful, the men are not responsible for desiring the Oden Tal women, but the women should be held responsible for defending themselves. Linda Williams argues that the more sexually liberated women are in contemporary horror films, the more violence they are subjected to. She writes: "What we do need to see is that in fact the sexual 'freedom' in [contemporary horror] films, the titillating attention given to the expression of women's desires, is directly proportional to the violence perpetrated against women" (Williams 32). What Williams is suggesting, is that the more sexually liberated representations of women that are presented, the more violence will be done to those representations. In effect, sexually liberated women should be punished for their freedom. Angel equates the attempted-rapists as innocent, saying: "If you vowed to protect the innocent, Jhiera, it shouldn't matter what dimension they're from." To which Jheira replies: "An easy sentiment when your people are free" (Noxon). Although Angel and Jheira are talking about humans vs demons, they very well could be talking about white males vs. minorities. That Angel insists from beginning to end of the episode that the human would-be-rapists are innocent and that their desire is completely at the fault of the women, is denying the women of Oden Tal both their status as victims and the ability to fight back. Which is, ironically, exactly the same treatment Jheira experienced in Oden Tal.
On Oden Tal, the women have their ko removed, which removes their personality, desire, and physical power, rendering them completely powerless in the face of white patriarchal power. Jheira describes the ko as the site of a woman's "physical and sexual power" and when it is removed (or, when a woman is "unmade") she says: "we marry who they command, serve without questioning. We leave behind dreaming" (Noxon). To lose one's ko is to completely lose one's self. Jheira breaks free from this tradition and works to free other women from the Oden Tal dimension. However, her pursuers are able to find her and take one of the women away from her. The woman who is taken and "unmade" is a petite red-haired woman. Interestingly, the only time the audience will see the unmaking process is on the body of a caucasian woman. bell hooks argues that the white male audience will more readily sympathize with “an innocent ‘white’ virgin girl assaulted by dark evil forces” (hooks 63-4).
During the scene in which her ko is taken, the camera zooms to a close up on only the ko, separating that significant part of her identity from the rest of her body symbolically before it is done literally. In this way, the ko, which is seen as one of the most "potent threats to a vulnerable male power" is related to the viewing audience as an object that is separate from the female body (Williams 23). After she is unmade, the red-haired woman is subdued in body and mind. She is shown in a white, with her hair pulled back austerely, her face is whitened and blue shadows circle her eyes and lips. Her whiteness and subdued hair (previously long and wild, framing her face) signify to the audience her lack of passion and individuality. Tae asks the woman if she wants to go home, to which she replies: "It is happy to go… as you say" (Noxon). The woman no longer refers to herself as "me" because she no longer has any identity of her own. In opposition to Jheira, this "white" woman is easily captured and easily restrained, furthering the stereotype that the nonwhite female body is out of control while the white female body is easy to control.
There is an obvious parallel between the Oden Tal's tradition of forcing women to be "unmade" and Angel's insistence that Jheira and her "girls" cannot defend themselves against would-be-rapists. Both examples reveal a need to limit the power and passion of women. As has been discussed, much of the fear of the "other" is based in the fact that the dominant hegemony does not have absolute power, but in fact is threatened by the very things it marginalizes. Lacanian theory suggests that "feminine structure proves that the phallic function has its limits" (Fink 107). In other words, female empowerment proves that white patriarchy does not have ultimate control. Tae expresses this fear to Angel near the end of the episode, stating that: "If this enemy persists, our whole society crumbles" (Noxon). What no one is willing to admit is that Jheira is attempting to change her society for the better: empower and teach the women so that they can become free individuals. However, since she is forcing change she is seen as an enemy to the Oden Tal way of life. Their society is based on a tradition in which women have no names, have no desire, and are completely subservient. Angel, when he tells Tae to leave Los Angeles, does not help Jheira in the sake of her cause. He does not question Tae's traditions, does not sit Tae down and explain to him how his society would be changed for the better if they listened to Jheira. He does not play mediator to Jheira and Tae, helping them to come to an understanding in which more people are free. Ironically, in the last episode of the second season, Cordelia revolutionizes another dimension (Pylea) by insisting that humans no longer be treated as slaves, but should be free as their demon masters. This example shows how little empathy Angel has for Jheira's plight, because hers is a fight within a system he feels he does not belong to, whereas the freedom of slaves on Pylea is a matter of human vs demon.
Jheira's plight, it must be understood, is one which Angel wants to believe has little or no commonality with the system to which he belongs. However, as has been established, Jheira is fighting a losing battle as a nonwhite female against white patriarchy. Angel says himself that he "can't allow tourists to go around torching locals" (Noxon). Angel believes wholeheartedly that Jheira's battle has nothing whatsoever to do with him and the battle that he is fighting: of demons vs. humans. Angel is, in a sense, seeing the world that he lives in according to the white hegemonic view. As Tim Wise writes: "By allowing white America to remain in this bubble of unreality, white privilege ultimately distorts our vision, and makes it difficult for us to function as fully rational beings. It protects us from some of life's cruelties, and allows us to wander around, largely oblivious to the fires that, for others, burn all around them" (Wise 60). For Angel, the "fires" that burn are the masses of demons seeking to destroy human life. What Jheira represents, is the moment in human life that is not perfect, that should be questioned, not defended. Angel, though, as a male within the symbolic order, is dependent upon the system that gives him the most power. Molly Chandler argues that Buffy's battle against demons "can be seen as a physical manifestation of a more abstract, often subconscious battle between women and deep-rooted sexist attitudes" (Chandler 14). However, in keeping this battle in metaphor, in relying on the nonwhite female body to represent the "other," this metaphor does nothing to change attitudes.
Angel's status as hero is not up for debate in this project, what is and what I hope can be seen should be questioned is what "hero" signifies and how its relationship to the symbolic determines that heroes can only be part of the system. Our very definition relies on the patriarchal symbolic system - a "hero" will always defend the symbolic until we begin to rethink the binary system by which we define our world. This is made perfectly clear by the larger plot that is at play in this episode. Framing the context of Jhiera's battle the relationships between Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley become cemented as Wesley becomes a permanent member of Angel Investigations. The patriarchal family unit that is being created as Jhiera fights her battle against the same social construction forms a frame in which the patriarchal family is a signifier of happiness and camaraderie. In the end, though Angel is tempted by Jhiera, she is merely a prop in his story, while the construction of his family with him at the helm goes largely undisturbed by her presence.
Lawrence and Jewett admonish their readers that "We cannot afford to wring our hands, waiting for Superman or a Heidi to fix our problems" (9). This is primarily because our heroes today are part of a system that relies on the marginalization of any body that does not comply to the dominant hegemony. What we need to recognize as the hero today are characters like Jheira, who question system and fight against the norm in order to give voice to the disenfranchised. These characters have been coded as the "villains" whom the heroes must protect us against, but they are merely scapegoats. The imagery of the villain, the monstrous, and the fearful is synonymous with the bodies of the disenfranchised. As Jheira states: "we have a chance to become, but it is difficult" (Noxon).
ats: manpain & schenanigans,
feminism,
grad adventures,
sometimes i channel taylor townsend