Broken Girls, A Manifesto for whedonland
Broken Girls, A Manifesto
Joss Whedon is all about female empowerment… but that doesn’t mean his stories aren’t riddled with characters that are battered and bruised from a life that isn’t always as kind as they would like it to be. They aren’t just the normal sort of victim, though. Not our Joss girls. No, they’re still fully realized characters so, while the pain is eating at their souls, they’ve still got something holding them together. And when all is said and done, they end up stronger than they were before.
Our first broken girl is the original: Willow Rosenberg. Before she met Buffy, she was a wallflower who hid, rather successfully, behind her books and computer. When she becomes one of the Scoobies, her life is changed in all sorts of ways. She moves from reading about life to experiencing, taking on vampires and her own psyche in a way she most likely wouldn’t have otherwise. Because of this newfound empowerment, she starts dating a musician (only to use him to his own broken soul), starts to discover just how strong her power really is (only to have it shrouded at every turn), loses the musician when he goes off to learn more about his inner werewolf, finds a woman that thinks she’s pretty incredible, dabbles in areas of magic that makes her friends uncomfortable and, finally, loses the woman she’s given her heart to right when she truly starts to understand just exactly how much she means.
When Willow loses everything (love and magic) in one fell swoop, she feels out osf synch. She’s broken. But she learns how to safely utilize her magic so that she’s helpful once again. When she least expects it, love wanders back into her life once again. Last time that we see her (in the show), Willow seems like she’s on the right track once again.
The next broken girl seems to be broken beyond help when we first see her. When we first see River, she’s huddled in a box. Her emotions don’t work and she says weird things that no one, not even her brother, seems to understand. We learn that she’s a genius but that’s hard to see that brilliance outside of flashbacks when she isn’t functioning at all.
As River’s recent history starts to come to light over the series, it’s easy to see how she might be a lost cause. Only her brother holds out hope that she might be salvageable in any way, although he has his moments of doubt. At one point in her life, her future must have looked bright as she was accepted into a government program for gifted children. Who knows… she might even have found someone to love her in that group of misfits. The end result of that dream was pain and suffering.
All it took to right this wrong was a cartoon blaring over the screens at a humble drinking establishment. When River saw the animation and heard the fun song, something clicked in her brain and there was no longer the confusion clouding her mind. The problem was that her first forey back into normalcy was at the expense of several men’s noses and the bar’s supply of drinkware. This is not our last view of her extraordinary but it is the best because we never expected it of such a tiny girl. Her friends and brother accepted her newfound power (mostly because it came in quite handy) and moved on to the next adventure. The only difference this time is that River is accepted as one of the crew and not just as an addled body taking up space in a room on Serenity. If we’d had more time with the fandom, I assume we would have seen River in action and would have been able to see for ourselves just how her past gave her the resources to accomplish her future.
In Dollhouse, just about everyone is broken but none of them rips my heart out the way that Mellie/November/Madeleine does. She loses her child, gives herself over to a shady group of people who tamper with her memories, turning her into an empty vessel they can fill with whatever they need at the moment. When we first come across her, she’s Mellie, a rather unassuming woman living across the hall from a man she seems to find her attractive. While he wishes he could love her the way he should, he doesn’t seem to truly love her. Not in the way that counts. Try as he might, Paul is smitten with Echo. She is the one that he keeps running after. November is the one that he feels he needs to protect. In a fit of gentlemanly behaviour, he gives himself to the Dollhouse to send November back to her life (or, as some might see it, to get her out of the way so he has a clear path to Echo).
There really isn’t a typical happy ending for November. She ends up back in the Dollhouse and ultimately kills herself to keep from harming Paul. While the conclusion is very unsatisfactory for a fan, she might consider it a befitting ending to a broken life. In the end, Madeleine found the peace that had eluded her for so long, Mellie proved that she really did love Paul and Novembe successfully fought back at a system that had her bound.
The last broken girl is one that I especially like. Gwen Raiden, the electrified seductress with a penchant for taking things that weren’t her own, was broken at a very early age. Forced away from other children because she didn’t know how to control her powers, she spent a lot of time on her own. That she doesn’t do more damage when she comes into her own is the amazing part of this story. She could very well have become a serial killer… which would have fit in nicely with the show but Angel would have been forced to kill her and then where would we have been? No, Gwen becomes the ultimate broken girl with a harsh exterior to protect her inner pain. She starts out working on her own (as all good broken girls do) but then reluctantly joins with the group from Angel Investigation. It’s on her own terms, though. Half the time, it’s not obvious which side she’s playing on or what she’s willing to do to get what she wants. Even though it might seem that she lies to Gunn because she’s playing him, really it’s because she doesn’t trust him to help her if he knows the truth. She’s not used to having people follow her merely because she asks them to. In her world, people use her so she does the same.
The device she steals allows her to suddenly become what she imagines a normal person would be. Instead of being stuck away from humanity, she can suddenly be one of them. While she has a considerable distance to go before she’s not broken anymore (a road that is laid out in the After the Fall Angel comics), Gwen has discovered her own humanity, as well as her place in the world around her. She’s no longer on the outside looking in on a life she can never hope to have.
So while all four of these women have been fixed to some extent and are no longer as broken as they once were, they are heroines in the world of Joss Whedon’s mind. That means that they may be whole for the moment, but their spirit will soon be wounded and bruised once again. It sounds horrible but I love it and I love these characters.
Joss Whedon is all about female empowerment… but that doesn’t mean his stories aren’t riddled with characters that are battered and bruised from a life that isn’t always as kind as they would like it to be. They aren’t just the normal sort of victim, though. Not our Joss girls. No, they’re still fully realized characters so, while the pain is eating at their souls, they’ve still got something holding them together. And when all is said and done, they end up stronger than they were before.
Our first broken girl is the original: Willow Rosenberg. Before she met Buffy, she was a wallflower who hid, rather successfully, behind her books and computer. When she becomes one of the Scoobies, her life is changed in all sorts of ways. She moves from reading about life to experiencing, taking on vampires and her own psyche in a way she most likely wouldn’t have otherwise. Because of this newfound empowerment, she starts dating a musician (only to use him to his own broken soul), starts to discover just how strong her power really is (only to have it shrouded at every turn), loses the musician when he goes off to learn more about his inner werewolf, finds a woman that thinks she’s pretty incredible, dabbles in areas of magic that makes her friends uncomfortable and, finally, loses the woman she’s given her heart to right when she truly starts to understand just exactly how much she means.
When Willow loses everything (love and magic) in one fell swoop, she feels out osf synch. She’s broken. But she learns how to safely utilize her magic so that she’s helpful once again. When she least expects it, love wanders back into her life once again. Last time that we see her (in the show), Willow seems like she’s on the right track once again.
The next broken girl seems to be broken beyond help when we first see her. When we first see River, she’s huddled in a box. Her emotions don’t work and she says weird things that no one, not even her brother, seems to understand. We learn that she’s a genius but that’s hard to see that brilliance outside of flashbacks when she isn’t functioning at all.
As River’s recent history starts to come to light over the series, it’s easy to see how she might be a lost cause. Only her brother holds out hope that she might be salvageable in any way, although he has his moments of doubt. At one point in her life, her future must have looked bright as she was accepted into a government program for gifted children. Who knows… she might even have found someone to love her in that group of misfits. The end result of that dream was pain and suffering.
All it took to right this wrong was a cartoon blaring over the screens at a humble drinking establishment. When River saw the animation and heard the fun song, something clicked in her brain and there was no longer the confusion clouding her mind. The problem was that her first forey back into normalcy was at the expense of several men’s noses and the bar’s supply of drinkware. This is not our last view of her extraordinary but it is the best because we never expected it of such a tiny girl. Her friends and brother accepted her newfound power (mostly because it came in quite handy) and moved on to the next adventure. The only difference this time is that River is accepted as one of the crew and not just as an addled body taking up space in a room on Serenity. If we’d had more time with the fandom, I assume we would have seen River in action and would have been able to see for ourselves just how her past gave her the resources to accomplish her future.
In Dollhouse, just about everyone is broken but none of them rips my heart out the way that Mellie/November/Madeleine does. She loses her child, gives herself over to a shady group of people who tamper with her memories, turning her into an empty vessel they can fill with whatever they need at the moment. When we first come across her, she’s Mellie, a rather unassuming woman living across the hall from a man she seems to find her attractive. While he wishes he could love her the way he should, he doesn’t seem to truly love her. Not in the way that counts. Try as he might, Paul is smitten with Echo. She is the one that he keeps running after. November is the one that he feels he needs to protect. In a fit of gentlemanly behaviour, he gives himself to the Dollhouse to send November back to her life (or, as some might see it, to get her out of the way so he has a clear path to Echo).
There really isn’t a typical happy ending for November. She ends up back in the Dollhouse and ultimately kills herself to keep from harming Paul. While the conclusion is very unsatisfactory for a fan, she might consider it a befitting ending to a broken life. In the end, Madeleine found the peace that had eluded her for so long, Mellie proved that she really did love Paul and Novembe successfully fought back at a system that had her bound.
The last broken girl is one that I especially like. Gwen Raiden, the electrified seductress with a penchant for taking things that weren’t her own, was broken at a very early age. Forced away from other children because she didn’t know how to control her powers, she spent a lot of time on her own. That she doesn’t do more damage when she comes into her own is the amazing part of this story. She could very well have become a serial killer… which would have fit in nicely with the show but Angel would have been forced to kill her and then where would we have been? No, Gwen becomes the ultimate broken girl with a harsh exterior to protect her inner pain. She starts out working on her own (as all good broken girls do) but then reluctantly joins with the group from Angel Investigation. It’s on her own terms, though. Half the time, it’s not obvious which side she’s playing on or what she’s willing to do to get what she wants. Even though it might seem that she lies to Gunn because she’s playing him, really it’s because she doesn’t trust him to help her if he knows the truth. She’s not used to having people follow her merely because she asks them to. In her world, people use her so she does the same.
The device she steals allows her to suddenly become what she imagines a normal person would be. Instead of being stuck away from humanity, she can suddenly be one of them. While she has a considerable distance to go before she’s not broken anymore (a road that is laid out in the After the Fall Angel comics), Gwen has discovered her own humanity, as well as her place in the world around her. She’s no longer on the outside looking in on a life she can never hope to have.
So while all four of these women have been fixed to some extent and are no longer as broken as they once were, they are heroines in the world of Joss Whedon’s mind. That means that they may be whole for the moment, but their spirit will soon be wounded and bruised once again. It sounds horrible but I love it and I love these characters.