Recently I was asked by a friend, in the middle of one of my many gushing rants about Gillian Flynn and why she might actually be God, what I saw in the violent, bordering-on-revenge-porn piece of insanity that is Gone Girl. Well, I’ll tell you why I love Gone Girl. It’s because the way that women are portrayed in the media is deeply, intensely messed up.
Look, I’m not gonna be one of those girls. You know, a “Tumblr feminist” who would rather scream and call people “literally scum” for not believing that gender is a social construct or that cultural appropriation is a thing - mainly because as a non-transgender, white girl, I really have no business poking my nose into either of those topics - than actually educate people on why our media, despite recent improvements, is still kind of a mess. I’m not going to go that far. Let someone else do that.
What I am going to say, though, is that the on-screen treatment of women, especially in big blockbuster movies, really, really fries my cheese. And when you throw in the irrational way that people react to women on-screen…whew! Recipe for trouble, right there.
Let’s take a look at Age of Ultron. Okay, we know I wasn’t too impressed with that film, but one thing I didn’t have an issue with was the Banner/Widow romance. Honestly, I wasn’t even really surprised by the whole thing. You’ve got a kick-ass woman surrounded by kick-ass men - possibly the only men on the planet who are even remotely capable of understanding her on an intellectual and emotional level. Of course a romantic subplot will eventually develop. Now, when I initially heard the cast lineup, my first thought was “ohh...Scarlet Witch is gonna fall for an Avenger and switch sides, isn’t she.” So I was actually relieved that they went with Hulk and Black Widow, because Christ, as cheesy as some of that storyline was, it was a hell of a lot less so than where I was afraid the movie would go.
Now, I’m not denying that Black Widow has gotten the short end of the stick in this whole scheme. She’s undeniably one of the most badass characters in the Marvel canon (her backstory alone...holy crap!), right up there with Scarlet Witch, Daisy “Agent Skye” Johnson, Moondragon and Peggy Carter. Who...uh...also don’t have their own origin movies, or action figures, or...well, you get the point. So yeah, she’s gotten shunted to the side quite a bit. But let’s not forget that the reason we love her, and the reason we care that she’s gotten backburnered fairly often, is that she’s been given moments to shine in the films. She’s kicked asses and taken names. She’s gotten the team out of some absurdly sticky situations. She’s figured out Loki, discovered Ultron’s location, tamed the Hulk, shut down the Tesseract, and saved the collective asses of the male Avengers several times. And I have no doubt that when Infinity War rolls around, she’ll have her moment wiping the floor with Thanos, just like the rest of them.
But here’s the problem. Black Widow is amazing. She’s whip-smart. She’s a kick-ass fighter. She’s witty, she’s snarky, she’s resourceful, she’s beautiful, and she’s interesting. We want to know more about her, hence our cries for an origin movie. We’re all collectively in love, platonic or otherwise (yeah, yeah, I know, but that’s not objectification, that’s a fact) with Black Widow.
That’s the problem.
She is fucking perfect.
Have you ever freaking noticed that? She’s perfect. And of course she is. She’s perfect in all the right ways, because she has to be, because she is repping every damn woman in the universe.
Think about this for half a second. There’s five guys - eight if you count Falcon, Quicksilver and War Machine - that provide a range of different personalities and backstories that people could identify with on a number of levels. I tease Ian all the time by calling him “Captain America” on account of the fact that he’s pretty much pre-serum Steve Rogers in the flesh. My best guy friends are, respectively, “Hawkeye” (because he’s constantly underestimated but wonderfully hilarious when given the chance) and “Tony Stark” (because he’s a walking pile of unfairly intelligent snark). I once dated a guy who jokingly introduced himself to me as “Bruce Banner - but, y’know, without the rage-beast thing” because he prided himself on his aptitude for science. There’s such a range of qualities there that any of the guys can afford to be imperfect, because their imperfections are a part of their overall character and can be appropriated as part of the thing you identify with. (“Oh my gosh, Hulk has a temper, just like me!” “Iron Man is really smart, but he drinks too much sometimes...and so do I!” “I might be too idealistic, but so is Captain America, and he saved the world!”)
But look at Black Widow. Because she’s virtually the only leading female character in the movie, and arguably the single most popular woman in the franchise, she cannot afford to have those imperfections. Her backstory must have just enough tragedy to be interesting, but not so much that it alienates her from her target audience. And God forbid she not be feminist enough, or she is reduced to “a shell of a superheroine who’s sad she can never be a complete woman.”
That’s my biggest issue, right there. The infertility storyline was met with cries of “but she could be a great example of a woman who doesn’t need children to be complete!” “She doesn’t need kids, why should she want them?” “Oh my God Joss Whedon, how dare Natasha call herself a monster for her infertility, that is misogyny!” And what pisses me off the most about this is that Natasha is not allowed to be a woman who wants kids. She’s not allowed to be happy with the life she has, but feel that there’s something missing. She’s not allowed to be both a badass and have maternal instinct. That’s just not allowed, despite insistences from the same people who protest her storyline that it’s horrible to ask Jennifer Garner if she has trouble balancing work and family. Natasha is not allowed to want a family in addition to a career. No, because Natasha is the sole female lead of the Avengers, she is not allowed the weaknesses of Tony Stark and company, because she must be a role model. She must be perfect, or she is a liability.
And the worst part is, she’s not the only one. Harry Potter’s Hermione Granger gets the same treatment. When I first read the books, Hermione’s imperfections endeared me to her all the more, because it let me believe that even amazing, intelligent women are allowed to make mistakes. In the books, Hermione’s obsession with logic and single-minded pursuit of justice are treated as the pitfalls they are - character qualities that are both a help and a hindrance. She insists on freeing house-elves because she can’t bear the thought of their “enslavement,” never mind that house-elves literally live to look after humans and have no desire to be free. She loses her temper. She can’t hold back the truth (“you have a saving-people thing, Harry”) even at the least-opportune moments. But for all of that she is strong and smart and brave, and she is a wonderful, balanced character.
Not so in the movies. In the movies, Hermione’s physical awkwardness is replaced by Emma Watson’s impeccable beauty. I remember seeing a photograph of Chamber of Secrets-era Emma Watson months before the movie came out: her bushy hair had been tamed to Pantene Pro-V commercial-worthy curls. I cried, because book Hermione had frizzy hair like mine and I had so loved seeing an on-screen girl with imperfect hair. And her makeover was just the tip of the iceberg. She was wise beyond her years. She left the house-elves alone. She came up with ideas that book-Hermione never would’ve thought of - flight-shy Hermione, thinking of jumping on a dragon’s back to escape a collapsing bank? Non-magically-raised Hermione, remembering to use her wand when a murderous plant attacked? Not in the books. But in the movies, she was perfect, to the point where people railed against her for - how dare she? - falling in love with a man who they believed to be beneath her. Which, come on. Of course he was. No one in the movies was good enough for movie-verse Hermione. But because she’s on-screen now, and part of an industry that tragically under-represents realistic women, she has to be Perfect Strong Girl Character, devoid of flaws and shaped into a Perfect Role Model For Young Women.
I could go on and on. Katniss Everdeen, a young, scrawny, wonderfully-flawed character in The Hunger Games, was made over into a self-sacrificing, angelic (but oh-so-tough!) beauty queen for the movies. Elle Woods, in Legally Blonde, is not only gorgeous and quick-thinking, but has an impeccable memory and buckets of self-confidence. Doctor Who’s Rose Tyler? Beautiful, resourceful, witty, athletic, smart, alluring - literally every male character she meets falls in love with her, for God’s sake. Disney’s Mulan? She’s beautiful, athletic, cunning, clever, and just the right amount of awkward to be endearing. Right from the beginning of the movie we’re shown, very clearly, that she is perfect; it’s her environment that’s the problem. Rory Gilmore? Pretty, academically inclined, popular with the boys (see: Rose Tyler), able to win over less-perfect girls like Paris. Notice a theme here? Even if their worlds are imperfect (Mulan, Katniss, Elle) the girls are shining paragons. Feminine but still tough; physically attractive but still smart. They have to be perfect - they’re role models!
So when a thing like Gone Girl comes along, and we’re finally given a complex character who is interesting as all hell - who does some really terrible things, but does them because she believes she’s doing the right thing - who is beautiful and funny and incredibly intelligent, but also happens to be a freaking psychopath - damn right that’s going to resonate with all of us imperfect girls. I think this is also why I loved the women of Tim Burton’s films so much: he understood that no one is perfect, not even token Strong Female Characters. Because at the end of the day, there is not just one archetype out there that every woman can embody. We are not all Supergirls. And that is what I desperately wish Hollywood would realize, and start giving us the heroines that we deserve: not actual heroines, but girls just like us.
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