Phenomenal Women

I loved The Avengers. Let's start there. I was skeptical going in, because I didn't see how having that many superheroes in one movie could possibly result in anything but a mad mixture of endless fight scenes interspersed with dialogue heavy scenes meant to summarize the plot, but luckily I was wrong. Hiring Joss Whedon (he of Buffy, Firefly, and Toy Story fame) to write and direct was possibly the smartest decision they could have made.

However, I loved The Avengers in spite of a glaring problem I had with the storyline. It's not an overcomplicated plot twist or an unrealistic character motivation. It's a lot simpler than that. In fact, it's obvious without ever seeing the movie. All you need to do is look at a movie poster. Notice how there's only one woman? Notice how many bloggers and critics and fans didn't notice? Yeah. That would be the problem right there.

I had a long discussion with Buggy about whether or not it was fair to accuse The Avengers of being sexist for only including Black Widow when there weren't that many female superheroes they could have picked in the first place. Sexist is a big word, and to be honest I'm not comfortable applying it to the way I feel about The Avengers. Instead, I think The Avengers is an example of a larger problem that exists in popular fiction, television, and especially Hollywood: the Strong Woman has become the Token Black Character. There's one in every story, but only one, and her personality can usually be boiled down to being 'tough.' It's fantastic that there are female superheroes, and doctors, and police officers, and scientists, etc. That's a huge step forward that a lot of people fought for a long time to achieve. But we've made that step, and now it seems like we've stalled. Would it be too much to ask for us to keep walking?

Strong Women Are Everywhere
Think about your own life. Think about the women you know. Is there only one or two who you'd call strong--independent, smart, capable? Unless you live in a black hole, the answer's no. In ten seconds I could name ten women I know personally or who are well know figures who are strong. Give me a minute, and I'll give you fifty. Madeline Albright. Isabel Allende. J.K Rowling. Aung Suu Kyi. Sandra Day O'Conor. Emma Thompson. Margaret Thatcher. Lady GaGa. Angelina Jolie. Cat Cora. Hillary Clinton. Sarah Palin. Hope Solo. Gabby Douglas. Malala Yousufzai. Beyonce. Love them or hate them, it's impossible to deny that each of these women is strong, intelligent, and talented in a way that has nothing to do with good looks. Strong women are everywhere--so why does fiction have such a hard time mirroring reality?

To me, the best example of a story with truly strong women is J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas books. What makes these stories so fantastic in their representation of women is Robb doesn't create Eve, a lieutenant with the NYPSD, in a vacuum. She doesn't make one or two strong women and call it a day, and, more importantly, she doesn't make strong women seem like anything out of the ordinary. The Eve Dallas stories are full of strong women. Within the main cast of a dozen or so recurring characters, roughly half are women. Half. Think about how strange that seems for a second. Try and list as many movies, books, and television shows where that's the case. Now, in how many of those stories are all the women capable and talented? How many cases are the women independent characters in and of themselves--they don't simply serve as 'the love interest' or 'the obstacle in the relationship?' The number I can come up with is depressingly small: Animorphs, Bones, The Descent, Rizzoli and Isles, The Circle of Magic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and of course Eve Dallas.

What really makes the Eve Dallas stories special, however, is that there are an equal number of strong women present in the minor and supporting characters. Whether it's victims' families, other police officers, lawyers, witnesses, etc, there are constant appearances and mentions of women who hold leadership positions, demonstrate their intelligence, and show strength and independence. Of the stories I mentioned above, only Circle of Magic passes that test. We need stories that are filled with strong women--which doesn't mean replace the men with women. Real life is full of strong men and women. Is it too much to ask that fiction live up to the same standard?

A Woman Doesn't Need to Swing a Sword to be Strong
I love Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series. First published in 1983, Alanna: The First Adventure introduced the world to a stubborn, thick headed, passionate and tough young girl named Alanna, who dreamed of being a knight in a world where only men could earn the title. Alanna was a tough and strong female character in an era where tough and strong female characters were practically nonexistent.

That was thirty years ago.

Alanna embodies an important step in the struggle for strong women in stories. She entered a man's world, defied stereotypes, fought for her dream, showed that a woman could be just as strong as a man, and scoffed at anyone who dared try and stop her. Alanna's journey mirrored the struggle that many women in the real world were fighting at the same time: the struggle to earn respect as scientists, politicians, sports players, etc. But, like Alanna, that struggle has essentially been conquered. It's time to take the next step, but writers, directors, and producers seem unable or unwilling to make the start.

Within the main cast of the Eve Dallas books, the strong women include a therapist, an MD, an ADA, multiple police officers, and a rock star. Eve herself hates the idea of shopping, finds fancy clothes a mystery, and actively avoids cooking and cleaning. In many ways, Eve embodies the 80s idea of what a strong woman looked like.

But this is 2012, not 1983. Strong women come in all shapes and sizes. As they do in the Eve Dallas books, they can love or abhor shopping. They can literally kick ass, or they can be intelligent and wise. They can gush over boys AND take down a perp with a handgun and a pocket full of cocaine. They can cry over sad movies and scream profanities at pushy cab drivers. They can love to sing and dance, or they can love playing soccer in the park, or--shocking!--they can love both.

Scarlett Johansen's Black Widow is an awesome character. But she falls into the same pattern that every strong woman seems to fall into today: she is a woman in a man's world. She is tough and aloof--no feminine weakness for her. She can literally kick your ass and she shows little emotion while doing so. She is serious and does not engage in bickering and jokes with the men on the team--she's above all that.

Women are strong and talented in a multitude of ways--there's no single image of a strong woman. Rosie the Riveter has passed the torch to chefs and artists, leaders and athletes, warriors and doctors. Rosie played her part, as did Alanna. It seems a shame that we can't continue the fight and fill our stories with phenomenal women of all shapes and sizes.

Now It's Personal
There's one final issue I'd like to address, and it's a point where even the Eve Dallas books, even the works of Tamora Pierce, falls down.

I have an awesome younger sister. She's at the top of my list of phenomenal women. She's no Primrose Everdeen--the thought of her as shrinking and shy is hysterical. If I ever tried to pull a move like Katniss and offer myself up to protect her, she'd tackle me into the dirt before the words left my mouth and call me an overprotective idiot. That being said, I'd still try, because I'd do anything for her, and she'd do anything for me.

The list of strong brotherly relationships goes back to literally the dawn of storytelling. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest existing story, deals with the relationship between two men who, while not born brothers, become brothers to each other with all the relationship implies: camraderie, protectiveness, support, trust, competition, love. Moving through time, the examples are endless: Hector and Paris in The Iliad. Jacob and Easu, Jonathan and David, Moses and Aron in the Bible. Caleb and Aaron in East of Eden. The Brothers Karamazov. Death of a Salesman.

Five years ago, there were three different television dramas that featured a pair of brothers: Supernatural, Numb3rs, and Prison Break. And that's only counting shows where the brothers are genetically related, not shows that feature bromances like Psych, Scrubs, and Rescue Me. Two years ago Rizzoli and Isles premiered, and it was treated like a big deal because it featured two female leads and the relationship between them.

I've already questioned why the strong women seem to be missing from much of television, movies, and popular fiction. Here's my personal bone to pick: where are all the sisters? I can't believe--in fact I know for certain--that mine and my sister's relationship is unique. Of the women I know who have sisters, many speak about the relationship as the most important one in their lives. So where are the stories that reflect what it means--what it truly means--to be sisters? We should have left the fairytales and stories such as King Lear behind a long time ago. But all too often, when a show or book does feature sisters, one is given prominence while the other is merely an obstacle or a competitor or an annoyance or an object to be protected.

I'll finish with a quote by Barbara Alpert: “Sister. She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child.” 

Reading it over, it really seems a shame to me that there aren't more stories about sisters, because of all the rich possibilities that exist in such a relationship. We need stories that show women as they truly are, not as we've idealized them to be. Women who are sarcastic, smart, reserved, bubbly, amusing, quick-witted, practical, and foolish, wild dreamers and level headed planners. And we need to see women interacting with other women--not as rivals, but as equals. Not as the strong woman who stands out alone, but as sisters who fight and laugh and argue and defend with and for one another.

--Cates

Make Me Smile: A Review of Sarah Micklem's Firethorn

I recently read Sarah Micklem's Firethorn, a high-fantasy novel for adults. To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't required to read it for class, I probably never would have picked it up. I put that out there just to acknowledge that this book is not the sort of thing I usually choose to read, so some of my feelings about it may be due to my lukewarm attitude towards the genre in general, rather than problems specific to this particular book.

To be clear: I love fantasy, but only certain types of fantasy, and even within the types I like I'm very picky. For one, I vastly prefer children's fantasy to fantasy stories intended for adults. The exceptions are pretty much Lord of the Rings and medieval literature like The Mabinogion and Sir Gawain. (Yes, I am a nerd. Sue me.) Then, even within children's fantasy, I vastly prefer 'low' fantasy--which, to me, is defined as fantasy that has its basis in the real world, like Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, to 'high' fantasy, stories set entirely in a fantasy realm with little or no connection to the real, modern world,  like Victoria Hanley's The Seer and the Sword. (Of course, my absolute favorites are the ones that take place almost entirely in a fantasy world, but manage to start or anchor themselves in reality, like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, all of Eva Ibbotson's work, the Pendragon books, etc., but I digress.)

Firethorn is definitively both high fantasy, and intended for adults, not children. (I'm pretty sure anyone fifteen and up would be fine reading this, but that's true of most adult novels.) The thing was, even though Firethorn isn't my usual cup of tea (Twinning's Earl Grey, brewed for two minutes, with a slice of lemon if available.) there was a lot about it that was very, very good.

The writing was beautiful and flawless in a way that made me jealous with its flowing, lyrical language. The titular main character skated the hairy edge of Mary-Suedom (and, from what I heard, dove right off the freaking cliff in the sequel) but managed to be likeable, sympathetic, and engaging. The main thing that saved her (for now) was that she was flawed. She was naive, and impatient, and conceited at times in a way that made her entirely real and relatable. Then there was Micklem's world-building, which was phenomenal. Another review described it as 'typical serf and sword medieval with an Indian-Greek-Japanese mythology fusion,' which captures it very well.

Micklem's greatest strength is making this world feel incredibly real to the reader, from the sights to the sounds and the settings and, yes, the smells. For most of the novel Firethorn is travelling with a group of soldiers marching off to war, and there is no romanticising to be found. The entire experience is captured in gritty, realistic detail. Firethorn is travelling with the soldiers because she becomes the, ehm, "bed companion" of one Sir Galan, and though they have a mutual attraction that grows into something like love at the end, it is done in a very realistic, non-romantic way. Neither ever forgets that she is a mud (low-born) and he is a blood (noble) and therefore she is bound by law to obey him.

With all of that going for it, I really had to sit down and think to figure out exactly why I did not enjoy reading this book.

The one reason I knew I'd had an issue with it was because throughout I couldn't escape the distant feeling, like a minor itch, that Micklem had copied just a little too much of Firethorn's character from Tamora Pierce's Alanna of Trebond. The similarities were thus: both are redheads, both are healers who grow into their gifts over the course of their stories, both are stubborn and proud and suffer the consequences of their stubborness/pride, both are women operating in a mostly men's world, both grapple with their feelings for a high-born man because they fear losing their independence, and both are marked by a female god as special in the middle of a forest. All of what I just said could be and probably is true of other characters in literature, except the last point. Again, I'm probably over-reading it and I'm sure it wasn't deliberate. But I couldn't escape the feeling that I was reading about Alanna under a different name in a somewhat different set of circumstances.

The bigger problem though, and the reason I started this blog post, was that the book did not make me smile at any point while reading it. Now, again--this is not a cardinal sin. This is a problem that is specific to me, definitely not to every reader out there. But after thinking about it, that was the problem that I specifically could not overcome. There was nothing joyful in this book, and there was nothing humorous. I get that humor was entirely not the point of this story, but that didn't change the fact that it wasn't there, and therefore I didn't enjoy the book.

All of my favorite books, and even every one that I can recall enjoying, have made me smile.

I can and have read books mostly devoid of humor that I still enjoyed, like Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass. But I can still remember smiling when I first read about daemons, and the description of the kingdom in the North, and the bridge made of dust. If a book doesn't have humor, it needs to have wonder and awe, at least for me to enjoy it. To give a "literary" example, John Steinbeck's East of Eden is a heavy, serious, not-funny-in-the-least story. But the moment when Lee, Samuel, and Adam discover the meaning of Timshel gave me chills, and the ending, with its quiet promise of hope and redemption between Cal and Abra, gave me a happy, hopeful feeling inside.

Firethorn never did that for me. That's not to say the book is all doom and gloom, but it is heavy and serious, and even when things are going well or looking up for Firethorn, it's all still pretty grim. K.A. Applegate's Animorphs was even darker and heavier than Firethorn, for all that it was written for children, but it was still a rare book in the series that didn't make me laugh out loud. (Don't believe me about the darkness? Just try tracing Jake and Tom's relationship and character arcs sometime. If you're not weeping at the end, you didn't read the books.)

So my long, drawn out point is: I didn't like Firethorn because it didn't make me smile. Maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe it's because I'm addicted to happy endings. Maybe it's because high fantasy for adults really isn't my thing. Maybe it's because it started off with twelve pages of scenery and no dialogue, something that's sure to put me off. But I did not enjoy reading Firethorn, and I don't care for the book. To me, great literature--whether for adults or children, whether science fiction or literary novel, whether written a hundred years ago or a hundred days ago--are the stories that do it all. The ones that make you laugh, cry, smile, scream, tear out your hair and dance around the room. Great literature makes me smile.

Kates


P.S: On a mostly unrelated note: I strongly, strongly recommend reading Georges T. Dodd's review of Firethorn, and his objection to its (and other medievalist fantasies') portrayal of rape. Then, read Sarah Micklem's even better defense of her story and her character, and of rape survivors in general. Both of them have excellent points and present them in a logical, respectful, well-written manner. I'm going to meet Sarah Micklem tomorrow, and though I'll stay mum about my feelings about her book, I will thank her and congratulate her for her phenomenal, empowering essay.