You sound like me in my academic career, trying to convince my fellow feminists not to overlook the transformative and revolutionary power of domesticity. :)
I def. agree with you that there is an urge to make women heroes into men. Just to take the most basic example, the "Hero's Journey" that has been popularly defined for us by Joseph Campbell. People seem to skip over the fact that the stories he has distilled into this series of progressions are all about Men. It is literally the Hero's Journey and I'm not sure we can really just lift the template and slide it to the left and expect Women Heroes to fit their Journeys into it.
I run into this all the time when I see fen complaining "I can't stand to see character xx marry and settle down and have kids. She should want MORE." As though the lives of the huge numbers of women who marry and have kids are these vanishing points of dullness. GRRRR. There are infinite ways humans can band together, not just one man one woman, and not all relationships lead to kids, but why does the woman's story have to end if kids occur? that's insane, yet, our storytelling as a culture isn't ready to take on much beyond the youthful Man Hero's Journey.
I am 100% in agreement with you on Dean and Sam above. I am of the opinion that Supernatural has been explicitly exploring the nature of how Men are hurt by forcing them into these hypermasculine roles... excluding them from the daylight civilian sphere of women. I love the huge variety of women characters that SPN gives us... even though their characters are not explored in depth (which is why my longterm fic project is writing all the women characters of Supernatural! hello, my Dorothy, Charlie, and fairy girlfriend Big Bang of next spring!!) One of my favorite side characters of all time of SPN is Lisa Braeden's neighbor, Annette, who drowned her daughter's changeling replacement. !!!! That's the kind of risk in storytelling that SPN can take because of its nature as a genre show. Or (I am a huge fan of Ruby) giving a woman side character a two year arc during which she completely runs the show and achieves her Big Bad Goal, to the point where she willingly dies for it.
I guess too that "Strong woman character" can be read more than one way. It would be better to say "well developed woman character" because of course not every human can be strong all the time. Did you happen to catch Joss Whedon's Much Ado with Amy Acker as Beatrice? She knocked it all the way out of the park... just this amazing nuanced character of a woman making the most out of her individuality within these very tight social constraints... her sorrow about her situation ... and her rage at not being able to defend her cousin's reputation in the ways a man would. So, an AMAZING strong woman character, in a story that emphasizes all the ways she is powerless. :D (Also, I think Joss was really trying to engage some of these issues about strength in powerlessness and vulnerability in Dollhouse, but no one seemed to want to hear how that story might go.... )
no subject
:)
I def. agree with you that there is an urge to make women heroes into men. Just to take the most basic example, the "Hero's Journey" that has been popularly defined for us by Joseph Campbell. People seem to skip over the fact that the stories he has distilled into this series of progressions are all about Men. It is literally the Hero's Journey and I'm not sure we can really just lift the template and slide it to the left and expect Women Heroes to fit their Journeys into it.
I run into this all the time when I see fen complaining "I can't stand to see character xx marry and settle down and have kids. She should want MORE." As though the lives of the huge numbers of women who marry and have kids are these vanishing points of dullness. GRRRR. There are infinite ways humans can band together, not just one man one woman, and not all relationships lead to kids, but why does the woman's story have to end if kids occur? that's insane, yet, our storytelling as a culture isn't ready to take on much beyond the youthful Man Hero's Journey.
I am 100% in agreement with you on Dean and Sam above. I am of the opinion that Supernatural has been explicitly exploring the nature of how Men are hurt by forcing them into these hypermasculine roles... excluding them from the daylight civilian sphere of women. I love the huge variety of women characters that SPN gives us... even though their characters are not explored in depth (which is why my longterm fic project is writing all the women characters of Supernatural! hello, my Dorothy, Charlie, and fairy girlfriend Big Bang of next spring!!) One of my favorite side characters of all time of SPN is Lisa Braeden's neighbor, Annette, who drowned her daughter's changeling replacement. !!!! That's the kind of risk in storytelling that SPN can take because of its nature as a genre show. Or (I am a huge fan of Ruby) giving a woman side character a two year arc during which she completely runs the show and achieves her Big Bad Goal, to the point where she willingly dies for it.
I guess too that "Strong woman character" can be read more than one way. It would be better to say "well developed woman character" because of course not every human can be strong all the time. Did you happen to catch Joss Whedon's Much Ado with Amy Acker as Beatrice? She knocked it all the way out of the park... just this amazing nuanced character of a woman making the most out of her individuality within these very tight social constraints... her sorrow about her situation ... and her rage at not being able to defend her cousin's reputation in the ways a man would. So, an AMAZING strong woman character, in a story that emphasizes all the ways she is powerless. :D (Also, I think Joss was really trying to engage some of these issues about strength in powerlessness and vulnerability in Dollhouse, but no one seemed to want to hear how that story might go.... )