And now for something completely different...

So it looks like Natalie Portman has been making noise in feminist circles after an interview with Elle featured this rather controversial statement.

The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a "feminist" story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathise with.

I discovered this article long after I started originally writing this post, but it helped me to reorientate my thoughts about this very subject and confirmed many of my own arguments. This blog was originally meant to discuss the elements of publishing and characterisation, but now I’m about to go down a path that I never thought I would take and discuss a potentially dangerous topic; feminism and what we consider feminist in characters. Don’t worry, I will be back to my normal topics of conversation next time but consider this first post as an introduction to my next one in which I will be delving a bit more into what makes a good female character.

Don't say I didn't try and warn you

What do I mean by feminism?

If you try and bring up the word ‘feminism’ in a casual conversation, you may get one of two responses. One, you might get people groaning and begging you to change the subject (in fact, some of you might have already decided that you don’t want to carry on reading this post and instead have gone to check your Facebook page or delve into the other wonders of the interwebs). Or two, you will have someone latching onto the subject and providing a three minute monologue on the subject. For the fortunate few, an intelligent and interesting debate about feminism and what it means may be initiated, so for those of you who fall into this category, I bid you welcome and hope you have something to add to this. However, the majority of people still fall within this first category because somewhere along the way our understanding of the word ‘feminism’ has become something less to be celebrated and more to be condemned.

For many of us, we have become well acquainted with stereotypical feminism and what it means. To be a feminist is to be always serious, to be considered unattractive by men (because surely an attractive woman would not need feminism), to hate all men and consider them the scum of the earth, to avoid all cosmetics or things that could possibly be considered ‘feminine’ and to be poised to complain about anything as potentially unfeminist, whether it is a politician’s unsavoury remarks or the shape of a hot dog.

Sound familiar?

So, what exactly is the official definition of a feminist? Well, according to Oxford dictionaries, the definition is a little bit different than you might expect:

the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Let me reiterate this. Equality. Not superiority.

It is very easy at the moment to consider that most women within the Western world are already considered equal, and while we may be in a much better position than we were in our parents’ or grandparents’ time, we still have a long way to go.

I am not going to address the political or social aspects of feminism because that was never what this blog was meant to focus on and frankly, I think there are many people out there who will be able to describe these concepts in a much better way than I can. Instead, I wish to use this as a springboard to examine feminism in regards to characterisation and our responses to that. Writers are constantly struggling to create good female characters in modern media and are constantly encouraged to write strong female role models for young girls. The princess in the tower must now make her own escape instead of waiting for the prince to save her, and she must do it while kicking ass and taking names. If she doesn’t match this description, she is criticised for being weak and passive and for the negative associations she brings for women.

But are we right to do this? Or more importantly, should we be criticising her for not meeting our expectations?

The women of new-Who

Allow me to put this into context by sharing with you what motivated me to write this post in the first place.

A few weeks ago, I came across a post on Tumblr that focused on the female companions of Doctors 9 through 11 and the titles that they were given throughout the course of their time aboard the TARDIS. Most of you will know what I mean but for those of you who do not, I would like to direct you to the post in question and will do my best to make this as comprehensive as possible. The characters of the first three women featured on the post (Rose Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble) were written during the tenure of Russell T Davis while the last two characters (Amy Pond and Clara Oswald) come under the direction of the new head scriptwriter, Steven Moffat. The post is considered to be a feminist perspective of the Doctor’s companions and heavily criticises Moffat’s portrayal and treatment of women during the course of his role.

As a woman and as a fan of Doctor Who, I am no stranger to these kinds of arguments. And certainly, I thought that while reading the arguments themselves, I would support them or at least find myself considering things from a new perspective. After all, my blogs are about sharing opinions even if they are only my own for the moment. However, I found myself disagreeing with these comments and felt that a lot of the show’s context was being ignored.

Things are much bigger than they appear.

The first main argument states that Martha and Donna have titles involving the word ‘Woman’ while Amy and Clara’s titles use ‘Girl’. The use of ‘Woman’ versus ‘Girl’ has come under scrutiny in the past for being disempowering towards women. After all, the word ‘Girl’ is used for children or teenagers, those who are currently under the care of others and do not have the authority to make decisions for themselves and are usually not treated as equals by other adults. It is the same argument that protests the use of princesses rather than queens in fairy tales and fantasy stories, especially those aimed at children. Why are we constantly placing an emphasis on women without power or those with limited power and condemning those who do have that power by portraying them as ‘evil’?

Now on the surface this is a very valid point. Infantilising and restricting the power of female characters is something that the media has to fight against. However, the post also addresses another point; that in Moffat’s run it was the Doctor who created these nicknames while the others were named by other humans. This is very important because it places the use of these comments within their proper context. The Doctor is a very old man in a very young body. At the last check he was over 1,000 years old, but this is debatable as neither the characters nor the writers are entirely sure of his exact age. From his perspective, humans are still children by comparison and he has expressed words to this effect more than once. In addition, the Doctor also refers to Rory Williams (Amy’s husband) as ‘The Boy who Waited’ (although his ‘official’ title is ‘The Last Centurion’).

(Please note that no mention is made of Rose’s title which is unrelated to her gender.)

These titles are also merely made in passing. They do not define who these characters are. Amy might be known as ‘The Girl who Waited’ by the fans, but she also makes it clear that she stopped waiting when she grew up and the Doctor tells us that she also has the ability to remember things that never happened. Rose’s title is a message that is only used as a signal of her presence within the Doctor’s timeline. Donna and Martha both received their titles towards the end of their official ‘companionships’ (with Martha even losing her official title as the world reset itself, meaning that the circumstances in which she received it no longer existed) and Clara was never aware of her title as ‘The Impossible Girl’. These are phrases that we, the fans, have used to define them based within the context of the show itself.

Next, the term ‘side characters’ and the fact that both Amy and Clara are only ‘puzzles for the Doctor’. A side character is someone who supports the protagonist but is not essential to the story. Both Amy and Clara have proved time and time again that they are essential, not just for the Doctor to show off to but also for providing new perspectives and doing things that are central for the story, even going so far as to solve things that the Doctor can’t. They are complex individuals, capable of great strength and crippling weakness, embodying the essence of good characterisation. We as an audience are interested in who they are and we therefore care about what happens to them.

In regards to argument about being ‘puzzles’, this cannot be denied. After all, both Amy and Clara create puzzles for the Doctor to solve. However, those puzzles are not what interested him in the first place and are certainly not anything new to the Who-verse. ‘Bad Wolf’ was the main mystery of Doctor 9’s time in the TARDIS, which was eventually discovered and revealed to be Rose herself. What needs to be remembered is that in all these cases, the puzzle appeared after the Doctor interacted with the people and decided that he liked them. The interest was established before the puzzle came to light and it was because he was interested in the individuals that he became interested in the puzzles. While it could be argued that this was not the case for Clara to a certain extent, I would hasten to point out the solution to her mystery: that she scattered herself throughout the Doctor’s timeline in order to save his life and ensure that everything he did wasn’t undone by someone else. By the time the Doctor first meets her, whether you consider that to be as an embodied voice in the Asylum of the Daleks, the governess in Victorian London or the nanny in 21^st century London, she has already done this. The wheels have been set in motion and his interest begins because of the actions she has already taken.

Context, context, context

Context does not only apply to contemporary media but is also essential when making feminist arguments about media from the past. It is incredibly easy to argue that books written in the past were unsympathetic towards women or that women are badly treated in early literature and should be looked upon with scathing feminist criticism because the characters do not match our sensibilities regarding women’s rights and characterisation. However by focusing our modern understanding on, for example, a Dickens novel, we run the risk of misunderstanding and misinterpreting the story and its characters.

Rules and expectations change over time. They change because of laws, wars, circumstances, beliefs and even technology. If they did not, the abolition of slavery would not have taken place, women would not have been given the vote and children would still be considered property. When people write or create, it is often a reflection on what they know of the time or what they think might be possible in the future. Imagination will fill in the blanks but the spark will usually appear because of a person’s current context. So why do we seem to believe that this was any different for our predecessors?

An example would be the character of Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, often considered to be the most boring and irritating of Jane Austen’s heroines. Adaptations of the novel have fought to change the shy, moral heroine into someone significantly more ‘interesting’ for our modern sensibilities. She is not witty like Elizabeth Bennett, funny and endearing like Catherine Morland or even romantically tragic like Anne Elliott. In fact, she completely goes against what we believe women should be.

Or does she?

Boring and moralistic? Or a hidden champion of feminism?

This is the point when context both within and beyond the story becomes necessary. We know that Fanny is shy and timid. She’s the second eldest of nine children in a poor household, who has been pulled away from everything she knows to live with rich relatives. To her, they are strangers and she is encouraged to remember that despite the fact that she is living with them and being educated to their standard, she is not one of them. She creates a moral compass for herself and endeavours to follow it dutifully, which she does even when it causes her problems. A rich man offers to marry her but she refuses because she knows that he has behaved badly towards her female cousins (who do not treat her well). However, in order to protect their honour (an important and fragile thing at the time), she refuses to say anything and endures going against her uncle, and being sent back to her poor family as a subtle punishment for her wilfulness.

Let me put this into context for you. At the time Austen was living, women did not have many prospects. You were under the care of your father or brother and you either married or went into service. If you were wealthy enough, you might survive being a spinster but if you had no one to look out for you? You may not have been able to earn the money you needed to survive. If you were a servant, you might have some protection in the household but Fanny has lived too long among her wealthier relatives to be able to cope with the harshness of the position. While she has the education necessary for a governess, socially, Fanny runs the risk of becoming more isolated as she is neither a member of the house nor a servant.

For a woman as quiet and timid as Fanny to not only refuse a proposal that was financially beneficial to her but was to a man whom she considered to be dishonourable and morally wrong, and to stick with her decision despite the opinions of those she loves, is monumental. It takes a great deal of courage to stand up for your beliefs but to do so within this context makes it a much more courageous act. Vera Nazarian wrote an article about Fanny’s position as a feminist and referred to her as a ‘feminist of the truest kind’. You may find her full article here.

Final thoughts

It is very easy to make snap judgements about whether or not a character should be considered feminist based on an outward appearance because we assume that feminism can only be one thing. However, as we have seen feminism doesn’t always have to be aggressive and vocal. Elle Woods from Legally Blonde hardly follows the traditional avenue of feminism with her slightly ditzy attitude, obsession with pink and focus on fashion. And yet she is a caring, intelligent woman who never apologises for who she is and doesn’t compromise her beliefs in order to achieve success. She may have gone to law school for the wrong reasons but she did it using her own abilities. In contrast, the character of Hit Girl from ‘Kick Ass’ has the ability to drop grown men that are twice her size and even surpass them in fighting and shooting abilities but she is also a girl who was denied a childhood by her father and became a tool for a man who was searching for revenge and was prevented from making proper human connections.

So which of these would we consider the good feminist example? The one who did not compromise who she was to get what she wanted? Or the one who was forced to change to fulfil someone else’s expectations?

We seem to have developed this idea that a feminist character is a female who is strong and able to hold their own in a fight without showing weakness. That those who do not aggressively meet or inspire events should be considered passive and therefore are not valid feminist role models. However, by doing this we risk the possibility of confusing what is ‘feminist’ and who women are. The ability to shoot a gun does not automatically make a character narratively interesting or deep regardless of whether they are male or female and if we, as an audience, don’t care about the character, why should we care about what they are trying to achieve? Isn’t creating a female character with a black belt, who the audience are not interested in, just as bad as creating a female character whose sole purpose is to act as a love interest for the hero?