The Shift Matron and the War Widow

Canada is known for many things: breathtaking natural beauty, an over-dependence on maple syrup, and a population whose famous humility makes way for brief bouts of patriotism only once every four years, when we cheer for the gifted athletes we usually ignore and the professional hockey players we watch almost constantly. We are not, as a rule, celebrated as the home of fantastic feminist television shows.

However, with the international success of the homegrown drama Bomb Girls, that’s beginning to change. Set during the Second World War, Bomb Girls chronicles the trials and tribulations of life on the home front for the women of Victory Munitions, a bomb factory in Toronto. At work, at home, and at play, these women simultaneously struggle with the sexist standards of their time and bask in the new freedom allowed them while the men fight overseas.

I mentioned in Monday’s post that this show passes the Bechdel test twice in the first three minutes of the first episode, but what is even more notable is that it holds to this pattern for the remainder of the first season. Bomb Girls is precisely the kind of show that would exist in a post-Bechdel test cultural climate, in which women in the media are shown to be thinking, feeling people with important relationships with other women, all of whom have full lives that don’t revolve around men.

(Note: We will only be covering the first season in our analysis. We have, however, timed these posts to coincide with the release of Season Two in Canada, so once you’ve bought and marathoned the first season on DVD, there will be bright, shiny, new episodes waiting for you.)

Lorna Corbett

We begin with Lorna Corbett, the blue shift matron at Vic Mu, who is just about the only person in management who seems to understand how to run the place. It is her job to ensure order in her shift and to inspect her workers for materials that may spark in the very literal powder keg in which they work. Her boss, Harold Akins, reduces her job to a simple task, exclaiming, “For God’s sakes, all you have to worry about is dressing the girls for their shifts.” But Lorna actually does much more. She asks that the factory implement a comprehensive sexual harassment policy and goes on to write it herself. When a bad bomb injures three male workers during testing, she takes the women’s suggestions for improvement to Akins. She tells him to publish them in a report and take the credit for increasing safety and productivity; in exchange, she asks only that her scapegoated worker be rehired.

In these two instances, and in many others, she demonstrates that she is committed to protecting her girls. The best example occurs near the end of the first episode, when Lorna appeals to a doctor to give a grievously injured woman worker the same treatment that he would give the higher priority soldiers. She gives an impassioned speech: “You can’t let her leave here deformed; it will destroy her future. … Vera is a soldier. Vera risked her life every day to help win this war. Do not turn your back on her. If you want to see our boys with bullets in their guns and bombs in their planes, you will show her the same respect. … Now go in there, and book the operating room, and you do the surgeries, no matter how expensive or lengthy. You do your best for that girl.” Lorna refuses to let women’s role in the war be dismissed and their work devalued; instead, she argues that they are instrumental in the men’s success and should therefore be treated with equal care.

Lorna knows very well what it means to contribute to the war effort. She is the mother of three grown children, two of whom are fighting across the pond while she and her daughter do their part at home. She is also the wife of a World War I veteran, whose experiences during the Great War left him crippled, both physically and emotionally. The show takes this opportunity not only to flesh out the well-worn character of the dissatisfied middle-aged woman, but to explore the effects of PTSD on the affected person’s family.

As her husband’s character becomes increasingly complex, we discover what Lorna has had to live with for twenty-five years. Bob has a drinking problem and a tendency to be brutally honest in a way that comes across as callous. He refuses to have sex with her and chooses to complain about the extravagance of buying a whole pot roast rather than praise Lorna for making it. He’s not all bad, however. His observations, cynical as they may be, are often correct, and his decision to revisit the trauma of his wartime experience in order to write convincing letters for Edith’s children is admirable. When it comes to their marriage, however, things have gotten so bad that Lorna becomes suspicious when he displays any positive emotion.

From Lorna’s perspective, the problem is that Bob has never made any effort to move on from his traumatic experience, choosing instead to view the world “through the lens of a few terrible months [he] had twenty-five years ago.” He seems to prefer to wallow in his pain rather than acknowledge the things they have accomplished since the war. While he remained isolated in his pain, she tried to convince him to let her in, explaining that “[she] asked, [she] hinted, [she] tried, and then finally, [she] gave up.” She has been trying to re-forge a connection for decades, and it’s understandable that she would resent him when he finally makes an attempt to do the same.

Her relationship with Bob also explains why she is so determined to help Vera. Faced with the prospect of seeing another person in her life lose themselves to depression, she fights back. She has to make Vera what Bob never allowed himself to become: a person who lives after not dying.

Unfortunately, most of Lorna’s good advice is reserved for other people. Just as she makes it her job to protect her girls, she also considers it her duty to protect her country. In the first episode, she begins a campaign to get a materials controller, Marco Moretti, ousted from Vic Mu based solely on his Italian heritage and Italy’s connections to Hitler. She accuses him of being an enemy spy and then spends most of the first three episodes trying to prove her suspicions. She believes that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide, and any investigation will necessarily find them innocent. Implicit in this notion is the idea that if you are found guilty of something, you must have done it. Eventually, she reports him to higher military authorities, which leads to rumours of his being taken to an internment camp. It is only when she shares an awkward family dinner with Marco and his mother that she begins to relinquish her fear and comes to appreciate their cultural differences, as well as the flaws in her worldview.

While Lorna claims that her actions are driven by the circumstances of global conflict, she proves that, in this case, the political is personal. Smoking out an enemy spy allows her to feel like she’s helping to protect her sons; the same rationale motivates her to make the bombs that will kill other mothers’ sons. When she sees Marco with his mother in his home, she can no longer pretend not to see him as a person. Unfortunately, this realization coincides with the discovery of their mutual attraction. It seems that Lorna’s misuse of her power as a native Canadian to banish an Italian threat was also an attempt to banish the temptation that threatens her family and marriage; she had to neutralize what she viewed as a threat to both her home country and her home. This is further complicated by the fact that Lorna ends up having sex with Marco and becoming pregnant with his child, willingly letting him into her life.

This all brings us to the issue of sacrifice. When asked to deliver a speech on Armistice Day, Lorna chooses as her focus the topic of individual sacrifice on behalf of the greater good. While she explicitly links this concept to the efforts of soldiers in both wars, she also acknowledges the sacrifices that she and her fellow workers make to support them. Implicitly, she also talks about herself. Early in the speech, she delivers a line that she wrote in an earlier scene; the repetition suggests that it is intended to draw our focus. As she says, “We are all asked to make sacrifices, and while not every sacrifice is rewarded, it is our duty to do so.” It seems as if Lorna is speaking about her marriage, twenty-five years of living with a distant partner in order to raise three children, two of whom she has offered to her country. By the end of the speech, however, she seems to be looking to the future: “Sometimes, you know when a thing is right. What’s a few small sacrifices on our part when we stand to win back the happiness and freedom we deserve?” She sees herself as deserving of love and affection. She sees herself as deserving of a life that takes into account her needs.

This all changes when she learns of the pregnancy in the next episode. After the positive test comes back, she breaks down in front of Marco, saying that she’s a horrible person who deserves this punishment for all of the awful things she’s done. She laments, “I thought it was finally my turn; I’d get my life. And now it’s over.” She has come to the conclusion that she’s not the hero, doggedly pursuing the enemy; rather, she is the villain, paying for her crimes.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Edith McCallum

Edith is the least developed and, arguably, the weakest character among the six that we’ll be discussing. At the factory, she is Lorna’s right-hand woman, the bridge between her and her girls. In the show, she is the first victim of the war.

Edith is at work when she learns that her husband’s plane has been shot down, and her grief is suddenly made very public. While the show makes clear that the news could have come to anyone, even going so far as to make it seem as if one of Lorna’s sons had died, it is ultimately Edith who collapses with grief. The rest of the season chronicles her attempt to cope with the loss.

Although she gets less screen time than other characters, Edith’s story is a fairly compelling one. She continues to work after receiving the news, taking comfort in her friends and in the activity. Despite the fact that she barely sleeps, she knows that she must support her family and diligently does her job until she is the unfortunate victim of scapegoating after a disastrous testing day. When Lorna tries to justify her firing by implying that she could have done better on the test, Edith defends herself: “Aside from not sleeping a wink since my husband was blown to bits, or worrying how I’m gonna raise two kids, or how I still can’t tell them Daddy’s never coming home... Aside from all that, I can’t imagine what took my head out of the game.” In addition to her grief, she now has to deal with a reputation for incompetence that will prevent her from finding further employment.

Once she gets her job back, she still has to deal with the mess that is her personal life. The rest of her storyline revolves around her refusal to tell her children that their father is dead. Although both Lorna and Bob take issue with her decision, Edith is persistent, trying to protect her children from the kind of pain that she is experiencing. She causes herself more pain, however, in pretending that everything is fine. Helping and hindering her in this pursuit is Bob, who pens letters for the kids in the guise of Edith’s husband before eventually revealing the truth. In a refreshing change, the show doesn’t actively support Bob’s decision to end the charade, but instead has him acknowledge that it was her right to tell them; he apologizes for taking away her agency.

Edith’s defining moment comes in the second episode. Vera has asked to brush Edith’s hair, and in a revealing moment, Edith laments, “I guess the war pretty much kicked the girly girl out of us, didn’t it?” She is not just talking about coveralls and turbans, but about the reality that she faces as a single parent, having to become mother and father and breadwinner.

Verdict: Supporting role

I’m Holding Out For a Hunka Hunka Burning Cookie

In last week’s post, we talked (and talked and talked) about the subversive work that the Adventure Time crew has done with Marceline. This week, we’d like to tackle the way in which this subversive spirit has affected a few of the more minor characters.

Fionna

We start with someone who, despite her limited screen time, isn’t actually minor at all. Fionna is the gender-swapped version of the show’s hero, Finn; with the help of her cat, Cake, she must keep Ooo (and Prince Gumball) safe from the evil Ice Queen.

According to Rule 63 of the infamous Rules of the Internet, for every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa. Gender swapping is so pervasive a phenomenon that the rule’s popularity is only dwarfed by that of Rule 34: “There is porn of it. No exceptions.” However, while Rule 34 only proves what Avenue Q’s Trekkie Monster has been telling us for a decade, Rule 63 has a more complex function.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that, in G-rated films released between 2006 and 2009, women and girls only comprised 32.6% of the characters onscreen. This number only decreases as the rating goes up. Essentially, in mainstream Hollywood, the ratio of men to women is 2:1. Now imagine a world in which the opposite is true: women star in nearly all blockbusters, women make up the majority of background characters, and the “womance” becomes a common trope. Women play all of our admirable action heroes, all of our bold world leaders, all of our iconic villains. When a film starring a man or a group of men succeeds at the box office, it is nevertheless dismissed as a “male tale.” Gender swapping, taken to its logical conclusion, shows us just how messed up our current media norms really are.

Although the show is certainly engaging in this conversation, in its use of gender swapping, Adventure Time seems to be responding to a very specific -- and ultimately negative -- application of the trope.

Let me explain. (No, there is too much. Let me sum up.) Although she appears to be a few years older than her male counterpart, Fionna closely resembles Finn, possessing his thirst for adventure, his crush on Bubblegum (now Gumball), his friendship with Marceline (now Marshall Lee), his canine best friend (now feline), and a very near approximation of his wardrobe. However, whereas many of Finn’s personality traits are considered pretty standard for a thirteen-year-old boy, they are somewhat less common among cartoon representations of girls in their late teens and therefore take on a slightly different significance.

Fionna is labelled as a tomboy, seemingly just because she loves adventuring and finds wearing dresses to be a chore, to the extent that she wears her everyday clothes underneath the one that Cake recommends she wear. As she says, she is “all about swords” and prefers a wardrobe that accommodates their inclusion. When she is being serenaded by a false Prince Gumball, she provides the pyrotechnics by chopping through a swarm of attacking creatures. She is an accomplished hero, saving Gumball on several occasions and holding him in the very definition of a heroic pose. She is less competent when it comes to romancing or actually talking to her crush; in fact, it is only by the end of their evening together that she can confidently and excitedly state, “It was a date! There was singing and junk!”

Their next rendezvous doesn’t go so well. Gumball urges Fionna to join him in his bedroom, and she’s clearly very uncomfortable with the idea of the sudden shift in their relationship. She gets even more uncomfortable when she notices that the real Gumball is frozen to the ceiling and the prince that has been wooing her is the Ice Queen in disguise. The end of this scene is the pivotal moment of the episode, not because it clears up the plot, but because it reveals the subversive function of Fionna.

We’ve all noticed that Hollywood has a tendency to make movies starring men about universal ideas and experiences, and movies starring women about love, usually of the romantic variety. A recent television-based example is a much-criticized aspect of The Legend of Korra. Whereas its predecessor, Avatar: The Last Airbender, focused on a major plot arc and used romance either as a subplot or a device to enhance character development, the first season of The Legend of Korra became bogged down in endless love triangles that took time away from the plot arc and, arguably, regressed Korra as a character. The most glaring difference between the two series? The last airbender, Aang, is a thirteen-year-old boy and Korra is a seventeen-year-old girl.

Taking the very same difference into account in its own episode, Adventure Time manages to avoid making a similar mistake. The episode does focus on Fionna’s romantic troubles, but, while Finn struggles for three seasons with his crush on Bubblegum and tries to deal with a potentially life-threatening relationship with Flame Princess, Fionna decides over the course of an eleven-minute-long episode that she don’t need no man to complete her. After the real Gumball offers to take her out on a real date, she not only tells him that she isn’t interested, but physically shoves his face away, stating, “I think the reason I got all these guy friends and no boyfriend is because I don’t really want to date any of them. I don’t need to feel like I’m waiting to be noticed. I know who I am, and I’ll know what I want if and when it ever comes along.” The episode focuses on one girl’s love life in order to argue that there is more to a girl’s life than love.

Perhaps the greatest part of this episode, though, is the reveal that it all occurs in a piece of fanfiction written by the Ice King, a character to whom Jake has said, “Your constant harassment of the female gender makes me sick.” The fact that a person like the Ice King can write a female main character who is happy with herself and has no need for male validation serves as a pretty clear condemnation of the writers and producers that have populated our screens with women who can’t live without a man.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Flame Princess

Flame Princess is explicitly introduced as Finn’s new love interest, some time before Finn has even met her. The situation itself is more than a little dubious: Finn, heartbroken by Bubblegum’s rejection, has descended into an almost catatonic state of grief, and Jake decides that the only way to get him out of his slump is to provide him with a new girl to pine over. Thinking that Finn should perhaps go for someone a little more attainable than Bubblegum, Jake has the brilliant plan to hook his best friend up with a girl made of fire. The fact that this situation leads to a lot of pain is not surprising; what is astounding is the fact that Flame Princess turns out to be a compelling character in her own right.

When we first meet her, she is incarcerated in a lamp: the Fire Kingdom equivalent of a maiden stuck in a tower. Jake must essentially woo her father with gifts in order to gain her hand for Finn, and it is only after the whole courtly routine is complete that the Flame King lets Jake know that his daughter is evil. When Jake attempts to get out of the deal, telling her that Finn no longer likes her, she attacks the tree fort, snapping Finn out of his funk in the process. Hurt by Finn’s unknowing rejection, she tells him not to mess with her ever again. Unfortunately, this encounter leaves him smitten with her.

Adventure Time does a lot of interesting work with Flame Princess’s forced innocence and ignorance. Flame Princess comes to learn that the world outside of the Fire Kingdom is a dangerous place, for her and for anyone who gets close to her. Everything she touches is reduced to ash, so she cannot truly discover things like trees or flowers. She comes to learn that she can be physically hurt as well, whenever her flames are put out. Instead of depicting her as an uncontrollable, natural force, the show portrays her as a young girl just beginning to learn exactly what it means to harm and be harmed.

As if that weren’t difficult enough, as soon as she seems to be carving out a place for herself, she learns that she can hurt others just by being a normal teenage girl. When she is released from the lamp, her father describes her as “an unstoppable force of destruction,” and the cruel irony is that the full force of her power is unleashed only when she finds something that she doesn’t want to destroy. As Princess Bubblegum explains, “Her elemental matrix can’t handle extreme romance! If Finn tries to kiss her, she’ll burn so hot, she’ll melt right through the planet’s crust, down through the molten core, then she’ll be thrown back and forth by gravity until she burns up the world from the inside! Why do you think I had her father keep her locked up?” Setting aside for a moment (and another post) the incredibly interesting idea that one princess had another locked up, Adventure Time is suggesting that sometimes princesses need to remain in the tower for the good of the world. Sometimes, Beauty and the beast are the same person, and the villagers need to be protected.

But sometimes, what is better for the world doesn’t trump what is better for the girl. Finn and Flame Princess bring out the best in each other, even if together, they produce an inferno that threatens to destroy Ooo. What we find particularly lovely is the fact that Finn makes a point of making the adjustments so their relationship can work. They want to hug, so he has Jake wrap him up in tin foil. He doesn’t let her think that she is a burden to shoulder or a problem to be solved, and in this way he tries to keep her from getting hurt. This doesn’t come across as some sort of misguided attempt to protect her because she is in some way weak; if anything, he’s protecting himself so he can continue to seek out and enjoy her company. At the same time (and we’re giving the Adventure Time writers major kudos for this), Finn and Flame Princess’ affection for each other doesn’t magically resolve the difficulties inherent in their relationship. Instead, it allows the show the opportunity to represent an interesting partnership that both people have to work to maintain, which we’ll take any day over an unrequited crush and several seasons of moping.

Verdict: Strong Female Character™ (just because she hasn’t been developed very much beyond Jake and Finn’s perceptions of her)

Princess Cookie

This analysis is the result of a special request by our illustrator, Jai. While Princess Cookie goes by masculine pronouns in the episode and could therefore be excluded from the category of “strong female character” based solely on that, we’re pretty confident we can defend his inclusion.

We first meet Princess Cookie as Baby-Snaps, a chocolate chip cookie person who has taken hostages in a grocery store and refuses to let them go until Princess Bubblegum gives him her crown. While this initially seems a bit like a very poorly staged coup d’état via small-scale domestic terrorism, it soon becomes clear that there is something else at work. Once Jake and Finn have infiltrated the store, the former in the guise of a milkman, Jake befriends the nervous Baby-Snaps, who then tells Jake why he has taken such extreme action.

Baby-Snaps was the new kid who tried and failed to make friends with the perpetually depressed children at his orphanage. One day, Princess Bubblegum visited and brought with her an influx of joy and optimism. Baby-Snaps describes that day as the most important -- and most crushing -- of his life: “Everything was different. Everything was... was better with her around. And something inside me changed that day too. And then later she told me I could be anything I wanted. … And I told her I wanted to be a princess like her, so I could make all the children happy. And she laughed in my face, man! It really messed me up.”

After hearing this story, Jake starts to call Baby-Snaps “Princess Cookie,” not in a patronizing way, but with genuine respect. He tries to secure Cookie’s safe departure in exchange for the hostages, but Bubblegum refuses to entertain any proposal that does not eventually end with Cookie rotting in the dungeon. Still, Jake decides to help, turning himself into Cookie’s trusty steed and temporarily turning his back on his Bubblegum-supporting buddy. When Jake and Cookie reach a cliff with a sheer drop, Cookie gives up, knowing that he cannot escape. He attempts to commit suicide, but Bubblegum’s forces merely gather up the pieces and deposit them in a mental institution. In the final scene, Jake delivers a specially made crown to Cookie and bows before him, driving the rest of the people in the room to acknowledge Cookie as the princess he always wanted to be.

There are a number of issues at work here, but we’re going to isolate two. The first hearkens back to a major issue already tackled on Strong Female Character: the idea that every little girl wants to be a princess and that, accordingly, every female character must be royal. Princessery is therefore an intensely feminine pursuit. The fact that Baby-Snaps wants to be a princess and assume the duty of pleasing his royal subjects makes a solid argument in favour of the awesomeness of typically girly things. Throughout their lives, the boys who watch Adventure Time will likely receive the message that they shouldn’t like things intended for girls, because our culture champions the stereotypically masculine and denigrates the stereotypically feminine. This episode, however, argues that embracing feminine pursuits is a legitimate endeavour, to be celebrated just as much as any typical path.

The other issue that emerges is one that perhaps validates Princess Cookie’s inclusion on SFC: his apparent genderqueer identity. In a show where just about every female character is a princess, there is a suggestion that “princess” is synonymous with “girl.” What Princess Cookie is doing then, more than breaking laws, is violating the unwritten societal assumptions with regard to the binary nature of gender. He seems to identify as male, nevertheless yearning to break free of the social restrictions (here represented by Bubblegum, the show’s head princess in charge) and become a kind of model of femininity.

It would have been subversive if Adventure Time had merely represented this story and portrayed Princess Cookie sympathetically. Instead, they went one step further. Not only did they give Cookie a heartbreaking backstory of dreams dashed, but they gave him a supporter who made every effort to help him realize those dreams. They told a tale about being yourself and deserving the opportunity to achieve your dreams using a princess story that Disney wouldn’t dare produce. Unfortunately, Adventure Time offers no miraculous solutions; Cookie is institutionalized, and his subjects are his fellow inmates. He achieves his dream, but at a tremendous cost, trading his credibility for his crown. In the rest of society’s view, his story remains, at best, a cautionary tale.

Verdict: Supporting role

That Poor Misguided Angel

KNIVES CHAU
17 YEARS OLD
STATUS: TOTALLY CRAZY

 
“Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler!” So begins the tale of Scott Pilgrim, introducing at the same moment its titular character and his seventeen-year-old counterpart, Knives Chau.

Knives enters the story as a stereotypical Asian teenager, complete with overbearing parents and advanced textbooks. She initially treats Scott as another friend, regaling him with stories of high school drama. Their relationship is almost preternaturally innocent, and it is only after she hears Sex Bob-omb play for the first time that her obsession with Scott truly takes hold. Hearing those poorly played chords pitches her face first onto the Yellow Brick Road to adulthood; though her world as we see it remains a land of black and white, she has clearly had her first glimpse of Technicolor.

For Kim, music is a constant, structuring her life; for Knives, it is a gateway to emotions and situations she has never before had a chance to experience. When Scott starts dating Ramona, Knives bemoans her relative lack of life experience: “She’s had time, you know?? She’s got a head start! What am I supposed to do?? How do I fight that? I didn’t even know there was good music until like two months ago!!” Knives frames what she seems to think of as a kind of life seniority in terms of music knowledge, as if everyone had an equally melodic moment of maturation.

Her discovery of music also coincides with the beginning of her search for a model of femininity to emulate. After that first rehearsal, she cuts her hair and starts to dress like Kim. Once Scott has dumped her for Ramona, she gets highlights, mimicking Ramona’s dye job as if that will restore her to Scott’s favour. Although she doesn’t imitate any particular aspect of Envy’s style, she does become obsessed with her, not only explicitly calling her her role model, but also freaking out over the idea that she’s kissed the lips that have kissed Envy. She even tells Scott that he’ll “always be [her] Clash at Demonhead,” compounding in one sentence her love of Scott, her obsession with Envy, and her devotion to music.

This is not to say that Knives’ attitude toward other women is at all positive or healthy. For the majority of the series, she views Ramona as the harlot who stole her man while refusing to see Scott for the cad he demonstrably is. She is constantly using gender-based insults like “slut” and often stoops to calling other women “ugly” or “fat,” regardless of evidence for either claim.

Accordingly, most of Knives’ characterization revolves around her being herself a kind of two-dimensionally awful woman. She is the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend who becomes a stalker and picks fights with her ex’s current love interest, asserting throughout that she’s a “Scottaholic.” She dates Young Neil because he looks like Scott. She even has a shrine. In a narrative that revolves around Scott, she becomes proof of the damage a Scott-centred existence can do.

She is also, in many ways, a reflection of Scott. His dating her represents a regression, as he turns to the easy world of teenage dating to avoid the realities of adulthood. Over the course of the series, he must grow up and learn to take responsibility for his own actions, learning that life isn’t a video game, even if he appears to be living in one. Knives undergoes a more straightforward, if less thoroughly explored, coming-of-age story. She is introduced as a shy, naive child who begins a musically triggered metaphorical puberty. By the third volume, she is beginning to understand the double-edged sword that is adulthood: “I mean, I’m not totally happy, but there’s no way I’d go back to my old oblivious self! I like it here. I like all the... confusion and heart-break. … I feel like I’ve learned some stuff along the way. I know things now.” Eventually, by the final book, Knives’ development has surpassed Scott’s. She is eighteen, an adult in the eyes of the law and a soon-to-be graduate of high school, and she has left the stalled Scott behind. This becomes obvious when she rejects Scott’s offer of casual sex, telling him that they should try to be grown-ups.

Her maturity is finally demonstrated by her decision to let Scott go. He retains the importance of being her first boyfriend as well as the person who helped open her eyes to the world beyond her Catholic school, but that’s all. As she asserts, “I’m happy being alone right now, Scott. I’m trying to learn to like me. Alone.” Best ending for a character that seemed to be nothing more than a caricature of a crazy ex? We think so.

The film’s version of Knives doesn’t fare much better than Ramona or Kim. While she does get to replace Ramona in the final battle against Gideon, she was only there because she wanted to fight Ramona and punish her for stealing Scott. Whereas the comic leaves us with an image of Knives as an independent person striking out on her own, the film ends with Knives telling Scott to go get the girl, assuring him with a wry “I’m too cool for you anyway.” It’s an important and disappointing difference. Comic!Knives completes her character arc by growing up, and leaving Scott behind is merely part of the process. Movie!Knives completes her own arc by letting Scott go, making the romantic relationship the whole point of her story. As you may imagine, we don’t like this ending very much at all.

Verdict: Supporting Role (Comic) and Love Interest (Film)

The Outcasts

We interrupt your regularly scheduled princess programming with an urgent news bulletin.

After the end of the Disney Renaissance, the House of Mouse stepped outside its princess box to make some really terrible films as well as some fairly solid ones. In the latter category are Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Lilo & Stitch, two films that feature multiple female characters. They represent a breath of fresh air which unfortunately blew away with the return of the Disney princess.

(We included Meg just for the hell of it.)

Megara

In Greek mythology, Megara was the first of Heracles’ four wives: she was given to him by her father, King Creon of Thebes, after Heracles defeated the Minyans at Orochomenos. Heracles brought Megara to his home in Thebes, and she bore him a son and a daughter. Unfortunately, Heracles was driven mad by Hera (who resented him because he was the offspring of an affair Zeus had with the mortal Alcmene, and living proof of Zeus’ infidelity) and killed his children. Some sources claim that he also killed Megara, while others state that she was given to Iolaus (Heracles’ nephew) after Heracles left Thebes, never to return. Not exactly Disney material, there.

But then again, the Megara of Disney’s Hercules isn’t standard Disney material either. She is a dame straight out of a classic film noir, a self-proclaimed loner, and an unabashedly skeptical and sarcastic woman. When we first meet Megara, she’s in a typical Damsel in Distress situation: the centaur river guardian Nessus is manhandling her. Hercules tries to step in and save her; however, she refuses his help, saying, “I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, I can handle this. Have a nice day.” It is only after Hercules leaves that we learn that she went looking for trouble, having been sent by Hades to convince the centaur to join his side in the coming war. We also learn that Megara is completely unimpressed with Hercules’ “big, innocent farm boy routine.” The Lois Lane to Hercules’ Superman, Megara only truly notices him when he saves Pain and Panic in the guise of cherubic children.

Still, she is reluctant to fulfill the narrative’s role for her, as she plays the double agent while resisting the pull to become a love interest. She is forced at every turn to play the femme fatale, deploying her feminine wiles at Hades’ command. The bulk of her courtship with Hercules is part of Hades’ plan to discover Hercules’ weaknesses, making Megara a pawn in a game played by men and gods. The only control she possesses at this point is control over her own feelings, and even they are rebelling. After a date not necessarily with the Devil, but certainly planned by him, Meg laments her situation, refusing to acknowledge the fact that she’s in love. She is manipulated by her feelings just as much as she is manipulated by her master.

And this is a dangerous and familiar situation for Meg. She’s stuck in this predicament because she sold her soul for a guy who immediately left her for another woman, proving that you have to be a mermaid for that kind of deal to work out. Indeed, the lesson this particular film appears to be trying to get across is that it’s fine to give up everything for a guy, but it has to be a guy worthy of such a sacrifice. Meg goes on to make a similarly substantial sacrifice for Hercules: she pushes him out of the path of a falling pillar while he’s weakened by his deal with Hades, sustaining fatal internal injuries in the process. In doing so, she restores his strength and allows him to go to the Underworld to confront Hades, where he risks his life to regain her soul. In risking his life for Megara, Hercules gains the Official Stamp of Heroic Approval from Zeus and is elevated to god status. He refuses immortality so he can be with Meg, whose mortality excludes her from Mount Olympus. There is a certain equality in their mutual heroic sacrifice, rendering Meg a kind of hero in her own right.

However, it's Hercules’ name on the tin, and Megara’s story revolves around a romantic relationship with him. Like Jasmine, she’s a Supporting Character, albeit a pretty cool one.

Verdict: Supporting Character

Kida

With the release of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Disney introduced us to Kidagakash, a competent, capable princess by birth -- the first since Pocahontas, seven films and six years before. In addition to having the coolest name of any Disney character, she may have the most harrowing origin story. Her mother is literally pried from her hands while the apocalypse happens all around her; her mother seems to die as the city sinks.

Later, Kida is re-introduced in a scene obviously intentionally reminiscent of every moment of first contact between colonizing “heroes” and “savage” natives, as she and her companions wear large masks and threaten the invaders. However, we already know that the Atlanteans are actually a highly advanced civilization, and we forged a connection to them before we forged one with the surface dwellers. In this sense, the cliched meeting is a kind of subversion of the trope. Unlike Pocahontas, who learned English by listening to her heart, Kida and the other Atlanteans became polyglots by studying languages. While Kida is curious and knowledgeable about other cultures, her real passion is learning more about her own fading culture. She brings the explorers into Atlantis so she might convince her father to let them stay in the city and teach the Atlanteans about their past. When the explorers are only allowed to stay for one day before leaving, she takes advantage of their short stay to show Milo around the city and have him translate an underwater mural that discloses the heart of their culture and the reason for her mother’s disappearance. While Milo is falling all over himself muttering about “pretty girls,” Kida is using him to get things done.

They are not, however, the things her father would like her to do. He tells her that the invaders should be killed, and that a thousand years earlier, Kida herself would have been more than up to the task. During that millenium, it seems that Kida has been forced by the evidence of her people’s impending demise to experience tremendous character growth. Nevertheless, when Milo and Kida emerge from their subaquatic study date she doesn’t hesitate to take down three of the guards awaiting their arrival, thereby demonstrating that she is every bit the warrior she used to be. She and her father have different ideas about the way Atlantis should be run; whereas she understands that their way of life is dying, he argues that it is actually preserved and that all will become clear when she takes the throne. She learns the truth before she wears the crown, however, having been chosen by the Heart of Atlantis to act as a conduit in order to save her people. Basically, she has phenomenal, cosmic powers without the itty bitty living space. After saving Atlantis from a volcanic eruption, Kida becomes queen in her own right -- the only Disney princess to become an active monarch during the course of the film.

Kida is also the only Disney princess not to kiss her love interest: she and Milo are shown embracing once, holding hands once, and then rebuilding Atlantis together. The most outright romantic implication we get is that Milo marries Kida and becomes prince consort, having donned Atlantean clothing and tattoos. It’s downright refreshing.

While Kida is an excellent character in her own right, what makes the criminally underrated Atlantis: The Lost Empire stand out from the crowd is the sheer number of female characters. Not only are there women shown manning the controls of the submarine, there are four women in the principal cast. Joining Kida are three of the explorers, Mrs. Packard, Helga Sinclair, and Audrey Ramirez. Mrs. Packard is the radio operator, a woman who remains so cool in the face of danger that she offers advice on her friend’s marriage while a monstrous machine attacks the submarine in which she is travelling. Helga is introduced as a straight-up femme fatale, but is soon revealed to be the mission’s second in command. After she is betrayed by Rourke -- who, in another wonderful subversion of the formula, she is not dating -- she plays an integral role in saving Atlantis by shooting down Rourke’s escape balloon.

One of the film’s major achievements is its subtle reimagining of the hero’s best friend. Audrey fills the position of the protagonist’s closest friend, a role usually reserved for a white or black man, here played by a Puerto Rican woman. Despite being only a teenager, Audrey is the chief mechanic on the mission. When Milo asks how that came about, the following dialogue occurs: “I took this job when my dad retired. But, the funny thing was, he always wanted sons, right? One to run his machine shop, another to be middleweight boxing champion. But he got my sister and me, instead.” “So, what... what happened to your sister?” “She’s 24 and 0, with a shot at the title next month.” The real value of this exchange lies in the way it is delivered: as if it is no big deal. When the crew members turn their backs on him, she is the first to step forward to support him, despite the fact that a change of allegiance almost certainly means that she will never return to the surface in order to open the second garage that her pay was supposed to fund. This film is full of women being awesome in ways that the film doesn’t need to draw attention to, because it just expects it of them.

(Bonus points for not female but still awesome Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet, a biracial man (Native and African American) who is proud of his cultural heritage and wickedly quick with a bone saw. Extra points for Vinny Santorini, whose past as a flower arranger is in no way disparaged by the film, but is rather upheld as an admirable future plan should his taste for demolition run its course.)

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Lilo

We are inundated with films about the profound connection between male children and their legendary or science fiction derived creatures: a boy and his dragon (How to Train Your Dragon), a boy and his robot (The Iron Giant), and a boy and his alien (E.T.), to name a few. Little girls find this kind of connection almost exclusively in girl and her horse movies, which offer significantly fewer opportunities for the protagonist’s story to have national, global, and even intergalactic significance. Lilo & Stitch represents a departure from this model.

When we first meet her, Lilo is a brilliant yet profoundly troubled kid. She runs late to dance class because she was making an offering to Pudge, a fish that she claims controls the weather. When she arrives at dance class Lilo jumps seamlessly into the routine being performed, only to have the rest of the girls slip on the water she tracked in. After explaining the reason for her lateness and being mocked by Myrtle, one of her “friends,” Lilo fights (and bites) Myrtle. Their dance instructor breaks the fight up, and Lilo is immediately remorseful and apologetic. It seems that while she’s trying to be good, she can’t quite keep on track. Still, Lilo is treated as a very wise character: she is aware of the problems with her relationship with her sister (“We’re a broken family, aren’t we?”) and is doing her darnedest to try and make things right. When we find out that her parents died in a car accident caused by bad weather, the importance of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich offerings to Pudge the Meteorologic Fish takes on much more gravity. Presumably, the offerings she makes are to stop Pudge from causing more harm to her broken family.

With Lilo’s wisdom comes eccentricity. She makes voodoo dolls of her “friends” and shakes them in a pickle jar. When she crafted her ragdoll Scrump and accidentally made her head too big, Lilo decided that it was because Scrump had bug eggs laid in her head. When she meets Cobra Bubbles, her first question for him is if he’s ever killed anyone. She is a massive Elvis Presley fangirl. Later, when Stitch is trashing Lilo’s room, she clutches some of her finger paintings and proclaims that they were from her “blue period.” Her eccentricity also manifests itself as an incredible gift for finding the beauty in odd things. She cultivates a collection of photos of obese beachgoers, and when Nani examines them Lilo sighs, “Aren’t they beautiful?” Indeed, it’s this same gift that actually leads to her picking out Stitch at the animal shelter, even though no one is entirely sure what animal he is. When the rescue lady explains that Stitch had been hit by a truck and presumed dead, Lilo’s first reaction is to proclaim “I like him!” Talk about rose-coloured glasses.

Stitch is actually the greatest proof of Lilo’s strong character. She manages not only to tame a purely destructive force, but to make him a member of her family. Unlike earlier films, true love does not even factor into the equation, unless you count true familial love. It is reductive to make every film starring a female character focus around the family unit, but Lilo’s story, while certainly revolving around the domestic world, also revolves around whole other freaking worlds. That is something remarkable: that this little girl can do what the entire Galactic Federation cannot, and that she is important on such an epic scale.

Also, there is a chairwoman. It’s the little things.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Conclusion

Despite the lower box office take, we would argue that this period produced some of Disney’s most daring and creative films as well as some of its most fascinating female characters. From the acerbic Meg, to the queenly Kida, to the bizarre Lilo, as well as all the women with whom they share the screen, this set of characters represents a welcome departure from the tried and true Disney Princess formula. Ironically, this change occurred just as the princess brand was being invented.

We now somewhat begrudgingly return you to your regular Princess-centric programming.