Miscellaneous Mondays: Strong Women

I’m a fan of superhero comics, so, although we spend most of our time talking about strength of character, I have a special place in my heart for women who display great physical strength. That’s one of the reasons why my collectible Wonder Woman figurine shares a shelf with my Virginia Woolf plushie.

It’s also the reason for the focus of this post. Superhero comics are well-known for their portrayal of impossible women’s bodies. These women often have the kind of statuesque physiques that could only exist on an actual statue, with torsos so narrow it seems as if they’ve had some vital organs removed. As if these women weren’t already in danger of snapping at the waist, they all seem to possess the most common superpower. Perhaps the (usually male) artists are operating under the assumption that women can relocate their internal organs to protrude from their chests.

The most obvious example of this phenomenon is Power Girl, a superhero so well-endowed that her insignia is a boob window. There is a story, circulated through the comics-reading community and addressed by blogger Ragnell, that the character’s impressive cup size is the fault of Wally Wood, the artist who drew the character when she was first created. Wood supposedly decided to see if the editors were paying attention to his work by increasing Power Girl’s bust size every issue. Unfortunately, it took several issues for anyone to notice, so she’s been stuck with gravity-defying, back-breaking breasts ever since.

While the unrealistic breast size of these characters is certainly indicative of their over-sexualization, I would argue that there’s another aspect to this decision. In order to perform acts of tremendous physical strength, female superheroes need to have a well-defined musculature. However, because physical strength is so thoroughly associated with masculinity, the artists feel that they need to over-enhance the character’s feminine appearance. What’s the best way to do this? Long, flowing, easily-pulled-in-hand-to-hand-combat hair and fabric-straining breasts.

So it was with delight that I found this review of Venus with Biceps: A Pictorial History of Muscular Women by David L. Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky. Although I haven’t yet purchased a copy for myself, I’m more than willing to get the word out about what looks to be a very interesting work, that not only discusses issues of gender identity, but also collects a number of images of unrepentantly strong women.

Perhaps even better than knowing that this book exists, however, is seeing similar images make their way back into popular culture. MAC has recently launched a new cosmetics line called “Strength,” and its advertising is a thing of beauty. Not only is the face of the line a bodybuilder, Jelena Abbou, but the tagline of the campaign is the greatest I’ve read outside of that amazing 1980s Lego ad: “Flex your femininity with a colour collection that’s fearless, elegant and strong. Strike a powerful pose, stand out, redefine the notion of beauty -- and do it with strength too irresistible to ignore.” That’s advertising even Wonder Woman would love.

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

Miscellaneous Mondays: The Quest for a Better Hero's Journey

This week’s Miscellaneous Mondays post features a talk given by communications expert Colin Stokes about the profound influence that the filmic hero’s journey exercises on the audience. In this video, he discusses the limitations inherent in this trope and advocates for a paradigm shift from a hero’s journey, focused on an individual (usually a man) who either defeats other people or claims them as prizes, to a heroes’ journey, focused on a team comprised of people of all genders, whose goal is to improve themselves and those around them.



Now for a bit of a teaser. Whether you have been basing your viewing habits on the Bechdel test for years or had never heard of it before watching this video, you might be interested to know that the television show that we’ll be talking about in our next series of posts passes the test two times in the first three minutes.

She Blinded Me With Science

In our survey of the subversive qualities of the ladies of Adventure Time, it’s only right that we end with Princess Bubblegum. For the better part of three seasons, Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum (hereafter Bubblegum, Bonnibel, Peebles, or just PB) occupies the role traditionally reserved for the princess prize, the woman who will be given to the hero as just deserts for his impressive deeds. Except, of course, that that’s not even remotely what happens.

Just as Marceline operates within and against the conception of vampires derived from literary and folkloric sources, the character of Bonnibel is informed by a long tradition of fairy tale princesses. Her skin, hair, and wardrobe are all overwhelmingly pink. She has a tendency to speak in a formal register, stopping just short of speaking with the royal “we.” She serves as an almost preternaturally all-knowing guide to our hero, and it is her job both to send him off on quests and to ensure that he learns the proper lesson from his adventures. She even bids him farewell by waving a handkerchief.

The handkerchief incident is an excellent indicator as to the show’s approach to Bubblegum’s princess status; when seeing Finn off, she actually stops herself mid-sentence, says, “Wait a minute,” and produces the cloth in order to get the look right. If a princess is sending her hero off, she has to cut a suitably dramatic figure. The same kind of transparency exists in her speech patterns. While she clearly strives to stay in royal character, she also regularly slips into informal diction and slang, mixing declarations that she “will be back on the morrow” (a phrase which, in context, is itself a play on assumptions about formal language) with words like “y’all” and “aight.” Even the lessons she imparts are delivered in unexpected ways. When Finn and Jake disregard signs telling them not to enter a dungeon -- signs that Bubblegum had them put up -- she tries to make them see that the lesson was to obey her orders. The boys offer a different lesson and, when Bubblegum finds it lacking, Finn amends it: “I learned that you are a very... intelligent princess?” Her response? “You’re darn right I am.” As if all this weren’t enough to let us know that we’re dealing with a different kind of princess, the swan she rides can shoot lasers. Because of the show’s post-apocalyptic setting, it almost seems as if Bubblegum has tried to meld her reality with our storytelling tropes, revealing the performativity of princessery in the process.

Further hammering this point home are Bonnibel’s other pursuits. She is a polyglot, speaking German and English as well as understanding Korean. Like the sugar-based lovechild of Pinkie Pie and Marie Curie, she spends her time either attending bizarre events (our particular favourite is the Whistling Choir Death Match Championship) or doing Science (the capital “S” is always implied). We’re most interested in the latter interest, because science has typically been considered masculine territory.

In Adventure Time, however, the first episode opens with Bubblegum conducting an essentially impossible scientific experiment while Finn looks on, fascinated and uncomprehending. It’s a daring move, because the first time we meet Bubblegum, she messes up. In another show, this might set the standard for her character: she tries to perform experiments beyond her ability and Finn saves the day by fighting the monsters that result. Instead, she has him babysit her subjects while she fixes the situation herself. In addition, the problem that she’s trying to solve is death itself, and she triumphs. Accidentally raising a candy-eating zombie hoard from the dead can be overlooked when it leads to unlocking the secret of resurrection.

Adventure Time manages to strike this kind of balance in many aspects of Bubblegum’s character. She is obsessed with science, once going so far as to use a wide variety of scientific approaches and equipment to make “the most perfect sandwich that has ever existed or ever will exist within the confines of space-time.” In this instance and one other, when she stays up for eighty-three hours straight in order to make herself an immortal replacement, the show suggests that this obsession may be unhealthy. At the same time, however, the vast majority of her experiments and inventions are helpful, practical, and just downright cool, and the show actively supports her accomplishments. She also has a tendency to engage in displays of irrational anger, but these moments are tempered by the hyper-rationality that dominates the rest of her life.

Although she often has to be saved, she is clearly able to take care of herself. The best example of this occurs in the episode “Lady and Peebles,” which follows Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn as they embark on their own adventure to save Finn and Jake from the nightmarish Ricardio the Heart Guy. Not only does PB prepare for every eventuality, but when her equipment is stolen and Lady injured, she nevertheless sets forth to save her friends, all while carrying the much larger Lady on her shoulders. When she discovers that Ricardio has made himself a body and intends to marry her, she agrees, on the condition that he must beat her in hand-to-hand combat. She exploits his body’s poor design, literally ripping him limb from limb before delivering this amazing speech: “You think we’re intellectual equals? It only took me seconds to get you off your guard! And this ‘body’ you’ve designed is self-congratulatory garbage! See, I know a thing or two about building a body out of biomass, and you don’t leave your heart exposed!” When Ricardio protests that he only wanted to impress her, she simply replies, “You didn’t.” Finally, because she hadn’t quite reached a high enough level of BAMFitude, she drags Finn, Jake, Lady Rainicorn, and the Ice King back to the Candy Kingdom, where she cures them and builds the Ice King a new heart. Still, while she combines brains and brawn, she doesn’t quite fit the warrior princess mold. She doesn’t seem to enjoy fighting, using it not to replace, but to support her intellectual smackdowns.

In addition to her duties as princess of the Candy Kingdom, she is queen of the trolls. Not only does she help Jake with his haunted house trick, but she uses her knowledge that Finn wants to kiss her to engage in a little good-natured teasing. She makes a habit of exploiting her connections to a hero to get him to do menial tasks for her, like watching her princess plant or putting up signs. The pièce de résistance is her decision to make Finn and Jake believe that she’ll be decapitated if they don’t deliver tarts to an official ceremony on time, purely to ensure that they won’t eat the tarts themselves.

This attitude toward Finn may explain, at least in part, why they don’t really work as a romantic pairing. While Finn entertains the idea that the (probably several times) eighteen-year-old Bonnibel could come to love his thirteen-year-old self, she seems to understand that they are at different places in their lives. This is confirmed in “Too Young,” when the thirteen-year-old Bubblegum displays feelings for Finn that her older self dismisses as a mere childish whim. He constantly tries to impress her, but she cannot -- or does not let herself -- see his actions as legitimate romantic advances. In fact, her willingness to tease him about wanting to kiss her may stem from her inability to figure out a way to let him down gently. This is suggested by the events of “Incendium,” when Finn puts his head in Bubblegum’s lap and she cannot get away fast enough. Before she goes, she does manage to express how awkward he has made their friendship: “Finn, no. Come on, Finn, don’t be weird.” Finally, when Jake suggests that jealousy lies behind her objection to Finn’s relationship with Flame Princess, she tells him that it’s not about “some petty love triangle.”

Jake speaks here as the voice of narrative convention. In other stories, the girl who’s been resisting the boy’s advances might show interest after he’s moved on, moving him out of the so-called “Friend Zone” only after he’s already left. Adventure Time doesn’t even entertain the idea of friend-zoning, instead replacing it with an increasingly foreign concept we might call “being friends.” What makes this particularly impressive is that it shuts down the easy drama represented by the love triangle in order to show respect to the characterization of all parties involved. It’s a bold move, and as people who would prefer not to have to see another lazy love triangle storyline for about a decade, we appreciate it.

When she’s trying to explain to Finn why he shouldn’t date Flame Princess, Bonnibel makes a particularly revealing argument: “Finn, sometimes you want someone, and you want to kiss them and be with them, but you can’t, because responsibility demands sacrifice.” Regardless of your shipping preferences, this says a lot about her approach to life as a princess. In “Too Young,” she talks about the toll royal responsibility takes, stating that she would love to remain thirteen in order to enjoy the freedom of childhood; however, she ultimately decides to age back into rulership because her people need her, “and that comes first.” She is motivated primarily by a need to do right by her subjects, keeping them in ignorance when it will save their lives and planning to torture the Ice King in order to cure an epidemic. She is a monarch first and a person second.

The most interesting treatment of PB’s approach to leadership comes in the “Goliad” episode. Faced with her own mortality following her near-death at the hands of the Lich, Bubblegum decides to make a successor who can live forever. That successor turns out to be Goliad, a rather horrifying piece of Nightmare Fuel made from Bubblegum’s DNA. Because PB stayed awake for days making the unholy creature, Finn and Jake take Goliad out for her first lesson in leadership. Goliad learns the wrong lesson, claiming that enraged shouting and psychic/telekinetic manipulation are the best ways to get people to do what she wants. When it comes time for Bubblegum to correct her creation’s conception of leadership, she tries to figure it in terms of a symbiotic relationship between ruler and subjects: “Goliad, let me tell you something about leadership. You see this fat bee? She gets pollen from this flower, but she’s gentle and makes the flower happy and pollinated. They both get what they need. And that’s how a leader should be.” Goliad rejects this reality and substitutes her own.

To prevent Goliad from indulging her megalomaniacal tendencies, Bubblegum makes another candy sphinx, this time using Finn’s heroic DNA to make Stormo, a selfless creature willing to sacrifice himself to save the kingdom. Here’s where things get interesting, even though that’s technically where we leave the episode. If we are to infer that Finn’s heroic DNA made Stormo heroic, we have to wonder what Goliad’s actions say about Bonnibel herself. Is it her DNA that produces a creature willing to rule others by force? Or, considering the fact that Goliad initially sees this forceful behaviour demonstrated by Jake, is this merely a comment on the malleability of children’s minds and the necessity of giving them healthy examples to emulate? At the very least, it shows us that Bubblegum is willing to enter ethically dubious territory in equipping her ideal ruler with psychic powers.

What we appreciate about Bubblegum is precisely what we enjoy in all of the Adventure Time characters we discussed: they are successful subversions of familiar character types that demonstrate what you can create when you expand these types into nuanced, fully-formed people. The show gives the lie to the claim that children’s programming is simplistic and unsophisticated. On the contrary, Adventure Time proves that a simple concept can give its creators room to create, to expand upon ideas, situations, and characters that television shows and films intended for adult audiences leave unexplored. It is a cartoon that draws its women in fine detail, rendering them human with all the accompanying strengths and flaws inherent in the term. If enjoying some legitimately strong female characters means that we also have to adjust to a world in which the amount of candy matter present in one’s body determines one’s age and buttermilk is instrumental in summoning demons, we have to say we’re okay with it.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Edit: Sometimes when you have a deadline looming, you publish work that is less than your best. Luckily, we’re giving ourselves something of an extension to ensure that Princess Bubblegum gets the treatment she deserves.

We have had it brought to our attention by Adventuretitan that we missed a major issue in the “Lady and Peebles” episode. While we focused on Bubblegum’s ability to defend herself, we neglected to discuss what she was defending herself from. From the moment that Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn enter Ricardio’s lair through a sphincter, the episode is full of the imagery and symbolism of violated bodies. While flying through a dark chamber, Lady and Bubblegum are accosted by a multitude of groping, disembodied hands. After temporarily impairing her sight, the hands strip Bubblegum of her bag of supplies, leaving her vulnerable.

Once she and Lady enter the chamber that houses Ricardio, they are confronted with the body of the Ice King, whose chest bears a gaping wound. Next, they see the unconscious Finn and Jake, who have been poisoned by zanoits, which seem to replicate some of the effects of date rape drugs. Finally, Ricardio reveals the reason for this horrific display: “I thought I only wanted your heart, but I was wrong. I was unfair to you. I want the full package.” He has made himself a body, and the interest he takes in Bubblegum removing some of her clothing suggests that he is planning to use his new body to violate hers.

In light of this, Bubblegum’s ability to best Ricardio on a physical level can be seen not only as a display of badassery, but as an assertion of bodily autonomy. She annihilates his capacity to enact sexual violence, not just preventing a sexual assault, but incapacitating a sexual assailant. Even better is the fact that the narrative upholds her actions as very much the right thing to do.

Another important moment we wanted to discuss occurs in a situation where Bubblegum’s body has actually been compromised. In “Mortal Folly,” Finn uses the power of love (or liking someone a lot) imbued in the sweater Bubblegum made him in order to defeat the Lich. However, when he attempts to use the same sweater -- and, therefore, the same power -- to restore the possessed Bubblegum’s true self, nothing happens. As Finn observes, “Liking her didn’t work. She’s unstoppable.” For once, the power of love isn’t enough to save a woman. We may be jaded as a result of overexposure to Disney movies, where the healing properties of “true love’s kiss” are apparently limitless, but the idea that a woman can have strengths and weaknesses that have nothing to do with romantic emotion is pretty excellent. It’s sad that we even have to celebrate such a thing, but we’re willing to give kudos to any show that does it right when so many do it wrong.