Miscellaneous Mondays: Gender-Reversed Fairy Tales and Classics

Yudi Chen

This post is going to be very short, because, while a picture is usually worth a thousand words, these ones could be entire novels.

Gender-reversed versions of iconic fairy tales? Yes, please. I have waited my whole life for this version of Beauty and the Beast.

Big Damn Hero

We all have that show. You know the one: the show you watch for the first time and proclaim its brilliance throughout the land, secure in the knowledge that you’ll love it forever. Then you watch it again a couple of years later and notice some flaws, but nostalgia prevents you from questioning your love. After all, nothing and nobody is perfect. Finally, two or three years on, you brush off the cobwebs on the DVD case and pop it into the player, only to be confronted with a harsh reality: far from being perfect, your one true show is actually kind of a mess. The honeymoon is over.

I don’t want to hyperextend this metaphor into tales of the show’s devoted spouses, who still have a spark in their eye after eleven years of marriage to a series that could only ever provide them with fourteen episodes and a movie, or bitter exes who gather on the Internet to commiserate about heroic slut-shaming and unnecessary deaths in the name of creating serious art. What I want to do is begin what promises to be a lengthy foray (comprised of several expeditions -- let’s be real here, we’re not doing them all in one go) into the work of Joss Whedon, the acclaimed writer renowned for his strong female characters.

To that end, let’s delve into the universe of Firefly. The show, which aired in 2002, tells the story of a space cowboy, Malcolm Reynolds, and his crew of smugglers, who travel the galaxy doing mostly illegal jobs under the nose of the all-powerful Alliance. The first member of the crew and second in command is Zoe Washburne, a woman who fought alongside Mal six years earlier in the war against the Alliance.

According to her husband, Zoe is a “warrior woman,” a gifted military tactician who can take out soldiers with complete stealth and lead a successful attack on a space station with a force of eight. She is shown on several occasions to put herself in the line of danger to save someone; the most impressive instance occurring in “Out of Gas,” where she literally jumps in front of a fireball to save Kaylee. She is stoic, self-assured, and courageous, and she manages to stay calm and cool even in the most emotionally trying circumstances. She is, as she states in an observation about both herself and Mal, a “big damn hero.”

While Zoe is pretty clearly the “strongest” female character on the show, it’s difficult to deny that her life revolves around two men. The first, Mal, is her former superior officer whom she still calls “sir.” Theirs is the bond of soldiers, strengthened by the shared experience of horrific circumstances. In many ways, Zoe serves as Mal’s opposite; his chattiness contrasts with her reservation, and his recklessness is the counterpoint to her caution. She often becomes the voice of reason, telling him when the situation is too dangerous. Because of her well-established bravery and competence, these warnings never come across as cowardly; instead, the fact that we implicitly trust Zoe’s judgment means that we know things are about to get ugly. In their comedy duo, she’s the straight man who sets up many of Mal’s best lines.

She is also, as has been mentioned in many other discussions of the show, a Black woman who fought for an army coded as the American Civil War South who calls her white captain “sir” years after leaving the army. While most of her character seems carefully constructed to subvert tropes, I can’t help but think that that little issue slipped through unnoticed.

One such subversion lies in her happy marriage. In many stories, a woman who possesses as many stereotypically masculine traits as Zoe would have to relinquish them when she entered into a heterosexual union. It’s fine for a man to be attracted to a warrior woman, but when they settle down, the subtext is often that she had better settle down as well. That’s not the case in Firefly, where Zoe goes out on missions while Wash stays with the ship.

They are shown at all times to be completely in love. We see that they have an active sex life and a sincere desire for each other, subverting the television stereotype of the sexless marriage. Their arguments generally revolve around the hectic lives they lead, as Wash struggles to secure some one-on-one time with Zoe off-ship. At times, they struggle with communication, at least in part because the one person with whom Zoe is not always honest is Wash. When he proposes a plan to cut out the middlemen in some of their dealings, she hides behind Mal’s disapproval of the plan to avoid having to tell her husband that she agrees that it’s a bad idea. She wants to spare his feelings, but he accuses her of not having her own opinions.

Zoe and Wash’s conflict comes to a head in “War Stories,” in which a jealous Wash takes Zoe’s place on a mission only for both him and Mal to get abducted by a vengeful ex-client. Much of the episode revolves around Wash’s perception of Zoe and Mal’s relationship; he sees Mal as the second husband to whom Zoe vowed her obedience. Mal assures him that Zoe disobeys him quite regularly, most egregiously by marrying him. Soon Mal is playing off of Wash’s jealousy to keep him alive, feeding his fury to help him weather horrible torture. When Zoe arrives with an insufficient ransom, she doesn’t even have to think about which man she will save, choosing Wash before the evil Niska has even finished speaking.

Although there are some dubious aspects of this set-up -- the most obvious being the fact that most of the conflict between Wash and Zoe is actually worked out between Wash and Mal -- there is a fascinating point being made in the conversation between two men about an absent woman. It would be easy to reduce Zoe to an object at this moment, but that’s not what happens. Instead, Wash turns to his wife as a source of strength, framing his own survival as a game of “What Would Zoe Do?” Meanwhile, we see Zoe deducing who has the men and working out a plan to get them back. Although it is ultimately Wash who decides to return for Mal, Zoe leads the assault. The episode ends with a confirmation of the platonic status of Zoe and Mal’s relationship.

I actually consider Zoe and Wash’s marriage to be one of the best parts of Firefly and Serenity. They have realistic issues, but they resolve them and move on. Those issues that remain, such as their disagreement over when they should have a child, are addressed as they arise, but not dramatically blown out of proportion. They are both truly supportive of each other, and it’s clear that their love is partially based on an admiration for their partner’s abilities. While Zoe is hyper-competent and Wash is a bit goofy, they never fall into the stereotypical roles of the sitcom couple. They do, however, fall victim to one of Joss Whedon’s favourite tropes.

I am, of course, referring to character death. In the follow-up movie to Firefly, the crew of the eponymous good ship Serenity must find their way to the home of Mr. Universe, a man whose computer equipment is capable of sending information across the galaxy. Wash does the best flying of his life, landing the ship with minimal damage and no casualties... or so it seems, before Wash is impaled on a Reaver harpoon. His death causes Zoe to descend for the first time into a frantic, emotional panic. However, by the next scene, she has regained her usual stoic demeanour, responding to Kaylee asking about Wash’s whereabouts with “He ain’t comin’.” She has shifted her focus away from her grief to the task at hand. Her determination is largely the result of her giving up all hope; she is certain that they’re making their last stand, so she commits to completing one final mission.

When they manage to make it out alive, the crew holds a funeral for Mr. Universe and their lost crew members. The last time we see Zoe, she is repairing Serenity, symbolically looking forward to the next mission.

I’d like to conclude this post with something of a departure from our typical analyses by positing a “what if” scenario. Basically, what if Mal weren’t the main character? Or, more pointedly, what if, in creating a show about Western adventures in space, Joss Whedon and Tim Minear had passed over the obvious white, male lead for a Black, female one? Both Mal and Zoe fought as Independents in the Battle of Serenity Valley. Wouldn’t it have been interesting to see why Zoe joined up, especially given the Civil War symbolism? Wouldn’t it have been fascinating to see a woman of colour fighting against the oppressive, largely white hegemony? Wouldn’t it at least have made sense, considering the obvious Asian influence on the Firefly universe, to make the protagonist Chinese, if it was too difficult in 2002 to conceive of a Black woman as a damn hero big enough to warrant top billing?

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Miscellaneous Mondays: ... For Girls!

It’s that time of year again: April Fool’s Day, a day dedicated to practical jokes and pranks. To commemorate the occasion, we here at SFC are going to talk about a trend that, well, we wish was a joke: taking what was once a gender neutral toy and making it “for girls!” We’ve talked about gender-segregated marketing before. It’s by no means a new trend in toy production and advertising, but it seems that in the past year there’s been a rise in targeted spin-offs of toys that were once considered largely gender neutral.

Our first case in point is Lego’s new line, Lego Friends, a renewed attempt by the company to create a line of toys marketed exclusively to girls. Like many girls’ toys before them, the new Lego Friends sets have been injected with pink and purple, and feature stereotypically “girly” environments such as a beauty salon, a bakery, and a pool (a saving grace and advancement on earlier gendered offerings is that there’s also karate class, soccer practice, and inventor’s workshop sets. They’re still pink, though). And it seems Lego is profiting enormously from this “pinkification": Lego’s overall sales rose 25% last year, and sales of Lego Friends sets were three times higher than originally expected.

With Lego Friends being met with such financial success, it’s hardly a surprise that Kinder Surprise has also jumped onto the “for girls!” bandwagon. Kinder, which once packaged refreshingly gender-neutral puzzles, Smurf figurines, and put-together toys in a chocolaty shell, has decided that they too need to cash in by dividing their offerings. Last summer, the company started rolling out Kinder Surprise eggs wrapped in pink packaging, containing Barbie and Winx Club figurines. A split from the original line (which has tellingly not been labelled "for boys!" even if that is now implied), the girls' line is everything you'd expect from the kind of marketing team that thinks that girls couldn't possibly enjoy building something that isn't wearing a dress. There’s no word yet on how successful this new line is, but we suspect that, like Lego Friends, they’ll sell like delicious, stereotypical hotcakes.

The reason we wish that the development and success of these new ultra-pink toys was a joke? As Pinkstinks puts it, “girls’ products overwhelmingly focus on being pretty, passive and obsessed with shopping, fashion and makeup - this promotes a dangerously narrow definition of what it means to be a girl.” There are a multitude of ways to be a girl; traditionally feminine and masculine values are not mutually exclusive. A girl can be a race car driver if she wants, just as a boy can be a stylist, and vice versa. Children are often told that they can be anything they wish, but when toys limit a child's imaginative play to a few standard scenarios, is it any wonder that these wishes are limited accordingly?

We just wish that Lego and Kinder, ostensibly two of the more imaginative toy creators in the business, would have thought of that before gendering their once universal toys.

Juno

I’ve had this post open for two days now, staring at a flashing cursor on a blank page. This seems strange, because when I first saw the request for an analysis of Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman’s Oscar-winning film, I immediately wanted to get cracking. And then I re-watched the film.

It’s not that this film is poorly made or unenjoyable; quite the contrary. The problem is one of interpretation, and that process, as applied to the story of a pregnant teenage girl, has only become thornier with the recent legislative attacks on women’s reproductive agency. Both sides of the debate could easily claim victories in Juno’s success. The pro-life contingent can point to the fact that Juno decides to carry her pregnancy to term, explicitly turning down the more convenient solution of abortion, while the pro-choice side can refer to the numerous indications throughout the film that everything about this pregnancy, from having unprotected sex to choosing to give her child away to an adoptive family, is solely Juno’s choice. Those seeking an apolitical reading might consider it the story of one young woman’s individual experience with pregnancy. Essentially, what we’re facing is the need to discuss both Juno the character and Juno the film.

We begin with the former. When we first meet Juno MacGuff, she is guzzling Sunny D and trading verbal barbs with a particularly articulate convenience store clerk. Juno is something of a word wizard, and much of her characterization comes through her dialogical stylings; she is intelligent, witty, and amply endowed with a quirky, sometimes poetic sensibility. This speaking style strikes some who watch the film as overtly false; a number of people in one of my screenwriting classes blamed their inability to connect to Juno as a character on her seemingly artificial speech. While I concede that it can be frustrating, I would argue that Juno’s verbal self-expression is supposed to be a bit alienating. Take, for example, the conversation in which she tells Paulie Bleeker that she’s pregnant with his child. She explains that she’s planning to have an abortion: “I was thinking I’d just nip it in the bud before it gets worse, because they were talking about in health class how pregnancy, it can often lead to... an infant.” She sounds detached, but we can see that she isn’t. If you look past the wall of false bravado and carefully constructed carelessness, you see a terrified girl trying to make the best of a bad situation.

We’ve spoken at length about titles and what it means when women are excluded from them. In this case, the fact that the title is the female protagonist’s name speaks volumes about her importance. This is truly Juno’s story, and that is made clear in several ways. The first is both the most obvious and the most important: the world of the film revolves around Juno. She is, as she observes at one point, a planet, and the other characters are moons in orbit. This may not seem like a big deal, but there is something to be said for a film in which the female lead gets the screentime, the narrative focus, and the witty commentary. It tells us that her story matters.

It also tells us that we should pay attention to her as something more than a teen pregnancy statistic. Juno is fiercely unique and, at first glance, this comes across as something like the super special snowflake aspect of the traditional Mary Sue. In an early scene, the camera lingers on the eccentric decor of Juno’s room, as if to confirm that she really is just as quirky as we think. A little later, she waxes philosophical about the desire of teenage boys for girls like her: “freaky girls: girls with horn-rimmed glasses and vegan footwear and goth make-up, girls who, like, play the cello and read McSweeney’s and want to be children’s librarians when they grow up.” She even goes so far as to contrast herself with the “perfect cheerleader” type.

At the same time, Juno seems to be a subversion of this very trope. She genuinely loves and appreciates the eclectic, speaking intelligently about classic rock and taking a keen interest in both truly terrible zombie films and a manga about a pregnant superhero. She doesn’t scorn the popular cheerleader types; in fact, her best friend, Leah, is one of their number, and she clearly has a great relationship with her. Finally, during her description of freaky girls, we see a girl on a black background, arranged like a paper doll. The transformation of this doll-girl into a “freaky girl” occurs as though some unseen person were dressing her in an assortment of tabbed outfits. It suggests that Juno recognizes the performative nature of the public personas that we project in high school, as well as their inherent superficiality. Perhaps this is why she seems so set on not caring what other people think.

What I find fascinating about Juno is the way in which she is allowed to be flawed. She’s the kind of character who recounts tales of a girl making drug-addled claims of krakenhood, and it turns out that she was the aspiring sea monster in question. When she tells her parents about her pregnancy, they legitimately consider expulsion, vehicular assault, and legal trouble more likely topics for a Juno-focused family meeting. Despite her obvious intelligence, she doesn’t put any effort into her schoolwork, copying from Bleeker and wryly observing that her contribution to their science partnership is “charisma.” She has no sense of proper etiquette, and she doesn’t respect the boundaries that separate her life from the lives of the couple to whom she is planning to give her child. The catalyst of the film is her decision to have unprotected sex and, while several characters point out just how foolish this decision was, they still make a point of helping her with the consequences.

 Juno herself finds something positive in a difficult situation. Having been abandoned by her own mother, who left to start a new family and whose only acknowledgement of her first-born is the gift of a cactus every Valentine’s Day, Juno seeks a secure, loving home for her baby. When Mark tells her that he is planning to leave Vanessa, she reveals her hopes for her child: “I want things to be perfect. I don’t want them to be shitty and broken like everyone else’s family.” Part of her desire for a perfect life for the baby seems to come from her need to live through him vicariously. She gets to talk rock music and zombies with Mark for a few months, but her kid would get that for a lifetime. Even her decision to give the baby to Vanessa could be seen as a way to give her child the mother she didn’t have and couldn’t be. Despite her apparent cynicism, Juno is idealistic.

Her idealism extends into the realm of romance. Over the course of the film, she comes to realize that she is in love with Bleeker, but she is also confronted with the harsh reality that love rarely conquers all. When she asks her father to reassure her, he offers the following advice: “Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you: the right person’s still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That’s the kind of person that’s worth staying with.” It’s a solid message, and it leads to a happy ending.

It’s this happy ending that brings us back to Juno the film and the question of its political message. On the pro-choice side, we have the undeniable fact of Juno’s agency. She chooses to have sex; she chooses to get an abortion, then chooses not to; she chooses to find an adoptive family for her baby, and she chooses to give him to Vanessa even after the fantasy life she imagined for him falls apart. When Juno tells Paulie that she’s pregnant and tells him she’s planning to abort, he is supportive of her choice and tells her to “do whatever you think you should do.” He understands that, ultimately, it is her decision. Further supporting a reading of the film as pro-choice is the sheer number of casual references to abortion. It’s not stigmatized in the least, and both Juno’s stepmother and her best friend suggest it as an option. Leah even mentions that she called a clinic for one of their classmates the year before, treating it as a normal medical procedure. Then, of course, there’s the ridicule heaped upon the pro-life movement in the form of Su-Chin and the infamous “All babies want to get borned” protest outside the clinic.

On the other hand, the clinic itself is hardly a rousing endorsement for the cause. The receptionist is blasé about bomb threats, dismissing the very real incidents of anti-abortion violence. She urges Juno to take a flavoured condom because it “makes [her boyfriend’s] junk smell like pie.” Instead of merely reminding Juno to fill out her information thoroughly, she tells her to give all the “hairy details” about “every score and every sore.” In her own way, she’s as ridiculous as Su-Chin. The more obvious argument in favour of the pro-life side is the happy ending that results from Juno’s decision to give birth. At the end of the film, Juno and Bleeker are blissfully happy together, Vanessa has exactly what she wanted, and Juno’s stepmother has the dogs she adores (because Juno magically overcame her allergy, I guess). Everyone’s lives have improved, and Juno’s plan to consider the pregnancy a nine-month blip in her life has apparently been successful. I don’t want to claim that this could never happen, but it does seem awfully convenient.

Honestly, I’m inclined to believe that Juno is intended to be an apolitical film, and I understand that a film that takes its structure from the length of a full-term pregnancy would be pretty short if said pregnancy was terminated in the first couple of months. However, in a media climate where just about every woman chooses to carry the fetus to term (see recent, ridiculous examples in American Horror Story and The Walking Dead), I don’t think it’s too much to ask for one show to do more than pay lip service to the idea of abortion. You can try to normalize it through repeated references to its availability, but if no character ever takes advantage of it, even in cases when it’s the only sensible option, it will remain stigmatized. While I’m happy that the Junos exist, I could do with a few more Maudes.

Verdict: Actual strong female character