Supergirl and powerful women's happiness
Dec. 11th, 2015 04:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanSupergirl is adorable, and Melissa Benoist is knocking it out of the park. I’m hoping the writing will tighten up a bit, and also PLEASE QUEER ALEX PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE, but it brightens up my day every week and James Olsen is the hottest thing I've seen in a while. I find the casting of her parents unbearably cute, and so many relationships between women are emphasised and that gives me great joy.
But there’s one aspect which blows my mind constantly, and I don’t think it gets enough attention for how genuinely revolutionary it is.
Kara loves using her powers. She likes being a superhero, and she wants to be seen and appreciated and even loved by her city for the work she does, and her power is something she enjoys and loves and is natural to her.
That is ENORMOUSLY unusual for a female superhero.
Female superheroes so often have an origin story soaked in trauma. More than that, their power itself is often rooted in violation – whether in straight-up rape or other sexual abuse, or other forms of violation such as Black Widow’s brainwashing. And even if that’s not true, the very use of their power is often painful or isolating in itself (as opposed to ‘I am isolated by my need to keep secrets’, which I’d argue is a separate thing).
I mean, let’s take a tour for a second. Black Widow? Grew up in a hideously abusive environment which gave her her abilities. Buffy Summers? The Slayers’ power was created by an unsubtle rape metaphor, and the power itself isolates her. Jessica Jones? Most likely she got her powers via medical experimentation she didn’t and arguably couldn’t consent to. Max Guevara? Chalk up another abusive childhood of being trained as a weapon. Gamora? Power comes from horrible abusive background. Pepper Potts? Usually powerful and gets to enjoy it, but the superhero-style power comes from being tortured in a sports bra. Sara Lance? Dollhouse's Echo? Rogue? Elsa vs Anna, even.
(Laurel Lance I'm leaving out of the discussion, because at least as far as I've seen she isn't powerful enough on the superhero front. Sorry Laurel, I actually really like you and your more realistically slow attempts to become a fighter!)
Thea Queen’s an interesting one. Despite the massive amounts of trauma she's experienced, and the ooginess of getting trained by her evil bio-dad, becoming more physically powerful and using her power seems to have been very positive for her. Caveat that I haven’t seen any of the current season of Arrow and she doesn’t often have agency to drive plots, but she’s avoided the specific pattern I’m talking about here – she has a fuckton of trauma and angsty backstory, but in a general superhero sort of way rather than a “female superhero” way.
Now, I love ALL these characters and their stories, don’t get me wrong. (Some more passionately than others, but I genuinely love them all.) There’s a long literary tradition of going through the crucible and coming out stronger, and obviously traumatic backstories happen to a LOT of superheroes whatever their gender. I do think, though, there’s a difference in how those traumatic backstories play out. Male superheroes often find their origin stories in women being victimised; female superheroes often ARE the women being victimised.
(Marvel male superheroes do often suffer from issues of bodily autonomy and body-horror-type trauma, and that’s often not recognised precisely because it's so unusual for a male character. Even then – well, this is yet another issue of patterns and the need for more representation, but there are three male Avengers who have non-traumatic superpowers, and even Tony’s arguable, before you get Bruce who is definitely a “power comes from pain and physical violation” type. No female Avengers with non-traumatic superpowers.)
Despite this trend that I find sort of worrying, a lot of these stories are feminist, or at the very least not anti-feminist; I don't think any of them would be a problem if not for the pattern as compared to male heroes. I appreciate the attempt many of them explicitly make to take women who are victimised as often happens RL and show them coming back stronger and saving other people from a similar fate. Those storylines are often delightful, but as a pattern it begins to weird me out. There's an article about the victim paradox as it appears in Dollhouse which gets at these issues.
Supergirl is a MASSIVE breath of fresh air. She’s happy, and her power brings her happiness, and though she certainly has pain of her own in the loss of her family and planet, it’s completely separate from why she has superpowers and what she does with them. She also WANTS ATTENTION AND APPRECIATION AND LOVE, as humans tend to, and that is never scorned or shown as a flaw. Look for literally any article about those millenials/women (and it’s always women, apparently) who take selfies - oh, those vain self-obsessed vapid female millenials with their selfies and their assumption everyone’s interested in them and their need for social-media validation - and you’ll see how rare that is.
This is partly aesthetic tastes – I’m way more of a Flash than an Arrow girl, and I feel strongly about the value of idealism and happiness and am a very hard sell with grimdark. So the general joy of that programme makes me happy. But seriously. Superhero stories tell us SO MUCH about how we imagine power. When female power is inextricable from female pain, it doesn’t tell us anything great.
Thank God for Wonder Woman, that’s all I can say.
PS: looking for discussion here, I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong! I’d love to hear about more examples, for or against; although I’ll also note that like. When explaining “fridging” or “manpain” I often turn to Buffy's manpain over fridging Angel, because a flipped-gender example is usually more obvious – it doesn’t fade into the cultural background the way yet another man screaming over the body of a dead woman does.
But there’s one aspect which blows my mind constantly, and I don’t think it gets enough attention for how genuinely revolutionary it is.
Kara loves using her powers. She likes being a superhero, and she wants to be seen and appreciated and even loved by her city for the work she does, and her power is something she enjoys and loves and is natural to her.
That is ENORMOUSLY unusual for a female superhero.
Female superheroes so often have an origin story soaked in trauma. More than that, their power itself is often rooted in violation – whether in straight-up rape or other sexual abuse, or other forms of violation such as Black Widow’s brainwashing. And even if that’s not true, the very use of their power is often painful or isolating in itself (as opposed to ‘I am isolated by my need to keep secrets’, which I’d argue is a separate thing).
I mean, let’s take a tour for a second. Black Widow? Grew up in a hideously abusive environment which gave her her abilities. Buffy Summers? The Slayers’ power was created by an unsubtle rape metaphor, and the power itself isolates her. Jessica Jones? Most likely she got her powers via medical experimentation she didn’t and arguably couldn’t consent to. Max Guevara? Chalk up another abusive childhood of being trained as a weapon. Gamora? Power comes from horrible abusive background. Pepper Potts? Usually powerful and gets to enjoy it, but the superhero-style power comes from being tortured in a sports bra. Sara Lance? Dollhouse's Echo? Rogue? Elsa vs Anna, even.
(Laurel Lance I'm leaving out of the discussion, because at least as far as I've seen she isn't powerful enough on the superhero front. Sorry Laurel, I actually really like you and your more realistically slow attempts to become a fighter!)
Thea Queen’s an interesting one. Despite the massive amounts of trauma she's experienced, and the ooginess of getting trained by her evil bio-dad, becoming more physically powerful and using her power seems to have been very positive for her. Caveat that I haven’t seen any of the current season of Arrow and she doesn’t often have agency to drive plots, but she’s avoided the specific pattern I’m talking about here – she has a fuckton of trauma and angsty backstory, but in a general superhero sort of way rather than a “female superhero” way.
Now, I love ALL these characters and their stories, don’t get me wrong. (Some more passionately than others, but I genuinely love them all.) There’s a long literary tradition of going through the crucible and coming out stronger, and obviously traumatic backstories happen to a LOT of superheroes whatever their gender. I do think, though, there’s a difference in how those traumatic backstories play out. Male superheroes often find their origin stories in women being victimised; female superheroes often ARE the women being victimised.
(Marvel male superheroes do often suffer from issues of bodily autonomy and body-horror-type trauma, and that’s often not recognised precisely because it's so unusual for a male character. Even then – well, this is yet another issue of patterns and the need for more representation, but there are three male Avengers who have non-traumatic superpowers, and even Tony’s arguable, before you get Bruce who is definitely a “power comes from pain and physical violation” type. No female Avengers with non-traumatic superpowers.)
Despite this trend that I find sort of worrying, a lot of these stories are feminist, or at the very least not anti-feminist; I don't think any of them would be a problem if not for the pattern as compared to male heroes. I appreciate the attempt many of them explicitly make to take women who are victimised as often happens RL and show them coming back stronger and saving other people from a similar fate. Those storylines are often delightful, but as a pattern it begins to weird me out. There's an article about the victim paradox as it appears in Dollhouse which gets at these issues.
Supergirl is a MASSIVE breath of fresh air. She’s happy, and her power brings her happiness, and though she certainly has pain of her own in the loss of her family and planet, it’s completely separate from why she has superpowers and what she does with them. She also WANTS ATTENTION AND APPRECIATION AND LOVE, as humans tend to, and that is never scorned or shown as a flaw. Look for literally any article about those millenials/women (and it’s always women, apparently) who take selfies - oh, those vain self-obsessed vapid female millenials with their selfies and their assumption everyone’s interested in them and their need for social-media validation - and you’ll see how rare that is.
This is partly aesthetic tastes – I’m way more of a Flash than an Arrow girl, and I feel strongly about the value of idealism and happiness and am a very hard sell with grimdark. So the general joy of that programme makes me happy. But seriously. Superhero stories tell us SO MUCH about how we imagine power. When female power is inextricable from female pain, it doesn’t tell us anything great.
Thank God for Wonder Woman, that’s all I can say.
PS: looking for discussion here, I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong! I’d love to hear about more examples, for or against; although I’ll also note that like. When explaining “fridging” or “manpain” I often turn to Buffy's manpain over fridging Angel, because a flipped-gender example is usually more obvious – it doesn’t fade into the cultural background the way yet another man screaming over the body of a dead woman does.
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