Women in fantasy: the illusion of self-empowerment

Dear producers, filmmakers, screenwriters and costume designers,

In honor of this march 8th (which happens to be the International Women’s Day) I would like to ask a little change: stop inflicting on the world the tough-independent-don’t need a man-I dress way too sexy-brooding female hero stereotype. This has especially been relevant in the fantasy universes.

Characters like Xena (Warrior Princess), any female character in the Conan series, Sif (Thor), the new Maleficent or, the newcomer, Katniss Everdeen fit into this description. These are generally one-dimensional characters whose main definition is that they are female and “warriors/fighters”. They are usually dressed with way too little clothing (prompting one to wonder what good is an armor for if it barely covers your modesty) and are angry with the world and reject the male gender (a movie like Barb Wire did take this far too literally for its own good). And they are all terribly blend. They are just an idea of a female role model. They are one-dimensional and paper-thin. The problem is that the general consensus is that this is somehow empowering to women.

I do understand the female fantasy of fighting wars just like men (especially because that’s a role that has been traditionally denied to women), but do we need to do it in a tiny, tiny body armor that will show every inch of skin?

Lady Sif from the Thor movies

Xena: Warrior Princess

A character like Eowyn doesn’t need to do it. She fights, kicks ass and is NOT one-dimensional and, most important, does it with a full armor (thanks for that Peter Jackson). Brienne doesn’t need it. Arya doesn’t need it. But sadly these are just exceptions. Most of female fantasy characters are still either the princess or the sexy kick-ass of the story (and whatever the case they will have to look pretty at all times).

It seems like the idea of “girl power” has somehow been translated to: angry and sexy. So, according to the mass media (movies, literature, comics, TV shows…) if you want to be an independent-empowered woman, you have to look sexy and hate the world. And to me, this is just another way of exploitation (movies attempts to gain success by “exploiting” a current trend or a genre or any element that differs from the norm: Blaxploitation, sexploitation…). 

Apparently the image of self-empowerment in the media is still filtered through a basically male conception of “empowerment”: “yes, she’ll be a super kick-ass character. She’ll slaughter trolls in a miniskirt and stilettos!” (this is basically the thought process of 90% of the producers in the industry).

It’s so shameful that in the year 2015 most of the female characters on screen are so one-dimensional. If they are the protagonists then they never develop a personality of their own, sticking to the angry and sexy, and if they are not protagonist, then they are relegated to being the token girl for the hero.

And this is a generalized problem. It happens in all genres. A director like Christopher Nolan (whom I’ll admit is pretty darn good at directing) is still incapable of writing good female characters. Most of the times they turn out to be just a token for the perfectly well-rounded male protagonist. And so, his movies conform a very masculine universe. This is not bad in and on itself. The problem is that the industry seems dominated by this masculine universe, which gives way to a very frustrating phenomenon: if the movie protagonist is a male, then he’ll be a well-rounded character (or at least they will try) and the movie’s target will be both for men and for women. But it the protagonist is female, then she’ll be poorly written and the movie will be entirely targeted at women (yes, I’m looking at you Mamma mia).

I think that this is the core problem. Somehow, female characters never get as polished and well-rounded as male characters. I’m not sure whether this is because in an industry dominated by men most screenwriters can’t write women well or because they think that it’s not necessary.

What feminism (more like women in general) needs is for movies to give us good female characters: multi-layered, complex and well-rounded characters that are more than an illusion of self-empowerment. What’s really self-empowering is seeing female-characters treated as humans. Female characters, just as the male ones, have distinct personalities, strengths and flaws because they are humans as well.

What female characters demand is equality. Equality of treatment. The right to be as flawed and petty as male characters are allowed (for some reason women in movies are not generally pathetic the just have two set-points: either they are demons or angels)

That is what sets apart a writer like George R.R Martin; he is capable of writing female characters that are psychologically complex, interesting and human: Cersei, Brienne, Sansa…. are all very different women and all are treated as unique human beings, both results of their environment and victims of it at the same time.

Brienne of Tarth. A real female warrior

“It’s about treating men and women the same, I regard men and women as all human - yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created by the culture that we live in, whether it's the medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture.”
[….]
“All of the characters should be flawed; they should all have good and bad, because that's what I see. Yes, it’s fantasy, but the characters still need to be real.”
--George R.R Martin

Unfortunately, characters like Princess Leia, Eowyn, Cersei or Brienne walk the lonely path of the good fantasy female character (made a little less lonely by Mister Martin).

So, today, in this very special day, I ask you (producers, filmmakers, screenwriters and costume designers) to please reconsider this worrying trend in media. Stop thinking about giving us female role models and start empowering female characters the only way you can: by making real human characters.

The Lord of the rings: the role of the Everyman

The art of storytelling, whether we are talking of literature, movies or theater, is a very complex one. And, if we restrict to ourselves to what has unfairly been called “commercial” storytelling, we must agree that it bases itself on the premise that there must be a certain structure, certain formula that helps the audience to connect with the story by the means of easy recognition of said formula. That formula, in action, adventure or epic stories is generally known as the hero’s journey.

Campbell’s study of mythology that resulted on this “hero’s journey” is nothing more than a standardization of the narrative structure that lies behind every mythological story told since the beginning of time: from the story of Isis in ancient Egypt to every story in the Bible, passing through the legends of King Arthur and most of the literature that derives from it. Therefore, it’s only logical that a story that aimed to become the true Anglo-Saxon mythology would loosely follow this structure even if at the time it was written, Campbell was very far from its conception.

“The Lord of the rings” was written by J.R.R. Tolkien between 1937 and 1949 and was first published in 1954, divided into three books: “The Fellowship of the Ring”, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King”.

The most interesting aspect in regards to this is the fact that, as it was written and structured intuitively (unlike many scripts that were made after Campbell published his theory) it creates a story were different journeys are incased one inside the other. We all can agree that, as a protagonist, Frodo leads the main journey, but there is also Aragorn’s hero’s journey, and Faramir’s, and many others. This gives the story a veracity that helps create this feeling that you are reading a legend that is thousands of years old.

I’m going to try to clarify this: stories like “Star wars”, “The matrix”, “Harry Potter”, created after Campbell’s big revelation, follow almost step by step his theory. The result, although very entertaining, is also very contrived. I base this far fetched statement in one single argument: the role of the everyday man. In these stories these is far too forced and contrived, especially when compared to a story like Tolkien’s.

I started off this essay by saying that in adventure or epic stories it is needed a recognizable structure to capture the audience. But there is one thing that is even more important: the audience needs to connect with the characters and the story, and to do that he need to relate to our protagonist. Because of this, in this heroic stories, the hero tends to respond to the figure of the Everyman.

The Everyman is the narrative equivalent to the ordinary person. It’s the figure of the average, which calls to almost everyone in an audience because most of us don’t have superpowers or are incredibly brave and courageous. We are nothing but ordinary, and, therefore, we want our protagonist to be nothing but ordinary, at least at the beginning.

This is especially clear in stories like “Harry Potter”, where our main character is absolutely ordinary, it even has the most ordinary name in the Anglo-Saxon world. He has nothing special about him, except that he is a wizard. But even then, he is not the best wizard nor the bravest. He is nothing but average.

In “Star Wars” there is also something like that, but it’s not so blatant: Luke is the Everyman in the sense that he is nothing but a farmer with no special powers. But, unlike Harry, as his adventure advances he abandons the role of the ordinary man to become extraordinary, and that is maybe the reason why I prefer “Star Wars” to “Harry Potter”. But I’m going to try to stay out of such diatribes.

"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future" - The Fellowship of the ring

The thing is: I’ve made my point clear: there is the need of the figure of the Everyman for the audience to connect with our story through our protagonist.

And “The Lord of the rings”, as expected, even though it’s not as formulaic as these other stories I’ve mentioned, it does use the figure of the Everyman. 

Tolkien’s work is a huge, heavy-detailed high fantasy epic, filled with characters. But at the same time, it’s the story of a little Hobbit named Frodo Baggins. It’s a high fantasy epic, but it’s also the story of the Everyman.

In this case, the figure of Frodo helps the audience to connect with the story, for in the middle of this fantasy, there’s a character that, to a degree, it’s recognizable.

But here, unlike in other stories, the set up for the introduction of the Everyman into the adventure works much more natural.

More often than not, it is very difficult to put the Everyman into the protagonist slot because: what does the Everyman have to do with the doings of war and heroes? Some storytellers go to great lengths to put that Everyman into the coveted slot of the protagonist.   Our main character always ends up being the product of some predetermined Messianic prophecy; someone comes and tells them they were the chosen one all along (Dune, Harry Potter, Star Wars). Or sometimes, the set up is just stupid: the main lead just happens to have a mark in their skin that happens to be the map to anywhere important or something like that.

But the set up of the ring actually works very naturally for Frodo. He is the only one who can carry it to Mordor because if any of the great heroes or powerful characters, like Aragorn or Gandalf or Galadriel, are the ones to carry the ring, they can become something terrible, like Sauron or a Ringwraith. On the other hand, if it’s Frodo who takes it, in the worst case can become like Gollum. And this is precisely because he is the Everyman, he is ordinary, he doesn’t matter and has no say in the big schemes of the world. He has no power at all. So, because of the powerful and corrupting nature of the ring itself, only a non powerful and unimportant person can carry it.

And it is something as stupid as this what gives the extra point of credibility to this story. The Hobbits, as described by Tolkien, are the most similar to the average men we have in middle earth. And precisely because of it they are described as small folk who always stay out of everything. They do not take part in the comings and goings of their world. They are humble and contempt themselves with what they have. Frodo never dreams of becoming a great warrior, nor does he want any glory for himself. His wish is more human: he wants to keep the Shire green and safe, so Hobbits can continue being the way they are. He knows he is not Aragorn; brave and kingly, neither is he Legolas: bold and graceful, nor is he Gandalf: old and wise. He is Frodo Baggins of Bag End.

The key of this lies behind a line voiced by Galadriel in “The Fellowship of the ring”; even the smallest person can change the course of the future. This is clearly an idea deep engraved behind Tolkien’s trilogy. And that is exactly the reason why they couldn’t use the excuse of the Messianic prophecy to force our character into the adventure. The moment this card is played, our character stops full filing the role of the Everyman and becomes  a Messianic figure. 

That is why Harry, despite J.k Rowling’s efforts, isn’t really the representation of the Everyman. By marking him and turning him into “the one who lived” he becomes something else. He is marked as superior from the rest. As seen here, this setup doesn’t really respect the notion of the Everyman.

The case of Luke Skywalker in the Star wars trilogy is really similar. Luke is never the Everyman, not even in his days in Tatooine. He is his father’s son, and therefore he is destined to become, to a certain extend, a Jedi. Therefore, what we get is a non average character who has lived his youth as the Everyman and after a certain external element enters his life (R2-D2 and C3PO) he is forced to return to the life he was predestined to. Again, we find another “false” Everyman figure.

The main difference is that in “The Lord of the rings” Frodo is not marked nor predestined to anything. He is a simple Hobbit who lives a simple life. And when the story begins, he is thrusted into a world that is not his own, only to end up returning to his usual normal world and live for the rests of his days as the Everyman.

In the other two examples, what we find is two characters who were being forced into the Everyman slot out of a tragedy that befell on their parents and they are eventually restored to the world they were born into; in Harry’s case is the magic world, and in Luke’s case is the Jedi Order.

And so, I rest my case. The role of the Everyman is almost vital to high fantasy or big adventure stories, and it’s set up is something really complex due to its inner workings. Despite that, Tolkien’s work, does a great job at introducing it and finds a perfect excuse to make something really transcendent within the story itself.

This is Tolkien’s greatness (amongst other things), to take a world created completely out of his imagination and find the way to anchor it in our reality by constructing a really great link with the readers (or audience) through the reestablished role of the Everyman.

Welcome!!

The Last Homely House is a Blog dedicated to high fantasy and all its forms; from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, but also Star Wars and other fantasy fandoms.

I hope you, fantasy fans around the world, enjoy it.

Thanks to you all! :)