Top 6 Ways to Undermine Your Female Hero Part 4
In which we discuss the Demonisation of powerful women in our stories
4. Demonisation
As mentioned in the Damsel In Distress chapter, oftentimes when a woman is characterised as powerful or ‘badass,’ the narrative feels compelled to undermine her by making her a victim of her own power. In in many cases these women are also villainised at the same time, and ultimately are only redeemed by dying (often at the hands of the male hero). So far, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are just about the only female heroes in film who have had no difficulty managing their immense power. Yet, Jean Grey, Scarlet Witch and Vanya Hargreeves are all fantastically powerful characters who were turned into the villains in their stories. Therefore, it seems that there is a pattern in which, when a woman granted power she is also demonized by the narrative: she either is literally the villain, or she “feels like a monster” and demonizes herself.
In those cases in which she is made the villain, she becomes a femme fatale who usually wears tight leather or revealing clothing and who slips sexual innuendo into every interaction she has with the male hero, like Catwoman or Black Widow (or who performs a most peculiar and, frankly, ridiculous gyrating dance, as was the case with Cara Delevigne’s Enchantress in 2016’s Suicide Squad). The femme fatale, by virtue of being the villain of the story, is fair game for those seeking to turn her into an object for male pleasure (or male disgust). But while the objectification of the femme fatale means that she exists for male pleasure, her demonisation (or villainisation) implies at a not-so-deep level that women with power are bad girls. Bad girls who embrace their sexuality and take what they want — who are desirable and powerful — but who ultimately are not the “good girl” that the hero must end up with. They may exist in the morally grey area (again, like Catwoman and Black Widow), they may even be the victims of their more powerful evil alter ego (Enchantress, Jean Grey, Vanya), but at the end of the day they are only evil temptresses who must be stopped at all costs.
Catwoman may have been given more dimension as a character in recent comics but the fact remains that there are few female Batman characters who are not either femme fatales (the villainesses), or good girls and abuse victims (the Batgirls). Netflix’s film Polar (2019) is a good illustration of this juxtaposition. All the women in the film fall into exactly two categories: the tough woman (the sexy and objectified femme fatales) or the innocent girl (the weak and innocent rape survivor who must be rescued by the male protagonist). What this shows is simple: that women with power and who are sexually liberated are bad, and women with no power at all are good. The way that women are portrayed in Game of Thrones should once again come to mind, as the power-hungry and ambitious Daenerys and Cersei are brutally killed, while Sansa, the victim of abuse, ultimately becomes Queen.
Now, in the cases in which the woman is not actually a villain in the story, she often practices self-demonisation; as in, “I cannot have children, I am monster,” or “he/they did this to me, and turned me into a monster.” Sound familiar? If you’ve watched Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), or The Witcher (2019), or countless other films or TV shows, then it surely will. Of course, morally conflicted heroes are nothing new. In fact, it’s probably the most boring trope at this point, essentially becoming a rite of passage for the action hero. But the key difference between male and female heroes is the source of this internal conflict: where male heroes are generally burdened by guilt over their actions or by survivor’s guilt, women often demonize themselves over trauma they themselves have suffered. And in many cases, this trauma is often gendered in that it revolves in some way around motherhood. Take Black Widow, who in Avengers: Age of Ultron was revealed to “feel like a monster” not because of the horrible things she has done in her past (she is, of course, a master assassin), but because she had been sterilized. She believes she is not worthy of calling herself a hero, not because of the murderous crimes she has committed, but because someone else took away her ability to have children. Ultimately, her death in Avengers: Endgame (2019) “redeems” her by having Natasha, the woman with no children, die in place of the man who has a family. To make matters worse, that same man, Hawkeye, had himself become a mass murderer not long before Natasha sacrifices herself for him. That the film still chooses to frame Natasha as the only one in need of redemption, despite the fact that she had long since redeemed herself by working for SHIELD, is to drive home the fact that society is still culturally incapable of accepting women who fail to conform to the patriarchy's conventional expectations of femininity and motherhood. That Natasha herself believes she deserves to be punished for this failure is an insult to female personhood and to women's continuing struggle for respect and autonomy.
Similarly, in season one of The Umbrella Academy, Allison is weighed down by guilt over having used her powers of persuasion on her daughter. In fact, her husband divorces her over it, and she struggles with that guilt so much during that season that we get the sense that she feels like she deserves it when her voice is taken from her and her powers along with it — as if her child were safe from her now. Conversely, in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017) Gamorra finds redemption for having been raised as Thanos’ best assassin by becoming a mother figure to a young Groot. Ripley from Alien (1979), played by Sigourney Weaver, also finds some form of atonement for her masculine characterisation by protecting a child, as do Sarah Connor in The Terminator (1991) and the ladies of Birds of Prey (2020). Meanwhile in Game of Thrones, Daenerys unknowingly sacrifices the life of her unborn son, which eventually leads to her taking power in the same way that the deaths of Cersei's children do for Cersei. Yet, despite their sacrifice, the show continues to imply that both women are going mad with their newfound power, as if the trauma they experienced with the deaths of their children tipped them over the edge.
This pattern seems to suggest that the narrative of these stories is equating power, a traditionally “masculine” trait, with non-femininity, and therefore the woman’s inability to be a mother. Like Black Widow, many of these women regret how powerful they’ve become because they relate that power directly to their inability to bear or raise children, and consequently see themselves as monsters simply because they have power but no ability to be a mother. The Witcher’s Yennefer is another prominent example of this, as her entire character arc revolves around her desperate attempts to restore her ability to bear children, which she sacrificed for the sake of power at the beginning of her story.
The demonisation of powerful women is one of the most toxic tropes in media, yet unfortunately one of the most inconspicuous. It lies so well hidden in almost everything we read and watch that we do not realize that when we demonize our female leaders in real life, we are replicating what we’ve learned to be the norm in our stories. We are still far from extricating the concept of power from masculinity, which is why our cultures tend to punish women so much for exhibiting interest in it. If more female heroes were licensed to be unapologetically powerful, perhaps the world would have an easier time accepting women into positions of power. And perhaps women would no longer be forced to choose between having a career or being a mother, because power would no longer be a gendered trait. It’s time for our stories to make female power a strength, not a weakness, and to accept that power and motherhood or femininity are by no means mutually exclusive. And perhaps more importantly, it is time to accept that women should be able to choose power and ambition without being demonized for it, both in fiction and in real life, and without being fatally punished for it in our storytelling.
By R. Jordan Ortiz
Next in Part 5: How are female heroes ‘Othered’ and what does that mean? Look for The Culturist next week and find out!