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| image by Sudip Dutta via sxc.hu |
Introduction
Beginning in the late 90s we saw the emergence of strong female characters in what was dubbed the “girl power” era. These characters could kick the ass of any guy and looked fabulous while doing it. They were a response to criticism from feminists about the lack of good females roles. However all characters are not created equally.
Xena: Warrior Princess came on the scene in ’95. A spin off of Hercules, it followed her and gal pal Gabriel as they traveled the world righting wrongs. While watched by both genders it had a strong following among lesbians due to the copious amounts of homoerotic subtext between Xena and Gabriel. At first the producers denied it, then embraced it, making their lesbian relationship all but cannon in later seasons.
The Buffy Effect
However it took another fantastical female to popularize and codify this meme. Enter wonder woman Buffy Summers. Josh Whedon’s eponymous vampire slayer was one part cheerleader, snarky punster, and action hero. Buffy was at its core was about coming of age and made the metaphor of high school is hell literal.
The thing that made Buffy work was the smart and funny writing coupled with the endless joy of watching 110 lb Sarah Michelle Gellar open a can of whoop ass on burly vamps who outweighed her by a hundred pounds or more. The reason this worked was the mythos around the slayer, where as Xena’s mythos was inconsistent often owing to her plot convenient back story.
Monster Magnetism
One of the running jokes of the series was that if a female was interested in Xander Harris then she turned out to be the monster of the week or otherwise supernatural. Since then this theme has popped up in other works where men are magnets for supernatural women. in Dark Angel genetically engineered super soldier Max Guevara, aka X5-452, falls for Logan Kane , super hacker extraordinaire, and uses her super blood to restore his mobility.
In Angel, several supernatural women fall for the brooding vamp, including Cordelia and Fred who become demonic later in the series. Then there’s Leeloo, the fifth element, who falls for Korben Dallas. You also have countless stories of men being seduced by sirens, sucubi and other supernatural creatures.
Battle Babes
These are female action characters who rack up higher body counts than their male counter parts. Classic examples include the Bride from Kill Bill, and Alice from the Resident Evil franchise. In each case these characters are defined by their ability to take out legions of goons single-handed. Sure it’s fun to watch, but it comes off as cartoony for the same reason it does when male characters do the same thing. Namely no one is that skilled to come away with few if any injuries from such a battle.
Conclusions
So why is this? First it could it be because male writers view women as alien creatures thus believe making them such will resonate with male viewers. The other possible explanation is this is a return to chivalrous ideals where women were put on pedestal to be worshiped from a far.
A simpler explanation is just lazy writing. rather than developing 3d female characters they opt for cartoonish super heroines. As a viewer and reader I couldn’t care less what gender the protagonist is, as long as the story is interesting and well told. My one pet peeve is tokenism, especially when that character comes off as trying too hard.