When the bitches are in charge

Posted on Jul 22, 2012 in Culture, On Writing | 2 comments

This photo belongs to JeraSue and is used in accordance with the Creative Commons license

Reposted from JC Andrifeski‘s blog!

Last week my friend JC Andrijeski of this here blog posted about “Strong” Female Characters… and Why So Many of Them Bug Me on my blog. What she had to say was important and interesting and made me think. As I was smiling and laughing reading her post I couldn’t help but think to myself: But these are all protagonists. What about the antagonists?

Female bad guys are few and far between, and on the rare occasion we get one there’s always an “out” for them. They are almost always insane, driven made with love or jealousy, or possessed. Rarely do we get a bonified, for the fun of it, bad guy with tits.

Even those identified as truly evil are subject to apology. The Wicked Witch of the West, the iconic villain in a dress has been rewritten by Gregory Maguire in Wicked as a misunderstood outsider who just wants to be loved. She was also redone in The Tin Man on Scifi as Azkadellia, the possessed sister of Dorothy. Yes, the Wicked Witch wasn’t to blame, instead we should feel sorry for her. She’s just a victim.

On the rare occasion you get a great unapologetic female antagonist with teeth, inevitably her power always comes down to sex. Take Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Her character Catherine Tramell takes absolute glee in her terrorism of Michael Douglas. She is cold, confident and deadly. But what would she be without her sexuality?

Women in power use every tool given to that. And with the exception of Margaret Thatcher I think they’ve all used their sexuality liberally. Traditionally, we have been the subjugated, the oppressed, so I have no problem using whatever means necessity to get ahead. But in literature and media it would be nice to see this not be the main focus of the character’s ability. Once again we are watered down to being either the virgin or the whore. We are Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene. There is no room for the gray area in between.

What I wouldn’t give to see a movie where a woman is portrayed the way male antagonists are, as either greedy or just insane! Even Elle in Kill Bill was a woman with a broken heart. That’s all we are though right? Whiny middle school girls who get our feelings hurt and lash out. And it always comes back to the men.

Instead, I’d like to see someone portray Madame Mao as the truly evil villain and King Whisperer she was. I’d like to see Cleopatra depicted as a murderer and tyrant. If you look at history we can’t prove that they weren’t. Oscar Wilde said “The one duty we have to history is to rewrite it.” So what makes Elizabeth Taylor‘s seductress any more authentic?

This was one of the inspirations when writing my novel Shadow on the Wall. One of the antagonists in Shadow is Darya, a woman of high stature held prisoner by her city’s strict interpretation of gender roles in the Qu’ran. Darya’s situation is neither unique nor usual. She is smart and passionate and I hope very relateable. In fact, writing her was more fun than I could have hoped. I could deeply empathize with her anger and even see how when pushed to far her situation could crack one’s sanity.

So how many real bitches have there been in history? How many of them have had their story and their passions either excused or sanitized so that we can continue to regard women as wife and mother on one extreme or slut on the other with no room for overlap? I can think of more than a few, how about you?