The Superhero Girlfriend
Is it bad for a woman to play a this role, or is there more to it than that?
Recently, the Guardian published a piece by film critic Ben Child on the role of women in superhero films. Focusing on the newly released Doctor Strange, Child argues women with superhero girlfriend roles are underdeveloped and do not fit into modern times. This, according to Child, is because superhero girlfriends don’t have superpowers.
I’d like to question and expand on some of Child’s points. While Child’s point that more needs to be done to bring forward women’s representations in mainstream media has merit, we also need to keep an eye on the nuances of current portrayals and how they relate to wider cultural issues.
History and Convention — What’s the Problem?
Child begins by noting the superhero girlfriend character type can be traced to the comics, “which have always imagined their (usually male) costumed titans requiring support of a (usually female) love interest in order to save the world.”
Historical context doubtless plays a role here. After all, comics fans and writers have been talking about “Women in Refrigerators” since at least the late 1990s, when writer Gail Simone coined the term. It refers to a narrative trope, or a repeated series of events in superhero stories, in which superhero girlfriends are killed, maimed, raped — or all of the above — in order to propel the (male) hero’s story and motivate his action.
The villain goes for the superhero’s girlfriend in order to “attack his heart,” as Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborn puts it in Spider-Man (2002). Thus, the superhero has no choice but to save his girlfriend, an act which moves the narrative from one point to the next.
I refer to “women-in-refrigerator” characters as representing “active passivity,” for while they remain passive objects in need of rescuing within the narrative, their integral role in propelling action not their own is fascinating. Without them, the film would fall apart.
At the risk of devaluing film adaptations just for, you know, being adaptations, Child then argues that some superhero girlfriends have been depowered or made less physically strong than their comic book counterparts. Here, he uses Morena Baccarin’s character in Deadpool (2016) to illustrate the ways in which the adaptation process has “downgraded” her superhero girlfriend character. He says
“If being superpowered is what gets you screen time and a little extra attention from the script polisher, there are plenty of comic book paramours due an upgrade.”
Superpowers, it seems, are the key to successful female empowerment in superhero films.
Thinking about these characters in terms of whether or not they have superpowers and then valuing them accordingly has its drawbacks though. Throughout the history of superheroes, there have always been non-powered civilians of all genders (well, maybe not all genders but that’s a topic for another day). Foggy Nelson seems to get by in Daredevil stories without people saying, “Where are his superpowers?” Then again, you don’t see Foggy Nelson pining after Daredevil and constantly needing saving by him.
I would argue, though, that the problem isn’t that superhero girlfriends don’t have superpowers. The problem is with the way in which these non-powered women are devalued through their positioning in the narrative (as being in need of saving).
Giving them superpowers won’t necessarily fix everything. Look at Rogue in X-Men (2000) or Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). In X-Men, Rogue, who is a superpowered mutant, is just a tool which villain Magneto wants to to use to control humans, thereby placing her in danger and need of saving. Meanwhile, Black Widow’s portrayal in Age of Ultron attracted severe criticism for the ways in which she was victimized in the film and positioned as love interest for Bruce Banner.
Superhero girlfriends don’t underwhelm because they don’t have powers. They underwhelm because they’re placed in a particular position in a narrative which relates to bigger issues about what it means to be a woman. And with more widespread awareness of feminist issues, this becomes a more overt problem than it maybe was a few decades ago.
The Amazing Gwen Stacy
Let’s talk about Gwen Stacy, perhaps the ultimate woman in the refrigerator. Gwen Stacy’s comic book story in which she is brutally thrown off a bridge by the Green Goblin only to have her neck snapped by Spider-Man’s web shooter marked the beginning of a more serious mode of comic book storytelling in the 1970s.
The story had an effect on superhero narratives which we can still feel in “dark and gritty” stories today. Her death, of course, served no purpose other than to fuel Spider-Man’s fury against the Green Goblin (on a related note, the editors were convinced the only options for Gwen were death or marriage to Peter Parker — and Petey just wasn’t ready for that yet! So death it was!).
Gwen appeared in the ill-fated Amazing Spider-Man reboot film series, which only lasted two films before they hit the reset button, played by the ever-loved Emma Stone. As insignificant as the film might seem from here, The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) is one of my favorite superhero films, and this is partly to do with its portrayal of Gwen Stacy. The film was referred to in the press as “Twilight in spandex” and “a superhero film for women” because of its central love story, but also perhaps because it brought forward the narrative of the superhero girlfriend.
In The Amazing Spider-Man, Gwen’s role forms the backbone of the narrative. In the Raimi Spider-Man films, Mary Jane’s presence and actions are a constant source of pain, woe, and irritation for Spider-Man. But in The Amazing Spider-Man, Gwen’s relationship to Peter is not detrimental to his life, but enhances it. This is most obvious in the scene in which Peter tells Gwen that he is Spider-Man. Subsequently, he is no longer burdened by the isolation of being a hero.
Although part of Gwen’s role is to help Peter by contributing her resources and scientific skills further along the narrative, this is only one aspect of the character. Gwen’s intelligence is often highlighted in the film, but it does not necessarily function in opposition to her status as superhero girlfriend. And at no point is she kidnapped by the film’s villain, the Lizard, although she is part of action scenes between him and Spider-Man.
Gwen’s ill fate in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) is probably most representative of the struggle for the portrayal of women in superhero films. A central conflict of the film regards Gwen’s choice in partaking of the action.
Choice is an interesting concept when it comes to feminist ideas. Women’s choice to do what they want with their lives and bodies is often referred to when thinking about feminism. But it’s also something that has been incorporated by the mainstream and is used with varying results.
In one scene moments before her death, Gwen screams at Peter that it should be her choice whether or not she should be involved in his heroic life. Framed by the language of choice, then, Gwen is ultimately punished for not knowing her place in the superhero narrative, as her death from the comics is repeated in the film, almost panel by panel.
Reconciling Girlfriendism with Heroism
None of this should be thought of as straightforward though. The superhero girlfriend is a complicated character because of the way in which her very presence serves the interests of the male hero. But the bigger picture here points to more general issues about women’s roles in Western society.
One of these issues, for instance, is the role of heterosexuality in women’s identity. Through the positioning of superhero girlfriend characters as both objects of heterosexual desire and things that need saving, the superhero narrative is ultimately linked to specific ideals about heterosexuality and the ways in which this links to gender roles.
Superhero girlfriends also undoubtedly fall into the reinvigorated traditionalist ideas about gender which are part and parcel of postfeminist culture. But they’re also complex in their relationship to old-timey gender representation. Their sassy, even ball-busting, personas are both modern and reach back to an age in which cinema was dominated by what Maria DiBattista refers to as “fast-talking dames.”
Back in the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, DiBattista argues, women were portrayed as sassy and quick-witted. Their verbal expressions were sharp, snappy and came at one-hundred miles per hour. These factors contributed to their representation as empowered in an age which we might associate with overt gender inequality. Both Pepper Potts and Gwen Stacy are arguably presented along these lines in their respective films, making them both contemporary and old-fashioned (indeed, in Stone’s case this might even spill over into her celebrity persona).
It’s not enough to look at these films and simply trace the history of the comics and say “well, this was better and that was worse.” We need to think about the links to wider cultural issues present in the narratives. What’s at stake? How can we make sense of this?
Part of this involves thinking about the ways in which we value some gendered characteristics over others. Is it just an inherently bad thing for a woman to play a superhero girlfriend or is there more to it than that? Is being physically strong really the key to adequate representation? How do other factors such as race and sexuality factor into this?
When Zendaya, a woman of color, was cast as Mary Jane Watson in the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming, the decision was met with backlash regarding the changed race of the traditionally white character. The fact that there was backlash speaks to the general issue of the dearth of representation of women of color in superhero films. The superhero girlfriends we’re used to are white, heterosexual, thin, and middle-class.
Interestingly, most have received “upgrades” in terms of profession and intellect — Pepper Potts is CEO of Stark Industries, Gwen is a science genius, Betty Ross is a scientist, Susan Storm is a scientist, Jane Foster is an astrophysicist. This is perhaps ironic in an age in which women and minorities are still criminally underrepresented in STEM fields.
Criticisms not withstanding, superhero girlfriends have played an important role in superhero narratives whether we like it or not. This in itself should be approached and investigated with some degree of sympathy. If a mainstream culture is really into one particular thing, we should be asking why it is into that thing and what that might mean.
Portrayals of women in superhero films undoubtedly need to go further in terms of presenting female superheroes. But the opportunity for groundbreaking representation shouldn’t end there — it is present in every aspect of the superhero narrative, including superhero girlfriends.
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