Ever seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Probably the darkest movie Disney has ever done. ("And now all Paris is burning because of you!") Also one of my favorites (Bells of Notre Dame? EPIC)
It's also a movie that has the potential to be very socially conscious. Sexism, racism, religion, deformity, class awareness--this movie touches on it all. Sadly, it fails to follow through on these issues.
Esmerelda. She's pretty cool. A little cliched, the highly sexualized spunky girl with a heart of gold. Still, she's a fun, talented, brave woman.
But did you notice that she was basically the only woman in the movie? Racking my brains for other women, I come up with 1) Quasimodo's mother, 2) that little girl in the purple dress, and 3) Laverne the gargoyle. Either way, note that she is the only adult human woman alive during the actual story.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the three other main characters are all attracted to her. Quasimodo is helplessly in love with her, Phoebus finds her exciting, and Frollo has unholy desires for her. Did anyone else notice this? It's kind of freaky.
Because, okay, here's the thing. Only having one female character is bad. Women make up half of the population and that's about what it takes to satisfy me. A scarcity of women results in situations like we have with Esmerelda the Only Woman Available, and also the beginning of the movie.
Quasimodo's mother, as she must be defined, for her character gets its importance only from her relation to a man, dies in the first four minutes of the movie. She dies a heroic death in the service of a male, and that's what makes her likable. This may be the only situation like this that has been pointed out to you, so you may think I'm coming out of nowhere on this one, but I'm starting to get pretty tired of women who we approve of because they make sacrifices for men.* (Harry Potter also made a pretty big deal out of this.) I'd like to see someone we approve of because they make a sacrifice for a woman.
You may say "But this is bullshit! Quasimodo's mother (whose name we do not know) would have done the same thing for a daughter!" Well, that's the thing. She didn't have a daughter. Quasimodo was a male. (So was Harry Potter.) This is what happens when you have almost every character be a man: women don't get a chance to interact with each other.
And interacting with other men, Esmerelda is always in a subordinate role (Clopin's assistant, the archdeacon's, um, advice-taker, the soldiers' victim) or in a sexual one. There's probably some really nasty stuff to unpack here given that she is not just a woman but a woman of color, and that the men who love/fetishize her are all white, including Quasimodo who should be a man of color but is distinctly not--but I'm not as familiar with the patterns of racial oppression. Suffice it to say that I think it adds to the creepy.
One more thing that annoyed me was the climax. Esmerelda is a fierce, competent woman and would have been at least as valuable an asset as Phoebus in fighting Frollo and his soldiers, but instead she is incapacitated. First she is tied to that whole burning stake, putting the woman in danger so that the man can find his character development. Then, she is unconscious, making it look like the woman is dead so that the man gets extra emotion for the fight. She is completely put out of commission, and robbing such a strong character of the chance to be in the final battle, except as an object of motivation for the man, is lame. This is, like, the gypsy princess here. Can she get some action?
Le sigh. Some things they did right:
1. Phoebus does not beat Esmerelda in their fight in the cathedral.
2 Laverne is just as likable as the other two gargoyles, and not defined by her sex.
3. Esmerelda ends up with Phoebus, not Quasimodo.
4. Clopin is the shit.
*Arwen is pretty much the gold standard for this phenomenon.
Showing posts with label strong isolated women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strong isolated women. Show all posts
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Harry Potter: Hermione Granger
I'll start with the one thing that everyone in the world is most likely to be familiar with*: Harry Potter. Or rather, since the thing is such a behemoth, Hermione Granger.
What's up with Hermione Granger? She's such an awesome character. She's smart, of course, and earnest, and is quick on her feet, and dedicated, and honorable and loyal and good. She can be a little insensitive, a little too serious, but who doesn't have flaws? She's just a great person, you know?
So why does the text shortchange her so?
Let's start with the fact that she's consistently described as "shrieking" "squealing" "shrill" "wailing" and other negative gendered terms historically used to put down women who won't shut up. Her dialogue when you look at it isn't really so annoying, but colored by those terms it does seem to put a damper on your interpretation of it. (Just one of the many reasons why I want to go back and replace all her "'dialogue,' character [word for said that isn't ever said, except when it's modified by an adverb]" with "'dialogue,' character said.")
I pity Hermione. She is a strong female character, but she is isolated from other strong female characters. The closest to a female friend that she has is Ginny, and that friendship doesn't really seem to occur until maybe the fifth book. Even then, she is never seen talking with Ginny (except in those annoyingly frequent "whispering with Ginny and Mrs. Weasley scenes). She only recounts the conversations that she has after the fact, filtered for Harry's and Ron's consumption. Does she really only have Harry and Ron to talk to? Especially given the portrayal of shallow Parvati, Lavender, and Pansy, and the indistinguishable Angelina, Alicia and Katie, Hermione seems like an exception to a rule of weak female characters.
I mean, wouldn't it be nice to meet her mother? A girl like Hermione, so unafraid to be smart and so uncompromising in her values, must have a heck of a strong female role model. We know Harry's parents, living and dead, quite well. We spend an inordinate amount of time at Harry's house. Why, then, have Hermione's parents been reduced to nothing? We see them only a few times, mute, in Diagon Alley, without personality. Couldn't Harry have gone to Hermione's house? Couldn't they have exchanged a few lines of dialogue? Given how important the parent/child relationship is in Harry Potter, depriving Hermione of her relationship with hers seems unfair.
A second female opinion would certainly be nice sometimes. Harry and Ron are very good-hearted, of course, but they can be just as insensitive as she ever is. It would also be nice to have her accusations of sexism be validated. In Half-Blood Prince, I was so frustrated with the whole "I can tell the Prince is a he" thing. Hermione made the perfectly reasonable point that, because Prince might be a last name, the Prince might be a woman. Harry countered with "no it can't, because I just know." This absolutely ridiculous argument was then of course validated by the text, making Hermione's accusation that Harry was being sexist seem laughable, even though it really wasn't.
Ah, poor Hermione. No family, no female friends, and a true love who thinks that she belongs to him. Really. Ron's jealous possessiveness of Hermione's sexuality, which, though a forgivable flaw of a deeply insecure boy, was still a flaw, was unevenly treated, made fun of by the text or validated by it. (Ron's jealous possessiveness of Ginny's sexuality, by the way, is not a forgivable flaw, in addition to being deeply disturbing.)
With the Yule Brawl, happily, Ron's actions were not portrayed sympathetically. ("missed the point.") The whole storyline was of course pretty unbelievable and a little unsettling. Viktor Krum, 18 year old Quidditch God, stalks 14 year old gangly Hermione who, though she is an awesome character deserving of love, Krum doesn't even know? Especially when in the seventh book it was pretty much confirmed that he was a bit shallow ("all the good-looking girls are taken" echoes of Yule Ball Ron). I don't know, it seemed pretty off too me. At least Hermione was portrayed as being allowed to do that.
But take for example the sixth book. Cormac McLaggen. At Slugworth's little party, Harry meets Hermione and notices that she looks disheveled. What's going on, he asks. "Cormac McLaggen makes Grawp look like a gentleman," she says. Given that Grawp recently tried to snatch Hermione (another scene with very disturbing sexual subtext), from which she must be protected by Harry and because of which she is reduced to shaking and whimpering with fear, you'd think Harry's response would be one of concern or at least sympathy.
No. It's "Serves you right." Excuse me? Hermione just used the word "escape" to describe getting away from this punk who apparently is more unpleasantly sexually aggressive than a giant, and Harry says "serves you right." For what? Going out on a date? I'm sorry, does she belong to Ron now? She made a petty choice, yes, but it was a choice she had a right to make and it certainly does not justify unwanted sexual aggression (the word I'm looking for here is "assault.") That the text does not pass judgment on Harry's nasty comment shows complacence with it.
And in the seventh book the subtext grows ever more upsetting. Fenrir Greyback? For God's sake, does the man want to bite her or rape her? Hell, that's not even subtext. That's Hermione being threatened with rape by this man-beast and Ron being all "no! my pretty lady!" Note that while Harry's skin crawled, he did not attempt to struggle when he heard Fenrir assaulting Hermione. That job was reserved for the man who possesses her sexuality. That whole thing with Bellatrix the She-Devil torturing Hermione the Virgin while Ron the Knight cries her name stank equally of possession. Especially given the way her recovery was portrayed, basically with Ron protecting her like aargh why.
My point is that a lot of those scenes and comments were pretty gratuitous and reveal some kind of disturbing things about Rowling's psyche. There were a thousand little mentions of Hermione's vulnerable sexuality, from the men catcalling on Tottenham Court Road, to "counted as chivalrous that he was not asking Hermione to do it for him," to Ron insisting that Hermione sleep on the cushions and all the other instances I've mentioned in this leviathan post. The one that stand out most in my mind, FWIW, is seriously Harry having to pull Hermione away from Grawp. Note that none of these examples were at all relevant to any sort of larger story or point. They were just there, and they piss me off.
Another subtle little example of this that really got to me, by the way, was when they were at Bill and Fleur's house and even though the three had just been spending like MONTHS sleeping in the same room with no mention of any problems or issues, it seemed like a big deal was made of the fact that Hermione and Luna were sharing a room, like oh better protect their chastity. Not really a big offense in the scheme of things, but really.
And finally, Hermione's life as an adult. What was up with that epilogue? I mean, I know that the epilogue was pretty much bad news in every way, but was there even one single mention of Hermione's career? What did she decide to do? Healing? Did she do something big with SPEW? No, of course not, she got married and had children. Every woman's happy ending. That bugged me enough when it happened to Fleur (she was a Triwizard champion, and now what, she spends all her time making breakfast trays) but when it happened to Hermione it was even worse.
To be fair, it happened to all of them. Seems like to Rowling a happy ending seriously consists of marriage and children. It just makes me mad because in the Harry Potter universe, when a man and a woman get married, the woman stays home and now has no life outside her husband and children. (For your consideration: Petunia, Narcissa, Molly Weasley, Fleur, Tonks. Contrast with McGonagall, Umbridge, Bellatrix and Rita Skeeter, and also notice how all of the women in the first list are sympathetic even when not really nice, whereas the second list, with the exception of McGonagall, represent the most loathable characters in the series.)
So in summary: Hermione, though a likable character, has her independence, personality and sympathy consistently undermined by negative portrayals of her as a female, isolation from other women, and gratuitous disturbing scenes involving her sexuality.
*Okay, that's actually probably the Bible. So sue me.
What's up with Hermione Granger? She's such an awesome character. She's smart, of course, and earnest, and is quick on her feet, and dedicated, and honorable and loyal and good. She can be a little insensitive, a little too serious, but who doesn't have flaws? She's just a great person, you know?
So why does the text shortchange her so?
Let's start with the fact that she's consistently described as "shrieking" "squealing" "shrill" "wailing" and other negative gendered terms historically used to put down women who won't shut up. Her dialogue when you look at it isn't really so annoying, but colored by those terms it does seem to put a damper on your interpretation of it. (Just one of the many reasons why I want to go back and replace all her "'dialogue,' character [word for said that isn't ever said, except when it's modified by an adverb]" with "'dialogue,' character said.")
I pity Hermione. She is a strong female character, but she is isolated from other strong female characters. The closest to a female friend that she has is Ginny, and that friendship doesn't really seem to occur until maybe the fifth book. Even then, she is never seen talking with Ginny (except in those annoyingly frequent "whispering with Ginny and Mrs. Weasley scenes). She only recounts the conversations that she has after the fact, filtered for Harry's and Ron's consumption. Does she really only have Harry and Ron to talk to? Especially given the portrayal of shallow Parvati, Lavender, and Pansy, and the indistinguishable Angelina, Alicia and Katie, Hermione seems like an exception to a rule of weak female characters.
I mean, wouldn't it be nice to meet her mother? A girl like Hermione, so unafraid to be smart and so uncompromising in her values, must have a heck of a strong female role model. We know Harry's parents, living and dead, quite well. We spend an inordinate amount of time at Harry's house. Why, then, have Hermione's parents been reduced to nothing? We see them only a few times, mute, in Diagon Alley, without personality. Couldn't Harry have gone to Hermione's house? Couldn't they have exchanged a few lines of dialogue? Given how important the parent/child relationship is in Harry Potter, depriving Hermione of her relationship with hers seems unfair.
A second female opinion would certainly be nice sometimes. Harry and Ron are very good-hearted, of course, but they can be just as insensitive as she ever is. It would also be nice to have her accusations of sexism be validated. In Half-Blood Prince, I was so frustrated with the whole "I can tell the Prince is a he" thing. Hermione made the perfectly reasonable point that, because Prince might be a last name, the Prince might be a woman. Harry countered with "no it can't, because I just know." This absolutely ridiculous argument was then of course validated by the text, making Hermione's accusation that Harry was being sexist seem laughable, even though it really wasn't.
Ah, poor Hermione. No family, no female friends, and a true love who thinks that she belongs to him. Really. Ron's jealous possessiveness of Hermione's sexuality, which, though a forgivable flaw of a deeply insecure boy, was still a flaw, was unevenly treated, made fun of by the text or validated by it. (Ron's jealous possessiveness of Ginny's sexuality, by the way, is not a forgivable flaw, in addition to being deeply disturbing.)
With the Yule Brawl, happily, Ron's actions were not portrayed sympathetically. ("missed the point.") The whole storyline was of course pretty unbelievable and a little unsettling. Viktor Krum, 18 year old Quidditch God, stalks 14 year old gangly Hermione who, though she is an awesome character deserving of love, Krum doesn't even know? Especially when in the seventh book it was pretty much confirmed that he was a bit shallow ("all the good-looking girls are taken" echoes of Yule Ball Ron). I don't know, it seemed pretty off too me. At least Hermione was portrayed as being allowed to do that.
But take for example the sixth book. Cormac McLaggen. At Slugworth's little party, Harry meets Hermione and notices that she looks disheveled. What's going on, he asks. "Cormac McLaggen makes Grawp look like a gentleman," she says. Given that Grawp recently tried to snatch Hermione (another scene with very disturbing sexual subtext), from which she must be protected by Harry and because of which she is reduced to shaking and whimpering with fear, you'd think Harry's response would be one of concern or at least sympathy.
No. It's "Serves you right." Excuse me? Hermione just used the word "escape" to describe getting away from this punk who apparently is more unpleasantly sexually aggressive than a giant, and Harry says "serves you right." For what? Going out on a date? I'm sorry, does she belong to Ron now? She made a petty choice, yes, but it was a choice she had a right to make and it certainly does not justify unwanted sexual aggression (the word I'm looking for here is "assault.") That the text does not pass judgment on Harry's nasty comment shows complacence with it.
And in the seventh book the subtext grows ever more upsetting. Fenrir Greyback? For God's sake, does the man want to bite her or rape her? Hell, that's not even subtext. That's Hermione being threatened with rape by this man-beast and Ron being all "no! my pretty lady!" Note that while Harry's skin crawled, he did not attempt to struggle when he heard Fenrir assaulting Hermione. That job was reserved for the man who possesses her sexuality. That whole thing with Bellatrix the She-Devil torturing Hermione the Virgin while Ron the Knight cries her name stank equally of possession. Especially given the way her recovery was portrayed, basically with Ron protecting her like aargh why.
My point is that a lot of those scenes and comments were pretty gratuitous and reveal some kind of disturbing things about Rowling's psyche. There were a thousand little mentions of Hermione's vulnerable sexuality, from the men catcalling on Tottenham Court Road, to "counted as chivalrous that he was not asking Hermione to do it for him," to Ron insisting that Hermione sleep on the cushions and all the other instances I've mentioned in this leviathan post. The one that stand out most in my mind, FWIW, is seriously Harry having to pull Hermione away from Grawp. Note that none of these examples were at all relevant to any sort of larger story or point. They were just there, and they piss me off.
Another subtle little example of this that really got to me, by the way, was when they were at Bill and Fleur's house and even though the three had just been spending like MONTHS sleeping in the same room with no mention of any problems or issues, it seemed like a big deal was made of the fact that Hermione and Luna were sharing a room, like oh better protect their chastity. Not really a big offense in the scheme of things, but really.
And finally, Hermione's life as an adult. What was up with that epilogue? I mean, I know that the epilogue was pretty much bad news in every way, but was there even one single mention of Hermione's career? What did she decide to do? Healing? Did she do something big with SPEW? No, of course not, she got married and had children. Every woman's happy ending. That bugged me enough when it happened to Fleur (she was a Triwizard champion, and now what, she spends all her time making breakfast trays) but when it happened to Hermione it was even worse.
To be fair, it happened to all of them. Seems like to Rowling a happy ending seriously consists of marriage and children. It just makes me mad because in the Harry Potter universe, when a man and a woman get married, the woman stays home and now has no life outside her husband and children. (For your consideration: Petunia, Narcissa, Molly Weasley, Fleur, Tonks. Contrast with McGonagall, Umbridge, Bellatrix and Rita Skeeter, and also notice how all of the women in the first list are sympathetic even when not really nice, whereas the second list, with the exception of McGonagall, represent the most loathable characters in the series.)
So in summary: Hermione, though a likable character, has her independence, personality and sympathy consistently undermined by negative portrayals of her as a female, isolation from other women, and gratuitous disturbing scenes involving her sexuality.
*Okay, that's actually probably the Bible. So sue me.
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