Romance, control and female power
Cut for Angel season 5 and X-Men 3 spoilers.
So a month or two back I finally got around to Netflixing the final season of Angel, which I'd half-missed during its initial run due to having drifted so far out of the Buffy fandom I kept forgetting to turn on the TV when it was airing. And I had grand fun watching the character of Illyria -- and then I caught the episode where Angel wants Illyria killed, and at the end declares himself satisfied because so much of her power had been stripped from her.
And that set off little warning bells for me.
Because given the storyline running up to that point, Illyria was handled as an inhuman being learning about humanity and slowly developing something approaching redeeming characteristics. In fact, it was being handled almost as a straight "redemption by love" story, as the final episode made pretty clear.
From a practical standpoint, I can understand the very real need to keep the immortal warlord wandering your office from going off on a wild hair and disrupting or destroying things. But the thing that really bothered me about Angel's approach to the situation -- especially given that the episode in question started off with Illyria doing something independently helpful that no one else in the office was capable of doing -- was wondering how he would have reacted to the demigod getting underfoot had the body Illyria taken control of been a male one.
Because I just can't shake the nagging suspicion that an externally masculine demigod would have been dealt with by negotiation, with an attempt made to reach terms of understanding and mutual cooperation. Whereas a feminine power apparently needed to either be weakened or killed outright. Not an entity to reach an agreement with, but one to be controlled.
Jump forward to the X-Men 3 movie, where Xavier reacts to the discovery of the extreme potential of young Jean Grey's power by blocking it off. Again, the warning bells went off.
Xavier's stated goal in training these mutants is to help them gain control of their abilities (with the secondary purpose being the heavy encouragement to use said abilities to further his political goals of mutant-human cooperation). It is not out of character (as established in the comics, if not the prior movies) for him to play some mind control games with those around him for the furtherance of his own goals. But what really bothered me was his chosen solution in this case -- not training Jean in using her full powers, not even putting a few limits on them as a temporary measure until she'd completed some initial training, but deliberately causing a mental instability in an individual whom he knew would grow to be exceedingly powerful that would separate the Jean who'd been molded to his lofty goals from the Phoenix entity with that dangerous power. And then when the Phoenix started to escape his mental barriers, rather than attempting to help Jean reintegrate the sections of her personality he tried to lock the Phoenix back down.
This is not the action of a man trying to help a student learn to use and control her abilities to the fullest -- this is a man trying to keep a woman usefully controllable.
Magneto didn't make the same mistake Xavier did of setting himself into direct opposition to the Phoenix force -- but he also viewed her as a being to be used to serve his own purposes. He was just smart enough to coax and charm her into following him willingly, rather than attempting brute (mental) force.
But then, that's traditionally how women have been controlled, isn't it? Through seduction, and promises of love.
Note how Jean's utter breakdown was signalled by her destruction of the man she loved. (Presumably inadvertently, through her noncontrol of her expanded powers, though it's not like the movie bothered giving us that detail.) And that's the last straw where female breakdown is concerned -- the romance novel cliche is of love as redeeming and taming.
(Speaking of romance novels, note how "romance" is coded as exclusively a female interest. Men are strongly discouraged from voluntarily exposing themselves to the fiction aimed at a female audience -- fiction which carries and reinforces the values of self-abnegation for the loved one, of the search for the One True Partner as being the one important story and worthy goal of any woman's life, of the need for personality-subsuming codependency as "true love" that can make up for any personal incompatibilities, and the utter unimportance of anything else that comes between a Destined Pair. For the version of "romance" that men are trained in, see any movie largely aimed at men that has a love interest shoehorned in "to keep the chicks happy," and really ask yourself how well that would work out in real life.)
Note also how the movie ended, with Jean not assimilating the Phoenix but being killed -- by someone who got that close to her by professing how much he loved her. Jean had already killed the man she loved and threatened the life of the next man who wanted to step into the role -- she wasn't controllable by love and therefore had to be killed. More, by that point she wanted to be killed, rather than try to cope with the remains of her life and move on from the wreckage.
For that matter, look at Rogue. Her powers are from a certain standpoint awesomely chameleonic -- especially the comic book version, where in addition to whatever she recently absorbed she's also superstrong and able to fly. But the great tragedy of her character -- comic and movie alike -- is presented as her inability to make out with whatever love interest she's currently got. (Never mind the five billion and one creative uses of scarves and latex the fandom has come up as workarounds.) Many fans were aggravated by her decision to take the cure, the more so since it was so strongly presented as being a sheer case of giving up her powers in an attempt to preserve a relationship with a boy who appeared to be on the verge of dumping her for someone more touchable.
There are multiple downsides to her particular power, from not wanting anyone she brushes against inside her head to the worries of leaving anyone she touches in a comatose state. The first movie covered that a bit better, the more recent pair showed her actually using her gifts in a useful manner -- and made her aborted sex life out to be the sole down side. A deeply aggravating move on the parts of the comic and the movies both, in turning the situation into, "Rogue's got any damned power she wants, but can't get laid, so she'd rather be normal!" It was rightfully aggravating as fuck to have the pro-mutation voice being from the beautiful African weather goddess whose powers had no downside whatsoever and couldn't understand why any mutant would genuinely wish to be a regular human. (As a side note, movie-Storm's POV seems so close to Magneto's that it seems the only reason she's not in the Brotherhood is because of personal loyalty to Xavier. Chalk up another triumph of controlling women through fostering and exploiting their affections and loyalties to men. Note where the downside appears, when depowered Raven responded to being dropped like a used tissue by turning on Mags in a New York minute. Loyalty bought via love rather than via political alliance means that people take it personally when they're dropped by the wayside as a casualty of combat.) Points go to Logan for understanding why Rogue's powers have a down side and for being the sole token nod to the consideration that one must be very certain before sacrificing for love that the loved one is worth the sacrifice.
So, yeah. I not too long ago read the text of a magazine article from about the 1940s aimed at managers who were finding themselves dealing with female employees in formerly exclusively-male workplaces, and IIRC that was where I read the comment to the effect of never ever having a woman in any way supervising or giving orders to male employees because there was no way a man could be expected to take orders from a woman. And we'd like to think we've gotten past that, and in many places individual women are giving orders to men with reasonable effectiveness. But then I turn around and run up against that same old attitude, of men being nervous when confronted with women who aren't taking orders from a man somewhere up the chain of command.
And again I have the warning bells.
Crossposted from my own journal, where there was further useful discussion in the comments.
So a month or two back I finally got around to Netflixing the final season of Angel, which I'd half-missed during its initial run due to having drifted so far out of the Buffy fandom I kept forgetting to turn on the TV when it was airing. And I had grand fun watching the character of Illyria -- and then I caught the episode where Angel wants Illyria killed, and at the end declares himself satisfied because so much of her power had been stripped from her.
And that set off little warning bells for me.
Because given the storyline running up to that point, Illyria was handled as an inhuman being learning about humanity and slowly developing something approaching redeeming characteristics. In fact, it was being handled almost as a straight "redemption by love" story, as the final episode made pretty clear.
From a practical standpoint, I can understand the very real need to keep the immortal warlord wandering your office from going off on a wild hair and disrupting or destroying things. But the thing that really bothered me about Angel's approach to the situation -- especially given that the episode in question started off with Illyria doing something independently helpful that no one else in the office was capable of doing -- was wondering how he would have reacted to the demigod getting underfoot had the body Illyria taken control of been a male one.
Because I just can't shake the nagging suspicion that an externally masculine demigod would have been dealt with by negotiation, with an attempt made to reach terms of understanding and mutual cooperation. Whereas a feminine power apparently needed to either be weakened or killed outright. Not an entity to reach an agreement with, but one to be controlled.
Jump forward to the X-Men 3 movie, where Xavier reacts to the discovery of the extreme potential of young Jean Grey's power by blocking it off. Again, the warning bells went off.
Xavier's stated goal in training these mutants is to help them gain control of their abilities (with the secondary purpose being the heavy encouragement to use said abilities to further his political goals of mutant-human cooperation). It is not out of character (as established in the comics, if not the prior movies) for him to play some mind control games with those around him for the furtherance of his own goals. But what really bothered me was his chosen solution in this case -- not training Jean in using her full powers, not even putting a few limits on them as a temporary measure until she'd completed some initial training, but deliberately causing a mental instability in an individual whom he knew would grow to be exceedingly powerful that would separate the Jean who'd been molded to his lofty goals from the Phoenix entity with that dangerous power. And then when the Phoenix started to escape his mental barriers, rather than attempting to help Jean reintegrate the sections of her personality he tried to lock the Phoenix back down.
This is not the action of a man trying to help a student learn to use and control her abilities to the fullest -- this is a man trying to keep a woman usefully controllable.
Magneto didn't make the same mistake Xavier did of setting himself into direct opposition to the Phoenix force -- but he also viewed her as a being to be used to serve his own purposes. He was just smart enough to coax and charm her into following him willingly, rather than attempting brute (mental) force.
But then, that's traditionally how women have been controlled, isn't it? Through seduction, and promises of love.
Note how Jean's utter breakdown was signalled by her destruction of the man she loved. (Presumably inadvertently, through her noncontrol of her expanded powers, though it's not like the movie bothered giving us that detail.) And that's the last straw where female breakdown is concerned -- the romance novel cliche is of love as redeeming and taming.
(Speaking of romance novels, note how "romance" is coded as exclusively a female interest. Men are strongly discouraged from voluntarily exposing themselves to the fiction aimed at a female audience -- fiction which carries and reinforces the values of self-abnegation for the loved one, of the search for the One True Partner as being the one important story and worthy goal of any woman's life, of the need for personality-subsuming codependency as "true love" that can make up for any personal incompatibilities, and the utter unimportance of anything else that comes between a Destined Pair. For the version of "romance" that men are trained in, see any movie largely aimed at men that has a love interest shoehorned in "to keep the chicks happy," and really ask yourself how well that would work out in real life.)
Note also how the movie ended, with Jean not assimilating the Phoenix but being killed -- by someone who got that close to her by professing how much he loved her. Jean had already killed the man she loved and threatened the life of the next man who wanted to step into the role -- she wasn't controllable by love and therefore had to be killed. More, by that point she wanted to be killed, rather than try to cope with the remains of her life and move on from the wreckage.
For that matter, look at Rogue. Her powers are from a certain standpoint awesomely chameleonic -- especially the comic book version, where in addition to whatever she recently absorbed she's also superstrong and able to fly. But the great tragedy of her character -- comic and movie alike -- is presented as her inability to make out with whatever love interest she's currently got. (Never mind the five billion and one creative uses of scarves and latex the fandom has come up as workarounds.) Many fans were aggravated by her decision to take the cure, the more so since it was so strongly presented as being a sheer case of giving up her powers in an attempt to preserve a relationship with a boy who appeared to be on the verge of dumping her for someone more touchable.
There are multiple downsides to her particular power, from not wanting anyone she brushes against inside her head to the worries of leaving anyone she touches in a comatose state. The first movie covered that a bit better, the more recent pair showed her actually using her gifts in a useful manner -- and made her aborted sex life out to be the sole down side. A deeply aggravating move on the parts of the comic and the movies both, in turning the situation into, "Rogue's got any damned power she wants, but can't get laid, so she'd rather be normal!" It was rightfully aggravating as fuck to have the pro-mutation voice being from the beautiful African weather goddess whose powers had no downside whatsoever and couldn't understand why any mutant would genuinely wish to be a regular human. (As a side note, movie-Storm's POV seems so close to Magneto's that it seems the only reason she's not in the Brotherhood is because of personal loyalty to Xavier. Chalk up another triumph of controlling women through fostering and exploiting their affections and loyalties to men. Note where the downside appears, when depowered Raven responded to being dropped like a used tissue by turning on Mags in a New York minute. Loyalty bought via love rather than via political alliance means that people take it personally when they're dropped by the wayside as a casualty of combat.) Points go to Logan for understanding why Rogue's powers have a down side and for being the sole token nod to the consideration that one must be very certain before sacrificing for love that the loved one is worth the sacrifice.
So, yeah. I not too long ago read the text of a magazine article from about the 1940s aimed at managers who were finding themselves dealing with female employees in formerly exclusively-male workplaces, and IIRC that was where I read the comment to the effect of never ever having a woman in any way supervising or giving orders to male employees because there was no way a man could be expected to take orders from a woman. And we'd like to think we've gotten past that, and in many places individual women are giving orders to men with reasonable effectiveness. But then I turn around and run up against that same old attitude, of men being nervous when confronted with women who aren't taking orders from a man somewhere up the chain of command.
And again I have the warning bells.
Crossposted from my own journal, where there was further useful discussion in the comments.