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I’ve been thinking more about Avengers, particularly about Black Widow. I liked her character, but something wasn’t sitting quite right. It wasn’t until I read cleolinda’s post on LJ that things started to click into place for me.
There be minor spoilers ahead…
When we first see Black Widow’s character, she’s captured, tied up, and being interrogated by nameless Russians. We see the Standard Villain Torture Kit waiting on a nearby tray. But when SHIELD calls, Black Widow goes from helpless prisoner to fully in control in an eyeblink. By allowing her captors to see her as weak and vulnerable, she got them to tell her what she needed to know. It’s set up as a reversal of expectations: the men expect the woman to be powerless, and she does a masterful job of turning that against them. She was in control the whole time, and you know it.
So far, so good. I liked the scene. I also liked the way it set up Black Widow’s later confrontation with Loki on the Helicarrier. Once again, Black Widow allows a man to play on her apparent vulnerabilities and weakness, and in doing so, tricks him into admitting his plan.
But this time, as she turns away, you realize the vulnerability wasn’t faked. She wasn’t in control the same way she was in that earlier scene. Loki got to her. You see it in her expression, and you see it again later.
Some of what bugs me is the intersection of Black Widow being both the only female Avenger and the only one to use her vulnerability as a weapon like that. In a way, it feels like a subversion of sexism, since she’s using her targets’ expectations against them. But it also feels seductive in a way that disturbs me — in the case of Loki, “I’m going to let you paw all over my very real pain so I can get the answers I need.”
And look at the way Loki treats her. He rips into her more viciously than he does anyone else in the film, including his own brother. That level of scorn and loathing is reserved for Black Widow alone — for the woman who dares to be as powerful as the men. He also — and I missed this in the theater — calls her a “mewling quim.”
I wasn’t familiar with that particular verbal assault. I believe the modern U.S. equivalent would be “whining c**t,” making it the most hateful and sexist insult in the entire film.
All right, so Loki is an asshole. But then I thought back to when Black Widow went to recruit Bruce Banner. Banner was calm and cool, except for one moment when he slammed the table and shouted something like, “Stop lying!”
Black Widow jumped back, visibly shaken. Banner immediately calmed down, saying it was just a test to see how she’d respond. He was fully in control, of himself, and of the situation. He learned she didn’t come alone, and that he’s completely surrounded by SHIELD agents. I.e., he learned what he wanted to know.
Yet the way he did it resonates with Loki’s treatment of Black Widow later on. He lashed out in a way we never see directed at men, and in that moment, everyone knew exactly who had the power and who didn’t.
I’m certain some people will read this and say I’m overthinking, or that I’m reading too much into it. To be clear, I loved this movie. And I liked Black Widow’s character a lot. She’s capable, competent, and kicks plenty of bad guy ass. However…
- The only female Avenger is sent in to use her vulnerability as a weapon of interrogation.
- There are at least two scenes that feel like she’s being “put in her place” by a more powerful man.
- The phase “mewling quim” was utterly unnecessary and not at all in keeping with the rest of the dialogue, so why it used?
I find this problematic.
Comments and discussion are welcome, as always.
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
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YMMV
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The reason I don't agree is that we all know that things are not the same for men and women and especially not in comics. That is, a woman in any environment where she is, in any respect, competing with men or even just interacting with them has the shackle on her ankle of on-going workplace sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. Pretending - as a lot of careers advice aimed at women does pretend - that these factors do not exist is an insidious form of victim-blaming since it suggests that the career detriment suffered by women as a result of being sexually harassed and changing their behaviours to avoid sexual harassment is them not being strong minded enough to deal with the problem like a man - when it's not, by and large a problem men have, at least, not in the endemic and systemised way that women experience it. And it's assuming that men who perpetrate it must be doing it because they're clueless and "misunderstand signals" rather than because they've found it's a doubly effective weapon because a) it works on its own terms; and b) it works because the woman is shamed into pretending it doesn't happen.
So by acknowledging the reality of it for Black Widow and having her overcome it and being seen as overcoming it despite the fact that it got to her you get a trebly strong message:
a) it happens, it's real and even good guys and not just the designated evil Big Bad will sometimes use it to get their own way;
b) if it happens to you, it's OK to let it get to you - that's a normal response, not the "big girls take harassment in stride".
c) and you can be even more awesome by doing your job while being validly upset by the harassment.
I thought that was fabulous. Especially the fact that she got him to the point of delivering the "mewling quim" line which was supposed to show her weakness and it was the moment when in fact he'd just given her his.
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::Headdesk::
I do agree with you that simply pretending sexism and such don't exist wouldn't have worked, and I do think the movie got a lot of things right. But I don't feel like the movie was deliberately trying to make those points. But it felt like these things were done unthinkingly. (Obviously I can't read the writers' minds...)
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I do think they got too much right on the gender front for it to be accidental. In, I suspect, a similar way as
In fact, what we actually got in the Loki/Black Widow scene was a very, very plausible way in which someone who lives by headgames would attempt to play headgames with a woman who was also not someone with the superpowers of the other members of the team. And, again, that could have gone really badly - specifically, she could have had to rely on one of the other Avengers to get her out of the situation but in fact it didn't.
It's always difficult to see what a movie doesn't do, and it's probably a horrible comment on low expectations about Hollywood but these points taken together add up to something pretty damn unexpected:
a) neither of the characters who were turned (temporarily) to the dark side were female.
b) the character rescued from alien mind control by the bad guy was a man rescued by a woman.
c) the character who dies to motivate the others is male. No woman was fridged in the making of this movie.
d) women are routinely shown in bridge command positions including overall command and weapons control NOT signals.
e) none of the women we see earn their livings by taking their clothes off.
f) shoes - or absence of shoes! Dear God, yes. I could talk for days about the symbolism of the fact that Natasha picks up her shoes and carries them when leaving the building, and Pepper is barefoot and in shorts in Stark tower. Next time you're fancying some implausible photography, try doing it in movie heels.
g) no-one gets raped. That includes no-one's sister, mother, girl-friend etc.
h) the male character helps civilians - mixed by age and sex - from the bus while the woman holds off the bad guys with covering fire.
Both with that and Hunger Games, I'm feeling rather encouraged for 2012 in movies.
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She also kind of sat there huddling after the Hulk attack (which she again tried to deflect by appearing feminine and vulnerable as Bruce was changing), and had to visibly pull herself together to go rescue Hawkeye. Needing a minute after being attacked by the Hulk seems totally valid, but she's the only character in the entire movie who needed time to recover and pull themselves together.
I guess I was mostly happy Natasha wasn't as bad as she could have been. I've read a lot of Black Widow comics (all of them? Tonnes, anyway) over the years, and her character, as per the name, is frequently heavily sexual. She sleeps and seduces her way to information not infrequently, and in the hands of the wrong writer it can be an objectified mess (for example, Black Widow #6). So this... was way better than it could have been?
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Overall, I do think the movie got a lot of things right, and I did like Black Widow's character. But yeah. That line in particular was hurtful, and was *unnecessarily* so -- there were plenty of other ways to write that scene, so why choose this one?
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Overall I also really liked this Natasha. I think Johanson did a really good job of it.
Thinking about it, didn't Loki in Thor goad Thor by threatening to rape Jane? That also felt really unnecessary. Establishes something of a pattern for Loki though, who I like even less than I did before, as he seems to be both a misogynist and a sadist.
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That's an interesting point about the Banner scene, though, and upon reflection I'm somewhat more conflicted about that one.