A Female Doctor: It’s About Time

(This article first appeared at jwa.org.)

In the days leading up to the announcement of the new lead for Doctor Who, I had a heated debate with a male friend about who might be cast for the role. “I just don’t understand why they have to keep gender-bending and race-bending everyone’s favorite characters in these existing franchises,” he complained. “It ruins the characters I like, and isn’t it lazy writing, anyway? Wouldn’t it be better for them to leave Doctor Who and James Bond and Spiderman as they are and add diverse new characters instead?”

For those not in the know, when ill health forced actor William Hartnell to step down from his lead role in Doctor Who in 1966, the producers of the show declared that the Doctor, being an alien, had a unique ability to “regenerate” at the end of his life, reincarnating himself in a new body. This enabled them to continue the show for more than five decades with new actors who each brought out different aspects of the Doctor’s character, and led to interesting moments where the Doctor got to interact with past and future versions of himself as he gallivanted across time and space. But over the past decade, some fans (as well as former stars of the show) have commented about the fact that while the infinitely curious and adventurous Doctor can regenerate into any body imaginable, somehow the actors that get chosen for the role have been uniformly white and male.

Until now.

With the announcement that the new Doctor would be played by Jodie Whittaker of Broadchurch fame, some fans have delighted that they can finally imagine themselves as the Doctor instead of just one of the Doctor’s companions. Others have voiced frustration that this iconic BBC character still doesn’t look like any of the people of color who make up vast swaths of the British population. And, predictably, a vocal group of white male fans have complained that their beloved Doctor suddenly has girl cooties (or, put more politely, that the Doctor now reflects more than just their own experiences).

I am all for introducing diverse original characters. And I have zero fear that all white male protagonists will vanish overnight from existing franchises. But the advantage of race-bending or gender-bending an iconic character is that they change both the kinds of stories we tell about that group and the ways in which we perceive that specific character.

Katee Sackhoff’s performance as the hard-drinking, roguish pilot Starbuck in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica gave us a female action hero who was both amazing and incredibly flawed in ways women don’t usually get to be. When John Watson has been portrayed by male actors, he’s been a foil, meant to highlight Sherlock Holmes’ contrasting brilliance and eccentricity. Lucy Liu’s portrayal of Joan Watson on Elementary has emphasized how problematic the character’s subservient enabling of Sherlock Holmes is when the character is played by an Asian woman. The writers were pushed to give Joan Watson a richer backstory to explain why she might stay with Holmes despite his treatment of her, and Liu’s Watson started pushing back against Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes, becoming his apprentice and later a detective in her own right. While I can think of other actors who played marvelous Watsons, seeing Watson through the lens of Liu’s performance raised questions that ultimately transformed the character.

Which brings us back to Doctor Who. For five decades, the Doctor has been a quirky, chaos-loving explorer, saver of planets and destroyer of worlds, cheerful and dark in equal measure. How are those qualities going to read through the lens of Jodie Whittaker’s performance? How will established supporting characters react to the change? And what about the next companion, the sidekick character who gives the Doctor someone to explain things to, banter with, and rescue? If the show seeks gender balance by making the new companion male, how will the audience feel about identifying with a guy who is out of his element taking orders from a centuries-old, hypercompetent woman?

Time will tell.

The real-life consequences of the magical pregnancy trope

In Sarah Jeong’s fantastic Star Wars critique “Did Inadequate Women’s Healthcare Destroy the Old Republic?”, she points out that Star Wars is a story written by a man who seems to lack even basic facts about pregnancy and female bodies for a target audience that also knows very little, and that this has frightening implications for women’s health issues in our own world.

That got me thinking about how the Magical Pregnancy Trope also perpetuates some really dangerous ideas about pregnancy and agency.

Although it’s sometimes used as a plot device for its own sake, the Magical Pregnancy is also used as a television workaround when a lead actress gets pregnant and can’t just randomly leave the show for a few months, and the writers don’t want to work all the complications of raising babies into their storylines for the next few years. Instead, the pregnancy is accelerated (because it’s the product of evil magic/science) to take place in only one or two episodes, and ends with the child being conveniently stolen or magically aged so the show doesn’t have to deal with babies for more too long.

Why is this problematic, aside from just being lazy writing? It feeds popular notions that pregnancy is something that just happens to women, ignoring the fact that pregnancy is usually the product of sexual intercourse and that men should take responsibility for individual pregnancies they help create, something writers would have to address if the father were part of the main cast. The men who are involved are essentially rapists, and abortion isn’t even discussed, let alone possible in these fantasy scenarios. And because these magical pregnancies can’t be explained by science, it perpetuates the notion that real pregnancies are also mysterious and uncontrollable, and just have to take their course. Which means we don’t need to fund research or health care for women’s issues and it’s either pointless or unnatural for women to claim agency over their own bodies.

The sad thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. Highlander worked in a season-long arc where Anne got pregnant by another man, and Duncan had to decide whether he wanted to take on the responsibilities of fatherhood and what that might look like. White Collar hid one of Tiffani Thiessen’s pregnancies with careful camera angles and worked another into a longer storyline, and had Marsha Thomason’s lesbian character choose to get pregnant and decide what that would mean for her career as a field agent. And Firefly, had it continued, was clearly setting up a pregnancy storyline for Wash and Zoe. There are ways to either sidestep the issue or embrace it as a storytelling challenge, even on an action/adventure show.

Pop culture profoundly shapes our understanding of issues, sometimes in positive ways, as when sympathetic gay characters boost LGBT acceptance, sometimes in negative ones, like when crime shows perpetuate negative stereotypes of blacks and latinos. Changing the Magical Pregnancy Trope, showing more women and couples choosing a pregnancy (or choosing to terminate one), showing pregnancy and labor as normal processes instead of body horror fantasies, and showing the normal consequence of carrying a pregnancy to term by writing infancy and childcare logistics into storylines could have a massive effect on how our culture understands pregnancy and women’s bodies in general.

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Feminist!

(This article first appeared at jwa.org.)

I admit, I am woefully late to the party on Supergirl. I tried the pilot episode when it came out last year and found it a little campy and contrived next to my usual superhero and science-fiction fare. And by the time I gave it another try, late in the season, most of the previous episodes weren’t available online anymore.

But to drum up enthusiasm for Season Two, Season One is finally available on Netflix, and bingeing it hasn’t just been a guilty pleasure, it’s pushed me to look at massive blind spots I still have in my assumptions about feminism and pop culture.

I wanted to talk about how the stories that get told change when the cast is predominantly female, but I can’t do that, because when I actually tally up the cast, it’s exactly 50/50, men/women. After pointing indignantly (and repeatedly) to statistics that people perceive women as dominating the conversation when they take up half the space, I’m embarrassed to realize I’ve fallen into the same trap.

Then I thought about the fact that the parental conflicts on Supergirl are with mothers rather than fathers. I’m on more solid ground here: there are about as many dads on the show as moms, but the dads tend to show up in one-shot episodes while the mothers play more integral, ongoing roles. Usually, television heroes seem to spring full-grown from nowhere, and if a parent does show up partway into the story line, it’s generally an estranged or disapproving dad. But over time, Supergirl has to work through her relationships with both her long-dead biological mother (who turns out to be more problematic than Supergirl’s childhood memories of her) and her still-living foster mom. Meanwhile, her boss, powerhouse media mogul Cat Grant, struggles to mother her two sons while locking horns with her own critical and success-driven mom. Having so many varied mother-child relationships on one show changes both the dynamics between the characters and the range of possibilities for what it means to be either a bad or a good-but-flawed mom.

Tying into the mother-daughter dynamic, one of the most important relationships of season one has been Cat Grant’s mentorship of both Supergirl and her mild-mannered alter ego, Kara Danvers. I’ve snarled for years about the trope that whenever you have a super-powerful heroine with a special destiny to change the world, she needs to have an older male mentor to keep her in check: think Buffy, or Alias. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that (male) writers following the model of the Hero’s Journey know that all heroes need a mentor and, thanks to millennia of male-centric stories, imagine men in that role more easily than women. Here, finally, the heroine has a strong, smart woman to look up to, one who talks to her about dealing with power, anger, and even failure, all from a distinctly female perspective.

Which brings me to the realization of just how blind I’ve been. What I really wanted to talk about turns out to be how this show explores what it means to be a mother or a daughter, to struggle to figure out what you want to do with your life, how to be recognized for your worth, and how to define yourself despite pre-existing social expectations.

I wanted to say that Supergirl is ultimately about what it means to be a woman. But I’m realizing that I’ve always thought of Superman shows like Smallville or Lois and Clark as being about what it means to be human, not about what it means to be a man. Supergirl is also about what it means to be human, just examining that question through a female lens instead of a male one. And that’s a subtle but hugely important idea to normalize in popular culture. As the show switches networks from CBS to the CW, with all the upheaval that might entail, I am hoping Season Two (premiering Monday, October 10th) lives up to (and surpasses) the achievements of Season One.

Golden Anniversary

When I was a kid, occasionally my dad would wake me and carry me in my nightgown to the end of the block to watch fireworks.

One night, he woke me and said, with that same excitement and urgency, that there was something I had to see. Downstairs, he showed me my first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, starting an addiction I never outgrew.

 

Happy 50th, Star Trek.

Bechdel revisited

I often find myself in disagreements with male friends about the Bechdel Test, because there are so many good movies and books that fail it, from Lawrence of Arabia to Pride and Prejudice. The Bechdel Test is NOT a strict yardstick of either feminist content or quality. There’s a lot of awesome media that flunks the test. Here’s what it does do well:

1. It raises awareness of when there’s only one woman in a story. Which allows for other conversations about gender imbalance, stereotypes, and tokenism.

 

2. It highlights the problems of stories where the only female characters are there as encouraging cheerleaders, love objects, or obstacles for the male protagonists and have no lives of their own.

 

3. It problematizes the cultural assumption that the only acceptable stories with female protagonists are ones where women are looking for love. (Nothing wrong with a good love story, but there’s a problem when that accounts for the vast majority of stories women are allowed to tell about themselves.)

 

The Bechdel Test is not a checklist that ends conversation. It’s a tool to begin conversation.

The (not so) universal holiday

This morning, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder: why is it that every show feels compelled to do Christmas specials? Every year, we get inundated with scenes of our favorite characters angsting over gifts, gearing up for fraught family reunions, and learning the true meaning of Christmas.

Which, if you think about it, is really, really weird on every level. First, most of the characters don’t think about their faith at any other point in the season: it’s not central to who they are or what drives the plot of the show.

Second, you can find these episodes even on shows created and run by Jews. So it’s not like management has a deep, emotional need for these episodes either.

And third, a decent chunk of the population watching the shows isn’t Christian, so 15% or so of us get inundated with episodes that are putting forth this holiday we don’t celebrate as a universal event. If you really want those elements of fraught family reunions and ambivalent feelings about a universal holiday, why not have a Thanksgiving episode instead? (Which I think only Buffy has done.)

Look at the standard plot arc for these episodes: Some of the characters are really excited for the holiday. Some are stressed by the demands of buying presents, party planning, etc. And some have negative associations with the holiday and don’t want to participate at all. Discord ensues. But in the end, the characters bridge the gap: the excited ones show empathy for the ones who feel stressed or disconnected, and everyone comes together for the happy ending, singing carols, working in a soup kitchen, or opening presents at the big party. The real message is that no matter how stressed or unhappy Christmas makes you, if you buy in, you’ll reap happiness and connection in the end.

Which is why it’s always Christmas and not Thanksgiving: it’s not about writing an episode that resonates with either the characters or the audience, it’s writing for the sake of the commercial vendors. People exchange presents on Christmas, often more than they can afford. The Christmas episodes maintain a culture that encourages that spending, making it seem universal, something you can’t opt out of, something that–despite the stress and unhappiness–will be worth it in the end. It’s a particularly skeezy piece of manipulation, using much-loved characters to try and warp people’s choices.

Hell-fizzle

Okay, I’m giving Constantine one more week to hit its stride and then I’m throwing in the towel. So far, my three complaints are:

1. I still don’t care about any of the characters. For most people, that’s kind of a biggie, but I generally give a show a bit more time before deciding on that.

2. Constantine’s “spells” are all Latin, basically prayers asking God to smite whatever demon he’s facing. Granted, demons are fallen angels, and in the comics, Constantine’s been known to offer them a swig of holy water if it’s handy. But Constantine’s supposed to be both anti-establishment and a wizard–he’ll draw on whatever works, and a lot of that is from traditions that have nothing to do with Christianity one way or the other. I’m getting the feeling that Fox wanted to do a show about a battle between Good and Evil but was uncomfortable with the anti-establishment trickster aspects that make Constantine interesting and left those on the cutting-room floor.

3. The Boobs of the Week. All the main characters, the ones who know what’s going on, are grown-up men. Into this sausage party, we throw one female a week who is pretty, very young, and a complete noob. Her job is to be impressed with Constantine so he looks cooler, and then get disposed of before she can level up. I seriously doubt we are going to see anyone like Zatanna–a confident magician with her own way of doing things–although we might get Gemma, Constantine’s niece and protege, as long as she’s old enough to be “blessed in the chest.”

Wasted effort

Last night I went to a new critique group/pot luck for the first time. It was grueling. And afterwards, I’m sitting in the smoldering wreckage with one of the other group members as she gently tries to convince me that I need to explain my terms earlier in the text so the audience has an emotional context for the heroine’s big reveal, and I’m kicking myself for not realizing that was needed on my own.

And then I open my eyes and realize, “Oh. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming a critique session that never happened, about a novel I never wrote.” Which is a shame, because Lyta Alexander brought some tasty-looking chocolate truffles and pretzel rolls I would have loved to try before the assassins struck and blew up the place.

Mucking about with legends

A couple of years ago I kept saying to people that vampires and werewolves were getting played out and were probably going to rest for a few years (King Arthur gets very popular every ten years and then goes back to sleep, like clockwork), and that I thought the next big thing was going to be fairies. I totally missed the zombie thing in between, but here we are, with Grimm and Once Upon a Time and various novels about the fey.

Which is good for me, because I really like the fey and I’m looking forward to playing in that sandbox for a few years before it gets worn out too and needs a nap. As far as I’m concerned, fey stories are ultimately family stories: most humans in fairy tales are either married to fey, raising changelings, or have some fey blood themselves; plus there are unwritten rules that everyone has to follow and history from ages ago that still plays itself out in every argument, every reunion. I love me some good family drama.

But I feel strongly that if you’re going to play with a major myth, you had better damn well bring something new to the table, something that enriches the legend, or you’re just retreading old ground. And I think I’ve got it: I’ve decided my take on it is going to deal with why time in Faerie goes at such different rates; sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and make that crucial to the climax of my story.

The Bechdel Test

This week’s installment of Family Man referenced the Bechdel Test, which I haven’t thought about in ages, so I went hunting for the original strip again and found this, this, and this.

The sad thing is that while I’m generally aware of and frustrated by the Smurfette character who is just there to be a love interest (or a soulless ballbuster, which male executives seem to think is what feminists want), I’m less conscious in my viewing of whether the things I see pass the main Bechdel Test, in part because I like characters talking about their feelings, which often translates to girls talking about boys, so I don’t read it as an irritant when that’s ALL the female characters do. I also think some movies and TV shows are better with few or no women; Lawrence of Arabia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really don’t need tweaking. But it’s interesting that even a lot of tough chick movies and shows only allow for one tough chick in a world of men; she isn’t allowed to have sisters, friends, or (God forbid) a mother. And it’s disturbing that, as a writer, I’m mostly unconscious about how media portrayals of women that I’ve absorbed affect how I, in turn, portray women both as solitary characters and in relationships with male and female characters.

I started thinking about the shows, movies and books I like, and found some surprising (and not so surprising) Bechdel and Smurfette winners:

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Nikita
Full Metal Alchemist
Stargate: SG-1 (I know, it shocked me, too. Thank you, Janet Frasier.)

And losers:

Highlander: The Series
Sherlock
Doctor Who (Yes, the Doctor counts as a man whom the female characters talk about.)
CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga
Jane Austen’s entire life’s work

Now, I still adore everything I listed on the losers’ list, and wouldn’t turn Sherlock and John into Cagney and Lacey, or make Lizzy Bennet and her sisters fight crime. But I was blown away when Battlestar Gallactica made the daring choice to turn some of the originally male characters female when they brought the show back, with really stunning results. Is it possible to create a fully developed character first and then decide on gender, and just see where that takes a show or story? Can we expand the types of stories and characters and dynamics in our repertoire? What’s my responsibility for doing so in my own work?