I Know It's Your Fault

[itsallovernow]

It's hot here. Which means things are blooming. Which must explain the headache that Just. Won't. Go. Away. Ever.

On the plus side, I am going to learn to play the tabla. Fear me upstairs neighbors of clunky shoes and routine sexual escapades. You will rue the day, really! My tabla and I will make you think fondly of M. and his electric guitar and amp he bought from Target and stubs his toe on several times a week becuase he leaves the amp in the middle of the floor. Hah. Hah, I say.

I've discovered that the caffeine/Advil combination tends to make me a little loopy once the pain recedes. Something I discovered recently, and have evidenced to other people (yes, shut up, I'm a writer, I can make that word a verb) by explaining the chest drop as playing the xylophone with your boobs theory.

I am training my replacement and she is... very competent. But annoying. Teenagers in musical theater annoying. Pray the advil/coffee combo kicks all the way in before she gets here.

We had a very... lively discussion about female characters and violence via e-mail a few days ago and I'd like to open that up to LJ at large, particularly the idea of violence empowering female characters and the continuum along which we see that. Pretty much, the theory is that for characters like Buffy and Faith, the violence is a way of giving them a type of power that represents their "response", their solution to the vulnerability of being a teenage girl.

As the ever brilliant rubberneck said, Faith's violence is something the mayor appreciates in her, feeds in her and loves her both because of and in spite of that rage and violence. We also agreed that for Aeryn, the violence is inherent, but it's a tool. It's not about rage, it's about what she knows how to do, and when she learns that she has other tools, she also learns that her responses come with choices. She doesn't continue to use violence with John because it doesn't prove to be effective long-term. He sets his own limits and boundaries on his behavior in response to her choice. And that gives her other choices. But she doesn't use it out of rage and I find that sort of beautiful and interesting, and would love to open up the discussion about other characters.

crankygrrl thinks that Veronica Mars should be part of the discussion because violence isn't a tool offered to her by her creators, despite the violence of the world she lives in. I don't agree, because her lack of active violence seems to disqualify her from the conversation, but if we equate rage with violence, we have a comparison. Certainly to Veronica and Faith, which wow, that'd be quite an essay. Young women and rage in the media. So, I'm totally open to the discussion.

Hell, feel free to even share your favorite ass-kicking scene. I'd like to write this essay, post T&L Ficathon, and looooove examples.

Comments

[kernezelda]

I'm thinking of Xena and Ellen Ripley.

Xena went from being an evil warlord to righting wrongs, and her competence in violence was just as integral to both portions of her life.

Ripley in Alien wasn't shown as being out of the ordinary in using the tools at her disposal to fight for her life, or as afraid to use violence in the first place.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Ripley is definitely intersting in that her violence is an absolute response, not an inherent characteristic!

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

crankygrrl thinks that Veronica Mars should be part of the discussion because violence isn't a tool offered to her by her creators, despite the violence of the world she lives in.

I'm still all sixes and sevens on this one because on the one hand, the girl's got a taser and an attitude and knows how to use both. OTOH, she's tiny and tends to get beaten up if she's disarmed. But there's also the question of the gun and the thematically significant IMO image of Veronica holding a gun on her assailants that have closed both season finales, leaving open to discussion the implication that a day may come where she does pull the trigger. The more I think on it, the more you're right and that Veronica doesn't belong in a comparision that includes Buffy because violence is Buffy's primary form of expression whereas it is very much a tool that Veronica chooses when and when not to use.

I'm thinking of the episode in S2 where she doesn't tell the kid who killed his dog because she believed he would murder the person responsible - the opportunity for violence, or to be a conduit for violence is there but she sets it aside, just as she lowers the gun. So it's not so much that the writers don't offer Veronica that tool as much as it's proferred as a choice.

Given the nature of the Buffyverse, Buffy/Faith are false exemplars in this dicussion, I think. I think to make a true comparison of violence and female characters, you'd need to look at BtVS and Xena: Warrior Princess; Starbuck and Aeryn Sun; Veronica Mars and Ghost Whisperer/Close to Home (or something similar; and see if there are trends in common.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

The more I think on it, the more you're right and that Veronica doesn't belong in a comparision that includes Buffy because violence is Buffy's primary form of expression whereas it is very much a tool that Veronica chooses when and when not to use.

I dunno (and now veiled emailed comments make sense, btw ;). Because for the early S1/S2 Buffy (cuz let's compare apples to apples) is violence a form of expression for her (I agree, to an extent, that it (may?) becomes one later, though even there there is room for debate)or a necessary action, a pure matter of survival. Which, for Veronica, is the case in a different way. The taser (and the held but not used loaded gun) is in many cases to Veronica's survival as the stake is to Buffy's.

In fact, I'd need to re-watch, but I think there is an element of disliking the violence, of wishing it wasn't there, or at least of debating it's necessity in a far more obvious way in the early seasons of Buffy (the change comes in S3, and specifically, IMO, during GD1&2) than it is in VM.

Veronica at times KNOWINGLY places herself in situations where violence/the taser will likely be needed. That is WHY she carries it. Yes, the precipitating factor (Lily's murder) was outside her control, just as Buffy's calling was outside hers. But V is shown to embrace the violence, the lifestyle, the rage, far more readily than Buffy did at first. I can't help but think of Keith's "easy-going Veronica Mars" comment, here....

And yes, Thea, write that essay, please ;).

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

It's a false comparison. You can't compare Buffy to Veronica in terms of violence and its uses because the parametres of the story universe are too different, as are character arcs, and use and representations of time passing. While BtVS and VM share stylistic and thematic similarities and both use narrative genre as a metaphor for teen life, in terms of violence, it's consequences and it's effect on characters, you might as well compare apples to broccoli.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

I actually disagree, on a number of levels, because I think when you consider the responses of each character to their specific context/situation/narrative structure you CAN compare them. Which was what I was trying to do. However, long and painful experience has proven to me that I won't change your mind, and that's cool. ;)

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can within the context of the analysis Thea is considering - the jump from the fantasy world where tiny blondes bitch slap huge monsters to the "real" world where tiny blondes get bitch-slapped by bikers is too great when you add Aeryn Sun (sf world) and Starbuck (action movie world) into the mix.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

What I really want to look at is the different ways that the ability to commit violence is used by different characters, and what we, the audience can read from that as a representation of other characteristics. If you even do a quadrangle of Buffy/Faith/Aeryn/Starbuck you have two young girls, and two adult women with similar skills and very different responses to these skills. And putting Xena in there would be interesting. Xena/Gabrielle is much more like John/Aeryn in terms of coming towards a center from opposite ends of a continuum, but I'd need to seriously think about what the ability to commit violence represents in Xena because I have no anaylitical brain for that show whatsoever.

Now, if the essay were on female rage, I could totally compare Faith and Veronica:)

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I've been doing a lot of thinking about Doctor Who lately, and there are two obvious examples here, Leela and Ace.

Ace initially uses violence more in the Buffy vein; she's a teenage girl (between sixteen and eighteen during her tenure) whose violence, and homemade explosives, become a way of surviving her world and her adolescence. And she really embraces it in a way that neither Buffy nor Faith do, in that Buffy considers it an unwelcome and abnormal part of the job she does and Faith loves it a little too much, it turns her into a killer without much sense of right and wrong; neither of them shows a side of teenage female violence that's... healthy, inherently self-regulated without a repudiation of it, and, strangely, Ace's is that. Her use of violence originally sprung from being close to the victims of violent racism, like the explosion of an equally violent righteous anger, and that's often how she uses it - I was watching "The Happiness Patrol" recently, where, upon learning that the woman in front of her enjoyed killing people on behalf of an oppressive regime, she launched herself at this woman in completely un-thought-out desire to avenge the weak, and was only barely held back by the Doctor, who promises her that together they'll make these people regret what they're doing every bit as much as Ace wants.

In "Ghostlight", they revisit a house she burned down as a kid, because she was angry about her friend dying after her house was firebombed by skinheads, but it turns out something more sinister had once happened there, so her violence isn't portrayed as just a blind lashing out against evil, but an active response to it. In "Silver Nemesis", the Doctor makes it clear that he gives her the "don't be violent and do dangerous things like make or carry explosives" talk on a regular basis and yet also that he fully expects her to, that it's part of their being a team. When he uses the disapproving adult voice to say that of course she wouldn't so something as insanely stupid as carry her homemade exlosives after he told her not to, she replies that of course she wouldn't carry explosives, she's a good girl, and in the very next line, the Doctor asks her for some of the explosives she's not carrying, which she promptly digs out of her bag so they can blow up a Cyberman ship together. And in "Remembrance of the Daleks", he soups up her baseball bat into a "With the power of ancient Timelords!" baseball bat as a present for her, which she later uses to take on a trio of Daleks, so he neither expects nor wants her to be helpless - in little ways, despite not approving of violence in general, he supports her empowerment through violence, when she doesn't lose her head over it. She even meets the Doctor as a result of an accident with her homemade explosives, so for her, it becomes her path into this transformative life and away from all the hurtful and dangerous things in her childhood. In her final episode, "Survival", although she's been growing up over that past year and becoming less headstrong, she undergoes a transformative process on an alien planet that... in many ways, integrates her violence into her more adult self. The planet starts turning her into a hunter, one of a tribe of cats who hunt and actually have rather sensual ideas on violence and the chase and the kill, and it's a much more controlled and reasoned yet entirely integral role for violence. (There is, by the way, much more rite of passage stuff going on in this episode - it's the first visit to her home town in the modern day, and her childhood friends have been disappearing, so it's very much a story about what was left behind, what she's carried with her, and what she's grown past, even in a more mundane sense.) In the end, she escapes the planet before the change is permanent, but it's clear that she took some of it with her and doesn't want to leave it behind, and the Doctor approves; he tells her that experience makes people grow and it'll always stay with her.

(continued)

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

So, for her, violence changes from the righteous rage of a vulnerable teenage girl in a threatening world, and becomes something that's a quieter, more smoothly incorporated part of her power as the woman she's becoming. It's very much portrayed as her empowerment and her source of growth, even next to one of the most anti-violence characters on TV, and it's portrayed as actually a very positive part of her, especially as she grows to be more in control of it.

Ace: I felt like I could run forever, like I could smell the wind and feel the grass under my feet, and just run forever.
Doctor: The planet's gone, but it lives on inside you, and it always will.


Leela shows less growth in her use of violence, because she starts out as someone who uses violence as a tool, as part of her identity, already. (Well, and also, I've only seen a couple of her episodes recently, so I can't talk about them so much, to everyone's relief.) :) She's a hunter from a primitive tribe descended from astronauts gone native, so for her, it's very much a case of it being a tool she was raised to use. The technological world occasionally baffles her, but the world where men and women can be sized up at a glance and stopped with a good kick or a well-thrown knife never does - in the scene were she first meets a robot (in an episode where much is made of the Uncanny Valley effect, where humanoids that aren't human seem inherently creepy to people), she's thrown for a second, although it quickly turns into annoyance that they're just so damn hard to kill, but as soon as a human man walks into the room, even though she's being restrained by the robot, she's in charge, and gives the ship's captain a kick that sends him flying across the room. It's her area of competency versus the Doctor, I think, where he's not really very physical, more sort of a scientist, but in this area she can best him and show her strengths in the stories, and truly share that lead role with him. (He disapproves of killing, of course, and probably manages to save a few lives from her, but really not too many. Her body count is still pretty high. The other particularly interesting thing about her relationship with the Doctor, which is not entirely violence-related, is that she was raised to think that the Doctor was the equivalent of the devil, so she essentially gets kicked out of her tribe, hooks up with the devil, shrugs and decides he's not so bad and, besides, what's a few more heresies, and they end up getting along amazingly well. So, ultimately, he's not all that interested in changing her, despite a few half-hearted attempts, and it wouldn't be so easy for him if he did, she was pretty independent in judgment.)

(I was actually writing about Leela this morning. She was a character created by the Blake's 7 script editor who, despite not really appearing to be a feminist, nonetheless had a habit in the 1970s of writing some amazingly rounded, competent, realistic, and kickass women on a regular basis, characters who definitely hold their own and often best the men they shared stories with. He modeled her on Emma Peel, the original kickass female lead, and Leila Khaled, a famous Palestinian militant of the time, whom she was also named for - which in 1970s Britain, in the middle of a crisis with the IRA, was pretty damn daring, and he's lucky it didn't get out back then.)

So for Leela, it was a tool, it was a way of holding her own both in the story and on a meta-level. It's not rage, it's utilitarian. She protects herself, she protects the Doctor, she protects the things she believes in, she protects the people they meet in their travels. Her growth is mainly shown in other ways, like education and learning to relate to this wide and technological universe and how to hold her own with the highly advanced people in it. (She's the one companion who elects, and is allowed, to stay on Gallifrey when she leaves the Doctor - she essentially marries into the Timelords. So despite the very primitive background she comes from, the tools she takes with her are good and adaptable ones.)

Leela: Discussion is for the wise or the helpless and I am neither.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

As I said before, the more I think about it, the real problem is that Veronica is John not Aeryn (proving once again, that John's so the girl). Hee.

[elishavah.livejournal.com]

So, you're really talking more about violence as the primary point of empowerment? Is that the line re: which characters are part of the discussion? Because if you're going to rule out Veronica, I'm not sure I know whether you would allow Scully, and yet I'd argue that violence (hand to hand, and with weapons) is as much of a tool for Scully as her education is. She falls somewhere between Aeryn and Veronica, I suppose.

What about Kara Thrace, or Sam Carter, or Teyla? Again, violence as tools for those, but not primary. Teyla is sort of where Aeryn is. Sam is a little more where Scully is. Kara is...more controlled than Faith, but has definite rage/emotional issues.

And then there's Sydney. Who is about where Buffy is on the continuum, I'd say.

::shrugs:: Just throwing stuff out there.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

you know, your comment here violence as the primary point of empowerment raises an important facet of this issue for me. Which is this: why must it be through violence that women are empowered?? Because that buys into all sorts of socio-political models that are troubling at best (patriarchal and capitalistic come to mind, confrontation as the only solution is certainly at the core of this). It makes me wonder if these so-called "empowering" shows (and on that level, I think I can transcend Cranky's concern over comparing apples and brocolli) really just reinscribe social models that themselves could perhaps be better tossed out and recreated.

And I am not even going to get into how issues of race, and stereotyping, and violence fit in....

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

That sort of presupposes that you accept violence as a male or patriarchal trait, and I'm not convinced that's true - there's too much violence inherent in female behavior across other species and even traditionally in humans, although that tends to be hidden and we find it shocking when it comes out (I'll never forget reading an article about archaeological and psychological studies showing that women are very likely instinctively programmed to commit infanticide under conditions that make it hard to give resources to raising a child, because it's so very contrary to the sense that it goes against the essence of being a mother, the height of depravity and insanity in a mother).

Isn't buying into the myth of the female peacemaker just as great a way, if not greater, to buy into the patriarchal model? Saying that the female is the peacemaker and it's enlightened isn't very different from saying the female is the peacemaker and it's weak; the role of women is still strongly delineated and reinforced along the same lines. What the patriarchal model doesn't really cover is the issue of the female in a leadership role other than peacemaker. And it's just as valid a response to conflict - conflict, I think, is not the solution but the problem. What does one do in response to conflict? Sometimes the best solution is peaceful, and sometimes it's violent. I wonder if dissuading women from violence when it's the best solution, or the tendancy to freeze up in or shrink from violent confrontation rather than accept it and handle it as what it is, can't be seen as what enables the patriarchal model...

[raithen.livejournal.com]

I tried NOT to say that violence was patriarchal - it isn't per se. And I totally agree that women's responses need to be allowed to be appropriate to the situation -- I didn't mean to imply a value judgement against women who are violent -- quite the contrary. I like to see empowered women who can respond to the situation they are in as is appropriate. But I DO think it is important to ask what the models are that we are following. On ALL levels. To consider the broader implications of these types of questions. Your response is an important contribution to the discussion - thanks!

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do think those are important questions to ask.

And - this is a tangential and rather nebulous thing in my head, so it's not reasoned well, but - are the details of the commission of violence unisex or gendered? Is a woman who's trained to react as men do, in a very male power structure, acting out a woman's role or an imitation of a man's role? It makes a difference to know whether those are her choices and her values, or if it's someone else's measuring stick she's living up to when she acts. (Which actually applies to training in a wider sense, I guess, not just in a gendered way.) What if her culture doesn't have the perception of that power structure as male, the way ours might? What about a woman who's untrained, is there something more genuinely female about that expression of violence? What about societies where the women are accepted as violent and men are not (or ancient prophecies where women are endowed with the violent role and men the passive one) - when is female violence saying something about women, and when is it saying something about men?

I think that successful use of violence is an empowerment, in the most literal way. There's always the question of whether it's an empowerment for the individual or for the social model that surrounds them. Aeryn's violence seems to me to be in large part an empowerment of the Peacekeeper social model, often at her own expense, until she sufficiently breaks with their social model to learn how to use it on her own terms and to her own ends. Buffy views her need to commit violence as a curse as much as an empowerment, because it's imposed on her - is that really empowerment of her or of the forces around her? I don't know. The answer in both cases is that it's probably some of both, and the argument can be made as to who ultimately ends up empowered most by their use of violence. In Buffy's case, I'd say she's actually pretty torn down and disempowered by her role; the dead white male Watchers win, and she loses. Which is a plot that's at odds with the allegory they were trying to write, about young women facing the difficulties of adolescence in an empowered way. In Aeryn's case, her violence is necessary for her own safety and that of the people around her, but she's not rewarded for it - she's rewarded for losing it, for learning to be softer and gentler, and ceding much of the role of Using Violence To Great Effect to a man. I would like to think she's empowered by her violence, but I'm not sure it's true, ultimately. And Faith, who actually enjoys violence, is shown to be evil for enjoying it; she thinks she's empowered, but the person who's empowered by Faith is the Mayor, while she mostly pays a price. So I think they're, all three, cases of women being shown to ultimately need social correction, to varying degrees, for their use of violence, and not deriving the benefits one would expect of empowerment. The question of who's being empowered there becomes a complex one.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

In Buffy's case, I'd say she's actually pretty torn down and disempowered by her role; the dead white male Watchers win, and she loses.

but in the end, she wins, by sharing her power. Sort of, anyway ;)

and the issue of social benefit vs. personal one is a complex one, as the sociologist Giddens and Bourdieu make clear. Because social benefits feed into personal ones and vice versa - it is a constant process of negotiation. And NONE of these are simple questions. But I am NOT playing theory girl today ;). Cuz my brain doesn't need to hurt more....

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Sort of. And then Spike comes along and saves her ass for love. :)

But, yeah, that negotiation does make it tough to sort out the empowerment of the individual, of the society, and when those to things feed each other and when they conflict. And that doesn't always have much bearing on what the violence depicted is a metaphor for, whether it's a metaphor for a tool or for a reaction to vulnerability or for rage, or so on. I mean, there's an issue of how useful it is for this specific discussion to even get into that, probably. :)

[raithen.livejournal.com]

gah. Spike. I blocked that part out.

*la la la la*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Not even violence as empowerment. Although I think for both Faith and Buffy, it has an element of that. Violence, for them, represents a type of power that girls very rarely have. Their rage tends to be internal, tends to be leveled in jockeying for power, not expressed externally, and that makes them more vulnerable than boys who are given leave, if not permission, to strike out with their fists.

But the violence carries with it adult responsability. I'd say you can equate their violence to sexual power as well.

Argh. I wish I knew more about SGA so I could add Teyla in, and Sam and Scully would be on a similar continuum. Violence is a potential tool for them, but rarely the first one they'll reach for, and it's not hand to hand physical violence. It's violence at the end of a gun or a bomb or something explosive. It's violence one step removed.

Sydney. Oy. Sydney is id where the violence is concerned. Everything else shuts off. She'd actually be a great one to add to the continuum, because she is absolutely two personalities - the ass kicker and the proto-typical "girl" and never the twain shall meet, unless it's crying at the office which is every other woman I know's worst nightmare.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Actually, the more I think about this, the more I think that Doctor Who, sporadically early on, but especially in the last couple of years, really celebrated female violence as one of the parts of female strength and sensuality, in both the heroes and villains. (Well; I think what the celebrated was the combination of violence and honor/honesty, that was portrayed as a very positive and sensual thing in both heroes and villains. There were some villains where violence and sexuality were linked, but with self-delusion or dishonesty, and that didn't go so well. The difference as they showed it was very much one of having that inner voice to listen to, to differentiate right and wrong, being in control and not being in control, before it was too late, and that was an inherent part of both sexuality and violence going right for the women involved.)

So that gives you episodes where Jean, Phyllis, and Ace all went down to swim at Maiden's Point ("Everyone knows what girls who go there want!"), Jean and Phyllis are forbidden to go and Ace is just told to be careful, and Ace the one who has the sense to walk away when things seem wrong while the other two are goading each other to go further. And that allegory on following one's feelings (and on the results of differing sex education styles) casts the die for how all three of them use their sexuality and violence when the craziness hits. Ace uses her sexuality to avoid having to use violence and to bond with someone on her side, while Jean and Phyllis use theirs as a prelude to violence. (It's actually a rather complicated story on many fronts, with an amazing amount of thematic arcs criss-crossing it, so I don't pretend I fully understand what it's saying on burgeoning teenage sexuality. I confess, I often get distracted by the larger issues of faith and love and hope and the shades of gray that exist in place of the black and white we were hoping for that seem to overshadow most of the story. But it does have vampires, the traditional teenage sexual metaphor, and teenage girls trying out aspects of their sexuality alongside of violence, so it's there, it's just a bit hidden in the rest. This may actually be the story where Ace starts pulling away from the instinctive, uncontrolled violence, and growing up a bit.)

And it gives you stories like "Battlefield", where, besides Ace, it's full of warrior women all around; the new Brigadier of UNIT, who's clearly admired and respected as a competent soldier (and, in the case of one male character who drops in from an alternate universe, very literally and effusively admired for her ability to use violence effectively, on him in particular... it doesn't sound like it'd be oddly charming, but it is), and the villain, Morgaine (of "of the Fee") fame, who's very exacting about honor in combat and honoring the other side's warriors, and ultimately, as she concedes in the end over using a tactic the Doctor convinced her was unworthy of her, it comes out that her drive for power, these battles against the other side, were, even though she perhaps hadn't known it, closely wrapped up in memories of once having a very pure love for the man who had once led the opposing force. (And, in the neutral-affiliation side, there's the cat hunter who mentors Ace - definitely not a hero, since she's killing kids from London regularly, but, as a wild animal, presented as being outside the morality of hero/villain - and who is mixing these seductive ideas of sensuality and violence and sisterhood.) So sensuality and violence all become very wrapped up in a lot of those later stories, all part of being a woman, a very internal-power-driven definition of femininity, which I find very fascinating - none of these women were admired for being beautiful or sexy or traditionally feminine, most weren't really those things, but they made themselves feminine and beautiful through inner strengths fed by both violence and sensuality. (It was actually a very interesting message to see as a young teen, when I saw these.)

[kernezelda]

Aeryn doesn't hit John anymore after LATP, does she? I can't recall. I do remember thinking in your story where she was arrested, that John shouldn't put up with her behavior there, 'cause that whole kicking him as he's trying to help her was just totally uncalled for. It really put me off feeling any sympathy for her.

[sugargroupie.livejournal.com]

She hits him in Twice Shy, but by that time she was under the influence of Talikaa.

[kernezelda]

*nods*

I was thinking about S2, and the last time I remember her trying to hit him was in LATP.

[sugargroupie.livejournal.com]

Ah, then yes you're correct. Not sure if LGM counts because her hitting him was in response to John trying to turn himself over to Scorpius again.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Arc wise, it's likely that she wouldn't hit him as a first resort. In that story, pissed off, and feeling helpless, it was a legitimate if uncalled for reaction. And he called her on it, and can take care of himself. He didn't put up with it, and she didn't repeat it.

[kernezelda]

Thinking about it a little more, I'm not sure I understand what you're looking for. Is it important that media show women using violence as easily as men? Or that it's an available outlet for women as it is for men? Isn't it important that women be shown as smart and capable without needing violence?

In Farscape, we see Aeryn learning to use her mind as John is learning to use violence, and the general consensus seems to be that they end up about evenly, tempered from rashness. I regret that John had to learn violence to survive, but I'm pleased that Aeryn was able to learn to use more than violence to meet her needs.

I don't think humanity can or should give up violence or aggression, or that pacifism is a particularly good trait for species survival should we encounter intelligent species inimical to our own. John lived in a world where violence wasn't necessary, but he had the capability to draw upon it.

I think it's absolutely necessary that we hold onto the ability to be aggressive and to be able to call upon violence, but also that we ensure we are wise enough to know when to do so, to be able to control it in ourselves and respond to it effectively in others.

Maybe more later, have to leave work right now.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

No, I'm just interested in looking at the portrayal of women using violence, and the different ways it's portrayed - the metaphors, the textual analysis of it as a characteristic, a tool, a trait. Something hated or embraced, something learned or inherent, something that is a product of rage and abuse or something that's part of upbringing, a skillset if you will.

I'm not looking to make a judgement call. I'm looking at the way the use of violence is portrayed, and what it might mean in the context of the shows and the characters and our current society.

[kernezelda]

Oh. I'm more given to practical interest than metatextual. I like seeing a woman who can use many options and not be limited because some of them aren't 'feminine', like Scully's science and her gun, or Ripley's using the flamethrower, or Aeryn's swinging down a rope.

I mean, she swings down on ropes twice in the series, and how Batman is that?

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee. But I like the metatextual. I miss my days of lit crit:) And agreed. I like watching these women with a bag of tools at their disposal:)

[suslikesturtles.livejournal.com]

Can I just throw Serenity's River into the pot? Mainly because her fight sequences are some of my favourite on-screen ass-kicking moments.

However, I'm not sure how her character fits the violence - empowerment/solution to vulnerability theory. She uses violence when a) she has to defend herself or others, but also b) because she has been fitted with a subconscious response to a certain trigger, which, when activated, seemingly makes her roundhouse-kick everyone in the vicinity.

She has been trained to fight by others - does that mean it's not her that needs to overcome the vulnerability we assume because she's but a chit of a girl? If it's someone else who gives her the potential for violence and takes away the choice to use it or not by that trigger thing ... Wait, maybe this is too science fiction-y for this discussion.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that River doesn't choose to use violence, and she's not portrayed as a violent or angry person. So she uses her power when she has to. Which is, basically, what they teach us in school, isn't it? Don't hit people unless you have to defend yourself?

Does this link in with the murder v manslaughter degrees of homicide in the justice system? I'm not sure how it works on the other side of the Atlantic, but in Germany, manslaughter is a type of violence that results in the death of someone by accident or through self-defence. Murder is premeditated and therefore much 'worse', i.e. resulting in a longer prison sentence. Again choice v no choice to use violence... But like I said, I don't know if it's the same over there so I might talking out of my backside.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I like putting River into this equation because the violence was programmed, was given to her without choice and she has to figure out what to do with it.

It's empowering, but it's stripped her of so many other things that she didn't want gone.

Maybe not what you expected...

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

...but I'm going to throw it out there anyway.

the theory is that for characters like Buffy and Faith, the violence is a way of giving them a type of power that represents their "response", their solution to the vulnerability of being a teenage girl.

I say, no. Violence is power over other people. In many cases - particularly in the case of Faith - it is a demonstration of failure to demonstrate power over self.

Yes, it could be a response. But it is a depowering response, not an enabling one.

Also, violence is not rage. The two are not co-equal.

The point is, women don't belong in combat. Neither do men. There is nothing wrong with being the sort of person who has never had reason to learn to throw a proper punch.

And that last came from a man who had beaten the shit out of a great number of other people.

Unfortunately, we live in a fairly frakked up world. One where violence is used against other people, and must be met by violence in the defense of others.

Not of self. Not to attain what one wants. Not as a demonstration of "power".

If we want to talk about violence as a tool to get things done, okay. But if we speak of beating the shit out of people or things as an acceptable - as an admirable - way for women - and girls - to reach their goals, then we must grant the same acceptance to the methods used by men. And I don't see that happening.

Maybe examples later. I got fic to write.

- hg

Re: Maybe not what you expected...

[raithen.livejournal.com]

wow. I came back to this thread, because it was still on my mind, and troubling me. thanks for this addition -- it cuts neatly to the heart of some of what I was trying to say above.

and frakked up world, indeed. *sigh*