For those who don't know the term, you've definitely seen it before: a damsel in distress is a female character in a piece of literature or media in trouble that has a male hero (usually the main protagonist) come to her rescue. It's common in fairytales, like the prince saving Rapunzel from the tower and Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty" waking up from her curse-induced eternal sleep by the prince's kiss. |
I don't disagree that female characters today are far more often represented as heroic and capable of saving themselves than they used to be (I say "more often" because Princess Leia has been around since 1977). There are plenty of examples.
But the damsel is still around. She's just harder to see under her badass mask. I see damsels and other forms of sexism underneath the surface layer of strong female characters a lot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (often abbreviated as "MCU"). So without further ado, it's time for me to go full feminist nerd.
Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, a technology inventing and distributing company owned by Tony Stark a.k.a. Ironman, is always assertive when she needs to be and always on top of her game when it comes to handling business. And in this way, her character is done justice in Ironman and Ironman 2.
Ironman 3, which focuses a lot on Tony Stark's PTSD after traveling into a wormhole and falling out of it in The Avengers (boy, that must sound really weird if you haven't seen the movie), Pepper becomes the woman Tony is desperate to protect... even though he sort of gives his address to the terrorist he's up against. I mean, like, straight up says his address on live TV.
Listen, Tony, I know you were pissed off at the reporters and all, nobody likes Paparazzi, but really?
Pepper is also captured by the main antagonist near the end of the movie, whose life he tries to use to bribe Tony Stark into helping him by injecting her with a substance called Extremis that he wants Tony to help him fix the problems with.
Later, after she falls from a high spot it seems like she dies, she comes back temporarily super-powered from the Extremis, and kills the villain. I used to use Tumblr really often, and there are gifs all over the place with this scene, and others with Marvel's women, with feminist captions plastered on them, like "fight like a girl" or "here's to female empowerment." But Pepper coming back and killing the villian doesn't erase the fact that she was used as fuel for the plot and Tony Stark's motivation and despair.
And let's take a look at one of the posters advertising this movie.
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| Looks like a damsel to me... |
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In the first one, Thor, Thor is banished from his home, a realm called Asgard, by his father for seeking out war with creatures called Frost Giants from the realm of Jotunheim after they interrupt the ceremony crowning him king by attempting to steal a powerful object called the Tesseract (Ugh. Don't you hate it when that happens?). You see, before Thor went over to Jotunheim, his dad was all, "It's cool, man, chill. Don't worry about it, it was just a couple, we have a truce with them, they're not really gonna fuck with us." But then Thor decided it was a good idea to piss them off and attacked. So he was banished, and deemed unworthy of his hammer, a.k.a. his super duper powerful weapon, a.k.a. kind of the thing that makes him Thor.
When he falls to Earth, Jane Foster, a scientist, is driving her van with her intern Darcy and partner Erik chasing this crazy storm signal, even though her partner was like, "We're not storm chasers, we're astronomers." She hits Thor with her van, and Jane, Darcy, and Erik all get out to make sure he's alright. He starts screaming about how they shouldn't attack him because he's Thor! Son of Odin! Jane, Darcy, and Erik think he's crazy, and Darcy tazes him.
They then put Thor in a mental hospital, but he escapes. And then he’s walking around, annnnd Jane backs up in the van and hits him again. So she brings him to the apartment she shares with Darcy and Erik and later on, this spy organization called SHIELD shows up and steals all of Jane’s work because they found the hammer in New Mexico, and nobody could even budge it, so it’s considered a mysterious object that they have to investigate, and Jane has all the data on the storm that happened the night and the place the hammer fell.
But guess who gets all of Jane’s work back? Thor! And then Jane and Thor sit by the fire at night and bond. By the end of the movie, which is after just like, 2 and a half days, Jane is totally in love with Thor. When it comes to fighting the villain at the end of the movie, though, Jane doesn’t do anything.
In the second movie, Thor: The Dark World, the conflict starts all because Jane somehow encounters this powerful substance Aether, and it gets into her body and she’s in pain, and she slowly starts dying… until Thor goes on a journey to get it out, and then save the world from being enveloped in darkness by the dark evles! There’s a bunch of lovey-dovey scenes between Thor and Jane. So she’s used, like Pepper, as fuel for the plot, and to make Thor more heroic.
They then put Thor in a mental hospital, but he escapes. And then he’s walking around, annnnd Jane backs up in the van and hits him again. So she brings him to the apartment she shares with Darcy and Erik and later on, this spy organization called SHIELD shows up and steals all of Jane’s work because they found the hammer in New Mexico, and nobody could even budge it, so it’s considered a mysterious object that they have to investigate, and Jane has all the data on the storm that happened the night and the place the hammer fell.
But guess who gets all of Jane’s work back? Thor! And then Jane and Thor sit by the fire at night and bond. By the end of the movie, which is after just like, 2 and a half days, Jane is totally in love with Thor. When it comes to fighting the villain at the end of the movie, though, Jane doesn’t do anything.
In the second movie, Thor: The Dark World, the conflict starts all because Jane somehow encounters this powerful substance Aether, and it gets into her body and she’s in pain, and she slowly starts dying… until Thor goes on a journey to get it out, and then save the world from being enveloped in darkness by the dark evles! There’s a bunch of lovey-dovey scenes between Thor and Jane. So she’s used, like Pepper, as fuel for the plot, and to make Thor more heroic.
And yet, again, Tumblr users consider Jane a strong female character, because she can do science and stuff!
Now it's time to get into Agents of SHIELD, which I think probably gets the most praise for its strong female characters.
The show is about Phil Coulson and his team of agents taking care of superpowered or alien threats. The team changes every so often over the 4 seasons, with an old member leaving and new ones coming in. But there’s always a good portion of female characters. There are also a lot of characters outside the team praised for being strong women.
As “badass” as all the women are, they all fit the beauty standard. Sure, they kick ass, but they have to look beautiful.
Unlike any of the male characters, for instance, Daisy, the lead character of the show, is often shown mostly or completely nude (even though she’s always covered by something, as the show has a PG-13 rating) – and it’s never necessary.
Before Daisy is an agent, she’s supposed to be assisting SHIELD find the leader of a hacking group she used to be a part of, called “the Rising Tide.”
But she abandons the mission part of the way through to meet up with the leader. It turns out he’s her ex-boyfriend Miles.
There’s a scene of the two kissing, and it cuts to a scene where she’s in her underwear and a bra, looking for her top.
Agent May finds her in the middle of searching, holding the top. At this point, the bond Daisy was beginning to develop with the team of agents had vanished.
Why not just show Daisy having a discussion with Miles, where Agent May overhears her saying she’s considering re-joining the Rising Tide or asking for help in escaping SHIELD? It’d cause the same lack of trust.
Later in the show, she wakes up on an Inhuman (the type of alien she turns out to be) safehaven, undergoing acupuncture, and we get a close-up of her laying in bed nude.
Season 4 opens up with several shots showing Daisy getting dressed. It’s not an unusual or inherently bad way to start the new season, as the end of Season 3 marked her transformation into a vigilante and she has a new look to represent it. But in first shot we see her pull her underwear over a bare butt cheek – and it’s a close up.
In an episode where we are shown an alternate reality, we see separately where each of the major characters are.
Agent Coulson is shown writing on a chalkboard in a classroom. Agent Mack is shown carrying out a child’s bike out of a garage. Agent Fitz is shown wearing sunglasses and an expensive jacket, getting out of a car.
But how does the show introduce the life of Daisy Johnson in this alternate reality? She gets out of the bathtub.
None of the male characters who you could say are attractive (like Ward) have their appearance presented in such a way.
Skye’s mother is also shown in the beginning of Season 2 to be a strong leader, and then her characterization is butchered so she becomes the villain. She tries to kill Daisy, who is saved by her father, who started out as a murderous psychopath.
There’s also a storyline where Ward falls in love with a woman named Kara, brainwashed by HYDRA, and later blames SHIELD for her death, then shoots Kara because he thinks it’s May, but it really turns out to be Kara with a tech mask of May’s face (It’s wild, I know). Then he blames Coulson, and the really strong and badass leader of another agency who he falls in love with, Rosalind Price, is killed by Ward to avenge Kara. And then Coulson gets pissed and kills Ward to avenge the love of his life!
I love Marvel, but let’s stop praising it for its “strong women.”
-Olivia Biel
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