12 July 2006 - 6:06pm
Disappointment in the dark: Superman and Pirates of the Caribbean
This is not a movie review, but a general complaint. Is it possible we're living in the 21st century? Not judging by the stories we're telling, which recycle the same staid gender roles. I'm taking about the summer blockbuster movies Superman and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
I was pretty disappointed with the characters written for women in both films. This is not an indictment of either Kate Bosworth or Keira Knightley (Superman and Pirates, respectively). I'm sure both actors were doing the best they could with the material they had. But have you ever seen a worse Lois Lane? I didn't feel she was a crack reporter, driven to nail a story down - she seemed to be there as the damsel in distress. Yes, Margot Kidder fulfilled the same role in the Superman film of 1978, but at least there were gestures towards her career: the balcony scene where she gets out her pad and pencil for the scoop on Superman, and the general indication that she had drives and desires, and led an autonomous life.
In fact, having recently viewed Superman: The Movie, I was stunned by a scene I'd forgotten: there's a long sequence where Superman and Lois Lane fly above Metropolis at night, just after the balcony scene mentioned above. The audience gain access to Lane's thoughts during an unrushed monologue where she muses on what is unfolding before her. This places the whole audience in sympathy with Lane, and places our subjectivity squarely on a female character's shoulders.
I got the sense from the 2006 Superman script that it could've cared less what Kate Boswell's thoughts were, or what drove her, besides the socially sanctioned love for her child. Speaking of child - how boring is it to have her kid be male? For God's sake, at least take a bit of a risk and make the child female - that way we would've had more interesting ideas raised about gender and the whole "superman" mythology. But, no - they had to keep that whole Christian Father/Son thing chugging along.
In Pirates, there's a wonderful moment where Keira Knightly, as Elizabeth Swann, is aiming a gun at some barrels of gunpowder. You think - yes! - they've given her some action, something interesting to do. But the inclusion of her fiance on the barrels, along with a swaying boat which, in her female incompetence, she is unable to contend with, means that the satisfaction of blasting the Kraken's tentacles is left to the ever-shaky Johnny Depp. Yawn, sigh. Well, what was I thinking - they'd let the female character actually do something?
The Pirates script even has a promising set-up where Swann has to disguise herself as a sailor and work on a ship incognito. The writers could've taken this in any number of interesting ways, having fun with the role reversal, undermining gender expectations, etc. But her passing as a male member of crew is left largely unexplored. Disappointing.
Am I too optimistic about gender roles crumbling in this new century? Hollywood seems stuck in reverse with its unexamined assumptions about men and women, endlessly recycling the same old stories…
Blur penned these lyrics in 1995:
This is the next century
Where the universal's free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future's been soldEvery night we're gone
And to karaoke songs
How we like to sing along,
Though the words are wrongIt really really really could happen
Yes it really really really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you
Well just let them go
I share Blur's thinly-veiled skepticism. Chances are, the plum roles will continue to be written with men in mind, until more women move into directing and producing. Then maybe we'll have a fighting chance of having complex, interesting leading ladies: in short, humans, not cardboard characters.
It really really really could happen.
Lyrics: Blur, "The Universal", The Great Escape
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Comments
if only you realized how little people cared.
...from one of our most enlightened minds, apparently. Whatever indeed....
You know, the stuff that attracts the Therons and Jovoviches and Beckinsdales and Jolies -- the Jane Austen movies of scifi action! :p
This is a poorly written article. The writer does not even know the name of this summer's blockbuster pirates movie. Its not curse of the black perl, its dead man's chest. Just a point to show the obvious lack of research on the writers part.
This is an off-topic comment that points at a minor detail and claims that somehow discredits the thesis of the post. Just a point to show the obvious lack of yarbles on the commenter's part.
The topic strike a little too close to home, minir4?
Minir4 has the tact of a baboon, but he/she/it does raise a point.
When assaying cultural commentary, it does pay to check details.
In a recent column in the DC Examiner, Herbert London criticized the new Superman for being too politically correct and drifting from his roots. I wasn't incredibly sympathetic toward his thesis to begin with, but he lost me with this sentence:
As we all know, Superman did not come to Gotham. He came to Metropolis. Yes, it's a small, picayune detail, but it significantly discredited London's commentary, as it betrayed a lack of knowledge about Superman.
When a writer undertakes cultural criticism, that writer implicitly asserts a knowledge of the criticized subject matter. When that person errs as London and Duck have, that writer undermines his or her thesis.
--|PW|--
If you'd like to see some of the worst depiction of women in fantasy, try Robert Newcomb's The Fifth Sorceress, which features a quartet of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL LESBIAN SORCERESSES.
Blech.
--|PW|--
I disagree with your analysis of Lois Lane's role in Superman Returns. While this version of Lois Lane was not an ideal, she is nevertheless a stronger character than you give her credit for.
You write:
I disagree with this contention. To start with, I will admit that I found Lois Lane's status as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist questionable. Her failure to stand up to her boss and really fight for the stories she believed in -- the power failure, interviewing Lex Luthor -- struck me as unrealistic. Any reporter who has driven hard enough to win one of journalism's top prizes would be far more insistent about "her" story than Lois was.
However, a couple mitigating factors come into play.
First, notice that Lois Lane adamantly refuses the role that Perry White tries to thrust her into. While Perry White virtually instructs Lois Lane to sit on a rooftop with a flimsy negligee so that Superman flies by, she steadfastly refuses to do so.
Second, Lois Lane also pursues her story, even placing herself in likely physical jeopardy so that she can unravel the mystery of the EMP. Granted, this bid ends with her as a damsel in distress, but she got there by being a proactive journalist. And when she gets in trouble, she uses subterfuge to send a message to somebody who can help her. Damsel in distress? Yes. Helpless damsel? No. To my eye, the character did what she could in that situation, given that she was on a boat, held prisoner by Lex Luthor and his goons.
Also, what should one make of Lois Lane's actions after her rescue? Rather than fly to safety with her boyfriend, she forces him to turn around so that they can rescue a kryptonite-afflicted Superman from a nearly certain death. On the one hand, you could argue that she's adhering to the societal expectation that she stand by her man, be subservient, etc. On the other hand, you can also argue that she is undertaking heroic measures to aid one that she loves -- a sentiment that is noble, regardless of the genders of the individuals involved.
Kate Bosworth's incarnation of Lois Lane lacks the hard-bitten attitude that Margot Kidder brought to the role in Donner's Superman, but she is hardly a wilting flower or Superman's arm ornament. Throughout the movie, she is a self-actualized individual who takes effectively controls her own life and career.
You also write:
I came away with a different impression. First, we need to stipulate that love for one's offspring is not merely "socially sanctioned" but also a desirable trait that is part and parcel of being a good parent.
Second, it's worth noting that, while we are not as privy to her thoughts as we are to Superman's, we still gain significant insight into her evolving mentality through her actions and through her writing. We get a very good sense, for example, of her mixed emotions at Superman's return from Krypton's ruins. We also see that she hasn't really made the "Jason or Superman" decision yet -- indeed, she still seems to be mulling it at the end of the movie, when superman (nee Superstalker) advises her he's "always around."
Finally, I have to say that I found Bosworth's portrayal of Lois unconvincing. In my lifetime, Lois Lane has generally been depicted as harder-edged than the uber-nice Clark Kent/Superman, a career woman who, while she has a softer side, nevertheless has the steel that makes for an investigative reporter. Margot Kidder and even Teri Hatcher projected that hard edge; Bosworth, in my opinion, fails to do so.
--|PW|--
I would admit that Keira Knightly/Elizabeth Swann isn't a femminest icon of power, but that's only cause we live in a post-Buffy the Vampire World. Keira fights well with a sword, chops up some pirate henchmen, pull the ghost con on the ship. Sure she turns suddenly helpless with the gun, and does this fake fainting thing that everyone ignores. But all and all she's an action hero. Its just she's not up to Xena/Laura Croft standards of super-badassness.