【新政治家 20130815】我讨厌强悍的女性角色

满仓

【中文标题】我讨厌强悍的女性角色
【原文标题】I hate Strong Female Characters
【登载媒体】新政治家
【原文作者】SOPHIA MCDOUGALL PUBLISHED
【原文链接】http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters


谢洛克•福尔摩斯聪明、孤独、令人厌烦、放荡不羁、异想天开、勇敢、忧郁、控制狂、神经质、爱慕虚荣、邋遢、过分挑剔、风雅、彬彬有礼、粗鲁、一个博学的天才，而女性角色只能是强悍。


佩佩•波兹在《钢铁侠3》中的剧照。

我讨厌强悍的女性角色。

有人原意花不少的时间在网上抱怨，影视剧中缺少足够的女性主角，这看起来就像是脑子有问题的人说的话。

当然，我喜欢所有那些表现出强韧和勇气精神的女性角色。我喜欢看到当安吉尔夺走了巴菲的武器和朋友之后，问她你还剩下什么时，巴菲举起他的剑说“还有我”的样子（译者注：《吸血鬼猎人》中的情节）。在《卧虎藏龙》中，我喜欢章子怡扮演的玉娇龙被问到她是否与周润发扮演的李慕白有关系时，她轻蔑地说“他是我手下败将”的样子。我喜欢简爱忍受着全世界对她自尊的伤害，说“我会照顾我自己”的样子。长久以来，让我无比绝望的是，影视产业似乎认为，全世界的观众都更喜欢一部浣熊作为超级英雄的电影，而不喜欢一部女性作为超级英雄的电影。

但是这句话“强悍的女性角色”总是让我感到不舒服，而且还有源源不断的创作让更多的女性角色去迎合这种形象。

我记得有一次和我妈妈一起看《怪物史莱克》。

我说：“公主会功夫，太好了。”但我有一种不安的感觉，就是那种我似乎就应该说这句话的感觉。

她翻了翻眼睛：“现在所有的公主都会功夫。”

从来没人问过一个男性角色是否“强悍”，是否“好斗”、“粗暴”。

显而易见的理由是他被默认为“强悍的”，人们之所以推崇“强悍的女性角色”是因为这是反常的现象。不管什么人，当他们吹嘘一个主角的爱情观是强悍女性角色时，都会说：“别担心，一般的女人都比较弱小、无趣、成不了什么大事，但是这个女人不同。她很强悍，看，她一拳揍在那个人的脸上。”有时候人们会说“不是传统的绝望主妇”这句话，似乎流行文化中女主角的形象尚未脱离迪斯尼的《白雪公主》的时代，又好像很大一部分SFC根本不需要别人来搭救。

的确是这样，但事实并非仅仅如此。

最受我们喜爱的男性主角都是“强悍的男性角色”吗？换句话说，谢洛克•福尔摩斯强悍吗？从某种意义上说，是的，当然强悍。他为了追求正义，勇敢面对危险和死亡。但是从另一个意义上说，他的体能并不可靠——状态好的时候可以掰弯一根拨火棍，但经常需要华生来帮助解围，至少有一次他无意中落入被动的环境，都不敢反击。他的智力和情绪水平也起伏不定。就像一个心情抑郁的瘾君子，他有一次说他打击犯罪的行为是一种自我治疗的方式。从这个角度来看，他敢于让自己置身于危险中或许根本不是因为他的强壮，而是一种自残。换个角度，或许他的脆弱让他变得更加强大，因为尽管面对身边的诸多威胁，他还是可以在全身而退的同时把罪犯绳之以法。

谢洛克•福尔摩斯强悍吗？答案肯定不是“当然”，这个问题本身就是错的。

如果把其它有代表性的男主角强塞进理想中的“强悍男性角色”盒子里，会怎么样呢？部分角色或许会比较合适，但更多显然属于格格不入的行列，他们肯定无法适应这种有局限性的糟糕定义。他们习惯的是超越单一标准，呈现出多样性的表现方式。

“我当然很强悍，我是理想中的力量代表。但是更有趣的一点是，在内心里，我其实是个不善交际的小艺术家。”美国队长害羞地说。

詹姆斯•邦德懒散地倚着一个邮筒，查看着自己的袖口：“如我说自己其实是个变态，这算是强悍吗？”

蝙蝠侠近乎歇斯底里地宣称他完全适合“强悍的男性角色”盒子，但是那里容不下他的蝙蝠耳朵和斗篷，他还不愿意把它们摘掉。

神秘博士发现这个盒子内部的空间更加狭小，咕哝了几句后跑开了。

能舒舒服服躺在盒子里的角色往往都是令人乏味的人群，希曼、超人（抱歉）、独行侠，或许还有杰克•雷恩，以及那些粗制滥造的小说和《男孩私报》中被遗忘世界里的方下巴的男主角。如果“强悍的男性特征”是塑造英雄的主要标准，那么虚幻文学世界该多么枯燥啊。但就是在这个让人产生幽闭恐惧症的小盒子里，我们期望女主角可以长盛不衰。

还是让我们回到谢洛克•福尔摩斯。更恰当的一个问题应该是“谢洛克•福尔摩斯是什么样的一个人？”

他聪明、孤独、令人厌烦、放荡不羁、异想天开、勇敢、忧郁、控制狂、神经质、爱慕虚荣、邋遢、过分挑剔、风雅、彬彬有礼、粗鲁、一个博学的天才。

在这一长串形容词中再加上一个“强悍”，我觉得也算不上增色。

何不让我们也来看看那些与盒子格格不入的“主角”们？哈姆雷特算是“强悍”吗？在剧尾处，或许某种程度上他是强悍的，但那是一种非常特殊的、矛盾的强悍，通过付出生命的代价获得了永久的平和。理查二世是另一个极端，不但不“强悍”，而且绝对是个孱弱的角色，无论是作为普通人还是一个国王。但是从他软弱的嘴中，吟出了世界上最美丽的诗句，道出了有关帝王最复杂的思想。他没有力量，但是他有作用、有意义。整个故事的情节就是围绕他（往往是最糟糕）的决策所展开。从叙事的角度来看，作用比“力量”更加重要，它决定了一个角色是整个故事真正的中心，还是一个可有可无的配角。

除此以外，我们还没有考虑那种“强悍的女性角色”或许会与“强壮的黑人女性”陈腐观念重叠时的情景，力量的神化不但会破灭，而且会带来伤害。

查克•文丁格认为，我们应当按照“强悍”字面上的意思去理解，而是某种类似于“做得不错”的含义。但我的确不相信大部分作家和读者会这样理解。我们怎么解释《指环王》的编剧（蹩脚地）决定让书中阿尔温这个角色在屏幕上闲逛，把剑架在她男朋友的脖子上，吹嘘自己是怎样悄悄接近过来的？（丽芙•泰勒后来意识到“要让她强悍，根本不需要把剑放到她的手里”。）保罗•费格为什么还要表明《最爆伴娘团》中那些复杂、有趣的女主角其实一个个都弱爆了？

即使公众普遍认可这种更宽泛的“强悍女性角色”定义，那么就世界上一半人口的特性而言，再创作被当成一种令人印象深刻但可有可无的行为，难道不是更悲惨、更不可理解的事情吗？

当然，也有那么一些角色在塑造的过程中明显带有强悍女性角色的印记，但他们至少算是一半的栩栩如生。《美国队长》中的佩吉•卡特和《钢铁侠》中的佩佩•波兹是漫威中最受关注的角色。佩吉打纳粹，她从不需要美国队长或任何人来拯救和保护。她的出镜时间够长，影片并没有深入挖掘她作为一名英国女性士兵在二战中有趣的身份，而是暗示了她波澜壮阔的背景故事和坚强的性格特点，即使她与美国队长之间的浪漫情节也没有削弱这一点。尽管她的角色明显是男性主角的陪衬，但她并没有感觉到自己的表现限制了必要的发挥。我们有理由设想一部有关她的电影——一个女人下定决心，克服一切困难抗议纳粹。这个角色成功的另一个重要因素是，她的扮演者是优秀的海莉•阿特维尔。

她被要求向一队超级士兵候选人讲话，这个场景明显是为了树立佩吉的强悍女性形象。大致是这样的：一个候选士兵立即开始嘲笑她，先是侮辱她的口音，然后被叫出列之后，又发表了大男子主义的言论。

她一下子把他按倒在地。

后来她通过对话得知美国队长被另外一个女人吻过，那个女人在影片中的唯一任务就是和美国队长接吻。她表面上保持镇定，直到美国队长第一次展示他标志性的盾牌。当时他们还在讨论这究竟是个无坚不摧的武器，还仅仅是一个设计原型，佩吉突然向美国队长开枪，他不得不举起盾牌（感谢上帝，这玩意能挡子弹）来自卫。

这两个场景实在是荒唐可笑。

你可以说打到士兵那一拳是合理的，毕竟是战争期间，她没有时间耐心地和大男子主义者周旋，她必须要强力、迅速地树立自己的权威。但普通的口角在几秒钟时间里升级为肢体暴力冲突，很难想象男性角色以这种方式出场。第二个场景，假如说我们不考虑这部影片中“哈哈这个疯婆子”的搞笑色彩，更让人难以接受。毫无征兆地开枪射击你的心上人，而对方手里只有一个效力不明的盾牌（跳弹怎么办），只是因为你的嫉妒？还有别的原因吗？佩吉，你在搞什么？

这种让女性角色安之若素，但是让男性角色被认为是不可理喻（甚至嗜血如命）的行为，或许是一种不公平的照顾。但这些场景的确让我们看到，缺少对角色的尊重让她不得不用一些极端、卡通式的手段来应对。她似乎四面楚歌，做一些让男人都感到毛骨悚然的事情或许可以把她提升到他们的高度。编剧的确承认并且鞭笞这个角色在第一个场景中面对的性别歧视问题，但是他们并没有挑战这个性别歧视士兵的信念，也就是女性不属于那里，而且还在不断把更多的女性写到这个队伍中。至少不是那些有名有姓、有台词的女性角色。

我相信有人会说，这根本不可能，因为人们都知道二战就没有女人参与，这是其一。其二，德国女人在希特勒上台之前的科研已经非常先进。那么为什么艾斯金——用血清改变了史蒂夫•罗格斯的可悲德国科学家——不能为了影片而转换性别？霍华德•斯塔克——短暂出场的钢铁侠父亲，为什么他未来的妻子玛丽亚不能也在影片中露个面，哪怕是在打磨盔甲也好？为什么守护带有超自然能量的宇宙魔方的守卫必须是个男人？红骷髅就不能雇用几位邪恶女性为海德拉战斗吗？就像我们所说，如果人们把代表女性对抗大男子主义的重任放在佩吉所扮演的角色的肩头，那么她的行为只能被放大到足够补偿那些不能出场的女性的程度，因此那些夸张的表现也可以解释得通了。

强悍女性角色的存在，是因为有一些事情要去证明，她在一开始就被预设了弱势地位。她就像是《五伙伴历险记》中的乔治（译者注：英国著名儿童作家50年代的小说，讲述喜欢像男孩子一样冒险的女孩乔治和她的三个表兄妹的故事），在长大成人后依然喋喋不休地抱怨她缺少那种“像男孩子一样棒”的认同感。

当我分享这个观点时，人们提出了一些替代性的说法，虽然表达同一个意思，但范围似乎更广一些。比如，“有效的女性角色”？但这还不够彻底改变这句话的含义，这种微妙的改变依然保持了基本的意思，没有太大的意义。我们需要的是一个崭新的方式来解决这个问题，也就是要消除人们对于女性角色就应该是柔弱无力的印象。我们要努力消除这种陈腐的观念：小说中的大男子主义可以通过刻画单一强悍的女性来推翻，这样就可以完事大吉了。

反复谈论《美国队长》和《理查二世》似乎令人生厌，但我还是要再一次指出两个因素，它们在理查、邦德、美国队长和蝙蝠侠身上都有所体现，但是强悍的佩吉却没有。这是非常简单的因素，比“作用”更加初级。

1，理查是聚光灯下的人物。无论他多么脆弱、哀伤、悲观，他都是他娘的主角！

2，围绕理查的性别展现出非常复杂、多样的性格特点，所以他从来不需要担任男性的代表或者使者的责任。即使他被赶下王位、被监禁，他依然可以自由地表现自己。

做到第一点的女性少之又少，做到第二点的更是凤毛麟角。看看2010年影片《特工绍特》的演职员表，基本就是安吉莉娜•朱丽和其他男人。

现如今，公主们都会功夫，但她们还是公主。她们依然会落入爱情陷阱，依然是一帮男孩子中的女孩，依然是千篇一律。她们走上银幕，拳脚相加，证明自己不是吃白饭的，丢出一些俏皮话，强吻男人，因为被男人吻是弱者的行为。之后，带着妇人的谨慎退出叙事主线。

在海报上，她们永远站在男人的后面。在预告片里，她们或许会生气、微笑、大打出手，但永远没有台词。她们所展现出的强悍让她们短暂地吸引了观众的目光，但从未主导过剧情。这就是一个安慰剂、一个讨好的姿态、一个特洛伊木马，目的是让你分神、混淆，这样你才不会刨根问底。







我要提醒一下，讨论这些问题的目的并不是分析那些强悍、有效角色的古怪特点。其实问题并不复杂，但是我们要实现的变化必须超越那些撒泼发飙表演所呈现出来的效果，而且要让类似上面的海报越来越少。

那么如果不是“强悍的女性角色”，我究竟想要什么？我希望看到一个男女比例1:1，而不是3:1的角色，我希望看到一个性格复杂的主人公，她可以强壮，也可以脆弱，或者既强壮又脆弱、不强壮也不脆弱，因为她们可以用强壮和脆弱以外的因素来定义自己。坏蛋歹徒和武术大师？没问题，但还需要一些害羞、安静的形象，有时候要容忍别人的污言秽语，因为现实生活中她们就是这样。除了女主角，还我要看到像男人一样形态各异的配角：闺蜜、导师、搞笑的、敌人、恶棍。当我在创作一本有关两个女孩、两个男孩和一个没有性别的机器人的故事书时，我不希望被人问到，是否可以把一个女孩改成男孩。

最后，当我在思考有关女性角色的问题时，我发现自己思考的其实是表演诗人Guante的阐释。在他的诗中，他拒绝接受侮辱性的“雄起”所带来的局限性。那么，如果他可以原谅我借用他的诗句……

我要她可以自由地表达自己
我要她与其他女人建立有意义的、可以分享感情的关系
我要她有时会软弱
我要她有时可以表现出并非体能上的强悍
如果她伤心，我要她哭出来
我要她可以寻求帮助
我要她做回她自己
塑造一个“强悍的女性角色”？
绝不！




原文：

Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, a polymath genius. Female characters get to be Strong.

Pepper Potts, in a screengrab from Iron Man 3.

I hate Strong Female Characters.

As someone spends a fair amount of time complaining on the internet that there aren’t enough female heroes out there, this may seem a strange and out of character thing to say.

And of course, I love all sorts of female characters who exhibit great resilience and courage. I love it when Angel asks Buffy what’s left when he takes away her weapons and her friends and she grabs his sword between her palms and says “Me”. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I love Zhang Ziyi’s Jen sneering “He is my defeated foe” when asked if she’s related to Chow Yun-Fat's Li Mu Bai. I love Jane Eyre declaring “I care for myself” despite the world’s protracted assault on her self-esteem. My despair that the film industry believes the world is more ready for a film featuring a superhero who is a raccoon than it is for a film led by a superhero who is a woman is long and loud.

But the phrase “Strong Female Character” has always set my teeth on edge, and so have many of the characters who have so plainly been written to fit the bill.

I remember watching Shrek with my mother.

“The Princess knew kung-fu! That was nice,” I said. And yet I had a vague sense of unease, a sense that I was saying it because it was what I was supposed to say.

She rolled her eyes. “All the princesses know kung-fu now.”

No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s “feisty,” or “kick-ass” come to that.

The obvious thing to say here is that this is because he’s assumed to be “strong” by default. Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she’s anomalous. “Don’t worry!” that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero’s love interest is an SFC. “Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can’t do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face.” Sometimes the phrase “not your typical damsel in distress” will be used, as if the writing of pop culture heroines had not moved on even slightly since Disney’s Snow White and as if a goodly percentage of SFCs did not end up, in fact, needing to be rescued.

This is true, and yet it’s not all of the truth.

Are our best-loved male heroes Strong Male Characters? Is, say, Sherlock Holmes strong? In one sense, yes, of course. He faces danger and death in order to pursue justice. On the other hand, his physical strength is often unreliable – strong enough to bend an iron poker when on form, he nevertheless frequently has to rely on Watson to clobber his assailants, at least once because he’s neglected himself into a condition where he can’t even try to fight back. His mental and emotional resources also fluctuate. An addict and a depressive, he claims even his crime-fighting is a form of self-medication. Viewed this way, his willingness to place himself in physical danger might not be “strength” at all – it might be another form of self-destructiveness. Or on the other hand, perhaps his vulnerabilities make him all the stronger, as he succeeds in  surviving and flourishing in spite of threats located within as well without.

Is Sherlock Holmes strong? It’s not just that the answer is “of course”, it’s that it’s the wrong question.

What happens when one tries to fit other iconic male heroes into an imaginary “Strong Male Character” box?  A few fit reasonably well, but many look cramped and bewildered in there. They’re not used to this kind of confinement, poor things. They’re used to being interesting across more than one axis and in more than two dimensions.

“Of course I’m strong, I’m an idealised power fantasy, but the most interesting thing about me is that, on the inside, I’m a dorky little artist,” says Captain America sadly, sucking his stomach in.

“Does it still count as strength if I’m basically a psychopath?” inquires James Bond idly, lounging against the box wall and checking his cuffs.

Batman’s insistence that he can, must, will get into the Strong Male Character box comes close to hysteria, but there’s no room in there for his bat ears and cape and he won’t take them off.

The Doctor, finding that this box is in fact even smaller on the inside, babbles something incomprehensible and runs away.

The ones that fit in most neatly – are usually the most boring. He-Man, Superman (sorry). The Lone Ranger. Jack Ryan, perhaps. Forgotten square-jawed heroes of forgotten pulp novels and the Boy’s Own Paper. If Strong-Male-Character compatibility was the primary criterion of writing heroes, our fiction would be a lot poorer. But it’s within this claustrophobic little box that we expect our heroines to live out their lives.

Let’s come back to Sherlock Holmes. A better question would be – “What is Sherlock Holmes like?”

He’s a brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, polymath genius.

Adding the word “strong” to that list doesn’t seem to me to enhance it much.

And what happens when we talk about characters that don’t even fit the box marked “hero”? Is Hamlet “strong”? By the end of the play, perhaps in a sense he is, but it’s a very specific and conflicted form of strength which brings him peace only at cost of his life. Richard II, on the other hand, is not only not “strong”, he’s decidedly weak, both as a human being and a king. Yet some of the most beautiful poetry in the language, the most intricate meditations on monarchy, are placed in this weakling’s mouth. He has no strength, but he does have plenty of agency. The plot of the play is shaped around his (often extremely bad) decisions. In narrative terms, agency is far more important than “strength” – it’s what determines whether a character is truly part of the story, or a detachable accessory.

And all of this without taking into account the places where the Strong Female Character may overlap with the stereotype of the “strong black woman”, when myths of strength not only fail but cause real harm.

Chuck Wendig argues here that we shouldn’t understand “strong” as meaning, well, “strong”, but rather as something like “well-written”. But I simply don’t think it’s true that the majority of writers or readers are reading the term that way. How else to explain the fact that when the screenwriters of The Lord of the Rings decided to (clumsily) expand Arwen’s role from the books, they had her wander on screen, put a sword to her boyfriend’s throat and boast about how she’d sneaked up on him? (It took Liv Tyler to realise later “you don’t have to put a sword in her hand to make her strong”). Why else did Paul Feig, as Carina Chicano notes here, have to justify the fact that Bridesmaids hinges on a complex, interesting female character who appeared rather weak?

And even if this less limiting understanding of “strong female character” were the common reading, doesn’t it then become even sadder and even more incomprehensible that where the characterisation of half the world’s population is concerned, writing well is treated as a kind of impressive but unnecessary optional extra?

Of course, there are characters who’ve clearly been written with SFC-compatibility in mind, who nevertheless come at least halfway to life.  Captain America’s Peggy Carter, along with Iron Man’s Pepper Potts, are much the best of the Marvel love interests. Peggy shoots Nazis. She never has to be rescued or protected by Captain America or anyone else. She has a decent amount of screentime. Her interesting status as a female British soldier in World War Two is not actually explored, but implies a compelling back story and an impressive depth of conviction and resilience, and her romance with Captain America is never allowed to undermine this. While her role is clearly ancillary to the male hero, it’s not so much so that she feels defined by his presence; it’s possible to imagine a film about her – a woman determined to overcome everything in her path to fight the evils of Nazism. Most importantly to the character’s success, she’s played by the superb Hayley Atwell.

She’s introduced briefing a number of potential recruits to the super soldier programme. This is the scene clearly written to establish Peggy’s SFC cred, and it unfolds like this: One of the recruits immediately starts mouthing off at her, first insulting her accent and then, when she calls him out of the line-up, making sexist, suggestive remarks.

She punches him to the ground.

Later she discovers Captain America being kissed by the only other woman with a speaking part in the film, who has no other role except to kiss Captain America. She outwardly maintains her composure until Captain America is handling his iconic shield for the first time, and its perhaps-impenetrable qualities are briefly discussed as well as the fact that it’s just a prototype. Peggy suddenly fires off several shots at Captain America, so that he must raise the shield (which does, thankfully, stop bullets) to avoid being killed.

Both scenes are framed as funny and impressive.

You can make a case for the punch, I guess – it’s wartime, she hasn’t got time to pussyfoot around with sexist idiots, she needs to establish her authority hard and fast – but it’s still escalating a verbal conflict to fairly serious physical violence within seconds, and it’s hard to imagine a male character we’re supposed to like being introduced in the same way. The second scene, though, when considered without the haha-what-a-little-spitfire framing of the film, becomes outrageous. Shooting a gun, without warning, at your love interest who has a shield you do not yet know can stop bullets (and what about ricochets?!), because you’re jealous? Or for any reason at all? What the hell, Peggy?

That a female character is allowed to get away with behaviour that, in a male character, would rightly be seen as abusive (or outright murderous) may seem - if you’re MRA minded, anyway – an unfair imbalance in her favour. But really these scenes reveals the underlying deficit of respect the character starts with, which she’s then required to overcome by whatever desperate, over-the-top, cartoonish means to hand. She’s in a hole, and acts that would be hair-raising in a male character just barely bring her up to their level. The script acknowledges and deplores the sexism the character faces in her very first scene – but it won’t challenge the sexist soldier’s belief that women don’t belong in this story by writing any more women into it. Not women with names and speaking parts, anyway.

I’m sure someone will claim here that this would have been simply impossible, because everyone knows there weren’t any women in World War Two, so, firstly – oh, PLEASE. Secondly, German women had done pretty well in the sciences before the rise of Hitler. Why couldn’t Erskine, the sad German scientist whose serum transforms Steve Rogers, have been gender-switched for the movie? Howard Stark, father of Tony/Iron Man, gets a cameo – couldn’t his future wife Maria appear too, grinding edges on that shield or something? What about the tower keeper who was guarding the supernaturally powered Cosmic Cube – did he have to be a man? Couldn’t the Red Skull have recruited a few evil women for Hydra, too? As it is, with when one recognises that sole responsibility for representing her gender and tackling sexism rests on Peggy-the-character’s shoulders, that her actions are outlandishly large to compensate for all those other women who simply aren’t there, some of the strain and hyperbole in her characterisation becomes more explicable.

The Strong Female Character has something to prove. She’s on the defensive before she even starts. She’s George from The Famous Five all grown up and still bleating with the same desperate lack of conviction that she’s “Every Bit As Good as a Boy”.

When I talk about this, people offer synonyms; better, less limiting ways of saying the same thing. What about “effective female characters”, for instance? But it is not enough to redefine the term. It won’t do to add maybe a touch more nuance but otherwise carry on more or less as normal. We need an entirely new approach to the problem, which means remembering that the problem is far more than just a tendency to show female characters as kind of drippy. We need get away from the idea that sexism in fiction can be tackled by reliance on depiction of a single personality type, that you just need to write one female character per story right and you’ve done enough.

Switching back and forth between Captain America and Richard II may be rather odd, but I want to do it one more time point out two things that Richard has, that Bond and Captain America and Batman also have, that Peggy, however strong she is, cannot attain. They are very simple things, even more fundamental than “agency”.

1) Richard has the spotlight. However weak or distressed or passive he may be, he’s the main goddamn character.

2) Richard has huge range of other characters of his own gender around him, so that he never has to act as any kind of ambassador or representative for maleness. Even dethroned and imprisoned, he is free to be uniquely himself.

It’s rare enough for a female character to get the first, and even rarer for her to get the second. Just look at the cast list of 2010’s Salt, say. Angelina Jolie plus dudes.

Nowadays the princesses all know kung fu, and yet they’re still the same princesses. They're still love interests, still the one girl in a team of five boys, and they’re all kind of the same. They march on screen, punch someone to show how they don’t take no shit, throw around a couple of one-liners or forcibly kiss someone because getting consent is for wimps, and then with ladylike discretion they back out of the narrative’s way.

On the posters they’re posed way in the back of the shot behind the men, in the trailers they may pout or smile or kick things, but they remain silent. Their strength lets them, briefly, dominate bystanders but never dominate the plot. It’s an anodyne, a sop, a Trojan Horse - it’s there to distract and confuse you, so you forget to ask for more.

Let us remind ourselves that the actual goal here is not the odd character who’s Strong or Effective or anything else. It’s really very simple, but it would represent a far more profound change than any amount of individual sassy kickassery can ever achieve, and would mean far fewer posters like those above.

Equality.

What do I want instead of a Strong Female Character? I want a male:female character ratio of 1:1 instead of 3:1 on our screens. I want a wealth of complex female protagonists who can be either strong or weak or both or neither, because they are more than strength or weakness. Badass gunslingers and martial artists sure, but also interesting women who are shy and quiet and do, sometimes, put up with others’ shit because in real life there’s often no practical alternative. And besides heroines, I want to see women in as many and varied secondary and character roles as men: female sidekicks, mentors, comic relief, rivals, villains. I want not to be asked, when I try to sell a book about two girls, two boys and a genderless robot, if we couldn’t change one of those girls to a boy.

Finally, when I think of what I want for female characters, I find myself thinking of what the performance poet Guante wants for himself, in this poem where he rejects the limitations of the insulting commandment “Man Up”. So if he’ll forgive me for borrowing and paraphrasing ...

I want her to be free to express herself
I want her to have meaningful, emotional relationships with other women
I want her to be weak sometimes
I want her to be strong in a way that isn’t about physical dominance or power
I want her to cry if she feels like crying
I want her to ask for help
I want her to be who she is
Write a Strong Female Character?
No.