Fridges, and All

[handful_ofdust]

Man, writing about yourself is harder than it seems. I think I’ve come up with some fairly good answers thus far, re the FearZone interview, but there are other questions I can’t even begin to plumb. Therefore, I’m taking a break to float yet another one of those Unpopular Fannish Opinions, vide—

So here’s my question: Is no one ever going to be allowed to kill a female character in a movie/TV show/comic/whatever again, without being accused of “fridging”? Because this will make things about as difficult as if we declared a moratorium on death in fiction generally. People die, people. Changing the default setting isn’t a victory, so much, as just switching one brand of knee-jerk for another.

For example, let’s look at The Dark Knight a bit more, from this particular angle:

Let’s be brutal here, okay? Rachel Dawes was, frankly, a character constructed for pretty much one purpose…to die. We all knew this going in. And what’s the alternative, exactly? Rachel leaves both her guys and goes off alone (she wouldn’t). Rachel becomes Two-Face (again, unlikely—only a guy would think becoming Half-Flensed Coin-Flip Injustice Man was a good grief-management strategy). Rachel—what? Is very badly hurt/in a coma? Then Harvey has an out, hope, limitations; no Two-Face, and this is at least as much a Two-Face origin story as anything else.

My basic argument re Rachel would be against whether she needed to exist in the first place, constructed as she obviously was to A) convince us Bruce can (or wants to be able to) love (heterosexually) and B) give him something else to lose. But once Rachel does exist, you have to let her play out logically, because if you don’t, that’s bullshit too—just as much.

So take your pick: She’s either a character or a symbol, and I don’t actually think she’s the latter. If she’s a symbol, you can judge her on the “well, what is all this telling us?” tip, if you desperately want to—but if she’s a character, she’s simply another person the Joker fucks over, a part of the escalation. And I’ll point out that a lot of guys die in The Dark Knight, at which point you can say: “But we weren’t made to invest in them”, which’ll certainly show me. But we’ll still be left with the same old problem, won’t we?

I’m not sure what the “answer” is, per se, aside from more women making stuff rather than consuming stuff. And yeah, I get that that’s easy for me to say…but if you take nothing else away from Dr Horrible, it’s also getting a whole lot easier to do than it used to be. So.

And now, I have to go get ready for the Geneva Centre.

Amended to add: Interestingly enough, I'd be far more inclined to agree with those fangirls who are annoyed by the fact (and I don't think this counts as a spoiler, per se, so I'm not cutting) that TDK contains a chance to give a shout-out to Barbara Gordon by involving her in a particularly life-changing incident, and chooses instead to involve her brother. Working from established Batverse canon, we "know" that Gordon Jnr. isn't going to end up as Robin or something, but Barbara is going to end up as Batgirl, which is why this stings.

As a decision, it can be partly explained by assuming that Christopher Nolan doesn't necessarily want to reference that part of the Batverse...ie, the dysfunctional "Bat-family" of underaged apprentice vigilantes Bruce will eventually amass, since this slightly skeevy pattern of behavior may well make him look even crazier than he already does here. However, it can also apparently be explained, as my husband Steve did when I floated the above comment to him this morning, as "a different that is no difference and therefore makes no difference" (to him); he thinks it's more because the threat to a man's son evokes a very different sort of pain, to which I said: "You do realize you're sort of assuming/confirming the received wisdom that Nolan thinks most of the people watching will identify with Gordon on this one because they're all guys, right?"

And he's all like: "WHAT? NOOOOooooo..."

There ya go. Dubious content in TDK all 'round, either way you slice it.;)

Comments

[onemoreshadow.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with the term "fridging" -- my net slang is hopelessly out of date -- but I think I get the gist.

(Bat-spoilers ahead)

Having said that, I totally agree with you re: Rachel Dawes. Although I didn't know she was going to die in TDK, I knew it was coming eventually. I figured everyone did.

As for the whole Dr. Horrible debate, I have to admit it ended on a bit more serious note that I expected, considering the first two parts, but I still liked it. (I liked even more that Bad Horse turned out to be an actual horse.) All I can suggest is that fans of horror/sf/fantasy are among the more fickle fans out there. And I mean that in a positive way. Even the so-called fanboys tend to have just as many quibbles with their favourite flicks/tv shows/books as they do things they like about them. It's almost a point of pride to be able to point out these flaws (or these perceived flaws), either to make one appear superior to the material (in the manner of "this sucked, I could do it better"), or to show that one is paying strict attention (out of fanlove, presumably), I'm not really sure which.

That was actually why I liked your reviews so much in eye. I remember thinking, Wow, here's someone who actually LIKES some of the stuff she watches, and doesn't feel the need to apologize for it afterwards, as if writing a positive review is the mark of a character flaw in a critic :)

[bitterfig.livejournal.com]

Here's an article that gives an overview of fridging aka the "Women in Refrigerators" phenomena where female characters are raped, murdered, depowered or tortured as a plot device. The term originated from an incident in the DC comic Green Lantern where the heroes girlfriend was murdered and stuffed in the refrigerator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators

[onemoreshadow.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks for the link!

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

This strikes me as one of those fears/accusations of cliche that need to be identified, but unfortunately then usually stick to those that least deserve it: ie people who actually *do* write Mary Sues, Magical Negroes, Refrigerated Girlfriends etc, will just keep blithely on doing so; whereas thoughtful writers rack themselves with guilt and second guesses as to whether their female characters are too positively portrayed, or their black characters are sufficiently Not A Plot Device.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yes! Exactly my point. Though granted, perhaps I'm flattering myself by assuming I'm one of the latter, rather than one of the former.;)

[marythefan.livejournal.com]

Is no one ever going to be allowed to kill a female character in a movie/TV show/comic/whatever again, without being accused of “fridging”?

I don't know. That's the best answer I can give, because it depends on a lot of variables. Maybe an easier question would be "When is anyone going to be allowed to kill a female character in a movie/TV show/comic/whatever again, without being accused of "fridging?" Because I can guess as to things that might mitigate the accusations - although I don't know that they'll completely kill the instinctive flinch. Most of them have to do with making a female character's death only one option in a sea of existing stories.

-When we get more female characters in general, so that the number who do get killed is a smaller percentage and it's less of a sure bet that it's going to happen to any woman with a speaking role.
-When more male supporting characters get fridged for the sake of the male protagonist's arc. A lot of guys died in DK, too, sure - but fridging specifically involves someone with a close or intimate relationship to the protagonist, someone who's going to get the biggest rise possible out of him.
-When more male supporting characters get fridged for the sake of the female protagonist's arc. And that means ...
-When we start getting any decent number of female protagonists. Also, I don't ... think male supporting characters do tend to get fridged for the sake of female protagonists even when those women do exist. My impression is that the way to build a female hero or a female villain is more likely to be to visit bodily indignities on her rather than the people around her. If you want to motivate a man, rape a woman. If you want to motivate a woman, rape a woman - her. Or for more specific examples, compare Two Face's origin in DK to Catwoman's origin in Batman Returns. It may be a case of "the personal is political" writ mythological, but like the issue of fridging in general, I think the underlying problem is the lack of variety in the storylines, the fact that this is the story that gets told over and over and over when it comes to female characters.
-When female fridged characters get defrosted the way male characters do - when they're resurrected, re-powered, recovered at the same frequency and with the same ease as male characters.

All that is largely dependent on general trends, I know, and it sucks for any one artist to be held accountable for what everyone else has been doing, but fridging is ultimately about an overall trend. It's easy to pull out any single data point and justify it, just as people can pull out any single black male character's death on SPN and tell me why it had to happen that way, but the end result is a field full of dead black men, or one full of dead women, and it seems as if the writers can't or won't envision any other story for a black man, or a woman, than to die - nor envision casting them in any other role. And that pre-existing situation means that female characters, like characters of color, currently can't be treated the same way you would "any other" character - the historic baggage attached to them means the outcome won't be the same. It's a case in which equal treatment isn't equitable treatment, and that's a variable that has to be taken into account when gauging what you want reader/viewer reaction to be. As with characters of color, I think people will stop demanding special treatment for female characters when they stop being special because there are so few of them, with so few faces.

con't because I am verbose ...

[marythefan.livejournal.com]

I do think any individual writer/director/producer/etc. can counter accusations of fridging by building up an individual body of work that looks like the general landscape I've described up there, although I don't think it will make them entirely immune. Buffy didn't save Joss from the finger-pointing when it came to Penny, but then, Penny's fridging was so textbook that I had a hard time believing there wasn't going to be some twist that turned it into a commentary on the trope. I kept waiting for the last three minutes of Act III to show up. On the flip, though, in talking about Dr. Horrible, I've had at least one person tell me that they'd never considered the deaths of Jenny Calendar or Tara on Buffy as examples of fridging - and neither are, by the classic definition, because they're done to motivate a female protagonist, not a male character (Buffy, in the first case, and Willow in the second).

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer in detail. I agree with pretty much all of your points re the need for more female lead characters generally (key), not to mention the way that the flipside of dead/raped woman as motivator for some guy is obviously (and painfully) woman as possession or extension of some guy. Great call also on Tara and Jenny Calendar, who always get cited, and really are not part of the same trend...see also Wash, who's a good character who dies because when people put themselves in heinously dangerous situations, somebody has to die. And it just works better, dramatically, if it's somebody you like...

But then again, c'mon! Did you not like any given one of the other applicants? Remember, the pilot episode, where it looked like it was gonna be Kaylee? You want to be the one to make that call? ("Oh, let's kill Inara--NOBODY likes HER!")

Re "defrosting", meanwhile: The two primary cases of this which I can think of in comics are (Marvel vs. DC) Carol Danvers, aka Marvel Girl, and the aforementioned Barbara Gordon. Carol gets her powers sucked out by Rogue, is a disgruntled, angry, alcoholic human for a while, then gets them back (unsure on how) and goes back to being the female Captain America. Barbara, OTOH, is shot in the spine by the Joker and put in a wheelchair--she too is bitter for a while, then reinvents herself as Oracle. One "defrosting" is more quote-quote wish-fulfillment than the other...shit, Batman at least got out of his chair, eventually, after having HIS spine snapped. But on the whole, I rather appreciate Barbara's more, because it's a transformation which shows that actions have costs, that not-so-random cruelty and tragedy can be overcome, that both willpower and will-to-power is the coin of the Batrealm, for everybody. That those lessons took, in other words.;)

Spoilery

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Working from established Batverse canon, we "know" that Gordon Jnr. isn't going to end up as Robin or something, but Barbara is going to end up as Batgirl, which is why this stings.

I've been thinking about that scene, and my interpretation is that the audience does contain a lot of fans, so that threatening little Barbara would have been a scene with a safety net - we're pretty sure she's got to grow up to by Batgirl, so she can't be killed off; OTOH, she doesn't have a brother or a mother in cannon, so we fully expect the Joker to kill Tommy and/or Barbara Sr., --it's much more tense, and even though they escape, we have a feeling they've just borrowed some time...Nolan may also be setting up a future motivation for Barbara as the Secondary child who's desperate to earn her father's love/be a replacement for her dead sibling....

Re: Spoilery

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

This is a great explanation. I'd absolutely love some sort of evidence that the Nolans were even vaguely thinking things through to this sort of degree.;)