A bunch of people have asked me what I think of Agent Carter and Supergirl. The short answer is that I enjoyed each of them. I’m thrilled to see shows about competent women being brave and heroic and overcoming others’ low expectations of them. Both shows have had engaging storylines and I’m delighted that each has found solid viewership.
Of course there’s a much longer
answer—making this such an unusually long post that I’m giving it sub-headings. (Sub-headings! What is the world coming to!)
The length is because I think of
these two shows not so much as “superhero shows” as very explicitly female
superhero shows—as much about the superheroes’ femaleness as about their
superheroics. So it’s worth thinking about
what that means. I could go on and on
about that. But here are a few
observations that have jumped out as I’ve watched both shows.
No
Winning
Many of the shows I’ve enjoyed most
over the last year or so —UnReal; iZombie; Continuum; Scott & Bailey—are
about women struggling with being defined by their careers, confronting
overwhelmingly difficult situations that challenge their senses of self, and
facing up to those difficult odds. These
shows take as their baseline the truth that it’s harder to be taken seriously
as a professional woman, but that’s not necessarily what the shows are about. Key to their likeability, from my
perspective, is that the main characters aren’t “extraordinary women.” But they are extraordinary people, in a world
where being publicly extraordinary has in the past been reserved for men.
These two superhero shows bump that extraordinary-ness/normal-ness
contrast up to eleven. Both feature
women who are super-skilled, but otherwise pretty normal women with pretty
normal wants and needs. This highlights
that when men are extraordinary, they’re automatically treated as such. Even when women are extraordinary, per these
shows, they still have to jump over an extra hurdle.
The shows’ main characters present
two very different ways of approaching this problem: Agent Carter rebels at every turn, showing
the men that she is twice as good as them at everything. Sometimes this wins them over; just as often,
it makes them angry. Supergirl takes
the opposite path: for all that her
story purports to be about how wonderful it can be to “come out” and embrace
one’s inner power, Supergirl never actually “comes out” as a powerful
woman. Instead, she spends her days
pretending to be what society expects her to be—shrugging, unthreatening, and
self-deprecating—and does all of her superheroing under cover of another
identity (who, herself, goes out of her way to be unthreatening). It’s a fine way of hiding in plain sight, and
it’s a self-preservation technique that many women employ, but it doesn’t
actually teach anyone any lessons. Then
there’s a third model: Supergirl’s boss
Cat Grant, a media mogul who’s had to work twice as hard to rise to power in a
man’s world. She’s a complicated mix of
toughness, sharp edges, and battle-worn femininity. Grant’s professional success may be the
modern fruit of Carter’s sassy 1940s labor, but that success comes at a
price: Carter gets to be funny and
flirtatious in the ‘40s, while in 2016, Grant knows those things will be
perceived as weakness.
Combined, these shows demonstrate a
disappointing, but real, choice faced by women today: Either face the
exhausting prospect of fighting for oneself every day and maybe still not
making progress, or hide one’s light under a bushel and probably ensure that
society learns its lesson even slower.
The shows want us to believe that women shouldn’t be dragged down when
people underestimate or undervalue them—the important thing is they value
themselves. The implication is that if
women believe in themselves, others will come to realize just how amazing they
really are. I want to believe that
too. I really do. But there are two problems with that: (a) wow, that’s a really unfair burden; and
(b) unfair as it is, it may not even be true.
Well, that was intense. Let’s see if I can make some slightly more
trivial observations, too:
Who’s
at “fault” for unrequited love? The
woman, that’s who.
I won’t make a direct critique of how
much of each show has focused on an otherwise independent, capable woman mooning
over an unavailable man and making tactically questionable decisions as a
result, although I do note it’s true. Honestly,
that seems to be a trope for all sorts of comic book superhero shows (see,
e.g., the first seasons of Arrow and The Flash) regardless of the superhero’s
gender. I will, however, note of one
particular aspect of how the romantic subplots are treated in each. It’s a subtle difference, but I don’t think
I’m imagining it.
In the male-led shows, the women are
treated as the source of the men’s weakness—if the women weren’t so tempting,
or if they weren’t so resistant to the men’s obvious ardor, the men would be so
much more effective. In the female-led
shows, the men aren’t tempting—they’re innocent objects of the women’s
inevitable sentimentality. In other
words, both shows cast unrequired love as a hero’s weakness, but in each case
it’s is the woman’s “fault.” In the
male-led shows the women could solve the problem by acquiescing. In the female led shows the men really can’t
solve the problem (one of the men is dead, for goodness sake!); it’s up to the
women to get past it.
I don’t mean to imply that any of
the shows would be improved by swapping the dynamic. But the difference does highlight some of our
underlying assumptions about how men and women approach responsibility and romantic
emotion, and it brings up a larger point about the larger cultural narratives
of woman as both inevitably sentimental and inevitably tempting. In fact, in each show (and here I’m treading
lightly to avoid spoilers), there are subplots where female heroes berate
themselves for “making” men like them or “making” the men expose themselves to danger. These are men with free will, and I guarantee these men would not beat
themselves up about it if the positions were reversed. UGGGHHHHHH.
Protect
vs. Help
My last observation is related to
one that I’ve seen made well elsewhere, but not identical.
And from my perspective, it’s more of a critique of male superheroes
than of these female-led shows. It has
to do with the problematic trope that superheroes have to keep their secret
identities hidden from their friends and loved ones in order to “protect” those
loved ones. I’ve always been deeply
mystified by this. When else are people
allowed to lie with impunity to their dearest friends about the very core of
their beings, and still get to keep those friends? Nowhere.
But somehow it’s allowed in male-led superhero shows because it’s done
out of a desire to “protect” the friends—especially when those friends are
women. That “protection” rationale has
never made logical sense to me as a story justification. (And on a related note, I just spent several
episodes of The Flash literally yelling at the screen.) Doesn’t she always end up being a target for
bad guys regardless, and in those situations wouldn’t she be better able to
protect herself if she had fuller information? Won’t the truth come out and
undermine her trust in you? Yes, yes,
and yes.
But in these two female-led shows,
the secrecy works differently. Nearly
everyone in Peggy Carter’s world knows what she does (if not what she’s capable
of); in the first season, Carter hides her identity from her civilian best friend
Angie, but more out of loyalty to her secret-agency employer than out of a
desire to “protect.” And once she
decides to embrace her abilities, Supergirl doesn’t really keep her superhero
secret from anyone she cares about.
So why are the female-led shows different? I fear that it has to do with a much more
fundamental difference in expectation about the jobs of male and female
superheroes: Male superheroes protect people. Female superheroes help people. That bugs me deeply, because it seems to be
based on a whole lot of malarkey presumptions about gender roles, “strength,”
and the presumed relative ease of emotional labor for women. But more than that, it makes me sad because
the “protecting” vision is used to justify a whole lot of bad behavior by the
men, which is something I see echoed in the world around me.
I don’t want to see the female shows
change—I like the more empathetic, honest version of superheroics that the
women represent. And is it too much to
ask that our male superheroes don’t get complete passes for being lying jerks?
Well, that was long. On to the actual reviews:
Agent
Carter (ABC, premiered Jan. 2015. Action/Adventure)
Watched: All
Premise: In the 1940s of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
Agent Peggy Carter ably battles Commies, crypto-technology, and sexism.
Promise: This is a superhero show in the sense that
Peggy Carter is extraordinary at her job and there’s weird tech around, but
that’s where the superhero part ends, and I’m glad. At its
heart it’s a slightly-campy spy adventure, like James Bond without the systemic
male chauvinism, and it is exactly the show it wants to be. It’s full of hijinks and retro-futuristic
tech and fight scenes and fun little winks at its spy genre and ‘40s era,
without ever backing away from the unfairnesses or prejudices of the time.
The overwhelming, even pounding,
theme of the show is how unfair it is most men value women only for their
looks. Setting the show in the ‘40s
allows that theme to be overt, but even so it still sometimes seems exaggerated
(although I expect it’s more realistic than I’d like). On one hand, I wonder whether a lighter hand
might be more persuasive, but on the other, there’s something cathartic about
watching an ultra-competent woman overcome a sea of cartoonishly chauvinist
pigs.
Finally, it’s hard not to notice,
and be bothered by, how overwhelmingly white the show and its cast are. The second season makes a move in the right
direction (I feel comfortable saying, without spoilers), but I’d still like to
see some improvement on that score for a show that champions equality in other
respects.
Verdict: good, solid adventure fun with a heroine I
can cheer for and enough of a sense of humor not to get ponderous.
Supergirl
(CBS, premiered Fall 2015. Action/Adventure.)
Watched: All
Premise: Superman’s cousin, Supergirl, hides in plain
sight as an assistant at a magazine and learns to embrace her superhero powers.
Promise: In theory, this show could take place in the
same continuity as Arrow, The Flash, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. (And considering the concentration of Glee
and Rent and other musical theater alumni on each, I’d love to see the wacky-musical-episode
crossover, although I acknowledge it’s highly unlikely to happen). But in practice, they have subtly different
moods, driven by their different networks’ demographics. Supergirl’s characters act closer to their
ages, and have slightly more grown-up concerns.
And Supergirl is more serious and less silly fun, for better and for worse.
There’s also another thing going on
with Supergirl that’s worth noting and critiquing, because it’s a missed
opportunity. The show gives a pretty
clean presentation of the two models of women that actual Hollywood chauvinists
expect to exist (alas, I speak from knowledge):
the Iron Lady and the D-Girl
(which is industry code for “Coffee-Bringer Who Fills Out A Sweater Nicely
And/But Isn’t Worthy Of Respect”). And
Supergirl posits that those Iron Ladies may actually be hiding
something smart and compassionate behind their harsh exteriors, and those sweater girls may actually be hiding some amazing talents behind their
coffee-carrying exteriors. What I wish it showed us—and I know this is a
bizarre complaint about a superhero show, but when you look through that frame
you can see why I have it—was Kara actually being good at her media job, too.
Verdict: I consistently find myself liking it more
than I expect to.
On
the DVR/Unreviewed: Too many to
count. But more reviews coming soon!
