I watched a video essay for screenwriters about writing interesting characters. The essayist, Henry of The Closer Look, has an excellent tripartite analysis of what people look for when deciding if a character is interesting or not. If you're not willing to watch the ten-ish minutes of the essay, I'll spoil it here. A good character is one that has likeability, competency, or activity. That is, you like the character, the character is good at something, or the character acts (instead of reacts) and chooses throughout the story's world.
This makes a lot of sense for a good chunk of characters. His examples of Batman and Sherlock being competent and active, though not particularly likeable, are good ones that really illustrate his point. And his conclusion that having a character excel in all three gives you someone like Superman is an excellent conclusion. But there was something about his analysis that bothered me. Not, like, foaming at the mouth irritated. No, I couldn't get it to sit quite right, rather. Then I realized why, and it's a massive part of the next video: How to make a strong female character. (I disagreed with him even more on that video, though I appreciate his points and think he has a lot of good arguments.) In that video, he talks about assigning the gender (in fiction) after the character has been conceived, because a "strong female character" uses the same traits as a "strong male character". And while I don't disagree with that basis, I don't see it as the conclusion he does. Why? Well, it's in the video: Wonder Woman. Having clips of Wonder Woman on the screen whilst Henry talks about the aspects of the character that make her (or him) interesting and "strong" and simultaneously considering his previous arguments about the tripartite form of interesting characters, and I realized that Wonder Woman violates his rule of having only two of the three aspects. Now, I'm not the first to notice that Diana Prince is a better Supergirl than Supergirl is, nor that she closely parallels Kal-El in a lot of important ways. But she fills all of the three "boxes" of being likeable, competent, and active. She spends the whole movie pushing onward toward her goal. She fights incredibly well (that battle in the trenches…wow). And hardly anyone who meets Wonder Woman isn't instantly smitten by her--and not just her good looks. Wonder Woman, however, doesn't have a video essay by Henry talking about how it's hard to write for Wonder Woman, the way he does with Superman. There are likely many reasons for this. Not being Henry, I don't know them all. However, I think that one of the fundamental differences between Superman filling Henry's three boxes versus Diana filling the three is that Diana is a woman. Story time: A few years back, during the annual trip to Cedar City for the high school competition, we were "treated" to the SUU version of Hamlet. Normally, I'm always really excited for any version of Hamlet. (As a friend says, "Shakespeare is like pizza: Some is better than others, but you're always excited to have more pizza.") When I sat down, the director's notes said that, because of the way his cast was set up, the play worked a lot better if the entire production were gender bent: Female Hamlet and her father, Queen Claudia. Killed Queen Hamlet. Father Gertrude. Male love interest Ophelio (pronounced "Oh-FELL-e-OH", so it sounded like they were saying "Fellow"). Sister Laertes. Male Polonius (which…um, kinda broke that motif). Female Horatio. There are plenty of valid reasons for gender bending a Shakespearean play. The fact that sometimes that's how the casting works out makes sense. I've seen female Hamlets (always playing as a male character, though), and female Guildensterns and female Horatios. It can make a subtle, but not particularly significant, difference in the way that I feel about the character…for about two seconds. Then it stops mattering. But this play? Whoo, boy. It was a train wreck. Almost every choice was bizarre and out of sync with potential themes. The words were all there (almost all said correctly, save the pronunciation of "union" as "onion"…I kid thee not), but nothing fired the way it was supposed to. For example, Ophelio, by far the strongest actor, sold his position well--so well, in fact, that his version of the character didn't seem the type to walk around with flowers at the end of his time on the stage. I try to be generous and the best I can say that isn't some sort of self-perjury is, "They had very pleasant weather that night." I have thought about this version of the play a lot (which was one of the director's goals, so…hey, mission accomplished). And the reason that Hamlet: Princess of Denmark doesn't work is because there are aspects of the relationship that are built around masculine points of view. This might get my feminist card revoked, but some stories are masculine. Much like a gender-bent Pride and Prejudice will lack the import and nuance of its original, so, too, does Hamlet in which she laments the passing of her Queen Mother. I'm not here to probe the intricacies of this rabbit hole, but would rather pull it back to where I started: Wonder Woman is all three of the things that make for an interesting character and her film relies upon her femininity. Now, you could make a case about how competent she is, or when she switches from active to passive roles, but those are vicissitudes of the film, not fundamental aspects of her core character. At her heart, Diana is a likeable person who is incredibly competent and never sits around when she sees there's something she can do to make the world a better place. And I think that part of what sells that is because she's Wonder Woman. I'm not keen on relying on stereotypes or broad generalizations when it comes to genders: We're all individuals and have a distinct approach to the spectrum we choose to manifest. So I say this next part less as a requirement and more as an observation that often proves true: The way a woman processes a situation is distinct from how a man does. In the case of Wonder Woman, her femininity "allows" her leeway in the ways we like her. Even Eta Candy is impressed by her looks*, whilst her innocent appreciation of babies (whom she loves) and ice cream are all humanizing signifiers that the audience is given permission, through character response, to incorporate. Diana's story and the world she's navigating and her reactions to it are all dictated by her gender. It's a crucial component to the movie. On the whole, I agree with Henry: Characters that have two-thirds of the checklist make for interesting characters, as it builds in a flaw that makes them feel like there's room to grow, or an excuse/explanation for their behaviors. But I disagree that writing "strong** female characters" is about writing agender characters and then assigning them a gender afterwards. That, to me, doesn't work.*** I still like the videos though. They made me think. --- * This is a great example of what I mean, by the way: Gender bend the scene of Candy, Diana, and Steve in the department store. You have an Arnold Schwarzenegger style hero with a pretty guide and her overweight, British butler. The butler says something about how handsome and ripped the hero is. Even if the characters don't bat an eye at the honest remark, the audience will likely code it as a homoerotic comment (which it isn't). Women more often comment on a woman's good looks than men will of a fellow man. ** I get what the phrase is trying to say. I disagree with what it implies. It's a term that we'll be better off once we drop it from our lexicon. *** J.K. Rowling said that Harry Potter was always male. He walked into her mind pretty fully formed. I've had that sort of experience: A character shows up on the page, and it's clear that she's supposed to be female (or vice versa). On occasion, I've tried switching the character's gender to see if it still fits. Sometimes, it doesn't make a difference (so I make her female). Other times, it matters a great deal, and the character "rebels" in my mind until I put the correct gender/orientation into the hard drive (as it were) of the story. I'm willing to bet this is a similar process for a lot of other, though by no means all, writers. |
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