(no subject)

[bardic_lady]

It's insidious and far more present than I really realized. In modern genre tv, when there are women warriors, they kill themselves. Not every single one of them, but damn a lot of them. Just finished reading "The Cruelest Season" by Sara Crosby in the anthology Action Chicks. Crosby points out that in the 2001 tv season, Max Guevara of Dark Angel, Buffy, Captain Janeway, Zhaan of Farscape, Prue of Charmed, and Xena all committed suicide. All of them. Obviously, not all of them stayed dead, but they all killed themselves. As I start to work out my paper on Starbuck as the next generation of woman warrior, more societally integrated and less hypersexualized than her predecessors, I realize... Kara committed suicide, too. And now I'm sitting up at 3:30am trying to come up with a woman warrior who didn't (returning from the dead in whatever way is NOT an excuse). And I'm coming up dry. And it's PISSING ME OFF. Why do ALL the genre woman warriors kill themselves? It isn't just death in battle, it's either self-inflicted death out of battle or throwing herself into a situation in which she has no hope of survival. Suicide by cop/opposing army still counts. Ivanova escapes her death by opposing army, but only at the cost of someone else's entire life force meaning that she basically did kill herself, her particular universe had a way of fixing it.

What the hell? Seriously, guys, this is pissing me the hell off.

(Over the course of writing this, I have come up with Zoe Washbourne. So... That's one.)

Comments

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

Does animated stuff count at all? No, maybe? Cause Katara works well.

Uhhhh.... Does Samantha Carter count? She's pretty badass. And I can't think of any situation where she commits suicide.

Certainly not anything like the rest of the team, who all over the place is about self-sacrificing and all sorts of bullcrap like that. Wah wah we thought you were dead.

I'm pretty sure Teyla tries to do it all the time. I haven't finished watching SG:A yet, but... yeah I can already think of situations, I'm pretty sure, where Teyla TRIES to suicide by opposing army, so that's scratched off the list.

I'm not even gonna bother to ask about Aeryn Sun, knowing her character.

[dogwoodblossom.livejournal.com]

This was an exact discussion we had about a million times in my "Lit by Women" class at UPS. Every single novel we read ended with the heroin killing herself, mostly because in the time periods they were written there was no way for an independant woman to really be successful or live happily on her own.

It was sort of a problem of having to constantly reinvent the wheel since each of these female novelists was writing in kind of a vaccuum where there was no access to the work of previous female novelists, so they weren't able to play off of previous works and stop and say, "Hey how about I write one where she doesn't kill herself?"

Thelma and Louise was almost a step forward since the way the film ends, they might not die. Maybe they catch an improbable updraft or aliens save them or something.

It's hardly just a sci-fi/warrior princess trope. Also Xena wasn't just female, she was also gay. She had no choice but to off herself. What could possibly have been the alternative? Could she have conceivably lived and long and happy life with her lover, moving into a sagelike retirement and training the next karate kid?

The only solution I see is for people to write consistently less stupid/sexist female characters. And as white male dominated as sci fi TV tends to be, it's gonna be bringing up the rear. Followed very distantly by video games.

[ghost-light.livejournal.com]

Could you take an angle of it being self-sacrifice and pull in Inanna myths?

[dogwoodblossom.livejournal.com]

Coda to my post; I continued discussion with my mother and she pointed out that 'traditionally' women have gained power only through subversion. They can be powerful but should not have the appearance of being powerful. We mean in real life, not just in literature. See Hilary Clinton, celebrated when she was an active first lady, and despised when she ran for the actual office.

These overtly strong women are perhaps being punished for their boldness. It's not the power that is damning, but their openess about their own strength.

[skygiants]

Sarah Connor?

She goes into suicidal situations once or twice, but her death is by cancer, not by suicide, and (at least in the TV show) she fights viciously against it.

Excuse my shoddy writing but I may have a point in here somewhere

[dramatrauma.livejournal.com]

Well, in anything involving warriors/heroes isnt the willingness to sacrifice onself for the greater good part and parcel? Warriors fight knowing there is a chance, sometimes a near certainty, they are going to die.

Spock, Spike, Joxer (I think its been years), Leo.
A lot of the shows you mentioned had a man that did die or shouldve died from their own selfless act.
In some of the cases you listed youre looking at well into the 3/4 mark for the run of the series. About the time you get a need to "shake things up" and nothing does that like rumor of offing a lead (except in the case of Charmed where, face it, Shannon Doherty committed career suicide and they just wrote it into teh script). In studies of film and tv never leave politics and budget out of teh equation when considering artiistic choices. Since (i think) Battlestar was plotted as a maxi series with a definite ending Kara is the odd exception to the group you listed. The writers had the whole thing plotted beginning to end and apparently Starbuck still had to suicide.

And just to undermine my own point and enhance yours, I suddenly remember, In Nu Dr Who 2 of the new companions have willingly sacrificed themselves to save the Dr/the Earth and one even comes to mind in Ole Skool Who, all three were of course saved/resurrected by the Doctor. Was it a rating grabber yes, but the show in either acse didnt need the points so Im willing to believe it was for the story to put those women in that much danger and in one instance (Rose's) it resolved a year long plot mystery and in another (Donna) it created a story hook and a moral quandry for the upcoming season.

But to go back to why the women actually died as opposed to putting themselves in certain death situations feeling sure "certain death" just doesnt apply to them (ala James T Kirk)...I think part of it is the need to see women as Angels (an aspect of teh Madonna/Whore thing I spose) and ya gotta die to become a beautiful noble angel. Im reminded of the female icons of WWI marianne britannia and the like

A bigger part of it is that ingrained idea of women sacrificing themselves for others in life even as non warriors. In most countries its only in the last 40 years that childbirth isnt so potentially deadly as it has been for millenia. In one sense it made women dispensible (shes infertile Im allowed to divorce her, whoops another died in childbirth best marry a younger one) and in another put us on a pedestal. Dad may work very hard to take care of teh family, but often mom is seen as the one sacrificing in working day in and day out all her life to nurture and take care of dad and the kids (and take care of her parents of course as dutiful grateful daughters should). I think its given a lot of women a martyr complex (fine dont visit I was only in labor for hours to bring you into the world,I work so hard to take care of you kids and you cant even, this office would fall apart without me and this is teh thanks...etc etc insert your own mother/women martyr issues here) and a lot of writers the need to have their heroines make THE BIG NOBLE SACRIFICE.

I think in many instances; like with the writers who wind up add ing to the "women in refridgerators roster" they see themselves as enobling teh heroine or her cause.

[ashen_key]

*eyes Trudy and the Vasquez Must Die trope at TVTropes*

I knew her death annoyed me on more than just a character basis. Oh, popular culture, you suck.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

I would argue that Katara isn't a woman warrior in the truest sense. In Airbender, Suki is a woman warrior and I would make an argument for a Azula as well, but not every woman who fights is a woman warrior in the sense I mean. I would argue the same for Sam Carter. She's a scientist first, being a warrior is secondary for her.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Agreed and agreed.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Good call. (I'm still not done with the tv series, so I didn't have a coda on that.) I'm not thrilled with the warrior woman must die theme that continues there, but at least it's not suicide.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Suck HARD. Why do all my favourite characters have to suicide, damnit?!

[skygiants]

For the record, she does not actually die in the series - and as far as we know she has not yet gotten cancer, either. (She starts out the series being told that in the alternate timeline she dies of cancer, so she's always on the watch, but by the time the show was canceled she was still alive and healthy.) The movies of course are a different story.

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

Aaaand we all know what happens to Suki.