Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth (45 page)

I myself have never heard Nausicaä accused of being a weak character, but please note that the very thing which makes Buffy the Vampire Slayer allegedly a strong character, her physical strength and snarky attitude, are precisely the strength and the attitude missing from Nausicaä.

I once heard Mr. Joss Whedon in an interview discussing the origin of the character idea. He was weary of seeing scenes in monster movies where the blonde cheerleader Valley Girl wanders into a dark alley, is confronted by a vampire, and can do nothing. For reasons I cannot speculate, Mr. Whedon. Whedon did not think of making a Valley Girl carry a pistol whereby to defend herself, (even an undead monster can be chopped off at the knees if your handgun has sufficient stopping power), but instead thought it would be a cute reversal of traditional roles if the cheerleader could take out a stake and drive it through the vampire’s heart. That way she is not the helpless victim. That way she does not need a man.

Then Mr. Whedon writes a simply excellent show, truly one of my favorites—let no man dare to say I am not a fanboy of that show—but I notice with the slightest lift of an eyebrow that the main dramatic tension in the show is the romance, the girl’s love interest, Angel and Riley Finn and Spike. The traditional role is not reversed after all, is it?

Buffy must be saluted. She is the inspiration for an entire genre of fiction, the urban fantasy. Few characters can make that claim: Sherlock Holmes for detective stories, Juan Rico the starship trooper for Military SF, Harry Potter for the magical schoolkid genre, Frodo and his Fellowship of the Ring for the epic quest genre. And perhaps a few others. But considering that Buffy is the very epitome, or so I assume, of strength in a strong female character, a feminist icon akin to Xena the Warrior Princess, why is her main dramatic point her love story? Could it be because she is a female character, and that there is something in the female genius which naturally inclines itself to love?

By way of contrast, I would list Katniss Everdeen from the movie
The Hunger Games
as a relatively weak character—and here I am only talking about the movie, which I saw, and not the book, which I did not read. Aside from her extraordinary act of self-sacrifice at the beginning of the film, for the rest of the film she is basically helpless, and shows very little initiative. Whether the character develops in the sequels, that I do not know, and about that I make no comment. She is, however, physically and morally brave, which is not a trait to be scoffed at for anyone living in a nation of physical and moral cowards.

Something unclear in the movie is how any girl survives the first ten minutes of combat with relatively athletic young men of roughly the same age: the difference in aggression and fighting strength in an average sixteen-year old boy and an average sixteen-year old girl is immense. That is why the Romans did not stage gladiator fights between male and female slaves, or, if they did, we have no record of it. That is why boxing is not a unisex sport.

Katniss Everdeen is what I would call weak because she cannot articulate the cause for which she fights. She is not fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way, nor is she leading—yet—the rebellion; she is trying to stay alive. Oddly, had she been the only girl in a roster of boys, volunteering to take the place of her younger brother, the plot would have made more sense, because then it would have been a Jack-and-the-Giant story, with Katniss as Jack.

Weaker still is the character of Valeria mentioned above. She is the stuff of boyish daydreams, not a fully developed character at all. While established to be a ruthless, rough and hardy pirate queen, the equal of any man when it comes to climbing rigging, storming a city wall, or cutting down sea dogs in a sea fight, her role in the story is entirely feminine. Her main role in the story is for romantic interest and sex appeal. She is there to be menaced by the lusts of men, including Conan, to make dumb suggestions Conan wryly shoots down, and to be afraid of things that don’t scare Conan, because, as a barbarian, he is such a badass. For all that, she is not a weak character, not a milksop or lily-livered, and is strong and hearty and bold as any soldier. It is just that, next to Conan, any soldier would seem like a girl.

Podkayne of Mars from
Podkayne Of Mars
is a spunky and lovable teenager who dreams of being a space pilot. As the plot goes on, however, she takes no steps at all, not one, toward achieving this dream. Instead she gets abducted, saved by her brother, and then blown up by a bomb when going back into the villain’s lair for the cat or some other annoying fluffy critter. In the first draft, she died the death, and in the second, at the editor’s insisting, she was merely mostly dead. This teaches her psychotic supergenius younger brother to learn to love and be loved, or some such nonsense. And the moral of the story, placed in the mouth of the Uncle, tacked awkwardly onto the end of the book is that Podkayne’s Mom should have stayed home and raised her correctly.

Podkayne is a perfectly fine science fiction character. She does as much, or as little, as the Time Traveler from
The Time Machine
by Wells, or Professor Aronnax from
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
. More to the point, she does as much, or as little, as Matt Dodson in
Space Cadet
or Bill Lermer from
Farmer In The Sky
, who are mostly observers rather than initiators of the action. But the fact that the space girl is blown up and never becomes either a space cadet like Matt nor a farmer owning his own land like Lermer should leave any feminist cold. Is the purpose in life of girls to be blowed up by bombs as an object lesson to psychotic younger brothers so they can learn to love and be loved?

Jill Boardman in
Stranger In A Strange Bed
, buxom space nurse, becomes the lover and disciple of Michael Valentine Smith, the studly Man from Mars, and happily joins his harem of several lovers… and becomes a stripper. Yes, she takes off her clothing to excite the lusts of men for modest pay. They can stare at her boobs, which she bounces for their enjoyment. Such is the 1960’s version of women’s liberation. You’ve come a long way, baby.

The novel portrays this gross degradation as a dignified profession, whereas preaching the Gospel is portrayed as charlatanry less honest than selling used cars. Yet, had you asked, I am certain Mr. Heinlein would have described himself as an ardent supporter of women’s liberation.

Compared to this junk, Valeria the Pirate Queen with the shapely hips is practically as nuanced and three-dimensional a character as Lady Macbeth. But could someone claim, with perfect justice, that Jill is a strong character? She is certainly witty, as brave as a Marine, and she kidnaps the Man from Mars out from the clutches of the tyrannous world-state. Could someone else claim she was a weak character? Yes, and with equal justice, if not more so. She is a lonely schoolboy’s idea of a strong and independent woman, that is, a woman with all the virtues but chastity and modesty, independent enough to use contraception, and strong enough to violate the rules of chastity, presumably, in his daydreams, with the lonely schoolboy.

I should add the third example of Friday from her eponymous book, but there is too much about that book and that character I find personally distasteful. Let me just say that she combines the worst characteristics of physical strength—she can beat up a Marine guard—Playboy bunny looks, an odd desire both to marry and have a family, and to sleep around like a minx in heat.

If you have not read
Friday
, you can always watch
Dark Angel
by James Cameron. The main character, Max, is a personal favorite of mine. Let no one believe I dismiss or dislike the show. But I do note that she is a Friday-style woman: sexy and adorable, and she goes into heat, so that she can both beat up Marine guards with her biogenetically enhanced superhuman strength, and sleep around. You’ve come a long way, baby. The writers there perform the opposite trick as Robert E. Howard. To make the girl Max the manly character, James Cameron puts the male lead in a wheelchair, so that he has no possibility of being either the main romantic interest nor being the Riley Finn or Steve Trevor character.

(By a Riley Finn, I mean simply that a writer who makes his alleged strong female character physically strong, strong in masculine ways, the writer has no use for a male romantic lead, unless he is a superhuman, such as Conan or Angel. Riley Finn was despised by the fans for much the same reason that Steve Trevor is forgotten.)

No writer can write a man who swoons over the strength of a superheroine or vampire-huntress, admires her knowledge of French wines and Japanese karate, and find himself swept off his feet by her, carried back to her magnificent castle, married in a splendid but secret ceremony, ravished to within an inch of his life, and make it seem other than a satire. No writer has this power because that is not the way human nature works.

How does nature work? Women like men who are virile, vigorous and potent. They like men who are confident, decisive, courageous, and assertive. They want a man who fights. They like strong men. Look at the cover of a trashy romance novel if you don’t believe me.

More truth is held in the pages of trashy romance novels than in all the worthless books penned by college professors.

Men like women who are nubile, fertile and fecund. They want a girl worth fighting for. They want beauty in body but loyalty in spirit. They want a woman who has faith in him and who keeps faith with him.

Why does nature saddle us with these, (to a feminist), uncouth and inconvenient urges where different things attract the different sexes to each other?

It is one of the dubious joys of the modern age that otherwise sober men must take the time to explain the obvious, over and over again, to those ideologically committed to denying the obvious.

It is obvious that men and women are different both in fine and in gross.

(I read with some skeptical bitterness that when neurologists first started publicly admitting that there were neurochemical differences in brain structure between males and females, Gloria Steinem said that social conditioning could overcome these innate genetic predilections. I understand that the Left also says that homosexual attraction is caused by innate genetic predilections, but that to use any form of social conditioning to overcome such predilections is illegal in California. Consistency is not the strong suit of the Left.)

Because of these differences between the sexes, the characteristics of sexual attraction in men and women must be opposite and complementary in order for it to be sexual attraction.

Do I need to repeat that in shorter words for the intellectuals to grasp it?

Girls want strong men because strength in men, brute muscle power and leadership ability, is a primary sexual distinguishing characteristic related to the sexual process. Boys want faithful women because fidelity in women is a primary sexual distinguishing characteristic related to domestic life and the demands of domestic life.

But a writer writing an adventure story or a drama that wants to challenge or ignore the basic difference between what men and women find attractive in each other faces a paradox. How is he to make it dramatic?

Now, keep in mind that men and women can admire each other for non-sexual reasons. I am a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher, for example, or Mother Theresa, who are both world-magnitude leaders, one of political and the other of spiritual authority. Any tinge of sexual attraction toward these women from me would be grotesque.

But in a story, especially in an adventure story, the needs of drama want to introduce an element of romance even if the writers at first do not want one there. Romance is as dramatic as death, or more so. It is nearly impossible to keep out of storytelling, despite brave efforts by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Brave but futile.

Note that every later retelling or movie version of any of their tales always introduces a love interest. The movie version of
First Men In The Moon
introduced a female stowaway, played by sweater girl Martha Hyer. The movie version of
Journey To The Center Of The Earth
has the junoesque Arlene Dahl, likewise. The movie version of
Clipper Of The Clouds
, which was named for its sequel,
Master Of The World
has the adorable Mary Webster, likewise.

Examples could be multiplied endlessly. I think only
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
by Disney did not intrude an apocryphal female love interest. Hence my conclusion is that if there is no love interest at first, the pressure of the needs of drama always urges one be introduced later, in any sequel or retelling.

If I may use an example from a cartoon, just to dispel anyone’s idea that I have refined tastes in the matter: I am a great fan of Disney’s
Kim Possible
. I love that show. Every element is perfect. Teen superheroine Kim Possible is the daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon. On her website she boasts that she can do anything, and so instead of getting the babysitting or yard working jobs she supposed, foreign governments and major corporations hire her to solve crimes, stop revolutions, and track down supervillains. The show’s supervisors told the writers that, as a Disney show, they needs must put in a cute pet sidekick like the raccoon of Pocahontas or the flounder of Ariel, and the writers subverted the paradigm by introducing a naked mole rat. Who is also a super genius. Kim Possible’s comic relief sidekick and Sancho Panza is named Ron Stoppable.

Unfortunately, the needs of drama interfered with this perfect balance of elements in the last season, when some nitwit decided that Kim Possible should fall in love, not with the handsome and competent Will Du, agent of Global Justice, nor with Josh Mankey, the boy on whom she has a legitimate crush, but with Ron, her sidekick. (Who, by the way, was in love with and loved by the alluring and exotic high school ninja-girl and exchange student, Yori).

It is unsettling and stupid, as stupid as deciding that the alluring and snarktastic supervillainess Shego would go for her freaky blue supervillain boss Dr. Drakken rather than for the rich and handsome and stump-stupid but devotedly romantic Sr. Senior, Jr.