With Marvel having made six movies with lead actors called Chris, the calls for a woman-led movie have been getting louder. And while we’re going to have to wait until 2018 to see Captain Marvel, and a Black Widow movie is still not on the cards, our appetites have been more than whetted with the latest superhero show to hit our screens; Agent Carter.
The series premièred last week in the US with a two-hour long double episode, and while the tight plot and great action are noteworthy, there was one element of the show that really stood out for a lot of women viewers, and it’s a topic that TV is usually happy to brush over.
From very early on in the first episode it becomes clear that sexism, harassment and discrimination are a part of Peggy Carter’s daily life. While formally an SSR agent, informally her male colleagues patronise her, diminish her, ask her to perform menial administrative tasks like filing, answering phones or making coffee. Carter has to fight to be allowed to do her job and be recognised for her skills, potential and contributions – and she’s not the only one. Carter’s roommate Colleen finds her female colleagues out of a job, as soldiers – entirely unqualified for the work – return from the front to take them, while Waitress Angie deals with constant harassment from her male customers. It’s everywhere, and it’s unrelenting.
The debate about ‘strong female characters’ still rages on in modern feminist media critique. Such characters, more often than not, are either devoid of any femininity, or allowed to be feminine in only a very narrow set of ways. SFCs are simplistic, and often devoid of context.
They tend to move through a world as experienced by their generally white male writers: a world where they don’t have to consider the personal safety implications of being a woman in public; a world where being good at their job is a sufficient condition for success; a world where they can reasonably expect to be taken seriously by their peers instead of being told to “cover the phones”.
This is not the world that women – and other marginalised groups – live in. What many writers (especially those giving trite advice like “write them like they’re human beings”) don’t realise is that different people experience reality differently, and for marginalised people there are a whole set of social structures in place that make their experiences considerably bleaker. This is as true for women as it is for other marginalised groups – people of colour, LGBTQ people and disabled people. And of course, if you’re a member of more than one of these groups, the shit you have to deal with multiplies.
Marvel’s Agent Carter does a good job of showing the difficulties a white, cis, (probably) straight woman would have faced in 1940s America: being demoted or losing your job to returning soldiers, or being expected to only work until you get married. It also shows the kind of system-beating coping strategies that marginalised people often develop. You’re only good for making coffee? Make the coffee and listen in on the briefing. People see your pretty face and forget that there’s a person with thoughts and feelings and agency behind it? Lull them into a false sense of security. Men find women’s bodies largely repulsive unless it’s for their benefit? Use ‘women’s troubles’ to get a day off for world-saving.
This being a comic book adaptation, some of the ways in which Carter deals with her reality are basically power fantasies. There are times I wish I had comebacks as good as Peggy, or that I could press a fork to a man’s rib-cage and explain to him the consequences of his actions. Also true to the genre, Peggy acquires a sidekick in the form of Howard Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis. He’s there to patch up her wounds, check the paperwork for disarming explosives, and drive the getaway car. These are exactly the kind of power fantasies we see male characters enact without batting an eyelid. A simple role reversal of the male hero and female sidekick would be tired and insincere, but the fact that Carter is shown in the context of pervasive sexism and discrimination around her gives the situation depth and nuance.
The show centres Carter’s experience and takes us into her reality. Where it could improve is in its representation of characters from marginalised groups other than white, cis, (probably) straight women. We have a disabled character working in the SSR, a fair few women – and that’s it. So far, men of colour have appeared either as shady criminals or jazz musicians, and women of colour apparently weren’t invented yet. Now that the writers have shown what they can do, there’s no excuse not to have a more diverse cast treated with the same kind of nuance as the lead.
And lest we forget, Peggy Carter’s reality is not one we left behind in the 1940s. Those of us who experience it on a daily basis know that sexism, discrimination and harassment are still with us.
Those who have the privilege not to have to deal with this sort of thing, however, should not congratulate themselves on how far we’ve come in a few decades: Agent Carter’s “cover the phones” is today’s “make me a sandwich”.
[This post was originally published at The Geek Agenda.]