Ellen Ripley: Strong Female Character?

Time for a second installment in the (extremely) occasional feature here, where we look at a female character in science-fiction and fantasy and ask ourselves the following five questions:

1) Is she active? A genuinely strong female character should make her own decisions, and those decisions should drive the plot.

2)  Is she only allowed to be strong in a way that confirms gender stereotypes? A strong female character is not strong in the way women are allowed to be strong (femme fatale, mama grizzly, etc); she's strong in the way people are strong.

3) Is she allowed to explore a spectrum of sexuality outside of the virgin/whore dichotomy? An active sexual identity is fine, but it should not be presented as an object of male sexual fantasy.

4) Does she derive her power from a determination to avoid repeating a defining moment of victimization (particularly sexual victimization)? A strong female character should not just be an ordinary woman who was hurt/brutalized/raped and swore, "Never again".

5) Is she defined solely by her relationship with a male protagonist? Any character who is primarily motivated by her feelings for a man is being limited in some way.

Ideally, by looking at them through this lens, we'll be able to see whether or not the character is genuinely a strong female character, or whether she's the same old stereotype but with weapons.

Today, we'll take a look at Ellen Ripley, star of the first four 'Alien' movies. (And rumored to be involved in the next one as well.) She's often been held up as an example of a feminist science fiction hero, and while I certainly think that's true, I do think we can take a slightly closer look at the character and see just how and why she's written as a feminist. Let's go point by point, shall we?

1) Is she active? Definitely. Ripley makes her own decisions at pretty much every step of the way in all four movies. She's not completely unfettered in her decision-making process; let's face it, who is? But she makes key determinations that drive the plot of every movie. Usually, characters who don't listen to her or deny her agency are presented as villainous, and get their comeuppance at some point. Ripley knows what she's doing when it comes to xenomorphs, and you ignore her at your peril.

2) Is she only allowed to be strong in a way that confirms gender stereotypes? Well...this one may be a bit more problematic. Certainly in the first one, she's presented as "just another crewmember" (primarily because all of the parts were written to be played by any gender). In the second movie, though, she's very clearly presented as a mother defending her surrogate child, and the entire third act of the film is an elongated quest to rescue Newt (with the Alien Queen presented as an inverted mirror of Ripley, a mother figure who can only have children by killing). This isn't to say that it's not a solid character beat--Ripley feels lost due to her extended period of cryo-sleep, and is trying to recapture a lost relationship with her daughter through Newt. (In fact, the scenes between Newt and Ripley are one of the reasons this film passes the Bechdel Test.) And it's hard to argue that the film normalizes gender stereotypes, not with Vasquez around. But nonetheless, she's slotted into the "mama grizzly" stereotype for a significant chunk of the movie, and that shouldn't be dismissed.

The third and fourth film, meanwhile, subvert the "mama grizzly" stereotype by making Ripley mother to the antagonists. In the third film, she's gestating a queen, which makes her "immune" to the alien attacks; it's protecting the new queen. In the fourth film, she has a psychic connection to the aliens through the queen that is her offspring. Both do give Ripley power in a way that technically confirms gender stereotypes--the power of motherhood is a distinctly feminine power for obvious reasons. But they both subvert the tropes even as they offer them by presenting motherhood as something that forces the mother to sacrifice herself for her children, and by presenting the mother in question as decidedly unhappy about the idea. So while I think you can say that Ripley does confirm gender stereotypes, this is a good example of a way in which that doesn't necessarily mean it's not being feminist.

3) Is she allowed to explore a spectrum of sexuality outside of the virgin/whore dichotomy? There's not a lot of sex in the 'Alien' movies; it's just not really a thing they do. (Well, at least not literally and among humans. The facehuggers are a deeply symoblic and deeply troubling view of sexuality that probably deserve their own blog post. Suffice to say for now that the series is not pro-life.) It is worth noting, though, that Ripley is never condemned for the sex she does get to have, and it's not generally presented in an exploitative fashion. The only really exploitative bit in the whole series is when she strips down to her underwear at the end of the first movie.

4) Does she derive her power from a determination to avoid repeating a defining moment of victimization (particularly sexual victimization)? Nope. She certainly wants to wipe out all the xenomorphs, but that's primarily because she has first-hand experience of what they've done to her friends, not because they did something terrible to her that she's determined to avoid or exact revenge over. Free and clear on this one.

5) Is she defined solely by her relationship with a male protagonist? Nope. There isn't even a single male protagonist from film to film. Ellen Ripley is who she is, a survivor. She's tough, but she's very human and very real, and a really strong female character. There are some interesting nuances that the later film picked up on that did explore character beats specific to her role as a mother, but they weren't the only thing about the character and they weren't presented uncritically. I think that Sigourney Weaver has a lot to be proud of with her portrayal of Ripley.

Buffy Summers: Strong Female Character?

Back in the day on my guest posts for MightyGodKing, I discussed the ways that "strength" was such a nebulous quality that virtually any female character could be termed as a "strong female character" by someone who wanted to bandwagon feminism to some of that sweet, sweet progressive/liberal cash while still writing something unbelievably sexist. I tried to set out some criteria for an actual strongly- written female character, and I'll put down the quick and dirty version of my five points here, for those who don't want to wade through the original post or can't follow the link.

A genuinely strong female character should have these five qualities:

1) She should be active, not merely powerful. A genuinely strong female character should make her own decisions, and those decisions should drive the plot.

2)  She should be strong in a way that does not confirm gender stereotypes. A strong female character is not strong in the way women are allowed to be strong (femme fatale, mama grizzly, etc); she's strong in the way people are strong.

3) She should be allowed to explore a spectrum of sexuality outside of the virgin/whore dichotomy. An active sexual identity is fine, but it should not be presented as an object of male sexual fantasy.

4) She should not derive her power from a determination to avoid repeating a defining moment of victimization (particularly not sexual victimization). This isn't to say she can never have been hurt; only to say that she should not just be an ordinary woman who was hurt/brutalized/raped and swore, "Never again".

5) She should not be defined solely by her relationship with a male protagonist. Any character who is primarily motivated by her feelings for a man is being limited in some way.

I recently mentioned these on the feminism-in-pop-culture website Jezebel.com and was told that I should blog about how this relates to popular characters and series. Since I'm already doing way more blogging than I can handle, I felt like a better avenue would be to do it when I was stuck for ideas on my own blog. Which is kind of a shaggy-dog way of saying, "How does Buffy Summers stack up against these criteria?"

Pretty well, I think. Obviously, seven seasons of television, two seasons of comics with a third on the way, and a movie will produce a number of off-model moments...that said, for the most part, Buffy fares successfully when judged by all five criteria. In terms of the first, the series pretty much defines itself through Buffy's conflicts with authority figures; she is supposed to be simply the latest Slayer, a tool used by the Watchers in their endless battles (and if there's a better symbolic encapsulation of the patriarchy than the Watchers, I can't think of it). But she refuses to accept a subordinate role in her relationship with Giles, even though she accepts his role as a mentor and teacher, and their power dynamic changes repeatedly over the course of the series. By Season Eight, she is the leader of a group of Slayers, and her decisions guide most of the major story arcs throughout the show's run.

Moving on to Item Number Two...obviously, Whedon's initial concept of the series was a deliberate inversion of gender roles. Buffy is specifically chosen as an example of a gender role that has no power in traditional narratives--the damsel in distress--and then is given the power to subvert that trope and rescue herself. In one sense, this is still a gender-normative role; Buffy is a stereotypical teenage girl, at least in the early seasons. But looking at the definition, she is not drawing her power from a gender-normative role; she is drawing her power despite it. Whedon is kicking against the damsel in distress cliché, entirely on purpose.

The third question is the easiest to answer. Does Buffy get to have sex? Yes. Is she portrayed as nothing but a sex object? Nope. Even though there are times when she has had sex and regretted it afterwards, it was not sex itself which was portrayed as negative but the situation in which she had it. (And in a series where pretty much every character is sexually active, it'd be absurd if none of them ever had a bad experience.) Whedon probably has the best record here that we're likely to see in this blog.

On to Item Number Four. Does Buffy derive her power from victimization? Nope. She derives her power from ancient magic. This isn't to say that she's never been helpless or victimized, but she's no Red Sonja. (Yes, Red Sonja is the poster child for this particular trope. I may well do an entry for her just to show it.)

And finally...what is Buffy's motivation? Is she doing it all for Angel? Or Spike? Or Riley? (Who was totally my favorite, by the way, and got a bum deal from the show.) No. Although she cares for them, and although she does do things to help them out over the course of the series, she is primarily defined by and motivated by her knowledge that she is the only person who can do what she does and that the world depends on her. It's a weighty burden that sometimes feels like a trap, but ultimately she decides to do it because it needs doing. Which brings us right back to the beginning: Buffy Summers makes decisions that drive the plot. At least in my books, Whedon has done a good job of writing a genuinely strong woman.