It's an...odd time for the role of gender in pop culture, at least from my geeky perspective. Take two things I've recently played or read. On one hand, we have Bayonetta, a semi-recently released action game in the same genre of Devil May Cry (not surprisingly, since they have the same designers,) but with the notable difference that the cocky, confident, incredibly powerful protagonist is female. On the other hand, there's...the nearly unthinkable. See, I wrote a vampire-based novel recently, and I decided I needed to do some research. I was coerced into reading...sigh...Twilight. At least I could discuss the book with actual experienced now. Anyway, the Twilight novel's protagonist, Bella Swan, is the exact opposite of Bayonetta. Never mind monsters, she can't deal with a stroll through a forest, handle a blood drive, visit another town, or even walk ten feet without nearly killing herself.
We have two nearly completely different models of the female ideal, and I have to wonder: is either remotely a good thing? Should we even bother to use them for such a purpose, or should we dismiss them as one dimensional cardboard cutouts, too alien to be compared to our reality, or worse yet, given the dismissive label of "just entertainment" and thus without artistic merit in any way? It's easier to ignore the messages, but that gives both of them less respect than it deserves. Besides, as a Buffy fan, i can't really justify ignoring other uses of speculative fiction for feminist messages.
Let's start with Bayonetta. She comes from a long line of female protagonists, the descendant of Samus Aran and Lara Croft. She differs from them mostly in her sexual nature. Certainly, most video game women are extremely attractive (though in fairness, most male video game characters are intended to be as well,) and don't wear much, but they otherwise are happy shooting, impaling, or punching their way to victory. Bayonetta doesn't pretend to be unaware of her sexuality, and it reflects in her every action, from the way she walks to her in game taunts to her use of weapons to the fact that many of her most powerful moves briefly turns her naked. Well, technically she's always naked, since her clothing (by default a standard catsuit) is actually made of her hair, as are the demons she summons. It's a weird game.
Bella, meanwhile, reflects the now clichéd Vampire Romance Dynamic. You see it in nearly every modern vampire story, and there are a lot of them. I could probably write an entire article on that alone, but the short version is you start with a human woman (and it's always a woman,) suddenly in a relationship with a vampire man. It's a scary situation. After all, this vampire is so much more dangerous than you, with his strange needs and hungers that you, the female protagonist, can't understand. And he's so much bigger and stronger than you, and he could easily overpower you at any time if he just wanted to. But! Unlike many of his kind, he is a gentlemen who knows that he must be respectful and polite at all times. In fact, he must be this gentlemen, as it's the only way he can fight against the primal urges all beings of his kind have. And so he welcomes you into his world, showing all the incredible and wonderful things he can do, though he also must sometimes protect you and keep you from seeing the worst that his big, scary world has to offer.
Ick. I don't WANT to see the obvious gender dynamics in place in these stories, but they're just so blunt. It's unnerving. Just as the real world slowly works its way to a more balanced place, where women can be as competent as men (and just as importantly, where men aren't expected to be sex-addicted territorial alpha-types,) a fantasy version pops up that takes all the old stereotypes and makes them into a new ideal. Not that all stories who use this Dynamic are equal. Buffy, to use the obvious example, is special specifically because she avoids the implications of her weakness. She's more than a match for most demons and vampires, and at worst she is portrayed as equal to her vampire love interests. Similar, while I'm still working through True Blood, I was interested from the first episode when the female half of the Dynamic saves her eventual vampire love interest from a gruesome fate. And how does she save him? By almost strangling a guy with a chain. Sure, the Dynamic shows up soon after, but at least Sookie wasn't about to lose her own strength in the process.
Bella, of course, is the definition of this Dynamic. Not only does she need the protection of her vampire love interest against supernatural threats, she barely can exist in the regular world without her help. She would have died or worse at least twice in the first couple hundred pages of the book alone. The series also goes out of its way to avoid any hint of sexuality, or at least sex. Sure, it can't shut up about how beautiful Edward is, but any actual sex is off the table. It mostly relates to how vampire semen is toxic and would kill a human or something like that, so Bella can't sleep with him until she turns into a vampire, which he won't do, but then they eventually have sex anyway, but only after they're married (of course,) four books into the series, and...you get the idea.
So for all the differences between the two heroines, are we just talking the classic virgin/whore dynamic? Well, not exactly. For one thing, as sexually provocative as Bayonetta is, she has as much sex in the first game as Bella has in the first book. She's only had one game so far, so who knows if that changes, but in the first, she never gets past light flirting with a single guy; admittedly, it helps that he wants to kill her for the first half of the game. The problem, at least from a cursory glance, is the way the two take such extremes with what women should be. Either a role of passive emotional center to her man, the crucial piece needed to make him good in a dangerous world, or as an independent entity brazen in both her power and her sexual identity.
And to be fair, neither character completely matches her own ideal, though one undergoes actual characterization while the other regresses. Bayonetta starts as a bastion of self-interest, needing nobody but her information and item providing sidekicks/worshipers, but as the game progressives, she develops actual affection for her quasi-love interest and for a small child she has to protect. Okay, "strong woman learns to care for others through romance and motherhood" is not a great message, either, but at the same time, she is just as competent saving the world and fighting evil (well, evil-ish, they're mostly confused angels.) Bella, meanwhile, starts out at least showing signs of curiosity and the ability to solve a mystery. She only decides to turn her brain off after entering a relationship with a vampire. Even before, though, she is such an aggressive non-character. She hates the town she moves into, she hates the school, she hates her friends, she has no interests except for generic "reading," she just exists. At least Bayonetta has some interests beyond whittling a few notches in the celestial hierarchy.
I guess that's the answer. When making any character, you can't toss an archetype on them and call it a day. Give them interests, give them hobbies, give them activities beyond what their current adventure would call for. And if you make a female character, focus on this even more. It reminds me of a rule I discovered when I was younger and my creative talents were just starting to develop. Modern culture still is dominated by white male protagonists, but I find that working with minority characters is easier and more rewarding. With the dominant image of our society, you can get away with making them "the moron", or "the jerk," or "the loser." But such a simple, negative stereotype applied to a moron would look racist, sexist, or what have you. Do the same with a positive stereotype and you look like you're making a perfect token character. Neither is acceptable for any serious art, and so you're obligated to make a deeper character, one with faults and virtues.
Oh, right, this is a "Reviews," article, isn't it? Well, I'll make that part quick. Even ignoring the empty protagonist and the well-publicized creepy relationship she has with her chauvinistic stalker boyfriend, Twilight is a frustrating read. It starts out reasonably enough if you enter it without any presumptions, but by the time the relationship starts, the novel quickly regresses into a plot-free static. I was overjoyed when actual evil vampires arrived, but even they were defeated while Bella was conveniently unconscious. Bayonetta is a more traditional video game narrative, but it suffers from its own kind of extremism usually found in Capcom games (despite this one being made by Sega, albeit with old Capcom developers.) Every action you take is judged and graded, from individual fights to the entire level, and every deviation from perfection is penalized. Have to die and continue? Penalty! At least you still get an infinite number of them this time around. Use an item? Points lost! That's fair enough, since the only people who'd care that much about their score are the really hard-core fans. Everyone else will probably accept they won't get quite as many points as the perfect run types. The only real issue I have comes from the quick-time events, commonly call "press a button to not die." These show up all over the place, and if you miss the split-second command, you lose a continue and your score is ruined. These are game design philosophies that do not work well together. Still, I'd rather return to Bayonetta's world than Bella's any day of the week. Being male and all, it would be impossible for me not to.
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