Wicked Stupid Plotless: Representation, Point-of-View and How to Fix Blockbusters

WordMaster

One of the most common responses to women who criticize the lack of prominent, well-written female superheroes is something along the lines of: “Who cares if the main character is a man, as long as the movie is good?” Which is technically true, since movies like Citizen Kane and The Lord of the Rings aren’t any less great for revolving around rich white men (or, in the case of the latter, hobbits), and despite the growing dissatisfaction with TV antiheroes, Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Walter White will always be complex, fascinating characters.

But as much as some people try their damnedest to ignore it or to dismiss it as irrelevant, media representation is a big deal. Consider the explanations studios use to defend their reluctance to release a mainstream superhero movie headlined by a woman:

1) Women can’t carry movies (ahem, Sandra Bullock says hi and go fuck yourself).

2) Women don’t go to see genre movies (indeed, every single person who’s ever gone to any sci-fi, fantasy, action or horror movie is a white male between the ages of 12-25).

3) Catwoman and Elektra sucked, so clearly, female superhero movies just inherently suck (never mind that Daredevil and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, among others, also sucked).

4) It’s too big of a risk (after all, The Hunger Games was a major box office bomb – almost as bad as John Carter!).

5) There aren’t many actresses who are kick-ass enough to pull off action roles (oh, please).

So, yes, it matters a lot. It matters because, 27 years after Sigourney Weaver vanquished a colony of aliens in James Cameron’s adrenaline-charged action classic, we shouldn’t have to tolerate these bullshit excuses anymore. It matters because we live in a world where a feature-length, live-action blockbuster centered on Aquaman seems less far-fetched than one with Wonder Woman, where we have to struggle to get Black Widow her own solo project, yet Marvel can make a movie containing a CGI raccoon with a freaking rocket launcher and no one bats an eye. It matters because at one point this year, the D.C. metropolitan area had a whopping 25 screenings of movies about women. It matters because whenever a non-white actor is cast in an even moderately high-profile role, Internet message boards are flooded with commenters fuming about how the PC police are destroying the integrity of their beloved franchise with “lazy” attempts to “diversify” (apparently, the continuity of a fictional universe matters more than any desire to break down decades of institutionalized prejudice).

Let’s not forget that time when so-called “fans” of The Hunger Games spewed racist complaints about a character that was explicitly written as black in the source material.

Perhaps most importantly, though, it matters because, as any English teacher will tell you, point- of-view is a vital part of storytelling, if not the most vital part. After all, at their core, stories are about the journeys of characters, their efforts to complete a task, satisfy a desire or overcome an obstacle; who those characters are defines the story’s direction, tone, pacing, ideology, everything. You can’t just choose any random character to be your protagonist, and you can’t change your protagonist without completely changing the story.

Take a trio of American classics: Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. Imagine if the “I” in each of those novels wasn’t, respectively, Ishmael, Nick Carraway and Scout Finch and was instead, say, Ahab, Jay Gatsby and Atticus Finch; how different would they look? The answer is that, in all likelihood, none of them would be the revered reading-list staples that they are. Much of their power comes from the fact that they are all told from the perspective of observer narrators – point-of-view characters, usually speaking in first-person, who don’t actively participate in the central plotline, instead serving as intermediaries between the reader and the hero, the character around whom the action revolves. Viewed exclusively from outside, through the eyes of another character, the hero feels distant, mysterious, even larger-than-life; the story is less about his or her actions than it is about his/her impact on the narrator.

Another way stories can draw attention to perspective is by using an unreliable narrator (a term that’s really kind of redundant because unless you’re using the omniscient point-of-view, no character is fully aware of everything that’s happening at any given time). Like the observer narrator, unreliable narrators generally turn up in first-person stories, and the credibility of their thoughts and judgment is tenuous. Though the twist ending that so often accompanies unreliable narrators has become overused to the verge of predictability (thus defeating the entire point of a twist), when done well, this device can be useful for emphasizing the inherently subjective nature of experience.

Subjectivity especially tends to get lost in movies and TV, where the audience can see what each scene and character looks like instead of relying on a second-hand account and your own imagination. It’s easy to forget that just because you’re being told or shown something, that doesn’t necessarily make it true. Perhaps that’s one reason so many supporting characters end up as caricatures and clichés, since many filmmakers don’t bother developing them beyond what we see right onscreen, treating them like plot devices with faces, existing for the sole purpose of getting in the way of the protagonist and moving the action along.

And yet I still wasn’t rooting for Tony Stark.

Still, every once in a while, a movie or show comes along that really lets you step inside the main character’s head (sometimes literally). For example, Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s recently released directorial debut and one of the freshest, most thought-provoking romantic comedies in a long time. Told from the point-of-view of a shallow, self-absorbed porn addict, the movie strikes a delicate, mostly successful balance between satire, with the purposely garish editing and exaggerated New Jersey accents, and sincere insight, as it critiques the media’s portrayal of gender, romance and sexuality with welcome tartness. The reason why it works (again, for the most part) is because Gordon-Levitt immerses the audience in the protagonist’s mind, compelling you to sympathize with him even as you roll your eyes in disgust. At the same time, he acknowledges the limits and biases of Jon’s perspective, hinting that the world he – and, by extension, we – see isn’t exactly reality. If Scarlett Johansson’s Barbara Sugarman comes off as a bitch (whatever that means), it’s because Jon sees her that way; you can easily imagine that if the film was told from her point-of-view, it would be completely different. Also, although it shows her in a rather unfavorable light, the movie never outright vilifies Barbara, at least not any more than it does Jon.

In this way, Don Jon is reminiscent of (500) Days of Summer, another quirky rom-com maybe-or-maybe-not-coincidentally starring Gordon-Levitt. Many people have criticized the film’s use of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, claiming that Zooey Deschanel’s character is too hipster and ambiguous and Gordon-Levitt’s is too self-indulgent and unlikable and the whole thing is just a collection of pretentious, indie clichés masquerading as a cute, unconventional love story. Those people are missing the whole point of the movie. For one, the movie was inspired by a real-life relationship that co-screenwriter Scott Neustadter had, so at least some bias is inevitable. More importantly, though, Summer is supposed to be ambiguous and Tom is supposed to be self-indulgent, and their romance isn’t supposed to be “cute”. As Gordon-Levitt eloquently explains, the film is about someone who falls in love with the idea of a person, not an actual person. But by just giving us Tom’s side of the story, it allows for a more nuanced depiction of what it’s like to be in a relationship, since in reality, we can only see the world through our own eyes.

Which is why it isn’t enough to consign female and minority characters to supporting roles, even if those roles are well-developed, complex or interesting. No matter how richly drawn a supporting character is, the story still belongs to the lead: he or she is the one who controls how the audience perceives the world and other characters, who gets to undergo internal development (or, in some cases, stasis). With the exception of observer narrators and ensembles, the rest of the cast revolves around him – the definition of a supporting character. Of course, there are plenty of cases where the supporting character is legitimately more compelling than the lead, but that’s just bad writing; if the lead isn’t at least mildly sympathetic or intriguing, then he/she shouldn’t be the lead. No one is going to care about the rest of the story if they’re forced to hang around some bland cardboard-cutout the entire time.

Sorry, Charlie Hunan, but this movie would have been so much better if Mako Mori was actually the main character.

Yet, for some reason, movies insist on recycling the same tropes, the same story beats, over and over again: the generically noble hero, the brooding “antihero”, the sexy, innocuously smart, faux-tough love interest, etc. You’d like to think that at a certain point, people get bored of seeing endless carbon copies of the same template (but then you remember that there are three Hangover movies, half a dozen Fast and Furious movies, fifty billion adaptations of Pride & Prejudice and a Psycho remake exists). If Hollywood gave any shits about creativity, and most evidence suggests they don’t, they’d figure out that changing up the main character and experimenting with point-of-view might be a nice way to infuse some life into these increasingly dull, unremarkable blockbusters. I’m not just talking in terms of gender, race, class or sexual orientation either, though that’s a big part of it. I’m talking about having heroes – or heroines – that don’t fit neatly into a cookie-cutter “good guy/girl” mold, who can’t be summed up in a single phrase or sentence, who don’t follow some by-the-numbers narrative arc. It can be something as simple as subverting a stereotype by giving the character actual depth or telling a traditional story from an unconventional perspective like, say, that of the villain or the femme fatale. I want a movie that dares to be surprising or unconventional, even subversive.

So, when people complain about the lack of diversity in superhero movies, it isn’t purely for the sake of being “PC” or any of that reactionary crap. It’s because 1) a little more variety would be good for the quality of our entertainment and 2) middle/upper-class white heterosexual men aren’t the only people who have stories worth telling. They’re also not the only people in the audience; it would be nice if Hollywood actually acknowledged the existence and importance of groups outside the majority (which isn’t even the real majority, by the way) instead of treating us like angry gods that need to be fed once a year. Seriously, we can relate to a misogynistic porn addict, a misogynistic psychopath, a misogynistic ad executive, a misogynistic drug lord, a misogynistic mobster, a serial killer cannibal and, apparently, a CGI raccoon with a rocket launcher. I think we can deal with a female, non-white or LGBT superhero.