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.

Welcome to the Age of Not-So-Super Heroes

WordMaster

***BE WARNED: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR MAN OF STEEL, IRON MAN 3 AND CHRONICLE***

            For someone who’s never read a Superman comic or seen any of the dozens of previous TV and film incarnations of the character, I have a lot to say about Man of Steel. I walked into the theater with no real expectations, aside from what I’d heard about the movie’s possible feminist credentials; I’d only agreed to see it in the first place because a few friends wanted to see it, and I always like to be able to form my own opinions, even if those opinions cost $10 a piece. At the very least, I thought, Amy Adams should be a kick-ass Lois Lane, right?

            As it turned out, no. Wrong. Bare-minimum expectations not met. I walked out the theater fuming about the money I’d wasted, which is saying a lot (you’re talking to someone who saw Journey to the Center of the Earth – yes, the one with Brendan Fraser – and The Green Hornet in theaters and had no overwhelming feelings of regret), and struggling to suppress my urge to burst into a needlessly vehement rant like the guy sitting in front of me did to his amused buddies. If I felt betrayed, I could only imagine how someone who actually gave a damn about Superman felt, the countless people who looked forward to this movie the way I looked forward to The Dark Knight Rises.

            It’s a shame because, despite my hatred of Zack Snyder as a director and my indifference to Superman as a character, I genuinely wanted Man of Steel to be good. The dueling teaser trailers got my hopes up with their stark, poignant imagery and refreshing lack of in-your-face CGI; maybe, I thought, Snyder had finally ditched the irritating gimmicks that his previous movies unbearable (the fucking slow-mo and fast-mo in that train scene in Sucker Punch… rrrrrargh!!). Even after 75 years of comic books, radio broadcasts, television serials and feature-length films, it’s clear that Superman still resonates with people, contrary to the popular belief suggesting that his sunny idealism has become irrelevant in our age of antiheroes. In theory, Man of Steel presented a clean slate for the icon, unbound by obligations to follow the continuity of past cinematic efforts and allowing the filmmakers to remodel him for modern sensibilities. In theory, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams seem like spot-on casting choices, with his chiseled, hyper-masculine good looks and her down-to-earth feistiness. In theory, a Christopher Nolan-influenced version of the story, full of post-9/11 angst and moral ambiguity, could have worked.

How to Breathe Life into a Fictional Character

WordMaster

There is a debate that rages among writers, both amateur and professional, over the importance of plot versus character. Personally, I don’t think one is inherently more essential than the other (they’re equally indispensable elements of any story), but I’ll admit that I’m somewhat partial toward characters, if only because the act of creating fictional people that I inevitably find more interesting than anyone I’ve met in real life has always been one of my favorite parts of writing. Besides, for me, plot tends to be: people talk + random arguments + a big blur of shit happening that I’ll figure out later.

Anyway, not that I’m a genius with character development or anything, but here is some advice that you might want to heed when populating your novel/short story/script/fan fic/whatever:

Know your characters. This one seems pretty obvious, but it’s also probably the hardest aspect of character development and perhaps even writing in general. Anyone can just throw a bunch of adjectives together and call it a character, but a good writer can delve into a character’s mind and recite obscure details about his backstory and inner psychology like a therapist analyzing his patient. If someone asks you what your main character did on her 10^th birthday, you better be able come up with an answer. Even if you never end up using that particular piece of info in your story, it’s always good to be aware of it, just in case. Who knows? That one obscure, seemingly trivial detail could unlock entirely new doors for your character and shed light on some shadowy corner that you never would have seen otherwise. Besides, if you’re anything like me, creating characters is like wandering through a labyrinth: it’s complicated and maybe even frustrating at times, but it’s addictive as hell, and each turn brings with it a giddy rush of realization that there’s still more left to discover.  I could spend hours, days, weeks, exploring my characters and digging up information about their lives and personalities, their highest hopes and deepest, darkest secrets, wondering what makes them unhappy (advice-inside-advice: happy characters are boring characters) and what kind of music they listen to. I do it partly because it distracts me from actually writing my story, but I also do it because it’s fun and it lets my imagination soar.

Sated: Looking Back on the Hunger Games

CE Jenkins

****WARNING: Contains spoilers for the Hunger Games series. *****

As it turns out, taking a nap from 7-9pm is a terrible idea. I came to this realization at around 4:30am, after staring at the ceiling above my bed for five hours and willing myself into unconsciousness. That having failed, I settled for the next best thing other than slowing my brain’s inevitable slide into a grayish stew: reading. And that is the story on how I finished the Hunger Games trilogy.

I have to say, I profess myself disappointed. If you were to graph my enjoyment of the three books, it would look something like a skier going over a cliff. Still, in the grand scheme of things I found the series engaging and entertaining.

Gerd Pride

        CE Jenkins

           I love being a nerd. It’s great. Normally whenever someone gets so obsessed with something that they don a weird costume and camp out on a sidewalk for 48 hours the next logical step is a restraining order; but flash your nerd ID badge, and behavior that some would consider psychopathic becomes merely creepy. It’s like belonging to a cult, in a way; you wear costumes, speak in tongues, and convene regularly for sacred meetings at the local GameStop. And sometimes it’s all I want in the world to just get the nerdiest t-shirt I can find and plaster that logo across my chest. But thanks to the help of numerous t-shirt websites, that simple goal is a lot harder than it sounds.

          It seems like a lot of retailers are unaware of the existence of female fans. Nerdiness has always been characterized as a guy thing—I say nerd, and you probably think of a spindly dude with centimeter-thick glasses and a pocket protector. People refer generically to “fanboys”, assuming that the ladies are too busy making sandwiches to be interested in pop culture. But lately that stereotype has gotten more and more outdated, as women have taken their place alongside their male comrades in headshotting all the pathetic n00bs and storming all the conventions. Unfortunately, the media and its outlets have done little to realize this new world.

          For one, it is nearly impossible to get good merch (specifically t-shirts, because most everything else is gender-neutral). I am a chick and have the body to prove it. I don’t want to have to get by with throwing a small guy’s-cut shirt in the wash 5 times so it doesn’t look like I’m wearing a sack. Beyond that, getting nerdy girls clothing is a pain in the ass for a bunch of other reasons:

1.      Expense. For plenty of online retailers such as J!NX and ThinkGeek (both of which I love in spite of this), a woman’s shirt costs around 2-3 dollars more than a guy’s, and uses less fabric. That might not seem like a lot, but think of it this way: with the money you’d save on 3 t-shirts, you could go down to Wal-Mart and buy an Iron Man DvD.

2.      Material. The stuff they make some women’s t-shirts out of is so flimsy. Maybe they think it will stretch over our boobs better, as opposed to not ripping in half when you pull it off the hanger.

3.      Availability. I went to Adventure Island one time, and they had like 3 different comic book shops in their Marvel area. It was totally awesome, except for the fact that the only women’s t-shirts they carried all said something to the effect of “I only date superheros” or “my boyfriend has iron abs, literally!” I might find that sort of thing vapid and mildly sexist, but that’s just an opinion and I have no problem with people who do wear those shirts. I do have a problem with the manufacturers who think that the only kind of t-shirts female nerds want to wear are ones that lock them into the role of a girly sex object. Some of us actually want to wear Cap’s insignia emblazoned on our chest without the subtext implication that we’ll be banging him later on.

          The bias goes beyond the apparel section. Walk into any comic book store and flip through the covers; I’ll bet that one thing you won’t be wanting for is a plethora of unnaturally large breasts. Sometimes it seems like the majority of women in comic books have a rack comparable to if Christina Hendrix’s boobs had twins fathered by a watermelon. And on top of that they dress these characters up in skimpy outfits that are very rarely practical for punching a bad guy’s face in. Take Wonder Woman's costume, for example. I highly doubt that a nip slip is something you want to worry about while trying not to be incinerated by a death ray. Not to mention all those spinebreaking poses to show tits and ass at the same time. Seriously artists, I know proper anatomy is for losers and all but our bodies don’t actually bend that way. The problem isn't that comic book women tend to have large breasts and skimpy clothing, because there's nothing inherently sexist about that; it's that they're being exploited for their sexuality, treated merely as eye candy for an audience with a serious sweet-tooth. 

          The issues are more than just skin deep; whether it’s because many comic book authors are dudes with no clue how to write a woman, or because they think their readers have no interest in such things, strong female personalities are in short supply. Granted, there are some good ones as well: Kitty Pryde, Wonder Woman, and Barbara Gordon to name a few. But for every good female character there are a plethora of poorly written, underdeveloped, overly-sexualized ones to boot. There’s also the “women in refrigerators” conundrum, which describes the way many female characters are often ruthlessly punished or treated as plot devices to spur their manly men to action.

          One root of this problem is that the comic book industries keep assuming that their audience is composed entirely of straight dudes. There is some truth to that, of course; many women-centric comics don’t sell as well as their male-centric counterparts, and the fanbase has been an unequivocal sausagefest in the past. What I don’t understand is how alienating 50% of the population with over-sexualized and internally flawed characters is a good marketing strategy. Many women can be and already are interested in comics, and the industry could make a buttload of money off of them if they would only make more of an effort to be less gender-biased.

          Funny how whining about finding the right t-shirt size can lead to a feminist critique of the comic book industry. 

You Are Not Special.

CE Jenkins
    
           Your character is not perfect. If your character is perfect, then we have a problem. Very few people want to read about a half-elf, half alien that can shoot lasers from her nostrils and bitch-slap a t-rex with a shark. Actually, I take it back; I would read the hell out of that book. Rephrase: No one wants to read about a character that is super pretty and super powerful who everybody loves and who never makes a mistake or has any flaws at all. There are a lot of reasons behind this: readers don’t enjoy being nauseated, for one.

            I’m confident that most of us who have ever spent time around other human beings have run into a person kind of like this; they’re peppy, intelligent, kind, beautiful, altogether perfect, and odds are you can’t stand them. They remind us far too much of robots or aliens inhabiting human meatsuits and quietly plotting our demise.

Just sayin'.

 Personally I can’t imagine spending an hour with someone like this, let alone 500+ pages.

            One way to counteract this is to give your character imperfections; I know that’s a pretty shocking statement, so I’ll give you all a minute to pick yourselves up from the floor. Aside from that bit from Sir Patrick O’bvious, it’s also important to be sure the flaws you start slapping down aren’t just good things masquerading as bad. A few examples of this fallacy include a character who is stubborn, read, “he never gives up!” or a character whose acidic temperament results in a bunch of snappy one-liners which the supporting characters take in stride instead of getting irritated or defending themselves like normal people. The key is to make your imperfections actually unlikeable sometimes. For one thing, unlikeable traits don’t necessarily make an unlikeable character, and an unlikeable character isn’t necessarily a bad one. Your audience doesn’t have to want to hang out with the hero on weekends for them to want to read about her. And after all, there are plenty of things that you hate about yourself that don’t necessarily make you a terrible person.            

            So instead of having Billy’s shyness make him cute and relatable, also have it get in the way of his ability to socialize properly like it would for a real person. You say Donna likes to pick fights and is tough and cool as a result? Why not have it give her a bad reputation and get herself and her friends into trouble as well?

            One facet that seems especially fallible is the issue of beauty. When appearance is dragged into things, characters can either end up being one of two things: an airbrushed angel with rippling muscles and an eye color you’d expect to see on the side of a crayola crayon, or kill-it-with-fire ugly to show how they’re going against the status quo. The problem is that your character’s physical description should not revolve on how perdy they look, but on how their appearance reflects on who they are as a person. If you have a good reason for them being so stunningly attractive or repulsive, then go for it. Otherwise, I’d avoid it. It’s easy to fall victim to making your other characters dote on your protagonist’s beauty in a vomit-inducing way, or having your unattractive hero constantly whining about the evils of appearance. Whatever you do, make sure it’s not just for the sake of indulging yourself or your characters.

            Another thing that’s often glazed over is a character’s ability to make mistakes, especially ones with lasting consequences. Maybe it’s just me, but I live in continual fear of the inevitable moment when I do something so incredibly embarrassing that I’ll be forced to live in a secret underground cave for at least three years until I can forget my shame. I have one of these incidents about twice a week. But people in books hardly ever respond to someone who wasn’t talking to them, or writhe in the wasting agony of the awkward silence. They rarely make the kinds of errors that drop a heaping helping of lasting consequences into their laps on a regular basis.

 Yet mistakes are what makes us human, and if you’re sitting there grinning because your protagonist isn’t human to begin with, then congratulations, you won the internet. And yes, that was sarcasm. Every kind of character can benefit from errors of some kind to make them more believable. I mean, think about it; if you were a humble farmhand suddenly chosen to wield the magic sword and de-throne the evil king, you would be lucky to make it a couple weeks without slicing your own toes off or otherwise fucking the whole thing up. Besides, it can be a lot more interesting to read about how characters that done goofed deal with their errors and work to correct them. So in short, characters could stand to make mistakes and then have to deal with the repercussions.

            Lastly, many protagonists end up with some kind of super power or ancient weapon as one of the perks of being a main character. Be careful of this. It’s really easy to overdo it and make your hero a living god with so much power that all the challenges they have to face start to look almost pathetically easy. If there’s one thing I got out of government class is that great power should have checks and balances and something about great responsibility; Social studies wasn’t my number one subject. If your protagonist is immensely powerful, I suggest you have a damn good reason why and make sure that they don’t leave their supporting characters swooning in the dust. Then make your hero suffer for it. Everything has a cost, and the universe is one hell of a collector. Reflect this.  

            If you make your protagonist too perfect, pretty, and powerful, they will probably end up boring to read about and completely unbelievable. Everything needs to balance out in the end; like yin and yang, the cosmic scales, the circle of life; take your pick of metaphors. I'm out. 

Picture Reference

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&authuser=0&biw=1600&bih=775&tbm=isch&tbnid=9c-dhBOxAT97xM:&imgrefurl=http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/8-facts-about-lady-gagas-meat-dress&docid=FlK-UaGOLPkkdM&imgurl=http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2010/9/14/16/enhanced-buzz-15488-1284496566-20.jpg&w=383&h=600&ei=T4HZTvKiA6Ps0gH1-OWJDg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=462&sig=106889516085697478869&page=1&tbnh=136&tbnw=87&start=0&ndsp=43&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0&tx=46&ty=60

            

Villains

CE Jenkins

           …Are one of the most important elements in a story. In my opinion. Which is right.

When I say villains I really mean antagonists, because not every story needs a pale thin man with a goatee and a penchant for dark castles and evil laughter. But every story does need conflict of some kind, because readers are evil people who love to watch characters suffer in elaborate ways. Even in character driven stories there must be a source of inner turmoil or whatever the kids are writing these days that will lead to character development. Characters are defined by their problems, so if you don’t have a good antagonist then your story could end up as stable and coherent as a drunken one-legged tyrannosaurus.

A lot of times baddies get the short end of the stick when it comes to character development, when there’s so much potential for a stronger story with a stronger antagonist. So here are a few general tips on building a good bad guy.

Decide what kind of villain the story needs. For responsible, organized writers, this step occurs naturally when they are neatly outlining their plot. But if you write like I do, you’ll just throw in an evil space monkey that you’ll realize 30,000 words later bears an unavoidable resemblance to Mojo-Jojo. No matter how you go about it, in the end the choice is yours. There are some categories to help get you started, though:

·         Man vs. Nature- Think disasters or survival in the wilderness. May also include the drinking of one’s own piss.

·         Man vs. Man- Someone or thing out there doesn’t like your character very much. What do?

·         Man vs. Self- Whether it’s demons from your character’s past or an existential epiphany, most of the conflict in this type will take place in your protagonist’s head.

Plenty of stories have more than one of these, or even all three. We’re going to be focusing on the Man vs. Man model this time, because I don’t feel like talking about the other ones.

Once you have your villain, find out where they come from. What was their childhood like? How did they get so evil? Why do they have an irrational fear of cheese? Most people don’t wake up one day thinking, “My, I quite feel like turning evil today!” Put your villain on the couch and ask about their childhood. Just be sure you have a taser or a thick sheet of bulletproof glass between the two of you, because you know they won’t stand for that Freudian shit. You don’t have to go too far in depth in the actual story, but the key is knowing it yourself and then working it in subtly as you go. This will make your baddie feel much more rounded, and studies have shown that being hit with a Frisbee hurts less than being hit with a wrecking ball. Think of characters like Voldemort, Loki, or Darth Vader; that last one got three whole prequels dedicated to how he got so evil.

Come up with your villain’s motivations. This can go hand-in-hand with backstory, but because this is an evil post of evil we’ll just pretend that metaphor was a lot more ominous than it was. So, why does your villain what to do that wicked thing he wants to do? If you answered that question with “Because he’s evil,” take a moment to enjoy this wonderful gif I found for you: http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs3/1290449_o.gif

You need at least a simple reason for why they do things. Otherwise it’s just silly.

Consider their personality. No matter how much backstory you give a character, you still have to pay attention to where all that history has brought them. So many villains seem to be made with the same mould; they monologue, they kill their underlings and messengers like there’s no tomorrow, and they’re always very sinister with occasional bursts of insanity to remind us how evil they are. Don’t get me wrong, I love those guys. But at the same time, it doesn’t hurt to shake things up a bit. Villains are people too, unless they’re an evil squid dragon. They still should have the courtesy of having their own individual personality, because that will make them much more interesting to read about. Grey morality and sympathetic characters are fun, but on the other end of the evil spectrum you have buds like the Emperor and Sauron, and clearly those two franchises aren’t doing too badly. So no matter how you choose to do it, make sure you make the character unique.

Lots of good stories out there have a weak or clichéd villain. It is possible to pull it off, but my question is why would you want to? Baddies are a well of awesome story devices just waiting to be mined, and if that wasn’t a mixed metaphor then I don’t know what is. So build your villains carefully, folks. That is all.