lucimonk

[lucimonk]

Thoughts on JK Rowling's transgender debate

Recently, I read about JK Rowling’s transgender comment and the discourse around it. Insisting “sex is real,” Rowling argues that the recent transgender movement is erasing the concept of biological sex by ignoring the significance of biological factors in favor of gender which is a social, not biological construct. Rowling also insists that trans inclusive bathrooms intrude on the safety of biological women, especially those who have experienced bodily or sexual assaults. There have been several counter arguments to Rowling, most common of which are, “transwomen are women,” “statistically, trans women suffer from assaults rather than being the perpetrators of assaults” and “no one says sex isn’t real.” While I agree with all of those responses to Rowling, as an English teacher, I cannot help but notice the clever rhetorical techniques Rowling uses to frame her argument to evoke fear while appearing rational.

The core of Rowling’s rhetorical strategy lies in the combination of exaggeration (“trans people are saying sex isn’t real”), selective supporting example (“by erasing sex, biological women’s safety is endangered in trans inclusive bathroom”), and sympathetic personal anecdote (“as a victim of sexual assaults, I understand and care for women’s safety”). Let me be clear, I am not saying that line of reasoning is logical, ethical, or correct. Many have pointed out the flaws in Rowling’s argument: no transgender person denies the importance of biological sex in everything - however, gender should be the deciding factor when it comes to rights and recognition; credible research find that there is no evidence that trans inclusive bathrooms endanger women. Nevertheless, I think those counter arguments would do little to change the attitude of those who are already inclined to agree with Rowling because they probably just say something along the line of “the very notion of trans inclusive bathroom is about separating people according to gender not sex, how can you say you don’t deny sex in favor of gender,” and personal feeling of fear is more reliable than research because those research may just be “inaccurate or a part of the trans propaganda.”

I would like to understand the root of the fear that Rowling’s seemingly simple line of argument so effectively evokes, regardless of whether that fear is justified. The heart of the discourse lies in the dichotomy between sex and gender that Rowling succeeds in exaggerating and her opponents fail to elaborate to their advantage. Sex is a biological concept primarily centered on the body and bodily functions, whereas gender is a social construct that depends on performance, mostly outward expressions. For example, many transgender people are drag queens. In some ways, being a transgender involves a lot of performing certain outward appearances and (social) functions- through clothing, behavior, gender role, etc - to negate the (biological) wrongness within. This idea that sex is bodily and inward while gender is social and outward is certainly not absolute (many gender roles are performed in the private sphere, many gender aspects are performed through sexual and/or bodily acts; many bodily functions occur publicly - at least, according to anti-maskers who protest covering their faces because “I can’t breathe”). However, for the most parts, I think it is not unreasonable to generalize that biological sex operates primarily via the body and private bodily functions while gender is performed primarily via outward expressions.

Rowling’s argument would have fallen flat had she chosen a supporting example that takes place in a space whose nature is about outward performance. For example, if she had said, “trans inclusive catwalks are dangerous to biological female models,” people would probably have laughed at her. That’s because the catwalk is a space designed specifically to perform appearances and garner social recognition; no one cares about genitals or x,y chromosomes underneath the clothes on display. By contrast, a bathroom is very much where one exposes one’s private parts and performs basic bodily functions that may be even more private than sex. In a bathroom, one cannot care less about gender expressions like clothing or mannerism; instead, physical safety of the exposed body, albeit temporarily, is a real, legitimate concern.

Rowling’s effective rhetorical strategy can be summarized as such: step 1, exaggerating a simple concept (“sex is erased”) to evoke a sense of danger and urgency; any factual rebuttal (“no one says that”) will sound hollow because of step 2, selective example (trans inclusive bathroom). Most people will not notice how this narrow example is. Moreover, since most people instinctively understand the bathroom as a space for biological functions, they will take for granted the binary divide based on sex; thus, reconceptualizing it according to gender expression will automatically feel unnatural. Without explicit reason for a paradigm shift, the cry “but human rights” and “transwomen are women” will sound meaningless because some abstract concept and a semantic tautology cannot explain why a space designed for biological functions should be repurposed according to what is perceived as an irrelevant social construct. By this time, the sense of danger is validated and intensified into indignation at a perceived injustice (“biological sex is erased where it should not be, endangering bodily safety and privacy”). Finally, step 3, anecdote about sexual assault to make the feeling of danger more urgent and relateable on a personal level (“I experienced sexual assault, and you may experience it too, so you should care about this danger to your body in trans inclusive bathroom”). At this point, statistical evidence of the low possibility of assaults in trans inclusive bathroom holds little sway because if the switch from sex to gender is already unnatural, unfair, and carrying such imminent personal risk, why tolerate even a slight possibility of it?

I am not sure if exposing rhetorical strategy and logical fallacy changes any mind, especially of those of bigots. However, the debate around Rowling’s transgender comment reveals to me the need for a reframing of the transgender argument. It is worth elaborating in which context sex matters, in which gender matters, and why; if a setting like public bathroom, by nature, serves bodily functions, then what the rationales are for a paradigm shift from sex to gender; given these rationales, how they weigh against the costs (such as the discomfort of women like Rowling who experienced trauma from bodily assaults and prefer to keep their “safe spaces”) and/or any alternative; lastly, if the costs are real, how to mitigate them (this is where the statistics may come in handy, but only if one has gone through elaborating the previous questions).

In human societies, spaces have different natures and functions. Therefore, convincing people that trans people should be allowed in their prefered public bathrooms is fundamentally different from convincing people that trans people should be allowed, for example, on catwalks or in the military. A one-for-all generic argument will not suffice. In particular, the public bathroom divide based on sex or gender initially seems simple but is proven to be quite nuanced. Why should gender construct matter in a space designed for biological functions? What social and gender meaning do public bathrooms carry (if this debate proves anything, it is that even as a space designed for biological functions, not gender ones, public bathrooms carry enough social value for people to fight to preserve or reconstruct its meaning)? Between transgender people, for whom entry into public bathrooms carries social acknowledgement and confers personal worth, and opponents of trans inclusive bathrooms, for whom those bathrooms hold social meaning precisely for their binary assignment of biological bodies, who carry the burden of proof?

[lucimonk]

The moment that Sam Wilson becomes Captain America for me is when he tells Bucky to make amends, not avenge.

I have always had a problem with the ignorant white savior trope: a white dude, in his ignorance, does great harm to a non-white community, learns the errors of his way, then does a heroic deeds, and is considered a leader by the non-white people who conveniently forget or forgive that he ruins their lives recently. I normally chalk it up to “white nonsense” and compartmentalize it in a closed section in my head labeled “do not open to avoid rage.” However, this trope is getting more insidious in recent superhero movies that I find it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief.

One atrocious trend I observe recently is that after the white dude figures out the errors of his way, the narrative often shows the dude experiencing immense trauma due to his guilt, proving he’s such a sympathetic guy because he suffers so much! Narratively, this makes sense when looking narrowly at the hero’s journey: symbolically, an outside obstacle is a manifestation of some inner demon. However, in the larger picture, this could be an excuse for a lot of self-absorbed nonsense. The guilt is no longer a feeling a normal person experiences as a result of his wrongdoing, an internal reaction that should be followed by external punishment. Instead, the narrative dramatizes the guilt, framing it as the ultimate psychological obstacle to mirror whatever physical villain outside; and then when the dude successfully overcomes both, the narrative portrays this as the conclusive triumph by having the people he wrongs anoint him the hero. The problem with this narrative is that it misleads the audience into thinking that realizing one’s mistake and doing one heroic deed is enough not only to redeem past mistakes but also to become a hero. Imagine this: a murderer realizes murder is wrong, so he subsequently saves an innocent person from an other criminal. Does that make him more sympathetic than an unrepentant murderer? Yes. But does it balance out the murder he has commited, or make him admirable enough to be a police? No. In fact, after his good deed, the murderer should still be convicted and serve out his sentence.

Superhero movies are extremely good at using the facade of herodom and the dramatization of guilt to let a (often white male) protagonist out on paying for the crime he commits to a (non-white) community in any meaningful way. Afterall, it is unintentional, the dude learns his lesson, he suffers so much already, doesn’t he deserve to be a hero again so he can save these non-white people and the world? Take the MCU: Tony Stark creates Utron who destroys Sokovia. In the real world, Stark would be tried for crimes against humanity. However, in Civil War, the Avengers are still free to do missions; Tony Stark, the culprit, only realizes he has done something wrong after someone confronts him privately. This is white privilege in its finest: Stark needs a black woman to spell out his responsibility in small words in private so he does not lose face in public, as if a whole country ceasing to exist due to his direct action is not clear enough evidence. The confrontation and Stark’s subsequent guilt are meant to humanize him in a fragile moment. The movie cleverly groups the Utron incident, which is Stark’s fault, with New York, where he’s the hero. This allows the narrative to equivocate on Stark’s mistake by conflating a war crime and other heroic deeds, which evokes a misleading sense that Stark is being treated unfairly. As such, Stark’s guilt is no longer a natural reaction he is supposed to feel but a tool employed by the narrative to manufacture an internal burden for the character to suffer through to gain sympathy from the audience.

I find Stark’s performance of guilt unconvincing because however guilty the movie shows him to be, Stark does nothing to make amends to the Sokovian people. If he and the Avengers had felt genuinely sorry, they would have spent the next movie full time in Sokovia to atone for their crimes and afterward willingly be executed according to international law. Instead, Stark’s purported guilt drives him to persuade his team to sign the Accords which places the Avengers under governmental oversight, which theoretically is a reasonable course of action. However, since he is forced to confront his mistake instead of actively recognizing it, and his acquiescence to the Accords is done without compensating for his victims in any substantial way, this is avoiding taking the responsibility by passing that responsibility to an authority. In short, by dramatizing the guilt, equivocating on the nature of the crime, and failing to address the real victims or mentioning any sort of amends, the narrative successfully reframes Stark as a victim of his conscience instead of the war criminal he is.

The MCU is full of similar examples where a superhero’s trauma is dramatized to distract the audience from the gravity of their crime. Tony Stark is the worst, but others are just as bad. Also in Civil War, after Wanda Maximoff blows up a hospital, Steve Rogers tells her, “this job, we try to save as many people as we can, sometimes it doesn’t mean everybody, but if we can’t find a way to live with that, next time, maybe nobody gets saved.” Here, Wanda murders innocents, but Rogers attributes it to her inability to save everyone. This is such masterful equivocation: by calling it a matter of “saving” instead of killing, Rogers conveniently disregards the fact that these victims are not related to the mission and never ask to be saved in the first place, thus rebranding Wanda from accidental murderer into regretful hero and conflating her guilt over her crime with regret of a good deed unfinished. What a convoluted version of the white savior mentality: the narrative shamelessly allows perpetrators to maintain the facade of moral high ground, twists their crime into a noble mission, denies victims justice by turning them into unfortunate collateral damage. It is as if these white protagonists are incapable of mentally processing the notion of having committed a crime without making it all about themselves. The damages done to victims are unimportant; the guilt the hero carries is. The hero’s noble mission is crucial; a few accidental deaths are an acceptable price to pay. Afterall, hasn’t the hero already paid the price, being tortured by his own guilt?

What Steve Rogers should have told Wanda Maximoff is this: “Go make amends to the people whose families you killed. Don’t be afraid to face the horrific consequence of your action because only then can you truly understand the responsibility of possessing such power and be deserving of it. Run away from your guilt, you will not grow up. Remember it instead. Let it remind you of the burden we carry as soldiers.” If he had done so, maybe Wanda would not have been so traumatized by guilt. Maybe she would have learned to exert some control over her power. She certainly would not have run off as she did in Wandavision after imprisoning a town in her conjured reality and torturing them with her despair. Instead, Wanda flies away without a care. Why wouldn’t she, when the show’s enabling mouthpiece, Monica Rambeau, tells her, “[the town people]’ll never know what you sacrificed for them,” turning an abuser into a savior, victims into ignorant ingrates. Twisted savior complex strikes again!

What Tony Stark should have done is this: submit to international court, accept punishment - even imprisonment or death if that is the decision, pay reparation to rebuild Sokovia, and then if he is still alive, work toward accountability for superhero work. The movie skips all the compensation and reparation to jump to advocacy because the former is the punishment of a criminal whereas the latter is the activism of a leader. The former is too disgraceful for white male protagonist; the latter allows him to keep the moral high ground. However, had Tony not skipped these not so proud steps, he probably would have realized that making up for one’s mistake is about focusing on the victims and the Accords couldn't care less about them. Had his mind not been so clouded by guilt, he would have distinguished between true amends and politics and understood his co-captain’s concern. The Avengers might not have been broken.

White people are extremely skilled at turning their crimes into heroic deeds. The formula is simple: first, erase the victim from the narrative, then present the white man’s struggle with his guilt as a glorious journey, celebrate his moral growth as the testament to his personal strength and perseverance, and never mention such development is earned at the expense of the victim who ceases to exist in the narrative. How brilliant in its simplicity, how masterful in execution. See, this is why whenever I encounter this trope, I suspend my disbelief. I convince myself to overlook it for my own mental well-being. I love Steve Rogers. I love Tony Stark. They are my OTP. Wandavision is the best show ever. Who cares about a little irrelevant trope? Those are entertaining movies. Enjoy them! It is just “white nonsense” anyway.

So you see, when Sam Wilson tells Bucky Barnes to make amends, not avenge, he becomes Captain America of my heart. He says, “You got to make [your victims] feel better. You got to go to them and be of service.” He tells Bucky his guilt is not as important as making up to the people he has wronged. For many others, that is just a nice moment, but for me it unravels a forbidden part in my head that I have so long learned to compartmentalize, so as to not think too much about how the prevalent white savior tactic is so utterly unfair, disgustingly shameless. I label it “do not open to avoid rage” because I know if I do think deeply about it, I will feel either abysmal hopelessness or incandescent fury. When I least expect it, Sam Wilson’s words soothe the feverish anger I have been carrying by giving me a type of masculinity, a type of heroism I can stand behind without suspending any part of myself.

[lucimonk]

What America wants but not what it deserves: Steve Rogers as a symbol of protection

I came into Falcon and the Winter Soldier (FTWS) expecting a generic superhero origin story where Sam Wilson encounters a generic threat, does a generic heroic deed, and is anointed America’s next top captain, and that we just need to make do with him as an adequate substitute, with Steve Rogers retiring to Avenger heaven. However, the show has forced me to reexamine the very concept of captain America that I have taken for granted and come up with a new understanding of what that mantle means. Specifically, I look at Steve Rogers’ relation to the WWII era that births his heroism to argue that today America’s drastically different geopolitical position in the global landscape makes Rogers’ symbolism, which centers on a mission of protection, what America wants but not necessarily what it needs. This assertion is probably not only controversial but also unpopular because essentially, I am arguing that someone other than Rogers is better suited to lead America today (as the country no longer deserves him). However, hopefully by the end of my analysis, you will realize my deconstruction of the notion of captain America does not take away from Steve Rogers’s worthiness, only reframing his legacy in a new light.

Steve Rogers’ mission statement is about fighting against, as he puts it, “bullies.” They can be the literal bullies who terrorize his neighborhood in Brooklyn, the Nazis who take over Europe, Loki who attacks New York, Shield/Hydra that “puts a gun over everyone’s head and calls it freedom,” and finally Thanos who threatens the whole universe. However big or small, Rogers’ enemies are of the same type: an external threat to a people’s freedom. As such, Rogers’ primary mission is that of protection -  his shield aptly symbolizes this core value - which is particularly suited to America of the 1940s. America back then has yet to become the world’s only political, economic, military superpower. It has yet actively interfered in other countries in the name of defending democracy. It has not appointed itself world police, spreading its troops across the globe, making a mess everywhere. In short, it has yet to become the world’s super bully. While its history has always been riddled with atrocious crimes against African Americans, Indian Americans, and others, in the international stage, or at least reputation wise,  America of the 40s is still considered relatively “good.” Steve Rogers is born to this era where his government is struggling to lead the country out of a depression, his people learning the virtue of hard work; his fellow Americans are fundamentally good and unproblematic. Their only problem is that they are oppressed, their freedom in danger, and once the external threat is removed, they are fine again. Steve Rogers’ captain America then is motivated by and the direct product of his time as his country requires it: a soldier elevated into a symbol of protection for innocent Americans against outside bullies.

The same thing cannot be said of America today. Its hegemony is felt all around the world in every aspect: politics, economy, military, culture, science and technology. It has the strongest military, the most weapons and nuclear power, and spends the most money in defense spending. It is absurd to say America, the government or people, needs protection, for what bully can be strong enough to threaten it? In fact, in the last decades, America has run out of tangible outside threat it can bomb, so it starts to put a name and face to less tangible ones: terrorism, extremism, radicalism. It wages wars on drugs, poor people, the environment.

In such circumstances, Steve Rogers’ type of heroism centering on protection becomes out of place. As a person and an individual citizen, soldier, or leader, he has much to offer, for a good person always has something to offer no matter when or where he is. However, Captain America has never been only a captain; it is a symbol, which, in the postmodern age where God is dead, has almost reached a form of apotheosis. While it is true that “a symbol is nothing without the man or woman behind it,” Captain America’s symbolic power remains significant beyond the exit of Steve Rogers and becomes susceptible to exploitation in his absence. A true examination of the legacy of captain America therefore must look beyond Rogers as a person and consider the symbolism he engenders, and more importantly, what implication of using that old symbol in the now much changed society: keeping Rogers as captain America today would be equivalent to symbolically suggesting that America is still that younger, much weaker, less implicated country of uncomplicated, unproblematic, fundamentally good people whose only problem is being threatened by a bully from somewhere else. That mentality is at best an indulgence in and nostalgia of the good old days and at worst a delusion, a willful ignorance of the harsh reality of what America has become.  In fact, the latter response is exactly what the MCU American government does. It parades John Walker around as a PR tool to advertise its power and accrue more influence. Before that, it has tried the same to Steve Rogers until he breaks away. This is what I mean when I say Steve Rogers is what America wants, not what it deserves. It wants a pure symbol of a past that has long gone but is no longer deserving of that purity.

Indeed, the evolution of Steve Rogers’s relationship to governments throughout the 3 movies in the Captain America trilogy and Endgame can be interpreted as Rogers’ slowly but surely breaking away from the establishment, which, ironically, hints at his becoming unsuitable for the title he carries - if “Captain America'' is taken to mean a leader of a nation, then it is by definition cannot be disassociated from the institutions that give it its legitimacy. In fact, only the first movie, which takes place in the past, shows Rogers executing his mission statement at his truest: protecting people from Hydra. The second movie is Rogers’s breaking up with the American government while the third is his breaking up with world governments as a whole because these institutions do not share his values. His persistent distrust of and antagonism toward the establishment is indicative of how his individual leadership and the protective symbolism he carries are ideologically incompatible with today’s politics and to a larger extent, the monstrosity that that politics has turned his country into. This perhaps is not the intention of the creators of the Captain America trilogy; I don’t think they ever set out to suggest that America today is too corrupt to deserve Steve Rogers’ wholesome value. But as with God, authors’ intention is dead.

One can argue Steve Rogers only breaks up with the American government. He is still loyal to the American people, and while the government wages wars everywhere, the people do not. However, I argue that FTWS reveals a society that may not necessarily benefit from Rogers’ type of leadership because his staunch moral clarity runs the risk of being counterproductive in a divisive culture.

There is a hint of a viscerally broken society all the way back in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (CA:TWS) where Zola says, “for 70 years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, weeping wars… created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security.” However, the movie never explores this detail. It ends with Rogers foiling Hydra’s one plan, which is written narratively as a conclusive triumph of Rogers against the modern establishment. The movie and Rogers swipe Zola’s comment about the many issues Hydra has sowed under the rug and never pick up on this thread again or mention how the society deals with the aftermath of Hydra. However, in hindsight after FTWS, I wonder if Rogers’ effort is a real victory or just the start of a much longer, more onerous process where the actual hard work of repairing and healing after nearly a century of violence and conflicts has not even begun.

This is where I suddenly realize what Steve Rogers’ mission statement entails and does not entail. Steve Rogers’ unique strength lies in his staunch moral clarity and the inspiration it brings. That clarity works when there is a clear evil. That inspiration works when there is a clear victim. Those are both missing today. What if there is no common, outside bully to fight, no obvious, unambiguous evil to stand up against, no Nazis, Red Skull, Loki, Thanos for Rogers to punch, from whom to take back their freedom. Sure, one can point to the GRC, the stand-in for the establishment, but the GRC is only a catalyst to ignite the explosive inequality and polarization that have always hidden underneath. What is more, what if every side is vulnerable, and there is no clear victim because everyone is a victim from their own perspective. What if the victims the captain is supposed to protect are not uncomplicatedly good, but selfish, angry, violent; what if the obstacle to overcome is not some good old fear that can be solved by a protective symbol, but hopelessness, rage, narrow mindless, tribal mentality. What if the problem is not something to protect against but the fragmented state of the society itself. The crucial question of Rogers’ legacy then is this: once the evil has already been punched, and the immediate danger to the freedom of the people removed, what is his role in the ruined society in the aftermath? Can a soldier of war be relevant in peace?

It is easy to assume that if Rogers did not retire, he would reconcile that deeply flawed, divided society depicted in FTWS. Afterall, CA:TWS puts Rogers in a morally murky situation, and eventually, he is able to identify the real villain Hydra, separate, and destroy it. However, the problem presented by FTWS is different. Instead of a slick enemy hiding among the good citizens, FTWS depicts a polarized community deep in culture wars and fractions divided by economic anxiety. Each side has its own narrative and moral righteousness. Karli Morgenthau is no cartoon evil Zola; the show goes out of its way to make the audience sympathize with her cause. The Flagsmashers are no Nazis or Hydra agents; they are real humans who are at the end of their robes. In such a complex situation, moral clarity is a luxury, or worse, a danger. Afterall, Morgenthau shows a lot of moral clarity - in fact, too much of it; her people worship her cause and compare her leadership to Rogers’, which is not unreasonable: both are willful people stubbornly set in their own moral compass, standing up for oppressed people bullied by governments. The problem with Morgenthau is that her “moral” is too clear cut, her view too narrow, willfully refusing to recognize there are people outside of her community who are similarly vulnerable and oppressed.

It is not a coincidence that the show compares her to Rogers and has Zemo compare Rogers to the Nazis. While Captain America is a leader of the people, Steve Rogers is an anti-establishment individualist. When he was young, he was an outcast; he always fought stubbornly on his own, at one point even facing a whole alien army by himself. When confronted with injustice to individuals, or as he puts it, “a situation going south” (Civil war), he can’t ignore it and will fight a whole government to protect individuals like Bucky or Wanda. While becoming a fugitive to protect wronged individuals may be heroic, a look at the broader picture reveals Rogers’ approach to be narrow and self centered: CW and Rogers do not address the true victims - dead and injured people accidentally caused by Wanda, the same way the he conveniently does not deal with “the world so chaotic” revealed by Zola in CA:TWS after he foils Hydra’s plan. Ultimately, Rogers is a soldier; he comes in, fights, and gets out, leaving the aftermath for others to deal with. What role should he play then when all we have left is aftermath?

The problem with Rogers’ moral willfulness is this: once he recognizes a victim, he does everything to fight for them with a focus too intense it makes him unable to take into consideration others and the larger context. This is evident when Rogers abandons the Accords, which theoretically could be a step toward accountability. Like Morgenthau’s, Rogers’ moral stance at times is too clear cut, his view too narrow, centering on a few instead of the whole, and he does not compromise individual justice at any cost. Rogers is not as radical as Morgenthau, but like her, he would rather leave until justice for the few is achieved than to stay and work toward an acceptable resolution for everyone. Freedom is worth fighting for, but social norms need to be negotiated and constructed. One can’t do that without sitting at the table.

Rogers’ ability to inspire followers is his most valuable strength but also a potential danger. Rogers’ staunch willfulness is often so inspiring that oppressed people follow him because in him, they find the courage to fight, ala the speech in CA:TWS. However, FTWS’s America is much more complex than a generic oppressed people: in FTWS, some communities are radicalized and turn to terrorism to vent their anger (Morgenthau) while others (Walker) are manufactured to be ignorant, arrogant tools of the power that be. I am not sure an individualist, anti-establishment model with inspiring speeches is what these people need. Morgenthau already provides just that - a leader who inspires thousands of followers for a just cause - and what does that lead to? Radical extremist violence. Inspirational leader is dangerous in a polarized society especially when tension is high and divisions are deep because more passion may be counterproductive: it heightens emotion, ignites violence, and reduces the chance for calm, peaceful, productive dialogue. FTWS also provides a more realistic look at what oppressed people need: when a community has become resigned and indifferent to the country that abuses and neglects them (Sarah Wilson), some so exploited by it that they are reduced to bitterness and resentment (Isaiah Bradley), inspiration alone is superficial. Realistically, what they need is counseling and healing, and what the larger society needs is learning to make amends. The last thing a broken society needs is more violence, and that is why an inspirational leader who provokes a tired, traumatic people to vengeance can be very dangerous.

As such, Steve Rogers may have the best of intentions, but he is not what America today deserves or needs: as the world’s warmongering superpower, it does not deserve that moral purity nor does it need his protection; as a bully, it needs a lesson in humility and amend. As an already angry, traumatic society divided unto itself, it does not need more inspiration to stand up; it needs the forbearance to sit down and learn how to cooperate. I do not set out to diminish Steve Rogers’ significance, nor do I think my analysis takes anything away from his worthiness. Yet, I recognize different times call for different leaders. There are leaders who protect and inspire, and then there are leaders who heal and build. FTWS reveals a broken society in need of healing and a militant nation in need of making amends. It is not a disservice to admit that there are things Rogers is not good at, like resolving internal conflicts (he and Tony Stark fall flat on their faces in Civil war), diplomacy (he’d rather be a bearded fugitive), counseling people with PTSD (he is only learning this in Endgame). Steve Rogers has done his service to his country and the world by offering his best, protecting and inspiring. Now, someone else needs to take up the work of rebuilding, healing, and reconciling because it is unfair to expect Rogers to do everything.

[lucimonk]

Mad Max and the Problematic Question of Violence

So I finally went to see Mad Max yesterday and came home all excited about how feminist the movie is. Basically, it is an apocalyptic movie about how men and their toxic masculinity destroy the natural world and how a group of women plus two other men save the earth. The movie is feminist in many aspects. The female protagonist Furiosa triumphs over the male evil master. She rescues a bunch of pacifist women from slavery. Their compassion and humanity, qualities that are coded as feminine, are the main source of their strength, and help turn the titular character, Mad Max, a half man, half animal with only survival instinct, and Nux, a war boy who fails the standard of aggressive masculinity, to their side. Together, women and men, pacifist and violent, victims and perpetrators turned victims, they topple the patriarchy.

The movie is feminist on the thematic level, delivering relevant symbolic messages about two very contemporary problems: the environment (the world’s lack of resource, our reliance on oil), and the patriarchy (woman as things, masculinity as aggression and oppression, etc.). In addition to the thematic, the movie subverts many gender tropes. For instance, the relationship between the female and male protagonist do not end in romance or sex, suggesting that there can be such a thing as comradeship between two people of different gender. Also, Furiosa does not win by herself as per the motif of the lone, misunderstood hero who saves the whole world by himself. I have seen criticism of the movie’s presentation of people of color, arguing that the movie has only one non-white actress, and the cast is overwhelmingly white. In a closer look, one can alternatively argue that there are more people of color in the cast than it initially appears, and it is more a problem of white audience unable to recognize biracial people of color as such.

I will not analyze Mad Max in depth as I have done about other movies/shows. Mad Max is already a popular phenomenon, and many people have commented on it. I like it a lot, and probably have much to discuss, but I am more interested in writing about silence, and how to read silence instead of voice. I am also interested in reading agency into inaction rather than action, in interpreting the power of femininely coded qualities like compassion and love and deconstructing masculinely coded qualities like aggression rather than simply analyzing aggression. I am not saying that silence is better than voice, or inaction is better than action, or compassion always works, or aggression is always bad. In fact I think giving speaking and action-oriented role to female characters is a crucial and legitimate feminist project. I think that there is nothing wrong with the notion of a female character being competent in the masculine quality of aggression and violence. Sometimes, some form of violence is needed and justified. Nevertheless, all of that have already been discussed by many people. Put differently, there are already other people who speak and write beautifully about the need for more portrayals of vocal, competent, female action heroes. But I have not seen many people or many movies that successfully give justice to non-speaking, less action-oriented female characters with femininely coded qualities. And that is the reason why I choose to write about them.

Mad Max is a feminist action movie, full of sequences of awesome car chases and gun fights on desert. Its main protagonist, Furiosa is as competent in masculine action skills as one can wish without submitting to the toxic masculine aggression which she attacks. But as much as I admire the portrayal of Furiosa, I will not write about her, for the reason I have stated. Instead, this post is motivated by a criticism of Mad Max that argues that it is not feminist because it “interprets feminism to mean ‘women can drive fast and stoically kill people too” and because it fails to “re-imagine concepts of powers [and] move beyond the glorification of violence.” I actually do not agree with this assessment of the movie. Other people already voiced their critique of this criticism, so I will keep it short, but as my summary suggests, Furiosa is far from a caricature of one dimensional stoic women who drive fast and kill people, and her actions are far from a simplistic glorification of violence. Instead, she exhibits femininely coded characteristics of team work and compassion, which is the very kind of quality that redeems her and differentiates her from toxic violence of Immortan Joe the big bad, that allows her to triumph over him. In fact, that is probably what I like most about her.

What troubles me is not that I disagree with the aforementioned criticism of Mad Max, but the fact that I agree very much with its principle. All of my reviews are about how to avoid one dimensional caricatures of action women and how to move beyond the emphasis on violence. If I wish to write about anything, it is precisely about women who invariably do not who “drive fast and kill people.” I wish to give justice to women with femininely coded qualities. I wish to deconstruct, not just criticize the masculinity that is premised on aggression.

And yet, I wholeheartedly disagree with the criticism that Mad Max is not feminist. I choose not to write about it in depth, but it is not because it is not feminist. I do not think that a project of moving beyond violence and deconstructing aggressive masculinity necessarily has to criticize all forms violence at all costs in all situations. This is because to deconstruct something is not the same thing as to renounce it. To deconstruct is to take apart a concept, to see where it comes from, how it involves, to make explicit its illogical components and its harmful effect. One cannot do this if one takes a presentation of violence at its face value and rejects it simply for the reason that it involves violence.

This is not an analysis or an apology of Mad Max. I use the example of the debate over Mad Max to clarify my own project of reading silence in a feminist critique of media. I believe that a speaking female role can be as feminist as a non-speaking one. I believe that portraying a woman who can act competently violent is not contradictory but actually complementary to the project of deconstructing and moving beyond violence. I think of them as two parallel projects: one seeks a positive presentation of speaking, action-oriented women who exhibit healthy masculine qualities, whereas the other seeks to make visible and relatable the presentation of non-speaking, non-violent women who exhibit effective feminine qualities. I choose one project for my own writing, and I respect people who are committed to the other.

Of course, I am aware this is easier said than done. It is not as clearly as black and white as I have presented. What kind of violence is redeemable? What kind of violence needs deconstructing? What situation necessitates the need to move beyond violence? And what situation requires a more simple criticism of violence? Those are all difficult questions that I admit I do not have a clear and systematic answer to. What I do know is that it requires a sensitivity in the diegetic and in the audience’s interpretation of the diegetic. Sometimes, one needs to be able to read into the meaning underneath the silence. In other times, one needs to be able to recognize the silence hidden behind the noise. Mad Max has a lot of noises, but it is not all noise. There are layers of meaningful silence that are indeed precious. 

In all, I think this is a matter of perception: how can we, as audience, have a meaningful interpretation of a source material? Each media product will require the audience to engage their critical interpretation in a different way. As such in each of my review I tend to suggest one or two ways that silent and less obvious elements in a particular (often not popular) source material can be perceived. That is the purpose of this blog. I do not claim to be an expert, and I admit I do not have a systematic answer. But perhaps, for the time being, these are the general guideline I can propose: to be more attentive to the question of the thematic (what does the larger narrative analogous to?) rather than the representational (how many people of color are there in the film?); to look at context and motivation (why is a character engaging in violence?) rather than action (is a female character as competent as a “man”?); and finally, to pay attention to relationship (how is the female character or person of color treated by other characters and by the narrative?).

[lucimonk]

[lucimonk]

Beyond Words and Actions: An Feminist Analysis of Coercion in Persuasion and Moral Dilemma in Bao Công (Justice Bao)’s “Real Justice Bao, Fake Justice Bao”

This is will be another review of another case in the Bao Công shows called “Real Justice Bao, Fake Justice Bao.” The case features what I think is the best dialogue in the entire show.

To summarize, an idealist and very young Song Emperor disguises as a commoner to travel across the country to observe the life of his citizens. When the Emperor is betrayed, he writes a blood message on his royal fan for one wounded loyal guard to deliver to Bao. The guard is killed on the way after entrusting the fan to a family of poor commoners whom the disguised Emperor has generously saved earlier. Because of this fan, the whole family is turned upside down: the husband is captured, tortured by the city’s insurgent, corrupted officer and becomes insane. His wife is smarter than him. She manages to dodge many attempts of that officer, but when the officer uses her imprisoned, insane husband to blackmail her, she is faced with a moral dilemma: to give the fan to the corrupted officer to save her husband, or to give it to Bao to save the King.

The dialogue I mention speaks to a very fundamental justice question of a person’s conflicting duties to their different rings of responsibility: family, country, the world. Stated differently, does a person have a stronger moral obligation to those who are closer and more physically and emotionally important to them, like their immediate family and friends? Or does a person have a stronger moral obligation to what is commonly called “the greater good” like their nation, their race, even the world? What will a person do when the two duties come in conflict with each other? 

The case situates this moral dilemma squarely on the shoulder of a female character who is not a rich elite or a philosopher or a paragon of justice like Bao. In fact, this female character is just a common woman. She is married to a scholar and is therefore quite literate and smart. But the family is poor and helpless against rich bullies and officers of the imperial court. In addition, she has a type of personality that I find personally interesting for a feminist critique: the good, virtuous, obedient, feminine woman of the Confucius society. In the dialogue, Bao tries to persuade the woman to give him the fan and the woman struggles to reconcile between her two moral duties to her husband and to the country. Bao’s beseeching is both forceful and sensitive. In response, the woman’s words are poignant and expresses her inner tumult as well as her character beautifully.

Before talking about the woman, I must first talk about Bao’s approach to persuading her. It is important to talk about Bao’s attitude because I think it demonstrates quite well the thin and often ambiguous line between subtle coercion and respectful persuasion. As I suggested, Bao does not have a moral dilemma. In fact, his duty is quite clear: to retrieve the fan and find the missing, possibly wounded young emperor before the bad guys do. To be fair, he does want to save the woman’s husband from false charge, but he does not know this man personally. His interest in saving the man is impersonal and a result of his desire to uphold an abstract conception of fairness. His priority is clear: to save the emperor whom he knows personally and to whom he is loyal, and then to save the woman’s husband and finally to punish the corrupted officer according to the law. In other words, Bao does not have a moral dilemma. As such, in the dialogue, Bao’s role is like that of an interlocutor, to provide information and argument for one side of the dilemma that the woman is facing.

In the context of the show, Bao’s method of verbal persuasion is clearly suggested to be more humane and morally better than that of the bad guys. To get to the fan, the corrupted officer verbally manipulates, physically tortures, and even resorts to dark magic and illegal poison to hypnotize the husband. When he is out of tricks, he uses his position as a member of the imperial court to condemn him to death out of spite. Compared to those tactics, Bao who is in the same race to the fan, shows a superior sense of morality by using reasonable explanation to appeal to the woman’s logical, rational mind. What is more, he willingly and respectfully bows and kneels in front of the woman, which in the context of the show is a significant gesture, considering that he is a very high ranking officer and she is a common poor woman. In fact, I think that this is the only instance in the entire show in which Bao kneels in front of a person who is not the Emperor himself, or a high ranking member of the imperial family (like the Emperor’s mother).

But if gender discourse teaches us anything, it is that word, expression of respect, and logical explanation can be unwitting or witting forms of coercion. That is, words can be used to shame others. In fact, corrupted officers in the show consistently do this to shaming innocent people of “disrespecting the laws.” Similarly, expression of respect and logical explanation can be an underhanded way to appeal to a person’s one moral duty while downplaying that person’s other moral duty, and thus dismissing and silencing their real struggle of reconciling a moral dilemma.

I want to suggest that Bao’s method of persuasion is non-coercive not only because he does not resort to violence. It is because he does not seek to shame or dismiss or silent the woman’s other moral duty. Specifically, Bao expresses admiration for the woman’s duty to her husband even when that moral duty is a disadvantage to his goal. It should be noted that the Chinese in ancient time (and even today) can be exceedingly polite and theatrical in their language to the modern eye. For instance, characters in the show ask to be “condemned to death” so many times that it is more like an expression of an apology than actual remorse. So one interpretation is to say that Bao’s verbal admiration of the woman’s loyalty to her husband is merely verbal, and no more. 

But I do not think Bao is simply paying lip service. A central point in the dialogue is when the woman asks Bao, “Do you mean to ask me to sacrifice my husband to save the Emperor?” This question, delivered by the main female character, strikes at the heart of dialogue. It articulates the moral dilemma of the entire narrative succinctly, directly, and unapologetically, to both Bao and to the audience, leaving no room for equivocation. To this question, Bao answers that the life of a common scholar and of an emperor are worth the same, and adds that Bao himself has no right to order the woman. In fact, with Bao’s rank, he has legal rights to order this woman to give him the fan. I read this as Bao’s refraining of abusing his position as authority figure. Of course, Bao then proceeds to make his case that if the Emperor dies, civil war will break out and many other lives would be affected. Nevertheless, the point is that in answering her question, Bao recognizes the other side of the woman’s dilemma. At no point does he shame her attachment to it, nor does he dismiss her struggle or use his position as authority figure to silence her. He simply acknowledges her attachment as legitimate, her struggle as real, and tries to provide her with rational explanation of his side.

However, there still may be room for coercion. Besides the woman’s on point question, an image that I find very memorable in this dialogue is of Bao and three imposing men kneeling in front of this woman’s almost deserted wooden house, with the woman unable to shoulder the pressure from them, retreating into the house. One can argue that even with Bao’s gesture of respect and his sensitive beseeching, his position as a famous officer and the presence of his guards, all dressed in official garments, still put a psychological pressure on the woman. Therefore, his beseeching is unwittingly coercive to that extent. I am not sure what Bao could have done in this situation to make it less coercive. It is our cultural context that makes it hard to read the idea of four powerful men trying to persuade one helpless woman as anything but that they are “ganging up” on her.

But I think this is where the camera, the setting, and the director, do a good job in resolving the coercive element in Bao’s persuasion. Specifically, the director makes the choice of not making the woman make her decision in front of Bao. Confronted with Bao’s imposing figure, she retreats into the house which she shares with her husband and in doing this, she closes the door to Bao’s face. The action of closing the door is significant not only because the house symbolically represents her duty to her family, but also because it literally provides her with a safe space of privacy where she, even if only for a moment, can escape from the coercive pressure of Bao’s presence. It is in this familial space, accentuated by the ghost of the absent husband and the vulnerability of her sleeping daughter that the woman is relatively free to make her decision. Put differently, her moral duty to her family is not dismissed but literally and symbolically surrounds her, while any alien coercion that might affect her judgement is kept, even if momentarily, afar.

Having talked about Bao’s respectful gesture, sensitive explanation, and the way that the setting is used to provide a safe space free of coercion, I am in a position to discuss the woman’s moral dilemma and her decision to give the fan to Bao. As I suggested earlier, the woman is faced with a fundamental question of justice: to save a closer person to whom they are personally attached, or to save a figure of higher importance but only in an abstract sense. The narrative represents the dilemma as one where the woman, no matter what she chooses, will have to sacrifice something. In the end, the woman sacrifices her attachment to her husband, and feels so guilty about it that she goes to the prison where her husband is kept and where husband and wife have one of the most poignant dialogues of the show.

What I like about the narrative is that it represents her sacrifice as not about abstract principle as it originally seems. In the safe space of her familial home, the woman recalls that the young emperor has saved her and her family once. This recollection shifts the nature of the dilemma. The woman is not struggling to choose between someone close and something abstract. Instead, she realizes a personal connection to the person of the emperor, and through that connection, the emperor is no longer a faceless, distant figure understood only in principle who stands in opposition to the family. He becomes related to the family because he, acting as a “common” person, has saved them. This connection shifts the way one can interpret the woman’s decision: she is not choosing the emperor over her husband; the woman decides to save the person who has saved her and her husband before. “I owe you my life,” she says, referring to the emperor’s earlier act of benevolence, implying it is only fair that she now saves his in reciprocity.

Of course, the woman proceeds to save the emperor not only once but several times. She finds him when Bao fails, gets a doctor to treat him, gives him food, leads him to evade the pursuit of corrupted guards, and delivers him back to the emperor’s uncle. And she does this without money, while having to care for her insane, sick husband, and almost losing her daughter on the way. It is not an understatement that the woman saves the day while Bao, with this position and man power, is rather useless. She is definitely an example of strong female characters in the media. What I find interesting is that this strong female character is a typical virtuous feminine Confucius woman who adheres to behaving a purportedly very obedient and subservient manner. I will explore this complication, but first, I need to talk a little about the notion of “strong female character” in the media.

The feminist critique of modern media often aspires to a presentation of “strong female character” to empower women. But what exactly does “strength” for a female character entails is a complex and problematic matter. If she is saved by a man, she is seen as “weak” (or is she?). If she somehow stands up for herself, it is hard to know if she is coerced to follow a man’s order, or if she acts according to her own judgement. There is also the matter of her method. If she uses “masculine” ways to achieve her end, is it feminist or does that reinforce the patriarchy? It is typical to imagine a tomboyish girl or action girl as a “strong female character” because she can fight “like a man” and she often speaks out vocally to defend herself.

I am not suggesting the notion of an action girl is not problematic – it is indeed very problematic. But generally, it is more difficult to understand the strength of a vocal, ass kicking girl than of a femininely coded woman. I think that there are two projects of feminist critique that at first sight may seem contradictory, but actually are complementary to each other. One project is to empower female characters by giving them acting and speaking role. I should note here that this project is necessary not because more voice by itself is particularly better than a lack of voice. Voice is significant in the context of female character because in media and literature, male characters historically have been given significantly more acting and speaking roles than female characters. As such, to have more speaking women in the media is about fair presentation and balance.

But to give more voice to female characters cannot erase the silence of existing ones. Some things are unrepresentable, unspeakable, and untellable. Therefore, the other project that needs to go hand in hand with creating more speaking female roles is to finding a way for the audience to better understand both speaking and non-speaking female roles. If the first project is more about empowering women by letting them speak vocally on screen, the second project is more difficult. Understanding words is direct, while understanding silence and context is indirect. It requires not only a sensitive presentation of non-speaking elements on screen but also a sensitive interpretation from the audience off screen. This is the reason why I am so interested in the figure of the virtuous, obedient woman in Confucius culture. That is, I would like to find a way to suggest that they and their seemingly subservient mannerism are not weak or lack of agency. I understand fully this is a problematic claim. I do not mean to suggest all kinds of silence deserve an appreciative interpretation. Indeed, some forms silence and some acts of silencing and self-silencing needs to be criticized.

Therefore, my claim is very narrow. I only suggest, no more no less, that this 90s Chinese show is an example of how a coded feminine virtuous woman is handled in a very sensitive way. I suggest that an empowering portrayal of female character can be achieved not only by simply giving women acting and speaking role. The woman analyzed in this specific case does indeed act and speak very well. Nevertheless, as I have analyzed layers of potential coercion in the dialogue between her and Bao, I argue that a truly successful and empowering portrayal of female character must go beyond giving her powerful words and strong deeds. One must account for the way her words are perceived and situated in the context of the diegetic. 

In particular, I have tried to suggest that Bao’s gesture of respect, his method of using non-shaming, non-dismissing argument is equally important. What is more, I suggest that the use of carefully paced directing and sensitively spaced setting is more effective in giving agency to the female character than simply providing the character with important sounding words. And finally, the way the narrative shifts the nature of the woman’s dilemma from an abstract obligation to a more personal notion of justice as reciprocity is significant. It transforms her dilemma into a personal matter that allows the audience to understand her motivation and decision on a more intimate level, making her a relatable, complex but not abstract figure. A sensitivity to possible coercion and attentiveness of personal connection, these are two of the many ways that the media can give agency to and facilitate a better understanding of both speaking and non-speaking female characters, besides paying exclusive attention to strong words and badass actions.

[lucimonk]

One Woman and Three Men in a Non-love Triangle: Deconstructing Aggression in the Concept of Masculinity in Bao Công (Justice Bao)’s “The Butterfly Dream”

No, I am not talking about Zhuangzi – although Zhuangzi is indeed my most favorite philosophical person.

I am talking about a case in the 90s show Bao Công (Bao Qing Tian in Chinese and Justice Bao in English. I will use Bao Công because I watched the Vietnamese dub version of the show) about the relationship between one woman and three men in her life. Bao Công is not an explicitly feminist show. It is a detective show about a judge in the Song imperial court who is lauded as the paragon of justice. In each case, there tend to be only one female lead, and if there are two women, they are almost always related to each other through a man. There are a variety of female leads throughout the show, and they exhibit a range of personalities, but in the case of the Butterfly Dream, the lead woman is a kind of woman that I find particularly interesting for a feminist examination of media: the good, virtuous, traditional woman of Confucius culture. As such, I would like to talk about this woman and the way the case represents gender roles.

To summarize, a woman is accused by her mother in law of cheating on her husband with a scholar. The town people gather together and tie her to a door and throw her down the river to die. It turns out that it was a misunderstanding: the husband who is a doctor is impotent, so he could not beget a child. The mother in law pressures him to remarry. Unable to dissuade his mother, he asks a scholar whom he has saved to sleep with his wife. Of course, she refuses. So the doctor drugs her and lets the scholar rape her. The woman gives birth to a son. But the scholar, having slept with this beautiful woman, cannot forget her, so he comes back, and in a moment of misunderstanding, is caught by the mother in law. Years later, the woman survives the river, having been rescued by a general. Her doctor now is a drunkard, often abuses the child whom he knows is not his. The child runs away and accidentally runs into the woman, now happily married to the general. At the same time, the doctor and the scholar go to the capital to look for the son.

Thus the entangled relationships between one woman and three men are thus put into motion: the scholar tries to rape the woman and blackmails the general who in a fit a rage and in an attempt to protect his wife, kills him. The doctor tries to respect his ex-wife’s new life, but is pushed by his overbearing mother who does not want the woman to reunite with the child. He gets drunk, loses his mind, kidnaps the woman, ties her to a door and tries to rape her. The general arrives in time to rescue her, but commands his vice general to kill the drunk ex-husband. When Bao convicts the general for murdering the two men, the general comes back home to see his wife for the last time and kills himself. Upon witnessing the general’s death, the woman loses her mind, but she is taken care of by her son and her ex-mother in law, who finally realizes she has wrongly accused the woman in the beginning.

This is a typical twisted tragic love story. It could have been presented as a love triangle (or triangular) with the woman in the center, torn by her (equal) emotions to multiple men. At some point, she could have been killed off, to provide man angst for one of these men to have some character development. Her tenuous relationship with her mother in law could have stayed hostile until the end and used to keep the relationships between her and the three men even more conflicted and tragic. The woman, as I have said, is the typical virtuous, obedient, traditional Confucius wife: she does not speak out to explain or defend herself against the mother in law and the village people’s false charge. She does not even speak out or explain herself to her understanding, generous, and utterly loving general. She does not speak in front of the court when Bao questions her. She defers everything to her husband. Her existence is defined completely by her relationships to the three men and her son.  

Despite all of that, I want to argue that the case handles the characters and their gender roles splendidly and in a very acute and sensitive way. I will talk about the woman later, but first I would like to talk about the three men and the ways their masculinity are portrayed and deconstructed throughout the narrative. The scholar is the simplest character of the three, but he is not one-dimensional. In the beginning, he appears like an average scholar. He tries to refuse the doctor’s request to rape the woman at first. But later he still does it because while he is not outright evil, his sense of morality is weak. Later, he could not forget her so he comes back and tries to claim the boy as his son. Both actions are entirely within reason and have humanly flawed motivation. It is only when he sees the woman again in the capital that the scholar’s obsession surfaces. He tries to rape her, masking his base obsession and sexual aggression with words of love and passion.

What I like about this narrative is that it portrays a man with a very common obsession: sex. I emphasize the  common nature of the scholar’s sexual obsession for a reason. It is very easy to read him as straw man misogynist. I do not think so, for at various points, he appears more rational than the doctor The scholar’s motivation, as suggested earlier, is not overly complicated: he is sexually attracted to a woman and he wants his son. So in this sense, he is just an ordinary man. But if his motivations are understandable, his actions are deplorable. In trying to rape her, he lets his obsession overwhelm him and commits acts of aggression and violence. Put differently, the narrative presents an average man, with a common obsession that every man has. But most importantly, the narrative proceeds to show that ordinary person can commit very deplorable act. In other words, this narrative dismisses the myth that rapists are exceptionally bad or evil man, and that all other men are innocent. Instead, rapists, sexual abusers, sexists, misogynists often think of themselves as very normal men. Nevertheless, their common obsession with sex can easily lead them to do inexcusable aggression. The fact that the scholar dies implies that the narrative clearly condemns the scholar’s action.

Even if one still thinks of the scholar as a straw man misogynist, one cannot say so about the doctor. The portrayal of the doctor takes to another level the notion of an average person with understandable motivation but committing deplorable act that the narrative directly calls out as aggression and vocally condemns. The doctor’s relationship with the woman is more complicated than mere sexual obsession and manly aggression. His words, his deeds, his motivations are complex and are presented in a sensitive and acute way. In the beginning, the doctor appears to have a very loving relationship with his wife. He seems to love her very much and she clearly loves him. The pivotal point comes when he is put in a tough spot by his overbearing and traditional mother. I think he genuinely thinks that he loves his wife. He probably thinks that letting another man rape her, even drugging her in the process, is justified for the reason that it will let him escape marrying another woman, allowing him to stay “true” to his wife. When his wife tells him that the child who is not his will come in between them, he tells her that his love can stay the same, and I think that in that moment, he honestly believes himself. The genius of the narrative is this: every man tends to believe that he is a good man. No one likes to think of themselves as rapist, sexist, or abusive. And when people give justification for their action, it is very likely that they honestly believe in it. The doctor shows this very well.

But the narrative proceeds to show that it is in specific circumstances that a person is pushed into action that defines or reveals their nature, which even they themselves do not know. After all of his words of promises and love, the doctor behaves exactly like his wife predicts. He abuses the child partly because of his grief and partly because he knows that is not his son. In addition, it is his own idea to drug his wife and conspires with another man to rape her, but eventually, that self-planned act of sexual violence is precisely what makes him unable to trust her later when his mother accuses her of adultery. In fact, everything about the doctor is that he believes in his own meaningless profession of love without knowing that they are empty and that he himself is a coward weak-willed man. There are moments when the doctor is sober and shows hints of regaining a sense of dignity. For example, in a moment of emergency, he is able to rediscover his skill as a doctor and saves his son. At some point, he shows real acceptance of his ex-wife’ new life with the clearly superior general. If he were able to keep up with this acceptance for his ex-wife till the end, he would have retained a sense of dignity and finally gained some respect from the audience. It is by acknowledging other superior person that one can claim some humility and self-worth.

However, the show really delivers on the central insight that words or intention or even genuine honest belief do not define a person. It is circumstances that push people into actions that define and reveal their true nature. The doctor unfailingly behaves like a decent person until his mother, his moral weakness, pushes him. It is his mother’s pressure that makes him conspire with the scholar to rape his wife. This shows his cowardice. It is his mother that accuses the woman of adultery, which he does not contradict. This shows that his love lacks trust and is meaningless. It is his mother that demands he take back the son, after which he gets drunk, loses his sense, kidnaps the woman and abuses her. This shows his weak will and lack of self-esteem. Through and through, the narrative shows the difference between the doctor’s words and deeds, between his self-belief and his own reaction to circumstances. This may be hypocrisy, and to some extent, I think it indeed is.

But the sensitivity of this show that I would really like to point out is that the doctor, like the scholar, is not evil. I do not think they lie. Actually, if men who abuse and rape women were all evil and if their words were all lies, I think it would been a good thing, because to say they lie is to say they understand right and wrong and just intentionally mislead people. But the reality of it is that things sometimes are not like that. Sometimes, men are like the doctor and the scholar. They are just ordinary men who fail to critically examine their own self-belief. They do not know themselves. They believe their own words of promises and passion without knowing in reality they might not have the caliber to back up these words. It is only through circumstances that they are pushed to actions that truly reveal their characters.

What is more, the narrative calls out the selfish and violent elements in these men’s action and the horrible consequence of their aggression. Both the doctor and the scholar die, showing the narrative’s clear condemnation. In Western media, if a man is portrayed with some good traits and thus coded as “potentially morally redeemable,” he is almost always redeemed. And this is almost always achieved by killing a woman or having her forgive him. It is a privilege that white men enjoy. I think the narrative is aware of this and teases with the audience with it. Even after marrying the general, the woman still carries half of the silk handkerchief which symbolizes her love with the doctor, leading the audience to think she might still have feelings for him. And if I am allowed to speculate, if this story were told in a Western film, it would be exactly that: a love triangle, with a woman torn between an old (abusive) love and a new (nice) love. 

The gesture of the half handkerchief teases at this old trope, but eventually subverts it. The woman very clearly and vocally states that she keeps it not because she has any feeling for the doctor (who clearly does not deserve any). It is because she wants to remind herself of what she deserves: a good man who loves her truly with both words and deeds, not a man who drugs and lets other rape her, does not trust or defend her, and abuses her child. In my opinion, this is a clear message from the narrative that it is not a woman’s job to redeem or forgive abusive men or act as instrument for their moral development.

But the most interesting portrayal is the woman’s new husband, the general. Unlike the doctor and the scholar, who are pathetic and weak and whose actions are called out and condemned, the general is an upright character who loves his wife truly. He rescues her, makes her his wife without asking about her past, or questioning her integrity. This is a gesture that is impressive even by modern standard, as we live in a world where a woman’s past deeds, whom she sleeps with, are often taken as criteria to define her worth. The general does not do this, which shows that he loves, trusts, respects his wife, her privacy, and her past.

Keeping up with the other portrayals, just as the narrative does not demonize the doctor and the scholar, the narrative does not idolize the general. He does have his moments of weakness: he tries to kidnap the child when he fears it will separate him and his wife, and he is angry with her when she finally tells him about her past. But this is all to show he is human. After that, he accepts the child without a word because he knows it will make his wife happy. Everything he does is to protect her reputation, and make her happy. The beauty of the portrayal of the general is just this: he is a good, loving, morally superior man but he is only human, so very human.

What I am most impressed is the end of the general. Of all the three men, he is by far the most “potentially redeemable.” In fact, in some people’s eyes, his actions are justified, and even just. After all, he only kills the two men when one blackmails him and the other kidnaps his wife. I personally think his attitude and behavior to his wife is almost close to perfect (it is not - I will address it in a moment). Of the three men, one can say that the general is arguably a paragon of good aspects of masculinity whereas the scholar’s obsession with sex is an example of masculine vices and the doctor’s hypocrisy is the result of his failure to be masculine enough (to stand up to his mother).

But the narrative is ruthless and relentless. It proceeds to deconstruct this example of the paragon of masculinity. The general’s act of violence is discovered, and he is sentenced to death. I don’t think this is merely a message about the integrity of Bao. I think it has a deeper meaning. By the end of the movie, there is a scene where Bao remorsefully looks at the woman who now has gone insane, and comments that each of the three men have all failed to truly understand and empathize with her. They have all wronged her, even the exceedingly loving general, Bao suggests. I think Bao has a point here. I think Bao’s condemnation of the general implies that even a good man is not good enough. If the notion of a man, even a good one who loves, respects, protects women, is so closely tied to violence and aggression, then the very understanding of masculinity needs to be examined.

The narrative does just this. By each presentation of its male character, it reveals layers of aggression embedded in the notion of their manhood. First, the portrayal of the scholar reveals the aggressiveness of male sexuality that is often masked as basic instinct. Then, the portrayal of the doctor shows how men fail to critically examine the violence inherent in their own belief and privileges, and how their denial to acknowledge their hypocrisy leads to serious mental and physical abuse of women. The portrayal of the general, the paragon of masculinity, digs deeper. With the general, the narrative goes beyond the dichotomy of the virtuous man v. the vile or weak man. It deconstructs the very idea of “a man.” If a “man” is always linked to violence and aggression, to the extent that a purportedly good one who does his best to care for a woman, to the best of his ability and selflessness even to point of sacrificing himself, still cannot escape committing acts of aggression that directly or indirectly hurt women, then to distinguish between good man and bad man is no longer enough. One needs to go further: to take apart the idea of a “man.” Put differently, by this point, it no longer makes sense to insist that only vile and weak men hurt women. It is time to acknowledge the layers of aggression and violence embedded in our understanding of masculinity, from the way men express their sexual obsession, to the way men make excuse for their weakness and selfishness and hypocrisy, to the way men justify their selfless sacrifice.  

Having examining three portrayals of male characters, I will now talk about the portrayal of the woman in the narrative of the Butterfly Dream. As I suggested earlier, she does not speak much, nor does she defend herself. But I think the narrative does enough to empower her: not only is she not required to redeem or forgive her ex-husband, but she meets the general who is clearly superior. My knowledge of media might be humble, but I think there are not many stories that shows how precisely a woman deserves to be treated without forcing her to “defend” or “justify” herself, vocally or otherwise. That is, I do not take her lack of self-explanation to be an indicator of her inability to be “strong.” I think it is a narrative’s way of stating, declaring, and showing (instead of telling through her voice) a matter of course: this woman deserves to be treated well, as a natural thing, and she does not need to defend herself to any of the three men or even to the audience, for she has done nothing wrong, and for she just simply does not have to. Put differently, she does not need to speak because I as an audience is expected to already know whom to question: the three men, not her. One questions abuser, not victim.

When this woman does speak, it is in three memorable moments: to tear the handkerchief, to explain the handkerchief, and to talk to her ex mother in law. I have already talked about the significance of the handkerchief in subverting the idea that a woman has a duty narrative-wise to redeem and forgive men who abuse her. The woman’s talk with her mother in law is equally significant. This woman who suffers from abuse from three men saves her explanation not for them but for another woman. Despite the mother in law’s hostility, this woman still believes her ex mother in law would understand her, because she is also a woman. Put differently, this is the narrative’s subtle way of implying the mother in law is also a victim of the patriarchy. As women, and victims, it is only natural that they understand each other. The change in the two women’s relationship is outstanding: in the beginning the mother in law is the cause of all of the woman’s suffering, but by the end, it is the mother in law that takes care of her when she loses her mind from grief. Unlike the men whom the narrative condemns to death, no female character dies. The show is not idealist. The woman loses her mind in grief. But she is alive. The narrative is entirely hers, without a doubt, unmistakably, even when she does not speak.

I have talked at length about gender role in the case of the Butterfly Dream in the 90s show Bao Công. Its acute and sensitive critique of its male characters is excellent: men are called out for their sexual obsession, their lack of critical self-examination, their hypocrisy, even their sacrifice. The notion of masculinity is deconstructed as the layers of aggression underneath are revealed and vocally condemned. But its portrayal of women is even better. The narrative allows a woman who is a victim of multiple abuse from men a sense of quiet but clear dignity. It empowers her without forcing her to speak by presenting her integrity as a matter of course. And when she does speak, her words are saved for another woman who arguably is also a victim of the patriarchy. To empower women without voice, this is something that contemporary media definitely can learn in dealing with its problematic presentation of “strong female characters.”

[lucimonk]

Feminist Media Review: Bao Công (Justice Bao) and “Strong Female Character”

Recently I have an obsession of re-watching the 90s show Bao Công (Bao Qing Tian in Chinese and Justice Bao in English. I will use the term “Bao Công” to refer to the show, and Vietnamese names to refer to its characters because I watched the Vietnamese dub version of it). It is a show about a judge in the Song dynasty called Bao Chửng (Bao Zheng) who has the reputation of being the most just officer in the Song imperial court, so much that the people call him Bao Thanh Tiên, or Bao, the blue sky, which is the Chinese symbol for justice. Along with this loyal followers, Công Tôn Sách (Gong Sun Ce) and Triển Chiêu (Zhan Zhao), Bao Công solves many cases and executes many wrong doers, from citizens to corrupted officer to princes and even high ranking members of the imperial family.

In all, Bao Công is an old, beloved show that every person in my generation watched in our childhood. It always has a dear place our hearts. When I was in primary school, there was only about 4 or 5 TV channels, so everyone tends to watch the same shows. I remember every other day, after doing my homework, I would gather with my family to watch an episode of Bao Công until 10 and then go to bed. Cheering for the dark like coal, just like steel Bao Công and admiring the handsome, kungfu jesus Triển Chiêu are all a part of a childhood ritual that I can say with almost certainty that I share with other people of my generation.

The last time I watched Bao Công was in college when I was trying to learn Chinese by listening to the original show without voice dub or English subtitle. This time watching the beloved show again in graduate school gives me a completely different experience. I realize that the show has not only good plots but also amazing humanity. On the surface, it is a detective show, but in fact, it emphasizes basic but very fundamental human motivations like love and revenge. Characters are forced to confront difficult moral dilemma to reconcile important responsibilities and relationships that pull them in opposing directions.

What is more, I am very impressed with all the female leads and their actresses. The episodes might not pass basic “feminist Western tests” like the Bechdel test. There tends to be only one female lead in Bao Công cases, and when that woman talks to other woman, it tends to be about other men, not because these women do not have a life for themselves, but because people in Bao Công exist in terms of their relationships. They never exist by themselves. A woman is never her own person, but is a mother, or a daughter or a lover. Her actions are thus motivated and revolve around her son, father, or husband. But so are men. A man is a son, a father, a brother, an officer in the imperial court, or a king, and his actions are thus motivated by his positions and relationships.

The notion that a person exists only in terms of their relationships is something that I think Western media can learn, especially in portraying female character. The portrayal of “strong female character” in Western media is a very problematic one. I will write a longer article about this notion of “strong female character,” but generally, woman in Western media often exists to be love interest, to provide eye candy and man angst to motivate male character to reach personal development. If they are “strong” they are only so because it would be “uncool” for the male protagonist to have a weak female lover or companion, and the narrative would be deemed sexist. Those women are not complex, they rarely evolve, and even when they are “badass” and “complex,” in the larger narrative they are still fundamentally instrumental. As such, feminist media critics have tried to devise many tests to make movies more feminist. For instance, the Bechdel test looks for female to female relationship to make sure that female characters are not entirely dependent on male character. But even then, the notion that a female character has a speaking role to other women about something that is not a man only scratches the surface of the problem. Indeed, to really portray a woman, it is not enough that she speaks. Also, even when there is only one female character who does not speak, it is not necessary that she cannot be a complex, strong woman. Eventually, it is a lot about the way the character is portrayed, and what motivations and relationships motivate her.

The focus on relationships and fundamental human emotions for their female leads is what make Bao Công a good show. I would not call it a “feminist” show, because it does not intend to or make itself out to be such. Put differently, I don’t think the show sets out to promote gender equality, or intentionally seeks to portray “strong female character.” It does not have an implicit standard feminist message about the harmful impact of the patriarchy or tries to empower women by giving them speaking roles with powerful words. Nonetheless, Bao Công has very good female characters. They have a variety of personalities: virtuous pious wife, jealous spoiled princess, revengeful daughter, and carefree kungfu genius hippy, and so on. Regardless of their personalities, their behaviors are all constrained in a web of traditional Chinese norms, in which virginity is closely tied to personal worth and familial honor and is literally a matter of life and death. At the same time, society places very strict duties on a woman to her father, husband, and son. In particular, while there are tomboyish girl, kungfu action girl, female villain, complex and steely woman in Bao Công, the “good virtuous feminine woman” in the show still invariably does not speak out loudly, does not often defend herself against violence from men, and has an infinite amount of patience for injustice. To the an uncritical modern eye, those are very irritating and seemingly idiotic traits. I cannot say for sure, but personally, I speculate that if such women were placed in a Western film, they would come out very weak and anti-feminist.

What I like most about Bao Công is that it does a very good job of making them not so. I think it is because the show does the same thing to its male and female characters: to portray them in terms of their relationships. Just as a man struggles between his responsibility to be good, righteous, and loyal, with his desire for wealth and honor, a woman in the show also struggles between her responsibility to her husband and her duty to the emperor and nations when they come in conflict with each other. Her “independence from men,” her own “complex character,” her “strength” all come from how she behaves in the web of relationships in which she is caught. She can be “independent, strong, and complicated” without speaking for herself, or interacting with another woman, or pursuing her own interest. Instead, she is complex in her attempt to struggle with moral dilemmas brought about by circumstances. She is strong in acting on behalf of others. And she is independent in trying to interact with the men in her life according to her own judgement about her duty to and relationship with these men.

The emphasis on independence and voice, I think, is a very Western thing. The notion of “strong female character” as I said earlier, is a complex one, but to be independent and to speak out (for herself) is clearly a very crucial part of it. While there is nothing wrong with that focus on voice and independence, it is worthwhile to note that there are way to have a good portrayal of women without doing so. What is more, an exclusive emphasis on independence and voice could make one forget that a good presentation of women could be about something deeper than her voice and her individuality. A person is never by themselves. Put differently, a complex person is never complex merely on their own and inside their head. They can only be fully human and humanly complex with other people. And voice is not the only way to perform individuality, and individuality is not the only mode of existing. In all, Bao Công is not feminist, but its approach to narration with its emphasis on relationship, and its cast full of personable, impressive female leads is a good reminder of that.

[lucimonk]

Hi, ladyloveandjustice

I am amusing myself by reading tumblr’s reaction to the supergirl trailer and found your post about the problem of forcing her to accept the title “girl” while she asks to be called a “woman.” I would like to play devil’s advocate and push you back on that point a bit.

I used to go to a women’s college. One thing we really like to say is “it’s not a girls’ school; it’s a women’s college.” it is as you said, the term “girl” has certain connotations in our culture: immature, childish, even infantile, and not serious. To intentionally call oneself “woman” as opposed to “girl” is an statement aiming at empowering oneself by claiming adulthood and maturity. it is a demand to be taken seriously. 

But to call oneself a “woman” instead of a “girl” (and create that dichotomy in so doing) is also to (intentionally or not) push the social baggage that sexism attaches to the concept of “immature, infantile, non-serious female” squarely to the concept of “girl.”

The thing is sometimes, this move is not even possible. There are things that we (the language we speak) call “girly” and decidedly not “womanly.” For example, talking about makeup is “girly” thing, not “womanly” thing. females being silly together is “girly” not “womanly.” The whole female obsession with fashion is also a very “girly” thing, not “womanly.” 

Take The Devil Wears Prada. Miranda plays a strong woman (we can’t call her girl at all) who aspires to power in a very masculine way (she is dominating, cold, calculating, etc), and in so doing, is dubbed “devil,” which is a common sexist trope anyway. The point is, even with Miranda as female figure with very masculine power, played by the inestimable Streep, the whole movie is still called a chick-flick: a girly girl’s movie. Not a woman’s movie. Because liking pretty clothes is girly. 

I think that is the key to interpret the whole girl-woman talk in the Supergirl trailer in a more positive way: 

If you apply that girl-is-not-bad talk to another female character like Black Widow, it would not have worked. In fact the whole point of the parody is that Black Widow does not fit under the “girly” category. Or Agent Carter, neither. And Superman doesn't work, coz he’s old (I think?). I would have no problem applying this talk to Spiderman though. In fact, I have no problem calling him spiderboy at all. (although, in the interest of complete honesty, I call every male superhero a manchild). 

But everything about Kara is “girly.” I don’t mean that she is young - female in her age can be called both. And I don’t mean that she’s immature, although the whole point is she does have a lot to learn. I put “girly” in quotation mark to mean that she fits in what the language and the culture denotes by that term: she is sweet, has this cute, bubbly charm, her interactions with Alex is about choosing clothes and boys thing (which is not to say it’s superficial, but simply that it fits under the “girly” thing), and enough is said about the similarity between her work environment and that in Devil Wears Prada. Females who are coded “womanly” are represented differently (ie. Black Widow).  

I think the movie is very aware of this dichotomy between girl and woman. I think the movie is also very aware of the sexist stereotypes that see “girl” as immature, infantile, childish, and non-serious, which is why they include that speech in the first place. Because that speech is targeting a particular audience and a particular stereotype: the “girly” one, the kind that is culturally coded specifically as “girly” and is unable to escape the charge of immaturity and non-seriousness by trashing the “girl” title and adopting the name “woman.” 

Because you see, sometimes, we have to work with the linguistic limitation of our culture. Take the concept of “woman.” Traditionally, “woman” is both weak and immature. Creating the dichotomy of (immature) girl v. (adult) woman helps us escape the one problem. But “woman” is still weak. So we have “strong woman.” But sometimes, “strong woman” is coded for badass sexually objectified female for the male pleasure. So we have, “independent, strong woman.” But now she’s “too perfect” and more an ideal male fulfillment. So we have “strong, independent woman with complex personality.” The point is, against all the sexist baggage attached to the term “woman,” we continually rework it, step by step by interacting with the patriarchy, back and forth, to have a better term. 

It is the same way with “girl” and the implication of “childish, immature girly things.” When Kara asked to be called a woman, it can be read as she is demanding to be taken as an adult. But don’t you think that the reason she has to ask to be taken as an adult in the first place already implies that “girl” is not taken seriously? Don’t you think Kara makes that request because she herself, consciously or not, is aware of the whole condescending, sexist attitude toward “girl” and that is the reason why she is invoking that dichotomy of immature girl. v adult woman? To be seen as a “woman” therefore “adult” therefore not “immature.” Don’t you think that while her request for self-naming is empowering on some level, it also means that she is accepting the notion that “girl” is immature?

Of course, there is nothing wrong with that approach. After all, I did that. My whole “woman”s college did and still does that. 

The other approach is to stick with that label “girl” and rework it. This is what I take to be the message from that talk. If that talk is given by a male boss, saying something dismissive like the dude who refuses to let her work, and tells her to go get coffee, I would agree that it is faux empowering shit. But that talk is delivered by her female boss, who admits she is not the one to name her that way, and implies she has no power to do so. It is the patriarchal society that does, and the name is probably to stay. The same way that no matter how rich, and smart and whatever the boss is, her industry is still a “girly” thing, and movie with it will always be a chick-flick (again, read: Miranda). That speech is directed at a very particular audience, those who identified as “girl” and with coded “girly” thing and are not taken seriously because of that label.

Black Widow can dismiss the “girly” charge easily (the attempt to make her “girly” is so ridiculous that it can’t be anything but a parody), but Kara, with her personality, her relationship, her career, not so much. But that makes her the perfect fictional character to challenge the concept of “girl” and “girly thing” as coded today in our culture. So perhaps, it is time to rework and reclaim this title “girl” the way that “woman” is continuously being reworked. 

In case you didn’t want the read that longass post about that moment from the supergirl trailer, here’s the important bit: