#you are a strong independent pirate who needs no stede

[ivyblossom]

The Triumph of Mary Bonnet, Strong Female Character

One of the saddest, and most telling, commentaries about film and television in general is that the request that stories contain more strong, female characters resulted in creators giving us female characters who are literally strong. Like, they can lift heavy stuff, or punch really hard, or can face dramatic, difficult situations with ease. That wasn't what we meant.

We have the Bechdel test (do two named female characters talk to each other about something other than a man?), which was never meant to be a deep measure of the quality of a film, or of the characters. It comes from a comic strip, and is a kind of a wry commentary on how sparse the inner life of female characters is that even this is asking too much.

It took me a minute to decide I was going to even dive into Our Flag Means Death, partly because the title is ominous, and partly because it looked like yet another sausage fest, which to be honest with you I'm getting increasingly tired of. But I was already a fan of Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi, so I didn't hold back long.

About 15 minutes in, I realized I was actually very much in favour of a sausage fest if they were going to do it like this: address toxic masculinity head on, rip it to shreds, pour one out on its grave while dancing on it, and portray multiple, more complex and humane versions of masculinity for the audience to fall in love with instead. That, yes. I will watch that. Bring me all sausage fest stories if they deconstruct and then reconstruct masculinity in an anti-racist, anti-colonialist, feminist way. We need it. I'm here for it.

But what about the women?

I absolutely love Mary Bonnet. She is a complete human being with her own personality, inner life, and hopes for herself. She is a victim of the same circumstances Stede is, but she faces different pressures and expectations, and she processes it very differently. She is not (and does not need to be) physically strong, or emotionally strong, or morally strong. She is compelling as a character, and that's what she needs to be.

Mary Bonnet has her own story, one that intersects with Stede's without being dominated by it. She has a role to play in Stede's story, and she is not a main character, but she is palpably not a minor character in her own life.

Finally. Someone understood the assignment. Mary Bonnet is a strong, female character. This is what we meant all along.

There was every reason to paint Mary as the villain of the piece, because Our Flag Means Death is the story of why Stede chose to run away from a life with her. Making her mean or difficult, or too domineering when she should have been demure, would have made sense. But they didn't go that way, and the story benefits from that choice.

It's hard not to empathize with Mary. The story gives us her perspective even though Stede can't see it. We love Stede as the audience, but we can appreciate how absolutely infuriating he would have been as a husband. He gives the kids nightmares. He has no interest in the things that Mary does, or the things she loves (painting). He waltzes off in the middle of the night to become a pirate, and then has the audacity to come back and try to take back the life he rejected so dramatically. Mary's perspective is perfectly summed up by the shots of her in her own bed, happy to take up all the available space, and then getting pushed to the edge of the mattress by the entitled, self-centred, and self-absorbed Stede upon his return.

Mary has her own take on this situation, and the story lets us see it. It's not hard to picture another 10 episode series about Mary Bonnet having to marry this odd man she has nothing in common with, who doesn't connect very well with his children, who then promptly abandons her. You can imagine how she has to face the horror of that, the questions, and how she took the situation by the horns and found a way to make it work. She declares him dead and secures her financial independence. She explores her passions in life. She gets into a loving relationship that doesn't infringe on her independence. She raises her kids without interference. She finds her own happiness, and then the bastard shows up again. It's right there in the text. When she decides to murder him, she even does that in her own way.

Mary is her own person and has her own story, and it's not there just to mirror Stede's or to make Stede's story work. The writers took Mary seriously as a complete and independent character. They gave her rational, reasonable thoughts and motives that align with who she is, what her life has been about, and her version of the world, not with Stede's. The fact that Stede's story and Mary's story conflict with each other makes them both better and more interesting.

Shine on, Mary Bonnet. We saw the whole person that you are. And you are fabulous.