 Imagine we built a time machine. Don’t worry, I’m sure our time machine won’t do anything like, I don’t know, accidentally start a multiverse. We take our time machine back to 2022-ish. (It’s not a very precise machine.) The year that I first watched the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. While we’re here, since it can’t hurt, we ask 2022 me which Marvel project she hates the most. Without even a second’s hesitation, she answers Captain Marvel. Right. Back to the present. I’m rewatching all the MCU projects and dreading Captain Marvel. But I give it another fair shot. After all, it’s been four years. Opinions change over four years. (Don’t I know it.) Cut to Carol fighting her attackers while “Just a Girl” blasts in the background. Cue me going “oh no.” Suddenly, my most hated Marvel film became not hated at all. Captain Marvel is a fun film with a fantastic heroine. And the reasons she’s so good are the very traits that I hated her for. Carol was too defiant. My girl Carol really crash-landed in a Blockbuster and immediately took no crap from anyone. She’ll disobey her superiors. She’ll argue with freakin’ Nick Fury. She’ll punch a hole through the wall with her super-powered fists. 2022 me thought that was too much. Can you say INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY? In case you’ve not been introduced to the term yet, internalized misogyny is when women subconsciously accept and project sexist beliefs onto themselves and the women around them. And it caused all my problems with this movie. I believed that I shouldn’t be loud, defiant, or angry, so I believed that even the fictional Carol Danvers shouldn’t be loud, defiant, or angry, and I hated her for it. Yeah, 2022 Rachel was going through it. I’ve undone a lot of those sexist beliefs over the past four years, although I’m sure that I still have a lot more to work through. And while we’re here, let’s clarify—a woman does not have to be defiant to also be strong. But some women are defiant, and some women need to be. Carol—and many other beings in her world—had been horribly used and manipulated. (I’m not going to say that nods to real-life problems, but it definitely does.) Carol’s anger and grief over what she had lost fueled her to create a change, both for herself and for other people who needed her. Sometimes, we need a woman to get loud and angry. Carol was too emotional. Do you hear that? Do you hear the internalized misogyny? Among the Kree, Yon-Rogg, Carol’s superior, lectures her about her emotions, claiming that they hinder her fights. In reality, he’s terrified of what might happen if she uses them in a healthy way. People use this argument against women every day, especially women in positions of leadership (like Carol eventually would be). I believed I shouldn’t be emotional, and so she shouldn’t either. If you asked 2022 me if I was a thinker or a feeler, she would have wholeheartedly answered a thinker. I believed that I didn’t feel very much and that when I made decisions, I used my head and my logic, and that I was better off for it. It turns out repressed emotions are still emotions. And over the next four years, life circumstances would be like “bestie, you are anything but logical.” And that’s okay. I had to undo sexist beliefs that told me that if I felt anything too deeply, then I was just a hysterical female. Once again, Carol deserves to be emotional. And yes, she shows how emotions can hold us back—but more importantly, she shows how emotions make us strong. She shows how emotions inspire us to do big things. We don’t need to fear our feelings, especially not as women. Carol makes mistakes. Sometimes huge ones. Carol disobeys Yon-Rogg’s orders—which gets her captured by the Skrull and ruins her mission. She discriminates against the Skrull through the majority of the film. And if she’d just listen to Nick every once in a while, quite a few complications could have been avoided. BEEEEEEEEEEEP INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY ALERT. (Are you noticing a theme here?) This idea sneaks into even the most “feminist” movies. Sometimes while trying to create a character that celebrates women, we swing so far the other way that we make them perfect, that we don’t allow them to make mistakes. But deep underneath that, we believe that women shouldn’t make mistakes, and if they do, they should not be easily forgiven. If you hang around fandom circles, you’ve seen those posts. “If (female character) were a dude, everyone would have said she was just misunderstood.” And it’s true. I could name multiple stories where two characters with similar backgrounds both make questionable choices. The male character is almost universally beloved, and the female character is almost universally hated for the very same choice. We hold women to a harsher standard than men, both in fiction and in real life. We’re taught to be perfect and to not make mistakes, because if we make mistakes, then people will discredit us. But making mistakes is part of being human. I argue that making mistakes is one of the most important traits a strong female character can have. And Carol not only makes mistakes, but deals with the consequences they bring. And not all her mistakes are the end of the world—sometimes they lead her to where she’s actually meant to be. And finally, she got superpowers randomly at the end so she could save the day. 2022 me thought the ending was an easy out. Oh, Carol now has the power of a thousand burning suns or whatever. How convenient. But Carol’s powers aren’t random, and they weren’t a cheap way to get her out of a pickle. Carol always had those powers. (Well, at least since the explosion.) She just gets them back, or rather, realizes she had them all along. But even when she didn’t have access to all her superpowers, she still always got back up after a fight. She cared about her friends. She searched for the truth and challenged the norm. Defiance was her power. Emotions were her power. Her ability to learn from her mistakes and get back up was her power. Carol’s most important powers weren’t even the superpowers she takes back. They were the qualities she had all along. So. Consider this my formal retraction of any previous Captain Marvel slander I’ve put out on the Internet. I could write thousands of words about this film. But all those words boil down to a twenty-four-year-old woman curled up on her living room floor watching Carol Danvers beat the heck out of her attackers while “Just a Girl” plays in the background. A twenty-four-year-old woman watching the stories she never saw as a kid. And that’s why Captain Marvel is so powerful. What are your thoughts on Captain Marvel? Let me know in the comments below! Hi, I’m Rachel! I write young adult fantasy. But more importantly, I write the novels I needed growing up—the novels I still need. Novels for the weird little girls and the women they’re becoming. Maybe you need those stories, too? You can get one for free by signing up for my email newsletter via the “HOME” page of my website. It might involve a girl and the magical violin she didn’t want and maybe a metaphor about grief. Plus, you’ll also get email-exclusive updates on my dieselpunk Anastasia reimaging. Sound good? I hope I’ll see you there!
2 Comments
|
