The Strong Female Character Archetype

For my first blog post that isn't a review of something, I thought I'd talk about a topic that has been on my mind quite a lot lately, concerning a trend in current-day TV shows and movies. In recent years, there's been growing demand for a certain depiction of women in film. Most refer to this depiction as the strong female character.

Now, this trend certainly isn't a surprise considering the years of film where women were for the most part helpless damsels. It figures that women and even men would get sick of women mostly taking on this role in fiction, and I'm mostly content with this new portrayal being prevalent. However, I do have some issues with it that I'd like to talk about.

A New Archetype
To me, it seems like the "strong female character" has sort of become a new archetype. Instead of making women these passive, emotional damsels, they're instead active, emotionless ass-kickers. In other words, women's roles have simply been reversed and are merely strong in the sense that they can physically kick ass and that they aren't emotional. However, good and memorable characters don't merely come out of capable fighters, but instead usually come out of being relatable, interesting and/or fun. This form of the strong female character is an equally uninteresting depiction of women that takes just as much effort to write as does a damsel. Heck, even Michael Bay, who is notorious for his shameless objectification of women in his films, has Megan Fox's character in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) save the heroes, reversing the damsel/hero roles. Does that inherently make her character a "strong female character?" I don't think so.

Physical Strength vs. Character Strength
The very notion of women needing to be "strong" female characters is pretty silly as it implies they need to be physically strong. Not all well-written female characters are physically strong. A good example of this is Liv Moore from iZombie. Sure, if you count her going full-on zombie mode, then yeah, she is, but most of the time, Liv's strength as a character comes from being relatable. She gets pissed off and angry sometimes. She cries when life comes to a halt, and she can be hilarious when she wants to be; above all, she is written like a human being, not as an archetype used to replace another crappy archetype.

Influence of Gender
Finally, when it comes to writing good female characters the focus shouldn't be, "How do we write a strong female character?", it should be "How do we write a good character?" Whether a character is male or female, the focus should be on trying to make them relatable if they're to be the protagonist and sympathetic if they're to be the antagonist. Obviously, this doesn't always apply, but often times it does. The thing about good female characters, such as Liv, I find, is that them being female isn't their primary attribute. They're not good because they're female or despite that they're female. That's not to say that gender can't ever come into play, but it shouldn't be the primary trait defining who a character is because in real life, that's not what people are like. We have many sides to ourselves, and a good character brings those different sides to the table, which is a big reason we find them likable and/or relatable.

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So overall, strong female characters aren't a bad thing, but we need to remember why we actually tend to find characters memorable. It's not because they are "strong." It's because they're funny, relatable, intriguing  or just plain entertaining for some reason. Therefore, if we want to have better female characters in fiction, we need to allow ourselves to go beyond the "strong female character" archetype. That's of course not to say that there aren't female characters that already go beyond this archetype, as I did use Liv Moore as an example earlier. I am, however, saying that we need to be mindful not to get caught up in the pseudo-feminist depictions of women that merely replace stereotypes with other ones, instead of getting rid of them altogether.

iZombie: Season 1 - Episodes 1-10 + "Astroburger (Review) **SPOILERS**

So since I haven't talked about iZombie on this blog yet, I thought that instead of just reviewing the newest episode, I would talk about what I think about the season so far. When I saw the first trailer for this show, there were a couple of things that came to mind. The concept of the show was unique. It takes a pretty popular thing in our current shows and movies, zombies, and it flips that on it's head. Instead of making the show about people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, it's about a person who has already become a zombie and has to learn how to continue living a worthwhile life despite her circumstance. Furthermore, not only is the role of the zombie changed, but the tone that is usually prevalent in zombie shows and movies is also flipped. The trailer made the show feel very upbeat and fun, and that made me very curious. I also thought it was pretty cool how the show was based on a comic book series.

EPISODES 1-10:

After seeing some positive reviews for the pilot, I decided to check it out. Not only did I end up liking it, but I ended up loving it. First of all, I was really impressed with how they used Liv's zombie powers for character development. The trailer made it seem like it would merely be used for comedy purposes, which it is partially, but it's used for so much more. In a sense, by eating the brains of other people, Liv gets to both obtain skills and traits of the brain's owner, and as a consequence gets to see life from someone else's perspective. For example, when she eats the brain of a sensual painter, she discovers a passion she never felt back when she was alive, studying hours on end, trying to be a good student. In a sort of ironic way, Liv discovers new ways to live (no pun intended, but it's unavoidable with that kind of name) after she died. This sort of self discovery that Liv continuously makes with each brain she consumes lends itself to a very optimistic and fun show, and it's one of the things I love about it. It also helps that the comedy elevates the mood of it all.

The other thing I adore about this show is its ability to make me instantly care for all its different characters and relationships. In only 11 episodes this show has given each of its characters at least some degree of depth and I have come to really enjoy characters I expected not to like. For example, Major, Liv's ex-fiance, I expected to despise. For the first few episodes, he was just the ex that wanted to get back with her and that she had to distance herself from. Couple episodes later, we learn that he's both a social worker and that he's trying to find some kids that have gone missing. This starts an ongoing conflict where he finds himself in jail and even loses his job, when all he wants to do is to bring justice to the kids that died. As a result, he becomes both very sympathetic and an integral part of the show's main plot involving Blaine's brain food business. I was also surprised that I found Major and Ravi becoming friends very believable, which I expected to come off as forced instead. Their friendship developed quickly, but naturally. I was even surprised to find that I enjoyed Liv's romantic relationship with Lowell. None of the drama surrounding them felt forced or cheap, and generally both parties were mostly reasonable in dealing with each conflict. It was actually made quite interesting with them being zombies; I was honestly torn up when Lowell kicked the bucket.

Now that I've given my general thoughts on the season so far, let's talk about the most recent episode.

EPISODE 11: "ASTROBURGER"

First off, what a weird title. I looked up if it meant anything special on Google, but all I could find was the name of a restaurant in Hollywood. Maybe I missed something about it in the episode. Anyway, this episode may just be my favorite episode of the season. Now, I have to admit that before I got to the ending, I only found this episode kind of enjoyable. It just really irked me how it seemed like they weren't utilizing the hallucinating brain that Liv had eaten nearly enough. All that we got was a talking devil, which was at least somewhat funny. However, once I got to the end, my mind was freaking blown. I couldn't believe that the entire episode Liv had been hallucinating and neither she or the audience knew. There's several reasons why I simply love the way that it was done.

First, I love the fact that if the audience paid enough attention, they could figure out that Liv was hallucinating. Throughout the entire episode, I thought it was sort of weird how Johnny Frost always seemed to be "in character." I figured it was just him being silly, but when you get to the end, it makes perfect sense. Liv's idea of Johnny Frost is the character that she sees on the news, not the real guy, so him acting in character would logically play out in her hallucinations. I also loved the way her hallucination with Major played out as well. I thought it was sort of weird how all of sudden, Major seemed very adamant about getting back with Liv. You'd figure he'd be too caught up with trying to learn more about the zombie thing, and of course that is exactly what is the case. I don't know how sure I am about it, but I'm guessing the hallucinations started when Major returned to Liv's place after first leaving that same night. Come to think of it, we never see Major and Liv together with anybody else around, after he leaves that night. So it would make perfect sense if that is when the hallucinations started. Furthermore, I think it's also awesome that Liv hallucinating about Major in this way fits her current state of mind. Not only does she want Major to be accepting of her being a zombie, but since she lost Lowell, she's yearning for someone to be by her side. Since she and Major are so close, it figures it'd be he who she hallucinates about.

Another thing that I enjoyed about this episode is how it takes advantage of one plot point to create another. It was creative to make the murder victim the person that Major met in the mental hospital. It surprisingly isn't contrived as his murder had nothing to do with zombies, which if it did, may have been pretty silly.

Overall, this was a fantastic episode, not only building towards the season finale, but also managing to continue the episodic structure of the previous episodes. I'm hyped for the next episode, and even more, the season finale.