Portrayals of Women in Fiction, part 1

Last night I made the mistake of watching the movie "Black Death." I don't characterize it as a mistake because of the violence, which was excessive, or the gory shots of plague victims. No, the movie was an awful experience because of its treatment of women.

Before anyone can roll their eyes and declare, "Chill out, Gloria Steinem!", let's make a few things clear. First, as a reader of fantasy, I am unfortunately accustomed to female love interests whose sole role in the story is to be rescued by the hero, and female leads whose idea of strength is wearing pants instead of a pretty dress. All of that just gives me an increased desire to write kick-ass female leads. Also, don't try to tell me that, "It's just portraying things historically! The middle ages were a terrible time to be a woman!" Yes, the Middle Ages were a terrible time to be a woman. But there were a couple of things in the movie that take it from historical depiction to pure condescension.

We would have brought wine, but it's too cliched as a gift

I've got to give you a quick rundown of the plot of this movie, spoilers included. Beware, spoilers abound. It's the 14^th Century, and the Black Death is ravaging England. A group of men has been tasked with investigating rumors of a village that seems to be miraculously free of the plague. So Our Heroes go tromping across the land to this magical village that is indeed plague free.

But after just a few hours in the village, they find it is an almost cult-like place. In this patriarchal England, their leader is a woman in red who seems to have mystical powers. The soldiers get captured and tortured for their intentions to destroy the village. But some of the soldiers escape, prove the Woman in Red a fraud, and slaughter those villagers that resist them. And then, in a fun twist, the soldiers turn out to have brought the plague to the village, and all the surviving inhabitants die. The end!

This whole thing reminded me of the common portrayals of matriarchal societies in fantasy and science fiction – they are almost invariably portrayed as being inherently flawed or based on poor morals. And in the end, they always break down (see Melanie Rawn's Exiles series for a prime example). The portrayal of matriarchal societies is a post of its own, but it I mention it here to point out how prevalent it still is in fiction today.

Still, none of that is anywhere close to the fury part. So let's get to the point, shall we?

Also, she knits really great socks

After the bloodbath, one of the soldiers growls to a male villager, "Why did you follow her?" (referring to the Woman in Red)

And the man replies….

Wait for it….

"Because she was beautiful."

Really. REALLY?

Great! Now, not only do we have the female-lead society based on improper morals and descending into chaos, but the men weren't even in it for the non-plague non-violence part. Nor were they in it because the woman was a good leader. No, they just thought the lady was pretty!

But the worst part is yet to come. See, for some reason the director decided to tack on a sort of epilogue. The main character decides to seek vengeance on the woman in red. Apparently, killing her entire village apparently wasn't horrible enough.

So this guy who used to be a monk turns into a mercenary, and spends his days hunting down women who look like the witch and torturing them to death. Fun! And again, one could say blah blah, historical period. But at the very end, the narrator intones as the main character burns yet another woman at the stake, "Despite the grief in his heart, I hope he someday found peace."

Really? Because I kind of hope that someday the ghosts of the women he murdered come back and rip him into teeny tiny shreds and feed him to weasels.

The Point of it All

The intent of this movie is clearly to shock and horrify. The things it says about religion are also pretty terrible. But the parts about women still make me angrier. Maybe it's because their pure condescension, because those two moments seem almost casual in their inclusion. That's particularly true for the latter of the two. The first could be to show that the men of the village were terrible people too. But the second? There's really no reason for that, nothing it adds to the movie.

In trying to sum up this post, I started out asking myself why the movie made me so angry. But maybe the question is, what do I want to get from putting this into a post? If I just wanted other people to back my position, I could have complained on facebook. If I wanted to make a real, true change to the world, I'd need to do a lot more than post in a blog. But the more I think about this, I suppose I just want to understand. Why was this okay? Why did they throw that last sentence in there? Why, in every single review I found, does no one else have a problem with this?

Any thoughts?