This is going to be one of those posts that angers fans if I don’t explain a few things first: hi, Neil Gaiman fans! I like Neil Gaiman. I think he’s a good storyteller. I think he does an overall good job with female characters. But the imperfections of a writer like Gaiman, however small, are infinitely more revealing to discuss than are the the glaring mistakes of writers who don’t even seem to like women.
There’s a reason I don’t go about bemoaning the lack of “strong female characters,” and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere series is a perfect example of why.
Neverwhere is a ton of fun, and I enjoyed it. It’s written by Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry, based on a Gaiman idea with Gaiman going on to write the novelization. The female characters avoid a lot of the standard crap women in fantasy get saddled with: they don’t get all headstrong and get themselves held hostage. They don’t get embroiled in goofy love triangles. They don’t get murdered off just so we can feel for the poor lead dude as he mourns or plans revenge. They aren’t all white. They aren’t all simply good or bad. Gaiman avoids all the usual mistakes – and a lot of the more subtle ones – and for this, I commend him. In fact, his females – good or bad, sympathetic or not – are tough and strong and a good deal more savvy than his hapless protagonist. This is all good.
What’s lacking is a feeling that we ever actually get to know these women, or even get close enough to truly sympathize with them. I felt for several of the men in the story, and theoretically wanted to feel for the women, but they remained inaccessible somehow – distant, removed, mysterious – instead of vivid and alive. Why didn’t I feel like I knew the women enough to feel for them?
Part of the problem is simply cultural. The Victorian writers knew how to create strong female characters and let us into their heads and hearts until we couldn’t help but sympathize with them. Early filmmakers knew it too, and we had years of female leads ruling the box office (not all of these characters were “strong”, but many were). But since the 1950′s – when the US government asked TV to help them remind Rosie the Riveter that her rightful place was the kitchen – film and TV have acted more often than not as tools of cultural oppression, teaching generations of kids such “norms” as: all girls want to be helpless princesses, everyone’s heterosexual, the American family is white, women are obsessed exclusively with winning male affections and tending babies and sick people, and all good stories are those about white men. (Yes, there have been exceptions at every step of the way, but that’s the point: they were framed as exceptions.)
As a consequence, we’re very used to reading emotions into tough male film characters, but we’re used to seeing women wear their hearts on their sleeves. Therefore, an author/filmmaker like Gaiman is hobbled at the start: can you portray your females and males with equal bravado and self-assuredness and still expect the audience to read emotions into the females? Not really. Even after years of exploring these issues, I had trouble accessing the characters. If someday we find ourselves accustomed to equal representation in celluloid, I wonder how Neverwhere would play in that time period.
There is an additional issue, however, and it’s evident in Gaiman’s novels and short stories. Unlike film, the written word gives Gaiman ample opportunity to go inside the heads of his female characters and let us know what they’re feeling. He doesn’t avail himself of it. In more than one book, his protagonists marvel humbly at the inexplicable attraction they seem to hold for worthy women. They can’t imagine what the women who love them are feeling. I think this is a clue that Gaiman himself finds women a bit unfathomable, even while he seems to respect, admire and take interest in us. Or else he lacks confidence in his ability to convey the female mind accurately, and thus focuses on the laudable external traits of the women characters. (In “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”, Gaiman actually portrays girls as aliens out to use men to change the world.)
The trick to writing your opposite gender is, of course, to realize it’s not another species. Yes, they may have vastly different social programming than you have, which forces them to view the world and situations within it differently – but take us outside of civilization’s reach, into deadly situations (for one example), and you’ll find we’re not that different. It’s even harder for white straight men to fathom the rest of us than for us to fathom them, since we can draw on their stories not only from fiction but in history and the news. This is why I give Gaiman credit for doing what he feels he can with women characters, instead of wussing out like George Lucas (who wanted to make Luke Skywalker female at one point, but was afraid he’d get the characterization wrong and piss off women, and so decided just not to bother). At least Gaiman shows women as people who have agency, who have a reason to be in the story, who are competent, who can do wrong without being bad, who can be bad without their badness being sexualized, who can be good without any reference to sexual purity.
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I do too.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Of course, for a considerable period of the book, The Sandman isn’t the protagonist of The Sandman. And often when he is, he’s only revealed to be so in the background after an age…
Onlooker(Quote) (Reply)
Eileen invites the contribution of thoughtful males. I hope I qualify.
My impression of most popular fiction is that while even heroic male characters are expected to have flaws and weaknesses, female characters are expected to be paragons, role models, and “strong women”. Male writers feel that to write a woman with weaknesses is misogynist, so they write uninteresting women.
I found my way here via a comics blog, so I’ll pick an example from comics. Garth Ennis is praised for writing “strong female characters”, but his female characters – Tulip in “Preacher”, Kit in “Hellblazer”, Tiegel in “Hitman” – basically function as the male protagonists’ consciences. Hero acts, heroine tells him whether or not he did the right thing. She also shouts a lot and occasionally kicks a misogynist villain (or the hero when he really screws up) in the balls. A lot of “strong women” in the movies fulfil the same function.
I would agree that Gaiman is one of the few writers in comics who writes women as people. He’s also very good at writing from the point of view of not-very-bright men who are afraid of and don’t understand women – Richard in Neverwhere, Shadow in American Gods.
And some stories aren’t really about women at all, just as some stories aren’t really about men at all. And they don’t have to be.
Jennifer Kesler says: “The vast body of movies and TV are made for the male gaze”
I’m not sure I agree with that. There’s a substantial body of movies that are made pretty much exclusively for men, but also a substantial number that are made pretty much exclusively for women. The majority of TV, on the other hand, seems to me to be directed at women, and tends to show female characters apparently in the shadow of male characters but obviously cleverer and more compassionate than them.
Patrick Brown(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not sure I agree with that. There’s a substantial body of movies that are made pretty much exclusively for men, but also a substantial number that are made pretty much exclusively for women.
Consider if from this perspective, then: films made for women are called “chick flicks” and revolve around romance, shoe shopping and historic drama. Conversely, films made for men are called “mainstream” – there is no genre, because male is the default audience. And they revolve around pretty much everything but romance and shoe shopping – they can even involve historic drama if there’s enough butch stuff going on. The male viewer has a lot more choice of genres.
I do think TV offers women more targeted programming than film, but remember that advertisers pay considerably less for female eyeballs, which puts networks in the position of obsessing on male viewers to the point of canceling shows when “too many women” are watching. So when they make a show for men, they actually want women to stay away, but when they make a show for women, they try to make it man-friendly enough not to put off the guys. When we are pandered to, it’s not without consideration for the men. When men are pandered to, women are not considered at all – until we start watching, at which point they panic instead of thinking “Oh, here’s a new opportunity.”
And if you’re a woman who doesn’t like soaps or relationship dramas or relationship comedies, you’re shit out of luck – you can either try to relate to the guys in some genre you like (something many of us grew up doing, or we’d never have watched movies or TV at all), or you can give up celluloid entertainment. Because even if you find something mainstream that features a woman being competent and strong and interesting, after a couple of seasons when the network gets worried not enough men are watching, there’s about an 80% chance she’ll get retooled into a cardboard cutout designed to illuminate the wonders of the male lead at her expense.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer, I disagree with you that “chick flicks” aren’t mainstream, and your view of TV seems to be based largely on sci-fi/fantasy stuff, which is is non-mainstream and which TV has never really known how to handle. Geeks are probably a pretty difficult sector to advertise to, because we spend so much money on our niche obsessions and we’re not that worried about standard consumer crap. Your post about the cancellation of Firefly lacks context, but my guess is they couldn’t sell enough female-directed advertising space on a sci-fi show, and couldn’t sell enough male-directed advertising space on a show few men watched, and so couldn’t afford to keep running it, rather than they didn’t want women watching it.
It may be different in the USA, but UK TV seems to have given up on male viewers entirely. Nothing but “reality TV”, talent shows, “celebrity” reality TV and talent shows, soaps, costume dramas, interior design, celebrity chefs, murder mysteries (I have no idea why murder mysteries, usually starring unpleasant male detectives and often revolving around violence against women, appeal largely to women, but they do) and sitcoms featuring idiot men married to smug clever women who can always outmanoevre them. And the commercials are even worse.
Late night comedy, which always grabbed plenty of male viewers, is pretty much dead. A couple of months a year we get Doctor Who, which is primarily a kids’ show, and keen to appeal to female viewers, knowing it can take the male ones more or less for granted. That leaves us with Match of the Day and Top Gear, and if you’re male and aren’t interested in football or cars, there really isn’t much to watch.
Patrick Brown(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer, I disagree with you that “chick flicks” aren’t mainstream,
Perhaps I was unclear. “Chick flicks” is an industry term (later, obviously, picked up by the audience) for films that target a female audience. There IS NO TERM for movies that target men, because all movies that don’t target women target men, because men are the default viewer. Men don’t require a genre, because the whole mainstream movie-making industry is all about the male viewer.
and your view of TV seems to be based largely on sci-fi/fantasy stuff, which is is non-mainstream and which TV has never really known how to handle.
No, I’m also thinking of cop dramas and medical dramas and all that. For example, Cagney & Lacey targeted female viewers without focusing mainly on relationships – I enjoyed the hell out of it. But what’s there been since to rival it?
Your post about the cancellation of Firefly lacks context, but my guess is they couldn’t sell enough female-directed advertising space on a sci-fi show, and couldn’t sell enough male-directed advertising space on a show few men watched, and so couldn’t afford to keep running it, rather than they didn’t want women watching it.
…which is why they didn’t want women watching it. Did you assume that in saying they don’t want women viewers, I’m saying they’re misogynistic bastards who hate their mothers? I wasn’t judging them for not wanting women, just saying it’s the fact of the situation. I DO think some prejudice has come into play in constructing a whole system in which the eyeballs of viewers involved in 80% of all purchases are worth less than the eyeballs of those less involved in shopping – and if you followed the links, you know that both BusinessWeek and WSJ were at a loss to explain it, too – but I can’t begin to guess what individuals were responsible for that prejudice. The point is, industry pros NOW need to question what they’ve been taught. That’s how innovations happen and people get ahead.
It may be different in the USA, but UK TV seems to have given up on male viewers entirely.
UK TV has never been as obsessed with male viewers as US TV – that’s why I primarily watch British TV. The shift toward reality TV and all that is happening here as well, but it’s not that they’ve “given up on” male viewers: the truth is, the traditional male formula genres of action and sci-fi are freakin’ expensive, and fewer people can afford to make them now. They’re switching to uber-cheap reality TV and men are watching that and discussing it over the water cooler, so why make something more expensive if they’ll watch something cheap?
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
UK TV is in a different situation with regard to advertiser revenue, because of the license fee people pay in order to even have TVs, which goes toward the BBC’s budget.
Ide Cyan(Quote) (Reply)
UK TV is in a different situation with regard to advertiser revenue, because of the license fee people pay in order to even have TVs, which goes toward the BBC’s budget.
Thank you; that explains a lot. I really need to become more familiar with the business model the BBC/UK TV uses to make money.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
The BBC is funded by the licence fee, which is basically a tax you pay if you own a TV, although for expensive progammes they often co-produce with American broadcasters like HBO and Discovery, and they also make money by selling DVDs, and selling old shows to cable/satellite channels. There are subscription and pay-per-view movie and sport channels. All the rest of the broadcasters sell advertising.
Patrick Brown(Quote) (Reply)
Okay, it sounds like the BBC’s model is much more like the pay channel model over here – like Showtime, which makes money by subscription and doesn’t care if its subscribers are women, men or monkeys. Pay channels here also take chances on shows regular broadcast won’t touch.
A big part of the problem with US TV and film is a business model which is based not on tested and re-tested principles, but on assumptions which may have been true at some point, but desperately need to be re-examined. The assumptions are: men spend more money than women (again, BW and WSJ have found the opposite and cannot account for the origin’s of this assertion), men control the (single) TV at home and women only watch what their menfolk want, women don’t like sci-fi or action, and young men won’t watch sci-fi or action when competent females lead or are even present for fear of girl cooties.
Again, there are many, many exceptions (and cultural changes, such as many homes housing multiple TVs) that suggest these assumptions might not be as valid as they once (possibly) were, and I was never the only young film/TV student and later worker arguing that we were leaving money on the table by ignoring women viewers with money, ignoring male viewers who like to see women with agency, etc.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
With the exception that you must “subscribe” if you have a television, even if you never watch the BBC – the comparison to tax is an apt one. That gives it a big budget that it doesn’t have to do anything to earn.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Right – Showtime has to attract subscribers, but the BBC gets the licensing fee money automatically, which means a certain amount of their funding is not money they have to compete for. But they also sell air time for commercials like our broadcast channels, right? And that makes them subject to market forces for that portion of their income…? Could they survive on just licensing fees, though?
What I’m wondering is how much the difference I perceive in UK and US TV is cultural, and how much is market driven.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
No.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Okay, I’ve just done some reading and… is the BBC actually not supposed to make money? Its main body of programming is 100% funded by licensing fees?
This will sound stupid – or sad – but that’s almost incomprehensible to me. Over here, truly fully government-funded programs are quickly becoming extinct. The post office is semi-private. Even schools are now practically co-owned by fast food chains who market their crap in the schools and exert influence over the curriculum as part of their price for helping to cover funding gaps. It’s been such a disillusioning process to watch that I think I just blocked out any memory of the concept of the government fully funding something (yes, with the fees charged to people, I know, but all government funding really comes from the people).
Wow.
Okay, so who does the BBC answer to? The govt which allegedly answers to the people, or what? Who and what forces shape their programming?
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
The BBC charter says it is meant to be free of political influence (i.e. the government), so the only thing it’s meant to be answerable to the BBC Trust (replacing the Board of Governers in 2007). The Trust is an external body from BBC management and is a 12-member body, with members appointed IIRC by the Queen on advice from the government.
So effectively the government appoints them, which does give it some influence on the BBC but the Trustees will change depending on which party’s in power.
The government also sets the license fee, which it can use against the Beeb if it’s unhappy – and the government & BBC have gotten into spats quite a few times (which the BBC, amusingly, reports on!). I don’t think they’ve ever reduced the fee but they can shorten the increase (to match inflation et al) which they did recently, leading to layoffs and cutbacks.
Generally the BBC gets to be surprisingly autonomous though. This is an agency that got criticised by Thatcher as being “unacceptably even-handed” during the Falklands War, for example.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Question: Have you also seen the novelization and graphic novel treatment of Neverwhere? I found that the graphic novel had more of Door’s and the Marquis’ perspectives than the series.
Also, in the novel when Richard or Door asks Hunter how old she is, exactly, Hunter replies, “as old as my tongue and slightly older than my teeth”. I found that positively endearing. Hunter also comes off as more aloof than most of the other characters, but I think that’s more as a function of her character than a gendered thing.
Door is also portrayed as more sympathetic to Richard’s lost-at-sea-ness in the graphic novel as well.
Jha(Quote) (Reply)
Jha, I read the novelization years ago, but not the graphic novel. I do recall feeling like I knew Door better in the book.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Haha… now that it’s two years after the conversation, I’ll weigh in. I read Gaiman only because he’d worked with Pratchett. Both Neverwhere and Stardust were hugely disappointing because the female characters tried and failed to do what male characters could… There was no depth or development to them. Yes, there was a qualitative difference in them and it gave me the impression the author was the guy from Californication.
Syburi(Quote) (Reply)
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