Vulnerability – Another Look at Strong Characters, Part 1
Or: Why the Usual Suspects Remain Angry about the Black Widow Seen Pre-Endgame
A little while ago, I ran across this piece by Kessie Carroll on strong women and damsels in distress. In that article, she pointed out something that should be glaringly obvious but which is often obscured by the modern focus on one half of the debate regarding strong characters: no one, male or female, is perfectly strong a hundred percent of the time. Fictional heroes need rescuing as much as heroines, yet because the argument is primarily centered on the female, people rarely remember this fact in discussions on the topic.
Ms. Carroll uses her book Wraithblade to illustrate the fact that both men and women have weaknesses as well as strengths. Her heroine in Wraithblade was an assassin, so she had the skills necessary to take care of herself. But this did not mean she didn’t need the hero’s help occasionally, just as he needed hers from time to time. The hero was captured or put in danger as well, and he required the heroine’s help to get away as much as she had to rely on his aid to avoid being brought down by the bad guys.
It is a compelling point, one that necessitates further development. Hopefully, we can delve into that more with today’s subject: vulnerability. Ms. Carroll ends her piece by mentioning an article where someone complained that Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff was the “token female” in The Avengers movie, which Ms. Carroll explains is not true. As she states, Natasha alternates “between being vulnerable and being tough.” The Black Widow is not strong all the time, any more than her male compatriots – or opponents – are strong enough to face their adversaries alone in all circumstances and under all conditions.
Carroll reminds readers that Loki has a great many vulnerabilities and that this is one of the reasons why female viewers swoon over him. He is not always the bombastic, “full-tilt diva” who cows crowds and kills wantonly. In The Avengers he is the man who is on a deadline, with the threat of Thanos’ unspeakable punishment for failure hanging over his head, and he is allowed to show how vulnerable that makes him.
He is also a schemer whose plans tend to come back to bite him. We see this in Thor: The Dark World when his aid to the Dark Elves leads to the death of his adoptive mother, news of which prompts him to trash his cell in Asgard’s dungeon. When Thor visits him later, he manages to see through his adopted brother’s sneering façade of triumph to the wounded, vulnerable man beneath. This convinces the trickster god to expose his, and the room’s, true state to Thor.
There are facets to Loki’s character, weaknesses and vulnerabilities, as well as strengths beyond the physical. He is allowed to be a multi-dimensional character with wide appeal to audiences. Whether you like him better as a tragic villain, a straight villain with some glimmers of redeeming qualities, or a villain who redeems himself to become a hero, no one questions Loki’s right to these moments of susceptibility.
These incidents do not make Loki a token antagonist or diminish him in some way. Quite the contrary – these things make him more interesting to audiences, not less. Yet when this is applied to a female character, the Usual Suspects are immediately up-in-arms. How dare Black Widow pretend to be a helpless victim in The Avengers! Why should she “bat [her] eyelashes” at Bruce Banner in Calcutta to convince him to come to SHIELD? How dare she use her sex appeal to get close to men in Iron Man 2 and The Winter Soldier! How dare she be such a “girl” when she’s interrogating Loki in his cell on the Helicarrier?! Most of all, how dare she express sorrow at the knowledge that she can never marry a man she loves and bear his children to become a mother!
I do not recall much of a flap in entertainment news stories about Natasha’s depiction in The Avengers after it came out in theaters. That isn’t to say there wasn’t one; it may well have happened, and I missed it. Or I ignored it. The movie was a summer blockbuster: criticisms of such films tend to fall on deaf ears when everyone is talking about it, going to see it, or heaping deserved praise upon it.
That was not the case with Age of Ultron, one of my favorite movies in the entire MCU. (Yes, I know, that puts me in a minority. I don’t care.) The news outlets which cover the entertainment world exploded with indignation about two scenes in the film that feature Black Widow’s vulnerabilities: when she tells Bruce Banner about her sterilization in the Red Room, and when Bruce comes to rescue her from Ultron’s lair later in the film.
Reading through such articles greatly reduced my respect for those news outlets, which acted surprised that Natasha had been sterilized. It told me their writers did not do the research any fan could – and had – done to get to know this heroine better. I was a late-comer to the Avengers as a cultural touchstone, so I did my due diligence to learn more about the team long before seeing the first movie in cinemas in 2012. If I could do that research for fun, what was preventing these “professionals” from doing the same for their livelihoods? To date, I have not seen anyone answer that question satisfactorily.
The second reason I lost respect for these news outlets had to do with the fact that they were bashing one of the best scenes in the movie. Leave aside, for a moment, that revealing this vulnerability added depth to Natasha’s character; Scarlet Johansson filmed the scene while pregnant. There were three body doubles for her while filming Age of Ultron because she was expecting her first child with her then-fiancé and future second husband.
No matter what one thinks of superhero movies or superhero fiction in general, the fact remains that Johansson’s acting in this scene was stellar – especially since the topic had to hit close to home while she was carrying her own child. Yet that fact was ignored by the critics who were supposed to praise her excellent craftsmanship in the film. They peevishly decided that their politically correct opinions meant more than the art form and the artist they were supposed to critique honestly.
I was offended that they couldn’t see the value of a good actress, as well as the fact that they wouldn’t appreciate how the scene added to Natasha’s character. To the best of my knowledge, the topic of her sterility was never addressed so poignantly in the comics. Nor was it accomplished in such a brutally efficient manner; in the books Natasha has a variant of the super soldier serum in her body.
This serum was given to her by the Soviets to make her a super spy, and it was what rendered her and the other Widows sterile. Whedon took an underused aspect of this heroine’s character and backstory for Age of Ultron, where he elevated it to a level that had not been seen or utilized previously. In doing so, he added depth and perspective to this iconic heroine which no other author had done.
No one has to like Whedon to admit he did a passing fine job of expanding the character of Natasha Romanoff in Age of Ultron. The film may be a mess to some, but this does not mean it doesn’t deserve credit for what it gets right, or that he shouldn’t be praised for pulling this off. Very few Hollywood screenwriters at the time, or today, would have bothered to even look at this aspect of the Black Widow’s personality. He did, and for that, I give him due recognition and acclaim.
Now, of course, we come to the rescue scene in Age of Ultron. Unsurprisingly, the Usual Suspects threw a fit over the fact that the ultra-competent Black Widow needed to be rescued by a man. Never mind that she used Ultron’s assumption that her physical weakness would keep her cowed and too afraid to act. Never mind that she used this misconception to send a covert signal to the Avengers which allowed them to not only locate her, but to guess at Ultron’s strategy, or the fact that fighting an eight-foot-tall robot with vibranium armor would be impossible for someone of her size and weight. She should, they insisted (and continue to claim), have rescued herself. Somehow.
Professor Geek tackles this subject in his video here at about the twenty-six-minute mark. As he says, the main strength of Natasha Romanoff is her feminine vulnerability. Her sex appeal is part of this, as it emphasizes her physical weakness (in the comics, even with her variant of the super soldier serum, Natasha cannot bench press as much weight as Steve Rogers) and allows her to slip under men’s guard. If they’re too busy thinking “ooo, pretty girl,” then they won’t see her attack coming.
Vulnerability can be, as both Ms. Carroll and Professor Geek have said, utilized as much as a strength. It all depends on how the characters use it, how they determine to turn their disadvantages and drawbacks into strengths that give them an edge over their enemies. This goes as much for men as for women, which will be discussed in the following articles on this topic.
For now, I will end off with a quote from Ms. Carroll’s piece: “Maybe, at its heart, that's what this debate is about. ‘I can save myself! I don't need a Savior.’”
Maybe the people who don’t want a Savior would rather none of us remembered He came to save us all. Because on some level, we are all People in Distress, waiting for the Hero Himself to come rescue us. Perhaps they’d rather stay in prison than be set free – to fail or succeed with His help.
Maybe.
While I haven't been following the Marvel movies or the comics that much, I've always known that Natasha (Black Widow) is highly trained "standard" woman not a woman with super-powers.
Even the idea that she was given the Soviet version of the Super-Soldier serum doesn't really change that.
She's not a She-Hulk and thus has to use different tactics that She-Hulk would use.
Too many people want a female character to be a Superwoman without vulnerabilities.
Of course, these are often the same people who dislike a male character that lacks vulnerabilities.
I read a YA novel where the heroine spoke contemptuously of princesses killed by a giant and how they should have rescued themselves.
And rolled my eyes with the knowledge that she would get away with tempting Nemesis, though she should have found herself a helpless prisoner at some point.