Thor 2 and heroes and sidekicks
Nov. 5th, 2013 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eleanorjaneI kind of want to hold off on this post until more countries have seen Thor 2, but if I do, I'll forget what I wanted to say.
I'd been thinking about Thor 2 and the way it handled Jane's 'infection' with the Aether.
(If you haven't seen Thor 2 yet, the gist is that Jane accidentally becomes the host of a super-powerful semi-sentient artifact/relic/power-source/macguffin called the Aether, which the Big Bad wants to use for his own ends, so he intends to extract it from her. In the meantime, it protects Jane/itself by forcefully repelling anyone who's intending to lay hands on her violently.)
Jane is clearly presented as a victim throughout all this; the Aether is going to kill her because it's far too powerful for her, and there's nothing the Asgardians can do to help her (according to Odin, who is a colossal dick, so we can take that with a grain of salt I think).
Eventually, the Big Bad does extract the Aether from Jane - while she hangs limply in midair like a doll, with even less agency than she's had for the previous 30 minutes. And all I could think was "what the hell, Jane; why did you not even try to use this Cosmic Power Macguffin that's so awesome the bad guy will attack Asgard itself to get hold of it?
I'm a gamer and roleplayer, and to me that scenario is coded so heavily as "interesting character power development". You get stuck with something like that? You use the hell out of it. You don't sit there and helplessly let the bad guy win without even trying.
It made me think about story tropes, too, and the difference between being the hero and being the sidekick. If Jane was narratively destined to become a superhero, that right there would have been her origin story. Instead, it's a curse that she has to be saved from, and she never gets to actually do a thing other than lie, hover or stand around being protected and fussed-over.
lilacsigil pointed out the comparison between Jane/Aether and Pepper/Extremis. The ending of Iron Man 3 left Pepper's fate somewhat ambiguous, so - at least until we see more of Pepper in the MCU - those of us who are so inclined can imagine that "fixing" Pepper meant stabilising Extremis, not removing it. In that sense, IM3 did better than Thor 2. (It also did better in that Pepper got, as lilacsigil put it, her "fightback moment"; Pepper beat the bad guy, in the end, whereas Jane got to Science it up, but not at all as the hero.)
But let's face it: MCU Pepper Potts is really unlikely to ever become Rescue, no matter how much we may want her to. In the story they want to tell us, people like Pepper and Jane are relegated to being sidekicks who - when they do acquire power - are narratively treated as victims and relieved of their powers ASAP.
Some of it, I'm sure, is the usual entrenched misogyny - these are the damsels in distress; modern sensibilities demand they get to rescue themselves sometimes, but ultimately Hollywood and the comics industry both think their audiences aren't interested in women heroes. When they won't even give us movies for existing female superheroes, we've got no chance of seeing new ones.
I'm just not sure how much of it is sexism and how much of it is the sidekick trope. Comicsverse Bucky Barnes got to keep his "infection"-granted powers and fight alongside the main character (eventually); he got screwed over in a lot of other violating, agency-negating ways, but in the end he gets to play as an equal. (It'll be interesting to see where CA 2 goes with this.) Depowering Pepper and Jane takes that away from them. I wonder if they'd have got to keep and use their powers if they'd been male secondary characters/sidekicks?
In conclusion, I want the AU where Jane takes Aether and uses the hell out of it. I wish I had the ability to actually write it. :)
I'd been thinking about Thor 2 and the way it handled Jane's 'infection' with the Aether.
(If you haven't seen Thor 2 yet, the gist is that Jane accidentally becomes the host of a super-powerful semi-sentient artifact/relic/power-source/macguffin called the Aether, which the Big Bad wants to use for his own ends, so he intends to extract it from her. In the meantime, it protects Jane/itself by forcefully repelling anyone who's intending to lay hands on her violently.)
Jane is clearly presented as a victim throughout all this; the Aether is going to kill her because it's far too powerful for her, and there's nothing the Asgardians can do to help her (according to Odin, who is a colossal dick, so we can take that with a grain of salt I think).
Eventually, the Big Bad does extract the Aether from Jane - while she hangs limply in midair like a doll, with even less agency than she's had for the previous 30 minutes. And all I could think was "what the hell, Jane; why did you not even try to use this Cosmic Power Macguffin that's so awesome the bad guy will attack Asgard itself to get hold of it?
I'm a gamer and roleplayer, and to me that scenario is coded so heavily as "interesting character power development". You get stuck with something like that? You use the hell out of it. You don't sit there and helplessly let the bad guy win without even trying.
It made me think about story tropes, too, and the difference between being the hero and being the sidekick. If Jane was narratively destined to become a superhero, that right there would have been her origin story. Instead, it's a curse that she has to be saved from, and she never gets to actually do a thing other than lie, hover or stand around being protected and fussed-over.
lilacsigil pointed out the comparison between Jane/Aether and Pepper/Extremis. The ending of Iron Man 3 left Pepper's fate somewhat ambiguous, so - at least until we see more of Pepper in the MCU - those of us who are so inclined can imagine that "fixing" Pepper meant stabilising Extremis, not removing it. In that sense, IM3 did better than Thor 2. (It also did better in that Pepper got, as lilacsigil put it, her "fightback moment"; Pepper beat the bad guy, in the end, whereas Jane got to Science it up, but not at all as the hero.)But let's face it: MCU Pepper Potts is really unlikely to ever become Rescue, no matter how much we may want her to. In the story they want to tell us, people like Pepper and Jane are relegated to being sidekicks who - when they do acquire power - are narratively treated as victims and relieved of their powers ASAP.
Some of it, I'm sure, is the usual entrenched misogyny - these are the damsels in distress; modern sensibilities demand they get to rescue themselves sometimes, but ultimately Hollywood and the comics industry both think their audiences aren't interested in women heroes. When they won't even give us movies for existing female superheroes, we've got no chance of seeing new ones.
I'm just not sure how much of it is sexism and how much of it is the sidekick trope. Comicsverse Bucky Barnes got to keep his "infection"-granted powers and fight alongside the main character (eventually); he got screwed over in a lot of other violating, agency-negating ways, but in the end he gets to play as an equal. (It'll be interesting to see where CA 2 goes with this.) Depowering Pepper and Jane takes that away from them. I wonder if they'd have got to keep and use their powers if they'd been male secondary characters/sidekicks?
In conclusion, I want the AU where Jane takes Aether and uses the hell out of it. I wish I had the ability to actually write it. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-11-05 07:06 am (UTC)That's an easy one: Rhodey. He gets a suit, gets to use it, and even when it's taken away has great action hero moments in IM3.
There's lots of good Jane fic out there from the first Thor movie, including some where Jane learns about Asgardian tech/magic, so I eagerly await fic from the second!