Maybe I should start this article by saying that I’m an immense lover of tv series. I have finished a ton of them, my bucket list is ever-growing, and I’m currently following too many for my student career to be happy about it. And in my years spent crying and screaming and getting way too emotional in front of my television, or more often than not my computer screen, I’ve seen so many women. So many. Of every kind.
Strong women, weak women, leading ladies and women who were just there to play the love interest, women who could have had so much more, women adored by their show runners or completely forgotten. It’s really an immense kaleidoscope that’s still not big enough, though, because we are in constant need of more women, more different women, more unique women, more real women. The road ahead is still long, that’s true, but I’d say that with the 2014/2015 mid-season we took a gigantic leap forward. And that leap is called Margaret Carter.
In the mid-season hiatus of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., hit series part of MCU’s Phase Two, the ABC network didn’t stop delivering us our weekly dose of Marvel, airing the eight-episode miniseries Agent Carter.
Quick synopsis here, just to know what we’re talking about. In a post-WWII New York, SSR Agent Peggy Carter works as a spy after her years in the war, in a work environment where men treat her as a maid and a secretary, at best. Enter Howard Stark, who lands right in the middle of her everyday struggle. His inventions have been stolen and are now popping up on the black market, and the American government is after him, since they’re all quite lethal (because like father like son) and he’s accused of treason. For old times’s sake, Howard asks Peggy to help him clear his name and she agrees, starting a dangerous double-play to aid her friend without getting caught by her colleagues. In all of this, she still has to deal with what she’s lost in the war, namely one Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America.
Now, Agent Carter is nothing new for ABC (we’re talking about the great kingdom of Shondaland here, with her great leading ladies, Meredith Grey, Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating), but it’s huge for Marvel. It’s the signal that maybe something’s moving, that maybe the dozens and dozens of fan-written posts and blog entries and letters written by male and female fans alike have finally hit home. This is Marvel’s official first female lead production, and the whole show rests on the shoulders of a women. It’s not like in Agents, where yes, we have badasses extraordinaries Melinda May, Skye and Jemma Simmons, but the main characters is till Coulson. In Agent Carter the centre of it all, the focus of all storylines and action is Peggy. Not Howard Stark, not any other man at SSR, not Edwin Jarvis, Stark’s butler who’s going to help Peggy in her deeds. Peggy is the hero. Jarvis’s the sidekick. It’s an overturning long due, and I’ve personally been waiting for it since the moment I realized I had sold my soul to MCU.
Peggy is the kind of woman I’d want to see every night of the week, on every on on every network, in any tongue spoken in the world. With my fangirling friends we’ve named her «the hero we need», and it’s quite the fitting description, coming to think of it. We need a hero like Peggy, we need such a brilliant and valid role model to follow. And not just that.
We need to hear her story, to see her in action in 1946 America, because the whole show revolves around Peggy’s struggles with the sexism she has to face everyday. And that’s groundbreaking, because this theme is always pushed to the side in other shows, always hinted but never explained, easily overlooked, while in Agent Carter is right in the spotlight, it screams and shouts and it’s too evident to be ignored, as well it should be.
Peggy served in the frontline, side by side with Captain America and his Howling Commandos, and in the SSR she’s treated like a secretary – archiving files, typing documents and taking lunch orders while everyone calls her «Marge» because no one actually bothers to learn that she prefers to be called Peggy. No one thinks her capable of doing a man’s job (spoiler alert: she is, and she’s even better). In the episode «The Blitzkrieg Button», for example, Peggy founds herself in the same room as Agent Thompson, one of her superiors who asks her what she’s doing there, in a highly specialized governative agency. Peggy tries to wiggle herself out of the situation, both because she’s trying to smuggle one of Stark’s inventions out of the building and because her relationship with Thompson isn’t exactly idyllic, so she answers, «for freedom and country – just like you». What Thompson says back is plain and cruel – she’s just deluding herself, because «You’re a woman. And no man will ever consider you his equal». This quote right here sums up everything Peggy has to deal with on an everyday basis. Or again, in the second to last episode during the interrogation her colleagues conduct on her after her double-play has been discovered, when she says, «I conducted my own investigation because no one listens to me. I got away with it because no one in here sees me. Because unless I have your reports or your coffee or your lunch, I am invisible.»
You don’t see a lot of scenes like that. Scenes that make you uncomfortable in your chair, that make you angry, that make you feel sad. A lot of bad things have been said on Agent Carter, on how «she’s not a real superhero because she has no superpowers and so it’s trash and blah blah blah», causing at least partly the low shares the show’s making. When I stumble upon these reviews I really just want to bash my head in with my computer. Given that «heroes are made by the paths they choose, not by the powers they are graced with», are heroes who can summon lightning and fly or wear an indestructible armor the only kind of heroes we need? Are those traits the only ones that identify them as «heroes?»
Peggy has to put up everyday with the idea she’s going to hear horrible things aimed at her person because she’s a woman. She has to come to terms with the idea that she’s never going to be respected, that there’s always going to be someone thinking he’s better than her just because nature provided him with an external reproductive system. She has to swallow rage, humiliation, and she has to work double to be recognized just a half of it. How can’t she be considered an heroine as fascinating as the others? If I had a daughter, I’d like her to be Peggy Carter, not Tony Stark, and that’s said with all the love and affection I have for Tony Stark. Peggy’s message, what she says in the season finale, «I know my value. Anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter», it’s important, and it’s something that all girls and women should sear into their brains.
Peggy Carter is one of a kind in today’s television – she often appears to be waiting something (oh dear lord, do women actually eat?), she can punch just as well as any of her male colleagues (and not in Natasha Romanoff’s sophisticated and highly trained style, no, Peggy’s punches are brute, they are the punches of a bar fight, and she still hasn’t suffocated anyone with her thighs), she has female friends whom she loves and supports and protects without feeling «threatened» or «in competition». And as of right now she doesn’t have a love interest (apart from presumed dead Steve Rogers), another really unique trait, I think.
Not that Peggy doesn’t have any decent male figures in her life (thanks to Salazar Slytherin not all of the people around her are like Thompson), but they’re friends, colleagues, sidekicks with whom she has a truly great relationship that doesn’t need to be sexual to be interesting. First among all of these men is Jarvis, friend and adventure buddy, Howard Stark’s personal butler. Jarvis respects and admires Peggy, not just a secret agent, but first and foremost as a person. He even comes to question the morality of his own employer after Peggy opens his eyes. He wants to keep her safe because he cares about her, but he’s also perfectly aware that she can look after herself, and leaves her all the space she needs. Just like Steve did. And if anyone tries to come and tell me that Steve wasn’t influenced by Peggy and didn’t always strive to be like her just as much as Peggy was influenced by him and tried to take after him then I’m sorry but you need to stop lying to yourselves and start using those eyes your mama gave you.
Of course, it’s not the perfect series. The biggest problem it has is not having a single relevant POC character, a thing that looks forced and heavy and it’s a really giant elephant in the room that whole Internet hasn’t failed to noticed (and rightly so). I’m sure the show runners will work on it and right their wrongs, but only if they have the chance, if the series get renewed for a second season. Not watching it because it doesn’t have representation or because it’s too focused on the sexism issue and not on the «secret agent stuff» it’s annihilating every chance for more diverse and better products. Mainly the long-awaited and fan-desired movie about Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff. If Marvel registers Agent Carter’s low share as a scarce interest in female-lead action movies then I doubt we’ll ever see divine Scarlett in her own motion picture.
Support Agent Carter. Watch it, fall in love with it, criticize it maybe but praise it, because it’s really deserving. And because without a second season it won’t have the chance to grow better. And also because, come on, Hayley Atwell is a dream, a vision, perfect for the part. Just look at her:
This shot is iconic. Iconic just like when Tony stutters and estates for a second after, «The truth is—», before revealing that he’s Iron Man. Or when Steve Rogers holds the cab door with the star on it in The First Avenger. When Thor gets his powers back in front of an astonished Jane. When the Winter Soldier appears for the first time in Nick Fury’s windshield. It’s one of those classic Marvel moments that stay in the viewers’s minds and become legends. And this moment right here, Margaret Carter emerging in red and white and blue from a sea of grey suits, this is our new iconic moment. It’s my iconic moment and I’m really glad to be able to live this series, follow it and adore it.
