Do you remember that Saturday Night Live fake trailer showing a film all centered on The Black Widow, the character played by Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers? As it’s a rather funny video I won’t bother you with boring descriptions. Here’s the link for you to fully enjoy it.
Supergirl’s pilot episode is pretty much identical to this, in a longer version and with one main difference: its comedy and stereotypes are accidentally awkward.
Here’s the context: in 2012, thanks to the producer Greg Berlanti, the channel The CW releases the show Arrow, inspired to the DC character Green Arrow; it unexpectedly gains success. Two years later Berlanti tries it again with the series The Flash, a show with a teenage spirit that conquers young and older geeks who feel nostalgic of the 1990’s show that casted Dawson’s dad as the protagonist. (Spoiler: I’m the older geek).
Arrow is a seductive womanizer. The Flash is a shy nerd. No, I’m not minimizing. The screenplay of both series describes all characters in two lines, typed in Arial font, in 48pt body. It is clear that the basics of Kotler’s marketing suggest a magic formula to Berlanti’s team: DIVERSIFICATION OF OFFERING. “We have two successful series, led by two archetypes of males that sum up the whole American teen culture: the lucky quarterback with the ladies and the dorky guy in the lockers. What else do we need? A character that girls can relate to, obviously!”
A breeding ground: on one hand, this young adults genre cleared the way for young heroines of action film; on the other hand, Marvel itself is holding a more and more inclusive strategy in its comics, to support the growing interest of female public towards its characters. You dreamers may say times are changing. Me, maybe cynically, I say selling more comics to girls just means selling MORE comics. Keeping my pragmatism, I may add, that if this is helping a bit to the cause of female emancipation, beyond the stereotypes of comics such as the “mistress in distress” or the “strong, beautiful, lonely but a bit crazy woman”, then it’s fine.
Back to Supergirl, that premiered a few nights ago on CBS: it becomes clear, right from the prologue, that the series aspires to promote a certain aura of “Girl Power”. But in trying to do so, it performs so badly that it risks of being more dangerous than ten seasons of Baywatch.
We’re on Krypton: Kara Zor-El is sent by her parents to the Earth, in order “to protect her cousin Kal-El” – who’s Superman (you should know that, even if you’re not from Krypton yourself). First fake “girl power” hint: she has to protect him. Unfortunately though, thanks to the idea of those who appear to be some distracted screenwriters who went fishing instead of working, she arrives late, due to an unforeseen accident. The cousin, who’s an adult now, basically says “Whatever, you’re not needed anymore” and leaves her to a couple of lovely farmers. The kind of ones with solid American values and supporters of creationism, the kind of ones you can only find in Kansas. So there’s the first smartass move; we first tell you it’s her who goes out to save him, and a moment later we just go back to the status quo.
A bit later, we see Kara-Supergirl nowadays in a few scenes describing her workplace: her boss is a woman (second fake “girl power” hint: we’re talking to women, the CEO of the most important news agency is a woman). Unfortunately though, Calista Flockhart (you might remember her from Ally McBeal) just cosplays Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada”. The effort of representing a supposedly familiar workplace fails, and turns out to look like the exaggerated parody of a fictional workplace in a movie that’s notoriously popular and loved by female public. The status quo reigns again.
The authors present us Kara as single and independent in a sequence where she “friendzones” her colleague, telling him she has a date with a guy she met online. Another fake hint. What an independent woman! Her condition of not-procreating-woman can’t last forever so Kara meets the love interest of the series, an African American Jimmy Olsen. There’s a hint to the inclusiveness of people of color, here, that has now become a common thing in the America of Obama).
I could go on for hours. Supergirl is full of this kind of smartass sketches. One moment the authors underline how they “talk to women, praising them as strong” and the other moment, just when you’re distracted by the streaming buffering, turns out they go back to the safe ranks of “girls’ series”.
Berlanti is too ashamed to have Supergirl wearing the same costume as in the comics (or as in the very unlucky 1984’s film). That is too sexualizing. So here’s the official costume. Absolutely identical. With darker pantyhose. Wow. The authors aren’t brave enough to have her wearing trousers, instead of that red skirt – that might be iconic but a bit uncomfortable when trying to fight crime. Jesus, the skirt was just a rough visual expedient the cartoonists in the 50’s – the fifty’s! – were using to portray those characters who needed to exists only as the female counterpart of the primary male ones – I’m thinking of Batgirl and Batwoman, here. I think they could have created something better. Instead, the result of this umpteenth “wanna be all girl power but not too much” effort, thanks to the designer, is kind of a Sailor Moon freezing for the cold.
The apex of all this comes during the final battle. The villain is said to be an alien (but probably just is the singer of Anthrax); Kara’s step-sister says she’s convinced Supergirl is going to win “just because she’s a girl”. Hear this out. We’re next to another smartass move. And whilst you, o’ naive viewer, are certainly wondering which hidden, dark, secret, female-precluded skill Supergirl will use… here’s what happens: Kara begs. She BEGS. Not to worry, though, your heroine is just pretending, before her coup de grâce to the enemy.
So we add this is added to our list of fake “Girl Power” moves. As a female character, her submissive attitude is considered inevitable by the writers – who clearly didn’t have any other great idea to imply the protagonist’s femininity, and who decide to fix it all by showing us she was just bluffing. Supergirl is basically a deceiver. How innovating. I hope the ancient Greeks will never build a time machine to come and join us, that’d be frustrating.
The epilogue presents us with the true nemesis of the show: the auntie.
Yeah, you heard me right. Supergirl’s enemy is her auntie. Stereotype n. 12.234.783 here: a woman’s opponent is hidden within a familiar figure, of course, there’s no one else in the world.
I realize I’ve perhaps judged this show too harshly. Its main aim is probably to be the umpteenth popular teen drama of the evenings.
But this is what I’ve found the most annoying. Why trying so hard to follow the stereotypes to emphasize the presence of the female figure, when you could have just as easily obtain the emancipation you were looking for by simply creating an INTERESTING character – who just happened to be female? (an INTERESTING female character?) The atmosphere of this show reminds a bit of that show about an African American family whose all characters are African American, in a sort of African American micro universe: sure, The Cosby Show have contributed to legitimize the idea, to the eye of the Western world, that a family of black people could be wealthy; but we’re talking about the eighty’s. Thirty years ago! And we’ve had better shows before Supergirl, in the past: compared to it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer looks like it’s been written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, even if it’s twenty years older.
Lastly, if female superheroes are theoretically being treated better on page, the same is not happening on screen. Even if we got our hopes up thanks to Marvel’s Agent Carter – which we’ve already reviewed -, Jessica Jones and the movie about Captain Marvel.
Confiding in a new generation of heroes and heroines, hoping that authors will be able to grasp the increasing sensitivity of the public, and not present roles with as much depth and substance of a pink ribbon hung on the door.
