Where's a Women's Studies major when you need one?

[amadeupname]

There's something that's been bothering me off and on for a few weeks. It's been in my head since the snafu in maladaptive's LJ, where luna_hoshino got into a tizzy of some sort because no one else though Aeris and Yuna were particularly strong feminist characters. At some point the "women in refrigerators" phenomenon was mentioned, and someone said that Aeris's death was solely to make Cloud's struggle against Sephiroth even more personal (though why it needed to be I have no idea), and that if Barret had died instead, it would have had the same effect on the group.

Now, I am not saying that I disagree with this. I don't tend to really dwell on issues like this, partly because it tends to get too deep too fast for my liking, and partly because I'm kind of rusty at being analytical, and people use references that I don't know anything about, so a lot of it goes over my head and I'm left feeling really stupid and completely disconnected.

What I am curious about is this: from what I've noticed, most character death is used to either further plot, give the main character(s) fuel for angst and/or characterization, or both. So where does it cross the line from necessary character death to sexism? Is it sexist for any female character to die? How are the characters supposed to react to her death, or the death of any character, so that said death isn't just a catalyst for character development or a larger plot point? When is a dead woman not a woman in a refrigerator? Is a dead man ever a "man in a refrigerator"? Does this make me a bad feminist/woman/'intellectual'/person for not understanding it right away? And why can't I seem to ever spell refrigerator right the first time around?

Comments

[pikabot]

Killing off a female character isn't sexist, and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit. Now, if a particular creator has a pattern of killing off female secondary characters you could possibly ascribe it to sexism, but it's just as likely to be lazy writing.

The 'Women in Refrigerator' phenomenon is just a description for the tendency for writers to use the suffering of the female characters to generate an instant sympathy from the readers, and the relatively large proportion of female characters suffer death, maimings, rape, etc. It's NOT possible to say 'This is a Women in the Refrigerator death, but this other one isn't', because, as Gail Simone, who coined the term in the first place, said: This isn't about assessing blame about an individual story or the treatment of an individual character and it's certainly not about personal attacks on the creators who kindly shared their thoughts on this phenomenon. It's about the trend, its meaning and relevance, if any. Plus, it's just fun to talk about refrigerators with dead people in them. I don't know why.

It's less an issue of sexism than it is of lazy writing. Killing off the protagonist's wife/daughter/girlfriend is a shortcut to pathos, one that many writers take. Sometimes the same effect is generated by killing off a male character (see also: the Brother rule), but for some reason the trend is for the female characters to suffer. Not sure why, although I'm sure someone who actually knew jack shit about psychology could tell you.

Now, there's a separate phenomenon, which is the 'cheap death': Killing off minor characters, male or female, to artificially generate a sense of danger or urgency. This one you have to sort of feel out to determine if it's what's going on, but you know it when you see it. See: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

(and just for the record, Barrett dying off would NOT have had the same affect on the party. He's a different character, who has a different role in the group dynamic. There would be an affect of approximately equal magnitude, but it would be VERY different)

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't have a full understanding of the Women in Refrigerators thing. Research time!

So when is character death not lazy writing, then? Can you point out some examples so I know what to aim for and what to avoid?

[pikabot]

Basically, Women in Refrigerators is just meant to note the trend of women suffering ignominious fates in comic books. It's not meant to apply to specific cases(even though it's named after one), and using it like that is Doing It Wrong.

There is no hard-and-fast rule, but you know it when you read it. Something like Silver Surfer: Requiem, or the Little Cement Girl from Spider-Man: Reign are both good deaths, but the swarms of deaths of minor characters that got murdered in Infinite Crisis, or Bill Foster from Civil War just feel like worthless shock-deaths. Or, to use an example that may be more relevant to you, Cedric Diggory and Sirius Black(although neither of them were really AWESOME deaths) had better, more relevant deaths than...well, everyone who died in the last Harry Potter book.

A good rule is that if you're offing minor characters for no good reason beyond trying to make the bad guy seem dangerous, and leaving the main cast unscathed, it'll come across as artificial and forced.

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

Okay, I think I understand now. Thanks for explaining to me.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

There's actually been some debate over whether Aeris is a WiR, and the conclusion is that she isn't (that doesn't make her a strong feminist character whose death was pretty much bullshit, to be fair). A WiR's death is usually like what happened to Stephanie, the female Robin. Her torture was sexualized and her death was largely a pointless spectacle. Black Canary has been said to be in Ollie's fridge because of how often she's turned into a damsel that he has to rescue.

It's not that a WiR just furthers a plot or gives the lead protagonist angst. It's hard to come up with a textbook definition with examples. But if the only way you can think of to give your lead male angst or a reason to go out and fight is to rape or murder his female loved ones... chances are pretty good she's a WiR. And it's not just that these aren't good motivators, it's that they're used so often. It's a common trope.

It's kind of a hard phenomenon to explain, because it doesn't often come up outside of comics and comics fandom.

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

It kind of makes me want to run far, far away from comics, but then I'd probably end up dropping manga/anime and video games, too, since they're not much better, and then what would I do when I read so much my brain turns to mush?

Maybe this just isn't sinking in, but what other purpose would a character death serve? It's kind of hard to keep a story going of you kill off the main character, and any other character deaths/tortures/rapes are going to be plot or angst devices, even if they're handled well. Are we just supposed to avoid character death altogether, like LKH, or only kill off men? Or am I being too paranoid about it?

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't that she's a dead woman. The problem is that the death is poorly handled in a sexist manner-- there's no textbook definition, it's polythetic. You can't say X, Y, and Z has happened and that's an example of a WiR. But maybe X, A, and L happen.

To harp some more, this is a really good example from the Girl Wonder site (http://girl-wonder.org/robin/projectgirlwonder.html). This is the female Robin, who is tortured and dies in unrealistic (http://girl-wonder.org/robin/robin130.jpg) and sexualized positions (http://girl-wonder.org/robin/catwoman35.jpg). She's posed like a centerfold-- and that is no way for a superhero (let alone a ROBIN) to die.

[hidden-now5.livejournal.com]

Aeris dies, get the fuck over it.

:D

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

It's not an issue of Aeris dying, she just came up in the conversation. If it had been some other dead female character, I'd have still had the same issue. Nice try at being a callous ass, though.

[not-gini.livejournal.com]

hello jimmy. i'm stalking you on sarah's LJ.