Let Her Be The Killer

A young woman is being followed by a lurking man in a dark black hoodie, her dead body is later discovered naked in an alley, what happens next? This storyline feels like such familiar terrain, right? In other words, the utilization of female victimhood and vulnerability, time and time again, where zero steps are taken to embrace any dignity towards the dead woman. It’s like the 2000s Juicy Couture tracksuit being revivified by one celebrity posting a picture in it decades later. Its familiarity and distinctiveness drove its comeback, just like the trope of female victimization which dates to classics like The Burning Bed in which Francine Hughes (Farrah Fawcett) kills her abusive husband. This particularly applies to the crime drama genre, in which society’s obsession with the norm of sophisticated plots, the ultimate suspicion, and complex character arcs is visibly clear throughout history. In fact, some of the most popular television series and films today like The Undoing, The Fall and The Handmaid’s Tale, feature women being murdered, raped, essentially, dehumanized. The disturbing utilization of female victims of violence has become a Hollywood staple and ultimately, exemplifies a disconnect between reality and entertainment.

Why haven’t we normalized female villains across entertainment? Perhaps it has to do with women as the idea of this ‘ideal victim,’ presented as beautiful and witty, yet naive in retrospect. It’s no shock that whenever we think of a villain in our favorite television series or films, our minds automatically go to a male. This is because most famous villains are indeed males. Think of popular murder mystery series like the fugitive Dexter, The Joker in fan-favorite movie, Batman and Hannibal Lecter in the classic film, The Silence of the Lambs.

With that being said, across entertainment, normally, women are protagonists and victims. In The Handmaid’s Tale, for example, the protagonists (fertile women) live in a predominantly patriarchal society, being entirely dehumanized and taken advantage of by inhumane male perpetrators. This series exposes an eerily futuristic warning of the increased prominence of elite white male power with society’s utilization of women as scapegoats. The show is one of Hulu’s most successful series to this day and is the ultimate epitome of society’s infatuation with viewing content that revivifies extreme violence against women, a staple of these crime TV series. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of many shows that reveals the world’s appetite for watching the ‘ideal victim,’ beautiful, naive, and in the case of this show, also fertile, become vulnerable to the dehumanization and violence at the hands of powerful men. This series actually serves as a dramatic backdrop of the social construction of femininity across entertainment. It’s also important to note that this television series was based on the dystopian novel written in 1985 on a typewriter by female author, Margaret Atwood. The book was later adapted into a television series that did in fact account for the change of times, such as including a more diverse cast that included more non-whites and gay characters (Dockterman, Eliana).

There has however been a level of course correction across the industry, an acknowledgement of the woman as a warrior and as a victim, in newer films like Promising Young Woman and I Care A Lot. Promising Young Woman, a film produced in the #MeToo era, vividly highlights and targets toxic masculinity and female sexual assault stories. After all, the entertainment industry is the absolute epicenter of stirring conversation around societal and cultural movements. Unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, Promising Young Woman directed and written by female director, Emerald Fennerll, features an antagonist female character, played so ferociously by Carrie Mulligan, who was just recently nominated for an Academy Award. She pursues the role of a mischievous and frustrated young woman seeking revenge for the sexual assault of her dearest friend. In Janis Hirsch’s opinion, a renowned female comedy writer, Promising Young Woman doesan excellent job of revealing the truthful views of society, in which many feel that a woman’s life only fully begins when a man walks in the door, which she attributes to the writer and director being a woman (Hirsch, Janis). Also taking on this uncommon female villain trope, I Care A Lot, features Marla Grayson, rivetingly played by Golden Globes winner Rosamund Pike, who pursues the role of a sketchy legal guardian who cold-heartedly takes advantage of the elderly population.

Promising Young Woman and I Care A Lot without a doubt entail tremendously different storylines to the previously mentioned series, The Handmaid’s Tale. The former featuring daring female villain characters who portray their power and stance in society, and the latter revealing the unfortunate realities of women oppression in an immensely patriarchal society. The Handmaid’s Tale’s overwhelming success, which brought in millions of subscribers to Hulu, reflects society’s deep infatuation with “The female [becoming] a linchpin for compelling shock driven visual tales using extreme, final and often gruesome violence” (Penfold-Mounce, Ruth). Its success also reveals that even though there are examples with female villains, such as the films mentioned, the unusual female villain trope fails to keep consistent with the footprint of female victimhood and vulnerability that dominates so much of popular entertainment.

There is however a common theme across all: perseverance. In The Handmaid’s Tale, female protagonist, June, stops at nothing to locate her daughter who was taken from her, joined by the sisterhood of oppressed women. In Promising Young Woman, Cassie is relentlessly determined to reveal sinful male characters, striking an ‘X’ in her journal for each one she seduces and exposes in the process. In I Care A Lot, Marla utilizes her electrically joyous manipulation abilities to collect elder’s inheritances. Regardless of the ethical nature of perseverance, it is profoundly strong across all of the content. However, that’s not to discount the powerful male perseverance alongside. In The Handmaid’s Tale for example, the men are depicted as monsters that will stop at nothing to fulfill their sexual needs, even if that includes dehumanizing every single woman around them.

The director, Sera Gamble, of another popular crime drama series, You, which follows the story of bookstore manager, Joe Goldberg’s toxic infatuation with Guinevere Beck, an aspiring writer, discussed this idea of male perseverance. She mentioned how the backstory of You was based on making the show into a satire of growing up, specifically around how princes in childhood favorite princess films were representative of hemogenic masculinity, portraying them in a position of dominance towards the princesses. In The Sleeping Beauty, Prince Phillip kisses Belle without consent when she’s asleep, a trope highlighting this idea of a prince being her damsel in distress.

Unfortunately, children, including myself, idolized this relentless male perseverance. How these men in many popular television series and films, even after being told no and rejected multiple times, continue to pursue and pursue, over and over again until they essentially get what they want — the woman as mentioned in examples above. You explores this humility in the persistent male pursuit, turning the male perpetrator in this case into a stalker and using this narrative as a theme throughout the series to satirize the idolization in society.

A multitude of other series and films fit this trend, this genre of a mistaken premise. To name a few, there’s Claire Danes from Homeland, another daring and badass woman who is not the victim, the characters in the Shonda Rhimes series. It’s quite evident that we usually want to root for male villains, but if we look at Elena from Little Fires Everywhere for example, we don’t want to root for her but with Damon from The Vampire Diaries we do. Perhaps this is because as Janis Hirsch explained, that “the only time men really appreciate a villain is if she’s hot and likes… you know what.”

With that being said, as interesting of a narrative that watching a female antagonist attack and seduce a ton of men may be, societal prototypes have contributed to this wildly distorted construction of femininity in entertainment. It will be interesting to see if there is a time where a woman writer in a man’s world prevails or when our brains may think female before male when thinking about the villain in our favorite film or series. Or when society will stop empathizing with male villains, rationalizing their depravity with their difficult childhoods to humanize them.

Bibliography

Dockterman, Eliana. “The Handmaid’s Tale: Differences Between the Show and Book.” Time, Time, 1 May 2017, time.com/4759957/handmaids-tale-book-vs-show-differences/.

Gamble, Sera. “You.” CTCS 467, Television Symposium, 04 Mar. 2019, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. Lecture.

Hirsch, Janis. Personal interview. 14 Apr. 2021.

Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. “Why TV Shows like ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Luther’ Normalize Violence against Women.” Newsweek, Newsweek, 30 Oct. 2016, www.newsweek.com/game-thrones-luther-fall-violence-women-female-representation-female-513408.