River Tam: not a “sad attempt at feminism” September 3, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in arts and culture, feminism.trackback
In the midst of this otherwise good piece entitled “Hollywood’s 5 Saddest Attempts at Feminism,” (h/t to Ann) we find none other than Firefly/Serenity’s own River Tam:
Despite River’s inherent ass-kicking abilities, she rarely uses them to the benefit of the crew. The character has been driven insane by her experiences, and therefore she spends most of her time saying crazy things and throwing up in her brother’s bed.
In fact, protecting River forms the backbone of no less than five out of thirteen episodes, plus the theatrical movie. That’s an awful lot of rescuing for a feminist hero.
First of all, there’s absolutely no way that Joss Whedon meant her to be a feminist hero. As one of the Feministing commenters pointed out, his characters are about more than being archetypes, after all, and if we were forced to label one of the characters in Firefly as a feminist hero, it would no doubt be the cool, tough, smart and totally sexually empowered Zoe, not the abused and damaged River.
But that misses the bigger picture, which is that River’s story is about overcoming the damage that’s been done to her. While the crew does save her on more than one occasion, she also saves them repeatedly, against desperate odds–all while appearing to be a crazy, “helpless” woman. That’s pretty kick-ass, and I could think of many worse Hollywood role models for young women than River. River’s inner strength, along with the support of her friends, helps her overcome even the horrific violence of her past and save the day. If Joss Whedon has one consistent message it’s that the good gals and guys can win with dedication and devotion to each other. That seems pretty empowering to me.
Look, Hollywood has an abundance of terrible faux-feminist characters, and Joss Whedon has his own issues (less than stellar portrayals of people of color, for instance). But River Tam ain’t one of them.
PS: River’s a failed attempt at a Feminist hero, and Buffy is responsible for women abandoning the Church–seems poor Joss is being blamed for a lot these days!
PPS [And Buffy-related spoiler]:
Joss still has tons of credit built up from me for his uber-cool ending to the Buffy series, where Buffy and Willow literally overthrow the rules of the old boys club and empowering woman, thus saving the day.
I totally love River. Her brother, Sad-Eyes “Mr Clueless” McWhiney, I could live without, but River is the metaphorical backbone of the story. They’re all damaged goods, especially Mal, but all of them to different extents and for different reasons. Their story — most literally in her arc — is their slow and painful crawl back to sanity, and redemption.