Rumplestiltskin and Regina: Gender and Villains

Over the weekend I was at CONvergence, a delightful convention about sci fi and fantasy. While I was there I sat on a panel about Once Upon a Time, and an interesting question came up: Rumplestiltskin is far more compelling, relatable, and interesting than Regina. Many people found that in the second season they just got sick of Regina who spent the whole season flip flopping between good and evil. These observations ring true to me: Regina is a less interesting, engaging, and compassionate character than Rumple, and in general people don’t seem to root for her the way they do Rumple. She’s often written awkwardly and unbelievably, particularly in the second season in her relationship with her mother. The question that was asked was whether this could be related to gender: are the writers better at making Rumple a good character because they’re better at writing men?

At first I felt at gut level that this was wrong. The show has so many varieties of women written both strong and weak, good and evil, many of them extremely compelling and interesting. How could the writers have fallen down on gender lines here? And I think that there are a few elements that differentiate Rumple from Regina that are not about gender that make him a much stronger character:

1.Rumple has a clear core, a clear motivation, and a clear path to redemption. We have known what drives Rumple from the very beginning: he does not want to be weak and magic is his way out of being weak. His motivation has always been to regain Baelfire. Of course the introduction of Belle complicates this, but she becomes his path to redemption to regain Bael. His character is clearly set out and he doesn’t deviate from these motivations.

2.Regina’s motivation is always shaky. While the core of her character has always been betrayal of trust (when Snow told her mother about Daniel), she hasn’t had a clear path since then: the writers haven’t made her WANT anything except for Snow’s death, and that they’ve gone back and forth on. It makes her shaky and unclear. In addition, they’ve introduced smaller desires along the way that have muddled things up: Henry, her mother, her father, and the kingdom.

3. Rumple grows while Regina flips back and forth. Rumple moves clearly forward. He has a progression from weak to powerful to crazy to compassionate (and then back to crazy after he loses Belle). Regina is innocent then evil then more evil then psych maybe good no evil haha you think you know what’s going on.

4.Regina seems to be trying to figure out who she is, and this is reflected in the way she’s written. She is very human in this regard: people don’t go through nice clear narrative arcs in real life. They do flip flop and make mistakes and change their minds back and forth.

So Rumple has been written in a very clear way that gives his character strength, whereas Regina has a lot stacked against her. However I do wonder if gender plays a role in how these two characters were written. Rumple’s character was written around his self-image and the kind of person he wanted to be. This is the kind of motivation or struggle that can keep going and make sense no matter what the setting: it makes you the hero of your own story. Men in media tend to get stories like this: who am I and how strong am I and how do I fit in the world? They are the protagonists. Regina on the other hand started out as a love story. Her motivation was centered on another person, and that person was removed from her story early on. She is not the hero of her story. In fact she was set up in such a way that there is no story without the man, all there is is a lost, floundering woman with nothing to love.

This is what seems horribly unrealistic to me about Regina’s character and where I think the writers fall down in their presentation of different genders. When Rumple loses his wife his struggle is about himself, not about her. When Regina loses her love, the struggle is not about her and her personality, it’s about a loss and nothing else. Regina doesn’t stand on her own. In reality, it seems unlikely to me that Regina would have blamed Snow and cut herself off from the people who were trying to care for her. If we were to look at Regina’s original character, she was kind and clearly looked past class and expectations to pay attention to people’s personalities. She would have doubled down on her ability to do that: she would have looked to where she could find friends. She would have known that her mother was the reason Daniel was gone.

This seems to be another instance of “hysteria” stereotyping and female infighting presented by the media. Women cannot be angry, fierce, or terrifying without being bitchy. Even Snow never gets angry: she just “does what’s right”. And so when Regina was placed in a situation where anger was justified, the writers warped it into something wrong and ugly. This does seem to be gendered to me, and it’s one of the reasons why female villains often get written as more shallow than male villains. I do think that men are allowed to be “bad” in more realistic ways than women are. Women are stereotyped as bitches or whores when they’re “bad”, whereas men can be jerks or assholes or dicks or just mean. Men can be tragic, fallen heroes. Women don’t get these options.

It also makes me wonder whether writers have a hard time imagining what a woman would be motivated by unless it’s love or petty jealousy. We know that women are more complex than that and have just as many motivations as men, but unfortunately even in a show as good as this one, these are the motivations given to a woman who is “bad”, while the “bad” man has a deep and complex range of emotions. It seems clear to me that the writers are working very hard to give Regina more of a backstory and make her a more believable character, but it does look like they may have fallen prey to some subtle stereotypes about what could make a woman mean.

I dearly hope that in season 3 they clean it up.

 

Truth-Tellers and Love

I am a hardcore Spuffy shipper. Oh yes, I ship them to Mars and back. For those who don’t know, Spuffy is the pairing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer of Buffy and Spike, and shipping…well shipping is the unholy obsession that some of us have with certain pairs of people who we desperately want to get together because we live vicariously through their beautiful relationships. I have a lot of feels about Spuffy. I have a lot of Thoughts about Spuffy. But it’s been a while since I watched Buffy and right now my love for that pairing is slowly being usurped by a love for Belle and Rumplestiltskin (the last episode kills me. There will be spoilers of it in this post). And I’ve started to notice a lot of parallels between these two couples, particularly between Spike and Belle. This might strike some as a little odd considering the fact that Belle is a sweet girl who sacrifices her life to save her kingdom and sees the good in a beast whereas Spike is a soulless bloodthirsty vampire who keeps trying to kill Buffy. But the reason I love these two relationships is because each of these characters is a truth teller.

 

One of the things that I have always loved about Spike is that he sees right through the other characters in the show and says what needs to be said. From the point where he starts getting developed as a regular character this happens. In Lover’s Walk in season 3 he calls out Angel and Buffy, saying what no one else will say: “You’re not friends. You’ll never be friends. You’ll be in love till it kills you both. You’ll fight, and you’ll shag, and you’ll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you’ll never be friends. Love isn’t brains, children, it’s blood…blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.” And from this point forward Spike becomes the truth teller of the show, even when he manipulates others and skews the truth to get his way. I think we see it most intimately in season 7 when Buffy has been kicked out of her home by the potentials, and Spike comforts her in the abandoned home. He doesn’t comfort her with empty words, he tells her exactly how he sees her and exactly how amazing that makes her.

 

In many ways, Spike is even a truth teller at the darkest points of their relationship. In season 6, he’s the only one who can see where Buffy has been and who asks her about it. He’s the only one who sees her when she’s truly falling apart. And he KNOWS that she is using him: in “Gone” he doesn’t want to have sex with her because he is in love with her and doesn’t want to be used anymore, he only wants to be with her if she’s willing to be seen with him. He knows exactly what she’s doing and he does call her out on it. In many other instances, Spike sees the good in Buffy, names it, and she grows. In season 6, Spike sees the darkness in Buffy, names it, and she grows more fully into that darkness. But either way, he is telling her the truth of herself. That forms the crux of their relationship and in the long run his ability to tell the truth is what allows their relationship to flourish. When Buffy is turning into something horrible, truth-telling destroys them, but when she is at her best, it saves them.

 

And I believe that there are some brief moments where truth-telling is what saves Spike too. In Seeing Red when Spike attempts to rape Buffy, she is finally able to tell him the truth of what she thinks he is, of the facts that he has no soul, of the fact that he cannot and has not respected her. Only through this truth-telling does Spike manage to find his soul and grow into a person who would NEVER do that again. And in the end, when Buffy gives Spike the amulet, she is telling him the truth that she sees him as a hero and it is only through that truth that he can save others. While Spike is more often pulling their relationship through with his truth, at crucial moments Buffy is able to tell Spike who he really is. When he is truly broken or when he desperately needs help to complete an action, she brings him back to who he is.

 

In a remarkably similar way to Spike, Belle is a truth-teller. From the beginning, both Spike and Belle see something that draws them to their respective lover. I believe that each of them sees nuggets of truth that no one else can identify. Belle knows from the beginning that Rumple is not as dark as everyone thinks he is. Belle is truth-teller in a slightly different way from Spike though: sometimes she comes straight out and tells Rumple who he is, but more often she tells the truth through her actions. She knows that Rumple will not hurt her for freeing Robin Hood. She knows that he will not kill Robin Hood. She acts in accordance with this knowledge and that proves to Rumple that he is who she believes he is. She reminds him verbally over and over that he is not dark and that there is love in his heart. She even reminds others, and in their relationship telling the truth to everyone is hugely important because Rumple’s reputation is an important part of his self-perception.

 

In the most current episode, Belle has forgotten who she is, and yet I still believe that she is a truth-teller. She sees through Rumple’s “best behavior”, the act and the façade that he puts up to try to win her over. She sees that there is darkness inside of him (because no one can deny that). He has been repressing his feelings of rage and impotence for a long time in Storybrook in order to try to win back his family, but it seems that he feels he is worthless and useless when he does this because in Storybrook love is more complicated than it is in the Enchanted Forest. Just as when he first became the Dark One, Rumple feels a need for power in order to protect himself, particularly when he has lost the love of those he cares about. Lacey sees this. Lacey sees that he has this overwhelming need to be safe through power. Belle is still telling the truth even when she is not herself.

 

But I suspect that what is really necessary right now is for Rumple to tell the truth. Belle is just as lost right now as Spike was in the middle of season 6. Belle needs her truth-teller to kick her in the chest and tell her to get her god damn soul back. Rumple has not stepped up yet. He’s tried, but he doesn’t know how to tell truth like Belle does and he has not been pushed in the same way Buffy was. Rumple needs to learn how to tell Belle’s truth before anything will break. I am highly looking forward to that moment.

 

The thing that I love about these relationships is that they ring true for me: the strongest and deepest relationships appear when you can see someone for who they truly are, both good and bad, and when you can help them become more themselves. This is true in media, but it is even more true in real life. Relationships live and die on truth-telling, and it is inspiring to me that relationships like these exist in media, relationships in which individuals are not afraid to tell the truth to each other no matter how terrifying it might be. And the reactions portrayed are real. Sometimes when you hear the truth about yourself you grow and change. Sometimes when you hear the truth about yourself you fall further into whatever you are at that moment. But truth-telling is always central to relationships.

Once Upon a Time: A Feminist Manifesto?

I don’t think I’ve made this a secret around here but I’m a bit of a nerd. Yes, it’s true. In particular I can be a junkie for certain TV shows (Anything by Joss Whedon…). And lately…well lately it’s been Once Upon a Time, which I cannot get enough of. I think I’m going to tone down a few of my next posts and do some pop culture things, a little bit of Dr Who, a bit of Buffy, and a bit of Once Upon a Time: some analysis and some feedback. It should be good. And so today I want to build a bit off of my dark fiction post and explain one of the reasons I absolutely totally and completely adore Once Upon a Time.

Once Upon a Time is possibly the most feminist show I’ve ever seen in my life. This might seem unexpected from a show that is both a reimagining of fairy tales and on prime time TV, but I think it does the strongest job of portraying all genders as complex, varied, autonomous individuals with motivations and histories. Women on this show do all kinds of things. They rule. They give birth. They adopt. They kill. They rescue. They show mercy. They use magic. They capture people. They inspire. They make mistakes. They suffer trauma. They recover. They are kind. They are motherly. They are vicious and selfish.

Women take on all sorts of roles. Off the top of my head: a nun, a mayor, a cop, a mother, a teacher, lovers, rescuers, queens, millers, peasants, pampered noblewomen, warriors, friends, sisters, daughters…the show passes the Bechdel test over and over, with women talking together about their children and their lovers yes, but also their enemies, their kingdom, their hopes, their guilts, their frustrations, their plans. And just as the women spend some time on their family life and their lovers, so do the men, AT LEAST as often as the women. For every scene we see Belle or Snow talking about trying to reconnect with her lover, we see Charming looking for Snow, or Rumplestiltskin wondering how he can continue without Belle. The refrain of Charming and Snow is “we will always find each other”. It’s mutual. They equally contribute to the well-being of the couple, and they have equal say in what happens in their kingdom. In our world, they always consult each other when trying to make plans for the future of their family and their subjects. They even allow their child and grandchild to express their opinions and take those opinions into account when they’re making decisions.

But the biggest reason that I love this show and the biggest reason that I believe it treats women more fairly than many other shows is that it gives each and every one of its characters complex backstory. No one’s history is ever set in stone. It is always possible for the show to flash back even further and show you a facet of their character that you never expected. This means that you can never become stuck in your stereotype of an individual and many of them continue to surprise you or gain your sympathy when you hear their story and motivation. I love that I never can fully peg a character, just like I can never fully peg a person in real life because there will always be elements of their history that I don’t know. I think that this humanizes the characters in a really relatable way, and it’s done for everyone across the show.

The fact that this story continually reinterprets the traditional stories and continues to interweave them in new ways that create different relationships and histories that you never expected is wonderful. When you thought Regina was evil, you found out that she has a lost love and fell into darkness afterwards. And once you start feeling some sympathy for her, you find out that she abandoned Rumple after saying she loved him. And when you start getting angry again, you find out that she is still working to protect her grandson and is always trying to earn the approval of a mother who never approved. That’s human. We all have hundreds of experiences of being broken and trying to take power back again, and being broken again. We try to protect ourselves and become “evil”. But none of us are truly evil, and each of these stories helps to make us who we are, to give us the autonomy we have, and to break away from any stereotypes people might have of us. These ongoing histories that develop as we see the characters develop are a way to allow us to get to know the characters better. It’s just like hearing your friends tell you stories: it helps you understand them better. And because OUAT allows every character the chance to tell their story, I see it as one of the most humanizing shows I’ve ever watched.