One of the reasons I think anyone interested in "how to handle female characters well even in a shonen series" should watch FMA is because of the dynamics between Mustang and Hawkeye. There's absolutely no doubt, textually, that Hawkeye is very, very, very good at what she does. (And for the record, there are a number of instances where we actually get to see her being exactly that good -- Arakawa does not pull the punch by having Hawkeye decide that it's not okay for her to kill people; if Hawkeye ever expresses doubt over whether she should, this does not affect her ability to go right ahead and do what must be done, regardless of her feelings for human life.)
What makes it a little more complex (and interesting, to me) is that Mustang is treated as being also incredibly good at what he does -- in fact, the text states unequivocally that among the alchemists we see on-screen, he's the most powerful. Not Edward, and not Alphonse, but Mustang -- and that right there is unusual, because normally shonen-genre stories will, at some point or another, put the shonen-hero (Edward, predominantly) at the forefront, unequaled. To the very end, Mustang remains far more powerful than Edward.
In that regard, it makes the final showdown -- where Hawkeye and Mustang must work together, with her incredible sniper-trained eyesight and Mustang's sheer power -- particularly intriguing. They're not cast as subordinate assisting her superior, but as equals. I'd even say that it's more like Mustang becomes Hawkeye's weapon, in a sense; she puts down her gun and aims with him, instead. Her lack of alchemy may make her less powerful on a scale of sheer destructive power (although if we're looking for brute force, that would be Edward; Mustang is shown to have considerable finesse), but it doesn't make her less.
It's a subtle difference, but a crucial one, I think: that texts in which the female character is 'supposed' to be an equal, of equal (if different) strength-of-skill, the text itself treats her as something we can dismiss or discount. Arakawa sets up Hawkeye as 'less' on the scale of alchemy (or, more precisely, 'not even on the scale at all') while giving her fearsome skills elsewhere, but Arakawa never makes the move to then declare that because Hawkeye doesn't rate on this single scale that she doesn't rate at all.
I think it's not just that Mustang sees Hawkeye as an equal... the author does, too.
Perhaps this is also part of the issue with the transitional damsel, in other stories where we have potential for great female character and no follow-through, even when those characters are supposedly really awesome. It's possible the author created the character with "really awesome skills" in mind, skills that would complement or supplement the main character -- but the author then didn't treat those skills as equal in value... and the result is that the text subtly dismisses those different-but-awesome skills. So we end up with this quiet but consistent slant in the story, that sure, she's good at that but because she's not quite so good as this, she's not really any good at all.
It doesn't help that the genre conventions of action-stories are that the hero (or heroine) must be superlative, and even if there's doubt/crisis in the middle, the hero/ine must still eventually win the day, carry the show, be the center of our attention. Creating a character like Mustang -- who is, in many ways, superlative to Edward on Edward's own scale -- is a real risk, genre-wise: you could end up with Mustang successfully stealing the show, taking attention away from the centerpiece. (This is is one reason I admired Naruto's first half so much, as well: the teachers could, and did, frequently "show up" the students, including Our Hero, and I found that refreshing compared to the number of stories in which the shonen-style hero rapidly advances past his mentor/teacher.)
Given that genre convention of the hero remaining at the forefront, with all other characters measured against the hero's standard, I can see why authors may lean towards 'downgrading' other characters, to make the hero look better. It's cheap, it's a cop-out, and I hate it, but I do get why authors do it, because it's easier than the work of figuring out how (as Arakawa did with Edward and Alphonse) to make your main characters the centerpiece despite having superlative characters in the background.
I've actually seen this argument in some fandoms: "but the hero keeps losing to so-and-so" or "but when you look at the entire show, you see the hero never actually wins against these other characters" -- and the conclusion is inevitably, "so why on earth do we think he's so great?" I can't recall anyone ever using that argument about Mustang and Edward, considering that Mustang does repeatedly show up and/or beat down Edward, in a variety of ways. (And in fact, Edward even comes to rely on Mustang and his skills arriving to save the day, by the end of the story.) I think that's because Arakawa figured out that brute force isn't why we like Edward, so the number of so-called battles he wins or loses isn't the reason the fans liked him -- thus, he could lose against Mustang and others, and not lose his position as the centerpiece of the story.
But for the author going the cop-out route of slavish attention to genre conventions (that the hero must, at least eventually, be the 'best' at something), using the hero as the standard for measuring 'best' means that anyone who can't fight on the hero's terms, with the hero's skills, by the hero's standards, may be 'best' at what they do but story-wise, they're unimportant, or at least not as important. They never get their moment to shine, because the light they put out isn't valuable because it's not of the same class or type as the hero-type light.
no subject
Date: 27 Sep 2010 03:55 pm (UTC)What makes it a little more complex (and interesting, to me) is that Mustang is treated as being also incredibly good at what he does -- in fact, the text states unequivocally that among the alchemists we see on-screen, he's the most powerful. Not Edward, and not Alphonse, but Mustang -- and that right there is unusual, because normally shonen-genre stories will, at some point or another, put the shonen-hero (Edward, predominantly) at the forefront, unequaled. To the very end, Mustang remains far more powerful than Edward.
In that regard, it makes the final showdown -- where Hawkeye and Mustang must work together, with her incredible sniper-trained eyesight and Mustang's sheer power -- particularly intriguing. They're not cast as subordinate assisting her superior, but as equals. I'd even say that it's more like Mustang becomes Hawkeye's weapon, in a sense; she puts down her gun and aims with him, instead. Her lack of alchemy may make her less powerful on a scale of sheer destructive power (although if we're looking for brute force, that would be Edward; Mustang is shown to have considerable finesse), but it doesn't make her less.
It's a subtle difference, but a crucial one, I think: that texts in which the female character is 'supposed' to be an equal, of equal (if different) strength-of-skill, the text itself treats her as something we can dismiss or discount. Arakawa sets up Hawkeye as 'less' on the scale of alchemy (or, more precisely, 'not even on the scale at all') while giving her fearsome skills elsewhere, but Arakawa never makes the move to then declare that because Hawkeye doesn't rate on this single scale that she doesn't rate at all.
I think it's not just that Mustang sees Hawkeye as an equal... the author does, too.
Perhaps this is also part of the issue with the transitional damsel, in other stories where we have potential for great female character and no follow-through, even when those characters are supposedly really awesome. It's possible the author created the character with "really awesome skills" in mind, skills that would complement or supplement the main character -- but the author then didn't treat those skills as equal in value... and the result is that the text subtly dismisses those different-but-awesome skills. So we end up with this quiet but consistent slant in the story, that sure, she's good at that but because she's not quite so good as this, she's not really any good at all.
It doesn't help that the genre conventions of action-stories are that the hero (or heroine) must be superlative, and even if there's doubt/crisis in the middle, the hero/ine must still eventually win the day, carry the show, be the center of our attention. Creating a character like Mustang -- who is, in many ways, superlative to Edward on Edward's own scale -- is a real risk, genre-wise: you could end up with Mustang successfully stealing the show, taking attention away from the centerpiece. (This is is one reason I admired Naruto's first half so much, as well: the teachers could, and did, frequently "show up" the students, including Our Hero, and I found that refreshing compared to the number of stories in which the shonen-style hero rapidly advances past his mentor/teacher.)
Given that genre convention of the hero remaining at the forefront, with all other characters measured against the hero's standard, I can see why authors may lean towards 'downgrading' other characters, to make the hero look better. It's cheap, it's a cop-out, and I hate it, but I do get why authors do it, because it's easier than the work of figuring out how (as Arakawa did with Edward and Alphonse) to make your main characters the centerpiece despite having superlative characters in the background.
I've actually seen this argument in some fandoms: "but the hero keeps losing to so-and-so" or "but when you look at the entire show, you see the hero never actually wins against these other characters" -- and the conclusion is inevitably, "so why on earth do we think he's so great?" I can't recall anyone ever using that argument about Mustang and Edward, considering that Mustang does repeatedly show up and/or beat down Edward, in a variety of ways. (And in fact, Edward even comes to rely on Mustang and his skills arriving to save the day, by the end of the story.) I think that's because Arakawa figured out that brute force isn't why we like Edward, so the number of so-called battles he wins or loses isn't the reason the fans liked him -- thus, he could lose against Mustang and others, and not lose his position as the centerpiece of the story.
But for the author going the cop-out route of slavish attention to genre conventions (that the hero must, at least eventually, be the 'best' at something), using the hero as the standard for measuring 'best' means that anyone who can't fight on the hero's terms, with the hero's skills, by the hero's standards, may be 'best' at what they do but story-wise, they're unimportant, or at least not as important. They never get their moment to shine, because the light they put out isn't valuable because it's not of the same class or type as the hero-type light.