damsel in transition

[kaigou]

[ ETA: to clarify a term I frequently use (but may be unfamiliar to some), "animanga" is a portmanteau of "anime" and "manga", meant as a shorthand for "the Japanese illustrated-story publishing/production industries, including manga (graphic novels), illustrated 'light' novels, four-panel comics, animated television shows, animated miniseries/OVA (Original Animation Videos), and animated theatrical releases". Because there's often a great deal of cross-pollination between the two types (printed vs. moving), I tend to use "animanga" to refer to the entire ball of wax in one easy word. ]

We all know (and likely loathe, at least given the posts I see go past from most of you) the damsel in distress: she does something stupid, gets captured/hurt, has to be saved by the hero, and usually ends up clinging to him. I've been browsing some of the manga that readers have classified (on reader-tagging database sites) as "strong female lead" or "strong female character", and I think we need an intermediary.

Something like, "female character damselfied by the author", or "damsel with fighter tendencies," for a less anti-author spin on it.

The so-called "strong female characters" usually go like this: she's relatively outspoken, strong-willed, and ostensibly very good at whatever she does (even if in some stories we never see her do anything, we're at least told she's good). She's independent, and a common expression or thought among the transistional damsel is that she wants to 'stand on her own two feet'. She'll often explicitly state that she intends to fight [the big bad], alongside the hero, as his team-mate or equal. She doesn't see the hero as her rescuer, but as her mentor or her role model (and sometimes as the person she aspires to equal).

Cases in point: Tokine in Kekkaishi, Sakura, Hinato, hell just about any of the female characters in Naruto, Rukia in Bleach, Lenalee in D.Gray-Man, Marie/Soma in Gundam 00, Hilde in Gundam Wing, Kallen in Code Geass. Yet to be determined if Yura (from Nurarihyon no Mago) will fall into this category, as the fight's not done, so there's still chance for her to fall in line.

These are all combatants, btw; I don't think this transitional category applies to civilians, like Winry (of Fullmetal Alchemist) -- as a non-fighter, her most likely means of expression (in a sense, "her way of fighting") is not going to be head-on battle-mode, so it doesn't seem right to measure her by the same standards.

For each of the cases in point (and plenty others but I'm midway through drawer-building and waiting for glue to dry, so keeping this short) -- the introductory pattern, as combatant, is usually as above. Somewhere mid-battle, however, the damselfied combatant is tripped up. One of three things will happen. Either she doesn't have enough spiritual oomph, eg Tokine, Lenalee, and just about every female character in Bleach. Or she doesn't have the will-power/dedication (or alternately, can't overcome her doubt in herself), eg Kallen, Marie/Soma, and Yura (in her earliest fight-scenes). Or the author simply sets her up against fighters who just happen to out-rank her -- Hilde, and nearly every female in Naruto.

Which ultimately amounts to: she still needs to be rescued, but with a twist: she gets mad at herself for ending up in a place that requires the hero rescue her. You can see the differentiation most clearly in Nurarihyon no Mago, actually: Kana is a true damsel in distress, captured, helpless, and waiting anxiously for someone to come save her, and it doesn't even occur to her that she might've, or could've, done anything on her own behalf. Yura, in contrast, is annoyed at needing to be rescued, and determined to do her best to prevent it from happening again.

So what we get is the apparent warrior-woman, trapped in the position of damsel-in-distress (injured, incapacitated, or just plain outranked and unable to contribute to the overall fight), but also consumed by frustration at her position. She invariably rails helplessly against her, well, helplessness, and we're supposed to see this as a fighting spirit, and ignore that basically she was set up to fail. Again and again these transitional damsels throw themselves against someone far stronger, but digging into that observation means realizing that even these so-called warrior-damsels are always set up as weaker in some way, from the get-go. The story's premise either presumes the female character to be weaker (ie Tokine) or undermines the female character enough to destroy her original potential (Sakura, Lenalee).

We're supposed to see the warrior-damsel's determination to fight "against the odds" as bravery... but I can't help but note that in nearly every bloomin' instance, the fight doesn't cause the warrior-damsel to power-up like it does for her fellow (male) character. It just beats her down, and puts her back into the box of needing to be rescued. The only real difference is that we got teased with the possibility that this time, it wouldn't be so, and we got a lot of words from the heroine about how she wants to fight and/or be acknowledged by the hero and/or be equal to the hero in strength -- but the bottom line is that the message in the actual text is that this will never happen. But that's okay! As long as she wishes it might, that makes her strong female, because at least she's not helplessly accepting her damsel position.

Or maybe it just makes her kinda stupid, for entering battles with fighters who out-rank and out-flank her. Or maybe what makes her stupid is signing up for a story with an author who give plenty of lip service among the fan service, but has no intention of actually following through.

ETA: there's another way some authors will handle the "what do I do with the extra chick in the party" question, which is to justify the sabotage as meaningful sacrifice. (The women in Naruto, and Lenalee, get set up for this repeatedly.) The method is this: by some means, the warrior-damsel does take on (and frequently then proceeds to kick serious ass of) a pretty scary big bad -- but in the course of doing so, is either: pushed past her limits and burnt out (Sakura, Tokine), if she's not injured to the point of comatose (thus rendering her not just injured but pretty much a NPC for the rest of the fight, cf Lenalee).

The storyteller's rationalization, as I see it, is thus: every fight must have both a physical climax and an emotional one. The physical, of course, is obvious; the emotional may differ each time. The latter will show up as "what are you fighting for?" or "is this really important enough reason to fight?" or even "do you really have it in you to kill someone?"

A favorite trope of Japanese animanga is the "I fight to protect those precious to me" (well, actually, this is probably a pretty common fight-justification in stories the world over, now that I think about it). If your character is going into a fight and you want emotional conflict along with physical, the lowest-hanging fruit is definitely the "why would you fight this hard?" The character, naturally, will doubt himself suddenly, but hey, look, there! His female teammate fought and gave it her all -- whether now she's injured and rooting for him, or injured and needing his protection (since the author has now rendered her not just badly hurt but also suddenly stupid in terms of any remaining self-defense skills), or just plain out cold. In short, her sacrifice inspires him while at the same time providing an object lesson in "the reason why he fights so hard" -- to protect girls his friends from going through such pain.

Which I think can have its place in stories, and is certainly a valid point in any action-based bildungsroman, but it gets tiresome when you realize that the sacrifice-and-example is pretty much always played by the action-girl, and frequently it's the only role the action-girl can even play. For all the homoerotic subtext some fans want to see, it's actually not very common to see a male character throw himself head-first against overwhelming odds for the sake of an injured or comatose male team-mate or friend. (The various Gundam series and Naruto are major exceptions, though, which might be why they also subtextually hit a lot of buttons, too, because they capitalize on tropes that are more often male-female in other stories.)

As a footnote to all of the above, one thing I've noticed increasing is the number of mangaka who seem to try and balance "lesser physical power" with "greater ruthlessness". Tokine in Kekkaishi is an absolutely stellar example of this, with absolutely no mercy while her male counterpart is really a softie. Sakura shows major signs of ruthlessness, too, but she's not without some modicum of compassion.

The animanga I recall from the 90s and early aughts, the girl's more likely to be a blowhard about having no sympathy for the enemy, but at the last minute! she can't bring herself to fire! and the hero thus must step in. The updated version is that the girl has no qualms about going for the jugular... if only the author hadn't set up the premise or circumstances to make sure she wouldn't actually have enough muscle/power behind her punch. It's like, well, now she's given the opportunity and guts to shoot -- except the author took all her ammunition away.

All these are just more reasons on the list of why I love Balsa and Gen. Oliva Armstrong so much.

Comments

[kaigou]

I think realizing that you are not the center of the world is a part of growing up, so the mangaka who make the hero the center of the universe are doing their readers a great disservice.

But I think that's part of what I enjoy about shonen-genre over shoujo-genre: that boys do eventually get at some point in the story to, well, 'save the world" or at least to realize that their actions have ramifications beyond just their small circle. Girl-stories start, and pretty much end, with a very limited circle that doesn't expand outwards to encompass much more, let alone the entire world. Yes, the hero (of either) always starts out with a very limited view, focused on just his/her friends and classmates, his/her personal worries, and his/her personal goals... but eventually the boy's story-world expands to include bigger bad guys, many of whom don't even realize the boy exists, and it's up to the boy (and possibly his friends) to stop the bad guy.

What's really going on there isn't just action-adventure, but a kind of large-scale acting-out of the process of growing-up, in terms of recognizing one's place in history. We enter adolescence with a vague sense of history, but by middle adolescence we start to move away from the self-centered (not conceited, just centered-on-self) adolescent view, as we realize on a much more fundamental level that there was history before us, after us, and going on right now without us. That, basically, the world is much much larger than just our sandlot. Boy-stories get that lesson, and although video games are partly to blame for the "each bad is bigger than the last bad", it's also an easy way to scale up the interaction and the 'size' of the ongoing historical world as it comes in contact with the protagonist.

The wish-fulfillment, I think, is not just in the notion of "winning" against the onslaughts of the ongoing historical world, but also in the notion that the larger parts of the rest of the world would even notice the protagonist in the first place.

That is one reason I find shoujo -- even when really well written -- ultimately dissatisfying: because where for the boy, interaction with and victory over the bad is a sign of his interaction with the world-at-large and realizing that despite its vast scope, he belongs within it -- for the girl-stories, the boy is what represents "the world outside" and it's his interaction/notice that works as a stand-in for "the world at-large" in the girl stories. That, frankly, really starts to annoy me after awhile.

Also, I agree with you about Sakura being awfully conventional. I mean, she doesn't even get any past trauma or difficulty to work through, which at least Hinata has.

[susanna]

Hm. I think I can understand and appreciate what you say about shonen manga being about growing out of one's circle of family and friends and classmates until it encompasses the whole world - I think it corresponds to an aspect of growing up. I think that it's around puberty that most people gain an interest in politics, some sooner, some later. Maybe it's simply because the world is too complex to be understandable when you are still a child. And actually, with my little brother, but also with a boy I know these days, I could observe this change from fantasy to RL politics: At the age of fourteen they have outgrown fantasy (in the case of the boy I know now, he has outgrown Naruto itself, in the case of my little brother it was rather role playing) and take an interest in RL politics and history. I think that withdrawing into private life and seeking happiness within one's own circle of family and friends is problematic. I don't know much about shoujo manga, but, well, there's enough stories that offer this as the only important thing to girls. And, well, private issues have to be resolved too. My reading-girl, for example, took a bit longer to begin to take an interest in politics - but at the age of sixteen, she did too (and she had given up on Naruto, then, too.) But her private live was overshadowed by much heavier problems that did not allow her to take an interest in the world.

Being the one who stops the grand big guy - it's a very childish image of politics, and I think it's not by chance that this idea is aimed at twelve-year-old boys, as they are still too young to understand the inticacies of RL politics and still see the world consisting of their family (extended to one's country, or all "good guys") that have to be protected against evil from outside. It's not how we tackle problems as climatic change or the world finance crisis, or the problem of nourishing the world population.

But the self-centeredness in Naruto is on a different level. Most people with a name exist so that they can further Naruto's development. Girls exist as love interests, as people to be saved, as people to give him praise, as people to give him healing. Older women exist as people who give him healing too, as people who nourish him, as people who protect him. Men exist as teachers. (Actually, my impression is that in Naruto this is not as bad as in Harry Potter. There, teachers are only teachers. In Naruto, Kakashi reads porn, and Jiraiya and Tsunade have a history of unrequited love.) Other boys exist to illuminate and better understand his own story (Gaara). The only exception is Sasuke, whom he does not understand, and he will have to learn that grow out of his childish way of thinking "my who shall not leave me" and understand that he has a life of his own.

It does not really matter whether you still live in a small circle (as a child) or whether your cirle has grown larger to encompass the whole world. I wrote that growing up means to understand that you are not the center of the world - but, well, this was not exact. Most children aren't even the center of their own small circle. If all goes well, parents and other relatives care well for them, and a lot of them also have siblings and cousins whom they get along well with - but they are not the center of their small circle. Some children are, but not all. Most know that most members of their family have a life of their own, and they know that they have a place in their family where they are safe and protected and well cared for, but not the center.

It's only for those who are the center of their family that growing up, leaving your sandlot and going out into the world (which is really part of growing up) means to learn that they are not the center of the universe any more. Their parents may treat them as their eye ball, the world will not. (Just this morning I read again the story of the buddha, who grew up in an extremely sheltered way, so apparently it's not a modern phenomenon.)

Realizing that there was a past before us, and a future that comes after us - that's all fine. Realizing that we are just small, not very important members of the world, not more important than other people anyway. Realizing that there's a world outside, and that we have to live in a way that makes a difference to this world.

But.

Recognizing that there is a world that needs to be saved and that it's not only about us and our small circle of family and friends is fine - but if realizing that there's humanity outside and also history does not make us humble, realizing that we are not that important, but that it's all about us, as we are the destined child who has to save the world, the message of humility is undermined.

I don't read any shoujo. To be exact, I read very little fiction these days beyond Naruto. I read newspapers and books on history and religion. What I still read, however, is Terry Pratchett. His Tiffany-books offer another way of growing up (and, yes, here's a male author who knows what to do with girls: treat them as human beings, for whom the central questions of mankind are just as important as for boys.) Tiffany grows up as part of a large family, she grows up knowing that there is a part and hopefully a future. She's well-cared for, but she's not the center of the world. The way she lives makes a difference, but she does not need to save the world. And it's not the great adventures of world saving, but the daily work of being a witch that is the center of witchcraft.

(Maybe the real reason why I cannot appreciate some aspects of Naruto is that I am not a fan of C.G. Jung and that I put away the Hero's Journey with disgust after I finished about a quarter of the book - one of the most pretentious books I ever tried to read. And I hate Star Wars too.)

[kaigou]

Your description of Naruto's storytelling issues (how all other characters exist -- well, mostly -- as reflections of their importance to the protagonist) could just as well be issues in nearly any coming-of-age story, and for that matter, a lot of action/adventure stories, too. Characters appear on the page to help or hinder, and then disappear. But with my writer's hat on, I must acknowledge that at the pen of a bad writer, this becomes a self-obsession (or a protagonist-obsession -- on the part of the author, really), but in a good writer, this is still a natural aspect of focusing on a single protagonist.

Or, to completely mangle and misphrase Thoreau, "we would not write so much about this protagonist if we knew another half so well."

What Naruto does have in its later chapters (the last forty or so, roughly) is that political complexity that it lacked in the first half of the story, pre-time-skip. And that, from what I see, is (under all the usual shonen-genre posturing and multi-chapter fight scenes) a growing recognition that sometimes there is no solution.

This is possibly one of the hardest, and worst, aspects of growing up: realizing that what makes one person happy doesn't work for everyone, and that sometimes, there is no happy ending, only less-bitter endings. It's much easier (for a writer) to stick with the easy way out: the bad guy is bad, the hero fights, wins, and goes home happy. It's a helluva a lot harder to come up with a resolution to a problem that has no solution: fighting a bad guy, for instance, when you agree with him. In the most recent arc of Naruto, I could see the story getting into this greater complexity, and I think you're onto something by pegging the Naruto/Sasuke resolution -- and possibly that's what the current big show-down is leading into: that sometimes, the other person can be right and yet wrong, and there's not going to be any way you can resolve it without hurting. Yourself, someone else, everyone, maybe.

Overall, it gives me the impression that Kishimoto is either writing more complex/nuanced storylines because of his own increasing skill as a writer, or he's doing it purposefully to respond to the aging of his original audience (per Rowling). If the latter, then I expect the female characters to become even more -- at least insinuated as -- sexual in terms of their relation to the protagonist, not less, per usual adolescence... Which actually acts as a kind of regression for the story's female characters. I mean, at least when they were too young, they were relatively innocent in their focus, and thus could at least be rationalized by readers as not existing purely for love-of-protag, but as they hit their middle teens... yeah, well.

[susanna]

As I said, I don't read much, and I am not a specialist in growing-up stories. I have read a couple, but not enough to say I am qualified to tell what is typical and normal. As I said, I love the Tiffany-stories, and just thinking about it, in the "Wintersmith", Tiffany meets again her friends from the volume before who have all chosen their all line of career and are training for it. It is clear that Tiffany is not the center of their lives. And if I think of the prototype of the Bildungsroman, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, the hero also has to learn to take himself not so importantly - and he has to give up his dream of a career as an actor, as this was just about himself wanting to be in the spotlight.

So a story may be about a protagonist, but the world is not about the protagonist, and the protagonist's life should not be about himself.

The problem I see with Naruto (and with Harry Potter) is the Chosen-Child stuff. Learning to care about the world as a whole and not just your small circle (or, even worse, yourself) is fine, learning to do something to save the world is fine too - but realistically, this still means that you choose some specific line of career where you have to become really good so that you can do some substantial work there, and it means that you will have to collaborate with others in the same field, and also recognize that others are also doing their share of work in other fields. Goethes Wilhelm Meister learns this. Getting the impression that one is the Chosen Child who will save the world all by oneself when one is not yet twenty is ridiculous, and at the moment I cannot think of any symbolic meaning, except if it's all the protagonist's inner world. Learning to do your tiny share to make the world a better place, and accept that you are special and unique only in the same way as anyone else, that's something more appropriate I think. And that's why there's such a lot of wish-fulfillment in Naruto.

The political aspects of Naruto. They have always existed, but since chapter 400 they are more important to me than the psychological ones. But - well, may I remind you of chapter 403 where Naruto refutes Itachi's idea that sometimes there is no good choice? And I fully agree to Naruto in this case - there's a lot of options, and people who present a situation to you as if it only contained two options are trying to manipulate you.

Where I differ from a lot of people is that I have a very clear, one-sided opinion on some matters of the manga. Mostly, I think that the murder of the Uchiha clan was murder, nothing else, even if it was ordered by the state. (And yes, I think the same about the killing commandos in Afghanistan and Pakistan.) And it's not just my personal opinion - it's what is clearly laid down in the constitutions of all Western-style democracies - and this includes Japan. That people don't act according to their own constitutions is of course a problem.

Another problem I look upon and wonder is revenge. Is there no judicial system in the ninja countries?

Then there's all the secret policies of Konoha - the Sandaime and the two councillors deciding everything by themselves, not only the Uchiha massacre, but also about Kushina being the jinchuuriki. That's not how politics should be done.

And of course the practise of turning people into jinchuuriki. I think it's wrong.

So I think that there is a solution to the central problem of the manga, bringing Sasuke back: Adress what is rotten in the political system of Konoha. Maybe this might make Sasuke overthink his position - if he is not already gone too far in his despair and is no longer accessible to rational arguments. But so far no one has offered him any rational arguments. Kakashi is just stupid, and Naruto has not come to a clear position against the evil existing in Konoha. And what is disturbing to me about Naruto is that it presents questions to us as unsolvable except to a "child of destiny" that have already been solved by completely ordinary people. Sometimes they have been solved for millenia. Revenge has been replaced by justice for millenia - even if there are still areas of the world where justice has broken down and again been replaced by revenge. And there is progress, as attempts to install justice even in the case of international affairs, and even if crimes were commited in the name of the state.

So Naruto is doing nothing to solve the problems the series allegedly addresses. It makes us turn away from the solutions that exist and instead gives us the impression that the problems are unsolvable, and that a tragic ending is the only possible. Well, maybe not - the manga is not over yet. Probably Naruto will find a solution that will leave Sasuke alive. I just fear that this will happen without addressing the central problems. I fear it will be as with the problem of turning people into jinchuuriki: they have to become saintlike, without any bitterness or anger towards those who burdened them with such a fate, they have to love everyone in spite of being hated and feared by their fellow villagers. Just become a saint, then being a jinchuuriki won't be a problem. I fear that something like this will be done to Sasuke too: Just learn to forgive, then it won't be a problem and more that your clan was murdered.

The way of Danzou's death made me fear that in the end, Kishimoto's ideas about politics are simply different from mine. Danzou was not a criminal, but someone who did everything he did because he thought it was best for Konoha, and therefore he was, all in all, a good person. I don't share this nationalistic perspective, and I think that if you don't abandon this nationalistic perspective all talk about peace is futile and hollow. I fear that Kishimoto won't address the problems in the way Konoha is governed, and that the conflicts that result from this will be solved by telling people to become understanding and forgiving. But there is a wrong kind of forgivance - the kind of forgivance that allows evil to go on.