You see, I’ve got this nice lamp here, which I like very much. Yet, every Wednesday, that guy in the black cape steals my lamp and refuses to give it back until I hunt him down and take it back by force. I’m very annoyed about that, as you can probably imagine. I also have a snow globe which another guy who dresses in a black-and-gold leotard tends to steal every other week on Friday, so I have to hunt him down and reclaim it, too. Sometimes, I’m so tempted to let them have the lamp and the snow globe and just buy some new ones…
Does that sound strange to you? Probably. Yet, it’s not far from classic adventure and pulp stories where the hapless heroine isn’t much more than a pretty lamp or a snow globe that gets stolen (or kidnapped) by the villain and reclaimed by the hero. If the story is serialized, that might very well happen to the heroine every other day. I’m not surprised that there’s that fan theory that Princess Peach of “Super Mario” fame might actually be having a relationship with Bowser, the villain, as often as he’s kidnapped her.
The ‘pretty lamp’ problem are damsels who have no agency themselves. They could very well be replaced by an object, such as the lamp or the snow globe, and the story wouldn’t change significantly. No sex scene at the end, perhaps, in modern adult literature, but that would be all. Well, perhaps still a sex scene - there’s many, many kinks out there, why not someone who feels sexually attracted to a lamp or a snow globe?
The classic ‘Damsel in Distress’ is a breathing lamp or snow globe. She has no agency, she takes no action at all, she is just ferried around, locked up, or threatened to motivate the hero. In the worst of all cases, she is killed to give the hero some ‘man-pain’ while agonizing over her death. Her whole existence is spun around the motivation of the hero and the actions of the villain, she has no other reason to be there.
Does that mean that everyone who is captured by the villain is a damsel, female or even male? No, of course not. At least not the classic, passive model. Sidekicks get caught a lot, too, but they do not just exist for that. They also help the hero, they just can be unlucky (or very unlucky, like a certain Jason Todd). Everyone, including the hero, can be unlucky enough to get caught by the villain.
What sets the sidekick or the plucky orphan or the scientist apart from the classic damsel is agency. They are not just a passive object sitting there and waiting for the next step. They do not only exist to motivate the hero to run some risks. They have a part in the plot that would not work with a lamp or a snow globe. The sidekick will assist the hero before and after the kidnapping, perhaps even find out some important things during it. The plucky orphan will give the hero the all-important information after crawling through a dangerous labyrinth of air ducts. The scientist will withstand the villain and secretly come up with a gadget that helps the hero overcome the villain’s henches. It’s only the classic damsel who sits there in her cell and waits for the next time she has to make an appearance.
What is ‘agency,’ then? Agency is actively following a goal. The goal might be simple, like ‘getting out of this lair’ or more complicated like ‘getting an interview with that hero, which is why I will be there when he fights the villain and get captured in the first place.’
A damsel with agency, even if she gets in trouble over it regularly, is so much better than a damsel without agency. As long as your active damsel isn’t stupid enough to walk into the same trap over and over again (which makes it very unlikely to most people - and with good reason), there is no reason why she should not end up in the villain’s hands regularly. After the first few times, the villain would know that threatening her gets him the hero he really wants to get at. Perhaps he also just likes kidnapping the damsel (I actually did once write a short bit of erotica about that).
The important thing about the agency is that it shouldn’t always revolve around the hero. The damsel should have her own reason for going out and risking her life and health. Perhaps she’s a plucky reporter who wants to make it in her profession and always risks it all for a scoop. Perhaps she is searching for her missing father, who is a scientist, and crosses paths with the villain, who kidnapped him. She shouldn’t just blindly follow the hero around and invite snatching by the villain that way - but even that would be better than the classic scenario.
Let’s make a more extensive example. One of the classic damsels in pulp is the plucky girl reporter. Reporters were working outside of the house and would naturally get into potentially dangerous situations in the early twentieth century. It would, therefore, be easy enough to explain why the girl reporter could end up in the villain’s hands so often - she was chasing a scoop and got caught by the villain’s henches while doing so. At the same time, the plucky girl reporter also made a very good love interest for the hero. Heroes with a secret identity would be weary of a woman whose goal in life it was to find out who they really were, yet they could still be in love with her.
The girl reporter who has to prove herself (on account of being a sole woman among many men and having to battle misogyny) is likely to run more risks than your average daughter from a good family. She also works in a field where dangers can be common (depending on the kind of articles she writes), so it won’t be too hard for the author to get her in trouble every week or month in a serialized format.
If the girl reporter gets snatched by the henches while following them, it also has nothing to do with the hero - it’s her own doing that got her captured. If this means the hero is going to help her get out of it, then that’s a lot better than getting kidnapped from her nice home in the good part of town just so the hero will come to save her.
‘Just so the hero will come to save her’ is never a good reason for endangering someone. Of course, a human life at stake will raise the tension of any story wonderfully. A human life extinguished (the logical next step when the hero gets too used to having their damsel kidnapped) will raise the stakes even more. Yet, having a character who only exists for that, with no agency and no goals of (usually) her own is not good. If you have to do it that way, why not try something along the line of the damsel wanting the hero to rescue her and putting herself in danger because of that?
This doesn’t mean that a damsel has to rescue herself. It just means that she should be active, even after capture. She can very well try to break out of her cell, but fail at it. Get out and get caught again. Gather information while the villain is walking around and giving orders. There are many ways in which the rescue of a damsel can pay off for the hero beyond a ‘Happily Ever After’ or a steamy night.
Avoid the cliché classic ‘Damsel in Distress’ who can be replaced with an inanimate object without any real changes to the story. She’s been around so often that it’s hard to do something new with her. You can still damsel people, if you need to, but make sure they have their agency and are not just passively sitting around. And while you’re at it, leave my lamp and my snow globe alone! I have other things to do on Wednesdays and Fridays!
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