all these cunning men

[rm]

schpahky and I have been emailing about her latest piece for school. In talking about what it should be talking about we got on a digression in which she asked if I had read Cat's Eye, and said this about it:

But the whole childhood of that narrator is about driving around all summer with parents and brother in a station wagon, and camping, and because her dad is a science professor, they always have jars of bugs and stuff, and she arrives into adolescence feeling more like a boy than girl, and doesn' t know how to manage the subterfuge and hierarchy of girls.

It was no doubt the slimy things in jars that made me make the connection I'm about to go into -- both because of my HP fannishness and because I was crazy for science (although not biology, but rather chem) when I was a kid.

Perhaps women love villains in stories, not because of Jungian this or that, not because of some dark, removing responsibility for sexual desire fantasy, but because we relate to them and so can wish to be them -- they are in range of our experience as heroes rarely are. The villain (or at least the anti-hero), like girls and women, must navigate subterfuge and heirarchy. We see their male privilege as attainable to us, because their burdens are similar to our own unprivileged ones. That the long tradition of the feminization of villains (and JKR actually does this on such a consistent and massive scale it's a little weird), strikes me as possibly being an outgrowth of this, and not merely, as I think is often assumed, an attempt to insult the sexuality/power/honorableness of the villain or anti-hero.

I think it's why we like the Slytherins, ladies. We imagine the prices they pay are measured in units we can understand. And so we play at wickedness being clever and sexy and all that, because it's simply a way to show gratitude to certain tales while not being questioned too closely.

When I mentioned this to schpahky she seemed to agree. She listed her cunning men, and "crushes" seemed to be the easy word in what is mostly, really about desire and identity.

So much of the two-gender world seems to be a lot of people unwilling to say aloud, "I want all my wounds and all your power" and then being pissy about it.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Ahh, gender identity.

After going through both childhood and adolescence feeling perfectly at ease with my "sometimes I'm a boy" leanings, I'm suddenly running smack into the "wtf" of it all. I feel like I'm about ten years late on this one.

Girls used to mystify me as a child. Now the "female drama" I witness just pisses me off. I avoid it like the plague. Thankfully, most of my female friends feel the same way.

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

Every time you post stuff like this, I feel lucky because somehow I missed so much of that. Like my mom was a chemistry professor, and so I never saw science as a male thing. (Or a female thing, given that my dad was also a chemist as well.) And I've managed to move in circles where intelligence--male or female--is the main criterion for success.

I've always identified with the good guy, with guy being gender neutral.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You are lucky. I went to an all-girls school and it was still considered somewhat "concerning" that I had this science brain.

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

People at my own school were like that (including the counselors). But the fact that my mom was a chemistry professor totally countered that. The main reason I still feel guilty about leaving chemistry is that I can't be a role model for others in return. (Though I can, I guess, for female lawyers, only that's not as great a need.)

[splix.livejournal.com]

The villain (or at least the anti-hero), like girls and women, must navigate subterfuge and heirarchy. We see their male privilege as attainable to us, because their burdens are similar to our own unprivileged ones.

I can't speak to Slytherin lovers, not being a fan of the HP books, but I think this statement has a lot of merit. You know how cunning, stealth, and treachery have long been considered the woman's weapon as opposed to brute strength, strategists over tacticians... it seems the cleverest villains, the silkily subtle ones, draw female admiration, whereas the strongmen, the blunt tyrants, are derided [or have a silkily subtle advisor, didja ever notice?].

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup, exactly. If I were an academic, I have to say, my dissertation would be about the idea lurking in this, the whole feminization of villains and why thing.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also, in the interest of my wanting to write about this at greater length at least here, can you name some of yours that fit this mold? Schpahky and I have a list going in email too.

[splix.livejournal.com]

God, it's everywhere, in every facet of media.

There's the Devil Himself in The Passion of the Christ, completely androgynous. Insidious.

Iago...

I hated the book Outlander, but the villain is a handsome, somewhat feminine army officer.

Feyd and Baron Harkonnen in Dune - not *typically* feminine, but both possessing feminine qualities.

Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs - hell, Hannibal Lecter, too, with his attention to sensual detail.

The king's son in Braveheart - a villain and weak, too. And queer...

Alex in A Clockwork Orange

Richelieu in a couple of Dumas novels

I feel like I'm missing a ton of really obvious ones, but those are a few, at least. Most literature villains seem to be escaping me at the moment.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember the noise about the Braveheart thing. And that was before we knew Mel Gibson was insane.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Speaking of, I hope you too will name some names, HP aside.

[rm.livejournal.com]

When I'm not on five horrible deadlines all at once, certainly.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

[or have a silkily subtle advisor, didja ever notice?].

Yes! Like Smithers to Mr. Burns!

Or at least some weaselly guy with designs on something else...

[splix.livejournal.com]

Like Smithers to Mr. Burns!

Ha - precisely. Too bad we can't identify them all by their Malibu Stacy collections. ;D

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

cunning, stealth, and treachery have long been considered the woman's weapon

For school I've been writing a series of papers which, as an aside, discuss the evolution of Athena as a goddess of domestic protection, learned skills, and feminine mysteries into the Romanized "goddess o' wisdom" that kids are taught about today. (The Romans were very afraid of powerful, magical women... hence their dislike of the cults of Dionysus and Ceres... but that's another story.)

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

If you'd like to borrow a copy of Cat's Eye, let me know.

[briansiano.livejournal.com]

Only point I'd raise is that the Slytherins-- at least, the kids-- tend to be on the brutish, thuggish side. Even Draco hasn't exactly been Mister Subtle Plans. They just don't seem a patch on the Slytherins of previous generations, like Lucius Malfoy or Severus Snape or even Tom Riddle.

The feminization of villians has another component-- namely, the tendency of male writers to cast their villains in effeminate terms. Good example might all the James Bond villains descended from the epicene Le Chiffre; they're rarely "men of action" like Bond, or Mickey Spillane or Bulldog Drummond. They're always refined, repulsive eggheads trying to gain power with that thing in their skulls, instead of the honest use of fists'n'kicks.

But I wouldn't align the gender thing with power, either. Cast this up to my being a het male if ya want, but I don't really share a taste for the eroticism of vampires precisely _because_ there's a fascist aesthetic there: they _have_ power, they use it without compassion, and humans are regarded as lesser creatures. It's a mix of eroticism and power, but it's closer to the sociopathy of Gilles de Rais than the empowerment of the powerless. (That's sort of why I liked Anne Rice's first book-- because it was original and horrifying. All the mythology afterwards struck me as
the self-image that Himmler and Goebbels might have concocted for themselves.)