Gender in The Walking Dead (part 2)

I know this post is coming a little bit late but I can explain! I've been busy reading through the first The Walking Dead Compendium, which contains the first 48 issues of the comic book series. Still, the notes that this post is based on date from before I have read the comic and it's still a look at the TV series only.

In the last post I examined the depiction of gender images in the first three episodes of The Walking Dead. It already became obvious that the dominant themes in this TV series seem to be fatherhood and the benevolent patriarchical group leader.

Now in the following post I want to continue analysing relevant scenes from each following episode and confirm the first impression on gender images in The Walking Dead that I obtained by analysing certain scenes from the first three episodes.

Episode four of The Walking Dead starts out with two of the female characters, Andrea and Amy, sitting in a boat on the little lake near the camp. They are catching fish for dinner. While waiting for the fish to bite they start a conversation in which we find out that their father taught both of them how to fish when they were younger, however he taught them different knots. Andrea at first suggests that this was just a coincidence but then they come to the conclusion that their father probably taught them different fishing knots because of their differences in personality. Remembering their father and childhood memories, they’re both starting to cry but the scene ends when a fish bites.

In this scene we also see the father figure as a strong, nurturing and benevolent motive. It is nice to have a father going fishing with their daughters, especially when this is usually known as the typical father and son activity to do. However, the complete absence of their mother in that nostalgic and slightly painful conversation is striking as well. When they think back to their normal comfortable life before the zombie apocalypse the first thing that comes to their mind is their father, not their mother.

What I liked about that scene where they return from the lake was that they had actually managed to catch a big bunch of fish. At least as many as Daryl managed to catch squirrels on his hunting trip. One male camp inhabitant even comes up to them and says: „Thank you! Because of you, my children will eat tonight“. This is a single instance where we can see the typical role model of nurturing father subverted and it’s actually the women getting food on the table. However this is also relativised a bit by them stating that it was Dale’s boat and fishing rods and that after all it was their father who taught them how to fish.

Since Rick has left the camp again together with Glenn, Daryl and T-Bone to go back into the city and save Merle and bring back that bag of guns as well, it is Shane who has to deal with Jim, who obviously is developing some mental problems. Jim had been keeping himself busy with digging graves near camp all day under the hot sun and Dale already reached out to him and asked whether he maybe wanted to take a break or at least drink something.

When Shane confronts Jim together with the group he doesn’t just ask Jim, he doesn’t accept no for an answer. His handling of the situation starts to appear a bit questionable especially when Jim calls him out on beating up Ed. This is also a moment in which the domestic violence coming from Ed is relativised and Jim says that „it is their marriage“ and none of Shane’s business. Finally Shane restrains Jim by force and ties him to a tree. As viewers we realise that there is danger coming from Jim, at the very least for himself but we also question the way Shane is dealing with the situation. In contrast to the way Rick always used to handle things Shane’s attempts look heavyhanded and not thought through. It becomes clear that Shane is not as good a leader as Rick.

There is also a brief moment in the scenes from the city in which an old woman appears through one of the key moments. Rick, Daryl and T-Bone are having a face-off with what seems to be a Latino street gang, who have kidnapped Glenn and set their eyes on the bag of guns, and the situation is approaching escalation quickly, when an old latino woman appears seemingly out of nowhere and walks into the middle of the scene. At that point all men put away their gun as there seems to be an emergency. The latino street gang is actually revealed to be employees at a nursing home and relatives of the old people who have been abandoned there. It’s a pretty imaginative scene but it seems a bit badly pulled off. It also does rely on the stereotype that latinos are generally more connected to their family and traditional values, etc.

The old woman defuses the situation and does appear as a positive figure. However, since she is so old already she is not exactly regarded as a woman, more as a grandmother or general mother figure. The men don’t stop fighting because she exudes some sort of power or authority but rather because she is old, helpless and pitiful. Thus, her positive influence on the scene also stems from her being understood as a traditional role for a woman – a mother or grandmother.
Finally the episode ends with a scene of great catastrophe. The zombies start to invade the camp. This scene undoubtedly stands for action and progress and has probably been hoped for by numerous people already. Ed, who refused to join the group for dinner, ashamed of his horrible bruises, is eaten first in his tent. Then Amy, who has gone away from the camp fire as well to go to the toilet is bitten by a walker. Some random guy gets eaten as well but I am not even sure he had a name.

The fact that Ed is killed first can be seen as his ultimate punishment for the domestic abuse of his wife. However, until the end we don’t see any development in his character and again evil is not punished through reason or criticism but by brutal force. The fact that Amy is killed seems to mean that she wasn’t that important after all. She will in the following episodes work only as a trigger for her sister Andrea, much in the way that a lot of women in movies solely exist to die and give the male main character a motivation to do something or a background of melancholy. But as of the end of season one we can not see Andrea getting any kind of motivation from the death of her sister, we will only be able to see her mourn for the rest of the season.

It is this mourning process that starts episode five. When the episode begins we see Andrea still kneeling by her sister Amy while the rest of the group is busy tidying up their camp, disposing of the corpses of both the zombies and their dead. The survivors are starting to get increasingly restless because Amy hasn’t been properly disposed of yet. If her brain is not destroyed she might come back as a zombie any time.

Now this is a mechanism very familiar to the fans of zombie stories. Fans are trained to quickly favour the decision of killing infected people. After all, that is the only way to contain the infection and not endanger oneself. So the long drawn out scenes of Andrea staying by the corpse of her sister will either bring great tension to the audience or great frustration at the unreasonable and sentimental behaviour of Andrea.

When Rick tries to confront her she pulls a gun on him and assures him that this time she has not forgotten to remove the safety. Thus Rick leaves her alone. Dale also tries to reason with Andrea. He comes to pay his respects to Amy and tells Andrea his own personal story of the loss of his wife. Finally he concludes that since that loss he hasn’t felt love for anybody but the two of them. Andrea and Amy are constructed to be the surrogate daughters for Dale, who has lost his wife (children are never mentioned). Thus Dale is also constructed as a father figure in the same way as Shane accepted his role as a surrogate father when he believed Rick to be dead and took care of his family.

Finally when Amy does come back alive the viewer almost expects Andrea to be bitten. We expect Amy who is just waking up into her new life as a zombie to quickly grab and bite Andrea at any moment, as we have seen it happen in a lot of zombie movies before. However, Andrea just says goodbye to her sister and at the very last possible moment she takes her gun and shoots Amy in the head. At that point we realise that she has been in control of the situation all along. This is maybe one of the only moments where we see a woman completely in control of her situation, even despite her heavy grief.

In that episode the conflict between Rick and Shane is also deepening. As they continue to dig graves to bury their dead Shane tells Rick he blames him for leaving and thinks that not as many people would have died if he had stayed. Rick however reasons that without the guns he brought back even more people would have died. Touché. Later as Rick and Shane scout the woods they have a conversation about either leaving camp and going elsewhere or staying there and sitting it out. Shane is in favour of staying, while Rick prefers to leave.

One very significant sentence almost sends Shane over the edge: „You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t have a family.“ Shane gets extremely angry at that and tells Rick that he HAS had a family, Rick's family, that he had taken care of when Rick was gone. It is almost implied that after all it was Rick who now has taken that family away from Shane again. Frustrated, Shane even points his shotgun at his colleague, when they hear a noise in the woods and Rick goes on to check ahead. Shane struggles for a moment and the anger is very visible on his face. He is clearly considering shooting Rick and finding an excuse for it. But then he takes down his rifle and to his horror realises that his moment of plotting murder has been observed by Dale. Dale is completely shocked by what he just witnessed and Shane sheepishly tries to escape the situation by calling out to Rick and suggesting going back to camp.

We can see from that scene how important that father role was for Shane and how much of his self-worth he drew from that. Now that Rick, who is better at being a leader, better at taking care of a family and better at solving group problems, has come back he feels that he is not the alpha male anymore and has lost a significant amount of his masculine power. The father and group leader role is depicted as the ideal for a man. We also see Dale as a passive father figure (possibly because of his age) but a moral authority nonetheless. In the end Shane submits to Rick's authority and supports his decision to leave camp.

In the final episode of the season the group is briefly allowed to enjoy a bit of civilised comfort as they find shelter at the CDC. They have electricity, warm running water, books and can sleep without being afraid of waking up to a zombie trying to eat them. In this episode we can see Andrea still mourning her sister Amy. It becomes obvious that she has given up on the whole world and even herself in a scene where she throws up in a bathroom and has a conversation with Dale. She suggests that everything is gone now, there most probably are no other research facilities around the globe trying to find a cure for the zombie disease. Dale however tells her that he sees this apocalypse as a chance to make a second life after his first one ended. In that scene Dale is also further established as somebody who is there for Andrea, which is a dominant theme in this episode, as it plays a significant role in one of the final scenes as well.

But we also have Shane further slipping away into self-doubts and anger. He drunkenly tries to confront Lori about their relationship, tries to tell her not to shut him out after all that happened between them but Lori refuses and the scene ends in an attempted rape, only stopped by Lori actually defending herself. Shane leaves the room in shock and anger. The next morning somebody confronts Shane about the wounds on his neck and he says he must have scratched himself in his sleep. Rick says that he has never seen him do that before and Shane answers "Me neither. Not like me at all." at which he looks Lori in the eye. The fact that he does meet Lori's eye in a sort of reproachful way tells us that he isn't ashamed of what he did. If he was ashamed, he'd maybe state the same thing but he wouldn't aggressively meet Lori's eye in a way of saying "we both know that you did that to me". I believe that Shane at this point is beyond redemption (which is further confirmed in a later scene where he flips out and Rick has to actually physically restrain him) and I really wouldn't know what to say if the creators of the series decided to "redeem" him in the next season. I really do wonder why the creators of the series keep him around, as the whole Shane-problem is much more easily solved in the comic books, before they even leave camp. I have heard words like "love triangle" been thrown around but in both the comic book and the TV series Lori does nothing but hate Shane's guts so I have no idea what the creators of the series are thinking right now. You better not come forward with some rape-apologism here, guys.

The final scene I want to have a look at is the scene where Andrea tells the group that she doesn't want to leave the CDC, effectively choosing suicide, and Dale stays with her to convince her otherwise. It is also very striking that nobody cares about the black woman, of whom we don't even really know the name. I know she has a name but next to nobody would remember it when talking about this scene. Nice to see that she doesn't merit a little "you can't stay here, come with us"-talk by Dale. Dale however tells Andrea that if she stays there he has no reason to leave either and Andrea tells him to get out and leave her alone. In the end she decides to leave with him after all. Thus Dale is sort of portrayed as a saviour to Andrea but the way through which he did it is also problematic. Ultimately he blackmailed her into going with him, he completely overruled her own judgement. Of course this means that Andrea will survive (and I am happy at that because she seems to be the only female character that isn't stuck in a mother-role so far and could get really badass) but we know that it will always be Dale who saved her. In this scene we can also see the final cementation of Dale's role as a father figure for Andrea and Andrea as his surrogate daughter. Or so I thought, when I had seen the series. Let's just say they will have to bring forth much better writing if they want to convince people that things can go the way they go in the comic book without being creepy or at least mildly inappropriate. But maybe Dale and Andrea will remain in their father/daughter relationship forever in the TV series.

So this was pretty much it, the first season of The Walking Dead. We can see that the strong underlying themes are fatherhood, as it is portrayed in the roles of Rick, Shane and Dale and the benevolent patriarchical group leader as it pretty much culminates in the main character, Rick. The reason for all of them to live are their roles as paternal authorities, protectors of the groups and their leading qualities. Rick for example, explicitly states at some points that he is "just a father looking for his family" and that all other things are less significant to him. He is fairly confident and powerful as a father and it is also from this role that he draws his masculine power over the group.

Shane is along for a bumpy ride. At first he is empowered by his role as a surrogate head of family for Lori and Carl but then he experiences an extreme loss of masculine power when Rick comes back and takes back his family and also proves to be a better group leader and decision-maker than him. This loss of his traditional role as the head of the family and indeed the head of a whole group of people, which he had never experienced before during the time before the apocalypse, makes Shane go mad with anger and we see him actually becoming a secret enemy to Rick.

Dale is a quite passive person who never gets to make big decisions, his role is more that of a protective father and not an aggressive authority. This may very well be just due to the fact that he is old and thus maybe rather fits into a "grandfather" role than a father role. However, by "adopting" Andrea as his daughter he is also clearly portrayed as a father figure. Even the little test you can take at the AMC webpage for The Walking Dead describes Dale as a "father figure".
The relevant women in the first two seasons are Lori and Andrea. Lori at first doesn't seem like a very good mother but as soon as she is reunited with Rick she goes back to her role as a protective mother and shuts out Shane, completely severing ties with him. It is also interesting that the relationship to Rick suddenly seems to be an ideal one, old relationship problems (which we knew existed from the car conversation in the first episode) are never mentioned anymore and the family becomes the most important thing to everyone involved. All in all Lori is depicted as relatively strong but only in her role as a protective mother. When she tries to argue decisions made by the group leaders, she doesn't get anywhere. So Lori is extremely passive and also very much dependent on Rick.

With Andrea, it is maybe significant to also have a look at her name. "Andrea" means "manly" and "virile". Thus it is not surprising maybe that she is the only female character so far that gets to show some backbone. She is easily the strongest female character in the first season. She criticises Ed for beating his wife and she is completely in control when she takes care of her sister Amy. Also it is not insignificant that in one episode Andrea and Amy manage to catch a lot of fish, thus satisfyingly filling the roles of nurturer for the group. Finally during the last episodes of the season Andrea becomes quite passive but this understandable as she is mourning the death of her sister. Still, if we hope to see a strong female character in the next season Andrea is probably our best bet.

Looking back at the whole analysis one can see that the traditional role of father / benevolent patriarch / group leader is depicted as ultimately ideal and desirable within the series. Women are mostly depicted as passive, problematic, very emotional and impulsive, which has to be balanced out by the reasonable males. Also the collaboration of father and mother to form a traditional family are very important. This is of course also owed to the fact that during a zombie apocalypse society does revert to a rather premodern state. As some people have worded it "feminism bullshit isn't relevant during a zombie apocalypse!". Of course, this could be a fact. However it is interesting to see that the zombie genre, as a genre that is very popular with the younger male geek generation and could even be understood as a sort of counter-culture to the mainstream popular culture, relies on the traditional values of family and masculine power. It is even experienced as a point of pleasure to see how modern society mechanics are removed and a group of people must revert back to life in a premodern world. People who feel unaccepted in today's world might not feel a big loss at having the current society structures vanish and be able to put their own brush on the canvas and finally be considered useful by whatever peers they may encounter. But why are traditional family values the ones that are being depicted as ideal then, when there has previously been a feeling of frustration at the way in which modern society works? This is a very interesting subject matter that I definitely want to look at in more detail with other products of the zombie genre as well. What I also found striking is that all the other characters, which don't fit into a clear mother/father role, such as Daryl or Glenn get very little development. Especially Glenn with his cute geekish ways should be an easy figure of identification for the target audience, yet he remains very passive and doesn't get a lot of chances to shine.

Now having read the comic book I have to say that I am glad I didn't read it before watching the series as I would have been disappointed in all the quite unnecessary sub-plots that are being added into this series. I know a TV series can't always be completely like the comic but the underlying feeling does suffer some and certain additions just look clumsy and bad.

However, there are of course also redeeming qualities in the TV series. For once I thought the dealing with basic humanistic ideals was very interesting. There we can see that the zombie genre definitely benefits from having a bit more time to spend on relatively calm scenes. Humanistic ideals such as "not killing people even if we don't like them" aren't necessarily present in today's society and are especially not on the mind of the audience of a zombie story. One of the very basic things that viewers of zombie stories are quickly taught is that you don't have time to wait to shoot somebody when they are infected and pragmatism is the key to survival. Thus, I found it quite interesting that the group did decide to go back to Atlanta and save Merle, even though I bet it was a source of great frustration for the audience. I know from the comic book that the theme of humanism and humane decision making is a very important one to the series and despite the TV series being quite different I appreciate it that they tried to keep that aspect even though it will frustrate a trained zombie-movie-audience.

Another thing that's very similar to the humanistic ideals of the group is the humanisation of zombies. We can see Rick showing sadness and regret at killing the bike girl zombie as well as taking a minute to find out who he zombie was that they are chopping up to take the guts. The very long drawn out scenes of Andrea saying goodbye to Amy also belong into that category. In your average zombie movie there is almost no time for scenes like this so it is a really welcome change to see the survivors take some time to deal with their emotions from time to time.
For the next season we can expect some interesting developments. My hope is that Andrea will develope her potential to be a strong female character and I also hope there will be a satisfying resolution to the situation between Lori, Rick and Shane. So let's wait and see what they have in store for us next Halloween!

Gender in The Walking Dead (part 1)

My fingers have been itching to write about this but I wanted to wait until at least the first season of The Walking Dead was over. Now I have seen all the episodes and I want to write down my observations and impressions about how the issue of gender is being dealt with on The Walking Dead. I will do this by not fully analysing every episode but rather dealing with a few key scenes that I will take a closer look at. Episode by episode an underlying theme and motif should become clear.

Before I start writing away however I also have to mention that I have not read the comic book. I did this on purpose so that my experience of the TV series wouldn't be influenced by any preconceptions.about the characters. As I understand it towards the end of the season the storyline has started to deviate a lot from the comic book anyway, so I might still read the comic books at some point. However all that I write here is only about the TV series as I have seen it and I don't know how this corresponds to the comic books at all.

I want to begin with episode one. The first scene with actual dialogue in it introduces the main character Rick and his colleague Shane by letting them have a conversation in their cop car about "the difference between men and women". Shane starts talking about how women are too stupid to turn the lights off. All of this is done in a joking way, an assholeish joke maybe, but a joking way nonetheless, which is probably supposed to be endearing or something. When Rick starts talking, things immediately go serious and he talks about his relationship problems between his wife Lori and him, finally coming to the conclusion "the difference between men and women? I would never say something that cruel to her". What starts out as a funny conversation about women being too dumb to turn the lights off turns into a dead serious declaration that women are fundamentally crueler than men. Now of course you can say that this is supposed to show that these guys are a bit fucked up and have problems with women but I think it is a pretty risky thing to have the first conversation in a new series, which is simultaneously supposed to introduce two male lead characters, make such a bad and one-sided statement about women. Personally it just gave me the reaction of: "Okay, maybe you guys are just getting what is coming to you". Let's just say that in terms of gender images we aren't off to an all too great start with this series, even though I can also acknowledge the kind of ambivalence this first scene has when it is seen in context with later scenes. Still the first impression that the viewer gets is that this Lori must be a heartless bitch.

Another significant scene in the first episode (and sort of the only other scene where a woman has any significance) is the camp scene where we are reassured that both Shane and Lori (and her son) are alive. We are also introduced to the fact that they have started a relationship. This does not come in favour of our already slightly prejudiced image of Lori. First she is cruel to her husband and now she has an affair with his colleague, just like that? I feel like most people will first start questioning her morals and maybe as an afterthought we will get our first doubts about Shane's morals as well. This scene is significant as well because it shows a difference of opinion between Lori and Shane. The one time in the pilot episode that a woman gets to suggest something significant (wanting to go warn Rick, who is approaching the city, about the danger that lies there) and she gets talked down to by Shane and she finally obeys him. It's a bit of a buzzkill and it also vaguely depicts the woman Lori as impulsive and emotional, while Shane is the voice of reason in this scene. This fits together a bit with the general depiction of women later in the series.

So the pilot episode does not pass the Bechdel test. It doesn't have a whole lot of women in it and the way they are talked to and talked about is mostly, let's be honest, bad. However, much of this can also be explained or at least relativised by context and later episodes do shine a light on the relationships between certain characters. So let's look onward at episode two.

In episode two we have a kind of uncomfortable scene in the beginning with Lori going into the forest to look for mushrooms. She hears a noise and starts looking around for zombies. The experienced viewer knows that this is the moment where not a zombie will come but instead a cat will jump out at the character or something similarly mundane as that. However, it is a tense moment and it turns out to be Shane who jumps Laurie. He holds her down for a moment to keep her from making a surprised noise, alerting the rest of the group, so they can have a bit of "private time". Before they have sex on the forest ground Lori takes off Rick's wedding band that she still wears as a memento. The viewer realises that Rick or at least his memory still holds some kind of significance for Lori but she does have sex with his colleague nonetheless. Her image doesn't really change from watching that scene but I felt like Shane is starting to get increasingly creepy.

One of the earlier scenes in the city has Andrea confronting Rick about his careless behaviour in the city filled with zombies, holding a gun to his head. She is angry at him for attracting a lot of zombies and making it difficult for her group to get out of the city alive. There we find the same pattern of women being portrayed as impulsive and emotional when under pressure. The only guys portrayed in a similar way in that series? The racist Merle and his slightly less offensive brother Daryl. But those guys actually do something, they fight, beat up people and kill zombies, while women rarely get a chance to fight in a similar way to men. But more on that later. In a later scene we also hear from Rick that he remained so calm with a gun pointed at his face because the safety was still on. Women... always leaving on lights and safeties! But nonetheless, the viewer can empathise with Andrea because she does get to tell a bit of her backstory, we realise she has a sister and she even gets to crack a little joke. She is introduced as impulsive but not cruel or unfaithful.


Finally, episode three! In that episode we have the big family reunion of Rick, Lori and Carl. This scene and this episode are very significant to the development of the relationship between Lori and Shane, now that her real husband has come back. When Lori and Carl suddenly see Rick standing there in their camp their joy is very visible on their faces. But with all that joy in Lori's and Shane's faces we also see a bit of shock. We come to realise that Lori is really and honestly very happy to have Rick back and that she very deeply regrets having slept with Shane. This earns Lori a bit of sympathy already.

Then there is another very significant scene, which also gave the whole episode its title. Tell it to the frogs! In that scene Lori comes to fetch Carl from the lake where he has been trying to catch some frogs with Shane as was arranged earlier. Lori tells him to go back to the camp and severs ties with Shane. This is a big turning point in our image of Lori, as we realise that Shane told her that her husband died FOR SURE. Suddenly it even seems a bit like Shane wanted to get his hands on that happy family (as he has always been plagued by girlfriends who left the lights on and as he remarked in the car, Lori is really good at turning the lights off!) and has no qualms whatsoever to jump into the gap when his colleague is disposed of. Or at least, if the thing wasn't planned then at least Shane didn't seem to wait for long. No matter how we precisely interpret Shane's intentions, in this scene he very much appears like the unethical one in this situation. Lori is also suddenly portrayed as a very strong and protective mother, trying to keep everything that harms her family out. And Shane no longer belongs to this family.

This, together with Rick's return leads to a very difficult situation for Shane. On the one hand, he is not the only cop in the camp anymore. He is not completely in charge anymore. Now I bet Dale also always had a say in things but from the way things were being handled when Lori suggested to warn Rick when he approached the city, it becomes rather obvious that Shane was the authority in the camp. That's probably the way things would go, if there's a cop still alive people would look to him for guidance. Now Shane has to share his power with his returned friend. On top of that he loses his newfound "wife" and "son". He doesn't only lose a part of his masculinity by losing authority over the camp but he loses the ego boost he gained by suddenly being in the role of a family father and protector as well. We can see that this takes a very harsh toll on him when he flips out at the wifebeater in the next scene.

This is also a rather important scene when one wants to talk about gender images in The Walking Dead. The scene begins with the women from the camp sitting at the lakeshore and doing the washing. They talk about what they miss from the life that they had before. Ding ding ding, I think we might have a winner here! This might be the first scene with which The Walking Dead passes the Bechdel test! Halfway into the first season, that's not so bad. To be fair, it's a very short season, too. Eventually the conversation strays to why the women have to do the washing while men stand around and smoke a cigarette (as Ed does) and Shane plays around with Carl in the water. When Carol admits that she misses her vibrator, too, the women break out into laughter. Annoyed by that, Ed, Carol's husband, comes along and tells them to laugh less and work harder because this isn't a "comedy club". The women don't immediately talk back at that but the scene instead cuts back to the scene between Lori, Shane and Carl. Then when the scene cuts back to the washing women Andrea gets up and tells Ed he can do his laundry himself and questioning what his job at the camp is. Ed reacts by telling his wife it's time to come back with him but Andrea objects and tells him she doesn't have to go anywhere. Ed threatens Andrea with violence and the situation quickly escalates when he punches his wife in the face. Of course at that moment, Shane who has witnessed the argument from afar comes running to save the day. He beats up Ed pretty badly. This is a very significant scene as it shows all that frustration that Shane feels now that his authority is standing on clay feet and that he has lost his would-be father role to Carl. He reinstates his masculinity by being the benevolent saviour of a bunch of harassed washing women. Ed is the perfect punching bag as nobody will, rightfully, feel sorry for him.

Now I have heard that this scene wasn't originally in the comic book, so adding a segment about domestic violence in which the offender is at first criticised and then also punished seems pretty progressive and praiseworthy, doesn't it? However, when you look at how the scene is solved it leaves a stale aftertaste. The criticism made by the women in the first place, about the division of labour within the camp and about Ed's treatment of his wife doesn't go anywhere. They can not protect Carol from being harmed and they can not defuse the situation once it starts to escalate. Instead they need a man to reinstate order. They need masculine violence to fight masculine violence. So in the end, even though I don't doubt it was meant well, the scene doesn't actually deal with domestic violence in a very progressive way. Now most people will agree that Ed deserved that kind of punishment and I am not even sure he didn't but the fact remains that women in that scene got nowhere with their talk and criticism and only male fists solved that issue.
Overall in the first three episodes we generally see women being portrayed as quite helpless, even if they try to be strong. They obey what men say and even if they try to fight they don't get anywhere. The two female characters with the biggest amount of lines, Lori and Andrea, are still quite ambiguous. Lori had a very bad image from the very start, being introduced as "cruel" and as the episodes progress we also see her having sex with her husband's colleague. However when we realise that Shane told her that her husband was dead for sure, thus seeminglylying to her and as we see how much she regrets having slept with him we get more sympathetic towards her case. Shane in contrast loses some of our sympathy and finally at the end of episode three we can see him become increasingly unhinged as he tries to rebuild his hurt masculine pride. Andrea didn't get a whole lot of lines yet but she comes across as probably the strongest female character of the series, confronting Rick angrily at his careless behaviour and also standing up to a wifebeater. There is no reason why the viewer would dislike her, we only laugh at her a little bit when we realise she had forgotten to remove the safety of her gun. Another thing that is increasingly stressed is the role of Lori as a protective mother. This is a quite conservative role for a woman to fit in but in the coming episodes we will also see that The Walking Dead relies heavily on the themes of fatherhood and as an opposite to that naturally motherhood as well.

My impression from the first three episodes is that it has already become quite visible that this show is aimed at males, with women getting significantly less screentime and not having as much background info and significant roles as the males. But of course a series isn't immediately sexist because it has male lead characters. I will however continue to analyse the underlying themes and motifs in that series and aim to come to a final conclusion about the whole first season in the next post. Then I will of course also deal with episodes four to six in detail.

I actually really enjoyed watching the series, because I like watching stuff about zombies. Also I'm not even sure the handling of gender images was the worst thing about this series. What kind of bothers me is that Rick so far feels like sort of a blank. Maybe it's just because I'm not exactly the target audience of The Walking Dead, but most of the time I can not fill his blank emotionless stares with content and put myself into his shoes. It's still the series I've been looking the most forward to watching during the last few weeks since Halloween. Rest assured, people can criticise aspects of products of popular culture and still be a fan.

The Problems and Redeeming Qualities of Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass opened in March this year and did, as I find, admirably at the box office. Sure, it only earned maybe a tenth of what Spider-Man made back in the day and many people did say that it bombed. However, if you compare it to slightly similar comic book movies you can see it did similarly as both Hellboy movies and Sin City. It earned a looot more than The Spirit as well. If you take into account that Kick-Ass has been rated R, while Hellboy is rated a PG-13 you also have to admit that it did reasonably well.

I didn't check Kick-Ass out right away. One of the early trailers (the one with Hitgirl in the schoolgirl uniform) annoyed me because I thought it was a movie about a little girl in a schoolgirl outfit killing people and lots of creepy people would drool over that. I made it a point to avoid this movie because of my first impression there, thus I didn't see it in the cinema. However, I did watch the movie eventually and I was completely blown away. Sure, you can say that this was due to my very very low expectations for this movie but I thought it was really entertaining, fresh and had the occasional legit surprise thrown in there.

Not being thrilled for the movie in the first place I hadn't followed reactions to the movie online at all and it was not until after the movie was released that I realised there was actually a lot of criticism for the movie. Most often that criticism went hand in hand with criticism of the comic book, which I have never read and never intend to, as it doesn't sound like something you really have to read. The three biggest problems of Kick-Ass seem to be sexism, homophobia and racism (are you surprised I am not mentioning violence and profanity? Pleeeaase. Such things aren't inherently evil, UNLIKE sexism, homophobia and racism).

I'm not sure what it is like in the comic book but in the movie several black people are being portrayed as bad guys, who get slaughtered by Hit-Girl. They're drug dealers, gangsters, hanging out in a run-down neighbourhood, playing violent videogames and enjoying the company of a hooker. Yes, I can see that this is a stupid and stereotyped portrayal of black people and I am critical of it. But there are also other examples to be found in the movie, which maybe can balance this out just a little bit. On the one hand, the main bad guys are Frank D'Amico and his lackeys. The black guys in that drug den were just "small fishes", not nearly as crazy and evil as the big baddie Frank D'Amico. Now of course you can say that this is also racist because some people do argue that Italians (and the actor who plays D'Amico as well has his character are of Italian decent) are non-white as well. If we are getting down to it, the whole idea of a white race is rather complicated. Are French people white? British people? Germans? Irish people? I read that at some point Irish people were not considered white. So to go right down to it, it is a rather complicated issue. Generally I think that Italian people are considered white though. On the other hand, pretty much the only character who is absolutely sane, rational and has a good heart is a black cop named Marcus. He was the one who raised Mindy after Damon had to go to jail and he continues to try to look after her, even when she is now in Damon's care. When he finds out, that Damon has manipulated her into being a little killing machine for his own plan to get his revenge on D'Amico, he confronts Damon and tells him that Mindy deserves to have a childhood. However, he doesn't tell on Damon, he doesn't betray his partner. In the end Marcus is the one who is once again made into Mindy's guardian and with him she is able to have a more carefree and normal life. Even though Marcus doesn't do a whole lot, no cool action tricks or anything, he is an important and good person in the movie. You shouldn't disregard that.

There are several points in this movie that you could describe as sexist. I am not sure I can find a sort of "answer" to all of them but I will try. One of the things is that in the end Hit-Girl goes back to having a "normal" life, even though as you might say, she was a whole lot more kickass than Kick-Ass himself. I feel like Hit-Girl was the strongest force in that movie and it's sort of ironic that she manages that while being an elven year old girl. In the end, her going back to every day life was described in the comic book with the words "as a girl should" or something to that extent, which is kinda lame. She was a whole lot better than Kick-Ass himself at what she was doing. But I think in the end of the movie you can see that she didn't go back to being a stereotypical little innocent girl character, as she does beat the crap out of the kids who tried to get her lunch money. Another point that you could describe as sexist is that she was only made into this killing machine by her father and didn't do it of her own free will, as Kick-Ass decided to become a superhero. I think that's a really valid point, however, you could also say that, as she is just eleven years old, a boy of her age could just as well be described as being pushed into this and not doing this of his own free will. The movie focuses much more on the father/daughter relationship between Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, than to be aware of what it is implying gender-wise. And I must say, that I find the portrayal of a strong father/daughter relationship really sweet. Yeah, on the one hand it's really twisted, Damon being on a scary revenge trip and using his own daughter for that purpose but on the other hand you can tell that he loves her and does take care of her. You don't often see strong father/daughter relationships in movies and, as ambivalent as this one might be in some regards, I really liked it.

Another really problematic aspect is the relationship of Katie and Dave, which starts out on the assumption that Dave is gay. Katie asks him to be her friend because she always wanted to have a friend like him... but that's not homophobic right? I really hope nobody took that line seriously, when Dave looks up to his friends and they advise him to go on and he says: Nah, that's not homophobic at all. I don't think the movie tried to insinuate that it was anything other than ridiculous that Katie suddenly wanted to be friends with Dave because she thought he was gay. Like a special Pokémon that she could collect or something. The advice by his friends also makes it obvious, because they are complete dicks. This is also nicely portrayed in one of the scenes where Kick-Ass gets beaten live on the internet and, horrified, Katie's friend embraces the fat guy and he motions to his friend to look "omg I got a girl to hug me" and they give each other thumbs-ups. What dicks. When my father saw that scene he laughed out loud and said: "That is SO tasteless". I don't think you are supposed to have another reaction to these jerks and their concept of geting a girl. Indeed, Dave getting the girl in the end is kind of childish and he did lie to her about his sexual preference for a long time. Part of this however, is also his friends' (dicks) fault because they advised him to keep up that appeareance, while he was doubtful about it. I don't think the movie is trying to tell you it is "not homophobic" to try to be friends with a guy BECAUSE he is gay. I also don't think the movie is trying to portray the behaviour of Dave and his friends towards girls as acceptable. Yes, in the end at least two of them do get the girl. In the comic book Dave at least doesn't, or so I have heard. I can see that it's problematic, that even though we as viewers understand that their behaviour is bad they still get "rewarded" for acting that way. But in a way, being able to tell that they are dicks should be enough for starters.

So Kick-Ass does have a bunch of problems that you should be aware of when watching the movie. However, what I found it also had were some really redeeming qualities. You maybe don't catch up on those at the first watch but there were some things that I just really liked. For example, the use of youtube and other social media. Finally a movie does portray the force of the internet in a way that is sort-of believable at least. There's also the character of Frank D'Amico's son, who I found to be pretty interesting. On the one hand, he does want to be like his father, that criminal mastermind. He wants to learn that "job", so he can take over for him some day. But then there are times when he thinks differently. He befriends Kick-Ass just a little bit and starts to care about him. He never had any friends after all. In the beginning he sits down at his father's desk and roleplays an evil mafia boss, while later he plays a super hero, side-kick to Kick-Ass. When Kick-Ass gets caught, even though Red Mist had asked for him to be spared, he is really disappointed in his father. However, he does sit down next to him when the violent demasking of Kick-Ass is about to begin on the internet. While Frank D'Amico laughs at the violence, his son looks at him in horror. This is probably one of the most significant moments for that father/son relationship. In that moment Chris does seem to emancipate himself from his father. However, in the end, when Kick-Ass finally kills his father we can see that he is determined to take revenge again. I was sort of surprised and a bit disappointed at that. He did seem like he could have understood that his father was a violent maniac, but in the end he didn't emancipate himself from his father after all. This is illustrated by him, instead of wearing a red colour, now having taken over orange, the colour of his father. I wonder what his role will be in a sequel.

What I also liked was the portrayal of the desensitisising of the general population in regards of violence. Not all characters shown in the movie exhibit that but it gets sort of obvious in the demasking scene of Kick-Ass. When the News stop showing the scenes due to too much violence, people scramble for the PCs, to keep watching what goes on on the internet. I thought that was a very realistic portrayal as well, since compared to the old media one of the absolute advantages of the internet is that there is no censorship going on, or at least not as much as there would be on conservative media such as TV. A very small but very sad scene indeed is when Kick-Ass and Big Daddy keep getting beaten up and the reaction of people behind the screens watching is shown. Dave's father doesn't even react to it much. He even puts a potato chip in his mouth while watching his own son being beaten (presumably) to deah. He doesn't recognise his son's voice and the realness of the violence doesn't seem to register with him. Maybe he is under the impression that this broadcast isn't real or that even if it was real it didn't really matter since the person suffering on screen doesn't have much to do with him. If you look at that tiny scene in detail, it is rather heartbreaking. Dave's friends also fall into that category. Giving each other a thumbs-up when Katie's friend, unable to watch what is going on, clings to one of them. They don't have much concern for the people suffering on screen either but are more in it out of sensationalism.

In the end, if you really look for them, you can find a bunch of good things about Kick-Ass. I also just think it's a really well-made movie, pacing- and storytellingwise. It's a damn fun movie to watch and does offer some deeper insights if you think about it for a while. Of course you should be conscious of its problems and think about those, too. I wasn't trying to "explain them away" in this post. I do see the problems but I just wanted to shine a tiny light on the redeeming qualities of this movie as well. Considering that I have heard the comic book doesn't really offer strong writing or anything, I think Vaughn did pretty good with that movie and I am definitely going to see its sequel.