by Emma Donati.
How the media struggle to create complex female characters
Black or Pink? That is the question!
The media products are all about these two colors, even if we are not talking about clothes but rather… female archetypes.
What does Wednesday represent if compared to Enid, moreover, are Elphaba and Glinda two faces of the same coin?
What is the spectrum of the feminine identity if we build it around these contemporary representations? And how is it evolving?
Pop characters as a social desirability compass
Dear reader, have you noticed it too?
Do you see it? Can you spot it while you look for a new movie, or when you scroll through your feed or even when you’re safe in your bed, choosing a new series to be obsessed with?
From famous animes like Nana, to giant film productions like Wicked, there is a pattern we can easily follow, a pattern that we need in order to unravel the modern female archetypes. How are they presenting themselves regarding what we could define as social desirability and, therefore, what kind of role models we’re setting ourselves up to?
The discussion about feminine identity is still emerging, taking new forms. The stories we create and we engage with speak to us because, in the end, they speak about us.
What we create as individuals living in a society is a reflection of our struggles and challenges, but also of what are our desires, what do we want to be, how we wish to be perceived.
On the other hand the reality we see in media products is, usually, a simplified version of the one we experience in everyday life, the grey turmoil of our existence becomes a series of continuums, where characters need to embody one thing or the other with a very tiny window left open to possible contamination.
This has an effect on our own life, we are being asked to define ourselves, to make it easy to pinpoint our most present characteristics, from dating apps, to Linkedin profiles. The characters are the result of a society that struggles with a very human thing: complexity.
Complexity is not profitable, because you cannot sell a version that is not determined, easy to manufacture based on some generalized features; in order for it to be a product it needs to be extremely stereotyped, and it works even better when you associate it with its exact opposite, in order to show the two ends of this spectrum, and to make it easy to relate, or to not relate, with one specific character.
The black and pink duos
The concept of using opposite characters as a duo is a very smart move, a media product can give the sense of complexity without working on making complex personas; it can rely on their interactions and their combined presence on the screen to give the impression of a deep understanding of each single role, when in fact we are able to comprehend them thanks to the connections that our mind makes autonomously.
That is very clear if we take the black-pink duos in the everyday entertainment industry.
I’m going to give you a list of characteristics for both of these archetypes, it will probably be easy to spot at least one screen couple!
Black: grumpy, independent, rebellious, loner, detached, self reliant, cynical and (most of the time) really intelligent.
Pink: bubbly, social, caring, gentle, obedient, with a tendency to people pleasing and (sometimes) codependent.
Even just by glossing over these adjectives we get a clear idea of the general idea of the characters. They depict opposite sides of womanhood, the first one is dark, non compliant, distant from the normative system; the second one is conforming to the social expectations of femininity and reflects the desired archetype.
The moment, for example, when Elphaba surrenders to the requested makeover and she starts to hang out with Glinda and her social elite, she also starts to be accepted into society and to be taken in consideration inside a world that has disclaimed her since birth. The simple association with the desirable femininity makes her a candidate for being a screen queen along with her partner, even if she doesn’t feel at home in it.
The narrative of these duos is based on the idea that you’re either a deviant or a supporter of an established system, in this case if you’re a bad or good example of a woman.
When we ask ourselves if we resemble a black heroine or a pink heroine we’re stretching our identity to the extreme because we feel compelled to insert ourselves in a binary system of bad and good femininity, the choice will inevitably leave us confused or uncertain because it implies a quality judgement about our alignment, either consciously or unconsciously made.
This theory doesn’t imply directly that the black character will be advertised as “bad”, but the objective of their presence on stage is to be perceived as an outsider, showing someone who doesn’t have social skills, who is estranged from community and society, that can only be accepted by the group if she gains some of the typical traits of her counterpart.
Moreover it is interesting to notice how a black character comes into life, because she usually doesn’t embody just the idea of a more “dark” feminine archetype, but the associations to her role are linked to some kind of deviancy. In some cases she might be marginalized because she adopts some “masculine” attributes, letting her social desirability as a woman decay, but sometimes the causes could be other kinds of undesirable traits. From poverty, to carelessness, from race, to personal music taste, everything can be used to forcibly enlarge the gap between her and the unattainable idea of the perfect woman.
Needless to say that a lot of what goes into the making of both of these archetypes is deeply rooted in western-centrism, rooting these ideals into colonialism, capitalism and classism, becoming a one-fits-all character that has the responsibility to represent all minorities. And even if, nowadays, the “wicked” character is starting to be shown as a considerable choice, these issues still haunt the creation process when it comes to showing an alternative way of womanhood.
Ultimately the media witnessed a changing manifesto during the period of thirty years, the weird girl, the outsider, evolved from being the emblem of the enemy, shifting then into a side character, becoming today the complementary main character of the biggest shows in production.This article is focusing on a specific type of media products, and consequently a particular target and distribution, but who knows, maybe in a few years we will go to theatres and cinemas excited to see the black girl stepping out of the limits of a genre or even break the curse of being in constant comparison with the pink girl.
