We, as a species, have either evolved or been trained to accept death of
men. But involve a woman? People of both genders get up in arms. And
even worse, get a child involved, and you'll have a lynch mob ready
with tar and feathers in record time.
I remember the various war crimes reporting in Bosnia, the genocidal murders they called
ethnic cleansing. Horrific stuff. But I also remember people getting
upset at the womenfolk and children getting hauled away for assumptions
of torture and rape, which were likely true, but very rarely did we
actually consider what had happened to the male victims. The ones the
aggressors (and both sides are/were equally guilty of this) lined up, shot
and then tossed into pits to rot. Sons, Fathers, Siblings, Lovers, all
dead men because the attackers thought it was better to wipe them out
because they would make taking the women difficult.
Instead we focused the plight of the living women and girls. Or if they
turned up dead, we mourned them and clamoured for the heads of the monsters
who were hurting them.
Why? Because we, humanity as a whole, see women (and children) as 'weaker'.
Ironically, it's because of their height. The majority of women are
smaller than men on average. And some of those same women are are more
capable than their male counterparts, but we tend not to see this. And
so whenever someone bullies or hurts or kills someone smaller or weaker
we get upset.
Now what does this have to with video gaming and/or comics? Everything.
As a pure story device, harming a female character gets audiences worked up and angry. It's a way of showing how 'evil' the villain is. Especially since targeting children was a no-no in comics. It also happens in video games. We often kill or mow down hundreds of male foes without a second thought, but we will always remember the female kills/defeats.
So where am I going on this. Well, there's this movement, called "Women in Refrigerators" (look it up!), which is in relation to an incident were a supervillain from DC comics (Major Force) for some reason kills and stuffs the new (at the time) Green Lantern's girlfriend into a fridge. Pretty nasty stuff. And it got ALL the readers upset and wanting to murder Major Force. The movement, however, focuses on more than just that. It picks out every single instance of a woman character that's been used and abused (There are a LOT of those, to be honest, a bit too much) and tries to shame people for... I honestly don't know. But there's a lot of trying to shame people.
The movement's heart is in the right place. Don't get me wrong, hurting and killing anyone is wrong, and we should be upset when some evil person does it to a woman, but especially to a woman.
The thing that strikes me is that in 2010, Marvel released a short series, called Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot Vol 1 where in a new (well, not quite, she showed up in 2007, but was a different character -a friend to the real one- who died because of substance abuse. This was the original Jackpot first series) superheroine called Jackpot had a series of adventures. She crossed paths with a villain named 'The Rose' and a henchman named Boomerang.
Now, in the course of the three issue series, Boomerang figures out who Jackpot is. And comes to her house, where she's having dinner with her husband and daughter, and kills the husband in front of both girls.
Full stop. A few things of note here, but most importantly, the husband character never got a name. Why is this? One could go into a myriad of reasons, but the one that matters the most is because the writers knew that it wouldn't matter. We wouldn't care about the dead husband, we'd focus on what would happen to Jackpot and her daughter.
The things is, both Kyle Rayner's (Green Lantern) and Sara Erhet's (Jackpot) significant others exist for the sole reason of creating character tragedy, they were both meant to be killed brutally in a fashion to get us, the reader, upset. And for the most part it works, but in different ways.
The issue remains though, that Ms. Erhet's plight is more what we focus on, instead of actually hating Boomerang. Instead of her going and hunting down Boomer, she unmasks The Rose, but decides to retire and go into the 'Witness Relocation Program', to protect her family.
But with Mr. Rayner, we immediately get up in arms about a big bad company abusing women again.
Which also brings up a point, I understand why it's upsetting, and yes, some sort of other device should be used from time to time, but at the same time, I get a sneaky suspicion that the Women in Fridges movement assumes that the readers are giggling and masturbating whenever a woman is killed. And I can say with reasonable confidence that... Most of us don't. We understand why it's there, it's to get us angry. And it really does work.
And it really is because we've been trained as a World Society that women and children are to be protected at all costs. Men's lives are nothing compared to a single Woman's.
So in the end, I'm left with an honest question, for a male character who has a 'tragic past' (and there's no going around it, no saying "no tragic past here"), what would 'you' use to as a device in a story?
