Captain Marvel, Disney Princesses, and the “Feminist Agenda,” Part 2
The
response to Disney’s Captain Marvel has been fraught with controversy, even before the film was released. Greg
Morse, a staff writer at Desiring God, wrote about the movie after seeing it,
and his article has received a lot of criticism (rightfully so, in my opinion).
Morse makes four dangerous rhetorical errors in his piece, and in my last blog post we examined the first two: unclear language and genre confusion.
Now let’s look at the other two problems: reverse chronological snobbery and a
demeaning attitude toward women.
3. Reverse Chronological Snobbery
C. S.
Lewis coined the term “chronological snobbery” to describe the belief that the
“intellectual climate” of our own time is automatically superior to that of the
past, as the beliefs and practices of previous generations are outdated and
less enlightened. This is a dangerous and pernicious mindset, blocking us from
learning from past eras.
Another
detrimental mindset is reverse
chronological snobbery. This is the belief that the intellectual climate of
times past are inherently superior to those in the present. The person who holds
this view practices what my friend E. Stephen Burnett has called
“nostalgia-based discernment”—looking back to the good old days when times were
ostensibly simpler or better or easier. In the words of author Jen Pollock Michel, it can be tempting to “decry the abasement of morality in
contemporary culture…when compared (however naively) to an idyllic yesteryear.”
The idyllic
yesteryear Morse apparently longs for is the time period of the earliest Disney
princesses. But were things better for women back when those movies came out? The
answer isn’t a simple yes or no. However, if you look up some of the
advertising from the period when, say, Sleeping
Beauty was released, you come across horribly sexist and disgustingly unbiblical
views of women.
One ad for a line of neckties encourages husbands to “show her it’s a man’s
world,” picturing a subservient woman in a house-robe kneeling before her husband.
Another ad for climbing sweaters boasts, “Men are better than women! Indoors, women
are useful—even pleasant.” Yet another ad shows a husband holding his wife over his lap, spanking her
because she purchased the wrong kind of coffee.
Based on
these three advertisements alone, we see women depicted as slaves, nuisances,
and children. These ads (and countless others like them) may not encapsulate
how everyone viewed women during the 1950s. They do, however, show that the
societal climate which created the “traditional princess vibe” was not a sterling
example of how to cherish and value women. The 1950s may not have been the epitome
of misogyny, but they weren’t the epitome of chivalry either.
I find it
odd that a writer for Desiring God, a ministry with a reputation for strict Scriptural
fidelity, would be content to myopically and wistfully gaze a mere 60 years in
the past, rather than resolutely looking several thousand years back to how
Scripture—and Christ himself—demonstrates the value and importance of women.
4. A Demeaning Attitude Toward
Women
It is true
that men are generally physically stronger than women. A recent BBC article I read said that men have “40% more upper-body strength and 33%
more lower body strength.” To deny differences between the sexes, or to promote
the idea that one sex is better than the other, is dangerous.
Morse,
however, goes beyond cautioning against such dangers. In fact, he fights so
hard against the “myth of sameness between the sexes” that he communicates
(inadvertently, I believe) not just that men and women are different, but that men are better
than women. How does he do this? Let me share three examples.
First, he
says the “alternative universe where an accident infuses the heroine with
superhuman powers…seems to stand as a reasonable apologetic for the feminist
agenda.” This implies that Captain Marvel
is basically a wish-fulfillment fantasy for women, since they have no hope of
such amazing powers in our universe.
But what
about all the superhero stories where men are infused with superhuman powers
through an accident? Are stories about Spider-Man, The Hulk, and The Flash just
wish fulfillment fantasies for men who lack a sufficient amount of masculinity?
Are these comic book heroes a reasonable apologetic for the misogynist agenda?
Of course, to ask such a silly question is to answer it.
Morse
would have a stronger point if he critiqued movies and TV shows featuring petite
women fighting and overcoming larger, stronger men in real-world, hand-to-hand
combat situations (often involving a quasi-sexual move where the woman wraps
her legs around her enemy’s head to gain the victory). But his claim that a
superhero story will lead women to think they can have superhero powers too is
one step away from ludicrous wish fulfillment itself.
Second, as
I have already mentioned, Morse wrote with a mournful tone, “How far we’ve come
since the days of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.” In highlighting and praising
the two Disney princesses who exerted the least amount of agency, Morse implies
(whether he realizes it or not) his longing for the good old days when women
were considered not just weak, but inferior—so fragile and helpless as to be
childlike in their dependence upon others (men in particular).
The
Sleeping Beauty and Snow White reference in Morse’s article has since been
replaced by the following sentence: “How far we’ve come since the days when we
sought to protect and cherish our women.” If Morse believes female protagonists
were more protected and cherished in the earlier princess days, he insinuates that
men can’t rightly cherish and protect our women unless we reduce their abilities
and contributions—and even literal screen time. (Princess Aurora, for example,
has only 18 lines of dialogue in Sleeping
Beauty, and she never speaks again after the 40 minute mark.)
Third, consider
another line from the article which I’ve already mentioned: “Along with Disney,
we abandon the traditional princess vibe, and seek to empower little girls everywhere
to be strong like men.”
Here, the enviable
“traditional princess vibe” involves cases where the princess is comatose and
unable to participate in her story at all. This goes way beyond a desire to
faithfully communicate that God made men and women different—including in the area
of physical strength. It communicates a desire to “care” for women by infantilizing
them—something that is neither protective nor cherishing.
To once
again quote K. B. Hoyle:
A
teaching like this leads to insinuations beyond physicality to comparisons of
strength and weakness of all types. Mental strength, spiritual strength,
emotional strength. In all ways, one might be led to believe that men are
stronger, women are weaker. . . . Couple this with an overreach of
complementarianism that teaches girls and women to always be submissive to men,
and you generate an environment ripe for potential abuses. What a damaging—I
would go so far as to say damning—theology of image bearers of God. . . .
I
don’t fault men who want to protect women—it is noble and godly to desire to
serve others. But to do so to the exclusion of the strengths of the helpmates
God created to work alongside men is to take a good mandate and poison it with
pride and self-sufficiency. In real life, not all men are strong. And even when
they are, they are often not protectors.
The Proverbs 31 Superhero
A year
before Sleeping Beauty, the exploits
of a superhero-like woman graced the silver screen in the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Starring
Ingrid Bergman, this movie told the story of Gladys Aylward, based loosely on
her autobiography, The Little Woman. Here’s
the tagline for her book (as listed on Amazon.com):
“A solitary woman. A foreign country. An unknown language. An impossible dream?
No.”
What was
this movie about? Who was Gladys Aylward? Here’s more of her book description:
With
no mission board to support or guide her, and less than ten dollars in her
pocket, Gladys Aylward left her home in England to answer God’s call to take
the message of the gospel to China. With the Sino-Japanese War waging around
her, she struggled to bring the basics of life and the fullness of God to
orphaned children. Time after time, God triumphed over impossible situations,
and drew people to Himself. The Little
Woman tells the story of one woman’s determination to serve God at any
cost.
Ingrid
Bergman’s stellar performance in The Inn
of the Sixth Happiness gave us an entry into what we might call the “Scripturally-informed
strong woman vibe”—a protagonist of immense physical and emotional fortitude, demonstrating
a kaleidoscope of virtues worthy of emulation and respect. Aylward’s superhuman
efforts provided an engaging viewing experience, and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness proved to be the second most popular film at the British box office in 1959.
Over the
years, Sleeping Beauty may have won
more hearts in the public consciousness, including that of Greg Morse, but The Inn of the Sixth Happiness gave the
world a more complex, three-dimensional, and admirable portrayal of femininity.
Hollywood would do well to give us more cinematic characters like Gladys
Aylward, and writers would do well to remember that honoring femininity does
not necessitate making them helpless damsels in distress.
Theoretically
speaking, it is possible for filmmakers to use a superhero story to push an
agenda that is diametrically opposed to biblical principles of masculinity and
femininity. But with the “particular message of Captain Marvel [being] that there is a special and unique strength
in being a woman” (to quote K. B. Hoyle again), Greg Morse is barking up the
wrong tree, in the wrong forest, on the wrong continent.
In
closing: If Greg Morse and I were to sit down and have an in-depth talk about
our worldviews, my guess is that we would agree far more often than we
disagree. I haven’t shared my thoughts here because I have an axe to grind or
because I’m out for blood. It is, in fact, because of my respect for those at
Desiring God that I wrote this critique. A misguided attempt of such magnitude
as Morse’s, on such a public platform, is worthy of constructive criticism. My
prayer is that this two-part blog series qualifies as such a response.
UPDATE: I have since had an in-depth conversation with Greg Morse, necessitating a third blog post to modify my critiques and help bring some much-needed clarity to Morse’s initial intentions. You can read that entry here: What REALLY Went Wrong with Desiring God’s Critique of CAPTAIN MARVEL
UPDATE: I have since had an in-depth conversation with Greg Morse, necessitating a third blog post to modify my critiques and help bring some much-needed clarity to Morse’s initial intentions. You can read that entry here: What REALLY Went Wrong with Desiring God’s Critique of CAPTAIN MARVEL
photo
credit: AntMan3001
via flickr,
CC (this photo has been cropped)
Comments
Excellent blog post.