The Avengers and Feminism

I am not ashamed to admit that I enjoyed the Avengers.  A balanced mix of action, humour and character development combined the multiple superheroes and past movie franchises surprisingly well.  What disappointed me about the movie was the role of women and lack of significant feminism.  Don’t get me wrong, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff) was a fantastically strong and smart character who didn’t need superpowers to make her mark in the film.  She didn’t even wear the traditionally revealing and misogynistic costume typical of comic book females.

However, the problem with the movie does not lie with the female characters.  The three women, Natasha, Pepper Potts and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill are proven to be canny, insightful characters on par with the film’s male characters.  The problem lies with the lack of female characters and their interactions with each other. 

Of the three females, only Black Widow has a significant amount of screen time in a predominantly male cast.  While this screen time contained important moments of plot (tricking information out of Loki, figuring out that the portal needed to be closed, etc.), she still is the only female Avenger in a group of five males.  Why just the one?  There were several other female Avengers, why not include one more to balance the genders a little?  For that matter, where are the other female superheroes in film?  In the past 10 years, we’ve seen several Batman, Superman, the Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman and X-men films, among many others.  All notably focused on male superheroes.  Besides Catwomen and Elektra, both of which were less than successful movies, where are the women?

This pattern of male dominated action movies makes me wonder.  It’s not as though there aren’t fantastic female comic characters to make movies about.  Yet action movie directors are typically male, and even Joss Whedon – stated feminist and writer of strong female characters – was criticised at one point as being too soft to direct the Avengers movie.  If anything, the Avengers proves the point that we still live in a male dominated society and women are still being portrayed as somehow lesser than their male counterparts.  Even if Black Widow fought alongside superpowered males with only a handgun.

Check out this post for more information: ‘The Avengers’, Strong Female Characters and Failing the Bechdel Test