{"id":8343,"date":"2017-11-07T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=8343"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:33:25","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:33:25","slug":"all-hail-hela-taking-aim-at-the-villainess-glass-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/all-hail-hela-taking-aim-at-the-villainess-glass-ceiling\/","title":{"rendered":"All Hail Hela, Taking Aim at the Villainess Glass Ceiling"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one will deny Cate Blanchett could play the phone book and it would be amazing. So to say her performance as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok<\/i> is wonderful is a foregone conclusion. But Hela as a character opens the door to comparing her with the Marvel and DC universes\u2019 other villainesses, of which there are not many. pantheon of female villainesses throughout the Marvel and DC universes. While the comic adaptations have a bevy of female characters<\/i>, the female villain<\/i> remains an untapped market, and at certain points in Thor: Ragnarok<\/i>, Hela implies that, regardless of how far we\u2019ve come, the future of evil remains a male-dominated market. <\/span><\/p>\n

To discuss a female character\u2019s looks should be reductive, but it remains a factor in how villainy is portrayed if you\u2019re female. Cate Blanchett is naturally flawless, but none of Hela\u2019s power or authority is enhanced or diminished by her looks. Her outfit is standard black, and though form-fitting it\u2019s never meant to present her sexually. Compare this to Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class<\/i>, played by January Jones, whose character is a \u201choneypot\u201d meant to entice men strictly with her looks. Her costumes consist of assorted lingerie or other cleavage-baring outfits. Her powers, such as the ability to shift into diamond form, act as a metaphor for how women are perceived as jewels or precious gems. <\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of b<\/span>eauty as power, and how the lack of it fosters evil, appears in more than one comic adaptation. The 2004 version of Catwoman<\/i> sees Sharon Stone as Laurel Hedare, a woman obsessed with aging whose face disintegrates from dangerous makeup. More recently, the evil mastermind in Wonder Woman<\/i>, Dr. Maru, aka \u201cDr. Poison,\u201d covers her face a la The Phantom of the Opera<\/i> to hide her disfigured visage. For Hela, beauty is irrelevant. She craves power and authority and attains it with strength and aggression strong enough to destroy Thor\u2019s hammer, Mjolnir. <\/span><\/p>\n

The nature of superpowers is often poorly defined for female villains. The majority have various methods of telepathy (such is with Emma Frost) or the ability to manipulate images. In Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/i>, Scarlet Witch does the latter, illustrating nightmares for those affected by them. But the return of \u201cpretty powers\u201d remains, as in the case of Angel in X-Men: First Class,<\/i> who possesses fairy wings and the ability to shoot fireballs from her mouth. Hela\u2019s power lies in strength. She\u2019s presented as an agile fighter, able to take on an Asgardian army single-handedly. Unlike the other villainesses mentioned, Hela is equal to her male counterparts, which only strengthens her motive for demanding she rule Asgard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hela\u2019s backstory is the only unique element about her, and does the most toward distinguishing her from the female villains of the past. Revenge is a commonality of all villains, male or female, yet Hela\u2019s motivations go to the very roots of religion and patriarchy itself. The first born of Odin\u2019s (Anthony Hopkins) children, Hela believes she should be allowed to rule by seniority. The transition of power going to Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the first biological son of Odin\u2019s, connects back to primogeniture, wherein only the eldest son \u2014 regardless of any female children born first \u2014 automatically received an inheritance. <\/span><\/p>\n

Yet Hela\u2019s roots of hatred go deeper. In one scene she takes in Renaissance-esque paintings of Odin, Thor, and Loki (Tom Hiddleston), not unlike common Catholic depictions of God and Christ. The men are presented with golden halos above their heads as a history of male dominance is deified and presented as glorious. This is Hela\u2019s main source of hostility: when war plays out with men it\u2019s presented as the road to power and omnipotence, yet the entire history of religious teaching \u2014 particularly Catholic-aimed teaching \u2014 is male dominated. Later, after Hela takes over Asgard, the paintings depict her at the right hand of Odin, a female recontextualization of eons of oppression. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth considering why Hela\u2019s evil is relegated to the role of villain and Loki, a character who has tried to kill his brother and family over two films now, is just a lovable \u201ctrickster.\u201d Why do male villains \u2014 another prime example being X-Men\u2019s<\/i> Magneto \u2014 get a shot at redemption, or at least an attempt to mitigate their villainy, while female characters don\u2019t? Like Loki, Hela feels thrown over for Thor, and finds her father\u2019s turn from vengeful, power-mad deity into benevolent God-King to be hypocritical. The question could lie in that return to patriarchy, and while Hela is presented as equally domineering as Thor, the female leader in Asgard is just impossible. <\/span><\/p>\n

Compare Hela to Tessa Thompson\u2019s Valkyrie. Valkyrie is independent and powerful; she\u2019s also plagued by a dark past that, not unlike many male characters, gives her a drinking problem. But where Valkyrie is set up as the antihero, she has no aspirations to take Thor\u2019s place. She\u2019s willing to work alongside, but never overshadow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless, Hela opens the door to villainesses who don\u2019t have to rely on their sexuality and looks as \u201cadvantages\u201d or the reason for their turn to the dark side. Her motivations go beyond the plot of the film and look at the role of gender in society itself. It\u2019s not a flawless gender study, but did you ever expect to see something like this at all in a Thor<\/i> movie?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Kristen Lopez<\/a> fights the patriarchy in Sacramento.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No one will deny Cate Blanchett could play the phone book and it would be amazing. So to say her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":8344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1400],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-on-the-marquee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}