The Bomb Girl and the Soldier

After the first season of Bomb Girls aired, its showrunner and co-creator, Michael MacLennan, did an interview with the pop culture bloggers of The Mind Reels. Drawing a comparison between the two shows as period dramas, one of the interviewers asked MacLennan what he thinks of Downton Abbey. MacLennan’s response was an impressively diplomatic phrasing of a very simple message: it all went to hell in the second season. (This section begins around 49:30, but do yourself a favour and listen to the whole thing.)

This is precisely the reason why, although the original Strong Female Character schedule had January booked as Downton Abbey month, we couldn’t go through with it. Why discuss a show that’s gone off the rails when you can spend your time on a series that shows every sign of staying on course?

The reason why we chose Bomb Girls -- and the reason why we will eventually deal with Downton -- lies in its writers’ approach to historical drama. In its first season, Downton Abbey looked like it was going to chronicle the downfall of the aristocracy, the rise of the middle class, and the changing status of women’s rights. Instead, it became a soapy mess dominated by love triangles and half-baked storylines often made possible by what seemed like daily trips back from the frontlines of the First World War.

Bomb Girls, by contrast, follows through with its premise of representing the often unacknowledged efforts of the women left at home. More than this, though, it does what we would like every period drama to do: use its historical setting to address issues that are still relevant in contemporary life and to interrogate our perception of ourselves as a society advanced beyond the people of that era.

Gladys Witham

A perfect example of this is the character of Gladys Witham. Gladys is the wealthy heiress of Witham Foods, a company doing its part in the war by capitalizing on rations contracts. After getting a job in the office at Victory Munitions, she finds herself attracted to the life and work of the bomb girls. Over the course of the first season, she struggles to find a place for herself both within and beyond the restrictive boundaries of her privileged life, confronting the realities of a social system that prefers to view her as a cardboard cutout than as a person.

In exchange for her wealth, Gladys is expected to relinquish all aspirations of being anything but arm candy and breeding stock. She possesses a keen mind for business tactics, but is excluded from taking an active role in her father’s enterprise by virtue of being a woman. Following a dinner that Gladys disrupted by daring to stand up to the guest, her expected role is explained by her mother: “There are other ways -- our ways -- to effect an outcome. So you powder your nose and walk downstairs. You’ll titter at jokes, compliment tie clips, and charm Tank Treleven’s cold, crass heart. That, dear Gladys, is your job.” Her power is limited to motivating the people who possess real power. She is intended to be, at best, a conduit; through her, her father’s power passes to her husband and her sons. Gladys, however, refuses to play this role. Instead, she takes advantage of the new opportunities offered by the war to become an active participant in her own life.

Gladys’ obsession with the roles people play in life appears to originate in her love of film. Her vanity mirror is surrounded by pictures of glamourous movie stars, and she models her own dress and behaviour on theirs. While she yearns to be onscreen, she tries to temper this longing by imbuing her life with Hollywood magic. On one occasion, her father suggests that her enthusiastic support of the war effort is just part of a game, in which she dresses up as the starlet du jour and re-imagines the war as a production with her as the lead. On another, she uses the events of a Hitchcock film in order to confront her fiancé about his infidelity. The problem with this approach to life, however, is that Gladys sometimes forgets that other people do not have the luxury of playing a part.

Being faced with the real conditions of factory work helps her to examine her privilege. Bomb-making begins as yet another role to which Gladys is attracted. In the first episode, Gladys looks on as Betty gives the trainees a pep talk and the expression on her face bespeaks her enchantment with their work. Ironically, she first becomes enamoured with the job while listening to Betty explain just how simple and unremarkable it is. Still, assisting in this work makes her instrumental in the fight against Hitler and therefore feeds her dramatic appetite; as she argues when she first asks for the job, “I came here to battle the Axis, Mr. Akins. I feel I can do more than just alphabetize.”

The problem is that almost no one else in the factory believes her. The other women on blue shift are reluctant to accept her as one of them, expressing their opinions that she will either get herself injured or give up when the work gets too hard. They are always aware of their vastly different socioeconomic positions; whereas Gladys is attracted to factory work as a matter of patriotic duty, the other women need this job in order to feed themselves and their children.

Gladys receives her first lesson in this harsh reality when she sets out to improve factory conditions following the detonation of a bad test bomb. She stands up to the Victory Munitions boss, Harold Akins, about the double standard inherent in blaming only the women workers for the problem. When she asks for support from the other women, however, they claim that their own demand for better conditions was just talk -- the inconsequential chattering of women. As Kate tells Gladys, “Nobody wants a Joan of Arc to lead [them] to battle.” Even when Gladys offers them the shelter of anonymity in the form of a suggestion box -- a fancy hat box converted into a useful object, a neat symbolic representation of Gladys herself -- they have to be crudely insulted by the men and led by one of their own before they will act. Because Gladys is not as invested in this fight, she must learn to play a supporting role. While her distance from economic reality allows her to speak up and initiate the women’s rebellion, she cannot fully take part.

Helping to make her part of the group are Betty and Kate. Initially, Betty is unhappy with Gladys’ presence on the line, resenting the security of her seemingly charmed life. Kate is more open to the idea of forging a friendship, but it is ultimately Betty -- the best worker, the working class Joan of Arc -- who must accept Gladys. The combination of her support and Gladys’ willingness to be part of the team of bomb-makers allows her to state unequivocally, “I belong here. I earned the right to stand with these women.”

Unfortunately, the right she earned and the privilege she maintains come into conflict in the final episode. Her controlling father learns that she has been working on the floor instead of in the office, and he risks the lives of every person at Vic Mu simply because he wishes to discipline his daughter. Gladys’ mother orchestrates a plan in which she offers Lorna money to send Sheila to medical school in exchange for Lorna firing Gladys. Lorna refuses, and does not give in even when Gladys responds to her warnings about marriage with a callous “Mrs. Corbett, I’m sorry if you hate your life. Did you ever think that maybe I have a better one?” She does, however, use her own positive pregnancy test to get Gladys fired when she learns that Gladys put Vera on the line with no consideration for the psychological scars she might disturb. She can enjoy her right to stand with the other bomb-makers until the moment she puts their lives on the line.

In addition to this reclamation of personal agency, represented by the transition from the informal “career” of entertaining to the formal job of making explosives, the show uses Gladys’ character to explore the issue of sexual double standards. Both Gladys and her fiancé, James, are unfaithful in some way, Gladys by engaging in some sexual experimentation with a soldier and James by having a full-fledged affair with one of the factory workers. Initially, Gladys becomes a willing enforcer of these double standards. While Gladys is hurt by James’ actions, she focuses most of her ire on the “other woman,” Hazel, who has been stealing things that Gladys received from James in order to validate their secret, physical relationship. Gladys tries to convince Hazel to confess to the thefts, again caring very little for the fact that that would lose Hazel her job. Even when Hazel transfers to a different shift, Gladys slut shames her, stating, “At least I earned my pin money standing up.”

This again leads us back to the topic of roles. Gladys is constantly defining herself as “not that kind of girl.” She does so in the first episode as a way to discourage the soldier’s advances, and again when she asks James why he chose to pursue Hazel instead of approaching her about taking the next step in their relationship. The problem is not that Gladys doesn’t want to have sex with James; on the contrary, her introductory scene shows her trying to take things further at their engagement party. The problem lies entirely in the societal construct of “that kind of girl” and the Madonna-whore dichotomy that it suggests.

Despite her behaviour with Hazel, Gladys demonstrates a canny understanding of this additional limitation. She explores her sexuality, first with Lewis and then with James, and her continued assertion that she’s “not that kind of girl” suggests that she refuses to be painted as dirty or corrupt simply because she had the audacity to seek out pleasure. She also rejects the idealized virgin role, telling her fiancé, “You put me up on a pedestal, James, and when I fall? I’m going to hurt something.” She fights to be seen as a person, capable of making mistakes and worthy of experiencing pleasure without the pressure of societal expectation.

There is one final area in which Gladys must confront the difference between the real and the ideal: the war itself. Gladys spends the first season championing the war effort, not only doing her part in the factory but verbally defending the soldiers at every opportunity. She risks familial repercussions when she calls Tank Treleven out for disrespecting the troops, and she is instrumental in convincing James and her father to improve rations production to prevent spoilage. She only questions her approach when her personal romance comes into conflict with her romanticization of the war. When James joins up following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he tells Gladys that he did so because she wanted him to be a soldier. She tries to tell him that that was before she knew the realities of what he would face, and that she isn’t “looking for a hero.”

This is the power of Gladys’ story. In every respect of her life, she is trying to discover how to negotiate the boundaries of the real and the ideal. She makes mistakes, but she is willing to learn from them. Through her struggle, the show explores the construction of social identity and the arbitrary designations we have for what is “right” or “proper.” Faced with almost insurmountable societal pressure to conform to a prefabricated ideal, Gladys nevertheless fights to define the role that she will play in her own life.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Vera Burr

Vera is introduced via what comics fans often call a “butt shot,” a shot in which we see her from behind, leaning down to light a cigarette. In a show filled with deliberate symbolism, it’s hard to dismiss this moment. Over the course of the first episode, we learn that Vera is well-known for her active sex life. She has accepted three soldiers’ marriage proposals, and considers this to be an act of charity, because, as she states, “they only propose to you so they got someone to think about when they’re off sweating in their bunks.” What we love about Vera is that she controls and embraces her sexuality; she decides to have sex, she knowingly becomes masturbatory fantasy material, and she feels no shame for doing so. Just as amazing is the fact that, while some of the other women are scandalized by her attitude and exploits, there is absolutely no slut-shaming.

As we all know from our exposure to media, a woman who takes obvious pride in her physical appearance is often punished for her pride by losing her beauty. On a superficial level, Bomb Girls plays into this trope, as Vera suffers a horrible, disfiguring injury during a moment of distraction on the line. Instead of portraying this as a punishment, however, the show uses Vera’s injury to delve into a number of different issues, among them the value of women workers relative to male soldiers, the reduction of women to their physical attractiveness, and the effects of depression and PTSD.

Several of these issues are introduced in a speech Lorna delivers to the doctor responsible for Vera, urging him to treat her as he would any man injured in service to his country: “You can’t let her leave here deformed; it will destroy her future. … Vera is a soldier. Vera risked her life every day to help win this war. Do not turn your back on her. If you want to see our boys with bullets in their guns and bombs in their planes, you will show her the same respect. … Now go in there, and book the operating room, and you do the surgeries, no matter how expensive or lengthy. You do your best for that girl.” Although we touched on the meaning of that speech for Lorna, we’d like to discuss it in more detail as it relates to Vera.

While Lorna is clearly thinking of Bob when she says that a deformity would destroy Vera’s future, there is more to this than one person hoping to save another from the kind of suffering she’s witnessed for decades. These women are enjoying a short period of time during which they are the ones driving the economy and earning their own livelihood. As long as the war continues, they have an opportunity for independence; however, once it’s over, it’s likely that pre-war social realities will be re-established (with a vengeance, as it turns out). Vera’s injury doesn’t just put her out of the job while she recuperates or limit her options for future employment; instead, it stands the chance of destroying her opportunities for marriage and financial support when the men come back to reclaim their jobs.

Lorna also argues that Vera is a soldier, and that is one of the show’s many compelling propositions: that these women in their jumpsuits, making the bombs, are just as much a part of the military as the men in their uniforms, using them. Women produce what the men will employ, and that makes them integral to the fight. The doctor claims that the men must be their first priority, and Lorna immediately links the process of prioritizing with ideas of value. That is why it’s so perfect that she tells them to “do the surgeries, no matter how expensive or lengthy.” She is telling them that Vera is quite literally worth just as much as any soldier.

It is one thing for Lorna to make this claim, and another for Vera to believe it. Vera’s storyline over the course of the season revolves around her decision to commit suicide. She sees no future for herself, admitting in the third episode that she can’t even go home to her family: “Why give them the satisfaction of knowing all along that I was nothin’ but a pretty face? Now I’m nothing.”

As one might expect, mirrors play a major role in Vera’s story. At the beginning of the second episode, she appears detached and numb, claiming that she “can’t feel a thing.” She does not express any emotion until she gazes at herself in the mirror, looking first at the unchanged left side before shifting the mirror to show her right, where the stitches and swelling dominate her face. It is only when faced with her reflection that she cries. If you’ll excuse a little English major indulgence, I’d also argue that the mirror symbolizes the fact that, at this point, Vera cannot see past her own appearance. Any view of the future is blocked by this mirror, that can only reflect her own trauma.

This is where Archie comes in. Archie is another Victory Munitions worker who sustained a major injury on the job. Although Vera is initially angered by his comments about her injury -- including one particularly tasteless one about her looking like she’d made out with a cheese grater -- she comes to understand that jokes are a coping mechanism. As Archie observes, “You gotta laugh about it, or you’re gonna cry.” Upon discovering that Vera has been collecting sleeping pills, Archie tries to convince her not to commit suicide, but she cannot be swayed. It is only when Archie becomes fatally ill with sepsis that she gives up on her plan and decides to live.

The speech she delivers in this moment, as she helps someone else die and decides to live, is an echo of the one Lorna gave in order to save her: “You know, after my accident, Edith told me Lorna argued with Dr. Poitier, said he had to do right by me in the surgery. She called me a soldier, same as any man here. And I liked that. I suppose I still do. That’s the two of us Archie: we’re soldiers... on the home front.” Vera has come to value herself and her contributions, and this allows her to continue to fight.

This is the point at which many other shows might stop; Vera has decided to live, she’s displayed great strength in helping someone die with dignity, and she’s served as an inspiration to us all. That’s why what happens in the next episode is so necessary to her storyline.

In the final episode of the season, Vera has decided to go back to her family, seeing no future in Toronto with “a face only a mother could love.” Lorna refuses to let her go, saying, “My husband came back from the Great War, months in the hospital, same as you, then home, where the ankylosis set in. He went in, Vera, and he never came out again.” When Vera dismisses this comparison by saying that she’s not him, Lorna states, “That’s right. You’re stronger.”

With this vote of confidence, Vera returns to the factory, where Lorna sets the example and treats her as she did before the accident. Again, stopping here would have provided us with our unrealistic happy ending, but the show follows Vera to the factory floor, where she has been posted in the same line where she was standing when the accident occurred. She experiences a panic attack, during which her flailing arms bump the hanging bombs. In her current psychological state, she would be a danger to herself and others on the floor. Her future is again threatened.

Vera’s final scene is one of the most effective, excruciating moments in a season finale full of them. Knowing she needs employment and can’t risk working on the line, she offers the factory boss, Harold Akins, sexual favours in exchange for an office job. The first time I watched it I had trouble with this scene, but looking at it with a more critical eye, I would argue that this is the point where Vera proves that she is a survivor. Before the accident, she had what appear to be fairly high standards for her sexual partners. She used to do it for her own enjoyment, but now we see a shift; this isn’t fun, it’s survival. Unlike Bob, who wallows in his suffering, Vera decides to work her way around it. She needs to have a life again and cannot do so if she is constantly subjecting herself to her trauma, so she does what she must. It’s not nice, it’s not fair, but it is necessary.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Miscellaneous Mondays: Strong Women

I’m a fan of superhero comics, so, although we spend most of our time talking about strength of character, I have a special place in my heart for women who display great physical strength. That’s one of the reasons why my collectible Wonder Woman figurine shares a shelf with my Virginia Woolf plushie.

It’s also the reason for the focus of this post. Superhero comics are well-known for their portrayal of impossible women’s bodies. These women often have the kind of statuesque physiques that could only exist on an actual statue, with torsos so narrow it seems as if they’ve had some vital organs removed. As if these women weren’t already in danger of snapping at the waist, they all seem to possess the most common superpower. Perhaps the (usually male) artists are operating under the assumption that women can relocate their internal organs to protrude from their chests.

The most obvious example of this phenomenon is Power Girl, a superhero so well-endowed that her insignia is a boob window. There is a story, circulated through the comics-reading community and addressed by blogger Ragnell, that the character’s impressive cup size is the fault of Wally Wood, the artist who drew the character when she was first created. Wood supposedly decided to see if the editors were paying attention to his work by increasing Power Girl’s bust size every issue. Unfortunately, it took several issues for anyone to notice, so she’s been stuck with gravity-defying, back-breaking breasts ever since.

While the unrealistic breast size of these characters is certainly indicative of their over-sexualization, I would argue that there’s another aspect to this decision. In order to perform acts of tremendous physical strength, female superheroes need to have a well-defined musculature. However, because physical strength is so thoroughly associated with masculinity, the artists feel that they need to over-enhance the character’s feminine appearance. What’s the best way to do this? Long, flowing, easily-pulled-in-hand-to-hand-combat hair and fabric-straining breasts.

So it was with delight that I found this review of Venus with Biceps: A Pictorial History of Muscular Women by David L. Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky. Although I haven’t yet purchased a copy for myself, I’m more than willing to get the word out about what looks to be a very interesting work, that not only discusses issues of gender identity, but also collects a number of images of unrepentantly strong women.

Perhaps even better than knowing that this book exists, however, is seeing similar images make their way back into popular culture. MAC has recently launched a new cosmetics line called “Strength,” and its advertising is a thing of beauty. Not only is the face of the line a bodybuilder, Jelena Abbou, but the tagline of the campaign is the greatest I’ve read outside of that amazing 1980s Lego ad: “Flex your femininity with a colour collection that’s fearless, elegant and strong. Strike a powerful pose, stand out, redefine the notion of beauty -- and do it with strength too irresistible to ignore.” That’s advertising even Wonder Woman would love.

The Shift Matron and the War Widow

Canada is known for many things: breathtaking natural beauty, an over-dependence on maple syrup, and a population whose famous humility makes way for brief bouts of patriotism only once every four years, when we cheer for the gifted athletes we usually ignore and the professional hockey players we watch almost constantly. We are not, as a rule, celebrated as the home of fantastic feminist television shows.

However, with the international success of the homegrown drama Bomb Girls, that’s beginning to change. Set during the Second World War, Bomb Girls chronicles the trials and tribulations of life on the home front for the women of Victory Munitions, a bomb factory in Toronto. At work, at home, and at play, these women simultaneously struggle with the sexist standards of their time and bask in the new freedom allowed them while the men fight overseas.

I mentioned in Monday’s post that this show passes the Bechdel test twice in the first three minutes of the first episode, but what is even more notable is that it holds to this pattern for the remainder of the first season. Bomb Girls is precisely the kind of show that would exist in a post-Bechdel test cultural climate, in which women in the media are shown to be thinking, feeling people with important relationships with other women, all of whom have full lives that don’t revolve around men.

(Note: We will only be covering the first season in our analysis. We have, however, timed these posts to coincide with the release of Season Two in Canada, so once you’ve bought and marathoned the first season on DVD, there will be bright, shiny, new episodes waiting for you.)

Lorna Corbett

We begin with Lorna Corbett, the blue shift matron at Vic Mu, who is just about the only person in management who seems to understand how to run the place. It is her job to ensure order in her shift and to inspect her workers for materials that may spark in the very literal powder keg in which they work. Her boss, Harold Akins, reduces her job to a simple task, exclaiming, “For God’s sakes, all you have to worry about is dressing the girls for their shifts.” But Lorna actually does much more. She asks that the factory implement a comprehensive sexual harassment policy and goes on to write it herself. When a bad bomb injures three male workers during testing, she takes the women’s suggestions for improvement to Akins. She tells him to publish them in a report and take the credit for increasing safety and productivity; in exchange, she asks only that her scapegoated worker be rehired.

In these two instances, and in many others, she demonstrates that she is committed to protecting her girls. The best example occurs near the end of the first episode, when Lorna appeals to a doctor to give a grievously injured woman worker the same treatment that he would give the higher priority soldiers. She gives an impassioned speech: “You can’t let her leave here deformed; it will destroy her future. … Vera is a soldier. Vera risked her life every day to help win this war. Do not turn your back on her. If you want to see our boys with bullets in their guns and bombs in their planes, you will show her the same respect. … Now go in there, and book the operating room, and you do the surgeries, no matter how expensive or lengthy. You do your best for that girl.” Lorna refuses to let women’s role in the war be dismissed and their work devalued; instead, she argues that they are instrumental in the men’s success and should therefore be treated with equal care.

Lorna knows very well what it means to contribute to the war effort. She is the mother of three grown children, two of whom are fighting across the pond while she and her daughter do their part at home. She is also the wife of a World War I veteran, whose experiences during the Great War left him crippled, both physically and emotionally. The show takes this opportunity not only to flesh out the well-worn character of the dissatisfied middle-aged woman, but to explore the effects of PTSD on the affected person’s family.

As her husband’s character becomes increasingly complex, we discover what Lorna has had to live with for twenty-five years. Bob has a drinking problem and a tendency to be brutally honest in a way that comes across as callous. He refuses to have sex with her and chooses to complain about the extravagance of buying a whole pot roast rather than praise Lorna for making it. He’s not all bad, however. His observations, cynical as they may be, are often correct, and his decision to revisit the trauma of his wartime experience in order to write convincing letters for Edith’s children is admirable. When it comes to their marriage, however, things have gotten so bad that Lorna becomes suspicious when he displays any positive emotion.

From Lorna’s perspective, the problem is that Bob has never made any effort to move on from his traumatic experience, choosing instead to view the world “through the lens of a few terrible months [he] had twenty-five years ago.” He seems to prefer to wallow in his pain rather than acknowledge the things they have accomplished since the war. While he remained isolated in his pain, she tried to convince him to let her in, explaining that “[she] asked, [she] hinted, [she] tried, and then finally, [she] gave up.” She has been trying to re-forge a connection for decades, and it’s understandable that she would resent him when he finally makes an attempt to do the same.

Her relationship with Bob also explains why she is so determined to help Vera. Faced with the prospect of seeing another person in her life lose themselves to depression, she fights back. She has to make Vera what Bob never allowed himself to become: a person who lives after not dying.

Unfortunately, most of Lorna’s good advice is reserved for other people. Just as she makes it her job to protect her girls, she also considers it her duty to protect her country. In the first episode, she begins a campaign to get a materials controller, Marco Moretti, ousted from Vic Mu based solely on his Italian heritage and Italy’s connections to Hitler. She accuses him of being an enemy spy and then spends most of the first three episodes trying to prove her suspicions. She believes that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide, and any investigation will necessarily find them innocent. Implicit in this notion is the idea that if you are found guilty of something, you must have done it. Eventually, she reports him to higher military authorities, which leads to rumours of his being taken to an internment camp. It is only when she shares an awkward family dinner with Marco and his mother that she begins to relinquish her fear and comes to appreciate their cultural differences, as well as the flaws in her worldview.

While Lorna claims that her actions are driven by the circumstances of global conflict, she proves that, in this case, the political is personal. Smoking out an enemy spy allows her to feel like she’s helping to protect her sons; the same rationale motivates her to make the bombs that will kill other mothers’ sons. When she sees Marco with his mother in his home, she can no longer pretend not to see him as a person. Unfortunately, this realization coincides with the discovery of their mutual attraction. It seems that Lorna’s misuse of her power as a native Canadian to banish an Italian threat was also an attempt to banish the temptation that threatens her family and marriage; she had to neutralize what she viewed as a threat to both her home country and her home. This is further complicated by the fact that Lorna ends up having sex with Marco and becoming pregnant with his child, willingly letting him into her life.

This all brings us to the issue of sacrifice. When asked to deliver a speech on Armistice Day, Lorna chooses as her focus the topic of individual sacrifice on behalf of the greater good. While she explicitly links this concept to the efforts of soldiers in both wars, she also acknowledges the sacrifices that she and her fellow workers make to support them. Implicitly, she also talks about herself. Early in the speech, she delivers a line that she wrote in an earlier scene; the repetition suggests that it is intended to draw our focus. As she says, “We are all asked to make sacrifices, and while not every sacrifice is rewarded, it is our duty to do so.” It seems as if Lorna is speaking about her marriage, twenty-five years of living with a distant partner in order to raise three children, two of whom she has offered to her country. By the end of the speech, however, she seems to be looking to the future: “Sometimes, you know when a thing is right. What’s a few small sacrifices on our part when we stand to win back the happiness and freedom we deserve?” She sees herself as deserving of love and affection. She sees herself as deserving of a life that takes into account her needs.

This all changes when she learns of the pregnancy in the next episode. After the positive test comes back, she breaks down in front of Marco, saying that she’s a horrible person who deserves this punishment for all of the awful things she’s done. She laments, “I thought it was finally my turn; I’d get my life. And now it’s over.” She has come to the conclusion that she’s not the hero, doggedly pursuing the enemy; rather, she is the villain, paying for her crimes.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Edith McCallum

Edith is the least developed and, arguably, the weakest character among the six that we’ll be discussing. At the factory, she is Lorna’s right-hand woman, the bridge between her and her girls. In the show, she is the first victim of the war.

Edith is at work when she learns that her husband’s plane has been shot down, and her grief is suddenly made very public. While the show makes clear that the news could have come to anyone, even going so far as to make it seem as if one of Lorna’s sons had died, it is ultimately Edith who collapses with grief. The rest of the season chronicles her attempt to cope with the loss.

Although she gets less screen time than other characters, Edith’s story is a fairly compelling one. She continues to work after receiving the news, taking comfort in her friends and in the activity. Despite the fact that she barely sleeps, she knows that she must support her family and diligently does her job until she is the unfortunate victim of scapegoating after a disastrous testing day. When Lorna tries to justify her firing by implying that she could have done better on the test, Edith defends herself: “Aside from not sleeping a wink since my husband was blown to bits, or worrying how I’m gonna raise two kids, or how I still can’t tell them Daddy’s never coming home... Aside from all that, I can’t imagine what took my head out of the game.” In addition to her grief, she now has to deal with a reputation for incompetence that will prevent her from finding further employment.

Once she gets her job back, she still has to deal with the mess that is her personal life. The rest of her storyline revolves around her refusal to tell her children that their father is dead. Although both Lorna and Bob take issue with her decision, Edith is persistent, trying to protect her children from the kind of pain that she is experiencing. She causes herself more pain, however, in pretending that everything is fine. Helping and hindering her in this pursuit is Bob, who pens letters for the kids in the guise of Edith’s husband before eventually revealing the truth. In a refreshing change, the show doesn’t actively support Bob’s decision to end the charade, but instead has him acknowledge that it was her right to tell them; he apologizes for taking away her agency.

Edith’s defining moment comes in the second episode. Vera has asked to brush Edith’s hair, and in a revealing moment, Edith laments, “I guess the war pretty much kicked the girly girl out of us, didn’t it?” She is not just talking about coveralls and turbans, but about the reality that she faces as a single parent, having to become mother and father and breadwinner.

Verdict: Supporting role

Miscellaneous Mondays: The Quest for a Better Hero's Journey

This week’s Miscellaneous Mondays post features a talk given by communications expert Colin Stokes about the profound influence that the filmic hero’s journey exercises on the audience. In this video, he discusses the limitations inherent in this trope and advocates for a paradigm shift from a hero’s journey, focused on an individual (usually a man) who either defeats other people or claims them as prizes, to a heroes’ journey, focused on a team comprised of people of all genders, whose goal is to improve themselves and those around them.



Now for a bit of a teaser. Whether you have been basing your viewing habits on the Bechdel test for years or had never heard of it before watching this video, you might be interested to know that the television show that we’ll be talking about in our next series of posts passes the test two times in the first three minutes.

She Blinded Me With Science

In our survey of the subversive qualities of the ladies of Adventure Time, it’s only right that we end with Princess Bubblegum. For the better part of three seasons, Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum (hereafter Bubblegum, Bonnibel, Peebles, or just PB) occupies the role traditionally reserved for the princess prize, the woman who will be given to the hero as just deserts for his impressive deeds. Except, of course, that that’s not even remotely what happens.

Just as Marceline operates within and against the conception of vampires derived from literary and folkloric sources, the character of Bonnibel is informed by a long tradition of fairy tale princesses. Her skin, hair, and wardrobe are all overwhelmingly pink. She has a tendency to speak in a formal register, stopping just short of speaking with the royal “we.” She serves as an almost preternaturally all-knowing guide to our hero, and it is her job both to send him off on quests and to ensure that he learns the proper lesson from his adventures. She even bids him farewell by waving a handkerchief.

The handkerchief incident is an excellent indicator as to the show’s approach to Bubblegum’s princess status; when seeing Finn off, she actually stops herself mid-sentence, says, “Wait a minute,” and produces the cloth in order to get the look right. If a princess is sending her hero off, she has to cut a suitably dramatic figure. The same kind of transparency exists in her speech patterns. While she clearly strives to stay in royal character, she also regularly slips into informal diction and slang, mixing declarations that she “will be back on the morrow” (a phrase which, in context, is itself a play on assumptions about formal language) with words like “y’all” and “aight.” Even the lessons she imparts are delivered in unexpected ways. When Finn and Jake disregard signs telling them not to enter a dungeon -- signs that Bubblegum had them put up -- she tries to make them see that the lesson was to obey her orders. The boys offer a different lesson and, when Bubblegum finds it lacking, Finn amends it: “I learned that you are a very... intelligent princess?” Her response? “You’re darn right I am.” As if all this weren’t enough to let us know that we’re dealing with a different kind of princess, the swan she rides can shoot lasers. Because of the show’s post-apocalyptic setting, it almost seems as if Bubblegum has tried to meld her reality with our storytelling tropes, revealing the performativity of princessery in the process.

Further hammering this point home are Bonnibel’s other pursuits. She is a polyglot, speaking German and English as well as understanding Korean. Like the sugar-based lovechild of Pinkie Pie and Marie Curie, she spends her time either attending bizarre events (our particular favourite is the Whistling Choir Death Match Championship) or doing Science (the capital “S” is always implied). We’re most interested in the latter interest, because science has typically been considered masculine territory.

In Adventure Time, however, the first episode opens with Bubblegum conducting an essentially impossible scientific experiment while Finn looks on, fascinated and uncomprehending. It’s a daring move, because the first time we meet Bubblegum, she messes up. In another show, this might set the standard for her character: she tries to perform experiments beyond her ability and Finn saves the day by fighting the monsters that result. Instead, she has him babysit her subjects while she fixes the situation herself. In addition, the problem that she’s trying to solve is death itself, and she triumphs. Accidentally raising a candy-eating zombie hoard from the dead can be overlooked when it leads to unlocking the secret of resurrection.

Adventure Time manages to strike this kind of balance in many aspects of Bubblegum’s character. She is obsessed with science, once going so far as to use a wide variety of scientific approaches and equipment to make “the most perfect sandwich that has ever existed or ever will exist within the confines of space-time.” In this instance and one other, when she stays up for eighty-three hours straight in order to make herself an immortal replacement, the show suggests that this obsession may be unhealthy. At the same time, however, the vast majority of her experiments and inventions are helpful, practical, and just downright cool, and the show actively supports her accomplishments. She also has a tendency to engage in displays of irrational anger, but these moments are tempered by the hyper-rationality that dominates the rest of her life.

Although she often has to be saved, she is clearly able to take care of herself. The best example of this occurs in the episode “Lady and Peebles,” which follows Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn as they embark on their own adventure to save Finn and Jake from the nightmarish Ricardio the Heart Guy. Not only does PB prepare for every eventuality, but when her equipment is stolen and Lady injured, she nevertheless sets forth to save her friends, all while carrying the much larger Lady on her shoulders. When she discovers that Ricardio has made himself a body and intends to marry her, she agrees, on the condition that he must beat her in hand-to-hand combat. She exploits his body’s poor design, literally ripping him limb from limb before delivering this amazing speech: “You think we’re intellectual equals? It only took me seconds to get you off your guard! And this ‘body’ you’ve designed is self-congratulatory garbage! See, I know a thing or two about building a body out of biomass, and you don’t leave your heart exposed!” When Ricardio protests that he only wanted to impress her, she simply replies, “You didn’t.” Finally, because she hadn’t quite reached a high enough level of BAMFitude, she drags Finn, Jake, Lady Rainicorn, and the Ice King back to the Candy Kingdom, where she cures them and builds the Ice King a new heart. Still, while she combines brains and brawn, she doesn’t quite fit the warrior princess mold. She doesn’t seem to enjoy fighting, using it not to replace, but to support her intellectual smackdowns.

In addition to her duties as princess of the Candy Kingdom, she is queen of the trolls. Not only does she help Jake with his haunted house trick, but she uses her knowledge that Finn wants to kiss her to engage in a little good-natured teasing. She makes a habit of exploiting her connections to a hero to get him to do menial tasks for her, like watching her princess plant or putting up signs. The pièce de résistance is her decision to make Finn and Jake believe that she’ll be decapitated if they don’t deliver tarts to an official ceremony on time, purely to ensure that they won’t eat the tarts themselves.

This attitude toward Finn may explain, at least in part, why they don’t really work as a romantic pairing. While Finn entertains the idea that the (probably several times) eighteen-year-old Bonnibel could come to love his thirteen-year-old self, she seems to understand that they are at different places in their lives. This is confirmed in “Too Young,” when the thirteen-year-old Bubblegum displays feelings for Finn that her older self dismisses as a mere childish whim. He constantly tries to impress her, but she cannot -- or does not let herself -- see his actions as legitimate romantic advances. In fact, her willingness to tease him about wanting to kiss her may stem from her inability to figure out a way to let him down gently. This is suggested by the events of “Incendium,” when Finn puts his head in Bubblegum’s lap and she cannot get away fast enough. Before she goes, she does manage to express how awkward he has made their friendship: “Finn, no. Come on, Finn, don’t be weird.” Finally, when Jake suggests that jealousy lies behind her objection to Finn’s relationship with Flame Princess, she tells him that it’s not about “some petty love triangle.”

Jake speaks here as the voice of narrative convention. In other stories, the girl who’s been resisting the boy’s advances might show interest after he’s moved on, moving him out of the so-called “Friend Zone” only after he’s already left. Adventure Time doesn’t even entertain the idea of friend-zoning, instead replacing it with an increasingly foreign concept we might call “being friends.” What makes this particularly impressive is that it shuts down the easy drama represented by the love triangle in order to show respect to the characterization of all parties involved. It’s a bold move, and as people who would prefer not to have to see another lazy love triangle storyline for about a decade, we appreciate it.

When she’s trying to explain to Finn why he shouldn’t date Flame Princess, Bonnibel makes a particularly revealing argument: “Finn, sometimes you want someone, and you want to kiss them and be with them, but you can’t, because responsibility demands sacrifice.” Regardless of your shipping preferences, this says a lot about her approach to life as a princess. In “Too Young,” she talks about the toll royal responsibility takes, stating that she would love to remain thirteen in order to enjoy the freedom of childhood; however, she ultimately decides to age back into rulership because her people need her, “and that comes first.” She is motivated primarily by a need to do right by her subjects, keeping them in ignorance when it will save their lives and planning to torture the Ice King in order to cure an epidemic. She is a monarch first and a person second.

The most interesting treatment of PB’s approach to leadership comes in the “Goliad” episode. Faced with her own mortality following her near-death at the hands of the Lich, Bubblegum decides to make a successor who can live forever. That successor turns out to be Goliad, a rather horrifying piece of Nightmare Fuel made from Bubblegum’s DNA. Because PB stayed awake for days making the unholy creature, Finn and Jake take Goliad out for her first lesson in leadership. Goliad learns the wrong lesson, claiming that enraged shouting and psychic/telekinetic manipulation are the best ways to get people to do what she wants. When it comes time for Bubblegum to correct her creation’s conception of leadership, she tries to figure it in terms of a symbiotic relationship between ruler and subjects: “Goliad, let me tell you something about leadership. You see this fat bee? She gets pollen from this flower, but she’s gentle and makes the flower happy and pollinated. They both get what they need. And that’s how a leader should be.” Goliad rejects this reality and substitutes her own.

To prevent Goliad from indulging her megalomaniacal tendencies, Bubblegum makes another candy sphinx, this time using Finn’s heroic DNA to make Stormo, a selfless creature willing to sacrifice himself to save the kingdom. Here’s where things get interesting, even though that’s technically where we leave the episode. If we are to infer that Finn’s heroic DNA made Stormo heroic, we have to wonder what Goliad’s actions say about Bonnibel herself. Is it her DNA that produces a creature willing to rule others by force? Or, considering the fact that Goliad initially sees this forceful behaviour demonstrated by Jake, is this merely a comment on the malleability of children’s minds and the necessity of giving them healthy examples to emulate? At the very least, it shows us that Bubblegum is willing to enter ethically dubious territory in equipping her ideal ruler with psychic powers.

What we appreciate about Bubblegum is precisely what we enjoy in all of the Adventure Time characters we discussed: they are successful subversions of familiar character types that demonstrate what you can create when you expand these types into nuanced, fully-formed people. The show gives the lie to the claim that children’s programming is simplistic and unsophisticated. On the contrary, Adventure Time proves that a simple concept can give its creators room to create, to expand upon ideas, situations, and characters that television shows and films intended for adult audiences leave unexplored. It is a cartoon that draws its women in fine detail, rendering them human with all the accompanying strengths and flaws inherent in the term. If enjoying some legitimately strong female characters means that we also have to adjust to a world in which the amount of candy matter present in one’s body determines one’s age and buttermilk is instrumental in summoning demons, we have to say we’re okay with it.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

Edit: Sometimes when you have a deadline looming, you publish work that is less than your best. Luckily, we’re giving ourselves something of an extension to ensure that Princess Bubblegum gets the treatment she deserves.

We have had it brought to our attention by Adventuretitan that we missed a major issue in the “Lady and Peebles” episode. While we focused on Bubblegum’s ability to defend herself, we neglected to discuss what she was defending herself from. From the moment that Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn enter Ricardio’s lair through a sphincter, the episode is full of the imagery and symbolism of violated bodies. While flying through a dark chamber, Lady and Bubblegum are accosted by a multitude of groping, disembodied hands. After temporarily impairing her sight, the hands strip Bubblegum of her bag of supplies, leaving her vulnerable.

Once she and Lady enter the chamber that houses Ricardio, they are confronted with the body of the Ice King, whose chest bears a gaping wound. Next, they see the unconscious Finn and Jake, who have been poisoned by zanoits, which seem to replicate some of the effects of date rape drugs. Finally, Ricardio reveals the reason for this horrific display: “I thought I only wanted your heart, but I was wrong. I was unfair to you. I want the full package.” He has made himself a body, and the interest he takes in Bubblegum removing some of her clothing suggests that he is planning to use his new body to violate hers.

In light of this, Bubblegum’s ability to best Ricardio on a physical level can be seen not only as a display of badassery, but as an assertion of bodily autonomy. She annihilates his capacity to enact sexual violence, not just preventing a sexual assault, but incapacitating a sexual assailant. Even better is the fact that the narrative upholds her actions as very much the right thing to do.

Another important moment we wanted to discuss occurs in a situation where Bubblegum’s body has actually been compromised. In “Mortal Folly,” Finn uses the power of love (or liking someone a lot) imbued in the sweater Bubblegum made him in order to defeat the Lich. However, when he attempts to use the same sweater -- and, therefore, the same power -- to restore the possessed Bubblegum’s true self, nothing happens. As Finn observes, “Liking her didn’t work. She’s unstoppable.” For once, the power of love isn’t enough to save a woman. We may be jaded as a result of overexposure to Disney movies, where the healing properties of “true love’s kiss” are apparently limitless, but the idea that a woman can have strengths and weaknesses that have nothing to do with romantic emotion is pretty excellent. It’s sad that we even have to celebrate such a thing, but we’re willing to give kudos to any show that does it right when so many do it wrong.