Pop Vultures

On Tuesday, I wrote about some of the ways television creates strong female characters. Now, film has its share of powerful women — Ripley, Sarah Connor, Thelma & Louise, and Clarice Starling, to name a few – but television has the luxury of creating equally powerful characters and then building upon them for multiple seasons. These women don’t just kick ass, in one way or another, but they do so while being fully drawn, multi-layered characters. Here, then, is a love letter to a few of the great women of television.

Buffy. The list has to start here, doesn’t it? Although there have been great female characters before and since, for many Buffy is still the gold standard of the ass-kicking woman. The thing that made Buffy so remarkable (other than her ability to have fabulous shiny hair despite spending half her waking hours fighting in the sewers) is that she was always, completely female. Lots of powerful women, particularly in film, have appeared strong by taking on traditionally male traits – masculine or gender-neutral clothing, bulging muscles – but Buffy was never anything other than a typical teenage girl who happened to save the world. A lot.

By typical, I don’t mean that she was obsessed with fashion and worried about boys all the time. Sure, she shed a few tears for her undead boyfriend and wouldn’t turn down a good shopping spree, but she never did so in a ditzy way, and she was always aware, first and foremost, of her responsibility as the Slayer. Besides, find me a person, of either gender, who didn’t stress about appearance or dating when they were 17. With Buffy, it never descended into stereotype, and she was allowed to keep all her power while still being a person, first.

Buffy as we know it wouldn’t exist without television. The film on which the series was based featured a silly, one-dimensional lead lacking in confidence, and it was quickly forgotten by all but the most devoted Luke Perry fan. While the first season of the television series had echoes of that silliness, the character was given time to grow and develop, and it didn’t take long for her to become the one true love of fan girls and boys everywhere.

Bones. Reasons to love Bones: she’s smart, caring, capable and successful. Plus, thanks to Emily Deschanel, she looks damn good in a Wonder Woman costume. Still, she’s far from perfect. She’s socially awkward, as you’d expect from someone who spent most of her life in academia. She’s tactless. She tells really bad jokes. Of course, all of this only serves to make her a more interesting character.

Bones wears exactly the sort of clothes and jewelry you would expect from someone in her field of study who has traveled a fair bit, rather than clothes that best show her ass. In other words, professional (I’m looking at you, Cuddy). She never apologizes for being smart, And, in a world where women tend to use lots of verbal qualifiers (”I just want to say…”, “I think the answer is…”), her abrupt, to the point speech shows absolute, unwavering confidence in her own abilities. She knows what she wants to say, she’s gonna say it, and considering that she has a much bigger brain than anyone around her, she’s probably gonna be right.

Characters like Bones are hard to find in mainstream cinema. You might have the female scientist, but rarely one who embodies all her traits and can go toe-to-toe in a battle of wits with the male lead. Certainly, Jodie Foster did all that in Silence of the Lambs, but that was one film. From 17 years ago. We get to see Bones in all her case-solving glory week after week – and hopefully for years to come.

Xena. Xena may seem an unlikely character to have on this list of quality shows, but I can’t help it. Xena was awesome. Sure, she was on a television show that was roughly the equivalent of a B (or C, D or J) movie, but she was possibly the most unapologetically powerful female character ever. She was the sword-wielding blend of traditional male and female traits. Even the costumers got in on the gender-bending action – she was dolled up in tough leather that just happened to show every inch of her legs. How about a Freudian take? She carried a long, pointy sword and a round chakrum, and was equally deadly with both. Hey, I said it was cheesy. Don’t look for subtlety here. Even her personality carried that balance. She was aggressive and blood-thirsty, but still motivated by the desire to help. Lucy Lawless managed to bring both humor and a sense of respect to the role, which elevated it above its very, very silly plots.

Basically, Xena broke through all gender boundaries. For all that I praised Buffy for being a typical girl, it was equally refreshing to see someone that just didn’t give a fuck. It wasn’t that she was a tomboy or a man in a woman’s body, but more that she really couldn’t be bothered to worry about that stuff. She was way too busy kicking ass from Athens to India to question whether she was properly fulfilling her role in society. For all intents and purposes, her gender was a non-issue.

Interestingly, Xena was the highest rated syndicated show in the US for several years of its run, handily beating its partner in cheese, Hercules. More people wanted to watch the adventures of the complex, leather clad heroine than the do-gooder covered in baby oil — as well they should.

Scully. (written by PV’s resident X-Files expert, Plattie) Name any kick-ass female TV lead currently on the small screen, and I guarantee she is merely a poor imitation of the woman who came before them all. Special Agent Dana Scully was the first character to break the leggy-busty-blonde-sidekick mould of female TV leads, and fifteen years after the X-Files pilot first aired, she’s still the best.

Scully was smart, ridiculously smart – with a master’s thesis that re-interpreted Einstein and a medical degree on top of that. And, more importantly, she wasn’t afraid of showing her intelligence. Week after week, for almost a decade, she grappled with Fox Mulder’s implausible theories and wacky pseudo-science, argued back, stood up for rationality and scientific rigour, and still managed to look calm, tough, and not a little hot throughout.

Scully gave girls like me hope – faith that smart was sexy after all, trust that if we studied hard and applied ourselves, we too could end up in a basement office with Fox Mulder and his collection of bad ties and cattle mutilation slides. And what more motivation could a girl need, frankly?

We owe TV for a character like Dana Scully. Over 9 years we watched her grow, from a sceptical innocent, to a woman who has seen true evil in the world, in all its manifestations. Such a character arc, with all its myriad twists and turns would never work in a two-hour movie.

Thank goodness for TV for giving us this remarkable character who stood up for herself and other people; who wielded a gun and a scalpel, but still had a deeply sensitive, caring side; and who gave us a good seven years of sexual tension and intellectual flirting before finally, finally taking Fox Mulder to bed.

I know this list barely scratches the surface, and there’s a whole separate post dedicated just to the women of BSG. Help fill in some of the blanks. Who are your favorite female characters from television, and why?