7

Always the Mother,
Never the Messiah

On Mothers, Daughters, and Women
Mentoring Women

You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you.

—Terminator 2: Judgment Day¹

The only challenge to a father's will is a mother's love.

—Smallville ²

As we explored in the previous chapter, the mother is often an absent or a destructive character in stories about the female hero. In stories about the male hero, the mother, or mother figure, is close to power, but rarely the revered source of it—reinforcing the idea that behind every great man, there's a great woman. While maternal characters such as Dana Scully of The X-Files, Trinity of The Matrix, Martha Kent of Smallville, and Sarah Connor of the Terminator films are written and played as intelligent, compassionate, and tough, their main purpose is to birth, protect, or otherwise nurture the male “savior.”³

This is further reinforced by images that play on religious symbolism. Take, for example, the X-Files Season 8 finale episode, “Existence,” in which Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) gives birth to her son. Scully and Agent Reyes (Annabeth Gish) travel to a remote location to protect Scully from people who are a threat to her and the child. She gives birth in an abandoned house, and in a sci-fi take on the Nativity, a group of uninvited alien–human hybrids come to witness the birth. Mulder initially stays behind, but when he becomes aware that supersoldiers are still in pursuit of Scully, he travels by helicopter to rescue her. He never receives specific coordinates to her location, but rather “followed a light,” and indeed an extraordinarily bright star was shown lighting the night sky and guiding him to her. The final scene shows Scully wearing a light-blue robe, evoking Mary as she cradles her child. The Lone Gunmen stand in for the Three Wise Men, bearing gifts and telling Mulder that they had to see the miracle child (born to the formerly infertile Scully) with their own eyes. Scully, once a groundbreaking character, became increasingly disempowered through her pregnancy and motherhood. She eventually gives the child up for adoption, ostensibly to protect it, but which narratively took her away from mothering a child and resituated her focus on the nurturance of Mulder's quest.

So if it's fathers who most often are responsible for raising heroic daughters, where does this leave mothers, or even heroic women who become mothers themselves?

Mother figures like Scully reinforce Campbell's assertion that the woman is the mother of the hero, not the hero herself. But as we'll see, characters such as The Bride, Sydney Bristow, and Sarah Connor manage to be both heroic and maternal without sacrificing one for the other. The supermoms and mother figures in this chapter therefore challenge traditional ideas about femininity and sex roles, rather than reinforce them. They show us the possibilities of being a hero who doesn't deny her quest for identity, nor her responsibilities to humanity, and is capable of being a kick-ass mom. Literally. And while this may evoke a different myth of “the Superwoman,” she with a high-powered career, who is an attentive partner and mother, and who has an athlete's body and an unnaturally clean house, it lacks the sexism of that unattainable, unrepresentative, and fallacious stereotype.

Warrior Moms

Hippolyta, the Amazon queen of ancient myth, was appropriated by William Moulton Marston for his Wonder Woman comic, so we can say that the first superwoman of modern myth definitely had a supermom. But over the years, writers have pitted mother and daughter against each other through competition and deception, shamefully disregarding Marston's message of sisterhood. Buffy Summers adopted the role of mother to her sister Dawn after the death of Joyce and would later go on to train an army of superpowered girls called “The Potentials”—made into Slayers themselves through an ancient ritual. Xena and Gabrielle gave birth to daughters, but both were prevented from actually raising them. (Although for a while we did get to see wonderfully choreographed fight scenes that had Xena taking on multiple attackers with babe in arms.⁴) Charly Baltimore was a reluctant mother; her daughter born while Charly had amnesia and was living under the spell of a previous alias. When her memory is recovered, she initially rejects the child, stating she didn't ask for the kid and that “Samantha” had the kid not her. But when the child is kidnapped, her oppositional identities as small-town schoolteacher and government spy merges into one complete personality, and Charly saves the kid—with witty dialogue no less:

Caitlin:  Mommy, am I gonna die?

Charly:   Oh, no, baby, no. You're not going to die. They are. Cover your ears. Hey, should we get a dog?⁵

Fighting to protect one's family or community is often the motivation for a superwoman's actions. Whether this is laudable—shunning the quest for a prize, the conquering of others, and focus on the self in favor of nurturing and fostering community—or it's a sexist and tired way of justifying women's acts of violence is clearly debatable, subjective, and contextual. But it should be noted that while protecting their immediate communities, Buffy, Charly, Xena, and Sarah Connor also fight to save the world.⁶

But Kill Bill 's The Bride, one of the most exhilarating of warrior mothers, is enormously self-indulgent, her only concerns being exacting revenge and reclaiming her daughter.

Entertainment Weekly called Kill Bill “a character-driven and visually sophisticated ode to one angry mother.”⁷ The four-hour saga of The Bride (Uma Thurman) is this and so much more. Existing in what Tarantino calls his “movie-movie universe, where movie conventions are embraced, almost fetishized, as opposed to the other universe where Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs take place, in which reality and movie conventions collide,”⁸ Kill Bill is an homage to nearly all of writer/director Quentin Tarantino's influences: Spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong kung fu and Japanese Samurai films, anime and manga, Blaxploitation and Mobster movies, comic books, obscure pop culture references and music, revenge flicks, and incredibly kick-ass, tough-talking women.

The core of the story—an assassin who is left for dead by her former colleagues on her wedding day—was conceived by Tarantino and his leading lady, Uma Thurman, over drinks during the production of Pulp Fiction. Tarantino wrote a handful of pages about The Bride and her tale of vengeance, which were then set aside for several years. When Thurman asked about them, Tarantino promised her a script for her upcoming birthday. The written script arrived a year and a half later.

The Bride, also known as Beatrix Kiddo, was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad—a group led by the ruthless Bill (David Carradine). When she discovers she's pregnant with Bill's baby, Beatrix is determined to bring the child up with some sense of normalcy. She takes up residence in a nowhere town and gets engaged to a nice guy. But Bill and the rest of the Vipers (comprised of Bill's brother Bud, Vernita Green, Elle Driver, and O Ren Ishii) track her down. They murder the entire wedding party, leaving behind a gruesome scene at the chapel; only The Bride survives. Four years pass before she finally wakes up from a coma. Her baby is gone and she's out for blood.

The Bride's story begins as a quest for vengeance, but when it's revealed the infant miraculously survived the assassination attempt, it also becomes a search for her daughter.

Mothers and daughters are as central a theme in Kill Bill as revenge itself, as we see when The Bride confronts Vernita Green (Vivica Fox). Her former colleague is now living the pedestrian life Beatrix was denied; only instead of retiring to a dusty town, she has a suburban house, a doctor spouse, and a daughter of her own, Nikki—who is nearly the same age as Beatrix's would be. Vernita acknowledges that her former colleague has every right to get even. “No. No,” says The Bride, “To get even? Even Steven? I would have to kill you, go up to Nikki's room, kill her, then wait for your husband, the good Dr. Bell, to come home and kill him. That would be even, Vernita. That'd be about square.” Beatrix assures Vernita that she can relax for the moment and that “I'm not going to murder you in front of your daughter.” But adds:

Just because I have no wish to murder you before the eyes of your daughter does not mean parading her around in front of me is going to inspire sympathy. You and I have unfinished business. And not a goddamn fuckin' thing you've done in the subsequent four years, including getting knocked up, is going to change that.⁹

Without intending to, The Bride does kill Vernita in front of Nikki. She tells the young girl, “It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that, I'm sorry. But you can take my word for it, your mother had it comin'. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting.”

Some feminist critics feel that while Kill Bill: Vol. 1 presented The Bride as a skilled, determined, fierce, and resourceful warrior and avoided fetishized catfights in favor of downright brutal fist-fights, stylized martial arts, and modestly clothed superwomen who got dirty, bloody, and mussed their hair, the second half of the story focuses on the reclaiming of Beatrix's daughter, B.B., and thus normalizes Beatrix by shifting her role from warrior to mother.

Lisa Jervis, co-founder of Bitch magazine, wrote that while Kill Bill managed to avoid many of the gendered pitfalls that plague other ass-kicking babe vehicles (skimpy outfits, romance, etc.), “Unfortunately, Vol. 2 manages to turn The Bride into a different but equally overused feminine archetype—not porn star but fierce mama, fighting to protect her family.”¹⁰ The last words before The Bride slips into a coma, and her first words upon waking, are about her baby. And as she'll later explain to Bill:

The Bride:    Before that [pregnancy test] strip turned blue, I was a woman. I was your woman. I was a killer who killed for you. Before that strip turned blue, I would have jumped a motorcycle onto a speeding train … for you. But once that strip turned blue, I could no longer do any of those things. Not anymore. Because I was going to be a mother. Can you understand that?

Bill:             Yes. But why didn't you tell me then instead of now?

The Bride:    Because once I would have told you, you'd claim her, and I didn't want that.

Bill:             Not your decision to make.

The Bride:    Yes, but it was the right decision and I made it for my daughter. She deserved to be born with a clean slate. But with you, she would have been born in a world she shouldn't have. I had to choose. I chose her.¹¹

Jervis concedes she wouldn't argue that “quitting the assassin game is somehow not feminist, but this plot twist is just one more message that maternity trumps personality, history, logic, and more.”¹²

That pregnancy is what inspires her to pursue a life of domesticity harks back to the days of the presumably widowed Mrs. Peel of The Avengers, who quit her assistant spook job when Mr. Peel turned up alive. In Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Beatrix attempts to assume her culturally proper gender role, even if it means leaving a career she excels at (albeit a morally questionable one), as well as a life of luxury and excitement, for one of poverty in a go-nowhere town. She gives it all up to become “Mommy”—the name of the final role Beatrix assumes in the two-part film. Perhaps the difference between Emma Peel and The Bride is that for Beatrix it is a choice, rather than a cultural imperative. Mrs. Peel did what a good wife should do, and Mommy did what she wanted to.

Grace, a reviewer for the website Heroine Content, gives another reading of the mommy angle:

The Bride and Vernita are mothers, and motherhood The Bride's big motivating factor. However, this didn't bother me as much in these films as it normally does, if only because non-mommy figures are portrayed as well (O-Ren and Elle), and because Bill takes fatherhood pretty seriously, too.¹³

Reflecting on the theme of motherhood in Kill Bill, particularly Vol. 2, Tarantino told Entertainment Weekly that

I can honestly say that all that baby stuff would not have been in Kill Bill if I hadn't written the part for Uma. We are best friends, and when I was writing the script it was a good excuse to hang out with her. And if you hang out with Uma, you're going to hang out with her kids. I had a wonderful connection with her daughter, Maya. Actually, the truthful answer is that Maya made me want to have kids. [She] showed me I'd be a good father.¹⁴

Reuniting Beatrix and her daughter B.B. was a chance for a happy ending. “I love The Bride,” said Tarantino, “I love her, all right? I want her to be happy. I don't want to come up with screwed-up scenarios that she has to fight the whole rest of her life. I killed myself to put her in a good place at the end of this long journey.” The final title card of the movie even reads: The lioness has rejoined her cub, and all is right in the jungle.

Various prequels and sequels to Kill Bill have been proposed by Tarantino—at least one of which would again focus on mothers and daughters.¹⁵ “The star will be Vernita Green's daughter, Nikki,” he told Entertainment Weekly, adding, “I've already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale [Julie Dreyfus] will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on The Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers.”¹⁶

Nikki would be following a tradition of vengeance and reprisal seen in ancient Greek myths, for example, The House of Atreus in The Oresteia, and in the Samurai tales that directly influenced Kill Bill, namely Lady Snow-blood, a daughter born and bred to avenge the slaughter of her family, and Lone Wolf and Cub—both manga written by Kazuo Koike and later adapted into films. Tarantino, always the authority on movies, noted that

When you're dealing in the genres of Hong Kong kung fu films and spaghetti Westerns, or even American Westerns …an absolute staple of those movies [is that] the child on the prairie sees his parents slaughtered and spends the rest of his life avenging the deaths. At that moment the child is dead and the warrior is born.¹⁷

Woman as Mentor: Buffy Summers, Sarah Jane Smith, and Elektra Natchios

Teach me something. I don't care what, but something that only you can do, something special like that. (Elektra/Wolverine: The Redeemer¹⁸)

I saw amazing things, out there in space–but there is strangeness to be found, wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too …you just need to know where to look! (The Sarah Jane Adventures¹⁹)

Over and over again, men have served as mentors to superwomen: Modesty Blaise was educated by the Hungarian Professor Lob; Elektra trained with Stick—her former lover's sensei; Araña was indoctrinated into the ways of the Spider Society by her mage Miguel; Buffy studied with Rupert Giles; and The Bride was molded through the cruel tutelage of both Bill and Pei Mei.

While it makes these heroes no less extraordinary, it is a concern that the example of women mentoring women is all too rare, and when present, it generally isn't allowed to thrive. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's techno-pagan Jenny Calendar could have provided beneficial and practical support along Willow Rosenberg's quest for identity, but she was murdered after a handful of episodes. Buffy adopted the role of mother to Dawn after their mother died, making sacrifices for her as well as acknowledging, encouraging, and respecting the power in the youngest Summers:

Buffy:  I want to see you grow up. The woman you're gonna become. Because she's gonna be beautiful. And she's going to be powerful. I got it so wrong. I don't want to protect you from the world. I want to show it to you. There's so much that I want to show you.²⁰

Buffy and Willow also train The Potentials, now Slayers themselves, and this mentorship has extended beyond the television series into the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic book. But powerful women who have, or could have, mentored the two most powerful female heroes of the series were generally kept in behind-the-scenes roles.²¹ The Coven of Witches in England who helped rehabilitate Willow after her journey to the Dark Side were only spoken about—never actually seen. The Guardians, an ancient sect of women who tasked themselves with watching the Watchers and claimed to be “Women who want to help and protect” Slayers, were revealed in the second to last episode of the entire series.²² Not only is this entirely too late in the game; the final remaining Guardian is murdered minutes after meeting Buffy.

Wonder Woman, of course, comes from a whole community of women mentoring women, the females-only Paradise Island. Diana is the matriarchal island's only child and is therefore fostered by many mothers, women who also support each other. “Between adults, mutual mothering becomes ‘sisterhood',” write Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, adding that in sisterhood, “the hero discovers not only a positive mother but a whole female support system, and by association, a nurturing, joyous, and powerful female heritage.”²³, ²⁴

A delightful example of a female support system comes in The Sarah Jane Adventures, a television series produced by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). The title character, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), was an investigative journalist and a companion to the third and fourth Doctors (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, respectively) in Doctor Who and appeared regularly over the years 1973–6.²⁵ Elisabeth Sladen has since revisited the character a number of times over the past 35 years—including in a pilot featuring Sarah Jane and the robot dog, K-9, as well as in a special feature-length episode of Doctor Who called “The Five Doctors.”²⁶ Sladen has also reprised the role in the revitalized Doctor Who alongside David Tennant's Doctor (the tenth incarnation).

The Sarah Jane Adventures is a spin-off of Doctor Who, intended for children, but witty enough for adults. The series debuted in the UK with an hour-long special shown on New Year's Day, 2007, called “Invasion of the Bane.” In it, we meet a 13-year-old girl named Maria Jackson (Yasmin Paige) who has just moved to West London with her dad after her parents' recent divorce. Dad is a stand-up guy, and while Mom is flighty, she frequently drops by for hellos, meals, and family time. Maria's living situation (a daughter with a single father) could have made her yet another victim of the female hero-sans-female mentor trope that has plagued myth from ancient through modern times, but her mother isn't dead, drunk, ill, or vindictive; she's just elsewhere and has kind of a difficult personality.

On her first night in her new home, Maria is awakened by a strange pinkish glowing light emanating from outside. She sneaks out of the house and across the street to spy on Sarah Jane conversing with a floaty, ethereal, otherwordly creature (who we later discover is a Star Poet who'd gotten lost on her journey and sought Sarah Jane's assistance with directions). Maria is understandably curious, but Sarah Jane is terse and standoffish with her neighbors, believing that others should not be subject to the danger involved in her investigative work.

Later, when Maria and her friend Kelsey take a tour of the Bubbleshock Soda Company, they run into Sarah Jane at the factory trying to expose the soda makers for who they really are—tentacled aliens whose mother bug secrets a substance marketed as the “organic!” additive “Bane”—actually an alien chemical used in the soda to turn humans into easily controlled zombies (fortunately, Sarah Jane and Maria prefer tea to soda pop and so have retained their autonomy). In the process of escaping the factory, they encounter a human boy called “The Archetype,” who is genetically constructed out of the thoughts and wishes of over 10,000 people. Sarah Jane and Maria rescue the child and at first, when he asks if he can live with Sarah Jane, she says no, but she ultimately adopts him into her home.

Sarah Jane recognizes Maria's inner strength and sees her as a kindred spirit. While figuring a way to stop the Bane from taking over Planet Earth, she tells her new young friend, “Maria, there are two types of people in the world. Those who panic, and then there's us. Got it?” Maria understands and affirms, “Got it.” Over the course of the episode, Sarah recognizes, even respects, the children's ability to make choices for themselves. And she's remarkably honest with them, telling Maria and the Archetype—who chooses the name “Luke”—that

When I was your age, I used to think “Oh, when I'm grown up, I'll know what I want, I'll be sorted.” But you never really know what you want. You never feel grown up, not really. You never sort it all out …so I thought, I could handle life on my own. But after today …I don't want to!

The series may tap into the lives and thoughts of children, but scenes like these can resonate with adults. Life never happens as you expect it to. You just have to stick to your values and go with the flow of the adventure. And as Sarah Jane proves, if things aren't working as they are, you can always change your mind and approach with new perspective.

While it could be bothersome that Sarah Jane was given a child to care for, and read as yet another attempt to restabilize a strong and independent character in a normative position as a traditionally gendered woman, the adoption of Luke was presented as simply a part of her journey rather than the sole motivation for it. What is of greater concern is that she can't or won't find a partner because after the Doctor, “No man could quite compare.” Further, other characters tend to disrespect her single, childless status, as though this makes her less of a woman.

A reviewer for the Chicago Tribune praised both The Sarah Jane Adventures and Sladen saying that

she projects an air of trustworthiness, courage and unapologetic independence, and though Sarah Jane's attitude is brisk and unsentimental, it leaves room for plenty of wonder at the stranger things in the universe. And by the way, how many series feature a middle-aged woman as the lead—and even let her battle many-tentacled aliens? Score one for the Brits.²⁷

Variety, on the other hand, panned the series, calling it “modestly entertaining for the moppet crowd” but patience trying for adults.”²⁸ (The reviewer also called Sarah Jane “a rather boring heroine”—perhaps because she doesn't play into ass-kicking babe stereotypes; she's modestly clothed and over 30.) Regarding its “maturity,” The Sarah Jane Adventures is a children's show in the way that the early Harry Potter novels are children's books—they are ostensibly for children but have a self-consciousness and intelligence that appeals to adults. (The Sarah Jane Adventures does feature some farting aliens—justifiably suitable for a munchkin audience.)

What's wonderful to see are the scenes between Sarah Jane and Maria; they brainstorm and problem solve, they comfort and support one another, and they mirror each other. Sarah Jane is experienced and wise, while Maria is a smart, compassionate, and brave young woman. As Pearson and Pope write, “Usually, when the hero is at the nadir of despair, a nurturing, strong, and independent woman appears to her … the female rescue figure tells the hero that she is capable of saving herself.”²⁹ Maria cannot rely on this type of support from her mother, but gets it in abundance from Sarah Jane. When Maria's father is turned to stone in “Eyes of the Gorgon,” Sarah Jane tells her, “Listen to me Maria. You are not going to lose it. You are not going to fall apart. Do you understand me? Whatever's happened to your father— there is one thing I've learned after all these years—there is always a chance. Do you hear me?”³⁰

This voice is essential to the hero's ability to trust her own vision and abilities—which is why depictions of female heroes are so important for women's self-esteem and confidence.³¹ It is because of this nurturance that Maria is able to save the day, Sarah Jane, her own father, and humanity itself. A character of compassion, justice, and hope, Maria even makes an extra effort when she returns a necklace to an elderly woman with Alzheimer's disease in hopes that it will restore her memory. Later, Maria reflects upon this woman who had traveled the universe with her husband as Sarah Jane had with the Doctor. She again brings up Sarah Jane's single status asking, “Don't you wish you had found someone special to share it with?” Sarah wraps her arm around her friend and says, “Oh, I think I have. For the second time.”³²

While The Sarah Jane Adventures presents a delightfully positive example of women mentoring women, we find a more disturbing, if intriguing, one in Elektra.

Elektra Natchios could hardly be considered a role model, but in at least two instances, and as many mediums, the character shares a reciprocal identification with a tween-age girl, offering us another opportunity to analyze the profound experience of finding a mentor of one's own gender.

Elektra was introduced in Daredevil #168, the first issue to be written by Frank Miller. The college sweetheart of Daredevil's alter ego, Matt Murdock, Elektra's world was understandably shattered upon her father's murder. She left Matt, as well as her studies at Columbia University, and ultimately became a bounty hunter, assassin, and ninja. Elektra was murdered by a rival bounty hunter named Bullseye a mere 13 issues later, but has remained one of the most beloved, if dark, characters of the Marvelverse. She has continued to appear in story arcs over the years even though Miller has said, “She had to be cruelly and coldly murdered by the worst possible enemy Daredevil had ever had”; a disturbing sentiment artist Klaus Jansen echoed by saying that he and Miller were “intent on killing her and leaving her dead.”³³

Elektra Assassin and Elektra Lives Again were scripted by Miller, while others have made contributions to the mythos, almost all of which irreparably confuse canon. The most interesting of these for the purposes of this chapter is Elektra/Wolverine: The Redeemer, written by Greg Rucka and hauntingly illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano—the core of which was used as the basis for the 2005 film Elektra.

In Redeemer, Elektra is hired to assassinate a man named Daniel Connor. The job goes awry when Daniel's daughter Avery witnesses the murder and gets a good look at the face of her father's killer. Additionally, Keifer, the man who paid the ninja 6 million dollars to carry out this deed, has also manipulated Wolverine into protecting Avery. Elektra abducts the child, and a series of betrayals and secrets are revealed when Wolverine and the girl's mother, Dr. Veronica Connor, attempt to rescue Avery. In this story, the Conners were present when Wolverine had the metal alloy adamantium attached to his bones and created Avery using his mutant DNA. Once they realized Keifer wanted the meta-human child for his own, possibly military, purposes, they devised a plan for escape. Outsiders were led to believe that Veronica was having a series of extra-marital affairs, which lead to a separation of the couple. Avery had been living with her father and, unaware of the deception, was furious with her mother's suggested betrayal.

Meanwhile, Elektra is faced with this girl. Assassin logic dictates that she must kill her to protect her own identity. But Elektra has become fascinated with the child, a mirror of herself—disarmingly stoic, patient, and curious in what should be a terrifying experience. “And while Elektra wasn't entirely certain why it mattered so much to her that she have contact with the girl, the thought of that contact being denied her was unacceptable.”³⁴ When the pair stop for a meal at a diner, Avery tells the assassin:

“I don't understand…. Why I am here. Why you care what I think. Why you're buying me pie. I don't understand.” Elektra sighed. “Because I look at you, Avery, and I see me.” Avery blinked at her, and then stared at her plate some more. “See, that's funny,” Avery said softly. “That's kinda funny, because I look at you, and I think maybe I could be looking at me, too.”³⁵

The fact that the waitress has mistaken them for mother and daughter further complicates already confused emotions.

Elektra tells herself that she abducted Avery out of self-pity: “… to keep from Avery what happened to me. Guilt, because I took her father the way another man, long ago, took mine.”³⁶ Rucka has said of his contribution to the Elektra mythos that the character has always willfully refused to look at the evil things she did or consider the consequences of her actions. Her job prevents sentimentality. But she cannot bring herself to put a knife in a child—especially one so like herself.³⁷

But it's not just the tinge of morality Elektra feels. There's also a factor of loneliness—and the seductive pull of companionship that Avery offers her. The girl tells Elektra all she wants is to be empowered and to learn from the ninja: “All my life I've had people telling me what to do and how to act, testing me and … and doing things to me, and I don't want it to be like that anymore. I want to do what you can do, I want to be like you. Free like you.” She astutely points out that “You want this [too], you just haven't admitted it yet. If you didn't want me here, if you didn't want to teach me, you'd have killed me already.”³⁸

The temptation for both parties is clearly there, but for Elektra, there is an added element of adult responsibility. How does an assassin-for-hire confront moral responsibility?

The girl was dangerous, Elektra realized, more dangerous than she'd thought at first, and again she felt the seductive pull first offered by the waitress. Whatever was going on inside Avery's head, whatever it was that made her erupt in sudden laughter instead of tears, she was willing to become her friend, her confidante, her daughter. Elektra could feel in herself the desire to let it happen, even though she knew she shouldn't.³⁹

Clearly these are the wrong circumstances for a healthy mentorship, and the mother–daughter bond is outright inappropriate. Elektra recognizes this and struggles to sort out her feelings from the actions she should take. But when the two are together, “Avery spoke as if it were just she and Elektra, all alone, and with all the time in the world. She spoke as if there was nothing that the two of them couldn't handle, as long as they handled it together.”⁴⁰

The movie, which is not a direct adaptation of Redeemer, but borrows heavily from the Elektra–Avery relationship, presents a more altruistic Elektra—making her story a character journey from darkness to light.⁴¹ “This particular story is about her not being able to deny her need for her own redemption, and it comes up and smacks her in the face, much like falling for Matt Murdock did,” says Jennifer Garner of the character she portrayed, adding, “except I think this is much more of a surprise, and it's more of a twist, and it's something she fights a lot harder than she fought falling for Matt.”⁴²

In the film, Avery is now “Abby.” Elektra is still hired for an assassination job, but here she is sent to an island a few days before her targets are revealed, and meanwhile, she becomes acquainted with the father and daughter who reside in the house next door.⁴³ When she discovers they are to be her victims, she finds she cannot follow through with the job and goes so far as to take them under her protection. Here, redemption comes from saving the child and forgiving herself. Reflecting on the story, Garner said,

I wanted to do this movie because I so love this character and I so love that, as much as she fights against her own re-entry into the world—her heart opening up after years and years of just being completely closed off—she loses the battle with herself, and she falls for basically a younger version of herself, Abby, and ultimately … opens herself.⁴⁴

As Roz Kaveney has noted, redemption and sentimentality aren't necessarily true to the established character of Elektra, and she observes that the film “falls apart whenever it shows the softer side that the [comic book incarnation of the] character does not really have.”⁴⁵ Nowhere is this more clear than at the very end of the film. Elektra says to no one in particular, “Please don't let her be like me,” and her sensei Stick answers, “Why not? You didn't turn out so bad.” The journey from darkness to light the producers envisioned is thus complete, if untrue to the spirit of Elektra.⁴⁶

Making Motherhood Heroic: Sydney Bristow

Who'd think you could turn a pregnancy into an alias?

… and in Chinese. (Alias⁴⁷)

Season 5 of Alias brought us television's first Spy Mama, and as Ms. Bristow said herself, she's “not like other moms.” Being from a family of double agents, how could she be?

Jennifer Garner's own pregnancy was written into the show, thankfully, as a natural pregnancy rather than the result of an immaculate conception à la Xena, or a possible alien abduction as with Dana Scully. Alias was, of course, not the first show to incorporate an actresses' pregnancy into the narrative, but it is one of the few genre shows where paternity is not in question. Sydney's partner Michael Vaughn is the father.⁴⁸

Regardless, television has come a long way in its approach to babies. Back when Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz wanted to write their pregnancy into I Love Lucy, CBS said they couldn't show a pregnant woman on TV (as if twin beds were enough to prevent a married couple from intimacy). When they managed to blend art and life, they did so on the condition that they would not say the word “pregnant” on air and substituted “expecting.” That was 1951, but 40 years later, pop culture controversy struck again.

In 1991, Murphy Brown became pregnant, although the actress who played her, Candace Bergen, wasn't. Murphy's choice to be a single mother became political fodder for then Vice President Dan Quayle, who went on to publicly criticize Ms. Brown, as if she were a real person, for eschewing a more traditional lifestyle. The eponymous series brilliantly used Quayle's narrow-minded polemic against him by airing a show on the controversy that validated Murphy Brown as a series and alternative families as well.

Garner's pregnancy allowed Alias to return to its principal theme— Sydney's identity and evolution as a woman, a daughter, and an agent. And in a series where removing eyeballs via plastic sporks was the norm du jour, Sydney's pregnancy was handled with the same amount of matter-offactness, irony, and playfulness as every other plot line. It didn't overwhelm the show, but it wasn't ignored either (though Garner did have to remind the crew that she was still coordinated and an athlete, and therefore capable of continuing to do stunts⁴⁹). In fact, Season 5's tagline, “Expect more,” channeled Lucy, Desi, and little Desi Jr. and reveals just how much American cultural ideas about women and morality have changed; pregnancy has gone from taboo to fashion statement. “I think women who are pregnant are very sexy,” Alias executive producer, Jeff Pinker, told USA Today.⁵⁰ He later expanded on this in the New York Times: “Sydney has always used her sexuality as a tool to take down the bad guys.”⁵¹

It's true that Sydney's femininity and sexuality were always embraced, but these things—as titillating, campy, powerful, and playful as they were— never defined her, and pregnancy was no exception. Her swollen belly was just another disguise, exaggerating her feminine exterior to conceal her actual strength. One of the most fun examples of Sydney using her pregnancy as an alias was when she distracted patrons in a Monte Carlo casino by rubbing dice on her stomach for good luck. When she's “caught” cheating, the Pit Boss tells her, “I have seen some despicable acts of cheating in my time. But a pregnant woman using her own baby to escape suspicion … I don't know how you live with yourself.” Sydney answers, “What can I say, sir? I'm not like other moms.”⁵²

Alias is first and foremost a show about family, and Sydney's pregnancy brought her closer to her father. Jack accompanied her to doctor appointments, gave her her own baby rattle, and put together the baby's crib (executive producer, Jeff Pinker, joked that it was likely “the first time in 20 years he's used a screwdriver for its actual intended purpose”).⁵³ But her own mother, Irina, loomed ominously in the background. “The fear of identifying with one's mother as a mother is particularly profound,” wrote Hope Edelman of poorly mothered women.⁵⁴ For Sydney, whose mother was a brutal KGB agent, a traitorous wife, and a person with generally ambiguous intentions, identifying with Irina is clearly a concern.⁵⁵

When Sydney goes into labor on a mission and Irina serves as midwife, Mother warns daughter:

Irina:  You should know something, Sydney. I never wanted to have a child. The KGB demanded it. They knew it would ensure your father's allegiance to me. You were simply a means to an end. And then when the doctor put you in my arms and I looked at you? So fragile. All I could think was, How could I make such a terrible mistake? And at that moment I was sure of one thing: I couldn't be an agent and a mother. I'd either fail at one or both. And I chose to fail at being a mother. In time you'll learn. You can't do both.

Sydney's response is a defiant, “Watch me.”⁵⁶

Season 5 also gave Sydney a chance to be a mentor herself when Rachel Gibson (Rachel Nichols) was brought into the covert A.P.O. organization for which Sydney works. Nichols' managers approached her and said that Alias was looking for a new female role, someone who would show the audience essentially how Sydney became a super-agent.⁵⁷ Garner enjoyed playing the mentor, telling an Alias fan magazine, “That made sense to me—Sydney has done it for awhile, and now there's a new kid coming up [through the ranks] who's really hungry and eager and looking for a mentor. Also, because I like Rachel so much and think she's such a good actress, it made me enjoy it more.”⁵⁸

Gotta Make Way for the Mother Superior: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

This is a mother and son show. (David Nutter⁵⁹)

Sarah Connor is the mother of a messiah, a protective lioness burdened with the duty to save the world by giving birth to the savior of humanity. She may be Mother Mary, but she's armed with a machine gun.⁶⁰

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox Network, 2008) affords new and deeper readings of Sarah. She becomes more than a revolutionary action hero and more than a woman whose sole purpose it is to nurture the “true” leader—the male savior of humanity. Sarah Connor Chronicles is a story about Sarah, not John, not robots, not the dangerous misuse of technology, not even Arnold Schwarzenegger—and that makes it, and her, ever so much more interesting.

The great failure of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) was that it lacked Sarah—and so far it's her story. Part of the project of Sarah Connor Chronicles is to correct the trilogy, and therefore, in the television branch of the Terminator mythology, the events of T3 never happened.

The series begins in 1999, two years after the original date of Judgment Day and five years after the events of T2, but by the end of the pilot episode, we will be transported eight years into the future. The pilot begins with Sarah (Lena Headey)in the middle of a nightmare. Terminators are after her son, Judgment Day is breaking, and in an echo of a scene from T2,we see her shielding John (Thomas Dekker) with her body, maternal lioness in full force; flames wash over them, and humankind is incinerated. When Sarah awakes, we learn she's engaged to be married, a choice that seems out of character for the otherwise cautious Sarah, but one that will serve a narrative purpose.

Sarah sees the nightmare as a premonition and decides it's time to change location again. After she disappears with John, her fiancé goes to the police where he is confronted by an FBI agent named James Ellison (Richard T. Jones). Ellison explains who Sarah is, what she believes, and what she's done. It's Terminator mythos 101 for the uninitiated.

The Connors arrive in New Mexico, where at his new high school, John meets a friendly beauty named Cameron, played by Summer Glau, her name an homage to James Cameron. As soon as John starts his first class, a Terminator appears. Fortunately for the Conners, here, as in T2, there are both assassin and protector Terminators, and Cameron is the later—we think.⁶¹

It's hard to believe that the T-800 in T2 was enough to convince Sarah and John to trust any Terminator that comes along and says it will help them. But John is still a child, and Sarah is clearly a woman on the edge, doing whatever she can to stay sane. Her son is still in denial and acts almost as if he just wishes hard enough, it will all go away. Sarah knows better.

John:   I'm not who they think I am! I'm not some … Messiah !

Sarah: You don't know that.⁶²

Sarah doesn't know for sure either—but it's irrelevant. She must prepare John regardless; no fate but what she makes.

To make the show about Sarah, the mother, not John, the messiah (as in The John Connor Chronicles) honors her place in the Terminator mythos. Elevating Sarah to her rightful position as the narrative impetus is actually pretty radical. “In fact,” write Pearson and Pope,

any author who chooses a woman as the central character in the story understands at some level that women are primary beings, and that they are not ultimately defined according to patriarchal assumptions in relation to fathers, husbands, or male gods. Whether explicitly feminist or not, therefore, works with female heroes challenge patriarchal assumptions.⁶³

Heretofore, this mentorship and matriarchal lineage of heroism has been, for all practical purposes, tragically absent from popular culture. Hopefully, with this new generation of superwomen giving birth to daughters, and occasionally mentoring girls, we are seeing the beginnings of a progressive female heroic tradition.