Conclusion

“Where Do We Go from Here?”

Throughout this book we have looked at the ways in which gender is represented in modern mythologies and how this is connected to contemporary social values; as Danny Fingeroth wrote, “Every generation makes the fictional characters it needs. What should inspire—or terrify—us are not the hero's power or gender, but what the heroes represent about our needs, our fears, and our attitudes.”¹

In the 1940s, Wonder Woman fought Nazis alongside Superman and Batman, and real Allied women were called upon to participate on the home front during the Second World War. British entertainment in the 1960s played with gender and modernity—particularly in the spy-fi genre—and American television and comics in the 1970s incorporated feminist themes with varying degrees of success. Blaxploitation and other B-movie genres featured some of the first action heroines in film. While in the Reagan era, men were presented as making the best mommies, career women were shown as really wanting to be at home being mommy instead of trying to “have it all”—with the exception of a few notable warriors. Grrrl Power in the 1990s, and adult mythmakers influenced by second wave parents, helped create some of the most complex women of popular culture to date.

So, as Buffy and the Scoobies famously joined hands and asked, “Where do we go from here?” Answering that question requires we take a look at where we are, so that we get a better idea of where we need to go.

The television series Heroes (2006–?) serves as a good example to explore, having a deeply layered mythology that viscerally captivates and intellectually challenges. Like Lost (2004–?) and Battlestar Galactica (2004–9)—shows with similarly complex canons—it also features some of the most ethnically diverse casts ever to grace television screens, and while these shows may lack the explicit feminist mission with which Joss Whedon infused Buffy, a commitment to diversity is inherently feminist.

Like Buffy, Dark Angel, and Star Trek, the characters and stories of Heroes and Battlestar Galactica are adept at reflecting contemporary concerns through innovative use of myth and archetype. Battlestar Galactica uses thinly veiled metaphor to explore issues of morality, abuse of power, and survival in a post-9/11 world and the conservative politics of the Bush era. Heroes—a series inspired by both The Incredibles and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind²—is an exploration of evolution in a time of global warming, terrorism, and diminishing natural resources. Series creator Tim Kring has said,

The world is a big, scary place right now, with huge issues … that seem really out of control. The wish-fulfillment aspect of the show is that ordinary people like you or me may be coming along with special powers, and can ultimately do something about these larger issues.³

Heroes, though not a superhero show per se, is, as the title claims, a show about superpowered people and is thus a particularly useful gauge of superheroic representation. Some, like Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) and Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), immediately recognize their responsibility to use these gifts to help humanity. Some, such as Sylar (Zachary Quinto), use them for self-gain. Many are confused, even afraid, and trying to make sense of what is happening to them.

Heroes has shown us marvelous individuals from all over the globe: from New York and Japan to India, California, Ireland, and Central America. Kring posits a theory in the show that “nature is somehow populating the world with people who will take us to the next evolutionary level”⁴—and what the possibilities and dangers of this might be. The global reach of the show, and the diversity of race and locale, ensures Kring's mission that audiences can “see themselves or their neighbors in these characters.”⁵ The unspoken implication being that audiences can take inspiration in this time of unusual need.

As progressive as Heroes is in its ethnic diversity, with a cast that includes people of South Asian, African American, European, Haitian, and Japanese descent, it still has work to do when it comes to making visible gays and lesbians, who at the time of writing have yet to be officially included on the show.⁶ Additionally, to the frustration of fans, while male characters have most often been the ones to embark on journeys that take them across time and space in order to heroically heal the world as they learn about themselves and their moral responsibilities, many of the female characters have fallen victim to various elements of the Women-in-Refrigerator syndrome (discussed in Chapter 8). This includes Niki Sanders, who couldn't control her power and was placed in a mental institution but ultimately died a heroic death; Eden McCain, a shady agent who also sacrificed herself with a dramatic last act; Simone Deveaux, whose death created tension between her two male love interests; and Charlie Andrews, Yaeko, and Caitlin, one of whom died, while one was left in the past, and another in the future.

But Claire Bennett (Hayden Panettiere) and Monica Dawson (Dana Davis) prove that the series is capable of creating laudable female characters. Independently of each other, these two superwomen set out to test the limits of their abilities with the same admirable courage and inquisitiveness as the series' male characters. They are also pragmatic about their powers' potential to help other people and actively find ways to do so.

Claire has featured from the very first episode as one of the integral heroes of the show. When we are introduced to her, she is testing out her ability to spontaneously heal by various gruesome means—diving off a scaffolding, dashing into the wreckage of a burning train, and shoving her hand down a running garbage disposal—each time breaking bones, charring skin, or grating phalanges, only to fully recover with near immediacy.

Claire's adoptive father Noah Bennett (Jack Coleman) works for The Company, a secret organization that tracks, and occasionally recruits or studies, people with abilities—people like his daughter Claire. Noah is a morally ambiguous figure, to say the least. In not-so-subtle metaphor, flash-back scenes of his past are even filmed in gray. Yet when he discovers Claire has manifested abilities, and is thus required to turn her over to The Company, he utilizes all his resources to protect her from his superiors including the frequent mind-wiping of his otherwise sharp and intelligent wife, Sandra (Ashley Crow).

At first, Claire is unaware that her father knows about her power and takes it upon herself to find answers about how she became nigh invincible. But she is not completely alone. With the help of her friend Zack, Claire finds her birth mother Meredith (Jessalyn Gilsig), presumed dead but living in secret in a small Texan town. Her birth father, Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), is a politician in New York. Both biological parents, like Claire, have unusual abilities.

Claire's search for the truth about herself supersedes normal teenage pursuits like boys, shopping, and even the cheerleading squad she'd once thought she needed to join as a way to cement her high school identity. As she documents her injuries and recoveries on film for posterity, one assumes Claire will also study the videos for insight into her ability.

Fascinatingly, Claire isn't disgusted with her body as so many teenage girls and adult women are. She explores her body and what it allows her to be capable of; she never panics over a dislocated shoulder, or even her own autopsied chest cavity. She simply puts everything back in place and moves on. As Hayden Panettiere told Sci Fi Wire, teenagers are “constantly trying to test the limits of their freedom and how far they can push things … [Claire's] just doing it in a different way.”⁷

Aside from her physical gift, Claire also shows strength and resolve in other ways. For example, when Noah finds videotapes of her testing her ability, he destroys them and mind-wipes Zack (Thomas Dekker) in an effort to protect his daughter. But as a result, the latter not only has no knowledge of Claire's power but also no memories of their friendship at all. As Claire's best friend, Zack was the only person she could trust with her secret. Rather than lose her confidant, she begins their friendship anew, reintroducing herself and re-filming her death-defying jumps.

Other examples of Claire's strength of will and sense of justice occur when she takes vengeance on a classmate who tried to rape and kill her, and when she escapes from the newly discovered grandmother who is holding her hostage by jumping out of a several stories high window.

Claire is centered in Season 1's major story arc. Propelled by the cryptic message, “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World,” Peter Petrelli, later revealed to be Claire's uncle, seeks Claire out to save her from a murderous villain. This could have relegated Claire to a damsel-in-distress stereotype, but she actively makes efforts to protect herself and others rather than play the girly victim.⁸ Her intelligence allows her to make logical connections, such as if her skin can regenerate after “boiling it with the eggs,” perhaps her blood has the potential to heal people as well.⁹ She's compassionate, reserving judgment for those labeled “villainous,” and instead chooses to trust her gut and weigh the facts that she herself finds. She even goes so far as to try to reunite a person, whose chaotic and uncontrolled abilities accidentally hurt someone else, with his family rather than blindly turn him over to The Company for imprisonment. In another instance, she absorbs a character's erratic powers to relieve the woman of pain.

Claire began as her daddy Noah's “Claire Bear” and as the cheerleader who needed saving, but she quickly moved beyond her role as daughter and out of the shadows of both her adoptive and biological fathers. In fact, in Season 3 it is her adoptive and biological mothers she turns to for guidance and for assistance—as well as always to herself. The ability to be independent and connected to others is a crucial part of redefining heroism, as Kathleen Noble wrote: “To live heroically a woman must belong to herself and herself alone; she must be the center of her own life. She must pursue a wholeness of integrity that is fluid, inclusive, and interconnected and that does not preclude relationships.” Noble adds that “the female hero must insist upon herself, something that most women are neither taught nor encouraged to do.”¹⁰ But Claire is no longer her daddy's little girl—–she's a young woman, a heroic woman.

I had great love for the plucky Monica Dawson, cousin to Micah Sanders (Noah Gray-Cabey) and hero-in-discovery. The character came across, as Monica herself put it, “like a woman with a future.” I was ecstatic to see such a determined woman on the series; Monica worked double shifts at a fast food establishment to financially support her extended family in the post-Katrina South, but had dreams of going back to college.

When she discovered her ability allowed her to instantaneously learn new skills simply by watching someone else perform them, her younger cousin used a comic book to explain what was happening to her. The title was about a muscle mimic, or copy-cat, named “St. Joan”—of course a nod to that tragic savior of her people, Jeanne D'Arc, who like Monica had a close relationship with God.

Like Claire, Monica explores her powers, learning Jeet Kune Do by watching a Bruce Lee film and going in for some Double Dutch (jump rope). Unfortunately, she was only in a handful of episodes. At the time of writing, Season 3 is well underway; Monica has not made an appearance, nor even been mentioned.¹¹ And it's a tragedy to lose such an interesting female character, a woman of color too, on a series that aims to represent difference in the world but still favors blonde women (Meredith, Elle, Claire, Niki/Tracy, Sandra, Daphne, etc.).

Men on Heroes were initially depicted more progressively than women. Claire's father Noah Bennett comes off more like a Sarah Connor–esque lioness rather than a traditional patriarch, and Peter Petrelli was a professional caregiver, praised for his ability to love unconditionally. He was even told that his love would save the world—recalling Xander Harris, the “heart” of the Scoobies on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Season 2 little Molly Walker had two daddies—two straight men living together to raise and protect an orphaned child while lacking the de-threatening humor of a sitcom.

So where do we go from here?

It appears that gender lines are beginning to blur as women and men continue to embrace both traditionally labeled “male” and “female” characteristics. Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope have stressed the importance of this, arguing, “Freeing the heroic journey from the limiting assumptions about appropriate female and male behavior, then, is an important step in defining a truly human—and humane—pattern of heroic action.”¹² They add that “Until the heroic experience of all people—racial minorities and the poor as well as women—has been thoroughly explored, the myth of the hero will always be incomplete and inaccurate.”¹³

Our stories will continue to evolve as humanity does. Increased acceptance of gay marriage, the first ever campaigns by serious Black and female US presidential candidates, and the presence of more women and other minorities in entertainment industry positions means that we will see an ever-increasing diversity in our heroes. We must, because wish fulfillment, fantasy, identification, and inspiration belong to all of us. There is no one way to be heroic, and there shouldn't be limited or conformative representations of a “hero.” What we need are heroes and heroisms: Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Aboriginal, Middle Eastern, gay, straight, male, female, transgender, fat, skinny, somewhere-in-the-middle, athletic, disabled, with the ability to fly, run faster than a speeding bullet, write, parent, kick-ass, grow, and make the world we live in a better place.

I began this book with an anecdote and I'd like to end it with one. When I was a little girl, my pantheon of inspirational female heroes grew when I fell in love with Dorothy Gale and Princess Ozma of L. Frank Baum's magical Oz series. I loved them so much that I even had my mother sew me an original Ozma-of-Oz costume for Halloween based on drawings and descriptions from the books. We also redecorated my room with a Wizard of Oz theme. In the books, when Dorothy wished to visit Oz she would just ask Ozma, who would see Dorothy in her magic mirror and transport her to Oz. I so wanted to visit that marvelous land and share in their adventures, and I would sit in my room and ask Ozma to bring me there too—If Dorothy could go, why couldn't I? Dorothy and Ozma helped me believe in magic and know that I could be a part of something splendid. When I shared this story with Trina Robbins over afternoon tea in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens, she said,

OK—then you understand, why, in the privacy of my bedroom, I used to go “SHAZAM? SHAZAM!” hoping that it would work. I love the idea of a magic word. It's so great, and so good for kids to think that if they can find their magic word, maybe they could be super too and it's good to give girls hope. Because maybe they can find their own way to Oz. You know what I mean? Or maybe their own magic word. Because we do—we all have a way to Oz, our own personal Oz, and we all have that magic word.¹⁴

We may not yet all have a hero that represents us as unique and varied individuals, but we all have that magic word. And we find it through the stories and the heroes that inspire us. For Trina, that word was Mary Marvel's “SHAZAM.” For the Potentials of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was a simple, yet profound, “Yes,” in answer to the question, “Are you ready to be strong?” For Hiro Nakamura, and fans of Heroes, it's a joyous “Yatta!”

My hope is that through the evolution of mythic stories we will all be able to find our magic word, heroes to relate to, and ways to live heroically.¹⁵