A Tribute to Female Villainy
Jul. 13th, 2003 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhat makes a villainess successful for you? And I mean "female villain". Despite recent changes, there are still more boys out there than girls, both in the hero and villain department.
Still rewatching I, Claudius inspired some thoughts on this. At the risk of boring everyone with my continued Livia/Sian Philipps praise, she's arguably the best small screen villainess ever. And not just because Livia avoids all the Evil Overlord traps (no gloating - do you listen, Ethan Rayne? -, no elaborate games for the good guys which would give them a chance of escape, and no random executions of Trusted Lieutenants). Livia is presented as smart and utterly ruthless, that's a given for a good villain of any gender, but she can also wait. ("Boy, can she wait", says her stepdaughter, whose life she destroys, admiringly.) She has the patience for long-term plans. And we avoid one of the usual clichés, which is the combination of female villainy with promiscuity. There is never the even the implication Livia had sex with anyone but her husband during the decades of marriage to Augustus, or wished to.
(Not that we don't get a promiscuous female villain later, in the form of Messalina. But early on there's Julia who is presented as promiscuous AND kind and good-natured at the same time. Not stupid, either - Julia figures out what Livia is up to long before any of the males of the family catch on. Doesn't save her, of course. So anyway, given this and the fact the men of the show, evil, good or shades of grey, sleep around as well, there is no indictment of female sexuality here.)
Livia has a cruel wit, another attribute of a successful villainess ("Has it occurred to you, mother, that it might be you they hate, more than me?" asks her exasperated son Tiberius, to which she replies "Nothing ever occurs to you which didn't occur to me first; that is the affliction under which I live"), and finally, we get glimpses of vulnerability without her being excused by them. They start when she performs what turns out to be her last direct murder; poisoning her husband, Augustus. While she waits for it to work, we see her get drunk for the first time, and later, when Augustus finally does succumb, we hear Livia explain herself (since she does so to the dying, then dead Augustus with no other witness, it is, presumably, the truth), and see she started to cry. Lest we think this has made Livia soft, she's absolutely vicious to Claudius in the aftermath.
Finally, the "compare and contrast" category also helps making a villainess impressive. During Tiberius' reign, we get introduced to the villains who take over from Livia as chief bastards - Sejanus, and increasingly, Caligula. The contrast makes it clear that Livia wasn't kidding when she said she did what she did for the greater good of the empire, not just for her own sake. Whereas Sejanus is out completely for himself, and Caligula, of course, is an insane (though fascinating) monster. This contrast works so well that both Claudius, who got treated with contempt by Livia for most of his life, and the audience, who saw her ruining and/or killing anyone in her way, mostly characters who were represented as sympathetic, genuinely regret her passing. I already mentioned Livia's birthday dinner with Claudius and Caligula (featuring the first frank conversation between Livia and Claudius) and the scene with Caligula and a dying Livia sometime later, as being among the most breathtaking (and most disturbing) of the show. I bet anyone who sees Livia coldly manipulating people left and right at the start of the series won't be able to believe this, but it's true - when Sian Philipps murmurs "I want to become a goddess" your heart breaks for Livia, utterly convinced what she did was right but that the tortures of Tartarus await her in the afterlife unless one of her descendants comes through with his promise of making her divine.
There are several great villainesses which I love - Servalan (obviously, see icon), Darla, Lilah (insert "I loved her first" mumble changed to "I already loved her when the rest of you were pining over Lindsey"). But this is the most impressive of them all. I salute you, Livia Drusilla. Ave atque vale.
Still rewatching I, Claudius inspired some thoughts on this. At the risk of boring everyone with my continued Livia/Sian Philipps praise, she's arguably the best small screen villainess ever. And not just because Livia avoids all the Evil Overlord traps (no gloating - do you listen, Ethan Rayne? -, no elaborate games for the good guys which would give them a chance of escape, and no random executions of Trusted Lieutenants). Livia is presented as smart and utterly ruthless, that's a given for a good villain of any gender, but she can also wait. ("Boy, can she wait", says her stepdaughter, whose life she destroys, admiringly.) She has the patience for long-term plans. And we avoid one of the usual clichés, which is the combination of female villainy with promiscuity. There is never the even the implication Livia had sex with anyone but her husband during the decades of marriage to Augustus, or wished to.
(Not that we don't get a promiscuous female villain later, in the form of Messalina. But early on there's Julia who is presented as promiscuous AND kind and good-natured at the same time. Not stupid, either - Julia figures out what Livia is up to long before any of the males of the family catch on. Doesn't save her, of course. So anyway, given this and the fact the men of the show, evil, good or shades of grey, sleep around as well, there is no indictment of female sexuality here.)
Livia has a cruel wit, another attribute of a successful villainess ("Has it occurred to you, mother, that it might be you they hate, more than me?" asks her exasperated son Tiberius, to which she replies "Nothing ever occurs to you which didn't occur to me first; that is the affliction under which I live"), and finally, we get glimpses of vulnerability without her being excused by them. They start when she performs what turns out to be her last direct murder; poisoning her husband, Augustus. While she waits for it to work, we see her get drunk for the first time, and later, when Augustus finally does succumb, we hear Livia explain herself (since she does so to the dying, then dead Augustus with no other witness, it is, presumably, the truth), and see she started to cry. Lest we think this has made Livia soft, she's absolutely vicious to Claudius in the aftermath.
Finally, the "compare and contrast" category also helps making a villainess impressive. During Tiberius' reign, we get introduced to the villains who take over from Livia as chief bastards - Sejanus, and increasingly, Caligula. The contrast makes it clear that Livia wasn't kidding when she said she did what she did for the greater good of the empire, not just for her own sake. Whereas Sejanus is out completely for himself, and Caligula, of course, is an insane (though fascinating) monster. This contrast works so well that both Claudius, who got treated with contempt by Livia for most of his life, and the audience, who saw her ruining and/or killing anyone in her way, mostly characters who were represented as sympathetic, genuinely regret her passing. I already mentioned Livia's birthday dinner with Claudius and Caligula (featuring the first frank conversation between Livia and Claudius) and the scene with Caligula and a dying Livia sometime later, as being among the most breathtaking (and most disturbing) of the show. I bet anyone who sees Livia coldly manipulating people left and right at the start of the series won't be able to believe this, but it's true - when Sian Philipps murmurs "I want to become a goddess" your heart breaks for Livia, utterly convinced what she did was right but that the tortures of Tartarus await her in the afterlife unless one of her descendants comes through with his promise of making her divine.
There are several great villainesses which I love - Servalan (obviously, see icon), Darla, Lilah (insert "I loved her first" mumble changed to "I already loved her when the rest of you were pining over Lindsey"). But this is the most impressive of them all. I salute you, Livia Drusilla. Ave atque vale.
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Date: 2003-07-13 06:18 am (UTC)(And now, I need to refer to To Write Like A Woman for my next comment... argh, hmm, no. I think the references to a female Genghis Khan are in The Female Man, actually.)
Livia is Great because she is successful in her schemes, most of the time, and she is smart, and she is acted magnificently by Phillips.
There is a great dearth of great female villains because there are so few possible roles allowed to women in popular narratives still. The wicked stepmothers and their sisters, who operate in the domestic sphere, never get as much limelight as the world conquerors, and are more easily crushed. Where are the female Genghis Khans? to paraphrase Joanna Russ. We see so few of them. Livia was mostly murdering her relatives -- luckily for her, she was in the imperial family, and her deeds were thus inscribed in politics. Servalan and her spiritual daughters, Grayza and Akhna, villainesses with political power in their hands, still constitute a minority. Furlow was great as an evil businesswoman and scientist. (And bless Jo Rowling for her Dolores Umbridge!)
When I look outside SF, female villains are still disadvantaged. Domesticated. Like female heroes. We need more wild, peremptory members of both parties, and anti-heroines who can blur the line without falling into simpering clichés.
Re:
Date: 2003-07-13 08:09 am (UTC)You know, first I was annoyed with Grayza and saw her as a pale Servalan clone, but then she started to come into her own, and from "Bringing Home the Beacon" onwards, she completely worked for me. Loved her scene with Akhna. Loved Akhna in general. (Go, Fran Buller!) Kemper saying we would have gotten more Akhna in season 5 just intensifies my howls of frustration.
And yes, word on the dearth of female villains outside of SF/Fantasy. I think if you ask people the might come up with Alexis Carrington Colby from "Dynasty". Who is presented as out to get her ex-husband, with the aquisition of business and power a by product. Whereas all of the above mentioned ladies were not only interested in power for its own sake but had political aims.
All these decades ago, Virginia Woolf wrote her essays and pointed out how women were allowed only love or scorned love as motivations, and how few male heroes and villains would remain if there were no other motivations allowed for them, and still so little has changed.
Dolores Umbridge was by far the most creepy and fearsome HP villain. (Well, save for the Dementors who are not villains as such.) Actually, with OotP I had the feeling JKR was addressing the complaints about the minor roles of female characters in the Potterverse directly - those already established, like McGonnagal and Hermione, rocked, those not very fleshed out before, like Ginny, got more characterisation without becoming The Love Interest, and we got not one but two female villains (the other being Bellatrix Lestrange). Plus that scene with Hermione and Rita Skeeter and Hermione revealing her inner Lilah? Very cool.
Antiheroines: yes, we need those, too. Aside from Faith, I can't think of one, especially outside the genre.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 09:12 am (UTC)I loved the scene with Rita, Luna and Hermione.
Another good SF villainess was the Rani, in Dr Who, though we got to see little of her.
And a good antiheroine in SF: Carolyn Fry, in Pitch Black.
Thanks for the info!
Date: 2003-07-13 10:33 am (UTC)A tip in return: have you read Barbara Hambly's "Bride of the Rat God"? Set in Hollywood during the silent movie era, and at once a spoof of the plot many a B-Film had and a homage to it. One character, Christine, made me think of Julia as portrayed in "I, Claudius" as well, for the same reasons.
The Rani: alas, I was so distracted by the horridness of the Companion in the episode I saw her in that I couldn't bring myself to finish. But she appeared to be cool.