Tonight....someone close to me will die!

[There are spoilers in this article for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ]

    One of the most well established tropes of comic book writing is to have secondary characters that are women exist for the express purpose of at best being a love interest or at worst to be a tragic fatality. It doesn’t matter if it’s an indie book, a superhero comic, or even a 60’s tale of romance.
    In the most extreme cases, these characters move beyond tragedy and are ‘fridged’
referencing Kyle Rayners one-time love interest who was literally disarmed and stuffed into a refrigerator. That’s a plot point you’d expect in a Frank Miller Batman and Joker comic, not for the story of the pluckiest of Green Lanterns. Beyond brutality against women, what fridging most represents is the idea that women are best put to use to drive male characters to action.

pictured: a good depiction of women in comics

   I’m not the type to say comics have made anything close to great strides since then; what has happened is a series of small steps towards being more inclusive and better depictions of marginalized groups. While it’s likely that Comics are treating women better than they ever have (especially indie comics) there’s still a lot of room to be covered. Even while comics are making great lengths, other representations of the medium still lag far behind.
    In the original issue of The Amazing Spider-Man that the events of the last movie are based on,
Peter Parker is forced to make an impossible choice, between the life of Gwen Stacy and stopping a villain. What should have been a normal rescue doesn't go as planned.
The result creates one of the most famous deaths in comic books: Gwen Stacy falls from the Brooklyn bridge and as Spider-Man rushes to save her, he inadvertently causes her death.
    Outside of clones and ill-advised plotlines, Gwen’s one of the few characters who’s ever stayed dead permanently. Even now, writers lacking a clever device to make Peter Parker’s life miserable can always fall back on the fact that Peter Parker essentially murdered one of his ex girlfriends.
    We can see this in the plot trends of the newest Spider-Man films directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.  In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we’re given a Gwen Stacy that’s much more than she ever was in the comics. In the storylines that follow her death in the various Amazing and Spectacular Spider-Man series, Gwen Stacy is almost an object of nostalgia as she was an object of comic readers’ infatuation.
   Gwen Stacy represented the often sought ‘girl next door’ archetype, who was demure without being too aggressive. There’s nothing about her character that was meant to be abrasive at all: Peter Parker’s failings with her were always dictated to be because of his own lack of experience in dealing with partners.
   This is of course a common point of derision for women in comic books, and the traditional comic book love-story. The easiest finger to point is the use of women purely as visual and emotional titillation: Peter Parker is meant to be a hopeless nerd (or that’s what people know about the character) yet he dates Mary Jane Watson, a redheaded model/actress/object of teenage dudes’ fixation.
   In one of her most famous appearances, Mary Jane faces the camera and utters what’s also her most famous line: “You just hit the jackpot, tiger.” She then proceeds to talk in incomprehensible slang for the rest of her early appearances as Mary Jane Watson, model and rebound.

   Throughout her existence as a character, that seems to be what most writers design her character around where the decision to include her in the Spider-Man mythos was purely “Peter Parker needs a new girlfriend!” Instead of the thirty plus years she’s had to grow and develop as a character, becoming much more than she ever was in the comics she was introduced in.
   That’s an easy mark to hit, too – if you don’t read comics and want to cover their depictions of women from a negative standpoint it’s easier to latch onto characters like Mary Jane
that seem shallow at a glance.
   Mary Jane’s been criticized before as a weak entry into the canon of Superhero love interests, especially compared to someone like Lois Lane. Superman’s famous intrepid reporter catch from the city of Metropolis. Lois Lane and Mary Jane aren’t bad comparisons to make, either. Both Superman and Spider-Man are often seen (in and out of universe) as the respective “hearts” of the fictional worlds they inhabit.
   Where we have Lois Lane as the tough reporter who has to constantly be pursued by the shy, small-town Clark Kent, we contrast Mary Jane’s depictions as primarily a pursuer. Her sole “Face it tiger.” Somehow being the apex of her and Peter Parker’s relationship; the mythical “This is it, I have indeed hit the jackpot,” every desperate guy with a crush has ever hoped for from the object of his desire.
   It cemented her most as the ultimate nerd-bate fantasy woman. Peter appears to have a stable relationship despite his reluctance to ever ‘pursue’ her. She falls for his shy personality and chiseled body that he never has to work for.
   Where Lois Lane had eyes for Superman and Clark Kent, Mary Jane had no interest in Spider-Man.
I think the message the comparison sends the most is that for women, being an active pursuer and deciding the value of your own existence isn’t as valid an expression of womanhood as it is to be pursued and defined by the men around you, which is awful any way you look at it.
    Yet what seldom is mentioned about her “Face it tiger.” Is that in one single line of dialogue, Mary Jane managed to cement herself as a woman who’s in touch with her own self-worth. She might depend on Spider-Man to be saved, but she never depend son Peter Parker to support her or validate her existence.

   If it were any other kind of story, Mary Jane would be the example of a stereotypical ‘trouble’ woman who’s too aware of her own purpose and value to be held down by a man, the standard subconscious reinforcement that women should be strong and empowered, but not too strong and empowered if they still want to be desirable.

    In the film, Gwen Stacy exhibits most of these character traits without ever openly stating them, taking advantage of the fact that a movie has more time and ability to impart character details than  the standard 30 pages that a comic book has to do it in.
   Yet even still, there’s deeply rooted sexism (if not outright misogyny) in both of these characterizations. Because of how we function as a society, we’re less inclined to notice it. Where women like Lois Lane are concerned, people have been constantly reinforced by the same tropes used by popular media.

   We see the same examples of the Strong Female Protagonist archetype that there are somehow more valid examples of womanhood than others. A woman who knows and understands her own self worth is still viewed as dangerous. That is, unless that person’s self image can only be validated by someone else, usually a man.
   The reason Lois Lane and Mary Jane make such a good comparison is primarily their relationship with their suitors. Even at her most aggressive, Lois Lane’s existence was still dependent on Superman – whether she was getting saved or sharing a byline with Clark Kent.
   Arguably, Mary Jane’s character started off the exact same way. I mention earlier that she was introduced because the comics needed a stronger relationship dynamic again, and she was created to fill that void after several other love interests came and went.

   Somewhere down the line, even after both characters had married their long-time partners, they diverged significantly. If you examine the character of Mary Jane for the last thirty years, you see that she was given steady ways to grow beyond her initial characterizations.
   She’s been trained in hand-to-hand combat by Captain America. She’s a successful actress and model and she constantly refuses to ever be put down or held back by Peter Parker. Their relationship in the comics has been more or less defined by her insistence that Peter Parker needs to be more than just a smart guy and a superhero to stay together

   Much more than Sam Raimi’s trilogy did, it’s easy to tell that Marc Webb’s definitely drawn off of modern Mary Jane’s characterization much more than he does Gwen Stacy’s.
The way both characters have kind of ‘switched’ who they are at their core isn’t really a problem when it comes to storytelling, for comic book fans though, it’s been a classic point of derision aimed at both sets of films.
   My argument is that it’s not much of a problem: The goal of a storyteller is self explanatory: to tell the best story they can. Compared to Kirsten Dunst’s performance as Mary Jane, Emma Stone managed to turn a pretty flat one note love interest into a fully realized character. Of course it helps that as an actress, she was able to embody a journey of growth that took Mary Jane years in the comics.
   Gwen Stacy in the movies is probably one of the best ‘love interest’ characters ever used in a kind of good vs. evil pulp movie. I can’t name many other characters that establish themselves as so dominant -- The movies kind of build it up to be as much about Gwen’s journey as it was Peter’s. It’s just…unfortunate in the face of the ending they ultimately give her character.
   In The Amazing Spider-Man 2 we see a Gwen Stacy who’s neither relegated to the role of manic pixie dream girl or protagonist stabilizer. Some of the opinions of Comic Book fans I’ve seen so far in light of the movie have been pretty hate-filled. What kind of hero is Peter Parker for deliberately putting Gwen Stacy in danger against her father’s wishes, etc.
   Most of the arguments (if not all of them) I’ve seen tend to favor Peter as a victim of Gwen’s selfishness, when only the opposite is true. At the end of the first movie it’s true that her father makes Peter promise to keep Gwen out of his life, but even as her father that’s not a decision he can make for her.
   If anything, the whole second movie is meant to practically be about that issue. Gwen’s constantly refusing to be answered for by anyone but herself , and it’s ultimately her decision to be involved in Peter’s affairs that he’s even able to defeat one of the villains.
    Yet the reactions by primarily comic book fans to the movie still paint Peter’s insistence on making and trying to control her decisions as heroic or noble. An easy way to sum up the critique is that people are upset Gwen won’t bend to the wills of the males around her.
   Her insistence that yes, Peter’s life as Spider-Man is a dangerous one but that it should be her decision to acknowledge she might be put in danger and is prepared for that eventuality is hers, not Peters forms the driving force behind a lot of the drama in the movie.

   Gwen still has to die though, ultimately because of canon that was determined in the 70’s as somehow essential to the mythos of the character. That’s hella odd too, because most of what Marc Webb draws from for inspiration is the Ultimate Universe in terms of characterizations – one of the established takes on Spider-Man where the way Gwen Stacy dies isn't just wholly different - but she actually comes back (and the story is no worse for it).
   Even then, that can most likely be excused after enough rhetoric in its favor – this isn’t by any mean an attempt to create the ‘definitive’ Spider-Man story, yet its’ most dated by its adherence to things like assuming the only way for a hero to lose the person they love most is by having them die.    
   That it is somehow inexorable for a heroic character to be a victim of romance and not another person’s murder. That somehow, despite making our representations of women better and giving them more opportunities to shine as characters and actresses that their existence is still ultimately defined in pop culture as either objects of love and obsession or to be used as a catalyst to spur a heroic  character back into action – usually through their death.
    Mary Jane Watson was originally going to be in the original version of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which makes me question how bloated the movie was even before it hit the cutting room floor. Ultimately, Marc Webb decided that it was just too much to add her into a movie where the romance was already so well cemented and focused on two characters, so all of the scenes involving her were cut after almost all of them had been filmed.
    From the way her character seemed to be depicted, her portrayal would have matched Kirsten Dunst’s more down-to-earth portrayal of the character from Sam Raimi’s trilogy.
I don’t think her removal is something that can be seen as detracting from the quality of the movie. If anything, it reinforces the point that Gwen Stacy isn’t just doomed by canon, but that she has to die because she doesn’t need her existence to be validated by the male protagonist:
She’s willing to put herself into danger selflessly, and could be seen as a result as being ‘too dangerous’ compared to a shy and awkward Mary Jane.
   Though her removal doesn’t detract from the quality of the movie, it does detract from the impact of the argument here. Had she been left in the movie – It’d be even easier to argue that Gwen Stacy has to die because she’s too ‘dangerous’ compared to the down-to earth and understanding Mary Jane.
   While comic books are in no means perfect, movies tend to recreate trends cribbed from stories that are now decades old, re-purposing events and creating a kind of faux-nostalgia for a particular zeitgeist that can never be experienced again.
   Marc Webb attempts to translate Spider-Man as an almost pulp romance comic to the big screen, bringing the accompanying baggage that saddles the medium with it.
It's been more than fifty years since Spider-Man was introduced in an issue Amazing Fantasy. Maybe it's time someone realized that next time they bring the character into another medium.

-skeletons

(P.S. Special thanks to Brad and Hayden for the input.)