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So I was watching Lost last night and something struck me about the show’s female characters (Kate, Shannon, Sun and Claire).
One of the things that's so fun to watch on this show for me is the way that once set into this primitive environment all the men (er...except maybe one) feel the need to prove themselves a necessary contributor to the community. It's not just that every guy has a talent, it's that every guy needs to prove to himself that he's a man by finding his strength: Hurley makes the golf course, Michael knows about engineering, Charlie gets Jack out of the cave and kicks his heroin habit (I wonder if he'll become a sort of bard, being a musician), Jin catches fish, Sayid is a communications expert, Locke catches boar, tracks and hands out Vision Quests and Jack does everything else. Of the last two men, Boone desperately TRIES to find ways to prove himself and Sawyer makes a big deal of refusing to do that just because he's supposed to.
But what of the women? They feel no such need, but busy themselves with domestic tasks that often no one asked them to do. Look at Sun, for example. She's been invaluable finding herbs for medicine and even started a garden and a grove, but there's no hint that she felt she had to do this to prove to herself and the community that she's useful. She just does it because she can and it seems helpful. It needs to be done.
I have a hard time breaking the men on the Island down into really clear groups. Some are more the main characters, some are involved in different stories, some get along with others, but they don't sort themselves out to be the way the women did last night into two easy groups. All the four main female characters are characterized through their relationships to men. (As opposed to the number of male characters defined by their relationships to women which as of now seems to be a whopping ONE character: Boone, and he's attached himself to Locke the first chance he got). Two are passive and two are active.
Sun and Claire—The Passive.
Sun and Claire's stories are remarkably similar when you think about it. Both are upfront with men, trust in men's promises, and wind up trapped. In Sun's case, she chose a man for a partner who was not part of her father's world. He promised to remain that way and take her away from that world, too. Then he changed his mind. He wanted to buy her things; he became her father's creature. Once this happened Sun was pretty much trapped. She loved her husband, she was married; she had no power over her own. She just didn't have that much control in her world. Sun asks Kate, "haven't you ever lied to the man you love?" as if this is a universal bonding experience for all women, but Sun's lie was very different from any of Kate's so far. "Sun only lied when it was clear her husband now belonged to her father and "I'm not going to tell him I learned English because I was planning to leave him once. It would hurt his feelings," is a different sort of lie than, "I lied to him so he wouldn't find out I'm a criminal and because he might not do what I wanted if I told him the truth." They're both lies, but that's not the whole story.
Claire also relies on a man's word. Her boyfriend tempts her with a similar illusion of a family by telling her they will raise their child together. Then he changes his mind and leaves her. Like Sun, Claire has little control over her situation: she's going to have a baby. Like Sun, Claire must start taking action for her own survival. On the island, Sun and Claire are both good providers in the very traditional female sense, imo, since they're both fertile. Sun brings forth food and medicine from the soil, Claire is having a baby—a very special baby, it seems. They're even both associated with sort of non-scientific stuff. Sun provides alternative medicine, as opposed to Jack's prescription bottles, the kind that might be considered flaky off the island. Claire goes to psychics and does astrological charts, which are considered flaky everywhere, even when they're accurate, as Claire's seem to be.
Shannon and Kate—The Active
Kate and Shannon are also remarkably similar. Both compulsively manipulate and trick men into doing what they want. Shannon's manipulation is laid out for us the day her stepbrother challenges her to catch a fish and Shannon flirts with Charlie to get him to do it. Boone is disgusted (and we can especially see why now!). To Shannon getting something done literally means finding a man and, through deceit and false promises of sex, getting him to do it for you. (In the end Shannon gets her fish, but it's Charlie who's learned to fish.) When we learn Shannon's back story we see she does this on a far grander scale than we ever might have imagined, manipulating men through their desire for sex and their heroic impulses. Such a vampire is Shannon that the idea of her dead leaves her stepbrother feeling relieved. (The show seems to already have realized that the way to challenge Shannon's character is to force her to do things for others —who knows what effect Sayid will have on her.;-) )
Kate's really not all that different. On the island she shuttles between Jack and Sawyer, turning to one when whatever she needs done won't be done by the other. When she spots the suitcase holding something she wants under the water she doesn't draw Sawyer's attention from it and come back by herself, she says, "Help me get that." (He gets it for her.) When she's unable to get the suitcase back from Sawyer she starts lying to Jack about why she wants it. Both men offer to give her the suitcase if they can see what's inside it, but she continues to lie, even though whatever it is she likes about that plane isn't visible to the naked eye.
In flashbacks we see Jack and Sawyer are just two more in a line of men Kate has enlisted to get at the toy plane inside the suitcase. She lies to and sleeps with a punk to get him to plan the bank robbery with her, then lies to a bank manager to place herself in the building when he arrives. Once a holdup's in progress she plays up to the bank manager's sense of heroism by having her "boyfriend" slap her around—this after covering up her failure to help the same bank manager by playing the damsel in distress who "doesn't know how to shoot a gun." When her "boyfriend" crosses her personal lines (by threatening to murder someone) she suddenly turns heroic and shoots him and his friends. "I told you you shouldn't trust her," one of the bank robbers growls, and clearly he's right. The other man Kate heroically saved, an Australian farmer with whom she lived, was also put into danger by Kate herself when she drove his car off the road to escape the police. Back on the island, the only explanation she'll give for why she wants the little toy plane once Jack sees it is that it belonged to the man she loved/killed, suggesting another man who wound up dead because he got involved with her.
Interestingly, so far Kate is obviously the Alpha Girl on the show, which suggests this kind of behavior makes her cool. She's active in ways Sun and Claire or not; she manipulates men into doing things for her instead of just relying on men to do things for her like they've promised. Yet look at the one man who follows the same kind of code: Sawyer. Sawyer, too, gets money by tricking others out of it, often through sex. Only with Sawyer it's part of his generally being a slimeball. Sex appeal aside, the show always suggests Sawyer is ''less of a man'' than Jack, or most of the other men on the show. He seems to fill a sort of Omega Wolf position on the Island (I think that's what it's called—the Omega) and he knows it. When Boone is in disgrace Sawyer points out that for the first time he knows what it's like to be Sawyer—and Boone immediately begins trying to make up for his mistake.
The other thing about Sawyer is that he knows his own behavior is disgusting. He revels in it. He even carries out a letter he wrote to remind him that he's become the thing he hated, in case he forgets that he hasn't taken on the name of the thing he hates as well. When Sawyer can't go through with a con, it's because he sees a little boy in the same position as he was and refuses to do to that boy what was done to him. He leaves the money he was about to steal and just walks out. This act, imo, seems nobler than Kate's own moments of remorse. Sawyer makes a decision to walk out of the house with nothing. Kate just sort of gets cold feet so she's not going farther than she wants to go. Sawyer ultimately does protect the boy he wants to protect. Kate tends to leave everybody wounded somehow. Wounded, but not dead if she can help it.
I'm not sure what this says in any grand way yet. I mean, it seems natural to me that in this kind of environment people would revert to more old-fashioned gender roles to an extent, and I enjoy watching the men trying to be men. I think the women could be just as interesting. Maybe it's just that since the show is so male centered, with more male characters, it just relates more to women-as-male-appendages more than women at this point. Even Wise Old Woman Margaret (Martha? ETA: Rose??) is defined through the husband she doesn't think is dead, before she's a mother figure for LostBoy!Charlie. I seem to remember a conversation between Kate and Claire where Kate seemed almost uncomfortable conversing with this other female. Kate and Shannon don't get along. Until recently Sun couldn't speak to any other female anyway. She and Kate now work on the garden together, but it seems like Kate's there just to give her another place for Jack to come looking for her. If the two of them wind up bonding the way the male pairs do I'll be surprised. I think I'd prefer a friendship between Sun and Claire, actually.
Maybe it just seems one has a better chance of not being maimed being friends with Claire—okay, I guess Charlie was. But Claire didn't do anything to cause that to happen. As usual, she was passive.
One of the things that's so fun to watch on this show for me is the way that once set into this primitive environment all the men (er...except maybe one) feel the need to prove themselves a necessary contributor to the community. It's not just that every guy has a talent, it's that every guy needs to prove to himself that he's a man by finding his strength: Hurley makes the golf course, Michael knows about engineering, Charlie gets Jack out of the cave and kicks his heroin habit (I wonder if he'll become a sort of bard, being a musician), Jin catches fish, Sayid is a communications expert, Locke catches boar, tracks and hands out Vision Quests and Jack does everything else. Of the last two men, Boone desperately TRIES to find ways to prove himself and Sawyer makes a big deal of refusing to do that just because he's supposed to.
But what of the women? They feel no such need, but busy themselves with domestic tasks that often no one asked them to do. Look at Sun, for example. She's been invaluable finding herbs for medicine and even started a garden and a grove, but there's no hint that she felt she had to do this to prove to herself and the community that she's useful. She just does it because she can and it seems helpful. It needs to be done.
I have a hard time breaking the men on the Island down into really clear groups. Some are more the main characters, some are involved in different stories, some get along with others, but they don't sort themselves out to be the way the women did last night into two easy groups. All the four main female characters are characterized through their relationships to men. (As opposed to the number of male characters defined by their relationships to women which as of now seems to be a whopping ONE character: Boone, and he's attached himself to Locke the first chance he got). Two are passive and two are active.
Sun and Claire—The Passive.
Sun and Claire's stories are remarkably similar when you think about it. Both are upfront with men, trust in men's promises, and wind up trapped. In Sun's case, she chose a man for a partner who was not part of her father's world. He promised to remain that way and take her away from that world, too. Then he changed his mind. He wanted to buy her things; he became her father's creature. Once this happened Sun was pretty much trapped. She loved her husband, she was married; she had no power over her own. She just didn't have that much control in her world. Sun asks Kate, "haven't you ever lied to the man you love?" as if this is a universal bonding experience for all women, but Sun's lie was very different from any of Kate's so far. "Sun only lied when it was clear her husband now belonged to her father and "I'm not going to tell him I learned English because I was planning to leave him once. It would hurt his feelings," is a different sort of lie than, "I lied to him so he wouldn't find out I'm a criminal and because he might not do what I wanted if I told him the truth." They're both lies, but that's not the whole story.
Claire also relies on a man's word. Her boyfriend tempts her with a similar illusion of a family by telling her they will raise their child together. Then he changes his mind and leaves her. Like Sun, Claire has little control over her situation: she's going to have a baby. Like Sun, Claire must start taking action for her own survival. On the island, Sun and Claire are both good providers in the very traditional female sense, imo, since they're both fertile. Sun brings forth food and medicine from the soil, Claire is having a baby—a very special baby, it seems. They're even both associated with sort of non-scientific stuff. Sun provides alternative medicine, as opposed to Jack's prescription bottles, the kind that might be considered flaky off the island. Claire goes to psychics and does astrological charts, which are considered flaky everywhere, even when they're accurate, as Claire's seem to be.
Shannon and Kate—The Active
Kate and Shannon are also remarkably similar. Both compulsively manipulate and trick men into doing what they want. Shannon's manipulation is laid out for us the day her stepbrother challenges her to catch a fish and Shannon flirts with Charlie to get him to do it. Boone is disgusted (and we can especially see why now!). To Shannon getting something done literally means finding a man and, through deceit and false promises of sex, getting him to do it for you. (In the end Shannon gets her fish, but it's Charlie who's learned to fish.) When we learn Shannon's back story we see she does this on a far grander scale than we ever might have imagined, manipulating men through their desire for sex and their heroic impulses. Such a vampire is Shannon that the idea of her dead leaves her stepbrother feeling relieved. (The show seems to already have realized that the way to challenge Shannon's character is to force her to do things for others —who knows what effect Sayid will have on her.;-) )
Kate's really not all that different. On the island she shuttles between Jack and Sawyer, turning to one when whatever she needs done won't be done by the other. When she spots the suitcase holding something she wants under the water she doesn't draw Sawyer's attention from it and come back by herself, she says, "Help me get that." (He gets it for her.) When she's unable to get the suitcase back from Sawyer she starts lying to Jack about why she wants it. Both men offer to give her the suitcase if they can see what's inside it, but she continues to lie, even though whatever it is she likes about that plane isn't visible to the naked eye.
In flashbacks we see Jack and Sawyer are just two more in a line of men Kate has enlisted to get at the toy plane inside the suitcase. She lies to and sleeps with a punk to get him to plan the bank robbery with her, then lies to a bank manager to place herself in the building when he arrives. Once a holdup's in progress she plays up to the bank manager's sense of heroism by having her "boyfriend" slap her around—this after covering up her failure to help the same bank manager by playing the damsel in distress who "doesn't know how to shoot a gun." When her "boyfriend" crosses her personal lines (by threatening to murder someone) she suddenly turns heroic and shoots him and his friends. "I told you you shouldn't trust her," one of the bank robbers growls, and clearly he's right. The other man Kate heroically saved, an Australian farmer with whom she lived, was also put into danger by Kate herself when she drove his car off the road to escape the police. Back on the island, the only explanation she'll give for why she wants the little toy plane once Jack sees it is that it belonged to the man she loved/killed, suggesting another man who wound up dead because he got involved with her.
Interestingly, so far Kate is obviously the Alpha Girl on the show, which suggests this kind of behavior makes her cool. She's active in ways Sun and Claire or not; she manipulates men into doing things for her instead of just relying on men to do things for her like they've promised. Yet look at the one man who follows the same kind of code: Sawyer. Sawyer, too, gets money by tricking others out of it, often through sex. Only with Sawyer it's part of his generally being a slimeball. Sex appeal aside, the show always suggests Sawyer is ''less of a man'' than Jack, or most of the other men on the show. He seems to fill a sort of Omega Wolf position on the Island (I think that's what it's called—the Omega) and he knows it. When Boone is in disgrace Sawyer points out that for the first time he knows what it's like to be Sawyer—and Boone immediately begins trying to make up for his mistake.
The other thing about Sawyer is that he knows his own behavior is disgusting. He revels in it. He even carries out a letter he wrote to remind him that he's become the thing he hated, in case he forgets that he hasn't taken on the name of the thing he hates as well. When Sawyer can't go through with a con, it's because he sees a little boy in the same position as he was and refuses to do to that boy what was done to him. He leaves the money he was about to steal and just walks out. This act, imo, seems nobler than Kate's own moments of remorse. Sawyer makes a decision to walk out of the house with nothing. Kate just sort of gets cold feet so she's not going farther than she wants to go. Sawyer ultimately does protect the boy he wants to protect. Kate tends to leave everybody wounded somehow. Wounded, but not dead if she can help it.
I'm not sure what this says in any grand way yet. I mean, it seems natural to me that in this kind of environment people would revert to more old-fashioned gender roles to an extent, and I enjoy watching the men trying to be men. I think the women could be just as interesting. Maybe it's just that since the show is so male centered, with more male characters, it just relates more to women-as-male-appendages more than women at this point. Even Wise Old Woman Margaret (Martha? ETA: Rose??) is defined through the husband she doesn't think is dead, before she's a mother figure for LostBoy!Charlie. I seem to remember a conversation between Kate and Claire where Kate seemed almost uncomfortable conversing with this other female. Kate and Shannon don't get along. Until recently Sun couldn't speak to any other female anyway. She and Kate now work on the garden together, but it seems like Kate's there just to give her another place for Jack to come looking for her. If the two of them wind up bonding the way the male pairs do I'll be surprised. I think I'd prefer a friendship between Sun and Claire, actually.
Maybe it just seems one has a better chance of not being maimed being friends with Claire—okay, I guess Charlie was. But Claire didn't do anything to cause that to happen. As usual, she was passive.
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Oh, and it`s actually kinda sad Kate (as you described her) is considered the Show`s stronger, more "perfect" woman.
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Kate definitely seems to be the strongest character in the show's terms. She has male skills in that she's able to fight like a man and do adventurous things, but then she's also incredibly high-maintenance and gets guys into trouble!
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See, this is just the kind of thing you have to think about when it's a relatively low-Dom ep.;-)
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When you line it all up about the female characters, it's really kinda sad. It's really too bad - Kate started off as a really cool character, and the more time passes, the more they take that away. Even her sordid past as a criminal seems to be just about men. I suppose JJ has done similar things with his female characters on Alias, I just have tried not to pay too much attention to that... I wish he understood how much better his shows would be if he had more 3-D female characters (or maybe he does, and just needs to improve his execution).
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I don't think there have been any women friendships in flashbacks either! There are no sisters I can think of, and even Claire didn't seem to have any girlfriends she could go to when she was dropped by her boyfriend. We don't hear of any Shannon has either. Kate doesn't seem to have any. Sun had some girlfriends when we first saw her in flashback, I think, and a woman was helping her escape, but we never really got to see casual female interaction.
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I'd forgotten about Sun's flashback. They totally had the sisterhood - I really liked her backstory. But now, anytime she and Jin are onscreen, I find myself pondering how one would deal with domestic violence in a situation like that. I mean, I'm clearly showing my roots as a dv crisis counselor, but there's just so much more interesting stuff that could be done here (and so much not being addressed). And I find their interactions painful to watch, cuz it's so real that she wouldn't leave him, and yet now, how could she? Where would she go? I'm not sure when or if she's going to figure out that if she did leave him, he'd be screwed - she can communicate with the others, but he can really only talk to her. Even to use it as a negotiation point so she can wear her clothes as she wants and talk to other people without him yelling.
And yea, in Claire's flashbacks, I totally wondered where her female friends were. She didn't seem to exist outside that apartment and her bf. I have this crazy idea that sometime we'll see people on TV in LTRs but with lives of their own outside of that which don't 100% overlap. And in a flavor other than she has only female friends that do girly bonding (that he would hate) and he has only male friends that do manly things like drink and bowl (that she would hate).
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It really was strange Claire didn't have female friends because unlike Kate and Shannon she seems like she'd have them. She was even the one who tried to have a conversation with Claire early on. She doesn't seem like she'd be that focused on men.
Word to your dream. I can't ever understand the convention where same-sex friends are just there for people to do Extreme Gender Rituals which revolve around not having the other sex there.
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Also, I might be totally hallucinating, but wasn't the Wise Old Woman named Rose? Gah, I must have been exposed to some of Locke's Vision Quest glop. :D
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Rose! Is that her name? I honestly can't remember at all--I'll put that in, though.:-)
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I'm not especially optimistic about any strong female/female interaction happening onscreen. I wouldn't actually mind some Claire-Sun bonding (assuming Claire comes back. Which I'm convinced she will) , but I can't imagine what form their interaction would take beyond commiseration.
You've pretty much nailed the neat little categories they've separated the female characters into. Though for the record, I like Shannon much more than Kate, for all the huge character flaws she has, because she feels more real to me. The lack of a permanently plastered half-sad, half-confused expression helps too.
Back on the island, the only explanation she'll give for why she wants the little toy plane once Jack sees it is that it belonged to the man she loved/killed, suggesting another man who wound up dead because he got involved with her.
Heh. That sentence, and the entire paragraph preceding it perfectly summarises the issues I have with Kate, that are futher exasperated by the fact the show writers clearly expect me to perceive her as some sort of mysterious romantic heroine. At least if she, and by extension the writers, embraced her manipulative, self-centered nature I could enjoy her on some level, like I do Shannon. Instead we get lame attempts of passing her off as misunderstood and conflicted. Yes, it must be hard to have the world revolve around you Kate Sue.
And big WORD on the superiority of Sawyer's 'moral decision' (I hesitate to use such an expression, but it's 1AM here, and I'm insufficiently caffeinated) over the panic-y changes of heart Kate has.
But hey, the show is still young, and could surprise us. For all we now, Rose is in fact a Machiavellian Evil Supervillain, and the rest of the season could be about her eternal battle with Locke to rule the island's super sekrit power.
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Shannon is like fingernails on the chalkboard for me. Call it unresolved childhood issues, but egad she reminds me of all the girls who made elementary school and jr high so unbearable for me. I'm intrigued by your explanation of why you like her tho - I'll have to see if this improves my experience of her. I did find her interaction with Sayid interesting in last week's ep.
Rose is in fact a Machiavellian Evil Supervillain, and the rest of the season could be about her eternal battle with Locke to rule the island's super sekrit power.
Wow, I want you to write for the show. :) JJ does like bizarre twists, so Machiavellian!Rose is probably more possible on his show that in the hands of any other writer. I really like her as she is, but making her a supervillain would make me so happy.
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Heh, its gets a lot of comments.
And don't get me wrong, it's not that I like Shannon. I knew quite a few girls like her at school to (seems that type is universal for all countries), and she's not someone I could see myself getting on with. But when I contrast the way she's written and presented with Kate, she comes off infinetely better, since the writers seem actually aware of her flaws.
Also, I think she has some potential for character growth in the island, and I am a sucker for 'shallow characters acquiring layers' type stories.
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Shannon is just such an obvious leech that might take away some of the power she would have in real life. I mean, even here they made sure to give her one truly useful thing and that is what's driven all her real stories--her ability to speak French. Her tan, her pedicure, her cuteness...that stuff really doesn't do much for her.
Clearly the show knows what poison she is, given her own brother realizes he'd kind of prefer her dead.
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The thing with Shannon, too, is that even though she gets people to do stuff for her you can't imagine wanting to BE her. She doesn't seem to have manipulated herself into any sort of a life. Once she's no longer pretty she'll have pretty much nothing. With Kate you're clearly supposed to see her as more of a heroine-misunderstood and conflicted even as she's getting somebody shot or ordering people around and the world is revoling around her.
Panic-y changes of heart--yes. Even at the end of the last episode her final thing to do about the whole plane issue was curl up and bawl like a baby for some reason. Guys are fighting with each other, they get lied to and manipulated...and she's the one crying at the end. That's the type of thing that makes you go, "Huh?"
I hope Rose is a Machieavellian Evil Supervillain. Woohoo!
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I remember saying last week that Kate and Sawyer seemed like two peas in a pod--only with Sawyer it's understood to be a rotten pod. Sawyer intentionally makes himself unsympathetic while Kate cries and asks for understanding. But underneath Sawyer seems to have the same strong moral code as anyone else, even if he's trying to force himself not to live up to it.
You can definitely see why anyone who had to live with Shannon would feel relieved if she died. When she's dealing with Sayid she's put more in perspective because he's so much stronger than she is (I think) but poor Boone. It's like his mother introduced radioactive waste into his life when he was 10. He didn't have a chance!
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I see "Lost" as something straying dangerously close to allegory territory. There are symbols sprinkled in all over the place... even within the lyrics of the closing song. And so I tend to think the following about all that...
Charlie has to give something up to get something, he is told. (Who is he giving up to or getting from? The question begs to be asked). That's important for his Wise Fool personna to develop and become a more prominent plot point.
Sawyer... he's the Shadow Hero. He could have been a hero... he has heroic qualities (a measure of courage, strenth, energy, not to mention a High Pain Threshold). But instead of taking these characterizations and serving The Light with them, he took them in another direction.
If you're following me this far... I think you'll see how applying the same methods to the characterization women can become problematic. There seems to be lots more archtypes to choose from for males... (Tricksters and Kings, Magicians and Warriors) many being strong ones, tho not all necessarily positive. With women it is basically The Maiden, the Mother/Matron, The Wise Older Woman... and maybe a few others that are variations on these main three. So that is how we ended up with a semi-useless blonde girl, a pregnant woman, a spiritually minded older widow...
Given what they are... how WOULD one combine these female characters into meaningful "bonding relationships"? How to show women evolving meaningfully into "something" roles. The puzzle is how to write them as something other than women assuming those roles which are seen as distinct from those already taken by the men of the island. So maybe you'll get a healer... but you probably won't get a female "warrior" or "trickster" or whatever.
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And now we've got Walt's mother who's manipulative too in her own way, cutting her son's father out of his life and forcing another guy to adopt him. The first thing the guy does when she dies is dump the kid!