Mad Max: Fury Road has already inspired some of the most intense fandom I’ve seen, and been part of, in years. I think it’s partially due to the sheer intensity of the sensory and emotional experience the movie delivers. But let’s be honest. A lot of it is due to Furiosa.
The character has already inspired an outpouring of fan art and cosplay. Even among movie fans who aren’t part of those scenes, people who love her REALLY love her. (And I wholeheartedly include myself in this category.) I can’t remember the last time that multiple, grown-ass adults on my Facebook feed had profile pictures referencing a movie character. Several of them–men and women–have this one:
Why has Furiosa inspired so much passion? I think a lot of it has to do with the way she blows a giant flaming hole in the standard images for women in action films.
While recent years have given us some fantastic action heroines, they tend to be confined within a few set tropes, with remarkably little variation.
Of course, by far the most common trope for women in action is still to be the person being rescued–to be the prize the protagonist, usually a man, gets at the end of the journey. There are whole franchises built around this concept. I think we can all agree that’s boring and not worthy of a blog post.
But even among women characters who have agency in action movies–as protagonists or as villains–there are still some basic patterns that recur again and again. In particular, there are three basic templates that a large majority of female action characters fall into. The point is not that these tropes, in and of themselves, are wrong. It’s that they’re often all there is.
1. The Girl Hero
This is the default trope for YA. Katniss in The Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent…you’ve seen it many times.
Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games
The Girl Hero is virginal (often unusually non-sexual for a teenager). She’s usually small or skinny, sometimes for a logical reason (Katniss grew up starving), sometimes not so much. She seems like an underdog, but proves to be surprisingly good at violence and/or have some unique skill, and through her bravery and grit takes on foes much bigger than she is.
Tris, Divergent
It should be said that plenty of male YA characters share these characteristics–Harry Potter is also small and skinny, a novice in the world of magic, but unusually skilled at a few things. He doesn’t win his battles through physical strength, but through cleverness and bravery. And there’s an understandable appeal in having a scrawny underdog, of any gender, turn out to be a hero, especially in a book or movie geared toward young people. But with a few exceptions (see: Tamora Pierce) the Girl Hero with these qualities is THE template for young women in action/fantasy/sci-fi/speculative fiction.
2. The Sexpot
When the Girl Hero grows up, she can be properly objectified as a different trope, the Sexpot.
Lara Croft: poster girl for this trope
You’ve all seen this trope in the many, many superhero and comic book movies that are currently squirting out of the studio pipeline. She’s that one token woman on the team with four guys.
Yeah, that one.
The Sexpot gets to fight–and sometimes even gets artfully bloody and dirty–but she has to do it in a latex suit and while appearing cool and sleek and having a good hair day. (She has long hair, so she can flip it, and so we’re extra sure she’s a girl.) Her fight style is extra bendy and flippy and maybe when we break out the slow motion. She may use her sexiness as a weapon (a la Black Widow) or it may be just a bonus quality. She can be powerful, but only if we can look at her conventionally attractive body move around in tight clothing while it’s happening.
3. The Ice Queen
The Ice Queen is almost always the trope for female villains. She sits at the top of some kind of power structure–a state or a criminal enterprise–issuing commands to her minions but rarely doing the violence herself. She’s probably got a sharp suit or a uniform and a severe haircut.
Delacourt, the villain of Elysium.
She’s allowed to be older than 35.
President Coin, Mockingjay
The Ice Queen has institutional power but rarely fights; physicality is the low pursuit of men in her world. She may be smart, crafty and manipulative, but she will not punch you in the face. She’ll snap her fingers and get someone else to do it, although she may sit on the edge of her desk to watch.
Jeanine, the villain of Divergent
Maya, Zero Dark Thirty–an Ice Queen protagonist, sort of
The point here is not that there’s no variation on these themes. And there have been iconic female action characters who stood totally outside them before. Alien’s Ellen Ripley and Linda Hamilton as the original Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, doing pull-ups on her mental hospital bed frame, come to mind as the most obvious.
But it’s striking how often the women that do exist in the thriller, action, sci-fi and speculative fiction film universe fall into one of these three boxes. Which is why any character who doesn’t map onto one of these templates is so exciting.
Here’s Furiosa.
She fights a hell of a lot. She does not flip her hair.
She’s intensely physical, but you never get the sense that her fights are choreographed to perform her sexuality for you. They’re choreographed for her to fucking win.
When Max shows up, they have a knock-down, drag-out fight with each other. Max doesn’t pull any punches. Why? Because he makes no assumptions that she’d be less lethal to him than a man. They beat the shit out of each other in a big, messy, grunty, scrabbly fight.
For significant portions of the movie, Furiosa is driving a truck, which means Charlize Theron is essentially acting from the biceps up. You literally cannot look at her boobs. You have to look at her face.
She gets to be dirty. Really really dirty. This picture alone highlights how weird it is that all the other women above are so clean.
She gets to be ugly and make weird faces in the middle of fighting.
She gets to yell and be angry the way one might be in the middle of a nonstop road battle when you’re full of adrenaline because you’re fighting for your life.
In short, she gets to look like an actual person who is actually fighting, instead of a statue that can do a back walkover with the help of a wire rig.
So it’s hardly surprising that she’s racked up a lot of fans. She takes all the images of clean, pretty, carefully sexualized women we’re used to seeing, even in action, rips them to shreds, sets them on fire and then drives over them with an 18-wheeler.
This is all even more remarkable given that Furiosa is played by an actress who is very feminine-presenting in her everyday life. Charlize Theron is one of the very few actresses who’s been allowed to pick roles where she radically changes her gender presentation.
Here she is in Aeon Flux, playing about the most Sexpot-y character imaginable:
Here she is in Monster:
I think there are a lot more actresses out there who could take on these kinds of transformations, radically altering the way they look, move, and perform their gender, the way male stars do all the time. But the equivalent depth and diversity of roles for women just doesn’t exist in Hollywood right now.
Furiosa’s popularity shows how starved we are for images of women who are actually powerful and physical in the same ways that men get to be in blockbuster after blockbuster after blockbuster. It’s not that all the images of women in action have to look like this–it’s just that we hardly ever see a female fighter who looks this way. Furiosa reminds us that there is so much more out there than we’re getting in terms of what women can do and look like on screen.
This Post will Contain Major Spoilers from A Single Pale Rose; If you have not watched the latest episodes of Steven Universe, please do so before reading!
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If I could describe my feelings about the latest episode of Steven Universe in one word, it would be SHOOK because it was a massive turning point in the series that I think a lot of us were both not expecting it and hoping for it all at the same time. Now, I don’t consider myself to be a complex or serious theorist on the series in anyway, as many of my posts are really just for the sake of provoking a conversation and looking at episodes with a different or alternative context. Theories for me are for the sake of the fun of it and aren’t meant to be taken too seriously in anyway, but there are some things that I wanted to point out from the recent special that I wanted to share.
So lets start with the big one.
Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond.
Shoutout to all the theorists who subscribed to this theory so early on in the series. I’ve always been in the camp of White Diamond Conspiracy, but I am so humbly glad to be wrong about it. There are some things about this fact that I wanted to talk about because I’ve noticed a lot of fans have been saying a lot about Pink Diamond and her character, and I wanted to clear some things up.
First, I want to talk about Pink Diamond as a Diamond.
We only have context for Pink Diamond as a Diamond in two instances: Before the colonization of Earth, and after. We know, based on the flashback in Jungle Moon, that Pink Diamond was treated very differently than the other Diamonds. She was not given any colonies, any armies, or even any real responsibilities as a Diamond. She as ultimately only a Diamond in gem and status, but not in power and respect. Pink Diamond was childish and immature, acting on her impulses and her feelings rather than anything else, and with some fairly justifiable reason. She wanted to be respected, and she wanted to be treated like the other Gem Matriarchs, so she demanded to have a colony of her own, thinking that by having that, she could be respected as the Diamond she was.
She wanted her own Army. She wanted her own Planet. And so, she was given the Earth.
Fast-Forward to Pink Diamond in A Single Pale Rose, and we see a very different portrayal of her. She no longer wants to fit into her mold as a Diamond. She no longer wishes to have the Earth as her colony. She realized the Earth was a special and unique places that taught her about life outside of the role she was created to play, and that became more important to her than her status as a Diamond and her desire to be treated as such. She no longer wanted to run her colony, knowing that it would destroy the planet that she grew so fond of, and kill the people she fell in love with. This portrayal of Pink Diamond is much like the Rose Quartz we hear Garnet talk about in Your Mother and Mine to the Off-Color gems, and is consistent with the Rose Quartz we’ve grown to know over the course of the series. A gem who grew to understand and know the planet she was colonizing in a way that the other Gems never had – a understanding that led her to give up her role and life as the Gem she was forever and to actively fight against the Diamond Authority to free the Earth from its tyranny.
But why would Pink Diamond chose to do this as a Rose Quartz gem, and not as a Diamond? Wouldn’t it be more impactful to have a Diamond rebel against the Diamond Authority and not just an ordinary soldier?
Rose Quartz gems are a vein of Gem that Pink Diamond, from context given to us by Blue Diamond in Human Zoo and Blue Zircon in The Trial, made herself. We don’t know a lot about Rose Quartz gems outside of the fact that they are soldiers, much like any other gems like Jaspers and Amethysts. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that Pink Diamond would disguise herself as a Rose Quartz to travel freely outside of her palanquin to explore the Earth. Its very much so a story of The Princess in Disguise: a high-ranking, royal disguising themselves as a commoner to explore the world outside of their castle.
Perhaps Pink Diamond was able to connect with her fellow gems in a way that a Diamond could not as Rose Quartz. Garnet mentions in Your Mother and Mine that Rose Quartz found allies in gems like herself – defective, off-color gems that did not fit their molds to begin with. It is rather obvious that Pink Diamond was aware that she was flawed; That she was unique as a Diamond not for her flawlessness, but in her flawed nature. Perhaps Pink Diamond saw that she was not alone when she came to know the other gems whom she felt related to her in similar ways, gems that did not fit their roles or their statuses, much like she didn’t. In my opinion, I do not blame Pink Diamond for disguising herself as a common gem rather than remain herself; I’m sure she was able to see a different side of her colony as Rose Quartz, a side that would never reveal itself to her as a Diamond. Perhaps she no longer wanted Gems to feel obligated to follow a Diamond – she makes it clear that she wants to fight for the freedom of the planet Earth and the freedom of other Gems. She gave up her mantle as Pink Diamond in order to forge a new identity for herself and allow others to do the same. I think thats one of the reasons she created the Crystal Gems.
I know a lot of people are angry about the fact that Rose Quartz was a facade for Pink Diamond, or that Pink Diamond was pretending to be some kind of rebel leader when in reality she herself was a Diamond – but I personally do not think that this reveal changes anything about the Crystal Gems and their story. I think, if anything, it simply switches the pieces around. I’m a strong believer that Garnet’s telling of the Story of Rose Quartz is accurate, but what I think is different is the pieces involved and some fine details.
We know Pink Diamond demanded to have a Colony, so Homeworld gave her the Earth. She began her colonization, just as she was instructed and just as she was meant to, playing her Role as a Diamond, but as the colonization of the Earth continued, she came to learn and understand more and more about the planet and slowly began to fall in love with it. In Garnet’s words:
Curiosity turned to Appreciation. Appreciation turned to Fondness. Fondness, turned to Love.
Rose Quartz was a figure that stood for freedom; She represented liberation and the freedom to forge your own destiny and life outside of the role a Gem was made to play. Her transition from Pink Diamond to Rose Quartz is a perfect example of that philosophy manifested in the greatest way: Pink Diamond gave up her life as a Diamond to live as Rose Quartz and to be free of the role she was made for. That, is a core belief of the Crystal Gems – the Earth of their home and they are allowed to live and be who they wish to be on Earth. There are no obligations. There are no rules. There are no requirements. Gems can be who they want to be on Earth and experience life how they choose to experience it. Pink Diamond wanted to free the Earth from Diamond control and free the Gems on it to allow them to live how they chose.
Pink Diamond wanted to protect the place that taught her that she did not have to play the role she was made for. She wanted to pass the message of liberation along to others to allow them to feel the same way she did. Her heart and her gem were in the right place. She had nothing but the best intentions, but even still…
…She was still Pink Diamond, and she was still very, very flawed.
Pink Diamond, as we’ve seen her, is very aware that she is not like the other Diamonds in the Diamond Authority. She knows that the other Diamonds treat her differently – she wasn’t given any colonies to rule over like the others had, she had to demand for one. She wasn’t allowed to interfere or be involved in the process of colonization and she was simply expected to play the role of a Diamond in appearance, not in power. She knew she was flawed. She knew that she did not matter, or at least she felt that way. Thats why you hear her say as Rose Quartz:
“Blue and Yellow Don’t care. They never have. This is Pink Diamond’s Colony. We can end it all… Right here, right now.”
However, we all clearly know this is false. The Diamonds cared greatly for Pink Diamond, so much so that they fought back against the Crystal Gems and their uprising to the fullest extent of their power. The fact that she says this about Blue and Yellow Diamond is really, in my opinion, heartbreaking, especially when you think about how much Blue and Yellow Diamond are aching over what they believe to be Pink Diamond’s demise, millennia afterward. Even in the sequence where you see Pearl as Rose Quartz supposedly shattering Pink Diamond, you can clearly hear sounds of anguish and mourning and despair in the background. Pink Diamond made a spectacle of her own demise in front of her entire court, and I had been wondering why Pearl was crying so much when she did what she did. Perhaps its because after the fact, she saw how wrong the both of them were to do what they did. Pearl must have heard or seen the distress of the other Gems for what she had done and thought that what they were doing was a mistake.
But this is what Pink Diamond wanted. She wanted to free the Earth. She wanted to free other Gems. She wanted to be free of being a Diamond – She must have felt that there really weren’t any other options for them, or at least believed that this was all that could be done, at last at this point. It wasn’t like Pink Diamond didn’t try other ways to leave the Earth. We see her and the other Diamonds in Can’t Go Back, with Blue Diamond saying:
“But this is what you wanted. You begged us for a Colony of your own, and now all you want to do is get rid of it. First, there were too many organics, then their cities were too difficult to dismantle, and… and now these Crystal Gems? We’re tired of your excuses, Pink.”
It gives me this impression that Pink Diamond was already in love with the Earth at this point and had been for some time, and that she created the guise of Rose Quartz and the Crystals Gems as a way to hinder the colonization of the planet. Blue Zircon says during The Trial that at the time of Pink Diamond’s demise, Rose Quartz was a known threat for a few hundred years, meaning that Pink Diamond and Pearl had been sabotaging their own colony for at least a few centuries before resulting in their final plan together. Pink Diamond was trying to get rid of her colony for a long time, so she could leave the Earth be without having to take any drastic measures. She had given the other Diamonds several excuses to try and see if she could abandon the planet – Too many Organics to conquer, Cities that were too difficult to destroy, and then finally, a coup of rebel gem known as the Crystal Gems. She had been trying for a long time to leave the Earth, but because of her own previous actions, the Diamonds would not let her.
“You must understand. You… are a Diamond. Everyone on this planet is looking to you. You don’t even have to do anything! Just smile and wave. Show everyone you are unfazed by this little… uprising. Your gems will fall into line and these… Crystal Gems will be, no more. As long as you are there to rule, this colony will be completed.”
Its in this moment that I think Pink Diamond formulated the plan to fake her demise. Blue Diamond instilled this idea in her that a Colony needs a Diamond to rule over it, and Pink Diamond believed that if she was no longer around, the remaining Diamonds would finally abandon the planet for good. I think too, this is why this episode was called Can’t Go Back – not only for Lapis who felt she couldn’t go back to Earth, but also for Pink Diamond, who could now no longer go back to being Pink Diamond after she swore herself to being Rose Quartz.
She can’t go back to being a Diamond, and she no longer wants to.
I know a lot of people are saying that Pink Diamond was stupid for being so selfish, and that Rose Quartz is awful because of how she kept her past a secret, or how she treated Pearl, but I for one, honestly just feel bad for her. Its tragic, to me. Pink Diamond was so carelessly optimistic about her plans that she thought everything would be okay. She didn’t want to hurt anyone else except herself in the process, but because of her actions, she ended up hurting everyone, and I believe that to the day Steven was born, she never stopped feeling guilty about what she had done and the actions she had taken.
Were her actions selfish and stupid? Yes, I do think so. Was she justified in what she did? Not really. Was her heart in the right place? Did she have good intentions? Absolutely.
After Homeworld left the planet and sent their final attack, I’m sure that was when Rose Quartz realized the gravity of her mistakes. I think that was when she realized that what she had done was wrong, and I think that she had been doing all she could afterward to try and make up for it. Its why she did everything she could to try and heal the corrupted gems, to try and make up for what she had done to them inadvertently by fighting for their freedom. They were her allies and she wanted to do what she could for them, but perhaps in the end, she really believed that the world would be better off without her.
And maybe thats why she was so happy to be able to have Steven; Maybe thats why she was so happy to be able experience something so unique and amazing a being a mother… Because even as Rose Quartz, she was still the same, horrible, Diamond underneath…, and maybe one day, someone better would come along to be able to fulfill the hopes she had that she realized she was never able to in the first place.
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