The Fem Spot

April 3, 2009

Here’s a ranking where women really stay competitive with men: Entertainment Weekly’s “20 Vilest Villains in Pop Culture.” (Anybody else think that sounds redundant?) Anyway, women have nabbed spots 19, 15, 14, 10, seven and one, but – in the spirit of sex equality – I think we should be awarded half of Norman Bates’ spot at number 12 since Norman is both himself and his mother; and she’s the violent personality. That means we have about a third of the list, including the top spot. (We only have five of 20 on the “Coolest Heroes” list.) Women really know vile villainy!

On second thought, most of these women just seem misunderstood. At spot 19, Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction did boil a bunny, but she wasn’t the movie’s philandering spouse. Everyone is quick to forget that the Michael Douglas character was the real villain of the story, cheating on the beautiful, warmhearted wife and mother Anne Archer. Shouldn’t he be on this list instead of her? It bothers me that a political pundit (or two) compared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Forrest while the former was running for President: a tough, political machine compared with an unstable home-wrecker? (On second thought, Clinton may be the one who is misunderstood. Considering the Monica Lewinsky scandal, isn’t Clinton the opposite of a home-wrecker?) I guess, since Michael Douglas is already on this list (number 18 – Gordon Gekko of Wall Street), the creators felt it was best to spread the wealth, especially since both films were released in 1987.

Ranking number 14, Annie Wilkes from Misery is truly a destructive force, but she’s also a lonely spinster who has become a bit confused about the boundaries between literature and reality. Perhaps, if she spent time with villain number 10, Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – who shows no signs of emotion whatsoever, probably as a defense mechanism – the two could form a lonely spinster club. (“Spinster” really connotes something much darker and more pathetic than its male equivalent “bachelor,” don’t you think?) Her first name is Mildred, by the way.

And how about villain number seven: Catherine Tramell of Basic Instinct? Sure, she looks sexy with an ice pick in hand, but does anyone know for sure if she ever actually killed anybody?

The easiest vile villain to defend is number one, though: The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. This woman gets a terrible rap for no good reason. How would you feel if you were born green and a flying house crushed your sister to death? I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for this “wicked” woman. And according to Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, her name is Elphaba Thropp, by the way.

The only woman on this list who I can’t seem to defend is number 15, Snow White’s evil stepmother, the Queen, in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She wished her stepdaughter dead – and for her huntsman to cut out Snow White’s heart, that sick bitch! – for the sake of vanity: in pursuit of the title “Fairest One of All.” What kind of an excuse is that?

I have a mental block. I happen to know a certain stepmother…and she’s a doozy! I believe she may in fact be evil. (It’s really quite a shame because her children are lovely in spite of their Cinderella counterparts.)

She’s scoffed at someone’s “silly and irresponsible” career aspirations: writer, filmmaker, English Ph.D. She arranged to marry a father – as in hold a wedding celebration – in the house where two sweet, little boys grew up…with their own mother (now deceased) and that father. She’s taken down all of the pictures of their childhoods and filled the newly empty walls with photographs of her own kids. She insists that the boys’ maternal grandparents adopt her as their own, and insists that they, 83 and 89 year-old grieving parents, allow her to accompany them to doctor’s appointments in lieu of real relatives with whom they are more comfortable. She requires that the boy (now a man), who lives a great distance away, drive three hours with his dogs in tow – whom she hates and shuts in the basement – so that the man can have dinner with her and the father in the house that they’ve redecorated, leaving little testament to the long, lost mother. She sat inside the car while the man gave them their (combined) birthday present ($300 plus in home entertainment equipment) and didn’t acknowledge the gift in person, choosing instead to send an indifferent “thank you” card several days after the fact.

And to top it all off, she’s always at least 20 minutes late for brunch…and she doesn’t apologize for it!

This is a feminist blog, so I suppose the best thing for me to do in writing it would be to rise to the challenge of understanding her perspective. Like the witch born green, perhaps this stepmother was (just) born insensitive, narrow-minded, pushy, abrasive and with a complete lack of imagination. In that case, she should be pitied instead of loathed.

A friend of mine explained the stepmother’s mindset to me: “She’s an administrative professional. She probably doesn’t understand artistic careers. That’s just the way people like that think…and she’s a cat person.”

I know several open-minded, creative admins, I’ll have you know! I don’t think your job – which you perform to support your lifestyle – necessarily says anything about your worldview.

Another friend argued in the stepmother’s defense: “Doesn’t she have a right to a home of her own? Doesn’t she have the right to identify with her surroundings, just like the first wife before her?”

I felt myself wanting to find the smallest, darkest corner in my house and crunch my body up into the smallest ball I could so that I could squeak out the words, “I guess so.”

She does have the right to be herself and make the house her own. Yes, she does.

But like any good manager will tell you, a new supervisor can’t come into a workplace and undermine the authority that has previously existed in that environment without offending the troops. The workers will resent their new supervisor before the first work day reaches 5 p.m. The only way an interloper can build alliances within a new group is to respect the dynamic that existed before she arrived. And the same thing goes for a family unit. Change has to happen slowly so that everybody will embrace it.

Of course, that last thought is optimistic. When you’re dealing with senior citizens who are absorbing the loss of their beloved daughter, change may not be possible at all. But like the perspective of the stepmother, their perspective too is valuable.

It can’t be easy being a stepmother, especially under these circumstances. First of all, there’s the dead mother factor. In Bambi, the Great Prince of the Forest is not depicted as remarrying another doe and moving to the suburbs. It’s terrifying enough that Bambi’s mother died; the film does not disparage her by suggesting that Bambi or his father found a replacement.

In the second place, for whatever reason that I’m not privy to, the father and stepmother are refusing to move from the house where the boys grew up. Some things there are different now, not just the pictures. In the living room, they painted one wall red…but they left the blue and mauve curtains hanging in the windows. This means that when the family gathers together, they are forced to consider which things reflect the dead mother and which things do not.

Tacky does not an evil stepmother make. Maybe her title should instead be “Shortsighted and Insensitive Stepmother with Lack of Imagination and Design Sense,” or “SISLIDS” for short. Is that better? More feminist?

The Queen in Snow White, however, is (just) evil…simply put!