some angry thoughts on book!Susan versus movie!Susan

[edenfalling]

(This post has been slightly edited for clarity of phrasing, and to add a couple additional qualifiers in the end notes. I want to be precise about what arguments I am and am not making.)

I don't want to harsh on people's squee, which is why I am writing my own post here on my journal instead of appending these thoughts to anything on Tumblr. But. Because Tumblr is aware that I am into Narnia and related stuff, and also into awesome women (and also because sometimes people I follow reblog things), I see a lot of movie-centric "Susan Pevensie fuck yeah!!!" style posts. Mostly I just shrug and pass them by, because the Narnia films are not my canon, and also not really my thing in general for various and sundry reasons, and people like what they like and that's cool. But tonight I saw a post that contrasted book!Susan to movie!Susan and implicitly declared the former a terrible character in comparison.

And I just.

NO.

Book!Susan is not movie!Susan. This is true. She does not participate in any battles. She does not have a body count. She is called "Gentle" because she genuinely does not like fighting; she doesn't have a killer instinct. She does, according to the assessment of Polly, Jill, and Eustace, become interested in fashion and romance and turn away from Narnia... though notably her siblings (who presumably know her better) don't say anything about that and in fact Peter pulls one of the most blatant and awkward rapid subject changes I've ever read to stop the others from continuing their gossip fest. The reason she doesn't go to Aslan's Country has nothing to do with all that. It's because she ISN'T DEAD. Susan is, in fact, the one and only person who makes it out of the series alive, and Lewis himself said (extracanonically) that there was no reason she couldn't get to Aslan's Country later on, after her actual death. So no, she was not condemned to "have fun in hell" for not wanting to associate with "talking Christian animals." She was the one who listened to Aslan -- about learning to live in her own world, about leaving the Rings alone -- and thereby survived. I think that is pretty damn awesome!

As for movie!Susan... first of all, can we stop with the automatic assumption that women who eagerly join physical battles are somehow better than women who don't? I mean, would you say that men who are pacifists, who prefer to talk things over and be diplomatic, who maybe get squeamish at the sight of blood, are somehow "lesser" characters than he-man barbarian types? (If you would, what the hell is wrong with you???) There are so many more and varied ways to be awesome than just hack-and-slash with archaic weapons. Forcing all female characters to kick physical ass is no better than forcing all female characters to be stay-at-home bleeding hearts. We need every kind of woman to be represented!

Second, yes, movie!Caspian was more respectful toward movie!Susan than Rabadash was to book!Susan. (I assume making people's minds jump to Rabadash was the point of bringing up romance at all.) So what? The mess with Rabadash was plot-relevant to HHB, and was never portrayed as a good or healthy relationship. It was a potential diplomatic alliance that turned out to be a bad idea, not because Susan was stupid but because Rabadash was a really good liar. That sort of thing happens. And even if an implicit comparison to Rabadash wasn't the point, I still say, so what? My take on movie!Susan is that she was just as uninterested in Caspian as she was in that annoying boy at the train station. I think she only kissed him to make him stop looking at her like a kicked puppy -- and she only even did that when she knew she was going to escape to a completely different world and there was no chance he would turn into a creepy stalker. That is precisely as valid an interpretation of that plot thread as any "sunshine and Christmas" perspective, by the way, because they are both completely subjective.

And lastly, you know what? If the movies had continued through the rest of the series, movie!Susan would have turned away from Narnia JUST LIKE her book counterpart. The only reason her story doesn't have the ending you have misread and condemned is because the studio ran out of funding to get there. In summary, you are making a false comparison and your argument is invalid.

...

Okay, I feel better now. I still want to write about a hundred book!Susan fics showcasing her differences from movie!Susan and why those differences make her AMAZING, but it's late and I'm tired, so that will have to wait for tomorrow.

---------------

Four additional things:

1) I would like to clarify that I have nothing against movie!Susan in and of herself. I just cannot stand people holding her up as a reason to tear book!Susan down.

2) I do think the changes in her character from one medium to another are a symptom of a large-scale failure of vision on the part of the filmmakers, but I can and do say the same for the changes in Peter, the Beavers, Reepicheep, Caspian, and even Aslan himself, not to mention all the plot alterations, so it's not as if I am holding her up as an isolated example.

3) Yeah, the ending of TLB sucks, but it sucks for everyone, not just Susan. Everyone else dies! Heavenly reward or no heavenly reward, that is not any kind of happy ending I recognize.

4) I am not saying Lewis is a flawless writer. Far from it! I mean, his fuckups on physical world-building alone... *headdesk* But the filmmakers are nowhere near flawless either, and I personally find their flaws more irritating than Lewis's flaws. Other people's mileage may, obvious, vary -- which is as it should be! -- but choosing to accept the flaws in a work or creator doesn't mean you get to pretend they aren't there.

Comments

[heliopausa]

Agree very much re: gentleness, but Saturday is upon me, and I have no time to write. I'll be back! :D

[branchandroot]

(If you would, what the hell is wrong with you???)

Alas, those probably /are/ the people who think that, deep down. And there is not world enough and time to name all the things that are wrong with that. *sighs* Humans, eh?

[rthstewart]

I really feel that the whole idea that a "strong female character" must, necessarily be physically strong, is just so missing the point of female characterization. There have been some memes and gif sets that have tried to capture that. A part of it is surely that if you only have one female character in the whole thing (whatever the thing is) she ends up having to bear the strength/weight of every expectation. Sure I love my kick ass females, but I love other characters who never shoot a thing, either. There was a bit of good analysis running around of the otherwise sub par Iron Man 2 how both Pepper Potts and Natasha demonstrate different skill sets with both running into sexism and both of them taking action of very different sorts.

The characterization of Susan is can be so problematic. The Peggy Susan thing I just did showed her being pretty cavalier about killing but in the original Rat and Sword, when she does kill someone it's a BIG emotional thing, taken to preserve a far greater good. Susan's strengths are not in taking life but in seeking to avoid it and anyone who doesn't understand that that's a STRENGTH is kinda missing the point as you say and really, wuh?

[rosaxx50.livejournal.com]

The reason she doesn't go to Aslan's Country has nothing to do with all that. It's because she ISN'T DEAD. Susan is, in fact, the one and only person who makes it out of the series alive, and Lewis himself said (extracanonically) that there was no reason she couldn't get to Aslan's Country later on, after her actual death. So no, she was not condemned to "have fun in hell" for not wanting to associate with "talking Christian animals." She was the one who listened to Aslan -- about learning to live in her own world, about leaving the Rings alone -- and thereby survived.

YES. The best part about Susan's story arc... she stays, and likely to make a difference because she lives.

(To be fair, I don't think the post was calling Susan a terrible character, so much as criticizing how Lewis ended up presenting her - that's what the "is a great archer, but is present in none of the battles" seems like to me - vs. the film presentation, i.e. "feminine but not revealing clothing".)