Villainesses

Evil women and villainesses are the spice of pop culture life. Cristen and Caroline mine the dark side for what Ursula, Catwoman, Cersei and other mavens of immorality can tell us about real-world women.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never told You From how stupports
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And since it is Halloween's season when
we're recording this episode, we are honoring, celebrating the villainess. Yes,

(00:25):
the bad girl of pop culture and fairy tales and
comic books, the evil stepmother, the giant octopus with really
cool hair. Let's be honest, Ursula's hair is so on
trend right now. We've got to admit, though, or acknowledge
that Ursula was based on Divine, the drag queen. Oh yeah,
hence big beautiful Ursula with her big beautiful hair, No wonder,

(00:49):
she's so fabulous and evil true true, yes, um yeah.
The post that inspired this episode was over a tour
dot com and it was titled in Defense of Villainess
is basically arguing that lady villains do not get their

(01:10):
proper dues in pop culture. Sure they're brushed off, is
just mad, bitter, resentful old women, or they just aren't
as visible or as uh fleshed out yeah as male
villains are. And in fact, there was some villainous news

(01:32):
recently that kind of gets to the heart of the
marketing machine behind villains and maybe one reason why we
don't see more women villains. Yeah. So, when you search
for anything on the Google about lady villains, villainesses, whatever,
one of the only things that comes up on page

(01:52):
one is the fact that the original Iron Man three
villain was gender swapped right before production, and not in
a good way. If you've if you've seen the movie,
you know that the villain was supposed to be a
woman and ended up not being a woman anymore. Why
did they do that? Well, I'll tell you so. In

(02:13):
the original script, the plan was to have this lady villain,
but a memo came down to the filmmakers saying, nope,
don't do a lady villain. A female villain toy will
not sell as well. And that kind of blows my mind.
I maybe I'm naive, but I didn't realize that like
pre production, not even after the fact. It's one thing

(02:35):
to like market something differently, but I didn't realize that
the making of a film could be influenced by the
toy making machine. Oh yeah, it's all about that money, honey,
I know. And so director Shane Black was like, guys, guys,
guys calmed down. The president of Marvel Studios had nothing
to do with this, because everybody was like, are you serious,
and they were trying to find out who to blame, basically,

(02:57):
and he said that we had to change the entire
script because of toy making. It was the marketing machine,
it was the higher ups at the studio. It was
not the director or the head of Marvel. Well, I
wonder if that also has to do with them, Uh,
presuming that the audience for Iron Man is going to

(03:17):
skew mail, so maybe you'll have more boys who are
gonna be interested in buying Iron Man related toys compared
to girls. And the thinking goes that boys would be
less likely to buy a girl villain, sure, or that
parents would be less likely to buy it for their son. Yeah. Maybe,
But I would just think, like, and I'm maybe I'm projecting,
I don't know, but I would just think that a

(03:40):
villain is a villain is a villain, and if it's
a woman like that just seems really fun too. I
imagine she has like dark lipstick and dark hair and
and cool accessories, and of see, I guess I am
a girl. Though we'll see that gets to what seems
to be the two categories of female villain that you

(04:03):
have in pop culture. Usually she's either kind of vampi
and a seductress, but also evil of course, she's like
an evil woman in that yellow song. Or she is
older and undesirable by virtue of her like lack of sexiness.

(04:27):
She's the anti seductress. She's the old hag with the apple,
the poison apple. Yeah. So, I mean it's still a
similar pattern that you see with female protagonists, where a
lot of times they are defined by their relation to
men and their sexual attractiveness. And with with films too,

(04:49):
cartoon or live action, you know, you have to provide
some degree of coding so that the audience sort of
knows what to expect from that character. And so making
her um, you know, a brunette, uh, you know she
maybe she's wearing all black and she's super sexy like
that codes as like the evil vamp villain, just the

(05:10):
same way that painting her as a witch an old
hag is like, oh, the signals to me that I
need to watch out for her and not trust her. Well,
and what you're describing, especially with the woman dressed in
all black, like a Donna Karen outfit from head to
toe is just reminding me of Angelica Houston and the witches.

(05:31):
Just watch that so flawless. She is that woman, she's
so stylish, she's stunning. And then of course, on the
inside she really is is this terrifying haggard witch who
looks like the Sanderson sisters, which I in hocus Pocus.

(05:52):
It's just watched hocus Pocus last night. Oh my gosh, Caroline,
I watched hocus Pocus this past weekend too. Okay, can
we talk cocus focus for a second for sure? And
this will listeners tie back into our conversation on villains,
because they are like the archetypal like evil Crone, and
they've got in that group of three sisters, they have

(06:13):
it all right. Oh yeah, they've got Bette Midler's kind
of she's not the old hag in terms of like
the snow white evil witch with a poison apple, but
she is still made to look with the buck teeth
that are yellow and the crazy red curly hair. She's
made to look a little more old and haggard compared
to her sister's right, and she's the most powerful too,

(06:36):
correct And then You've got Kathine and Jimmy who she's
They make her do this weird like crooked thing with
her mouth. Yeah, she kind of talk the side of
her mouth. They give her a speech impediment. Yeah, and
she yeah, she is the dumber. Well she's dumber than
uh Winifred. But then you've got Sarah, Jessica Parker's Sarah

(06:56):
who she is the vamp. She's the skinny blonde with
the big boo is coming out over her dress, and
she is super air heavy and jumps around and claps
all the time and says a makamukamuck and she really
wants to make out with any male who enters their premises. Correct. Um. So,
I gotta tell you that I loved the Witches, the

(07:19):
Three Witches. Could have watched them all night long, but
I stopped watching hocus Pocus. Couldn't get through it. Y'all.
This was my first time. Wait, this weekend at thirty
one years old, this was my very first viewing of
hocus Pocus, and I couldn't finish it because that like

(07:43):
poor Man's Jonathan Taylor Thomas kid, it was just the
worst because it starts off with him just lusting after
like the girl who looks like a young Hillary Swank
and it's like weirdly like overtly sexual, and he doesn't

(08:04):
listen to anyone. And you know what, during the selection season,
when we've had a man who is not listen to
women mucking a lot of stuff up, I was like,
I can't do this. I can't watch you. So where
where did you stop? Uh? The Witches had come back
and I don't know, like, uh like fake j T

(08:27):
T had just done something else foolish, and I was like,
I can't thora Birch, You're perfect, all the witches, You're perfect,
even young Hilary Swank I think you have a horrible
taste in middle school boys, but didn't at all, um,
But I was like, why why does it have to
be centered around this kid? Um? Also, this is a

(08:49):
cautionary tale of waiting to watch children's movies when you
are a thirty one year old professional feminist. Yeah. I
definitely have the benefit of the nostalgia factor having watched
it growing up, but it was funny watching it this
time around. I hadn't seen it in a couple of
years that I definitely was like, why why does it

(09:10):
have to center on this guy. Why can't it center
on Hillary Swank or yeah, who's perfect? Because by the
end of the movie, by the very end, which you
didn't get to, what's weird about it is that it
does feel like it is centered around her basically, Like
the ending shot is brother and sister like hugging or whatever.
But it's all about thora Birch saying goodbye to these

(09:33):
two characters, two of the characters in the movie. And
I wanted to be like, what this this just should
have been the movie. Let the two girls, who are
clearly smarter than this boy run the show well. And
getting back to our convo on villainess's villains, Uh, I
love that the Witches, the Sanderson's sisters are just purely

(09:58):
evil and have no qualms about it whatsoever. You know.
They there's that moment early in the film where they
get some some youthfulness back and are restored to their
their younger looking selves. Um, so you have like a
touch of uh, stereotypical like female vanity going on. But

(10:21):
then they're they're so powerful and terrifying and they love it.
And also I love that that midler Um despite her
extreme buck teeth and wild hair, I mean, she thinks
she looks phenomenal. I know they all do, and they're
they are, They're so wonderful. And I love how funny

(10:43):
that Middler is allowed to be in that movie. How
funny Winifred is allowed to be that she's not entirely
one dimensional. But let's talk about their fashion, because this
leads us into something that is pretty consistent across pop
cultural villains who happened to be women. So they've got
some good style. Yeah, so I love that the Sanderson

(11:06):
sisters they do have these like flowing gowns and capes. Um.
And you know you mentioned Angelica Houston in which is
she is fabulous with her lob, her long bob, her
you know, crazy good makeup. It was the eighties. Um,
and her she's got this tight off the shoulder black dress,

(11:28):
which when she turns into the ghoulish version of herself,
she's still wearing a gorgeous off the shoulder black dress.
I do love that that. Sarah Gailey over at tour
dot Com pointed this out, as did Lucy Hutchings when
she wrote about Villainess fashion for Vogue UK. What were

(11:49):
some of her favorites? So, I think one of the
main ones that is sited across all of these listical
sites has to be Maleficent, both the cartoon version and
Angelina Jolie's version of Maleficent. Of course, Maleficent is the
witchy evil villain from Sleeping Beauty. Yeah. She she has

(12:11):
that amazing headpiece. Yeah, she has that amazing headpiece. It's
so elegant, you know, for being like horn shaped and whatever.
Um and other villains with amazing accessories, like you've got
to think of l Driver's eyepatch. She's uh, Darryl Hannah
in Kill Bill Sarcy's queenly armor. So Sarcy finally, spoiler

(12:35):
Searcy in Game of Thrones finally gets to be on
the throne. Who knows how long she'll be there, but
to indicate that she has transitioned from just being like
run of the mill evil queen into like run of
the mill super evil, super powerful queen. She's wearing all
black with her an all black gown complete with like

(12:56):
super badass locking armor on her shoulders. Yeah, we'll never
remind me of when a couple of seasons back now
where Sanza is off with little Finger and I start
worrying that she's about to go to the dark side
because she starts wearing this intense black gown that has
uh those like feathers. Yeah, what way to go, wardrobe department.

(13:21):
But I mean those killer wardrobes. I mean they might
be wearing robes like Malifficent or o Riny she also
from kill Bill. They might have fabulous coats depending on
how you view For if you look at Cruella de
Ville or Miranda Priestley from Devilware's Products, she's kind of
the villain of that movie. Obviously that's not a comic
book movie or anything. Obviously she's supposed to be Anna Wintour, right,

(13:43):
so she must be well dressed. But she's a villain
for sure in that movie, and she has fabulous coats. Uh.
And one very common wardrobe choice, particularly when it comes
to comic book and superhero movies, is the cats suit.
And so not only obviously do you have Catwoman ring
the Cat's suit, even though one might argue that Catwoman
is really more of an anti hero than a villain.

(14:06):
Let's let's go back right Ghostbusters number one, Zul Right,
even though Zul is not technically a woman, Zul can
take whatever form here she wants. When Zul shows up
on top of Sigourney Weaver's building, Zula is dressed as
like the white version of Grace Jones basically. Anyway, You've

(14:27):
also got Nebula and Guardians of the Galaxy uh and
Harley Quinn not in the latest live action movie, but
in the comics she's wearing kind of like a joker
type cat suit. Well, and then there's also Poison Ivy,
who wears a cat suit made yes, but this is
this is what I'm getting at though, where we have
like the more mature woman who might be dressed all

(14:50):
in black. She might be chic, but she's probably not
outright sexy. And then you have the cat suit villains
who are very sexualized. I mean, they all like it
is fun to look at them, and I'm sure it's
fun to create them. They have fabulous crazy hair, like
their hair is allowed to be the Ursula swoop or

(15:12):
Zul's flat top. Or if you're going with like a
woman who is putting on femininity to describe to disguise
her evilness, you've got Amy from Gone Girl, who has
like the most perfect, fabulous, blonde, long, luscious hair ever
she puts on that luscious hair and then just like

(15:34):
Lego hair, just puts it on in the morning, bamboozle
has been affleck. That's right, And you know, tied in
with the whole like having fun with appearance thing is
the fact that a villain, like I was saying, a
villainess is allowed to look different. She's allowed to have
these different physical attributes than just like the perfect Disney princess,
well because she's loud. I mean, this reminds me of

(15:56):
our episode on Curly Hair, where a lot of times
you she coded. In movies, if you have sort of
a life montage where suddenly a female character kind of
like gets her act together, she's gonna go from having
curly hair to straight hair or vice versa. Like when
Um on Scandal, for instance, whenever we see Olivia Pope

(16:20):
um like kind of teetering on the edge of sanity,
or she is off on a deserted island like no longer. Yeah,
Caroline is squinty, but they're fans of Scandal, know what
I'm talking about? Um When uh, when she's not her
put together Olivia Pope um self, she usually has curly hair. Interesting, see,

(16:46):
but it's coding. It's it's signaling to the audience that, like,
even if you're not literally thinking like, oh, she has
really curly hair hair versus straight and put together, Um,
it's still signaling to you that something is different because
it's all it all kind of boils down to what
we associate with acceptable femininity, which is modest. You're not

(17:10):
going to wear a bold red lip like Maleficent, You're
not going to wear a gaudy fur coat like Cruella.
And you could see this as both a pro and
a con, but you are also likelier with villains, female
villains in pop culture for her to not necessarily be

(17:31):
white in the same way as so many female protagonists are. Yeah, okay,
so yes, that like virginal white femininity that is like
the crux of so many protagonists in these like fairy
tales or in these comic book stories, just the same
way that the villainess is coated as evil or crazy

(17:52):
by the way her hair is or her makeup or
her clothes. You know, the protagonist, the fairy tale heroine
is so often just like a traditional feminine that we
think of, the traditional white feminine that we think of. Um,
but you can have plenty of different types of villains
in comic book movies. In fairy Tales, You've got Verett

(18:15):
din a k A Fatality, She's a comic book villain.
With d C Comics. You've also got zen Z. She's
a new villain actually for the twenty six Team Black
Panther comic series by Tana Hassi Coates. Um. And if
you move out of the comic book realm too, I mean,
just look at kill bill by itself. You've got Go
Go you bari O, Rainy, She and Vernita Green all

(18:37):
trying to kill Uma Thurman's character. Or if you go
to Batman, you have my favorite villain of all. Who
is Catwoman played by earth A Kit. Oh yeah, She's perfect.
And then you later have Holly Berries Catwoman. And I
mean earlier you described like the quote unquote like traditional

(18:58):
white femininity. Um. I don't know if it's so much
traditional as it is racist ultimately. Oh, I mean yes,
and I mean traditional in terms of how that protagonist
is shown on screen. Right, Um, because I I feel like,

(19:19):
with with exceptions obviously two things like Zenz and Black
Panther and and some of these other characters. Um. But
to me, the the chance that these villains have differently
colored skin. Let's say, um does say a lot about

(19:39):
how we perceive women of color because also consider how
um Black women in particular historically have been so framed
as Jezebels and sirens and seductresses. And I would imagine
that there is that that that feed into some of these,

(20:01):
especially older school villains. Yeah, that no wonder, it's more
acceptable to have women of color of some sort, right
because they're already deviant by virtue of them not being white,
right exactly. And I think that ties into the next
point of why it is so common slash acceptable to
have a villain who plays on the whole vamp tripe,

(20:22):
who is that sexy, made up, you know, busty evil woman,
because even if she's playing on her sexuality and toying
with men and taking advantage, it's like, you can't you
can't hate her for it. That's her power because she's evil.
So it's okay for a woman to display outright sexuality

(20:45):
if she's evil and will be defeated in the end. Well,
and then by by that logic, then doesn't that mean
that a woman doesn't that suggest then that a woman
who is open with her sexuality and wields it in
such a way that that is the evil thing about
her exactly. Yeah, I know. And and some of my

(21:07):
favorite villain essa's do do this. I mean, but it's
an old trope. Oh yeah, I'm so easy to rely on.
Like okay. So one of my favorites is uh in
one of my favorite movies to watch around Halloween, which
is The Sleepy Hollow with Johnny Depp. Love it, love it.
It's one of my favorite movies. And Miranda Richardson's Lady

(21:27):
van Tassel uh in that movie is so freaking brilliant.
She gets to be beautiful, she gets to be glamorous, right.
She wears these big gowns even when she's mid like
crazy evil woman and her hair's coming out of her
up to she still looks like so fabulous and glamorous
when she's totally losing touch with reality. Um and in

(21:53):
all of this evil stuff she's doing and controlling the
headless Horseman, the way that she picks her victims and
seduces them and everything, like she tempts them with her
sexuality and her beauty, and it's so she's such a
fun villain to watch. This is also reminding me of
a movie I was watching last night. Also for the

(22:13):
first time, y'all, I've really been trying to catch up
on pop culture from like way back. I was watching
Casino and Sharon Stone, who plays Robert De Niro's wife
hustler turned wife, is such an embodiment of the Vampi
villain because you know from the first moment you see

(22:35):
her on screen that she is going to be his downfall,
because she is so captivating in her whole presentation. Of
course she's gorgeous, but also in how they outfit her
as just this very glamorous but ultimately money hungry and

(22:56):
self destructive um like Vegas queen. Well, yeah, because how
could beauty and sexuality coexist with a woman who doesn't
implode beauty, sexuality, and ambition. I mean, granted her ambition
was just to be like obnoxiously wealthy, but nonetheless, as

(23:17):
we're gonna get into that, I mean a lot of
these villains are ambitious, yeah, you know, not to be
a villain apologist. They leaned in, They really did, Ursula
who leans in. Part of the Ursula come just stealing
people's voices. She's got pet eels. Um. Yeah, So this

(23:40):
whole beauty thing in femininity is something that Shannon Austin's
wrote about in Batman's Female Foes, which appeared in the
Journal of Popular Culture back in April, and she quotes
author Mary J. Russo talking about how often in these
stories where the woman and villain is powerful and also beautiful,

(24:03):
that she uses her femininity as a mask and to
put on femininity with a vengeance, she writes, suggests the
power of taking it off and purposely disguising themselves in
this way and acting feminine to gain certain ends. Thus
allows them more power because they can remove this mask
at times convenient for them, revealing the so called monsters underneath.

(24:28):
And I you know, I'd love to talk with you
more about this and get your opinion, but to me,
it just reminded me of every time on the internet
a man criticized as a woman for wearing makeup. Uh.
But but you know, I mean, quite literally, that's what
Angelica Houston's which villain does, and which is she puts
on the mask of a beautiful, statuesque, distinguished, fashionable woman

(24:52):
and then takes it off and she's the haggard, disgusting,
which monster underneath? Right, which I mean talking about rude
dudes on the internet that that reminds me of uh,
the whole thing of makeup being deceptive. Correct. Yeah, yeah,
And you know, a villain, no matter male, female, old, young, whatever,

(25:15):
deceit is probably part of that part of the storyline
is that you need to deceive the hero or the heroine.
And so in this way that Austin and Russo are
talking about, femininity is like a super dangerous disguise because
look at poison ivy. You know, she's beautiful, you know,
and she'll tempt you with that beauty, and then her

(25:37):
kisses are fatal. She will kiss you and it will
kill you. Yeah. I am highly allergic to poison ivy.
I can look at that stuff. Oh god, I had to, like,
I got it so bad a couple of years ago.
I had to take steroids for it, and I just
lost my freaking mind. I was rage crying all the time.
So I don't take steroids anymore. But anyway, and we
also do not need to go around kissing Uma Thurman apparently, Yeah, no,

(25:59):
don't do that. But if we look at how a
lot of times, especially with more traditional fairy tales like
Grimm's fairy tales and a lot of the Disney princess
plot lines, you have these villains who are older, and
there there's like this Catch twenty two of those kinds

(26:21):
of fairy tales obviously rewarding feminine youth, fertility, and beauty,
but at the same time maligning these older women who
have lost that and who are trying doing everything that
they can to get it back because they realize that
that's the only way that society will value them. And
so we're like shaking a finger at them, but at

(26:41):
the same time, we are upholding the very thing that
is allegedly making them evil. Yeah, oh yeah, I know.
And and we're so scared. We're so scared of elderly women,
especially if they are elderly and alone. It would be
one thing if it was an old woman and she's married,
because then she's she's just a great mother. She's gonna
make cookies, you know, That's how she would be characterized.

(27:04):
And in a story, she would not be the villain
if she were married or paired with a man in
some sort. And there was this great NPR article that
talked to a couple of academics and folklorists about the
appearance and the presence of these older women in folk tales.
And they talked to Ivory Coast writer Veroniq Tajo, who

(27:26):
said that the old witch who destroys people's souls is
a super common African folklore figure. And she says she's
usually a solitary woman. She's already marginal, she's angry at something,
at life or whatever, and she will eat people's souls
in the sense that she's going to possess people and
then they die a terrible death. There's something scary about

(27:48):
a woman who does not possess that youth and that
beauty um and that traditional femininity, and who's also alone, like,
oh my god, where did all the norms go? And
she's like a net. You know. If we if we
have to deal with her, if we have to hear
her complain about anything, we don't like it. And it's
certainly not unique to African folklore. I mean, if we

(28:10):
look more at like Western history and some of the
mythology that we've built up around say cat ladies and Salem,
which trials and um. Also if we go even farther
back to medieval times when old women living by themselves
were so reviled um that if they were found to

(28:33):
be complaining too much and too loudly, they could be
punished by having to wear what was called a scolds bridle,
which was literally like a muzzle that they would have
to wear to shut them up. Yeah, people didn't want
to see or hear elderly women on their own. Gosh, like,
we don't want the burden. So children are to be
seen and not heard. Old ladies, we don't want to

(28:54):
hear from you. When when can we talk? That's why
we have a podcast. I guess I think we're in
that sweet spot of people still allowing us to talk. Yeah, yeah,
we're still We're still fertile as far as we know,
so we can keep making podcasts. Oh thank god. Well.
Harvard Folklore and Mythology professor Maria Tatar could be Tater

(29:18):
tater Tott, Maria Tater Todt, Maria tator Tot. I like that. Um,
I'm sorry. Uh. She talks about how the powerful old
witch woman in mythology is the one who can work
magic and transform. In other words, hello, what have we
just been talking about? In other words, she can exert
power and deceive and there's like nothing worse than an

(29:42):
old woman deceiving you with something. It's why people get
so upset when women wear makeup. It's why, you know,
people criticize older women for getting plastic surgery that's visible.
It's like, what are you trying to do? Are you
trying to deceive us about how old you are? You
should go live in a hut in the woods and
big children are You're trying to avoid being rendered invisible

(30:04):
by our sexist and ageist society. How dare you? What
are you thinking? Um? And you know, Uh, this Harvard
professor points out something that I hadn't even thought about,
which is the transformation sequence that's in some of these
Disney movies that we've talked about. She says, I always
looked at the Disney film Snow White and that charismatic

(30:24):
wicked queen who's down in the cellar with her chemistry set.
There's a sequence in which she turns from a beautiful, charismatic,
wicked queen into an old hag. And then, of course,
she points out, I think there's a scene that's probably
more frightening for adults than children because it compresses the
aging process. And about twenty seconds, um, but it also
reminded me of the scene and Game of Thrones from

(30:45):
Melissandra takes off her magic necklace at the end of
the night and transforms from this beautiful, seductive, redheaded witch
into this ancient old woman who's hunched ough her and
sagging and her hair is falling out. And I mean,
I like, hello, trophy trope, trop nous of displaying just

(31:10):
how powerful and evil someone is by how they deceive
you with their appearance and their femininity, right, because if
she weren't disguised as that sexy witch and just looked
like an old crone, no one would listen to her, right.
But but there are really fun ways that these villains

(31:32):
get to flout a lot of feminine conventions, and we're
going to get into that when we come right back
from a quick break, now, Caroline, as soon as I
said feminine convention, I felt like I should distinguish that

(31:55):
from the witch convention in The Witches starring in Delica, Houston,
which is sort of a feminine convention if you think
about it. Yeah, yeah, totally feminine convention. Not feminine norms
per se, but definitely a feminine convention. They do eat
children or no, they turn them into mice. They don't
eat them. Yeah, yeah, so that's fine. Um, but I

(32:19):
do think it's fun. I mean, you know, I think
it's fun to look at villains and talk about them
because they do flout so many conventions. And we've already
talked about, you know, the stereotypical image. You know that
they flout traditional femininity as it's as it tends to
be presented to us on screen. Um. But because of
a lot of that flouting, all of this flouting going on,

(32:42):
they can make a lot of people nervous too well.
And one of the reasons behind that, some people have
suggested is because I r L outside of Grimm's fairytale land,
we don't really understand female monality all of that much.
It's it's still kind of hard for us to wrap

(33:04):
our heads around it. Yeah, there's a lot of assumptions.
And this is coming from Brenda Russell, who write Perceptions
of female offenders. According to Russell's research and the research
of others, we do tend to think a female criminals
as an anomaly, like it's weird, something must have happened,
and we tend to view them either as victims who

(33:25):
were acting in self defense, or they were under the
control of others, like oh, well, she must have been
like one of Manson's women. She must have been told
what to do and duped into being so evil and unnurturing.
Or they are crazy, criminal deviance whose actions strayed from
typically female behavior, like she does have to be some

(33:47):
comic book superhero villain, Like I can't imagine a woman
who's like a run of the mill CLUPTI mediac basically
your run of the mill, average, every day clup top.
She's just got sticky thing yours is just one own
a writer. I love wayn I love you. Um. But
then of course there's a thing Kristen that you mentioned

(34:08):
earlier which is tied into this as well, that like, ah,
none of this is normal for a woman to do,
to be a criminal, But when it comes to women
of color who commit crimes, we tend to be less
sympathetic because it's like, oh, well, no, she's that's just
to be expected from a black woman, because they're unchased

(34:28):
and untrustworthy. Yeah, there's there's a lot of it's a
hot mess, really when you start unpacking. Yeah, views of
what women are capable of or not capable of are
so inextricably tied up with issues of race and class
as well, and speaking to that, for listeners who want

(34:49):
to learn more, we did a whole episode on Kleptomania UM,
which speak a lot to race and class. So definitely
go back in our massive archive and dig that one
up because it's a good episode. But of course too,
you have a lot of female villains who symbolize what

(35:10):
we repress, and that immediately makes me think of Carrie's mom. Yeah,
what dirty pillows? Yes, your your breasts or dirty pillows,
and she's terrified of Carrie getting her period because that
means that she's send sexually mature fears about female sexuality. Yeah,

(35:34):
I mean is that really like at the heart of
female villain e is sex panic? It's I mean it,
it seems like it. And well, and the thing about
that too is like, Okay, let's think back to older,
older tropes, fairy tales, folklore, and you've either got that
temptress villain, which type lady, or you've got the old hag.

(35:55):
And the more the stories are repeated, the more they've
become deeply ingrained into our collective subconscious basically, and so
when we I say we like, I'm a screenwriter. When
we create new stories, what are we doing but reaching
back into what we think of in terms of what
a female villain looks like, and frequently that goes all

(36:16):
the way back to sexy witches basically, or I would
argue that it goes all the way back to the
Garden of Eden. Oh snap and Eve original sin. Yeah,
it might seem like a stretch to call Eve a villain,
Now it totally works. Yeah, I mean she's she is, uh,

(36:37):
you know, lured into this by the snake Satan in
the form of the snake. But nonetheless she deceives Adam. Yeah,
you've got deceit, You've got a naked lady, you've got
long hair, don't care. And we know what some dirty
pillows because you know they weren't wearing clothes. Well, you
know what Hippocrates thought of long hair, that it was
full of semen. That's right, That is a fact. That

(36:58):
is a fact. Listeners, Yeah, that goes back to a
couple episodes now that we've done. We just love talking
about Hippocrates and hair. It's my favorite Hippocrates fact for sure.
But in terms of repression, Shilah Fair facts over at
Current Vlog in June cited film theorist Robin Wood and
looking at horror cinemas in particular, quote Return of the

(37:21):
Repressed Tool. Uh. Wood said that monsters are manifestations of
our tendency to enforce surplus repression within our communities, ensuring
we're all monogamus, heterosexual, bourgeois, patriarchal capitalist. Alright, so translate
please um. Basically, as Wood explains in this theory, women

(37:45):
are a counterpoint to male domination. They are therefore a
threat to patriarchal society. And so men project their repressed femininity,
which they hate because it's not powerful and it goes
against patriarchal ructure. They project all of that onto women.
And when a woman rises up in power, so when

(38:09):
that femininity returns to face them, uh, that female character
is clearly a monster who must be subdued. And so
when you look at all of this horror film stuff,
a female villain then is often the horror trope combo
of the return of the Repressed tool, female victimization and

(38:35):
punishing women who attempt to assume power, and the whole
female victimization thing. It's because so often with these bad girls,
these female villains, her motivation is so often revenge, Yeah,
I mean, and revenge for social rejections sometimes. I mean,
you do have in the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz,

(38:58):
for instance, you you do have the Wicked Witch of
the West who goes after her because she thinks that
um Dorothy has killed her sister. So that makes sense
she she wants to avenge your sister's death. But as
Elena doctor men Over at Time Magazine pointed out not
too long ago, one thing that a lot of female

(39:21):
Disney villains have in common is revenge for just straight
up social rejection. So I didn't realize that Ursula gets
mad at the beginning and targets Ariel because she sees
Ariel leaving for a party and she's just bummed out
that she's no longer invited to those kinds of events.

(39:42):
I didn't remember that at all. Similarly, Cinderella, you have
the evil stepmother and stepsisters who are terrified that old
Cindy is gonna outshine them at the party. Um in
the animated Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent is upset that he wasn't
invited to Aurora's christening. Oh right, well, but in the

(40:05):
live action Malefic sent with Angelina Jolie. Her backstory is
that she got her heartbroken by some man and now,
like anyone who experiences love or whatever is just too
gross and she's got to hurt them or whatever. Yeah,
that was a disappointing choice. Yeah, I mean, think of
all of the crazy, weird baxsters. You're literally recreating a

(40:27):
fairy tale in whatever way you want, and like that's
what you go go for. Well, and a document points
out that, meanwhile, you have male villains who tend to
be allowed in the Disney cannon, tend to be more
allowed to just be like evil for the sake of
wanting to cement power. So with scar in the Lion

(40:50):
King and Jaffar in Aladdin, they just want to be king.
Yeah that's also a song. I will not sing it.
Oh come on on, um. But for some of the
same reasons that these female villains in these tropes make
people nervous, whether it's in real life according to researchers,

(41:10):
or just whether she's scaring people in the film. Uh,
there's plenty of reasons to like her. Oh yeah, she's fun,
she's fierce, she wears a bold lip. Oh yeah, no,
seriously love it. Uh. She's unapologetically power hungry. She doesn't
have to just be spunky and rely on the hero
to get her where she needs to be. She tends

(41:31):
to be brilliant, if not a mad scientist type. She's unpredictable,
she's independent. Her storyline, her reason for being, doesn't have
to rely or revolve around a man. It can have
something totally different. I mean, frequently it does involve a
man to some extent, but it doesn't have to well
with a lot of the social rejection lines though. It's

(41:52):
more anger over competition with other women, which is also
an interesting twist to consider. Yeah, and typically the thing
with these lady villains, whether it's live action, cartoon, folklore, whatever,
she's typically not afraid to go after what she wants
at any cost. Typically that involves killing someone. Yeah. Granted

(42:16):
her motives are questionable, sure, but these women are often ambitious. Yeah.
So someone who maybe is not a villain, but it's
a fabulous anti hero who I think encapsulates a lot
of what we're talking about is Sigourney Weaver's character and
working girl, right, super ambitious, deceitful, beautiful. Uh, you know, Petty,

(42:40):
She's like all of these complicated things wrapped up in
a shoulder padded businesswoman package. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.
I mean all of the villains that we've cited by
name all have that massive internal drive. You know. Nebula
is gonna can kill, Serc's gonna kill, Zula is gonna kill,

(43:03):
They're all gonna kill. Cruella is gonna kill puppies. Like,
all of these women are driven to accomplish something, and
usually it's killing, killing in order to get something that
they want. And some times though, they will team up
with other women. Yeah. Okay, So this goes back to
that Shannon Austin Batman paper that we sided earlier. She

(43:25):
talks a lot and I didn't realize there was this
much to talk about. Austin proved me wrong. She talks
a lot about the relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison IVY,
and I was not aware of this. I basically only
know anything about Batman from what I've seen in the movies,
the live action movies. Mind's more Adam West base, so

(43:48):
you're probably even more accurate. I don't know about that, um.
But so Harley Quinn, who it is worth noting her
entire character. Her persona is in reaction to a man.
So she meets and sort of falls in love with
the Joker, and he manipulates her into becoming this villain

(44:09):
for him or with him. Um. But anytime she starts
to act up and try to kill someone on her own,
he basically smacks her down and he's like, no, I
want to do that. You don't get to make decisions
about murder. You don't get to kill people for me. Yeah,
And so you know, there's all of this stuff that's
lady villains and batman in reaction two men. But at

(44:30):
one point Harley Quinn is almost killed, but Poison IVY
saves her. Poison Ivy, the woman with lethal kisses who's
dressed in Poison Ivy, which sounds terrible. Um. And as
Austin points out, it's these women's closeness that gives her
her strength back, not the stereotypical like cattiness and fighting

(44:52):
that makes them weaker. And so she says that the
cements the almost terrifying idea that while a woman with
hour is dangerous, women helping women achieve power is an
even more serious threat. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are
always running around together, helping each other even when they're
in a fight. Well, and talking about Harley Quinn of

(45:12):
course makes me think of Suicide Squad, which I did
not see, because I'll never be able to get those
two hours of my life back if I do. But
the one bright spot critics said in the movie is
Harley Quinn, and she might get her own spin off movie, etcetera.
So I am curious from listeners who are in the

(45:34):
know what they think about her portrayal in that film,
because more broadly, I would be curious, um to see
whether and how the dynamics and motivations of female villains
changes it all in more ensemble roles where they are

(45:55):
usually the only female villain in the room, surrounded by
their their dude villain friends, um, or they might be
one of two. But I'm just curious from from listeners
if that changes changes things at all, or if they're
still just kind of the same but hanging out with
batty friends. Yeah. And you know, we've talked a lot

(46:18):
about ambition and female power and the fears around it,
and Sarah Gailey over at Tour wrote that the dividing
line between a protagonist and a villainous typically ends up
that the villainous actually gets what she's been working for,
meaning power. And you know, still, what we've been talking

(46:39):
about is that what makes the villainous a villainous is
that she's still striving for more. She's still striving for
more power UM typically over the protagonist or the heroine,
and Gailey writes, somewhere in there, they stopped caring about
what other people think, and they get what they want,
and they hearn it into cautionary tales. Something bad is

(47:02):
waiting for the woman who goes that way. We believe
it and we repeat it. I mean, we're basically trained
through everything from folk tales to being read stories as
we're growing up, to watching movies now as grown ups
trying to catch up on nineties pop culture, we're told
that women with power are to be we're to be

(47:23):
suspicious of them well, and that up until recently, I
do think the narrative is changing um, in part because
of major successes like Frozen Um, But for so long,
the underlying message was that really the only honorable aim
for a woman would be to find her prince charming. Yes,

(47:47):
to be quiet and sweet and modestly dressed. And wait
for the hero to come save you in the tower,
be the damsel in distress rather than doing it for yourself,
like Maleficent with a head dress. That's right. I wonder
if I could start wearing a headdress. Listen, you can
the only thing stopping you it was getting getting a

(48:08):
head dress. You're right. Maybe I could just get like
a fascinator, you know, maybe you know Holly from stuff
you miss in history class can hook you up. I know,
but I just always wear a T shirt and jeans.
Would it be weird? Maybe if it's maybe like your flair,
you know, you're like how pick up artists are encouraged
to always like wear something that will spark conversation, So

(48:30):
years can be a fascinator. I think I have killed
this idea for you now. Yeah, also my soul. That's fine.
I'm turning into a villainous as we speak. But because
of all of these rich layers and convention defiance that
these villainesses tend to exhibit, a lot of people are

(48:52):
calling for more of them and more fleshed out, more
interesting female villains like give us small are Yeah, I know,
I mean I feel like we typically have been so
starved for women who don't fall into stereotypical save the
damsel in distress categories, that, of course we would be
excited to see women in these crazy villainess roles. I mean,

(49:16):
I would argue that, like, maybe we should just get
more three dimensional women characters in general, rather than having
them need to be amazing amy from Gone Girl. Well,
and one thing we haven't mentioned that we absolutely need
to highlight is how, arguably nowhere else in mainstream cinema

(49:38):
big screen, small screen do you so reliably see any
sort of body diversity like you do with villainess is now.
Of course, if they are the more sexualized cat suit
wearing ones, they're gonna look, you know, like supermodels are
gonna look like halle Berry. But when you think about

(50:00):
the Sanderson sisters and Ursula, you know you do have
fuller figured women in there now. Of course, it also
says something about the fact that they are deviating from
you know, that uh thin ideal, and that also says
a lot about our fat phobic society for sure. But
that's also a convincing argument to see more of them

(50:23):
and to also have them be more three dimensional. Yes, yes,
because as we've clearly been talking about even though the
Sanderson's sisters are villains and they're evil, we love them.
I love those women even though you know all your
faiths are problematic. Um. And Kelsey McKenny over at vox says, yeah. Maybe. Um.

(50:45):
She argues that yes, male villains have tended to get
the juicier, more complex roles with fleshed out backstories and
rich motivations. Um. Possibly, she says, because we love the
bad boys. We love complicated, difficult, evil genius men. Uh.
She does point out by the way that whole entire
books have been dedicated to pop cultures difficult men. I

(51:07):
feel like there's one that has Tony soprano in the title. Well,
you do have the whole Wicked series and how incredibly
successful that's been. That's true, which is all focused on
the witches. Um yeah and she uh. McKenney goes back
through our pop culture villainous history and says that, yeah,

(51:28):
I mean they're great in their fabulous Um, but they
have tended to be, like Maleficent, a little bit flatter. U.
They tend to be used as plot devices. Um. Like,
she says, the original Maleficent and um, the Wicked Witch
of the West, who yes, she has the motivation to
avenge her sister's death, but is really just kind of

(51:49):
shrieking and vengeful on screen before she melts um Or,
she points out Nurse Ratchet in one floor of the
cucoos Nest, who's evil but she has no real backstory. Hey, also,
I had totally forgotten even though I've read the book
and seen the film. In One flu Or the Cuckoo's Nest,
Nurse Ratchett ends up getting hers at the end in

(52:13):
the most horrifying way. Like, yes, she is pure evil
and she treats patients in this psychiatric word, terribly. Um,
but her come upance is like very close to sexual assault.
So towards the end of the film, Randall, who's played
by Jack Nicholson, um ends up getting in a brawl

(52:36):
with Nurse Ratchett and he rips her uniform and I
can't remember if it's like more graphic in the book,
but he yeah, like tears her clothes off, and it's
just it's very violent. And while okay, she's she's horrible. Um,

(52:58):
female villains having their come up and spa sexual violence
is not cool Like that that says a lot about
just like an outright hatred for women across the board.
But I mean, I think that that ties in and
meshes perfectly with all of those theories about femininity and

(53:21):
sexuality being deceitful and a disguise used to tempt the
helpless pure man. Well and and Nurse Ratchet is such
the opposite of the stereotypical like nurturing perhaps kind of
sexy nurse. And also the fight between them is precipitated
by Randall, like sneaking to women into the hospital. Um.

(53:45):
So anyway, I had I had kind of blocked that out,
I think until I started reading for this episode, because
at first I was like, oh, yeah, Nurse Ratchet, she's awful,
and then I was like, oh wait, but then then
at the end things get very very uncomfortable and not okay. Yeah,
And I mean, I I think, you know, a lot
of what you were talking about with body representation and

(54:07):
you know, just having women who look different and speak
differently and act differently than the traditional heroin on screen.
I think a lot of that goes to just under
representation of women in general. Um, and how we do
tend to with the way that women are represented on screen.
It is so easy still to fall back on tropes

(54:29):
to punish women for their sexuality or or breaking gender
norms and uh this was also coming from mckenny's box piece.
She says that male characters outnumber of female characters three
to one in family films, so like a Disney movie,
and fort of male TV characters are shown on the

(54:49):
job in comparison to just twenty eight percent of female characters.
So women either aren't there, or when they are there,
they're not shown in positions of power. We're seeking power.
But as some would argue that it's definitely getting better,
not necessarily because we're seeing um more three dimensional maleficence everywhere,

(55:10):
but because of the rise of the female anti hero.
Oh my god, my favorite anti hero right now is
Phoebe waller Bridge on Fleabagh. You and me both girl. Oh,
I Binge watched there's six episodes on Amazon. I Binge
watched it. I I belly laughed the entire time I

(55:31):
was watching that, and at the end the last episode,
I was alternating between laughing and sobbing like a crazy person.
It was such a good show. She is such an
amazing character. I'm a little obsessed and I just saw
an article. Where was it? Was it on Refinery I
just saw an article about what her lipstick shade is
on that TV show. Such a good lip shade. Oh yeah,

(55:54):
she's wearing the statement lip. Um. I would also like
to give a shout out to Sharon Horgan, who stars
in Catastrophe. Um. And she's also the showrunner of Sarah
Jessica Parker's new HBO show Divorce, which I'm not loving,
but I love Sharon Horgan. She's uh, she's hilarious. I mean,

(56:16):
if you can share the screen with Rob Delaney and uh,
hold your own amazing and their chemistry is fantastic, and
she is flawed and three dimensional and wonderful. Well, and
that you said something, it's so key and it's flawed.
And whether you're a villain or an anti hero, and typically,

(56:40):
if it's not a fairy tale anti hero equates to
just regular woman with flaws and bumps and bruises and all.
But um, McKenney writes about how when you don't let
women be either the villain or just the flawed anti hero,
that ties into ideas of benevolent sexism that like, make

(57:02):
sure if we're gonna have a heroine she's going to
be upstanding and you know, pure and innocent and in
need of help. You know, we can't. We can't let
the woman hero have flaws and potentially be angry. Well,
that's why Jessica Jones is such a refreshing change from
all of that too. Although still all the people that

(57:23):
we've been naming so far white. Yeah, so we still
got catching up to do. Well. And let me tell you, so,
I noticed this as I was, you know, pulling notes
out of all of these sources that we read, and
I was like, where are the black women? Where are
the Asian women? Like? And so I I did some

(57:44):
searches on comic book sites, but listeners, I need your
help because I am not a comic book person. And
so I was specifically googling, for instance, black comic book supervillains,
and I came across a couple of names. But when
I try to search for them elsewhere, like they either
weren't true villains or I couldn't find more and better

(58:07):
fleshed out info. Well, on TV, though we do have
women of color being anti heroes. You've got Cookie on Empire,
and you have Anally's keating and how to get away
with murder. There are times, for sure when you could
argue that Olivia Pope is an anti hero. Is the
show Gotham still on because Jada Pinkett Smith played Fish

(58:31):
Mooney on that show, that's a villain? I don't know
if Gotham still on though, I'm I'm not sure. I've
never watched it. It's not my cup of tea, but
I know I know some people love it, Gotham watchers.
But okay, Kristen, Um, I forgot to mention, you know
when you talked about Nurse Ratchet being punished in almost
a sexual assault style way. Um, That's one theory that

(58:54):
Dan wall Over at The Mary Sue in June talked
about that there are issues when it comes to screenwriters
grappling with how to defeat a villain and that villain
is a woman. Because typically when you've got a villain,
the bad guy and the good guy fighting, it's fighting
and it's bloody and it's violent and it can be
scary and awful and the and the bad guy ends

(59:15):
up dying or whatever. Um. And so Dan wall Is like,
I just wonder if screenwriters are nervous about having some big,
epic final scene battle between a man and a woman
and and his thing, I know, Kristen shaking her head walls.
Thing that he argues is like, if that really is
what it is, because that's just a theory that he's

(59:36):
wondering about. Just right, write better stories that don't have
to involve punishing nurse Ratchet by taking your clothes off
or whatever. Yeah, there are all other forms of confrontation
that might not necessarily involve violence a so yeah, be
more creative. Also, uh talked to Josh Weeden because he
made Buffy the Vampire Slayer if he can make as

(59:59):
seven seas than hit show where Buffy is getting beaten
up sometimes, I mean granted, and she's defending herself, but
like when early in uh what is it in the
second season when spoiler alert she and Angel fight, it
is harrowing to watch um. And the same with Jessica

(01:00:20):
Jones where like she's fighting um and it can be
difficult to watch. But there's a difference between scenes of
women fighting and depictions of violence against women. Yes, which
also going back to Casino right quick, Oh my god,
there's a little bit of that in there, which is

(01:00:43):
I just don't I don't have the stomach for it anymore.
My threshold is so low for that I can't. So,
I mean, we need better villains, We need people to
write better villains, but we also just need people to
write better women right well, And something really telling about
some of the shows that we've been talking about recently,

(01:01:04):
with say Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder Um,
you have a woman of color who's a showrunner. You've
got Shonda rhymes with Jessica Jones, you have also a
woman's showrunner, and they just announced for season two every
single episode will be directed by a woman. Like this
is why diversity is not just a buzzword that it matters.
And same thing for Black Panther and Tanahasey Coats coming

(01:01:29):
in and taking that over and completely reimagining that world
with a black superhero at the center, because maybe now
we can get more stories that reflect richer inner lives.
But also don't just fall back on tropes about woman
as sexy equals bad and dangerous, woman as ambitious equals dangerous,

(01:01:52):
woman as anything over size, too bad and over the
age of what like, which means that you and I
are just old hags. Yeah, So, who are your favorite
villains listeners. Were there any that we didn't mention? I'm

(01:02:14):
sure there are who you were hoping that we would cover,
but we didn't. Let us know. Help us fill in
our our villainous cannon, and we'd love to know all
of your thoughts. We know so many of you are
pop culture junkies, so give us all of your insights.
Mom Stuff at how Stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple

(01:02:37):
of messages to share with you when we come right
back from a quick break and now back to the show.
We have some letters here about a woman who is
decidedly a hero. I have a letter here from Polly
in response to our Shirley Chisholm episode. She says, the

(01:02:59):
first I heard of Shirley Chosen was on a trip
to New York, where I wandered into a Brooklyn Delhi
alone and was grace to sit with a sweet older
fellow while I devoured my pastrami. He told me how
he'd worked right beside the late great Unbossed and Unbought
Chishlm in her campaigns. That man had the twinkliest twinkle
in his eye as he taught me about her. Flash

(01:03:21):
forward a year, and I'm a field organizer for Denise
Juno to take Montana's soul seat in the House of Representatives.
Who I noticed you gave a shout out to on
your Facebook page. What's so special about her potential nomination
comes not only from the fact that she's a two
term state superintendent who radically lifted graduation rates on reservations,
or that she would be the first American Indian and

(01:03:41):
not to mention, lesbian woman elected to Congress, but that
she'd be taking the seat on the one hundredth anniversary
of the first woman ever being elected to the House
of Representatives. And that's right. It was Montana who voted
Jeanette Rankin into office in nineteen sixteen, before women even
won the right to vote. Nash only. Montana has not

(01:04:01):
sent a woman to Congress in a hundred years, and
it's about time. I seriously could not get through the
hours of canvassing all over my city without listening to
Sminty between the doors I knock on. I always enjoy
pressing play on my phone after suffering thinly veiled racist, sexist, homophobic,
reasons that a person at the door won't vote for Denise.
You know, I just love skipping past the men mowing

(01:04:23):
their lawns as the two of you take a nuanced,
intersectional look at something or another. I've stopped turning down
the volume when I passed these men. Trump signed in
the yard, be damned. I'll end my letter with a
current ZEITGEISTI quote from Jeanette Rankin, our first ever congresswoman.
If I had my life to live over, I would
do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.

(01:04:46):
And that, my friends, is what we call a good
omen for Hillary's nomination. All my best, Polly, I love
that quote. I want that cross stitched. I bet it's
already on at State. Okay, I have a letter here
from Leslie, also about Shirley Chisholm, and Leslie writes, I'm
not sure if you all know about this, but surely

(01:05:09):
is one of the few women who have an official
portrait in the US capital. Similarly to uh fellow badass
Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin from Montana, Chisholm's portrait is extremely unique.
Not only does it depict her standing in front of
the White House in a fabulously loud printed dress, but
it's painted in such a beautiful, vivid color that it

(01:05:31):
demands attention. I used to be a congressional intern and
would always make sure to point out the portrait on
tours that I would give to constituents, outlining her importance
in political history, not only as a woman, but a
woman of color, usually concluding that she was quote an
overall awesome lady Caroline. We got to take a field

(01:05:52):
trip now. That portrait ps is incredible. I want to
see it. I love it in in person. Listeners, Thank
you so much for your delightful letters that charm us
every day. Mom. Stuff at how stuff works dot com
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(01:06:14):
can learn even more about millions. Head on over to
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