Gender and Race in Heroes (SPOILERS)

I just watched the premiere of the NBC show Heroes, which I’ve enjoyed for the past two seasons. My quibbles with the first were minor, mostly relating to the lifting of large sections of the story of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. As well, I get a little put off whenever time travel, as depicted in Heroes, enters into a narrative — why don’t the characters just solve all their problems by going into the past?

Anyway, my sociological interest in the show started in the second season. I started noticing things, albeit fairly minor things, that seemed odd to me. First, the season introduced Maya and Alejandro, a brother and sister pair from South America who are trying to illegally enter the United States. This didn’t seem strange until later, when Monica, a black female character was depicted breaking and entering a house in the course of the story.

Now, of course both of these instances have plot justifications, and the characters are definitely not acting selfishly or to the detriment of others — quite the opposite, they are trying to do good. The break and enter I mentioned isn’t robbery, it is the reclaiming of stolen property. I think it was the stereotypical (and, some might say, racist) imagery more than anything that made me uneasy.

After having seen the beginnings of the third season, my uneasiness with the show has increased, with the following incidents and trends standing out in particular. As noted in the title, there are spoilers in this post, so if you have not seen the episodes and intend to, proceed with caution.

Early on, there is a particularly graphic scene in which Claire is stalked in her home by the villain Sylar — if you’re not familiar with the show, he is trying to violently steal her “ability” to recover from any injury. This is the first time we see Sylar in the act of actually picking his victim’s brains in order to achieve his goal. Claire lies motionless, incapacitated, on a table while Sylar picks and prods at her brain, finally “finding what he needs”, then leaves her relatively intact — it is revealed that she, unlike all his other victims, will live. I found the scene pretty difficult to watch, and it might have been for the rape implications. Claire’s mother later asks if Sylar did, indeed, rape her, furthering the similarities. In the series thus far, Claire’s powers allow her to be terribly hurt (onscreen) in various ways, with the understanding that she still feels pain despite her superhuman healing. In the wake of her encounter with Sylar, she remarks that she can no longer feel pain, and wonders whether her lack of feeling makes her less than human. In a way, he took her ability to feel when he violated her.

It is arguable whether Claire’s character was set up to be a “reusable victim” of sorts in the series, but the other women on the show don’t seem to be much more regardless. Female characters who are not leads have a habit of dying brutally — Charlie, Eden, and Simone seemed to be set up to be minor characters whose deaths would, for the most part, galvanize the male characters.

And it was especially evident to me, thus far in season three, that Heroes is very much a show where the male characters are the proactive, interesting ones. Even in the superpowers the characters display, the male characters seem to have much more actively oriented abilities. For example, Nathan can fly, Hiro can time travel, Matt can read minds, Sylar is essentially a power “collector” as well as a serial killer, and Peter can use the abilities of anyone he comes across.

Now let’s look at the women. Claire, as previously mentioned, can recover from any injury (and never die), allowing her to be constantly maimed but without any serious consequences. Maya “poisons” those around her, and her power is initially uncontrollable, happening only when she is very angry or upset (although it should be mentioned that Peter’s powers were initially similar in this regard). Niki seems to display the masculine power of physical strength, but she is crippled by her various personalities, leaving her, for the most part, weak and afraid normally. Elle has the ability to produce electrical outbursts, but she too is a “broken” character, dependent on her father for love and affection. Even Angela Petrelli, who could be seen as the show’s most capable woman, has powers limited to seeing into the future.

Thus, it seems as if most of the female characters in Heroes are ineffectual, one way or another. Either they have severe personal issues rendering them weak, passive, or emotionally unstable (Elle, Niki, Maya) or their powers are limited to themselves — they cannot extend their influence to affect others (Claire, Angela). Constrast this with the male characters, who seem to exert great control over the world around them, either through their dominant personages (Nathan, Adam, Bob, Noah) or their godlike abilities (Hiro, Peter).

I realize that the show’s objective probably isn’t to break down any gender barriers, but I can’t help but feel that I’d enjoy it more if there were less implied rape scenes (there have been more before this), ineffectual women, and black muggers (attempting to rob Mohinder in the new episodes). I’m sure there’s more to say on this issue, but for now I will leave you with this, which points out some of what I was talking about in the earlier seasons.

The Social Side of Desistance

Recently, I made a pretty strong decision, albeit on a pretty minor subject. I decided to stop playing a particular card game. Aside from my failure to take loss well (especially in a competitive setting) it was monopolizing my time and costing me a not unsubstantial amount of money. After a particularly grueling night of losses, I decided to quit, at least for the time being. Not only would I not play the game, I wouldn’t spend time theorizing about it or reading about it on the net, the latter of which took up more time than the actual playing!

At this point, it’s been a week, and I think I’m fine. It would seem that I’ve successfully desisted from playing. That is, I have yet to “reoffend” in terms of reneging on my decision. You may be curious about my choice of words, but I use them deliberately to compare my own experience to another one, quite removed — crime and punishment.

There is a particular school of thought amongst policy makers and, arguably, the public, which holds that tougher laws (and most importantly, longer jail sentences) reduce crime. This view sees crime as an economic transaction of sorts, with criminals weighing up the costs (possible incarceration) and benefits (often fairly obvious) of criminal activity. This model is attractive to many as it constructs crime as an easily definable economic problem which can be curbed by increasing the price mechanism.

The problem with this paradigm, sometimes called “rational choice theory” (RCT) is that it fails to take into account the social causes of crime. Expressing a desire to “go straight” is one thing, but leaving prison with no useful skills and a criminal record, or returning to one’s old hangouts and criminal friends, is going to make acting on such a desire difficult. These factors are criminogenic , that is, they assist in the creation of crime, and RCT, for the most part, ignores them.

Coming back to my example, I only made the decision to quit and stuck with it (thus far) months after having moved to a different city, away from friends who initially drew me into the game and with whom I would play and discuss theory on a regular basis. Would I have been able to desist were I still in such a situation? It seems unlikely, unless their influence was removed in another way.

I don’t mean to equate the decision to change one’s leisure activities with the decision to persist in criminal behaviour. Obviously, my decision was my own — I don’t believe that the game is inherently harmful, just that it’s not a good idea for me to be involved with it right now. As well, there weren’t any real pressures to “stay in” other than my own enjoyment. That is, I wasn’t playing for the material benefits I might accrue as a result, as an alternative to gainful employment. Still, there are definite parallels, and the differences show the difficulty with perceiving crime as a rational act like any other when there are often no real alternatives, in part due to lack of employability and in part due to the stigma of being an ex-convict.

As we near federal elections both here in Canada and in the United States, there will likely be talk about getting tough on crime. However, we really have to question what that means, and how effective it might be in reducing crime — if indeed, that is what we want our penal system to do. Does “prison work” as a method of deterrence? Experience from elsewhere shows that no, it usually doesn’t (gated).

If we really want to reduce crime, we have to think about the social factors — environment, job prospects, and education — which can affect an ex-prisoner’s ability to desist from crime. Unfortunately, political rhetoric often gets in the way of serious rehabilitation, since the desire for revenge is viewed as a popular one (and maybe it is — see comments here and well, on any CBC article referencing crime or the penal system).

Mr. T the Lad

Gwen at Sociological Images on the Contexts site brings us this series of advertisements featuring Mr. T (real name Laurence Tureaud), star of the 80s action series The A-Team. These Snickers ad spots focus on what it means to be a “real man”. In one example, Mr. T lists what men do and don’t do (and threatens those who deviate from these norms*) in a rhyming delivery. I’d like to focus on one line in particular:

There’s gonna be pain, if men don’t start acting like men again.

Gwen discussed the policing of masculinity in her post, but what I find most interesting is the class element she mentioned. In particular, the “laddism” generally associated with the lower class, whose values seem to have arisen in response to the greater acceptability of nontraditional male roles. According to Tepperman and Blain (2006), laddism is a reaction “against mainstream images, the “new man,” and feminism, all at once”. They quote McNair (2002), who says:

New Lad rediscovered all the simple pleasures of football, beer, and birds…to be pursued henceforth without apology or guilt.

Laddism may encourage homophobia, equating masculinity with heterosexuality. It can be seen as an extension of hegemonic masculinity, exaggerating certain aspects of it. I became somewhat familiar with the lad culture during time I spent in the north of England. Most newstands carry “lads’ mags”, which mostly revolve around sex, sport, war, and technology. They, like Mr. T, are very clear on what constitutes a man: namely, sexual prowess, “toughness”, consumption of popular media and products, and avoidance of unmanly activities, a few of which Mr. T details, including yoga, pilates, and speedwalking.

I think these ad spots are a good example of the ways in which different masculinities are pitched to different groups as a means of selling consumer goods — in this case, a chocolate bar. In fact, the ad even uses testicular imagery, exhorting viewers to “get some nuts” (peanuts, that is). Of course, “having balls” or “cojones”, is a critical part of this type of masculinity, both literally — for the impregnation of women — and figuratively, in exhibiting machismo and a willingness to take risks.

As the earlier Mr. T quote exhibited, this isn’t just a maintenance of the status quo — it’s a reaction to perceived threats to hegemonic masculinity (hence the comment about men starting to act like men again). These kinds of backlashes should be expected, but the forms they can take aren’t always immediately apparent. The challenge for those who would dissolve gendered expectations and requirements, then, is to convince these dissenters that a wide variety of masculinites are available, each equally possible and no less desirable than the narrow ideals presented by Mr. T and others.

*It should be mentioned that Mr. T does not hate these men — he merely pities them.

References:

McNair, Brian. 2002. Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire. London and New

York: Routledge.

Tepperman, Lorne and Jenny Blain. 2006. Think Twice! Sociology Looks at Current Social Issues. Upper

Saddle River, New Jersery: Pearson Prentice Hall.