American TV series are increasingly portraying female murderers as victims of tragic pasts. While fresh perspectives can add depth, they can also obscure characters' true nature and lull society into complacency, writes Mari Peegel.
Two new television series have recently been released in the United States. Both offer good entertainment that Estonians can also enjoy on Netflix, but they deserve attention for other, somewhat deeper reasons as well.
I am talking about the series "Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story" and "East of Eden," an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel. Both stories are firmly established in the canon of American culture. The true story of Lizzie Borden, a wealthy young woman in the 19th century who allegedly murdered her father and stepmother with an ax, occupies a prominent place in American horror culture, from books and films to children's nursery rhymes.
Steinbeck's magnum opus, "East of Eden," is as richly layered in meaning as a Napoleon cake and the new Netflix adaptation is certainly neither its first nor its last.
What these two new series have in common is not just the period in which they are set, but their portrayal of Victorian-era female protagonists, given a treatment characteristic of the second quarter of the 21st century.
While President Donald Trump and his supporters rail against equal opportunity programs and what they call a victim mentality, Americans have not abandoned the practice of retelling old stories from alternative perspectives in their cultural works.
Both stories, of course, have already received extensive coverage. Lizzie Borden's case made front-page news even as it unfolded and the public immediately split into two camps: her ardent supporters, who could not believe that a woman was capable of committing such a gruesome murder, and those who regarded her as the embodiment of Satan.
Although later accounts of Lizzie Borden accepted the premise that she was a murderer, they generally found excuses for her actions in her troubled family relationships. Nor is the lesbian theme in the new Netflix series a novel approach to portraying Lizzie Borden. What is new about this adaptation, however, is its theme of women's righteous rage, which links Lizzie to other historical "monsters" who became murderers because of the oppression that stifled women.
The series' creators intertwine Lizzie's story with those of the sadistic 16th-century Hungarian countess Erzsébet Báthory and serial killer Aileen Wuornos. They seek to show that women's revenge and rage culminating in murder constitute a recurring pattern across generations, one that fits neatly with the series' central theme that monsters are not born but made. And in the cases of Lizzie, Erzsébet and Aileen, the series' creators argue, abusive and sexually violent men, along with callous and brutal women, all played a part in turning them into monsters.
Let some women monsters remain as such!
While critics have embraced the perspective of women's righteous rage in the case of ax murderer Lizzie, the efforts of the creators of "East of Eden" to turn Cathy Ames, a murderer and con artist, into a victim as well have left critics pleading in exasperation: Could we perhaps just let some bad female characters remain bad? Having just watched both series, I feel exactly the same way.
First, if we eliminate female villains from art and turn them into victims of circumstance, we do a disservice to both women and art. Especially when we go out of our way to portray them as victims in a formulaic fashion, we undermine the credibility of feminist interpretations altogether. We also turn female characters into uniform, uninteresting figures cut from the same mold, which, unfortunately, is already largely the case.
A villain is an artistically compelling character and an interesting role to play. Let's not insist on watering her down into a sheep in wolf's clothing with a tragic childhood. Half-jokingly, one could also argue that softening a female villain robs her of her agency and creates the impression that women are incapable of taking charge of their own lives.
The second reason is more grounded in real life: Sometimes being a monster is a choice and women can make that choice, too. The reverse is also true: Trauma does not generally turn those who suffer it into monsters.
But most importantly, as far as I am concerned, if we soften every monster and look for excuses for them, whether they are women or men, heads of state or janitors, fictional or real, we lose the ability to see them for who they truly are and to hear what they have been trying to tell us about themselves all along. Our blindness only makes them stronger.
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