The truth of the matter is, I’m not very good at anything. Both my jr. high field hockey coach and my favorite professor in undergrad said I had “potential,” which at the time (both times, in fact) I took as a good sign. I was meant for something. I could be good at something. It turns out that I only lasted a season as team captain and a forever wannabe filmmaker who could never churn something out as exciting as any of my film school colleagues. No, the capital-T truth is I am mediocre. What little athletic potential I may have held at one point is way past lost. And my filmmaking career over before it ever started. Did I not work hard enough? Did I not have goals? Yes, of course I worked hard and had big dreamy goals and there are a lot of reasons, many outside of my control, that contributed to those dreams not materializing the way I had imagined. That’s just life I think. That’s what they don’t teach you in school. Now I think more negatively on the word ‘potential.’ It’s what I would write in a recommendation letter for someone I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend. It simply means meh. Not outstanding, not a winner, just a person who tries. And tries. And tries.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with female protagonists who have a redemption arc in narratives, except to say that someday, I hope I find one. Heck, maybe even more than one?! Maybe then, I’ll know redemption. (This project is kind of my white whale, you see.)
I guess my point is that the meaning of the word ‘potential’ changes with both context and whatever the speaker/writer brings to it from their own experience. We all have our own definitions and understandings of words. My definition of ‘potential’ is akin to perseverance, consistency and of course, “could be better.”
Has anyone here ever encountered their own redemption? To be redeemed… What does this mean and how will we understand as we continue this quest? Is it a matter of having a comeback, or of proving people wrong? Is it about forgiveness or passage from wrong into right? Is it making amends or making peace? Is it given or taken? Or something that you ARE? Could it be all of these things?
Has your own experience contributed to your personal definition of the word ‘redemption’?
I thought maybe I could leave you hanging right there and let you marinade in ‘what is redemption,’ but here’s a dictionary definition:
The Oxford dictionary definitions above are fairly clean-cut, so why all this analysis of what a word means? This is not another rhetorical question. I’ll answer: I’m hoping to be clear in my intention of finding a leading female character who experiences a redemption arc. Some who responded to my initial quest via Facebook, identified other kinds of stories, perhaps bringing their own flavor and definition of the word ‘redemption.’
Let’s be clear about what is not understood as redemption, for our purposes here:
This is not a woman bucking social norms.
This is not a woman forgiving someone else.
This is not a woman finding herself or finding independence.
This is not a woman recovering or healing from trauma.
This is not a woman with a change in priorities (not necessarily, unless that priority shift is associated with a morality shift.)
This is not an anti-heroine.
This is not a villainess who remains a villainess.
Now that we’re all on the same page, how does redemption look in real life or fictional stories? Stories throughout history have been (mostly) written by men and focused on male characters’ hope of redemption. (Thanks patriarchy. And I know that someone out there will throw some title in my face that I’ve never seen or read that was written under a male pen name but by a female author. But I’ll preemptively ask, “Does that story have a female lead character and was she nasty?”) Ooph, tangent. There are many movies that have male redemption arcs. Here’s just a few examples: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1994), Groundhog Day (1993), Return of the Jedi (1983), Despicable Me (2010), arguably, Loki in the Marvel franchise (2011 - FOREVER BECAUSE MCU NEVER ENDS.)
Television series are a whole other ballgame. With the benefit of having a longer runtime in which to develop a complex character that could demonstrate a fantastic moral arc, TV series have a leg up in the redemption racket. Having a character with little to no moral compass to being a hero is a lot harder to convincingly pull off in a 2 hour feature. One of my favorite redemption arcs in a series is the character, Zuko in the animated show, The Last Airbender. This was a more recent discovery for me: during early months of Covid, it was every Saturday morning. Give it a chance if you haven’t yet, there’s lots to dig into there. Needless to say, there are plenty more TV series with significant redemption arcs, but still none that I could think of that was centered on a lady.
Which brought me to the quest. I wondered if there was any such story of a woman who was so callous, so terrible, so morally repugnant, that such an arc would provide hope in change, for those of us poor females in audiences, who are not the most prim and proper. If all genders are to be seen as equal, I’d surely like for that to be across the board in pay, in leadership, in representation, and in morals. Are women in fact held to a different standard both in narratives and IRL because it’s not acceptable for a lady to be angry, disagreeable, unlikeable, or God-forbid, corrupt, wicked, immoral, sinful? And if so, why is that?
Head’s up everyone: anyone can be a terrible person. I’m sure you even know one or two. But there’s hope for them yet, right? RIGHT??
Find out next time on Lady Parts.