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| "The intertitle of the TV show." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Jun. 2015. |
At the end of this past
week’s Mr. Robot, hacker
extraordinaire Elliot opens the trunk of a car and discovers the dead body of
his girlfriend and former morphine hookup Shayla. This is supposed to be a
devastating moment for Elliot and for the audience—Shayla has been in the
series since the premiere and she and Elliot only just recently made their
relationship official. We barely knew her, but, perhaps more importantly still
as far as this particular episode is concerned, Elliot endangered himself,
Darlene, and countless others to release Shayla’s violent supplier (who Elliot
put away for drugging and raping Shayla) from prison. He was promised Shayla’s
safe return in exchange for his assistance, and, of course, anyone who has ever
watched a movie or TV series in the thriller genre knew from the get-go that
the effort was doomed. Situations like these never turn out well, especially for the women.
Elliot finds Shayla’s corpse in a car, but she might as
well have been in a refrigerator. If that statement sounds nonsensical, then
this post is for you. The “women in refrigerators” trope (verb—“fridging” a
female character) was given its name by comics writer Gail Simone in “honor” of
a story from DC’s Green Lantern
series in which the hero returns home to find his girlfriend murdered and
literally stuffed into a refrigerator to cause him as much harm as possible. TV Tropes summarizes the specific story
briefly and offers the following description of the trope: “[A]ny [usually
female] character who is targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off,
abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose
of affecting another character, motivating them to take action.”[1] This is
essentially a cheap tactic designed to elicit an emotional response from
readers. It often represents lazy writing and also devalues the life of the
character killed, reducing them to little more than a motivating factor for
someone else’s story.[2] Does that mean that every female character death is an
example of fridging? No. Is it always easy to distinguish a cheap fridging from
a meaningful death? Definitely not—though Simone offers some thoughts on the
difference on the blog where she documents fridged characters in comics.
Simone notes the obvious counter-argument to the problem
of “women in refrigerators”—that “male superheroes ALSO get beat up, cut up,
and killed up”—however, she goes on to say that the percentages are off (fewer
major female characters of note means that each death essentially “counts” for
more), but also that “male characters tend to die differently than female ones.”[3]
While the men tend to die heroically and nobly on their own terms, the women
are often first abducted, tortured, or violated as “shock value seems to be a
major motivator in the [female] deaths more often than not.”[4] Because these
women were already often fixtures in the lives of male characters (the
girlfriend, the wife, the sister, the mother, etc.), their deaths often do less
to characterize them or serve as a dramatic ending to their own lives and
instead serve to motivate or characterize the men around them in the story.
From an audience perspective, there’s just something especially horrid about
the deaths of women and children, and I suspect that it’s primarily a result of
gendered expectations and a thoroughly masculinist society. “Women and children
first,” after all. They’re the weak ones, and when we see them butchered or
even just endangered, we instantly get upset. Men are often the action heroes
and the ones who instigate and fight back; therefore, we have less of an
instinctual desire to see them protected or unharmed.
As far as I know, there is no codified method for
figuring out what constitutes a fridging. In terms of Mr. Robot, specifically, I offer the following evidence that
suggests Shayla’s death was an example of the “women in refrigerators” trope.
First and foremost, as a character, Shayla has only ever been understood as a
part of Elliot’s life. Her own
interiority is a complete mystery, and we’ve only ever encountered her by way
of Elliot, whereas characters like Darlene and especially Angela have segments
apart from Elliot where we see them do their own thing without having the
experience colored by Elliot’s presence, his narration, or his subjective point
of view. We know very little about Shayla as a person, and what we do know
comes about because Elliot specifically asks her to tell him about herself when
he asks her out. Although we’re over halfway through the first season, Shayla
remains a non-entity. Admittedly, there are other characters we know very
little about as well, but when we’re talking about Shayla and her involvement
in the story, which has presumably ended, the possibility of further
development down the road is no longer an excuse of sorts. Granted, we could
see her developed further through flashbacks (a la Abigail Hobbs on NBC’s Hannibal), but as of right now her
development is finished. She died the way she lived—a supporting character in
another person’s story.
At this point, it’s hard not to see Shayla’s death as the
pay-off from the time and effort the writers put into developing a relationship
between Elliot and Shayla and Elliot, Shayla, and the audience. We got to know
her just well enough to care about her so that her death would matter. Not to
mention the fact that she’s already been victimized once already (drugged and
raped) to drive Elliot to give up his
morphine hookup and put the vile Vera away. Shayla was only ever adjacent to
the main plot action of the series (taking care of Elliot’s dog at times,
serving as an impromptu date to Elliot’s boss’s party). I have admittedly been
bothered by how Elliot has varying degrees of romantic tension/possibility with
so many members of the female cast. He’s been attached to Shayla, but it’s been
suggested that he wants to be with Angela. Darlene is still a bit of a
wildcard; however, the way that she’s been treated as something like a grungier
version of a “manic pixie dream girl” makes her seem like a male fantasy and
potential partner also.[5] Like I said before, though, Angela definitely seems
to be striking out on her own and acquiring more agency apart from Elliot and
her ex-boyfriend. Conversely, Shayla’s role on the show has only ever been
defined by her position next to Elliot, and we never really saw her in her own
element, though her night on the town with Angela hinted at possibilities we’ll
never see bear any fruit (and I’m not just talking about the kiss the two
shared in a bathroom). What I’m saying is, “Rest in peace, Shayla. We hardly
knew ye.”
I initially wrote a largely ambivalent post about Mr. Robot. It’s since grown on me
somewhat by striking a balance between visual artistry and good old fashioned
thrilling that has been skewed significantly toward the former over the latter
on Hannibal this year. It’s also a
show with an interest in detail and being as accurate as possible with its
depictions of hacking and technology. This past week’s episode of Mr. Robot has left a bad taste in my
mouth, though. The fact that the show held the moment between Elliot’s opening
the trunk and the ultimate reveal of Shayla’s body as long as possible despite
the fact that the audience would immediately know what he found based on Rami
Malek’s response feels exploitative at worst. At best, it serves to
characterize Malek’s character, but we’ve already talked about what it means
when a woman dies just to motivate a man. If Mr. Robot really wanted to break out into new territory, it should
have exploited the audience’s expectation of what was in the trunk and then had
Shayla live. Instead, it’s gone down a familiar road so well-trod, so hackneyed,
and so offensively lazy that the show is going to have a hard time earning back
my respect. One could argue that I shouldn’t be as pissed off about this as I
am. It’s nothing new or shocking, after all, but that’s precisely why I’m sick
of it. It’s not just disgusting, it’s boring.
Notes:
[1] “Stuffed into the
Fridge.” TV Tropes. TV Tropes, 30
Jul. 2015. Web. Accessed 2 Aug. 2015. <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge>
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Fan Gail Simone
Responds.” Women in Refrigerators.
N.p., n.d. Web. Accessed 2 Aug. , 2015. <http://lby3.com/wir/r-gsimone.html>
[4] Ibid.
[5] The “manic pixie
dream girl” is another trope that reduces a woman to little more than a fixture
in a male character’s life. The “manic pixie dream girl” is a male fantasy. Often
an outspoken guy’s girl, she enlivens the life of a male character through her
quirky or eccentric behavior that helps him come out of his shell or break out
of his funk. Again, this character exists solely for the benefit of her male
counterpart. Darlene’s vulgarity (her casual remark about cum stains on her
clothes, for example), her masculine assertiveness, and her penchant for just
appearing in Elliot’s apartment marks her as a “manic pixie dream girl.” For
more on the trope see: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl
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