Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Strong Women Series #6: The Women of 'Jane the Virgin' [Contributor: Ann]


STRONG WOMEN SERIES #6: The Women of Jane the Virgin
Ann Susteri is a weekly contributor for Just About Write, reviewing The Mindy Project. In addition to her intelligent discussions of the television comedy series, Ann also contributes to the site by discussing television series like Jane the Virgin, You're the Worst, and Selfie. When Ann is not writing for this site, she's also analyzing television at her Tumblr and occasionally does things like go to school and stuff. Jenn is extremely thankful to have a writer like Ann on staff, if you can't tell.
I am a strong woman.

This has nothing to do with my physical strength, as I am still unable to do a legitimate, real push-up. Nor does it have anything to do with my strength of character (I took two naps today). It more or less is a symptom of being a person, and as a person who lives in the world, I have a developed idea of my ambitions, my fears, my flaws, my strengths, my background, my relationships with others. I have agency. I am the protagonist of my story, and there’s no way in hell that story’s going to be flat because I have the power to make it not that way. Being a person is great, by the way.

However, when you are developing a story—not, you know, “your” story, but your fictional creation—you assume the responsibility of bestowing on your characters those traits which you have been blessed with, being a person. Unlike people, characters are not more than they appear, because the only thing that can be judged is their presentation on screen or in books. That’s all that exists to the viewer or reader. (That is why JK Rowling’s retroactive judgment of her characters is infuriating, but that’s another topic, I think.)

Jenn asked me to write this Strong Woman Series post on Jane the Virgin and I am more than happy to do so because the show has done a very good and deliberate job of shaping its characters. I am also so happy to do so because Jane the Virgin asserts more than most shows on TV that “strong woman” is soon becoming a thing of the past in favor of “strong character.” “Strong woman” is a title that makes me feel like it is an extraordinary circumstance for a woman to be strong, and it shouldn’t be.

I list pretty much all of the main female characters in the series in this post—the ones that stood out to me as being especially well-written. In a show whose central relationship is the one between three women of different generations, their success of strength as characters comes through their interaction with each other and with the world around them, in addition to their own innate characteristics.

Sound good?

JANE GLORIANA VILLANUEVA



I read a lot of articles about television. I read a lot about Jane the Virgin, about its triumphs and accomplishments and distinctions, in so many ways. Being a bit of a masochist, I also love reading the comments section of these adulatory articles.

The single most annoying criticism of Jane the Virgin is when people evaluate the entire show based on its title. Jane—the VIRGIN—must, through being a (gasp) virgin, be preachy or staunchly conservative or super-chaste, without question or evaluation whatsoever.

Never mind that the title’s main purpose is primarily to highlight Jane’s virginity given her abnormal-as-hell pregnancy. The problem in this assessment of the show (and of Jane herself) is accepting her virginity at face-value. The show and Jane both refuse to do this; so many episodes delve into both a) Jane’s reasons for maintaining her virginity and b) her struggle in doing so. Jane’s virginity isn’t a dirty little secret; like her pregnancy it’s given the appropriate scrutiny and is addressed by Jane and by those who deal with it. Sometimes it’s fulfilling to keep the promise; sometimes it’s annoying; sometimes it leads to coins of your pregnant self being distributed virally.

But the show shines a spotlight on Jane’s beliefs, which in turn gives her character complexity. How you develop characters 101: their innate characteristics, how they respond in situations, how they interact with others, how others think of them and visa versa. Jane’s virginity and her pregnancy are the reason all of these characters are interacting, so both are kind of a big deal. Fortunately, this show uses both not as a platform for a political agenda but as an opportunity to examine who Jane is.

So… who is Jane?

“Jane was a virgin, but not a saint” is one of my favorite lines of the entire show because it condenses all of what I’ve said into a catchy little phrase. ‘Jane is a virgin’ obviously is a comment about her sexual activity but is also tied to how perfect she seems: she loves her family members unconditionally, is employee of the month, has like a bazillion jobs, a rich telenovela dad, gorgeous dresses on her and gorgeous men… well… on her, if you don’t mind me saying.

(For the record, Jane’s character is pretty deserving of all the good things in her life at this moment. She is moral in a world filled with immorality. She’s good. She works extremely hard, tries again and again, and she knows how to choose her battles. I personally love her devotion to her religion and her vow because both of those things are tied to her love of her family, too. Oh, and she loves grilled cheese and I ate one today.)

But Jane is not a saint. She’s not a saint when you look at her character as a member of the audience. She is very judgmental, entitled, kind of callous to Michael, and was not very cautious in her decision to be with Rafael. She often doesn’t realize how much her mother does for her and can be kind of a brat as a result. Oh, and by the way: accept money from Rafael, Jane! You didn’t have a problem accepting Rogelio’s nepotism!

She’s also not a saint when viewed by other characters. Plenty of characters love Jane. But a lot of characters treat her with skepticism, or use her for their own benefit (the nuns, Rogelio’s other daughters, Dina, her friends’ coldness towards her given her new situation). By giving this quality to Jane, the writers give her actions repercussions, because Jane is not above censure. Even those who love her challenge and confront her in very real ways, and Jane is not always right and sometimes has to acknowledge that. This is such an important character trait to have. No character is interesting when everyone loves them!

My favorite thing about Jane, though, is that she is emotional. You know how sick I am of characters that don’t cry, that don’t doubt themselves, that don’t yell at people (sometimes irrationally, sometimes not)? Oh my God – you know how sick I am of characters who are not funny? I watch so many comedies but you know how few of them actually involve characters making jokes to each other?

This is the mandatory wheelbarrows of praise for Gina Rodriguez, who takes the writing of Jane Villanueva and absolutely crushes it in her portrayal of the character. Jane is hilarious and Jane gets hammered and Jane is sexual and Jane sometimes needs her mom when things get tough. Jane gets angry, Jane gets mischievous, Jane gets bored and indignant. Jane gets in over her head. Jane gets insecure and Jane gets disappointed. Jane is unafraid to confront anyone who she loves when she feels she’s right and she is able to apologize to them when she is wrong. Sometimes Jane wants to fight people (Petra) and sometimes Jane feels awkward (Rogelio) and honestly at this point I need to start talking about Dick based on how much this sounds like a book for schoolchildren.

What makes a character the strongest, to me, is when their emotional reactions make sense. And while the most popular of all tropes in this Mad Men world is the stony straight man who drinks his problems away, I am just as much a sucker of someone more resembling me; you know, someone who expresses what they are feeling.

I need to praise Gina Rodriguez more for this, I think. She conveys all of these emotions with the most subtle and realistic facial expressions. I love so much of Jane the Virgin but she is the heart of it and her portrayal as Jane really drives home how invaluable of a character this is. She feels human. How much stronger of a character could you get?

XIOMARA VILLANUEVA



I really wrote quite a mouthful on Jane. I think that this is fair because she is the main character of the series and in discussing her I think I made a clear outline of what I am looking for when I look at strength. I’ll look to be more succinct in discussing the supporting characters, though, but let me first introduce an idea that seems paradoxical but really isn’t when it comes to supporting characters: The perfect supporting character is a character who supports our main character’s story in some way, whether that’s as a foil or as a parallel or an opponent. The perfect supporting character enhances our main character’s story.

However, the supporting character in question should not act as if this is the case. Let me put it this way: I am the protagonist in my own story, but the people that I come across all in some way strengthen my “plot” or “character development.” They make me better (some of them make me worse) but everyone helps me grow. They are my supporting characters.

But to everyone else? I am their supporting character. I affect their lives in some way. To them, my story is far less important than theirs, which is fair because we are stuck with ourselves far longer than we are stuck with anyone else.

So, in short—what makes all of these supporting characters so A+ to me is that they enhance Jane’s story in some way, but also have stories that are treated with respect by the writers. They are distinct and they are their own and any one of them could front a TV show. But they are in Jane’s, so their lot in their fictitious lives is to enhance her story, a feat they all do.

Xiomara is easily Jane’s main comparison point. She doesn’t want to end up like Xiomara and a lot of her decisions are based off of how Jane evaluates Xiomara’s life.

The funny thing is that Xiomara is so great that Jane should hope she ends up like her. She is as flawed as Jane—she fights with her mother and is #TeamMichael, I mean, c’mon. But to me Xiomara is one of the most underappreciated characters on the show in that so much of what she does is based off of passion and love, even in making difficult decisions. Xiomara’s treatment of her own pregnancy (the lie), her reluctance to let Rogelio meet Jane, the “milkshake” dance, her submitting Jane’s rude story, her reluctance to date Rogelio (twice now—first because of Jane, now because of Alba). She doesn’t love Rafael because she is looking out for her daughter, and in other places where her actions are questionable, she always returns to love.

What is more motherly than to love, especially in the bumpy, maddening, and unconditional way family members love each other? Xiomara’s prime characteristic is love like this, and it makes her the most exemplary of mothers and the most relatable of daughters.

ALBA VILLANUEVA



I love Alba because Alba is a great demonstration on what tradition is and should mean to us in our lives (or in this case in Jane’s).

Alba is on a whole other plane from these people; she is the only one that speaks straight-up Spanish! She is so on another plane that while Magda and Petra are scheming and holding someone hostage, Alba just wants to give them a piece of her cute drunk mind.

Great storytelling has diverse characters. Diverse in that they have diverse backgrounds, belief systems, experiences—they have different things to teach me and tell me and entertain me with! This is how life is and this is how storytelling should be. Truthfully, storytelling has even more of an obligation to represent diversity, because the author can choose to incorporate it in their stories or not. Life isn’t always deliberate, but storytelling should take the initiative and show me something new.

Alba is either the most or the second most controversial character in this series because of her staunch Catholicism and sexual conservatism. And I adore this about her.

I am a devout Catholic. So, so often, all over the place, I am inundated with unfair stereotypes (think Amanda Bynes’s character in Easy A) about what being Catholic means. What makes these stereotypes especially unfair is that there’s no balance or real opposition; as the audience, we’re meant to laugh at the hyperbole without questioning why the character is the way they are. But no real discussion between the two dissenting groups can actually happen if one is hyperbolizing the other to the point of ridiculous caricature.

There needs to be a spectrum of beliefs because from that comes conflict and conversation. I’m not above watching TV that preaches to the choir, but I hate when shows (and people, actually) pretend they are open-minded when they are disguising their refusal to actually confront dissent.

Jane the Virgin does this in more than one way, whether it’s class differences, cultural differences, gender differences, or religious differences. I don’t 100% identify with Alba—she is the staunchest of the staunch—nor do I 100% identify with any of these characters. I just want to hear their stories, their perspectives. I know why I am the way I am, but I don’t always know why people are the way they are. I would like to understand it better.

I call out Alba especially because her views are the most drastic, and she is one end of the spectrum that is so often not represented or misrepresented. She’s good (morally) but she deserves, just as everyone deserves, to be a part of a discussion instead of part of the punchline.

BRIEF BREAK TO TALK ABOUT WHAT’S UP ON JANE THE VIRGIN

Is it, like, bad that I’m starting to warm up to Michael getting back with Jane? He’s super cute and also kind of a cop. The Latin Lover Narrator certainly made it sound like he’s gonna die soon, though.

Also, Sin Rostro. Could be Rose (Sin Rose-tro). Could be Luisa (?!?!). Could be Nadine (who knows what’s up with her and her hand placement was kind of suspicious). Could be Lachlan. Maybe Milos? That story has a lot in it that we just don’t know. Might be Rafael’s dad, but would more likely be his mom, in my opinion. Rafael’s dad kinda seems like the red herring.

I wish I had the name Roman Zazo. I’m a lady though so I guess it’d have to be Romana Zazo.

BACK TO THIS

PETRA/NATALIA SOLANO/SOMETHING RUSSIAN, PROBABLY



Petra is the last big character I’m going to dig into. She is the “evil” one, I guess, but I would think more that she is just misunderstood. Kind of like Alba, if you can believe—but where Alba is often misunderstood by us, the audience, Petra is often misunderstood by the characters she interacts with. This makes her a villain so endearing that TIME magazine wrote an article about it.

Think about it: does anyone know who Natalia is, really? I was stunned that Jane’s reaction to Petra’s slip-up was to blackmail her into silence, instead of showing compassion or at the very least curiosity. (I guess Petra had at that point faked assault and faked date rape, but still!) Rafael got cheated on, but the tag that Petra was a “man-eater” in the first episode is less true than Rafael being a playboy. Cheating is always gross but her reason is a fair one (I love, by the way, that Rafael and Petra fell apart the way they did instead of some icky contrived way, and the fact that both got burned from the trauma of Rafael’s cancer).

Lachlan doesn’t really know Petra, either. He doesn’t seem to care (he’s setting something really bad up soon, can you feel it? Do you think he might frame Petra?). Magda’s relationship with Petra is complicated—I’m not sure if it’s loving—but even still she doesn’t have the access to Petra’s wants and dreams and desires the same way that Xo knows Jane (or Rafael knows Jane). Petra might not even totally know because her life is so splintered, equal parts who she is and who she was forced to be.

The person with the best access to understanding Petra is us. Villains are normally the best characters to watch because we don’t have a horse in the race. Petra’s actions are diabolical and if anyone did to me what Petra does to Jane I wouldn’t love her, either. But we’re not characters here, we’re the audience, and we are able to oversee everything and draw conclusions that the characters can’t.
Petra is dynamic because of that difference between what the characters feel and what we know. What image does Petra present to these people in her life? There’s no clear answer. Their ideas of Petra are so scattered—from the man-eater of the pilot to the tulip-terrified person we saw in the most recent episode—that they can’t help but not make sense of the entire picture. We can, should, and must.

ROSE and MAGDA and NADINE and LUISA



Give it time. ¾ are diabolical liars, and one is in a madhouse. If I am gonna evaluate their strength of character, let me just say this: I have no idea what’s going to happen and all four of them make me nervous. Sin Rostro-wise.
Endless thanks to Ann for this absolutely astute and beautiful post about the female characters of Jane the Virgin and their agency! If you enjoyed it or want to continue the conversation, be sure to hit up the comments below and/or tweet her your thoughts! :)

2 comments:

  1. The female characters in this show, have many strong qualities but are limited and only shown through that of stereotypical 'female' jobs. A single mother, a girlfriend, a lover, and an ex wife. Needless to say that by episode 9, all the predicaments have been saved by a man and his wealth. The women are blinded by money and do not fend for themselves in this programme. This a sheltered and old fashioned way of representing women in our society.

    Jane - patronised by men in her current 'vunerable' condition, and using her relations with men to keep her in her job and raise her status

    Xiomara - a strong single mother, yes, however chasing a 'dream' that is being fuelled by her ex lovers connections and money- not making it on her own.

    Luisa - a crazy unstable drunk, who is emotional, causing her to make mistakes in a professional job.

    Rose - too afraid to admit homosexuality, because is being kept by husband

    Petra - manipulating men for money using her beauty

    Alba - the wiser older women, patronising in a sense that maturity and wisdom cab only be achieved by women at an older age, whereas the men in the series seem to have already acquired it.

    The characters are offensive to women by portraying the female characters as domestic emotional and vulnerable characters, in which only a rich wealthy man can get them out of.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The female characters in this show, have many strong qualities but are limited and only shown through that of stereotypical 'female' jobs. A single mother, a girlfriend, a lover, and an ex wife. Needless to say that by episode 9, all the predicaments have been saved by a man and his wealth. The women are blinded by money and do not fend for themselves in this programme. This a sheltered and old fashioned way of representing women in our society.

    Jane - patronised by men in her current 'vunerable' condition, and using her relations with men to keep her in her job and raise her status

    Xiomara - a strong single mother, yes, however chasing a 'dream' that is being fuelled by her ex lovers connections and money- not making it on her own.

    Luisa - a crazy unstable drunk, who is emotional, causing her to make mistakes in a professional job.

    Rose - too afraid to admit homosexuality, because is being kept by husband

    Petra - manipulating men for money using her beauty

    Alba - the wiser older women, patronising in a sense that maturity and wisdom cab only be achieved by women at an older age, whereas the men in the series seem to have already acquired it.

    The characters are offensive to women by portraying the female characters as domestic emotional and vulnerable characters, in which only a rich wealthy man can get them out of.

    ReplyDelete