Damsel in distress
The damsel in distress is a classic theme in art, literature, film, and video games around the world. She is usually a beautiful, nubile young woman put in dire straits by a villain or monster and in need of a hero to come to her rescue. She has become a type character, particularly in melodramas.
The term "damsel" (from Old French dameisele, 'lady'), an archaism[citation needed] that is rarely used At present, except for an ancient effect or in expressions like the present, it attests to its origin in the songs and stories of medieval errant knights, who considered the rescue of these women an essential part of their raison d'être.
The helplessness of these damsels, who are sometimes portrayed as reckless and incompetent to the point of naivety, along with their need for someone to rescue them, have made this stereotype a target of feminist criticism.
History
Origins
Damsels in distress appear long in history. Greek mythology, despite including a long list of competent goddesses, also had its share of helpless maidens being sacrificed or threatened with sacrifice. A famous example would be Andromeda, whose mother Cassiopeia offended Poseidon, so he sent a beast to devastate his country. In this way, Andromeda's parents tied her to a rock in the sea to appease her. However, the hero Perseus killed the beast and thus saved Andromeda, marrying her then. The harrowing situation of Andromeda, tied naked to a rock, became a favorite subject of later painters. This princess and dragon theme is also present in the myth of Saint George.
Middle Ages
Damsels in distress appear frequently in European fairy tales. Wicked witches locked Rapunzel in a tower, cursed the princess to death in Snow White, and bewitched Sleeping Beauty to sleep. In all these fairy tales, a brave prince comes to the aid of the maiden, saves her from her, and marries her.
The damsel in distress was an archetypal character of medieval romance, where she was typically rescued from her imprisonment in a castle tower by a knight-errant. Chaucer's Scholar's Tale narrates the repeated trials and bizarre torments that the patient Griselda suffered at the hands of Petrarch. The Emprise de l'Escu vert à la Dame Blanche was an order of chivalry founded in 1399 with the express purpose of protecting oppressed ladies.
17th century
In the English ballad of the 17th century The Spanish Lady (one of several songs English and Irish women of that title) a Spanish lady captured by an English captain falls in love with her captor and begs him not to release her, but to take her with him to England, and in this plea describes herself as "a damsel in trouble".
18th and 19th centuries
The damsel in distress made her debut in the modern novel as the minor character in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748), where she is threatened by the evil seducer Lovelace.
Reprising her medieval role, the damsel in distress is a staple character in Gothic literature, where she is often locked away in a castle or monastery and threatened by a sadistic nobleman or members of a religious order. Early examples of this genre are Matilda in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Emily in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolfo, and Antonia in Matthew Lewis's The Monk.
The dangers these gothic heroines faced were taken to an extreme by the Marquis de Sade in Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue, who arguably exposed the type character's pornographic background.
An exploration of the theme of the hunted maiden is the fate of Gretchen in Goethe's Faust. According to the philosopher Schopenhauer:
The great Goethe has given us a different and visible description of this denial of will, caused by the enormous misfortune and despair of liberation, in his immortal masterpiece Faustoin the history of Gretchen's sufferings. I don't know about another description in poetry. It is a perfect example of the second way, which leads to the denial of will, not, as the first, through the mere knowledge of the suffering of everyone who voluntarily acquires, but through the excessive sense pain in one's own person. It is true that many tragedies end up taking their violently arranged heroes to this point of complete resignation, and then the desire to live and their phenomenon usually ends at the same time. But no description of the ones I know brings us to the essential point of this conversion as clearly and as free from all strangeness as the one mentioned in Fausto.
From Victorian melodrama to early Hollywood
The misadventures of the gothic damsel in distress endured in somewhat cartoonish form in Victorian melodrama. These melodramas influenced silent films, where the lady in distress faced the new dangers of the industrial revolution by catering to the medium's new needs for visual spectacle. Here we find such clichés as the heroine being tied to the railway tracks, often by a sleazy villain with the peculiar waxed, curly mustache. Sawmills were another stereotypical hazard for industrial-age damsels.
The archetype of the damsel in distress survived well into the 20th century in the fledgling industries of film, television, and the comics. Ann Darrow, from the movie King Kong, is perhaps one of the most famous damsels in distress, with a gigantic monkey of hers capturing her and carrying her off. Jane Porter, in both the novel and the film versions of Tarzan, demanded constant ransom. Damsels in distress appeared frequently in black-and-white serials from studios such as Mascot, Universal, Columbia, and Republic Pictures in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. These serials sometimes drew inspiration for their characters and plots from novels by adventures and comics Some examples are the character Nyoka, which was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs for the comics and was later adapted into a heroine for serials produced by Republic, such as The Perils of Nyoka.
One of the most cited examples of a damsel in distress in comics is Lois Lane, who is forever getting into trouble and needs to be rescued by Superman. The comics also gave the world Mary Jane Watson, in need of countless rescues by Spider-Man, and Oliva Olivo, in a near-constant state of kidnapping, always saved by Popeye.
Modern Damsels In Distress
Damsels in distress no longer spawn as frequently as they once did, and current representations of the standard character tend to play a camp role, although old-style ones still occasionally appear in the games. Early video games often used a kidnapped damsel in distress as the main motive for the heroes to go out on a limb and defeat the villains. Princess Peach (and previously Pauline in Donkey Kong) is rescued by Mario in most of the games in the series of the same name. In most of the games in the Legend of Zelda series, the protagonist Link's goal is to rescue Princess Zelda from the monster/villain Ganondorf, although this is no longer Link's main mission in more recent games. In Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, CJ has to rescue Denise (who would later become his girlfriend) from a fire that he caused with Molotov cocktails.In the Uncharted saga, Elena Fisher is another example.
Some modern damsels in distress are actually very strong and capable women who end up giving up that attitude when they undertake important and dangerous tasks. One of the best examples is Princess Leia: in the first Star Wars movie she is captured by Darth Vader and faces his torture until she is rescued by Luke Skywalker and his friends. In Return of the Jedi she is captured by Jabba the Hutt in an operation to rescue Han Solo: significantly, it is Leia who ultimately kills Jabba, in an example of how modern damsels in distress are often strong, resourceful women who can fend for themselves when they are free. Pepper Potts, Karen Page, Betty Ross, and Jane Foster are examples of damsels in distress in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The guy character experienced a resurgence in bloody movies of the 1980s such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and others. In them, however, the typical character suffered a twist: there were several young women who were killed by a serial killer, but one survived to defeat him. The young survivor became a typical character, the last woman, embodied by characters like Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies. Sarah Connor, a damsel in distress in The Terminator, became the impressive survivor guy in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
The current damsels in distress can even become villains when they are not rescued or suffer a betrayal that leaves them in a particular circumstance, which causes them to become spiteful, or are in fact villains complex enough to feign distress, just to show his true personality at the right time. In The World Is Never Enough, Elektra King, who has been kidnapped by Renard, is not released by order of M and her father. As a result, she becomes spiteful towards both of them, and becomes Renard's accomplice (some even say her the main villain) in his plans to control the world's oil reserves. Elektra is even cunning enough to pretend to be a damsel in distress to James Bond, but she underestimates him, who manages to discover her deceit and ends up killing her.
Another variant of today's damsels in distress are former villains or minions of a villain who find themselves in need of ransom when they face the wrath of the main villain after betraying him. Pussy Galore in Goldfinger is a classic example.
Theoretical responses
Damsels in distress have been cited as an example of differential treatment of genders in literature, film, and works of art. Feminist criticism of art, film, and literature has often studied the gender orientation of characterization and plot, including the common theme of "damsel in distress". Many modern writers, such as Angela Carter and Jane Yolen, have revisited classic fairy tales and "damsel-in-distress" stories or collected and anthologized folklore stories and tales that break the "damsel-in-distress" pattern. Often these stories reverse the gender disparity by empowering the "damsel-in-distress" » or placing men in distress to be rescued by it.
While feminist criticism of the late XX century may have highlighted alternatives to the damsel-in-distress stereotype, the origins Some of these can be found elsewhere. Joseph Campbell's work on comparative mythology has provided a theoretical model for heroes throughout the history of literature, drama, and film, which has been further developed by playwrights such as Christopher Vogler. These theories suggest that within the underlying historical arc of every hero is an episode known as a traumatic ordeal, in which the character is nearly destroyed. Surviving fear, danger or torture, the hero proves that he has special qualities and ends up emerging reborn to progress to final victory. Within this theory the "damsel" with power may be a heroine who has lost her strength during her heroic trauma, eventually emerging as a strong character who claims victory.
Examples can be found in films made since the early days of the film genre. One of the films most frequently associated with the damsel-in-distress stereotype, The Perils of Pauline (1914), actually provides at least a partial counterexample. Paulina, played by Pearl White, is a strong character who rebels against an early marriage to go in search of adventure and become a writer. Despite widespread belief, the film does not include scenes of Paulina tied to the train tracks and threatened by a saw, although such scenes were added to later remakes and also appear in other films in the film. same time. Academic Ben Singer has disputed the idea that these "melodramatic serials" were male fantasies, noting that they were heavily marketed to women.
The powerful damsels were features of serials produced in the 1930s and 1940s by studios such as Republic Pictures. The "suspense" scenes at the end of the episodes provide many examples of heroines bound and helpless facing fiendish death traps. But these heroines, played by actresses like Linda Stirling and Kay Aldridge, were often strong, assertive women who ended up playing an active role in defeating the villains.
In her 1967 book The Devil With James Bond Ann Boyd compared James Bond to an update of the legend of Saint George and the princess-and-dragon genre, especially to Dr. No. The spy Emma Peel from the 1960s British television series The Avengers often appeared in a "damsel in distress" situation, although the character and her reactions, portrayed by the actress Diana Rigg, differentiated these scenes from others on film and television where women in similarly endangered circumstances were simply victims or pawns in the plot. A scene with Emma Peel tied up and threatened with a death ray in the episode From Venus with Love is a direct parallel to James Bond's confrontation with a laser in the movie Goldfinger Both are examples of the classic hero's ordeal as described by Campbell and Vogler. Serial heroines and Emma Peel are cited as inspirations by recent strong heroine makers, from Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone and Princess Leia in Star Wars to post-feminist icons like Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sydney Bristow in Alias. Feminism currently assumes that it does not have solid foundations to sustain such criticism.
Fetishism
The figure of the damsel in distress is a feature of certain fetishes. In particular, actresses who play damsels in distress in movies and TV shows often appear tied up. Although in reality these scenes are not usually seen as erotic, many sections of the church have complained.