Anita Blake and Mary Sue

There was apparently a bit of a mix-up when I went to order Laurell K. Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures, the first book of her wildly popular Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. I ended up with the first volume of Marvel's graphic novel adaptation instead. Illustrated lavishly by Brett Booth, it is certainly a visual feast but I was more interested in the story itself. I enjoy vampires (except Twilight) and have heard a lot of good and interesting things about Anita Blake. There has also been quite a bit of chatter on the speculative fiction blogosphere about a current publishing phenomenon called "urban fantasy," of which Anita Blake is said to have been a major forerunner and influence (Guilty Pleasures was published in 1993). Urban fantasy author Lilith Saintcrow has sarcastically referred to the genre as "angry chicks in leather," a label others have objected to, but from what I've seen, powerful, ass-kicking female protagonists do seem to play a huge role in these types of books.

Now I'm not sure whether I'd classify urban fantasy as explicitly feminist or not. One thing I noticed immediately about most of the book covers was that every single one of these tough, hard-hitting ladies (with the exception of both Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson and Anita Blake herself) seems to be a size 4 white girl, a beauty paradigm that's been widely proven to be harmful. Of course, you can make the same criticism of sci-fi/fantasy in general. And I'm not sure why every female character has to analyzed in terms of how "feminist" she is. In fact (to be fair), this has been a common counterargument among Twilight fans when confronted with accusations that Bella is terrible heroine (and personally, I think she is, but I've already beaten that topic to death). Why, they ask, can't Bella simply be Bella? By reducing her to a statement on feminism/anti-feminism, aren't you dehumanizing her as a character? (And why are you spending so much time on a series that you hate? Um. . . *cough cough*)

All that being said, however, I was forced to reexamine my own perceptions of women in genre fiction. I realized that I had been ready to dismiss Anita as a mere "Mary Sue," a dreaded term that originated in Star Trek fan fiction to describe an impossibly beautiful and impossibly talented female character who acts as a vehicle for her author's fantasy wish fulfillment (since most fan fiction writers are female). A Mary Sue in, say, a Star Wars fanfic would be a gorgeous young lady, maybe from Alderaan nobility, with the strongest Force powers seen in generations. Anakin or Obi-Wan will inevitably fall in love with her. She will end up either triumphantly saving the day or suffering a romanticized martyr's death. While there is a male counterpart known as "Gary Stu," a closer examination reveals that the Mary Sue burden seems to fall almost entirely on women. Editor Joanna Cantor has even blamed the specter of Mary Sue for the lack of "believable, competent, and identifiable-with female characters." A panel of female authors at a 1987 Star Trek convention has actually stated that they do not write female characters at all just to avoid the Mary Sue label.

Now I'm not denying that Mary Sue exists. But all serious authors want their characters to be real and identifiable. Having a protagonist who is just a freaking paragon is the sure sign of an amateur. I don't know about you, but I can think of quite a few fictional men who fit the Gary Stu model. James T. Kirk, for instance, is the proverbial sci-fi Alpha Male who commands his own starship, is renowned as a hero throughout the fleet, beds a whole lotta sexy aliens, and beats up a whole lotta bad guys. Of course, any Trekkie will also tell you that Wesley Crusher from The Next Generation actually has been widely reviled as a Gary Stu (to begin with, Wesley is Gene Roddenberry's middle name) but I think he was just hated from the beginning. Geeky über-kid saves the Enterprise - again! The "Gary Stu" criticism towards Wesley simply justified a loathing that already existed and finally gave fans a concrete reason to despise a character who had long rubbed them the wrong way.












And now the Big Question. Why does Mary Sue largely haunt female authors writing female characters? As Carrie Vaughn, author of the Kitty Norville series asks in her blog, "What is [the popularity of urban fantasy] symptomatic of? What anxiety in our culture is being expressed so eloquently in these works that they’re striking such a powerful chord in the readership, leading to phenomenal popularity?" It's women and power, she answers, women and violence. It's our willingness to accept female warriors but not without "apologizing" for them because Western culture is ultimately ambivalent about them. An ass-kicking femme will nevertheless submit to the smokin' hot Alpha Male or exhibit some psychological flaw such as low self-esteem. It's the paradox of the author who feels comfortable writing a strong, beautiful, confident female protagonist but who is still aware that her character may be dismissed as a "Mary Sue." Women have come so far, Vaughn argues, and yet we are still ostracized and undercut for appearing powerful and in control.

So yes, Anita Blake is a bold and sexy female fighter who gets her man. Yet she also values friendship and loyalty, shows sympathy for a recovering "vampire junky," and wears an oversized t-shirt with a cartoon penguin on it to hide her gun holster. I personally found the Guilty Pleasures to be a bit over-the-top in terms of the supernatural ("wererats"? "freak parties"?) and containing way too many sleazy Fabio types (what Smart Bitches, Trashy Books snarkily calls "quivering man-titty") but I ended up enjoying it. No, it wasn't Anne Rice, but it was great fun. I really need to read the actual book!