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30 Days of TV - Day 15
( The Days )
Day 15 - Favorite female character
When I started this meme, I thought this should be an easy question. But the more I think about it, the harder it is to choose a favourite female character. There are so many to choose from. I love women who can kick ass: Xena, Buffy, Sidney Bristow, Sarah Connor, Aeryn Sun. I love women who are smart: Sam Carter, Willow, Lois Lane, Dana Scully, Wendy Watson. I love women who have the self-confidence to insist the world take them as they are: Inara Serra, Sookie Stackhouse, Starbuck, Cordelia Chase, Delenn. I love women who are strong because they are women and that's awesome: Mary Winchester, Ellen Harvelle, Joyce Summers, Kaylee Fry, Precious Ramotswe, Laura Roslin.
How do I choose a favourite from among all of them?
But I did come up with one. Not so much a favourite as a character who embodies all the qualities I'm talking about above: Highlander's Amanda.
When we first meet Amanda, in Highlander season one, she's a cat-burglar, a circus performer and very much a woman who uses her femininity to manipulate the hero. She gets Duncan to fight the man who is hunting her (who is an ex-lover), then chooses her moment and kills him herself. There's this look she gives Duncan right after she decapitates her old lover/enemy - kind of a what's-a-girl-to-do? It's not a great first impression for the character, but Amanda developed as the series went on, and even more so on Highlander: The Raven.
There's something she says to Nick in one of the early episodes of Raven which explains a lot about who she is. He's angry with her. He points out that she's has a thousand years of experience, she's smart, she's gorgeous and she's rich. She could be anything she wanted to be, but what she chooses to do with that is be a thief. Amanda retorts that for most of her thousand years, she lived in a world where a woman who wanted to be independent was called a whore, and a woman who was strong was called a witch. Nick can only retort that the world's not that way any more. The thing is, they're both right. Amanda is a survivor: she took her beauty and her skills and made the best of them she could. For herself. Oh, yes, there's a core of selfishness about Amanda: that's what makes her a theif, but it's not evil selfishness.
Highlander was not about her, so though we saw glimpses of her past it was usually only insofar as her history intersected with Duncan's. We saw who she was before her first death: a starving peasant girl in a plague-ridden town. We saw her mentor (and lover?) Rebecca, who taught her the most important lessons of her life. Beyond that, we saw her love for Duncan: yes, love, though she wasn't above using him for her own ends he seemed to know what he was getting into each time. In Raven we learned a lot more about her. We saw the loves of her life and her losses. We saw the times she managed to break the mold and step out of the traditional 'women's role'...and we also saw the times she tried and failed, and paid for her failures.
Highlander presented us with paradoxical characters. It was amazing that someone like Methos, with all his experiences, could still look upon the world with wonder. In Amanda, we saw someone whose experiences should have beaten her down, hardened her to ruthlessness. And yet she could still laugh, have fun, seduce a hero or get off on the adrenaline rush of a good heist. She could still open herself to love and to pain. She was a survivor, both of the worst life can throw at a woman and of the deadly Game, but she could still put her life on the line when conscience or loyalty demanded it.
And she wasn't perfect. Oh, no. Amanda could screw up massively, she could over-react, she could go off on her own tangent with narry a thought for the people relying on her. She's really smart, but she's also impulsive, acting from her heart instead of her head and bringing tragedy on herself by doing it. But you could always see why she made her choices; her heart was always in the right place.
And she can kick-ass with the best of them!
Gotta love Amanda.
Day 15 - Favorite female character
When I started this meme, I thought this should be an easy question. But the more I think about it, the harder it is to choose a favourite female character. There are so many to choose from. I love women who can kick ass: Xena, Buffy, Sidney Bristow, Sarah Connor, Aeryn Sun. I love women who are smart: Sam Carter, Willow, Lois Lane, Dana Scully, Wendy Watson. I love women who have the self-confidence to insist the world take them as they are: Inara Serra, Sookie Stackhouse, Starbuck, Cordelia Chase, Delenn. I love women who are strong because they are women and that's awesome: Mary Winchester, Ellen Harvelle, Joyce Summers, Kaylee Fry, Precious Ramotswe, Laura Roslin.
How do I choose a favourite from among all of them?
But I did come up with one. Not so much a favourite as a character who embodies all the qualities I'm talking about above: Highlander's Amanda.
When we first meet Amanda, in Highlander season one, she's a cat-burglar, a circus performer and very much a woman who uses her femininity to manipulate the hero. She gets Duncan to fight the man who is hunting her (who is an ex-lover), then chooses her moment and kills him herself. There's this look she gives Duncan right after she decapitates her old lover/enemy - kind of a what's-a-girl-to-do? It's not a great first impression for the character, but Amanda developed as the series went on, and even more so on Highlander: The Raven.
There's something she says to Nick in one of the early episodes of Raven which explains a lot about who she is. He's angry with her. He points out that she's has a thousand years of experience, she's smart, she's gorgeous and she's rich. She could be anything she wanted to be, but what she chooses to do with that is be a thief. Amanda retorts that for most of her thousand years, she lived in a world where a woman who wanted to be independent was called a whore, and a woman who was strong was called a witch. Nick can only retort that the world's not that way any more. The thing is, they're both right. Amanda is a survivor: she took her beauty and her skills and made the best of them she could. For herself. Oh, yes, there's a core of selfishness about Amanda: that's what makes her a theif, but it's not evil selfishness.
Highlander was not about her, so though we saw glimpses of her past it was usually only insofar as her history intersected with Duncan's. We saw who she was before her first death: a starving peasant girl in a plague-ridden town. We saw her mentor (and lover?) Rebecca, who taught her the most important lessons of her life. Beyond that, we saw her love for Duncan: yes, love, though she wasn't above using him for her own ends he seemed to know what he was getting into each time. In Raven we learned a lot more about her. We saw the loves of her life and her losses. We saw the times she managed to break the mold and step out of the traditional 'women's role'...and we also saw the times she tried and failed, and paid for her failures.
Highlander presented us with paradoxical characters. It was amazing that someone like Methos, with all his experiences, could still look upon the world with wonder. In Amanda, we saw someone whose experiences should have beaten her down, hardened her to ruthlessness. And yet she could still laugh, have fun, seduce a hero or get off on the adrenaline rush of a good heist. She could still open herself to love and to pain. She was a survivor, both of the worst life can throw at a woman and of the deadly Game, but she could still put her life on the line when conscience or loyalty demanded it.
And she wasn't perfect. Oh, no. Amanda could screw up massively, she could over-react, she could go off on her own tangent with narry a thought for the people relying on her. She's really smart, but she's also impulsive, acting from her heart instead of her head and bringing tragedy on herself by doing it. But you could always see why she made her choices; her heart was always in the right place.
And she can kick-ass with the best of them!
Gotta love Amanda.