The XX Factor – A Woman’s Take on Women Characters for Women NerdsBy Heather Harris
“Elektra’s Disappointed Sai: Part 1 – Greek Origins Can Only Do So Much”
When a ninja assassin who is named after a greek titan leaves us wanting more, somebody needs to pay. The Bechdel Test – the pop culture metric used to determine female representation in works of fiction – has nothing on a character arc with enough holes to sink a ship.

                     Bendis/Austen
On March 18, 2016, Netflix will release its second season of the highly anticipated show “Daredevil.” The success of the first season rallied around the casting, the fight choreography, the faithfulness toward the spirit of the Marvel comic, and finding high ratings with both fans and critics. Some details were slightly off, such as the relationship between Kingpin and Vanessa, and the weapons of choice for Matt Murdock, but overall Daredevil and Netflix found themselves to be an exhilarating pairing.
When I lost myself in the Marvel universe which centered around Hell’s Kitchen and the journey of Matt Murdock into a beautifully spun web of superhero ethics, I expanded my exploration: paying closer attention to the character arcs of the supporting cast. Foggy’s trust issues, Karen’s paranoia and closets full of skeletons, Kingpin’s justification for violence, Madame Gao’s underground despotism for marginalized labor advocacy, and Stick’s adherence to form and practice and art at the cost of childhood role-modeling all gave me fodder for how their subplots offered the main character multiple encounters of facing his own demons. Internal conflicts are as numerous as the sounds of sirens in New York City. As a former resident of NYC myself, I can attest to how often that happens….think of changes of weather in the Midwest. Or better yet, how many damn squirrels you see on a daily basis. There’s your measuring stick. In other words, Murdock has to face his demons as often as the family dog barks at squirrels running past the window. Such is the ferocity of the first season of Daredevil, and such is the source of a fantastic and nuanced narrative.
As we began the Netflix series with a resounding YES for the pilot season, we will now encounter the hurdles of the sophomore season with furthering subplots and character arcs while introducing new and integral characters to Daredevil. While I’m as excited as the next fan who crushes all over Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/Punisher, the character I have found myself wanting more from in the trailers has been Elektra. Unfortunately, I have also found myself wanting more from the writers on the character of Elektra in the comics as well, and a part of me is hoping Daredevil Season 2 will give us a “Peter Jackson miracle” and turn a teensy amount of content into a monster of an ensemble story.
Elektra is a fascinating character. But just as her arrival began to get interesting in the comics, Frank Miller wanted her death-by-skewering in the Daredevil Comic to be the permanent kind of dead and not the re-animated kind like just about every other major comic character in existence. I have to ask “Why?” Her backstory is ambiguously exotic, her love relationship with Murdock is passionate and honest, and her own journey through The Moral Dilemma is as dynamic as his. It’s no surprise (and I’m sad to say this) that the dichotomy between male and female hit screenwriters shows the gap between story arcs of two amazing Daredevil Antagonists: in this case, Punisher and Elektra.
What do the trailers tell us about Elektra? Name a trope, and we might cover some good ground on that alone. She’s bad ass. She’s beautiful. She’s deadly. She knows info on the Yakuza that Murdock wasn’t aware of and helps him by sharing. Through her entrance we will see The Hand’s dark and overwhelming presence in Season 2 come into full effect in which we are sure to see a return of Stick.
What does the comic tell us about Elektra? She met Murdock at Columbia University as a political science major. They fell in love quickly and deeply. Her father is an ambassador. A year into the love relationship her family and security were held hostage. Murdock used his powers and his cane to infiltrate the captors and injure them one by one. Police outside mistook Elektra’s father as one of the captors and shot on sight after a hostage was seen injured. Her father’s death shattered her world views and Elektra realized her path to justice was irreconcilable with Murdock’s deeply held convictions. She found justice through assassination and as a bounty hunter, a persona that is the very antithesis of what Daredevil cherishes, as seen in their reunion through a botched assignment.

                Miller/Janson
Keep in mind, I have refused to watch the 2003 film version of Daredevil starring Jennifer Garner as Elektra or the 2005 stand-alone film, Elektra, hearing the incarnations were an atrocity and an abomination on the industry that took years from which to heal. So, I’m continuing that moratorium on good faith that they are no help in my quest to find a better understanding of Elektra.
That leaves us with her stand-alone comic series. And her words to start with:
“Once upon a time… there was a beautiful princess. So the warrior princess became a ronin and a whore. A warrior for hire. She sold her talent and rage to anyone willing to buy it. But she found that her life ran in cycles. That the same players came in and out of her life no matter how far she ran and no matter how much she learned. Old love kept returning. And old debts left unpaid came back to haunt her. And even that final disappointment of a warrior’s death brought her no peace. Because the way of the ninja is to know that life and death are nothing but energy pushed and pulled. The princess was brought back to life. Brought back from ‘the Place of No Name’…to finish a fight she did not start.”
Most rebirth myths are centered around redemption, but Elektra tells a different story. One encapsulated in constant struggle with the loss of a father and a fight with a real and/or imagined mother figure. She fights for the love of a devoted man/protective-father-figure, discovers the loss of herself in the process, dies metaphorically or literally, and is reborn in the hellish cycle of what has been used in archetypal and classical human psychology as the “Electra Complex”. This complex is the literal gendered opposite of the Oedipal Complex, and we see it reborn repeatedly in the Marvel story of Elektra, however piecemeal it has been offered.
I’m filling in these holes, goddamn it. Because if her story is the metaphor of a psychological state, then she’s one-dimensional. Whether that was intentional or not, I call bullshit, so here I come with my analysis offering some much-needed depth for fans of the red-wearing femme fatale.
“Part 2 – Elektra Conquers Distractions, and So Should We”
What we DO know as primary motivators for her decision-making in this series, besides her relationships with men, namely Daredevil, is that she trained extensively for combat and for hire. In so doing, her accomplishments have been listed as a resume for the Bad-Ass Female Trope, yet it’s vital to refrain from doing so, for her training offers a story of life conflict and lessons unrelated to her love complex. She need not be a footnote nor a mere helpmeet for one of her male protagonists. Her life story and how she survives as an assassin – as a cold and calculating mercenary – is key and ought to be held front and center.

                  Miller/Janson

In her stand-alone story, created by Brian Michael Bendis (against Frank Miller’s protests to leave her dead…which I have to point out yet another conflict that some villainous dude always wants to kill a wayward woman while some knight in shining armor dude always wants to save her…even beyond the comics, but I digress), Elektra was trained by The Hand. This ninjutsu organization and training camp originated in the 16th century to assist nationalist warlords seeking power and domination through assassination and espionage to gain information. Elektra Natchios, disillusioned as a world-class gymnast who loved and feared her father (the perpetrator of a child rape memory recalled by her), and watched him die while she lay helpless, began her journey of complete subjugation of compassion and realization of vengeance. She isn’t judge and jury, but a willing and skilled executioner.
Throughout her stand-alone, which occurs after her reunion with Murdock in the Daredevil Series, Elektra is forced to face her demons time and again. What annoys me, however, isn’t the portrayal of her ferocity or her anti-heroism, but how hot she looks in her red leotard as the focal point. Were I to suggest something to all writers who have collaborated on her story arcs in over 800 issues in the Marvel universe, it is that somebody needs to create the mood, the scenery, the dialogue, her costume, etc., to define her as more ruthless and calculating, making her physical appearance, and how alluring she is, as secondary or tertiary. If she truly IS the deadliest assassin in the world, she certainly isn’t provoking the same kind of fear as Punisher.
Which brings me back to the upcoming Daredevil Netflix series and my bated breath. We’ve come a long way in diversity with the Big Two in DC and Marvel, but perhaps it goes without saying: we need to keep pushing forward. I challenge the writers to place the blinders on Elektra’s physical assets except for same amount of time given to the six-pack eye candy moments for Murdock. Instead give her more evasiveness and residency in the shadows. Give her icy stare from a dark corner and not from a sultry body position. Highlight what her sai weapons are doing and not what her legs are wrapping around. A fully realized Elektra comic would be one of the bloodiest and most violent series in existence, were her title of “Deadliest Assassin” true to form – not the equivalent of a masturbatory fantasy of a faux role-play ninja-chick.

    Del Mundo
Daredevil needs a more daunting challenge than this. His love for her shouldn’t be challenged in a pedestrian manner, one where the ex shows up on his doorstep looking as beautiful as the day she got away. If she is a character that Daredevil truly feels diametrically opposed to, she needs to embody the visceral disgust that comes from the overwhelming sense of dread she brings to a room.
If anyone can write this, it would be Netflix. Jessica Jones realized the trauma of PTSD and rape effectively on screen without distracting from the entirety of the character or the story. Netflix also had no qualms ensuring that Jones herself was portrayed as an asshole yet fully human, battling her demons and Killgrave at the same time. A female character with nuance, bad-ass but non-sexualized, battered but not helpless, traumatized but with full agency. Will we see the same humanity offered to Elektra?
Daredevil, Season 2, here we come.