Women on Fringe

Fringe is a show that I have just recently started rewatching. I watched with my mother when it was on tv, and now my boyfriend wanted to watch it. While it has its problems, I do still think it's a great show, and has great characters.

Fringe is a sci-fi show, and I'm really glad that it has three female characters in major and minor roles. There is Olivia Dunhamn, Astrid Farnsworth, and Nina Sharp. They are all incredibly strong female characters.

Olivia Dunham (right) is a strong FBI agent with an unfortunate past. She tends to think and act emotionally. This is only to the dismay of Harris, who wants her fired at all costs. He hates her because she arrested him for sexual assault. Everyone else on her team are grateful for her emotional thinking. Thanks to it, she solves all her cases and truly take the initiative.

Astrid Farnsworth (left) is also an FBI agent. Unlike Olivia, she does not typically work in the field but in the lab, assisting Walter, an incredibly smart scientist.

Nina  Sharp (lower right) is the CEO of a large company call Massive Dynamic. She is older and has a robotic hand, but she doesn't let that, or anything for that matter, stop her.

Part of That World

The Little Mermaid is one of the most famous Disney movies, and Ariel is one of the most famous princesses. But personally, I don't think she or the movie get treated fairly. While it may seem that no one treats the movie badly, many people view the movie as anti-feminist.

People say this because Ariel trades her voice for legs, which I think people misinterpret as Ariel trading her voice for a guy (Eric). People then see then message of The Little Mermaid to be "change yourself for a guy!" I never saw it that way as a child and I still don't know. I think Ariel is a strong female character, and pretty darn feminist too.

Ariel is a free-spirited, determined, teenage mer-girl who is obsessed with the human world. As much as she loves her father, she is ultimately against him (and the patriarchy since he is the king) because he is holding her down. She wanted to visit the human world and know more about it for a long time before she saw and saved Eric. She has an entire song about it. I think Eric was just icing on the cake for her. He was also the very first human she'd up close. Right before she goes to see Ursula, her father has just destroyed all of her human treasures because of her obsession with the human word and her "love" for Eric. She upset, all her human treasures are gone, as well as she wants to visit the human world more than anything, so she would probably have traded anything to be human. Her trading her voice for legs was not because of her "love" of Eric alone, but of her love of the human world, and her determination.

Maleficent & Sleeping Beauty

A very popular trend these days is making villains (especially Disney) seem less evil. This can be seen as good, as we are used to the Good vs Evil binary, and now we can see Disney characters as both. I recently watched Maleficent for the first time, and the change in the characters is pretty astounding.

Character	Sleeping Beauty	Maleficent
Maleficent	Evil fairy/witch, angry for not being invited to a public party, curses Aurora	Fairy who wants to protect her home The Moors, falls in love with Stephan, is betrayed by Stephan who cuts off her wings, retaliates by cursing his daughter, watches Aurora grow up and begins to care for her and love her, tries to take back the curse but can’t
Aurora	Cursed as a baby by Maleficent, sent to live in the forest with three fairies to raise her, carefree and kind, likes to sing and dance with her forest friends, falls in love with Phillip	Cursed as a baby by Maleficent, sent to live in the forest with three fairies who don’t pay attention to her, carefree and kind, thinks Maleficent is her fairy godmother, likes to be with maleficent more than anything, has a crush on Phillip but he’s not really important
Flora, Fauna, Merriweather	The fairies assigned to raise Aurora, give her mediocre gifts for fairies, are relatively nice to each other only making sassy remarks sometimes, competent caregivers, raise Aurora as their own	The fairies assigned to raise aroura, give her mediocre gifts for fairies, are cruel and mean to each other, easily distracted, incompetent caregivers, forget about Aurora, if Maleficent hadn’t have helped, Aurora would have died (from multiple things, like starvation or falling off a cliff)
King Stephan	Aurora’s father, seems good, protects Aurora by sending her away	Betrays Maleficent by befriending her and loving her then lying to her and cutting off her wings, he was going to kill her, he goes mad trying to find Maleficent after that, he devotes his life to it, he does not care when his wife is sick and dying, he is the villain in these  events
Queen Leah	Aurora’s mother, loves her daughter, is distraught when she is cursed and is very happy when she returns home	Aurora’s mother, loves her daughter, is distraught when she is cursed, is sick, Stephan does not care, she dies
Diaval	Maleficent’s  crow	A crow Maleficent saves, turns him into a human when she wants to, her servant
Prince Phillip	Has mutual love at first sight with Aurora, strong love, saves her from her curse and from Maleficent	More of a crush, his kiss does not break the spell, it is not love, does not do much

While these changes are definitely interesting, not all of them are good, like showing the fairies as incompetent and the Queen dying. But besides some things, both show very different , strong, and interesting female characters.