womeninmarvel:

brevoortformspring:

That’s fine, you’re perfectly entitled to gripe.

I am fascinated by the fact that there’s all of these diverse opinions about Wanda and Rogue, but almost not a word about Simon (apart from that question I responded to a few minutes ago.) Was Simon’s death a “fridging”? If not, how is it any different than Wanda’s or Rogue’s in that issue? And if so, then what does that say about the whole concept of “fridging”?

Below is a feminist rant with UA spoilers and Dark World spoilers. Beware.

To answer your question, Simon’s death cannot be considered a fridging because he is male, and his death will never have the connotations that the death of a woman will. This is because men do not have an established, ongoing trope of dying solely for angst-ridden or revenge storylines. Such is the privilege of being a male character in a patriarchy. This privilege is similar to why the shock-“death” of Annabelle Riggs was made more problematic by being a queer woman than it would have been otherwise.

First of all, in my opinion, it isn’t possible to call Wanda/Rogue’s deaths fridging just yet. “Fridging” is a trope where a woman is killed, maimed, or depowered in order to progress a male’s storyline (usually causing some man angst or launching a male-centered revenge story). We don’t even know if Wanda and Rogue died permanently, let alone how their deaths are going to impact the larger Uncanny Avengers storyline. Fridging is not simply “female superhero dies”, it involves WHY that woman died, and HOW her death changes the flow of the overall storyline. 

What is problematic is Remender’s recent history of brutally killing women, which is why Wanda+Rogue’s death is more significant than Wonder Man’s.

Regardless, I’m disappointed in you, Brevoort. Fridging is an established and problematic trope that Marvel should be aware of and actively working against, not attempting to debunk or dismiss. It is not a thing of the past. We’re not past the Killing Joke and Big Barda. Two VERY RECENT Marvel fridgings are Sharon Carter (by Remender, hmmmm.) and Frigga in Thor: the Dark World. Frigga is basically a textbook fridging. Notice how every single notable scene with Frigga in it exists to establish motive for Loki and Thor later in the movie. She exists — and dies —- solely for the men in the film. Contrast this with Loki’s “death”, who not only has a rich character history across three films, died just as much for Thor’s grief as he did for his own “villain redemption” arc.  

Fridging doesn’t mean all women ever get plot armor from deaths. Fridging means that when women die, it shouldn’t be simply to progress another person’s story line. I read Remender’s interviews. His concept of Wanda representing the Avengers and Rogue representing the X-Men, and how their conflict is a piece of the bigger picture between these two conflicting themes, this is all good stuff. I don’t see why this conflict needed to result in three deaths. That is just shock-value storytelling. It is lazy, and Marvel is better than that.