I was reading an LJ discussion recently about sex/gender roles in romance novels, and the typical ways sexual desire and temptation are assigned to one gender or another in terms of power and control in the relationship. Someone commented that they still dreamed of seeing a romance where the badass dark character was redeemed by their desire/attraction to the innocent, naive, pure-hearted character, and to have those roles not be based on traditional male/female dynamics of romance fiction. And it hit me: I HAVE SEEN THIS. In PT. If Princess Tutu were any other anime, Rue would have been male and Mytho would have been female.
The gender roles are so wonderfully, beautifully twisted around in this story. Mytho is the most passive character since the stupid girl I hate from Phantom of the Opera, and he wins the love of the villain through his "inner purity" and "goodness of heart", even though she basically rapes him he forgives her all her wrongdoings. And Fakir! Fakir started out the ultimate dark macho man: he rides horses, he swings swords, he threatens and bullies people. But in the end the way he helped was through none of those things, it was through giving up everything he thought made up who he was for the sake of serving a girl, taking on a much more hands-off, nonviolent role of support. Though he wrote the story, in a sense he only channeled it, and what's more--- channeled the heroine's story, the heroine's power. He was her voice, her hands. His greatest achievement came in helping Ahiru reach HER achievement, and his power to write was always centered on her, defined by her story and her power. I loved that, because its so different from the power roles you usually see given to men and women in fiction.
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MORE SPOILERS!
Date: 2008-01-22 07:56 am (UTC)The gender roles are so wonderfully, beautifully twisted around in this story. Mytho is the most passive character since the stupid girl I hate from Phantom of the Opera, and he wins the love of the villain through his "inner purity" and "goodness of heart", even though she basically rapes him he forgives her all her wrongdoings. And Fakir! Fakir started out the ultimate dark macho man: he rides horses, he swings swords, he threatens and bullies people. But in the end the way he helped was through none of those things, it was through giving up everything he thought made up who he was for the sake of serving a girl, taking on a much more hands-off, nonviolent role of support. Though he wrote the story, in a sense he only channeled it, and what's more--- channeled the heroine's story, the heroine's power. He was her voice, her hands. His greatest achievement came in helping Ahiru reach HER achievement, and his power to write was always centered on her, defined by her story and her power. I loved that, because its so different from the power roles you usually see given to men and women in fiction.