I’ve Got Your Back: Buddy Stories and Female Archetypes

by Scott Shields

Buddy stories date back to the beginning of literature, and they are a fantastic vehicle for writers to display their characters’ personalities.  Whether it is Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Frodo and Sam, Butch Cassidy and Sundance, or “The Dude” Lebowski and Walter Sobchak, countless male examples abound in all story genres.  Yet when looking for female versions of the classic buddy story archetype, the list becomes substantially shorter and the characters’ roles are often different than those of their male counterparts.

The first thing to consider is the moniker, “buddy story.”  The term “buddy” typically carries male connotations, yet there is really no other word in English to describe close female friendships in this way.  Women often use words like “girlfriend” or “sister” in this way, but these words are not exclusive to describing friendships, and they can carry very different connotations in other contexts.  In recent years, the abbreviation “BFF” (Best Friends Forever) has come into vogue, and this seems to be used primarily by females.  Still, no one currently talks about experiencing a “BFF story” in print or on film.  So for lack of a better term, I will stick with “buddy story” in describing tales involving two female characters on a fictional journey.

Very often, female buddies appear in comic roles.  Mistresses Ford and Page from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor set the precedent for female friends who get themselves in and out of trouble together for the sake of a good laugh.  These character types would later appear as Lucy and Ethel in the 1950s and two decades later as Laverne and Shirley.

What is interesting here is the roles these female comics play compared to their male counterparts.  In comic roles, the male buddies usually have two roles:  the straight man and the fool.  The fool is often brunt of the straight man’s jokes or the victim of other characters’ actions.  There is also a hierarchical structure to these relationships;  one of the guys is clearly in charge, whereas the other follows orders.

This dichotomy of roles seldom exists to this extent in female buddy stories.  Instead, the women are either equal in their foolishness or they are the normal “everywoman” characters trying to overcome the foolishness of those around them (more often the idiotic men around them).  Does this suggest that audiences are uncomfortable with the notion of witnessing a woman being victimized in this way or being made to look foolish?  Or is it simply easier or more natural to cheer on female underdogs as they navigate a foolish and oppressive society together as equals (perhaps a more realistic scenario for women, historically speaking)?

Sometimes female comic roles dabble in the dramatic sphere and depict the various life stages of women.  For example, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell portray good friends who navigate the minefields of men and romance together in the comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams explore teenage friendship in the history-spoofing film Dick.  Likewise, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion features two lifelong friends who have supported each other through the travails of adolescence and adulthood.  Cultural differences are bridged in the comedy-drama Bend It Like Beckham, as are the realities of domestic abuse in Fried Green Tomatoes.

Law enforcement, a long-standing platform for male buddy stories, has its feminine counterparts as well.  The television series Cagney and Lacey broke new ground in its portrayal of women detectives, and in the comedy The Heat, Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy play a female odd couple waging a battle against crime.  In this female cop version of The Odd Couple, Bullock’s character plays the straight role while McCarthy plays the uncouth fool.

When surveying women’s roles in dramatic films, none conjure the female buddy archetype better than Thelma and Louise.  In a picaresque story reminiscent of Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Jack Kerouac’s On The Road (a story that mirrors many elements of Twain’s novel), two friends are brought closer together as they race west while dodging the law.  While they are on the highway, life is good.  But with every stop along the way, they find themselves getting deeper into trouble until they run out of road and there is nowhere for them to go but down.  Truly, they are BFFs to the end (or at least to the end of their steep downward journey).

The buddy story archetype has long been rich ground for writers, particularly where male characters are concerned.  Nevertheless, the list of female examples is rather sparse, comparatively speaking.  In thinking about the roles that women have in these narratives, it is striking how many films depict the female buddy archetype not so much in pairs—as is most common when the characters are male—but rather as an ensemble of female characters.  Is this because close female friendships do not exist in pairs very often in real life, or are there other factors at play?  Perhaps this will be the topic I explore in my next article.

To Finish or Not to Finish?

Books

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At what point is it okay not to finish reading a book? Ten pages in? Fifty? This is a quandary I have been facing this week as I’ve worked my way through the opening chapters of a novel that, by all accounts, I should like. It has been well-received by critics. The topic is one that I generally find interesting. The characters are believable. And the writing style, while not as artful as others I’ve encountered, is sufficiently engaging to keep my interest. Yet there have been a several moments as the story has unfolded (specifically, uncanny “coincidences” in the plotline) that have given me the urge to chuck the book into the trashcan and move on to the something else.

You see, I’m one of those readers who tends to see a book through to the end no matter what. Maybe it’s my Midwestern upbringing or my Protestant work ethic, but somewhere deep in my psyche is the conviction that, once a chosen task is begun, I have a moral obligation to complete it. Over the years, I’ve wasted an enormous amount of time reading all sorts of books that, in retrospect, were not particularly good and really weren’t worth the effort. But I finished them, dang it!

Recently, however, something has changed. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and I realize that life is short, or perhaps it’s the result of reading hundreds of really bad student essays during my decade and a half teaching high school English. For whatever the reason, I no longer want to read books I don’t like.

Yet does this reflect a growing shallowness on my part? Have I fallen victim to the same social and cultural forces that have conditioned my students to retreat from anything that is not immediately engaging or may require some sort of sustained effort on their part to fully reap its rewards? I can think of plenty of books (particularly some of the “classics” that were assigned by my teachers in high school and college) which were not particularly riveting at first, but they turned out to be some of the most memorable books I’ve experienced. At the same time, how many books have I blazed through that I found delightfully entertaining while I was reading them but have long since forgotten?

As C.S. Lewis notes, good readers can learn something valuable from even the worst books. The question is, at what point is it fair to say that a book is simply not worth the trouble? Personally, I’ve going to give my current novel another twenty pages or so. Okay, maybe thirty. We’ll see how it goes.

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Literacy Rant: Closing Thoughts

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So the task was simple. Pick five and only five books that would do two things: stand as a crash course in literature and encourage the reader to continue that education on his own. I’m pleased with the list and stand behind it, but there are a few random thoughts that occur to me.

I’m not a misogynist. But I may be a chauvinist. There aren’t any women authors on the list. The books are by and large ‘boy stories’. Women could, and certainly do, enjoy them but they all have male heroes and are generally male viewpoints. In part this is because the list was made by an older dude (me) for a younger dude (an illiterate moron I work with). The only real candidate I could come up with to fit the criteria was To Kill a Mockingbird. This is probably, and hopefully, just a hole in my own reading preferences, but if I were making a list for a young lady who didn’t want to read about wolves and murderers…well I’d be pretty much screwed.

I’m not a snob. I have a problem with people who look down their noses at popular fiction just because it’s popular. The books on the list are generally considered classics, but they’re also good stories. I think they’re all powerful as Literature with that stupid capital ‘l’, but if you don’t enjoy reading something what’s the goddamned point? Take away that snobbish capital ‘l’ and you might have better luck getting somebody hooked on reading with Harry Potter. Those books are easy to make fun of if your reading nose is in the air. I read every one of ’em and thought they were pretty flippin great.

I’m a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Fahrenheit 451 made my list because it was more accessible than 1984 but I really wanted 1984 on the list. I don’t know if people are truly getting dumber, although it certainly feels that way. It’s easy (and apparently human nature) to think kids are more stupid than you are. But it’s not a case of raw intelligence so much as a framework to express that intelligence. A book like 1984 can give you the syntax to express what you think of things with names like red light cameras, full body scans at airports, the patriot act, or tracking chips in your phone.  As far as I know, 1984 is no longer widely taught. I’m not sure that’s an accident.

I have no idea if this will work. The young guy I made this list for transferred to another department and I no longer see him. If he had read the list, I don’t know if it would be the magical transformation I hoped for. To tell you the truth I don’t think he would have even tried to read them. I can’t force him. Well, I suppose I could, but that would be me infringing on his right to be aggressively ignorant and I am a strong believer in individual rights. I’ll keep trying though. His replacement is another young kid. If I throw enough books out there maybe one will stick.

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Crash Course in Literacy: Part 5

No Country for Old Men (film)

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When I started this list, I mentioned that I had a reading order in mind for the books. It’s an order based on very subjective (and very arguable, I’m sure) feelings of ‘hard’ versus ‘easy’. Fahrenheit 451 is a great book but I consider it an ‘easy’ book. It’s fast paced, kind of fun, and a quick read. That’s not a knock either. The idea was to snare the young man who doesn’t read and you’re not going to do that with War and Peace or Moby Dick or really anything with a decent movie version out. The tones of the books (also very subjective) seem to get darker and more intense as they go along. And that brings us to the graduate course in this super-truncated literary education.

Cormac McCarthy is less subjective, less arguable. His books are not ‘easy’; the man doesn’t use quotation marks! The tone is bleak, desolate, relentless, dark…yeah all of those coupled with rape, incest, murder and other cheerful bits of violence. That cheerful was sarcasm. Somehow, though, his prose manages to be beautiful, his characters compelling, and his storytelling is imaginative and gripping.

No Country for Old Men is McCarthy at his best. It takes place in the West. Texas to be exact apparently circa the early eighties. It is at the same time the Mythic West of America but he subverts the reader’s expectation of that Mythos to explore things like the meaning (if any) of bravery, the meaning (if any) of right and wrong, the meaning (or existence) of morality, and the true depth of darkness one (apparently) human being is capable of. If that all sounds heavy, it is, but I don’t think it’s on purpose. McCarthy doesn’t appear to be subversive for its own sake. I think he just really sees things this way and those are the stories he tells.

No Country is simple enough. A blue collar kind of guy finds a bag full of money. The manner of the finding leaves no doubt that this is blood money from across the border. He takes the money and the cartel is after him. He makes a run of it and he seems to be doing well but it’s not just gun thugs after him. Also after him is a truly remorseless killer who doesn’t like to get blood on his clothes. Also a sheriff named Ed Tom.

Okay maybe it’s not that simple and if you haven’t read it that little synopsis will probably just confuse you. If it’s not simple in subject matter it is brutally simple in style. This story has been taken down to bare metal. Then had an edge put on that metal. Then that edge is honed and stropped until you can shave with it. No word is wasted or out of place and despite that kind of work from the writer, the book still expects a lot from the reader. McCarthy never once tells us, as narrator, who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy or what motivates a character or even what they look like. Everything we think or feel about a character is something we have to take based on what they do or what someone else in the book says about them. That takes a certain something from a writer…balls? insanity? reckless endangerment? Most of us as writers are concerned (read terrified) that we won’t get what we are thinking across to the reader. So we modify and explain and ramble on. Whether McCarthy has faith in his writing, faith in his reader, or just doesn’t give a shit, I don’t know. But it makes a hell of a good read and an affecting read. I would hope the experience of having a writer expect something from you and finding you are up to it would hook you on reading forever.

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Crash Course in Literacy: Part 4

Eberkopfterrine (boar head tureen), Modell: Go...

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When my high school English teacher (shout out to Mr. Ted Eriksen) passed out copies of Lord of the Flies he told us it was “Probably the most carefully constructed novel in the English language.” That being a bold intellectual statement and me and my classmates being smart ass teenagers, we immediately and mockingly started referring to the book in that manner or by the initials TMCCNITEL. Yes, we thought that was pretty funny.

Of course, we had to eat a little crow when it became obvious Mr. Eriksen was dead serious and dead right. Mind you, the structure wasn’t the first thing I noticed. The story was the first thing I noticed. It’s a great story that looks like a Robinson Crusoe adventure at first blush. The tone indicates rather quickly that it’s not going to be that. Something is weird about these kids and this island but we’re not sure what. If you haven’t read it, shame on you, but if you want the same feel and tone it’s very close to the first five or six episodes of Lost. In fact I doubt Lost could have been written without Lord of the Flies.  But I digress.

The reason this book is on my literacy list is because of those two things in harmony: a really great story told in a carefully constructed manner. The book is tailor made to be taught. An English teacher’s wet dream of symbols: the conch shell, Piggy’s spectacles, the signal fire, the Beast, the titular Lord of the Flies. The characters fit into allegorical roles that make the book easy to classify as allegory. But it’s told so damn well that it doesn’t have any of the heavy handedness of allegory. It was the first book that I wasn’t assigned but taught. There were real discussions between Mr. Eriksen and us smart ass kids. For me this leap was when we were discussing Roger (that little shit) throwing rocks at the littleuns but not quite hitting them. It’s not the most intense scene in the book by a long shot but it’s when I was invested in learning a book, even anxious to learn it. And of course it deftly foreshadows what Roger will eventually do to Piggy.

This wasn’t the overwrought obviousness of The Scarlet Letter (sorry Mrs. Leavens but that book has all the subtlety of a wrecking ball in mid swing). We’re not told that Simon is an intuitive and spiritual boy, it comes out in the story and it happens in a natural and compelling way. The book draws you in with a slow build, maintaining the simple adventure of a desert island while constantly cranking up the creepy descent into savagery. The power of primal tribalism gets so strong that the boys’ fate feels inescapable. That gripping story and masterful structure make it perfect for the classroom but it’s just as good for a less formal setting like my quick and dirty top five here. If you can read this and not want to talk about it then I guess there truly is no hope for you to develop a love of books. But I don’t think that will happen.

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