Why Isn’t Anyone on Team Bella?

Did anyone else here used to be a big Phantom of the Opera *sigh*  “phan” back in the day?

As usual, I don’t ask because I actually want to talk about Phantom of the Opera; instead, I’m trying to use the show to shed light on a trope in stories that’s sticking out in my mind at the moment, inspired by recent episodes of House (also as usual),  but related to Ivanhoe and the Harry Potter series, and also tangentially to various romance movies, including the one I’m going to use as an example, Mambo Italiano. The last group is different, for reasons I’ll get to by the end of this blog. Spoilers ahoy!

Basically, the trope is this: a character (a woman in every one of the stories I’ve mentioned except Mambo Italiano… which, as I noted, is a different trope  from the others, so I’m just gonna go with “she” and “her” for now*) is in a romantic triangle. She has to choose between the nice but kind of dull man who’s good for her and the crazy bad boy who is passionately in love with her but with whom she’d clearly have the most unhealthy relationship ever.

In Phantom, this character is Christine, who has to choose between her handsome, heroic, considerate but insipid childhood friend, Raoul, and Erik, the titular Phantom of the Opera, who’s a murdering, kidnapping, terrorizing psychopath with self-image issues but also a genius and angel of music who wuvs her more than anything, really for honest and for true. At the end of the musical and the book, Christine chooses Raoul by agreeing to stay with the Phantom in order to save his life, and the Phantom, overcome with remorse born of his True Love and overwhelmed by Christine’s sincere pity for him, lets her go to spend her life with the man she loves. Then he dies.

In Ivanhoe, a similar plot plays out between Rebecca, the “Jewess”, and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, the only interesting character in the entire book. Brian kidnaps beautiful Rebecca with the intent of raping her, but having actually captured her, he finds himself smitten with her determination and intelligence and decides to hold her prisoner until she agrees to marry him willingly**. Rebecca, however, is unfortunately in love with the most boring character in the entire book, Ivanhoe,  who is the epitome of virtue, blah blah blah, and she refuses to submit, even though she knows Ivanhoe’s already engaged and would never marry her anyway because she’s Jewish and he’s a Christian nobleman. Then the Templars get mad at Brian for having a sexy witch-lady in their castle, and, long story short, Brian gets killed, which, due to convoluted pseudo-medieval logic***, saves Rebecca from being burnt at stake.

In the Harry Potter series, this plays out in a milder form with Snape taking the bad-boy role, James the boring hero one, and Lily that of the poor sap who has to choose. In the current season of House, it’s House-Lucas-Cuddy. And in Mambo Italiano, it’s – well, I’ll get to that later.

On one hand, this trope seems to send an awesome message to women: don’t choose the abusive toolbox, ladies, even if he is super sexy and One-Girl-To-Rule-Them-All in love with you. You can’t change him – and even if you could, you shouldn’t have to try! Pick the guy who already treats you the way you deserve to be treated and live happily ever after. So what if he’s a little on the dull side? Just because you’re the love of some genius douchebag’s life doesn’t oblige you to sacrifice your happiness for his.

But when you examine this trope more closely, it has serious anti-girl undertones. Sure, it’s better than the trope where Beauty’s True Love transforms the Beast – Christine swoons over the Phantom and accepts his kidnapping, violent ways as flaws her love can fix – but that doesn’t mean it’s ideal. First of all, the woman always chooses someone. Why is it an either-or choice? Why can’t she just say, “You’re bland, you’re a jerk, I’m gonna go watch TV, maybe meet some new people, hang out with my friends. Call me when/if either of you fix your problems, kthxbai”?

Second, the healthy choice of rejecting  Mr. Has-Issues doesn’t always translate into happiness with Mr. Nice-But-Boring – look at poor Rebecca, doomed to pine away for Sir Fancypants Too-Good-For-Jew Most Noble Knight in the Kingdom for the rest of her life (after he marries Rowena, the second most boring character in the entire book). Look at Cuddy, condemned to spend every other scene throwing pained I-feel-guilty-about-House-and-it-mars-my-happiness looks at the camera. Look at Lily Potter, nee Evans, sent by the author to an early death so Snape’s tragedy can play itself out.

Which brings me to the really important way this trope isn’t actually good for women: IT’S NOT ABOUT THEM.

The musical is not called Christine’s Choice. The House audience is not asked to rejoice for Cuddy and her newly satisfying life. Lily spends the entire seven-book series dead, for goodness’ sake; Rebecca’s a vibrant character, but even she spends the climax of her plotline helpless and tied to a frickin’ stake while other people fight over her.

These stories are not stories of women who face personal dilemmas and make the right choice. They’re stories of flawed, powerful, intriguing men whose personal tragedy is that their shortcomings send the women they love into the arms of another man who will never live up to their genius.

Who’s the most memorable character in A Tale of Two Cities? It’s not Charles Whatsisface****, who gets the girl in the end. It’s not the girl, who’s so absent a character that I hardly remember anything about her except that her name might be Lucy, maybe. It’s poor old Sidney Carton – the engrossing anti-hero who gives his life so that he may save the man who makes the woman he loves happy.

Similarly, who gets the dramatic, show-stealing climactic scenes? Hint: it’s not Christine who leaves the stage with Raoul a good five minutes before the play’s over. It’s not Rebecca, who’s trussed up to that aforementioned stake. It’s not Cuddy, who spends literally every scene she does have with Lucas talking about House. And it’s not Lily, who’s DEAD. It’s our poor, misunderstood bad boys!  How can making a healthy romantic choice compare to the drama of sacrificing yourself for the one you love? They are incapable of living for her, so they must DIE (physically or metaphorically) for her! How will they deal with losing their love to another man??? Angst! Drama!

The point is, the story is set up so the audience is invited to sympathize with Jerkface!Genius!Bad Boy – so that readers and viewers will feel that it is a tragedy, not a happy ending, that he didn’t get the girl. Our hearts break for Erik when he sings, “Christine… I love you” and she gives him back his ring. We resent Raoul, because the language of the story has been telling us that Erik and Christine truly belong together. There is almost no phanfiction on fanfiction.net that pairs Christine and Raoul happily*****; there’s a far greater proportion of phans who adore Erik than who cheer for the poor Vicomte. The story ends on how things affected Erik and reminds us how his genius is dependent on his love: “You alone can make my song take flight/ It’s over now, the music of the niiiiiight!”

So, how is that certain genre of romances, as represented by Mambo Italiano, different? Well, it uses this trope (sort of), but it doesn’t have these problems. Many romances involve a main character who has to choose between a sexy character who’s somehow dangerous or bad  and an initially more boring character (who also turns out to be sexy) who’s pleasant or good. You know this story – it’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, Archie comics, every high school movie ever where the protagonist is gunning for the cool kid only to find true love with the geeky best friend he or she’s been ignoring all along.

Mambo Italiano is about Angelo, a gay guy from a traditional Italian family. He hooks up with his friend Nino, a handsome, charming bad boy who not only (understandably) doesn’t want to come out of the closet, but (jerkface-ly) breaks Angelo’s heart and decides to marry a woman to hide his sexual orientation from the rest of the community. Angelo is given a chance to go after Nino, but instead, he starts a relationship with Peter, a nice guy he met on the GLBT Help Phone line. Nino loses out on his real love, but Angelo is happy.

This is made of win because it’s Angelo’s story. Nino is important to the plot, but he is patently not the main character. We find out what happens to him at the end, but if we last saw him when Angelo rejected him for Peter, it wouldn’t be an issue. He doesn’t matter that much. We feel a little sad for Nino and his wife when we see that their marriage is based on a lie, but the ending of the movie leaves the audience feeling happy. Things are finally looking up for Our Hero!

Now, I generally don’t write or read straight-up romances – just not my thing, except when it’s paired with another kind of plot – but there’s a great storytelling lesson to be learned here even for writers who aren’t working on this type of story:  we don’t get pro-women bonus points for merely ending the plot with a woman making a healthy decision. The pro-women stuff happens only when that’s a happy ending – and when it’s the woman at the centre of her story, just like Angelo is at the centre of his.

Or (inclusive “or”) the super-cool misunderstood awesome genius could be a woman for once. Hint, hint.

* I mean, obviously that’s one way in which it’s different – that there’s a guy at the centre of the love triangle instead of a lady – but thematically different, too.

** Not a recommended plan, gentlemen.

*** We’re talking “If she weighs the same as a duck…” here.

**** Darnay? Is it Darnay? I refuse to Google this, just because.

***** Incidentally, one fanfiction trope one often finds in connection with these type of stories is “Nice Guy Turns Out to Be Even More Abusive Than Bad Boy, Who Will Come Rescue Her From Her Unpredictably Bad Decision!” Skim through the summaries on fanfiction.net, and you’ll find that fandom Raoul, Lucas, James Potter, and the rest have a preternatural tendency to suddenly become violent, possessive rapists after Erik, House, Snape, etc. are out of the picture. I’m sure there’s a Gender Studies and/or Lit Crit paper in there somewhere.