The Contradiction of April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[heWizard]

So? That's basically all April O'Neal has been in most of the TMNT media she's been in, a damsel in distress that everybody else in the cast has to go out of their way to save all the time, and in the few where she isn't she doesn't start out that way and has to grow into being competent. Also, eyecandy? That's another given.

It's like if they made a faithful Super Mario movie and everybody complained that Princess Peach doesn't do anything but get kidnapped over and over. I mean, what do you expect?

If you had kept reading you would know that this is the point of the article.

 

[immortalfrieza]

So? That's basically all April O'Neal has been in most of the TMNT media she's been in, a damsel in distress that everybody else in the cast has to go out of their way to save all the time, and in the few where she isn't she doesn't start out that way and has to grow into being competent. Also, eyecandy? That's another given.

It's like if they made a faithful Super Mario movie and everybody complained that Princess Peach doesn't do anything but get kidnapped over and over. I mean, what do you expect?

If you had kept reading you would know that this is the point of the article.

No, you then go on to write that she's been a contradiction between a strong female character and token hostage and that we should expect more out of April O'Neil, when I'm saying that being just that is the core of her character and that we shouldn't expect more than that out of anything half faithful to her character.

 

[nevarran]

What bothers me is that you (and many other people) consider "peril" as something purely physical. Like being kidnapped, or attacked by someone. As if strength is purely a physical thing. As if you cannot be a strong person unless you can kick someone's ass.
What about emotional peril? As far as I remember, Raphael goes very often into emotional holes. Why isn't he consider a *whatever the fancy word for male is* in distress? Why isn't he considered a weak character? Just a tough brute, who every now and then needs saving from his depressions?

 

[Lono Shrugged]

I always saw her as the audience stand in character. Kind of like the normal agent guy in Hellboy. Or the doctor lady in Blade. It's a pretty common narrative convention. Your introduction to the world so things can be explained. As for the old TV show. They don't really do anything. I never really saw sex as an issue with that kind of character. If you are trying to construct a complex narrative, then sure. But this is a couple of pop corn action films, a kids tv show from the 90's and the original comic. (Where it seems she had a developed character. She was their helper and represented us at home. She might not have been strong or capable but you could relate to her and her sex was not important. Anything over that is bad narrative. She is a side character. The turtles was the ultimate boys club and she was the kid sister who gets to tag along sometimes and help out.

 

[JimB]

I'm saying that being just [a damsel in distress] is the core of her character and that we shouldn't expect more than that out of anything half-faithful to her character.

A character is measured by what she does, not by what others do to her. A character defined by what others do to her isn't properly a character at all, but an object.

 

[vid87]

I'm saying that being just [a damsel in distress] is the core of her character and that we shouldn't expect more than that out of anything half-faithful to her character.

A character is measured by what she does, not by what others do to her. A character defined by what others do to her isn't properly a character at all, but an object.

In that sense she's kind've half a character. There's not doubt in her incarnations as a reporter that she's pretty gutsy - she goes out and gets the story by any means. Hell, the very first episode of the 1980's cartoon has her using a radio device the turtles gave her and threatening her boss by claiming it's a friggin' bomb unless she can be allowed do some investigating. Wildly irresponsible and certainly grounds for getting her fired, but gutsy all the same.

The problem I think is that she's stuck in development. Being saved from an overwhelming situation makes sense once or twice in the beginning, but sooner or later she had to have realized there would come a time when she couldn't rely on the turtles and needed to find a way to fend for herself. Later incarnations fix that by having her learn martial arts and defending herself from the forces that originally would have crippled her. That's not just a good thing in the sense of physical strength - it makes her a better person because she's taking steps to improve herself and become more independent like a rational person would do rather than dead-weight who expects others to solve her problems for her.

Not "strong" per se but "proactive."

 

[immortalfrieza]

A character is measured by what she does, not by what others do to her. A character defined by what others do to her isn't properly a character at all, but an object.

There are plenty of characters throughout all of fiction that are defined by how other characters treat them and are no less valid characters for it. April O'Neil is defined by largely having little other purpose beyond being a hostage for heroes to save, it's central to her character and always has been.

 

[JimB]

There are plenty of characters throughout all of fiction that are defined by how other characters treat them and are no less valid characters for it.

How do you define the word "character," immortalfrieza?

Also, sorry to be this guy, but it's kind of driving me crazy: her surname is not spelled with an A. It's "O'Neil."

 

[immortalfrieza]

How do you define the word "character," immortalfrieza?

First, how do you define the word "character" or "object" for that matter?

As for me, I could go into a long rambling explanation, but to put it simply any fictional person in any media that has any lines, actions, or other presence of note. They all are valid in their own way, not all necessarily good per se but all valid.

Also, for examples of characters which are defined by what other people and the world do to them instead of what they do for the most part, check a few TVtropes pages:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButtMonkey

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AttentionWhore

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeUltimateHero

and of course, for many more characters just like O'Neil (happy?):

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedVictim

...and that's just off the top of my head.

 

[Therumancer]

My basic attitude is that in heroic fantasy where most characters are one type of ideal or another, it's not so much a girl being oogled or not that makes her a "strong character" but how she reacts to it. There is no one "right" way to do it and be strong, as a girl can be strong doing everything from ignoring it, to giving scathing put downs, to playing the temptress, it all comes down to how well written she is and what she does other than act as eye candy (or if she's eye candy, how she goes about pulling that off, since that can actually be empowering as well).

That said, I'll say that at 39 I'm just old enough and a big enough nerd where I can say I both actually read the old Black and White comics, and played the Palladium RPG based on them (fairly heavily in fact). While I am in a distinct minority, I actually felt that version of "The Turtle" was actually better, not so much because it was darker but because it seemed to be better put together, thought out, and constructed as far as such things go. At the time The Turtles were hitting the cartoons and became a huge success, beyond anything they did in an obscure comic book, I was getting smart/wary enough to be sort of put off by the whole thing, especially seeing as it was pretty easy to see the mass merchandising involved, and some of the things like the "Turtle Van" just outright annoyed me. The Turtles as a concept seemed to always work better to me as a sort of urban legend, and being fairly frightening monsters in appearance (I mean seriously, a humanoid mutant turtle would be kind of freaky, they had things like that in the D&D monster manual... and I believe it's pretty close to the description of a Kappa from Japanese mythology to boot). While they made some mild pretensions of hiding in the sewers, them dragging a reporter around while they tear up the streets in a brightly colored van covered in shells, with guns hanging off the side, just never seemed right to me.

At any rate, I'll be blunt in saying that I do not think the version of "April" from the cartoon could really be considered a strong female character. Overall it always seemed to me that she was extraneous to the plot, and while she wasn't always a damsel, she seemed to largely operate as a foil and build in plot/information source. While some attempts were made to do things with her, and she was always there, I always felt she was kind of a part of the scene dressing.

In the old comics, April wasn't present as much, but she actually served an important role by acting as a sort of bridge between normality and the fantastic. Her initial background aside she was fundamentally just a girl with an antique shop who was decent with computers and once ran into a nut. By all rights she could have walked away from the turtles and would have every reason to do so, but she didn't, compared to the comic version where one can argue that April's entire career is based around the fact that she knows the turtles, and honestly I've kind of wondered if she would have really ever been anyone without them. What's more in the original comics things are pretty dark, people die, the bad guys are not always portrayed as being total buffoons, and the turtles are pretty scary looking (and at least one of them is arguably a sociopath... yes Raphael I'm talking about you). In the cartoon the bad guys are almost laughably incompetent, the turtles are a bunch of brightly colored pizza swilling clowns who it is hard to be scared of (being re-designed to appeal to kids), and nobody does... and the whole series rolls like that, being a cartoon everything is magically sanitized. It's not like your going to see a truly brutal melee, and have the turtles, themselves actually cut up/injured standing in the middle a pile of dead ninjas and wonder about how they are going to dispose of the bodies...


The point I'm getting at here is that I think the B&W version was actually a stronger character even though she did less, and was less active for a lot of it (though she does hook up with Casey Jones and even dons a hero mask briefly). Heck she even keeps doing this stuff after she's rendered sterile. Indeed I think in this case less was more.

Now, as far as Megan Fox goes, I have a little more respect for her than a lot of people do. She seems to be a decent actress, even if she has a tendency to say the wrong things to the wrong people (which I can empathize with). She's smoking hot of course, and you can't blame her for using that while she's got it (or directors for exploiting it). I actually suspect she's someone who will get more respect 10-15 years down the road when her looks start to seriously fade (though she seems like the type who will always been attractive for their age group). Mind you I don't think she'll make any "best of all time" lists, but it seems like she's decent enough where she'll be around in one form or another for a long time.

I'll also be blunt, Megan fits in with the old B&W version of April. April being a redhead started with the cartoon, and while that's the more well known version, I will say that they seem to have been going for a look more similar to the old B&Ws, with the turtles being a lot "scarier" looking as well for example, though it still drew heavily from the version most people know.

I won't likely see the movie until Netflix though, simply because no matter how much money it makes The Turtles drove me out of the theaters a long time ago.

 

[JimB]

How do you define the word "character," immortalfrieza?

First, how do you define the word "character" or "object" for that matter?

sigh

An object is the opposite of a subject. An object is something that is defined not by acting, but by being acted upon by outside forces.

A character is a fictional being with volition who has an arc. Insufficient amounts of either of these defining traits makes the character at best badly written, and at worst just an object that exists only in the context of some other character. See also "sexy lamp" phenomenon, a term I believe was coined by Lindsay Ellis of Nostalgia Chick (but don't quote me on that bit), referring to any character whose purpose in a plot could be replaced by an inanimate object like a lamp without changing the substance of the story. For instance, Jane Foster's role in Thor II: the Dark World; or April O'Neil's role in pretty much any Turtles story, which could just as easily be replaced by a camcorder the Shredder stole without changing the shape of the plot.

O'Neil (happy?)

Yes, thank you.