Supergirls Don’t Cry

An Essay about girlhood, womanhood and everything in-between

“I need my golden crown of sorrow 

My bloody sword to swing 

I need my empty halls to to echo with grand self-mythology”

Since Dance Fever by Florence and the Machine came out, I’ve been listening to it non-stop. Especially the song King taps into a part of me that I haven’t visited in a long time, a part that I tried to hide even from myself to a point that I forgot what it actually does. My womanhood. 

Just like the movement itself, I, as a life-long feminist, have been struggling with womanhood as a concept. Is it something to shun or to embrace? Is it something to ignore or to celebrate? Is it a vital part of me or is it dictated by the patriarchy and has to be fought at all cost? How do I wield it? When does it even begin?

I wonder about the mystification of womanhood. I wonder about witches, cavorting with the devil and dancing naked on a hill under a full moon. I imagine the Crone, the Mother and the Maiden, tugging at the strings of fate of mankind. I wonder about wellness, diets and Kundalini yoga. About the green goddess salad and my iron goddess tea, which is supposed to calm my primordial urges to kill all men during PMS. We are terrifying and mysterious, a force to be reckoned with. 

“A woman is a changeling, always shifting shape

Just when you think you have it figured out

Something new begins to take”

Being mistaken for a mythical creature, however, has led and still leads to a lot of death, and although they don’t burn us at the stake anymore, we’re still not exactly human. In this age of rationalism and identity politics, of third wave feminism and overall wokeness, we are still inbetweeners in western society. We are objects and subjects. We are a minority for some and enjoy white privilege for others. We are forced to represent all of womankind, but have to bear individual responsibility when it comes to our health, needs and desires. Our bodies are dehumanized, our voices ignored, our entire being and right to exist used for political gain. 

But instead of banding together, we quarrel. Supposed feminist cis women attacking trans women, feminists attacking women in the public eye for imagined transgressions against all of womankind - I guess I’m not the only one who forgot and is in search of answers.

“What strange claws are these scratching at my skin

I never knew my killer would be coming from within”  

Tired and in a dark November mood I, of course, turn to Hollywood. Simple, it says, womanhood begins with blood, then, to spice everything up, we’ll add a difficult, harrowing transition period - et voila, a girl becomes a woman. Cool. 

In terms of genre I choose horror, as it has a lot more leeway in tackling taboo themes and because my mood only darkens, as my exploration continues. You can also add some superpowers, high stakes and monsters, which makes it much more fun. 

And so, we meet Eleven, now Jane (Millie Bobby Brown) in Stranger Things 4 in 1986, roughly a year after the events of season 3. El lost her superpowers, some variation of telekinesis and telepathy, in an intense fight against the Mind Flayer, who turned out to be her most formidable foe, yet. After the fight and the death of her adoptive father Jim Hopper (David Harbour), she was relocated to California by Dr. Sam Owens (Paul Reiser), formerly in charge of Hawkins Lab where she grew up and was exploited for her powers by Dr. Brenner or Papa, as he had all his subjects call him. 

In 1976, we meet Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) in Carrie. A shy young girl born in the recesses of the mind of the master of horror Stephen King and brought to life by master of exploitation Brian De Palma. Carrie also wields telekinetic powers, which crop up regularly when she is stressed or frightened. She lives with her mother, or Mama to Carrie, Margaret White (Piper Laurie), who is an abusive religious zealot and regularly beats and berates Carrie for her biggest sin - existing in a female body.

Both Carrie and El are bullied incessantly, mostly due to being quiet, shy, not understanding social cues and dressing “weird”. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, as both their journeys begin with blood.

We first see Carrie in an overhead shot of school girls playing volleyball. Carrie gets passed the ball, but drops it, resulting in her team losing the game. The first line of dialogue we hear clearly directed at Carrie is “Eat shit!”, spoken by her main bully Chris (Nancy Allen). In the locker room scene that follows, we see a dreamlike almost fairytale version of girlhood and womanhood, as girls brush their hair, talk, laugh and are unadulteratedly naked with each other, all clad in soft porn lighting and music. It is clear that we’re invited to watch and linger. 

The shot pans to Carrie alone in the shower, the camera almost caressing her body, as she washes herself. It very slowly moves between her legs and we see an inordinate amount of blood. After noticing, Carrie freaks out, running to her classmates, crying and frightened. And only at the 4:50 minute mark does she utter her first words: “Help me!”

El’s story begins in 1979, as her Papa, Dr. Brenner prepares to go to work. At work he conducts some kind of experiment with a subject, he calls Ten, when Ten begins to have visions of a blood bath and terrifying cries of agony permeate the sterile halls of Hawkins Lab. Brenner stumbles over more and more blood-covered corpses, until he reaches a room strewn with horribly maimed bodies of children. In the middle he sees 8-year-old El, panting, bleeding from eyes and nose and her hospital gown covered in blood. As a bloody nose is a common side effect of using her powers, Brenner manages a “What have you done?”, before the screen fades to black.

Oops, all periods.

For El there will be no aftermath for this scene for a long time, but Carrie continues to suffer, as back in 1976 the other girls don’t take kindly to her plea for help. They back her into a corner, pelting her with sanitary products, while chanting “Plug it up!”. The gym teacher Ms. Collins (Betty Buckley) quickly figures out what's happening, shuts the bullies down and slaps the terrified, whimpering Carrie back to her senses, but not before the Psycho Prelude plays and a lightbulb bursts right above their heads. 

El doesn’t have any memory of the bloody incident in her past, but her current life is not exactly sunshine and rainbows, either. Although she describes her life as perfect in her letters to Mike (Finn Wolfhard), her boyfriend back in Hawkins, her alleged friends are actually her worst bullies, her amazing grades are actually bad and her new adoptive family, the Byers, are so preoccupied with themselves that they don’t really see her or her distress. 

In school, after a class where the kids had to make a presentation about their hero, she is bullied by Angela (Elodie Grace Orkin) and her preppy clique of friends. Instead of choosing some historical figure as her hero, El chooses Hopper and shows a diorama she made, of the cabin they lived in, since he adopted her in season 2. As Carrie gets bullied for getting her period, El gets ridiculed for her expression of grief - two distinctly human processes and emotions. Really our first clue, as to how their humanity will be treated in their respective stories.  

It all culminates, when after getting another bad grade, El trudges through the school yard with her diorama in hand. She gets intercepted and tripped up by Angela, whose weirdly exaggerated friend tramples on El’s diorama. Enraged and crying, El runs after the group, yells and raises her hand to use her powers, but, unlike Carrie, she doesn’t have them anymore.

As I watch these properties back to back, I do notice some intended similarities, but also something else. 

Stranger Things has always been inspired by 80-ties nostalgia. The first and second seasons were an homage to Steven Spielberg movies like E.T and The Goonies, while the third was inspired by action movies like Red Heat. 

Season 4 takes a lot of inspiration from horror movies of this era. Vecna, the main villain of the season, is clearly modeled on Freddy Krueger originally played by Robert Englund, who also makes an appearance, as Victor Creel, later identified as Vecna’s father. Villains that we thought dead make a comeback in this season, just like the indestructible Michael Myers, whose famous William Shatner mask also gets used by the main characters in chapter 8 aptly titled Papa. So, it’s not a stretch that some of Carrie made it into El’s portrayal. 

But Carrie is a product of second-wave feminism, more precisely the beginning backlash to it, and El is a product of third-wave feminism, which means that there should be great differences between the portrayals of both characters. The parallels, however, go beyond homage, it feels more like the template for female adolescence hasn’t been updated since the dawn of time. And so, in both instances, up to this point we haven’t seen the girls show any emotion beyond crying, sadness, fright or despondency. It is clear that their journeys are just beginning and it won’t be fun, until they reach … some conclusion.

We listen in as Ms. Collins tells the principal that Carrie didn’t know about the existence of periods and they discuss how they can’t interfere with her mother’s religious beliefs. After the principal misnames her multiple times as Cassie, the Psycho Prelude plays again and his ashtray flips violently, which no-one remarks upon. Carrie is then allowed to go home, and as she arrives, we get a glimpse of her horrid home life. 

Her mother Margaret, a religious fanatic who goes door to door “spreading the gospel of God’s salvation through Christ’s blood”, gets a call from school informing her what’s happened. Carrie asks her why she didn’t tell her about periods, to which Margaret responds with a more and more frantic chant about Eve and “the curse of blood” that befalls sinful women, who have committed the “first sin of intercourse”. She simply hoped that Carrie would never get the period, but is now convinced that Carrie has sinned. To free her from sin, Margaret puts Carrie in a closet with a St. Sebastian statue to pray the sin away. After hours, Carrie emerges, thanks her mother and goes to bed.

El, meanwhile, is looking forward to a nice day for once. After almost a year apart, Mike is visiting for spring break and she is determined to make his visit as perfect as possible. It all goes awry of course, as Angela and her gang are visiting the same roller skating rink as El and Mike. The scene that follows is the most overt reference to Carrie, including their bullies’ motives for making their life a living hell. 

Presenting: The most 80-ies bullies you’ll ever hate!

Angela, set on ruining El’s life for “snitching” on her in the earlier incident, sidles up to her and Mike and leads El to the middle of the rink. As Mike notices that something is wrong, it’s already too late. Angela and her friends, one of them equipped with a huge eighties camera, start circling El, while the DJ plays Wipe Out by The Surfaris. The circle grows ever tighter, as they laugh at El’s growing discomfort, shouting “freak!” and mimicking her move from earlier. Mike tries to help by begging the DJ to stop the music, which he does and shouts “Wipe out!”, which turns out to be the cue for Angela, as she spills her milkshake all over the crying El. 

In both, show and movie, we are shown that three things are to be experienced at the beginning of the transition between girlhood and womanhood. Pain, isolation and rejection. Fun is not to be had.

El, however, is not finished with the bullies and, unlike Carrie, gets her revenge early-on. After crying in the closet for some time, she musters up the courage to stand up to Angela and demand an apology. Angela scoffs and turns to leave, as El, in one swift motion, takes a skate and bashes Angela over the head who starts bleeding profusely. The rink falls silent, as we hear Angela’s cries and Mike saying, “What have you done?”.

It is remarkable how the actions of the bullies are not given any gravitas in this scene, their meanness is purely shown, but no-one remarks upon it in any manner. While El gets silence and instant doubts of character, the terror and humiliation that preceded her attack on Angela are swiftly forgotten. As though her actions resulted from nothing. In Carrie’s case the bullying and abuse are somewhat acknowledged, but, in the end, it turns out to be somewhat righteous. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Carrie is nowhere near to exacting or wanting any revenge and turns out to be more curious than anything else. After coming to terms with her period and newly emergent powers, she goes to the library and reads up on telekinesis, quickly accepting it as part of herself and later on defending it, and therefore her right to exist, to her mother. 

During her research, she gets asked to the prom by Tommy Ross (William Katt), a popular jock and boyfriend to Sue Snell (Amy Irving). Carrie, not being dumb, refuses on the spot. 

At this point I have a stray thought. For all my talk about womanhood, women had little to do with the creation of both El or Carrie. El was created by Matt and Ross Duffer and Carrie is the lovechild of Stephen King and Brian De Palma. Both these harrowing stories of adolescence, blood, responsibilities and superpowers were conceived and realized by men. Sort of makes one wonder, whose journey into adulthood we’re actually following. 

El, meanwhile, has to deal with the repercussions of her actions. The next day, after the incident, she gets arrested and, after questioning, where she doesn’t seem to show any remorse, gets sent to juvie. Again, nothing that preceded her attacking Angela gets mentioned. 

Her trip to juvie is short-lived, though, as her transport gets intercepted by Dr. Owens, who makes her an offer she can’t refuse. After stating that her friends in Hawkins, nay the entire world, is in terrible danger, Owens gives El a choice: Come with me and get your powers back or refuse and everyone dies. He frames it as entirely her choice, but realistically speaking there is none. And here, we get a hint at what the Duffers are planning for El. 

Hopper, who survived his accident at the end of season 3, says this: “It must be hardwired into us somehow. To reject our fathers. So we can grow and move on, become something of our own.” (Episode 7). It is a story about independence, agency, but also, about responsibility for yourself and others.   

While Carrie’s responsibility to herself and society is not being a sinful woman, and the dire consequences of failing this responsibility are shown in the finale of the movie, El’s responsibility goes beyond sin. She is supposed to save the world - she is a saint and we all know how saints are made.

After she agrees to go with Owens, we see them drive into the desert and enter an abandoned missile silo that has been converted for the purposes of Project Nina. As El is about to enquire about the nature of the project, a man enters from the shadows - Dr. Brenner. Alive and well, after El blew him to smithereens in the season 1 finale. El panics and runs away, at which point she is quickly sedated. It is especially of note that the violence done to her is exclusively at the hands of men, Dr. Brenner, Dr. Owens, Vecna and even the faceless government goons and orderlies are all male. There is no narrative reason for that, except a facile feminist message that is contradicted by what is actually going on with the character.

Papa’s plan is simple. Shave El’s head, put her into Nina, a hermetically sealed tank with monitors on the inside, sedate El so that she can enter her mental projection/telepathic state and make her relive the worst memory of her life by showing her camera footage leading up to the incident in 1979, until she is shocked into unlocking her powers. Over the course of several episodes, we see El suffer. Nothing else, just crying, pleading, trying to run away, being sedated again, suffering some more, failing to regain her memories and powers, being dejected to a point of cooperating with her abuser and seeming to forgive him and crying some more (snot and all). At this point the song that became analogous with season 4 Running Up That Hill (Deal With God) by Kate Bush sounds especially ironic. Eventually, after an especially harrowing experience, El unlocks her memories. 

Carrie is quite distraught after being asked to the prom, she knows that it has to be a trap. Another ruse to humiliate and make fun of her. But Ms. Collins’ encouragement, mostly about her appearance and her own budding confidence, make her doubt what she already knows. She is flattered by the invitation and the compliments. 

We soon find out that Sue put Tommy up to it, because she felt bad about what has been done to Carrie, essentially loaning her boyfriend out to provide a boyfriend experience. Sue tells Tommy that it is imperative that he take Carrie to the prom and Tommy pretty much pressures her into eventually saying yes. Despite all that, the following scenes of her standing up to her mother, asserting her powers and womanhood, sewing her dress and trying out make-up for the first time, are very endearing. 

Of course, we know how it ends. After they arrive at the prom, the movie assumes the same fairy-tale-like lighting and blurring, as in the locker room scene, as they dance and have fun. Eventually, Carrie and Tommy are crowned prom king and queen and Carrie goes on stage to receive the crown and a bouquet of flowers, all the while we see her smile for the first time.

Inspiring anti-bullying quote time: “We explain when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you do not stoop to their level. Our motto is when they go low, you go high.” ― Michelle Obama

At this point Chris, who relentlessly bullied Carrie in the past and is now mad at her for being punished for said bullying, has been planning her revenge throughout the whole movie. The plan consists of getting a bucket of pig’s blood, hanging it over the stage and manipulating the election process so that Carrie is crowned prom queen. Finally, when Carrie is happiest, it comes to fruition, as Chris pulls on a string and the blood pours down onto Carrie in all its sticky slimy glory, soaking her and hitting Tommy unconscious with the bucket. 

… she went low

Chris, her boyfriend and best friend erupt in hysteric laughter. Seriously, fictional bullies are indeed the scum of the earth. The rest of the auditorium, however, is in shock and silent, but Carrie, with her mother’s warning filling her head “They are gonna laugh at you!”, hears and sees only laughter. With an abrupt turn of her head she shuts all the doors trapping everyone, but Sue and the real culprits inside and turns on the water hoses. She then proceeds to tear down the decorations, crushing Ms. Collins in the process. Soon the water gets into the wiring and the whole ball room goes up in flames. With a wild expression on her face and soaked in blood, Carrie wanders outside and shuts the door behind her, as the screams of her peers dying in the fire pierce the night. 

… yep, she’s practically a demon

Carrie slowly makes her way back home, as Chris appears behind her and tries to mow her down with her car, which Carrie notices and flips the car around, causing it to explode. At home, she washes up and tries to hug her mother, begging her to hug her back, but Margaret decides that she can’t “suffer a witch to live” and stabs Carrie in the back. She flees and hurls every metallic object in the kitchen at her mother, causing her to get stuck to the wall in the same pose as the St. Sebastian statue in the closet, bearing the same expression. The house then collapses on itself like Dracula’s castle and buries the Whites in a heap of rubble. 

In the end, the abusive mother was right about Carrie being sinful. By accepting her powers, her womanhood and sexuality, she flew too close to the sun and had to be punished accordingly. Instead of forgiving her abusers, she took revenge and died. Her mother’s final pose as St. Sebastian, who warned Diocletian of his sins and was killed for it, makes her a martyr and a saint who tried to warn Carrie, but was rebuked by a rebellious, super-powered teenager. There is no inherent empathy for Carrie, no mention of the abuse she has suffered. In the end, she is Sue Snell’s nightmare, who is, according to her mother, “A good girl.”

Speaking of good girls, in her unlocked memory, we see that El wasn’t a monster all along. The massacre at the beginning of the season wasn’t her losing patience with her bullies, who tried to kill her, no, it was Henry Creel, alias Vecna, alias One, Brenner’s first victim/experiment. One manipulated the bullies into bullying El, so that he could manipulate her further into trusting him and eventually freeing him of the restraints on his powers installed by Brenner. He kills and maims everyone, because he hates humanity and wants to reshape it in his image. There, in the desert, he tempts El to join him: “Imagine, what we can do together. We could reshape the world, remake it, however we see fit. Join me.” (Episode 7), but El refuses and strikes back.

In their fight El, bleeding from eyes and nose from Vecna’s attacks, understands that her powers are not fueled by anger or grief, but by love and empathy. Thinking about her birth and her mother naming her “Jane”, El is able to deal a powerful blow, sending Henry into the Upside Down and therefore opening the first gate and turning him into Vecna. 

This all happens in a memory, which is closely monitored by Owens and Brenner, forcing El to relive this past moment to unlock her powers. We, the audience, are forced to relive her trauma with her, but are also gleeful observers, which makes her entire storyline in season 4 incredibly exploitative. We are almost at the end of the season and we still have only seen her cry and bleed and cry some more. 

After reliving this memory El flatlines, but comes back via rebirth, as we see her literally exiting her mother’s birth canal from her perspective. With her powers intact, she gears up to go to Hawkins and face Vecna once again.

Parents play a huge role in any adolescent’s life, but in such stories they have a symbolic value beyond their character. Both Carrie and El have a “good” and a “bad” parental figure. 

In Carrie’s case Ms. Collins is the good mother who sees Carrie’s potential to be a viable member of society, in her case being pretty and getting a date to the prom, while Margaret, the bad mother, chastises her for exactly this potential. It is a push and pull between freedom and control, but as this is a horror movie set in the period of the beginning backlash to the feminism of the 60-ies and early 70-ies, Margaret turns out to be right and is vindicated with a martyr’s death, while Ms. Collins pays for her mistake of trusting Carrie and punishing her bullies with her life. Carrie needs both “mothers” to progress on her path to inevitable destruction, as their unyielding abuse on the one hand and staunch support on the other cancel each other out in the end. 

El, meanwhile, has two “fathers”. Dr. Brenner the abusive self-serving Papa, who steals her from her mother and whose experiments scar and traumatize her, but also help to develop her powers that eventually save the world several times. And Jim Hopper, the eighties Dad, who lets her eat Eggos all day long, but also tries to discipline her in the toxic male tradition of keeping her away from Mike, leading to their break-up in season 3. His biggest contribution and what puts him at odds with Brenner, is loving her unconditionally and eventually sacrificing himself to save her. Both fathers shape El’s perception of herself and lead to the conclusion of season 4.

Hopper is alive, but has no meaningful influence on El’s becoming, it is rather his absence and how she deals with his loss that define her. The focus, however, is on overcoming her relationship with Brenner. She has to come to terms with his abuse and her trauma, before she can move on and eventually reunite with her good Dad.

Against Brenner’s wishes to keep El close and to train her some more, because she is not ready in his opinion, Owens, being somewhat of an outsider to El’s and Brenner’s toxic dynamic, gives El the choice to leave for Hawkins right now, which she accepts. But before this can happen, Brenner’s goons surround Owens and get him out of the way, while Brenner tries to coerce El back into Nina. This goes predictably wrong and while El is on the verge of escaping, again, Brenner incapacitates her, again. 

The situation is resolved rather quickly, when an arm of the military that wants to kill El attacks the desert Jesus compound and everyone is forced to evacuate. El awakens right before the attack, woozy from the drugs and with a shock collar on her neck. Brenner sits next to her bunk and swears that he will never use the collar and that it is just for her safety. Then the attack begins and, as El can’t run due to the drugs, Brenner scoops her up and flees outside, where they are targeted by a sniper in a helicopter. The general gives the go, and the sniper starts shooting, but Brenner valiantly turns his back and gets shot several times to save El and to give her just enough time to crash the heli in a spectacular fashion.

Insert Lonely Island quote here

In his last moments he releases the collar and assures her, as he did many times throughout the season, that he did it all for her. He wants her to acknowledge that, but El just cries and says goodbye. Now, literally and figuratively free, she goes to fight Vecna.

The fight against Vecna is not really important here, but there is one thing worth mentioning. 

Near the middle of the epic two and a half hour finale, Vecna defeats El and pins her against a wall so that she has to watch her friend Max (Sadie Sink) die. As she hangs there, crucified and bloody, she tells him that Brenner is dead and tries to appeal to him by emphasizing his abuse and that Brenner is the real monster. To which Vecna says the following: "Papa did hurt me, but he was no monster, he was just a man. An ordinary mediocre man. That is why he sought greatness in others … in you, in me. But in the end, he could not control us, he could not shape us … he could not change us! Do you not see, Eleven? He did not make me into this. You did." (Episode 9) 

With her first act of violence as a scared 8-year-old, Vecna and the Duffers argue, El set a precedent for violence and did not attend to her saintly duties. She succumbed to the rush of power, just like Carrie did. Therefore, her abuse, trauma, crying (snot and all), were necessary for her to repent for this … one … “sin”. 

El’s actual fathers, her creators, set the weight of the world on her shoulders. Not only is she a savior, but she is the embodiment of female kindness. Due to the Duffers’ understanding of a “strong female character”, El is both Jesus and Mary, Mother of God. She is supposed to save the world, but also be motherly and compassionate, always (for)giving, never feeling. At the end of season 4, El is stripped of her right to be a complex human being, she has transformed into Woman. A symbol, to worship or to tear down, as others please. 

And as her transformation is complete, she weeps at the feet of Max, her only female friend, then reaches somewhere inside Max’s mangled body and resurrects her, giving life to her disciple.

So, what do we learn from these vastly different, but also similar, becomings? What is womanhood? 

According to Hollywood, womanhood and girlhood are plot points to use in a symbolic fashion. These stories are never about women or girls, they are unfortunately about the oldest trope there is - the mother and the whore. 

Becoming a woman has to be a harrowing morality tale. Either the girl learns to take responsibility for everyone around her, and preferably the world, or she succumbs to lust, vanity and revenge. There is seemingly no other option, and there is certainly no empathy for either. 

I don’t want to assume how it is to be a man or how the transition between boyhood and manhood affects one’s mind, but it is interesting to me that these stories are mostly written and directed by men. When they write about an unfeeling, unsympathetic world that doesn’t show empathy, are they actually describing their own world? Do they write about their own fathers and mothers? Are they in need of a savior so much that they are willing to strip women of their personhood, to finally be saved? 

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but it seems to me that these lost boys are in agony and no one is rushing to save them from the world they shaped themselves. I know that we’re all tired and searching and only if we can see eye to eye, we can, finally, reshape the world - together.

“I am no mother,

I am no bride

I’m King!