Dystopia’s Intersection with Women’s Power Roles and Sexual Image

December 2015

The 100 is a show that premiered on The CW. It is about a world where society was previously faced with a nuclear war so all of the countries teamed up and sent everyone to live in space. Now, about 100 years later, the space station where the surviving humans reside is running low on resources. In turn they send 100 juvenile delinquents back down to Earth to be sure that it is safe and inhabitable. The 100 provides a frame of reference for what the world would be like approximately 100 years after a nuclear war, including government control and sacrifice. During a scene in the episode “Bodyguard of Lies”, the two main female characters, Clarke and Lexa, begin a romantic relationship. This scene incorporates both women’s gender roles and women’s sexuality through the use of leadership and relationships. Through the interactions of these two women, The 100 portrays women in a non- sexually dominated light. 

Throughout the season, Clarke and Lexa are seen as leaders of their respective societies. In this episode, Clarke and Lexa team up to save their people from Mount Weather, where they have been kidnapped by members of another society. The men in their societies do not have much of a say in the way that the two women go about saving their people, other than making sure that the two women are safe in whatever way that they choose. This suggests that the women are in the highest leadership positions, with the men there to protect them from harm. In the beginning of the episode, Lexa fears that one of Clarke’s people is a threat to her and she sends someone to assassinate her. She changes her mind after some discussion with Clarke. She then lets the assassinator know that he should not kill the person. This is an example of Lexa having power as she tells the man to stand down and not kill someone who may have been a threat to her. After this, the women go to Lexa’s tent to discuss this situation. As the women talk in Lexa’s tent, the men spot something in the distance, causing them to sound the horn to begin the march to Mount Weather to war. As they march to war, Clarke tells a member of her society to move back into the mass of people to be safe. This proves, yet again, that she is a leader, as she is looking out for the safety and well being of a member of her society. Throughout this episode, both Clarke and Lexa make important decisions in regards to their societies, making themselves top leaders. 

The countless instances of women in leadership roles in this episode proves that women are not just pawns for men. In “Alternative Futures? Science Fiction and Feminism” by Jenny Wolmark, Wolmark’s discussion of feminism and science fiction discusses various works where women are the main characters. This is apparent in The 100. Wolmark says, “It is important for a feminist cultural practice to recognize that popular narratives do not simply reproduce the dominant ideology but are involved in a constant renegotiation of those values in the dominant culture which sustain the dominant ideology.” (Wolmark, 1988). The leadership roles of Clarke and Lexa reject the dominant culture of science fiction as they are women who, in some ways, dominate the men in their societies. They take the masculine dominance that is apparent in the world today and in science fiction and dystopian works and reverse the roles into roles of feminine dominance. Wolmark goes on to say that “the alternative futures of feminist science fiction provide fictional landscapes in which the reconstruction of gender can take place…” which is precisely what the creators of The 100 are doing with Clarke and Lexa. By putting them in top leadership roles, they are putting them in roles that are normally male dominates roles. This is reconstructing gender in the societies in The 100, as women are and will continue to take on male roles in the show. 

As Wolmark made evident, the shaping of characters in regards to their gender can drastically impact the way that a work of science fiction is looked at. In this episode, the men in the society are used as protectors of the women, thus putting them on a lower level of social status than the women. This in turn makes the women more important. The men are mainly used as bodyguards to the women, seeking out and killing people who could harm the lives of the women- in this case, Clarke and Lexa. For example, one of the men tries to murder someone that Lexa saw as a possible threat, protecting her. When Clarke realizes that and proves that the person is not a threat, Lexa tells the man to stop trying to find and harm that person. This makes the men vulnerable to the women’s wants and needs, rather than the other way around. When both of the women decide that neither of them are being harmed, the men do what the women say. This situation, with Clarke and Lexa as women in social- status positions above men, proves their power and leadership roles in their varying societies in The 100.

The specific scene where Clarke and Lexa share a kiss introduces a new insight into women’s image in science fiction. "Sex in Utopia: Eutopian and Dystopian Sexual Relations" by Lyman Tower Sargent and Lucy Sargisson explores the feminist dystopian novel in the context of how sex is portrayed in utopian and dystopian works. Women in dystopia are used as sexual objects for reproductive purposes a majority of the time (Sargent & Sargisson, 303). In the scene where Clarke and Lexa share this kiss, it is apparent that both are female and cannot reproduce, in turn proving that this sexual relationship is based upon their own wants and desires, rather than the wants and desires of the men in their societies. In this particular scene, the women are in Lexa’s tent alone. The close- up shot of this kiss suggests the kiss is important both in terms of their relationships and in terms of their roles as women in this society. Both women begin the kiss instinctively and then relax into it. This shows that their fears about pursuing their relationship end once they accept that their feelings towards each other are more important. Sargent and Sargisson relay the message that “the treatment of sexual relations in utopia has changed very dramatically, from an aspect of a hierarchical, patriarchal society in which sexual relations reproduced the power structure (in dystopias, they still do) to a gender-equal assertion of the right to act freely that challenged (and still challenges) the power structure”.

It is clear by now that Clarke and Lexa are both in leadership positions and are romantically involved. In her study, “Genetic Transgressions: Gender, genre and hybridity in american science fiction television”, Lacy Hodges shows the incorporation of masculine and feminine qualities into the characters in recent and current science fiction television shows. She says, “SF action provides for a greater possibility of transgressive depiction of gender… some recent television series are more open to depictions of non-normative male and female characters” (Hodges, 100). In The 100, Clarke and Lexa have both feminine and masculine qualities, whether it is clear and apparent or not. 

In “Bodyguard of Lies”, especially, Clarke and Lexa’s gender identities are explicitly shown in relation to their power positions and budding romance. In various scenes, they are seen together, with medium long shots showing them looking directly at each other as they talk or walk in synchronization with each other. In every scene that they are in, they are both standing tall with their backs straight, a mark of their power. Even in the kissing scene, where they are alone and no men are in sight, they look at each other directly in the eyes. This shows that neither of them feel less powerful than the other. However, they are dressed in women’s clothing. Lexa wears heavy makeup and her hair pulled back into various braids while Clarke’s curls sometimes fall over her eyes and her cleavage is oftentimes shown as she wears looser scoop- neck tops. The costuming is not used to separate the women from the men in any way, but rather to dress them for whatever appropriate event they may be dealing with- in this episode, the impending war. The camera angles emphasize their equal heights in long shots and never sexualize either of the women’s bodies when they shallow focus on them. 

Many of the women in The 100 have been shown engaging in some sort of sexual activity. In their essay “Feminist implications of anti- leisure in dystopian fiction”, Margaret Daniels and Heather Bowen discuss the term “anti- leisure”, where those in a dystopian society have a distorted view of leisure activities. Daniels and Bowen say, “For dystopian women, healthy sexual relationships are not an option” (Daniels & Bowen, 434). In season one of The 100, another lead female named Raven instigates a sex act with her lover, Lincoln (“Unity Day”). In the same episode that Clarke and Lexa kiss, another lead female named Raven instigates a sex act with a friend and colleague, Wick (“Survival of the Fittest”). All of these are consensual and healthy, proving wrong what Daniels and Bowen stated. 

Wolmark’s discussion of feminism in addition to that of Sargent & Sargisson’s research on women as sex objects in dystopian and Hodge’s argument on masculine and feminine qualities in science fiction characters opens up a positive view of women in dystopia (that meaning all women, whether or not they are in leadership positions) who engage in sexual activities, despite what Daniels and Bowen say. The 100 inverts gender roles through the use of women in leadership roles, giving these women the power to explore their sexualities without doing so for the men or fearing the men’s opinions of them. With a continuance in shows and movies like The 100, women in society will begin to do the same.

Works Cited

Daniels, M. J., & Bowen, H. E. (2003). Feminist implications of anti-leisure in dystopian fiction. Journal    of Leisure Research,35(4), 423-440. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.indiana.edu/login?        url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/201121741?accountid=11620

Hodges, L. (2015). Generic transgressions: Gender, genre, and hybridity in american science fiction television (Order No. AAI3647902). Available from PsycINFO. (1735929513; 2015-99210-030). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.indiana.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1735929513?accountid=11620

Lyman Tower Sargent. and Lucy Sargisson. "Sex in Utopia: Eutopian and Dystopian Sexual Relations." Utopian Studies 25.2 (2014): 3015-317.Project MUSE. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. http://muse.jhu.edu/.

“Survival of the Fittest.” The 100. CBS. 28 Jan. 2015. Television.

“Unity Day.” The 100. CBS. 14 May. 2014. Television.

Wolmark, Jenny. “Alternative Futures? Science Fiction and Feminism.” Cultural Studies (1988). 48-56. Print