Who Needs Wonder Woman When You Have Elizabeth Jennings?

Wonder Woman may be the first blockbuster movie featuring a female SUPER HERO, but The Americans tops that as the first peak-tv series to feature a female ANTI-HERO.  There have been other female superheroes, and even other female superhero movies, but the anti-hero business has been an exclusively male preserve.

I haven’t seen Wonder Woman (a DC vs. Marvel thing, not a gender thing), but it seems like a fairly conventional superhero story: The good gal fights for truth and justice, etc.  The Americans goes further with a feminist remaking of a traditional genre. First, there is a gender role-reversal in the family dynamics. Elizabeth is the true believer, the patriotic soldier, and the ruthless one.  Her husband, Phillip, is the weaker link, placing family before duty. Phillip has been ready to quit the spy business since the pilot episode. It’s taken five seasons to get Elizabeth there. The series is really about her evolution.

But beyond the genders of the characters, The Americans really re-genders the whole idea of anti-hero. The classic anti-hero conflict is between the individual and society. Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper. These guys are trying to figure out who they are, and how they can (or cannot) develop their selves in the face of their particular social positions and larger cultural forces. The struggle is an individual one—discovering or being true to oneself. It’s not so different from the classic hero story, except these guys are bastards about the whole thing.

In The Americans the central struggle is about building real relationships. The conflict with society is not (just) about becoming one’s authentic self, but about establishing authentic relationships with others. Or put another way, the true self is one that can appreciate and interact with other in a deep, loving, non-exploitative way.  Phillip and Elizabeth are trying to have a real marriage, to be good parents, and to form genuine friendships. The world won’t let them (it’s more complicated than that, society has shaped their characters, so it’s as much an internal struggle as an external one).

If The Americans were a more standard show, Stan Beeman would be the prime anti-hero. Stan is the classic workaholic agent who is so consumed by saving the world that he ignores his family and personal relationships. His sense of morality is challenged by the compromises he makes in the line of duty. As he becomes disillusioned with his place in society (counter-espionage) he is left wondering, who he is and whether it is worth it. Can Stan Bee(a)man? Good stuff, but we’ve seen it all before.

For Phillip and Elizabeth the conflict is not just intrapersonal (trying to become oneself), but (I’d say primarily) interpersonal (trying to form relationships). The tragedy of the anti-hero is that he destroys himself. The tragedy of the Jennings is that they are destroying each other and the people they are in close relationships with. While the anti-hero damages others, the damage we care about is mostly to himself (more on Stan’s wife & kids in a second). The Jennings are hurting themselves (and, frankly, they deserve it). However, the hurt we care about is what they are doing to the others they love the most. This makes the Jennings way worse than other anti-heroes. You can hurt yourself (in fact, I root for Elizabeth to die a painful death), but leave your family out of it.

In the traditionally gendered world of anti-heroes, the wife was at home to take care of the kids. Stan’s wife, Sandra, is abandoned, and eventually leaves him. Really, she’s better off—who would want to be married to such a jerk? Similarly, Stan’s son misses out on a relationship with his father, but mom is around to keep the home. This is the classic gendered division of labor. The man goes out into the dirty world of commerce and politics risking his soul to do what needs to be done. The woman stays segregated, protected from the sins of the rat race to raise the family and nurture the moral virtues.

It’s possible to read The Americans as a critique of working women. At the Jennings’ there is nobody at home to take care of the kids. There is no buffer between the world of work and the family. Both parents have important and demanding jobs. Both parents put work before kids and spouse (or at least have to negotiate that conflict).  I don’t think The Americans is arguing that the Beeman’s solution is better than the Jennings’—the answer is not for Phillip to become a stay at home dad so Elizabeth can continue to torture and kill innocent people in service of a doomed ideology. The Americans is just noting the reality: The gendered division of labor never really worked. There was (is) no sheltered safe space. Critically, the men feel the costs of damaged relationships most keenly. Phillip longs for a real wife and kids. Elizabeth doesn’t really believe she can have them (or is naively optimistic she can have it all, work and family). Even Stan Bee-man recognizes the real price he has paid is not in his compromised ideals, but in his failure to establish loving relationships.

I’ve never been 100% sure what we are supposed to make of the show being called The Americans. I get there was sort of an immigrant drama (can people leave the old world behind and adapt), but that didn’t quite work for me (natives like Stan are facing the same conflicts. Oleg is back in the USSR). Now I’m thinking maybe it is the particular American mania for work. We are more career obsessed and work harder than other people. A drama about work-life balance does feel particularly American. It also makes the generality of the themes clear. The show is about the damage done to one’s self and one’s loved ones of being a murderous Soviet spy. Being a Soviet spy is an extreme challenge for work-life balance, but is it really that different from being a lawyer for Exxon, a VP for Walmart, or a broker for Goldman Sachs? Especially when both parents are working.