Damsel in distress
|
|
Perilsofpauline.jpg
A damsel in distress is a stock character, almost inevitably a young, nubile woman, who has been placed in a dire predicament by a villain or a monster and who requires a hero to dash to her rescue.
Damsels in distress are often tied up or chained, to prevent their escape; in the old melodramas and serials they would then be thrown onto railroad tracks or tied onto logs headed into a sawmill.
- ... A bad gunslinger called Salty Sam was chasin' poor Sweet Sue
- He trapped her in the old sawmill and said with an evil laugh,
- If you don't give me the deed to your ranch
- I'll saw you all in half!
- And then he grabbed her (and then)
- He tied her up (and then)
- He turned on the bandsaw (and then, and then...!) ...
- —Along Came Jones, by The Coasters
The damsel in distress is a popular stock character, perhaps in large measure because her predicaments almost always have more than a whiff of BDSM fantasy about them. The helplessness of these damsels, who are almost always foolish and ineffectual to the point of cluelessness, and their need for male heroes to rescue them, has made the stereotype the target of feminist criticism.
Damsels in distress are not used nearly as often as they were previously, and current depictions of the stock character usually play the role as camp. The stock character did undergo a revival of sorts in Halloween, Friday the 13th, and other slasher films of the 1980s. Here, though, the stock character was played with a twist: there were several young women characters, most of whom were killed by the serial killer villain, but one survived to defeat him. The young woman survivor herself became a stock character counterpart to the damsel in distress, as embodied in characters such as Ellen Ripley in the Alien series. Sarah Connor, a damsel in distress in The Terminator, became the effective survivor type in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Damsel in Distress is the title of a book by P. G. Wodehouse and a motion picture that starred Fred Astaire.
| Contents |
Notable damsels in distress
Legends and fairy tales
Novels
- Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Jane Porter Clayton in the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- There is usually at least one damsel in distress per chapter in the classic chivalry epic Amadis of Gaul
Movies
- Fay Wray's character in King Kong
- Mary Jane Watson from Spider-Man movies
- Lois Lane from Superman movies
- The Perils of Pauline
- Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
- Princess Fiona in Shrek (rather a spoof)
- Jane Parker in the Tarzan movies (based on Jane Porter Clayton)
Cartoon/anime
- Penelope Pitstop
- April O'Neil from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Nell Fenwick in the Dudley Do-Right cartoons
- Akane Tendo in some Ranma 1/2 episodes and the first two movies
- Kagome Higurashi in Inu-Yasha
Comics
- Mary Jane Watson from Spider-Man
- Lois Lane from Superman
Video games
- Pauline in the Donkey Kong arcade game
- Princess Peach in the Mario games
- Elaine Marley in the first and third Monkey Island games
- Roll in some Mega Man games
- Tooty in Banjo-Kazooie
- Krystal in Star Fox Adventures
- Rachel in Time Crisis
- Sandy in Maniac Mansion
- Emily in Frankenstein: The Monster Returns
- Princess Zelda in the Legend of Zelda series.
See also: Princess and dragones:Dama en apuros