Sharon Carter and Why Fandom Needs to Stop Hating on "Love Interests"

By Alex Wolf on June 16, 2016

When does a movement stop being progressive?

Captain America: Civil War hit theaters more than a month ago, and with it a new wave of interest in the character of Steve Rogers. Recently, there has been a call among the fans of superhero movies for the studios to include more LGBT+ characters and themes into the movies. Fans started Twitter hashtag #givecaptainamericaaboyfriend in order to persuade Marvel to let Steve Rogers develop a relationship with a man.

Or . . .one man. Bucky Barnes, Steve’s longtime childhood friend and ally who seemingly died, was brainwashed into becoming infamous assassin the Winter Soldier, and regained his memories at the end of the second Captain America movie.

Image credit: http://giphy.com/gifs/bucky-barnes-william-shakespeare-wVpFhc118QseI

Steve and Bucky, fans argue, have a close and intimate relationship that could hardly be considered platonic. They point out that Steve took down the organization SHIELD and stopped a helicopter from taking off using brute strength just to save his friend. In their opinion, there’s no way Steve and Bucky don’t love each other romantically. This has spawned a wide array of fanart, fan fiction, and speculation. The directors and actors have even acknowledged it, and they claim that the relationship as platonic, although fans can interpret it in whatever way they want.

Except . . . Steve has a female love interest in the movies. Sharon Carter, SHIELD/CIA agent, and the niece (or great-niece?) of Peggy Carter, Steve’s love interest during WWII.

In Civil War, the spark of interest that emerged in Winter Soldier, when Sharon was masquerading as Steve’s neighbor Kate, comes full circle. Sharon helps Steve rescue Bucky from his prison in Berlin, and gets the necessary equipment and information for Steve and the rest of team Cap to escape the clutches of the Sokovia Accords. Then she and Steve share a tender kiss before he runs off to save the world, or whatever superheroes do.

Image credit: http://superfable.com/hayley-atwell-says-captain-americas-kiss-sharon-carter-crossed-incestuous-boundary/01769

The fans reacted violently. People claimed that Sharon was only tossed in as a way to buffer the obviously romantic tension between Steve and Bucky. They claimed that there was no build up, and Sharon was simply there to be a pair of female lips for Steve to kiss, nothing more. Even Hayley Atwell, the actress who plays Peggy Carter, called the kiss “incest”, and claimed Sharon has no business kissing they guy whom her Aunt Peggy dated.

And this is where seemingly progressive movements, like people wanting Steve Rogers to have a boyfriend, stop being progressive, and start being anti-women.

It’s part of a disturbing trend in fandom, where female characters are demonized for getting in the way of popular “progressive pairings,” usually male/male pairings. People don’t usually acknowledge the supreme irony that, although male/male pairings are among the most popular in fandom, female/female pairings, usually called “femslash,” never receive nearly as much attention as male pairings.

To the Marvel fandom, I have news for you: Sharon Carter was not just a love interest in Civil War.

When the movie starts, Sharon is stationed in Berlin working for the CIA. When Bucky Barnes is framed for setting off a bomb that destroyed a UN building in Vienna, she receives orders from her superiors that if they find Barnes, they are to shoot him on sight. Instead, she goes to Steve and gives hi Bucky’s location. She knows Steve has the best chance of bringing in Bucky alive. She doesn’t want to see any more innocent people hurt. She doesn’t go to Steve out of romantic feelings or the sudden need to be next to the male hero, she goes because she thinks Steve is the best chance of preventing more chaos.

Image credit: http://favim.com/image/4170974/

When Bucky reverts to his old Winter Soldier programming, Sharon doesn’t hesitate to to show Steve the way to get to him. She also doesn’t hesitate to try to stop Bucky before he hurts anyone, risking her life against a person much stronger than her, and getting hurt in the process. She risks her job and her reputation to help Captain America, and by the end of the movie she’s forced to go into hiding, lest the government hunt her down for being a traitor.

Image credit: http://pictigar.com/media/1204492122003826335_640074824

Sharon keeps her professionalism throughout the entire movie, up until the kiss. It’s not her who even initiates the kiss – it’s Steve. We have to remember that it was Steve who wanted the kiss. Sharon wasn’t some predator who was waiting for her Aunt Peggy to die so she could swoop in and take her man. The fandom remains mostly silent about this. If you want to argue over the “incest,” of Steve and Sharon together, remember this: as far as what we’ve seen in the MCU, Sharon is related to a woman Steve kissed once during the war. They never went father than that.

Image credit: https://wegeekgirls.com/2016/04/25/captain-america-civil-war-plethora-of-new-stills-posters-tv-spots-and-more/

To call Sharon Carter a buffer to the obvious “gayness” of Steve and Bucky is misogynistic at best, and rather ignorant at the worst. Steve and Bucky are not gay, and Marvel will likely never make them gay, considering that they have a history of doing things that are decidedly not progressive, such as whitewashing their Doctor Strange movie. I’m not saying I don’t want LGBT+ characters in the MCU, but pushing aside a female character in favor of a gay pairing that is never going to happen is not the way to go. What Marvel needs to do is start introducing new characters from the comics that are already openly gay, such as Wiccan and Hulkling from the Young Avengers.

In a way, it is better that Steve and Bucky remain decidedly not romantic. When, before Steve and Bucky, have moviegoers been treated to a male friendship where the characters care so deeply and forthrightly about each other? It’s a huge contrast to the idea of toxic masculinity, having Steve and Bucky love each other so much that they would do anything to keep each other safe. That can still be presented as friendship; romantic love is not the only love that’s important.

Unfortunately, the fandom still continues to hate Sharon Carter, to send hate to her fans, and even to actress Emily VanCamp, who plays her. What’s worse is that many of these people claim to be feminists, sign the petitions for a Black Widow movie, and hide behind the veil of progressiveness when in reality, they only care about female characters when they aren’t “getting in the way” of two men kissing.

Sharon Carter, and female characters in general, are not your no-homo buffer, fandom. If you truly want to be progressive, you need to realize that.

 

 

Sources: The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/25/give-captain-america-a-boyfriend-the-campaigns-to-make-disney-s-big-franchises-more-gay-friendly.html) and Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/06/captain-america-civil-war-hayley-atwell-steve-sharon)

 

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