The men of Revenge

Revenge is a fairly new (currently airing the 2nd season) show on ABC that stars a young woman, Amanda Clarke, as the daughter of a wrongfully convicted man.
After turning 21, she reinvents herself to become Emily Thorne and spends the rest of her time exerting revenge on all the people that were involved in her father's imprisonment and murder.*

Dun dun dunnn: Emily just put a house on fire and looked glam while she did it

Although I absolutely LOVE watching this show, there are a few things that bother me.
For example, the lack of black people on the cast. Or the representation of homosexuality (hint: it's the only male that wears pink). Or the relationships that Emily has with her romantic interests. Or the stereotypes thrown left and right. Or the relationships between the men in the show.

Thorne...get it?

There are four main male characters worth talking about. In alphabetical order:

Aiden: Aiden is a new character and Emily's new love interest. We don't know a lot about his background (oooh! mysterious!) but we do know that he is violent, that he went to revenge training with Emily and that he has a British accent. Jean Kilbourne talks about this kind of character in Killing Us Softly 4 (around min. 40).

Daniel: Daniel is the wealthy son of Emily's targets. He is seen as the main man until Emily and his parents start manipulating him and he starts looking like a fool and an idiot. No amount of muscle or cash can compensate! In a sense, Emily is superior to him because she also has the money, and the body but, on top of that, she has more influence and wit. So Daniel becomes a pawn in her plot to bring his family down and stops being a romantic interest.

I hope he keeps that attitude when he finds out that his life = lies

Jack: Jack is Emily's old flame from the past. He is broke as a joke and keeps making very stupid decisions. But they are out of desperation, not for lack of intelligence. No one that good looking can be true working class and that's why even with dialogue about money trouble, the public never sees it.

Nolan: Nolan is the only guy in Emily's age range that doesn't want to sleep with her. So they made him scrawny, nerdy and gay. Problem solved! He owns a tech company that is very successful and still manages to be Emily's unpaid IT guy. Since they don't have a romantic interest in each other, their relationship has to be based off something else to push the plot forward, so it's driven by a promise made to her father that Nolan would take care of her. 

Like many other LGBT characters, Nolan was the comic relief...until he started adapting more into the heterosexual norms. During season two he becomes romantically involved with a woman and his character becomes more serious.

From left to right: Nolan, Declan, Emily, Jack and Daniel. Violence and nudity = successful TV show!

Since manliness is demonstrated with toughness, how they are violent becomes part of the characters personality.
Nolan is against violence, Jack is physical, Daniel uses guns and Aiden uses both.
Since Nolan is the submissive male and gay, his pacifism is unquestioned. Jack, being a blue collar guy, is rough and barbaric; while Daniel, being privileged, uses a revolver. Guns are a upper class weapon symbol because they inflict pain in such a removed, "civilized"way. Aiden is the ambivalent one - his accent brings forth stereotypes of lower class English people, but also exoticism. He is able to walk both worlds (just like Emily).



Emily needs and uses these men to get to the final goal - these men are necessary to get to a woman that they surround.

And Madeleine Stowe is fantastic

 However cliché the underlying current of the plot is, this show is more than redundancy of the stereotypes and plot lines that have been thrown at us ad nauseam by the networks. Because otherwise - I'd like to believe - it wouldn't have an audience. Emily is a modern character that follows some of the traditional dogma that is taught to girls, but she is still the main protagonist and heroine, independent, smart,  resourceful, well connected through her own abilities, and financially savvy.

Cheers to the modern woman!

*Looking for a cool clip to add to this post, I saw a panel where they said that if they can revive the father, they will. Expect it for season 4 or 5, when they start running out of ideas.