John Steed is a Gentleman and a Feminist. Napoleon Solo … Isn’t.

The Man from UNCLE (MFU) is an American spy-fi series contemporary with Britain’s The Avengers. Similarly to The Avengers, MFU centered around the adventures of two secret agents, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum), who must save the world from the nefarious plots put in motion by a variety of bad guys, although most often Solo and Kuryakin fight the machinations of UNCLE’s evil counterpart, THRUSH. One important part of the structure of MFU episodes is the presence of the “Innocent,” a civilian person, most often a woman, who gets sucked into UNCLE’s world of international espionage either by already being somehow involved in the affair, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or by being actively pressed into service by Solo, or some combination thereof.

In past conversations on Tumblr, MFU fans have suggested that, like The Avengers, MFU can be seen as a feminist show. They justify this on the basis of the presence of the Innocent, and on the basis of the number of women employed at MFU headquarters. Ultimately, however, these justifications do not hold water, especially considering the way the lead character, Napoleon Solo, treats the women with whom he interacts, treatment that stands in stark contrast with the way The Avengers‘ John Steed behaves toward the women he works with and encounters as he goes about his day. Although Steed has romantic and sexual relationships with women, and although he regularly shows a very male appreciation for women, he does not consider women to be objects for his consumption, nor does he toy with their affections, nor does he brutalize them in order to get what he wants. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Napoleon Solo.

How “The Forget-Me-Knot” and Season 6 Unraveled The Avengers: or, Why I Hate Brian Clemens’ Guts

The groundbreaking nature of The Avengers is something that deservedly gets mentioned repeatedly in analyses and discussions of the show. Creating Cathy Gale as the strong, talented, take-no-shit equal of John Steed in Season 2 was a stroke of genius, resulting in a winning formula that continued through the Emma Peel era, propelling the show into cult status. Unfortunately, however, once Diana Rigg left at the end of Season 5, all the good work that had been done on the show came unraveled in Season 6, largely because the producers and writers insisted on walking back many of the progressive elements that had made the show what it was in earlier seasons. I’ve discussed elements of this in other posts, but here I want to focus on the physicality and fighting skills of the female leads as the springboard for (yet another) discussion of the frankly misogynist turn the series took in Season 6, not only with respect to the character of Tara King, but also with respect to Steed himself.

“Amoral, Suave and Brainy”: Steed and Patriarchal Constructions of Morality in Season 1

Writers frequently employ the word “amoral” when describing the character of John Steed in The Avengers, a description that goes right back to the very genesis of the show and the character. Sydney Newman, one of the creators of the show, said that he wanted to create a character that was “a spy, an MI-5 type, someone [David Keel, the main character,] wouldn’t approve of so that sparks would fly between them. Perhaps someone amoral, suave and brainy who wouldn’t deign to dirty himself by physically fighting, preferring a silenced gun or a sword-cane.” (Sydney Newman, Head of Drama: The Memoir of Sydney Newman)

Other writers have continued to describe Steed this way, but given that he was supposedly one of the good guys, fighting villains of various stripes alongside Ian Hendry’s David Keel, in what way was he supposedly “amoral”? This can be a bit difficult to investigate for those early episodes, given that the vast majority are lacking except in camera script, but even those scripts can give us some insight into the construction of morality that was at play as the writers of Season 1 and Patrick Macnee gradually fleshed out the character of John Steed, and especially in creating Steed in opposition to David Keel.

Ableism, Sexism, and Toxic Masculinity: The Intersectional Violence at the Heart of “Noon Doomsday” and Season 6

Another in an occasional series on disability in the Avengers

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Recently on social media, I saw a link to a story about comic book author Farida Bedwei, the creator of Karmzah, a superhero with cerebral palsy who derives her powers from her crutches. Ms Bedwei, who herself has cerebral palsy, created Karmzah because she wants to see heroes who are like herself, and to share them with other disabled people. She also wants to use Karmzah as a way to end the stigma over the need for assistive devices such as crutches, which are so vital for disabled people, but the use of which all too often comes with additional costs and frustrations because the world has not been constructed to be accessible to the disabled.

This terrific story about Bedwei’s comic and her crutch-wielding superhero set me thinking about the third act of the Season 6 episode “Noon Doomsday,” in which Tara’s ableist attitude ends up endangering both herself and a crutch-wielding Steed, and how Steed’s adaptability, foresight, and approach towards his temporary disability allow him to defeat the villain and rescue Tara. Further, the ableism of this episode exists in intersection with sexism and toxic masculinity, and the presence of all three of these issues is a direct result of the way Tara’s character and her relationship with Steed was handled by the Season 6 producers in general and by “Noon Doomsday” screenwriter Terry Nation in particular.