Annabeth Chase: Refracting Softness
An Introduction to a new project
INTRODUCTION
“There is power in looking” - bell hooks
There’s an old story1 I think about on the odd occasion. It’s about a poor peasant named Jan Skiba, his wife Mariana and their three daughters. Jan and his family live in the countryside, not too far from a village in a small one-bedroom house. They do not own much more than a bed, a bench and a stove. But they did have a cat and a dog, each born within a week of the other. Neither animal had known any other animal than the other and had never seen another cat or dog. It is thus that since the cat only saw the dog, it believed herself to be a dog and acted as such. And the dog, only ever seeing the cat, believed himself to be a cat and acted accordingly. They ate from the same food container and mimicked the other. They co-existed well. One day, a peddler stops by Jan’s house. The family knows they cannot afford anything the peddler is selling, but they are curious nonetheless. Out of all the shiny and colorful baubles and jewelry, the women are entranced by a simple mirror in a wooden frame. Prior to this, the women had only been able to glimpse blurry reflections in a bucket of water that they kept by the door. It was only now that they could clearly see their own faces. Though they cannot afford the mirror outright, Marianna offers to pay in installments over time. It was thus that the Skiba family came to own a mirror.
But the excitement didn’t last long. The women soon began to find faults in their appearances and fell into despair. But the most drastic change fell upon the pets of the Skiba household. Now for the first time, the cat and the dog saw themselves as they really were. Confused and angry they first attacked their own images and then each other. These once-good friends violently turned on each other. The cat scratched the dog and the dog tried to bite the cat’s neck. The animals had to be separated and eventually, both stopped eating in distress. It was only until Jan returned the mirror that peace returned to the household. Despite having glimpsed their true forms, the cat went on believing she was a dog and the dog continued to believe he was a cat.
This short story is presented as a fable about how the character of a man cannot be seen in a glass mirror but reflected in the actions he takes for the good of those around him. This is all very well fine and good, but the story is not called “Jan the Peasant with Good Virtues”. No, the story is entitled “The Cat Who Thought She Was a Dog and the Dog Who Thought He Was a Cat” because the act of looking changed not only their self-conceived notion of their identities but their behavior as well. There is power in looking and from looking, perceiving and from perception, identification.
“We have been trying to theorize identity not as constituted outside but within representation; and hence of cinema, not as a second-ordered mirror held up to reflect what already exists, but as that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak” - Stuart Hall2
It is tempting to read the fable and find the root of the conflict in the mirror. After all, the mirror is the catalyst for the disruption of the Skiba household. But a mirror is just an object without an angle or agenda. It simply reflects “what already exists”. Rather, the fable is truly focused on the ability of people to look at an image, recognize the form presented and then identify with said image. Thus constructed identification. Very simple with mirrors. But as Stuart Hall asserts, the medium of Film and TV is not a mirror. Instead it uses existing objects to create realities onto itself. It is more complex than a mirror, it is a prism.
Consider for a moment the mechanics of your average glass prism, white light is bent and refracted at specific angles until it is separated into seven different colors. What was once simple and plain is suddenly layered and vibrant. The screen acts as our prism, turning our doldrums of reality into dramatic interpretations. The output of dispersed colors embodies the complexities of life. Just as the colors of the rainbow are invisible within white light, one cannot grasp the many facets of their neighbor with the naked eye. But through the cinematic prism a character’s motivations and flaws are cleanly and clearly parsed out to be made recognizable.
These colors are not just something pretty to look at, they are sites of recognition and identification. That’s what turns Kendall Roy from an inaccessible rich white man into an older brother, a recovering addict, a son trapped in the shadow of his father. Things regular people can relate to, identify with. Furthermore, just as colors operate on different wavelengths, so does identity. That’s what makes the human experience so specific but universal. Combined we are all white light, but we refract at different speeds. We are attuned to different wavelengths. One might look at Tony Soprano and see Orange while their friend sees Blue. We access these sites with respect to the wavelengths of our own identities and experiences, and thus the lights and colors we see will vary.
That is what Hall means when he discusses the possibility of discovery in representation. Cinema is not bound by reality, it instead borrows elements of the real world and then situates them in the unreal. It prompts imagination within ourselves, new ways of interpreting the past and inventing the future. Just as the prism bends white light, cinema curates and manipulates a world that is not objective but subjective. Scripted. Edited. Scored. It has an agenda, an angle. And through this angle, we just might see ourselves refracted.
“In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them - the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the values we place on them.” - Stuart Hall3
In 2024, Black Girls have quite the buffet of identities to choose from. We can be Magical, Awkward, Strong and even save Democracy (if people would let us). That’s quite the hefty list for a “girl”. But this word “girl” is used quite loosely in relation to Black individuals who identify as female. In my experience, I’ve observed the term “black girl” applied to anyone roughly between the ages of 5 and 30. That is a long time to be a “girl”. I know the term is largely colloquial with an affectionate diminutive intent. However, I wonder if the “[insert adjective] girl” formula for Black women flattens the nuance and complexities of development/girlhood.
At times, these aforementioned superlatives feel more like job titles than one specific attribute of one’s collective identity, specifically as it relates to media representation. They suggest a definitive state of being. A beginning and end of character development. To be clear there is nothing inherently vicious or malignant about these roles and shortcuts. In fact, they are overwhelmingly positive. They are affirmations. But an affirmation does not cover the whole of a person’s identity. MY concern is how these terms or shortcuts are used to quickly define and simplify a Black female body’s presence in a film or TV show. Even the newly adopted “awkward Black Girl” is quite limited. It allows Black women to be awkward, but only within the comedic sphere. The focus is on the hilariously awkward moment and not on the emotional byproduct of being awkward. It seems to be that in media, we always are and never become. Additionally, the persistent attachment of these titles to Black “girls” seems to remove the concept of development within Black girls. It negates the existence of an adolescence.
In Western Culture, heavy emphasis is placed on adolescence. The term stems from the Latin word adulēscere meaning “to become mature, to grow up”. This usually covers the ages of about 11-18 or Junior High to High School. In media, this period is often reflected in the “coming of age” genre. Now, if I asked you to name five of your all-time favorite coming-of-age media, what would they be? How many of those center on a White lead? Now could you name 5 movies or shows in the same genre but with a Black lead? How about with a Black female lead? How about coming of age movies/tv shows with a Black female lead with a plot that DOESN’T revolve around some sort of external trauma or struggle (e.g., police brutality, systemic inequality)? How many of those focus on Black girls being girls? Being soft?
Black girls don’t simply jump from wise-cracking children to messy but fashionable adults. We don’t pop out of the womb with pithy one-liners and immediately know our signature hairstyle. Somewhere in between the child and the adult is an adolescent stumbling in the dark building a bridge between them. All the magic, strength and even awkwardness has to be crafted, defined through trial and error. But we don’t get to see those Black “girls”. Growing up is a tender experience, why can’t we be allowed to be soft and tender?
“From myself, I wanted to bring a side of sensitivity, if that makes sense, of softness to her.” - Leah Savá Jeffries4
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan is a story about stories. That much is true for what had begun as a bedtime story and became a worldwide literary phenomenon. Such is the enduring endearment of the series that it spawned multiple spin off series, two live action films, a musical and now a TV series. A story about stories indeed. Additionally, Percy Jackson is a coming-of-age story about challenging the status quo. Throughout the original series, our titular protagonist, Percy, reenacts the immortal adventures of his namesake, Perseus, as well as other well known Greek heroes such as Theseus and Hercules. In a world where such men are the standard of what a demigod aspires to be, it is unprecedented that after all of his exploits, Percy realizes that he doesn’t want to be Hercules. In fact it is because of his adventures that he realizes this, and chooses to rebuke the structures and norms of the godly world in favor of being a different kind of hero. It should not be surprising, then, that this latest iteration of the acclaimed series, rebukes tradition and its own status quo in the casting of Annabeth Chase.
Yes. Annabeth Chase is Black in the TV series (played by the lovely, talented and now NAACP nominated5, Leah Savá Jeffries). That is as much of a comment I will lend to the “controversy” because life is literally too short. I am more interested in this new prism through which Annabeth Chase, and by consequence Black girls, are refracted through.
While the original Percy Jackson series sits very near to my heart, it is severely limited because it is told solely through Percy’s first person perspective. Not only is he an unreliable narrator, his knowledge and awareness of the interior lives and motivations of even his two closest friends are limited to what he can observe and what they reveal to him. The beauty of the television medium is that we are no longer restricted to one person’s POV. We get to experience Annabeth as an entity separate from Percy, as a 3-Dimensional character.
For those familiar with the book series, soft and sensitive are not the words one might use to describe Annabeth (again I point to Percy’s limited POV). In fact, she is proven to be largely self reliant, incredibly capable, intelligent and very handy with a knife. All of these capabilities and more have not been stripped away in the series. They are on full display. So much so that from the outside, Annabeth appears to be the embodiment of the strong black girl trope. But the series aptly leaves the similarities there, on the outside. Favoring to instead subvert this expectation by cracking open the thin exterior to reveal the soft and tenderness that exists within. While Percy is on the explicit and external quest to save his mom (oh and maybe find Zeus’ Master Bolt and stop a war), Annabeth’s journey is internal, emotional and ideological. In adding softness and sensitivity within the body of a black girl, this new reconstruction of Annabeth Chase complicates the strong black girl narrative and refracts a whole new spectrum of colors to explore.
The goal of this project is to analyze and unpack the means in which the TV series and Leah Savá Jeffries give Annabeth Chase the room to be soft and sensitive. Additionally, I aim to explore this new spectrum of identification and what this opens up for representations of black girlhood and future potential for the coming-of-age genre. I approach the subject of softness not by visual aesthetic but by markers of emotional interiority such as (but not limited to): emotional vulnerability, introspection, desires/hope, joy/pleasure. These will be lenses through which I will analyze 4 key relationship structures presented in Annabeth’s arc this season: Relationship with her Peers, Relationship with the World (Mortal/Godly), Relationship with her Mother, and Relationship with Herself.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey.
“The Cat Who Thought She Was a Dog and the Dog Who Thought He Was a Cat” by Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Cultural Identity and the Diaspora” by Stuart Hall
The Work of Representation by Stuart Hall
Vote for Leah! in Outstanding Performance by a Youth (series, special, television, movie or limited-series)