Women in Refrigerators

 In 1994, an issue of "The Green Lantern" was published in which the hero's girlfriend (Alexandra de Witt) is attacked in her apartment by the villain of the week. He tortures her and ultimately kills her (sorry - spoilers) when she refuses to give up her boyfriend's identity. 

Later, our hero returns home after a busy day fighting crime and finds her broken, dead body, stuffed into the fridge.

Comic fan Gail Simone read this and realised just how often female characters get killed purely as a plot device to advance the narrative of the male character. She coined the term "Fridging" in honour of Alexandra de Witt and her ultimate resting place. Ever since then, this idea of dead women as a plot device has been known as "Women in Refrigerators".

Screen writers use Fridging with appalling regularity. Of course fictional characters (male and female) die in drama all the time, but Fridging is different. 

A fridged character's primary function is to be dead. She serves no other purpose in the narrative, and her death is exclusively for the benefit of the narrative arc of a male character.

This is the logical (and unpleasant) end-point of the Bechdel Test. Films that fail the Bechdel Test feature women who are only included in the story because they advance the plot of the male characters (goes the theory). If a woman is fridged, then even her death only has meaning because it relates to the men. It provides the man with psychological baggage to overcome, or it helps to define the threat a man must face.

Women in Refrigerators can't even die on their own terms. They need a man around to give them meaning.

A few examples of notable "Fridgings" in film & television:

The Incredible Hulk (TV series): The series opens with a montage of a blissful, perfect marriage, until the wife is killed in a car crash. David Banner (the husband) blames himself because he wasn't strong enough to pull her out of the burning car, and this prompts him to experiment on himself in an attempt to access the untapped powers of the human body. Throughout the pilot episode he works with a (female) scientist who is ultimately killed in a laboratory explosion, although he tries (unsuccessfully) to save her. Her death leaves him completely alone in the world (she was the only one who knew his secret). The opening episode of the series features two fridgings.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Another pilot episode, and another fridging. Benjamin Sisko’s wife is killed when their starship is attacked by the Borg, leaving him to raise their son on his own. Her death haunts him for the rest of the series, and becomes one of the defining attributes of his character.

The Mask of Zorro: Zorro’s beloved wife is accidentally killed in the opening scenes of the film when the authorities come to arrest him. He is imprisoned and their infant daughter is taken to be raised by his enemy.

Dante’s Peak: Pierce Brosnan vs. Volcano. In the opening scene of the film, Brosnan and his wife are studying a volcanic eruption at close range. They wait too long to evacuate. He survives; she doesn’t.

Monk (TV series): Adrian Monk is a (former) police detective haunted by the unsolved murder of his beloved wife. Her death had pushed him into a complete nervous breakdown and haunts him throughout the entire series.

The Amazing Spiderman 2: Gwen Stacey is killed when she falls from a clock tower, despite our hero’s attempt to save her. Gwen’s death is part of Spiderman lore. Like Hamlet’s Ophelia, Gwen was always doomed; she was always going to die, but her death in the film is almost more gratuitous because the screenwriters greatly expand her character – making her a self-possessed, enlightened woman in her own right. Then they kill her anyway.

The Fugitive (TV Series): A man wrongly convicted of murdering his wife goes on the run in an attempt to prove his innocence (and find the real killer). The wife’s death is central to the entire series, but the story is all about him.

Bambi: The most infamous of all fridgings, this one has left generations of children scarred for life. Bambi’s mother is killed by hunters, leaving him alone and defenceless in the forest.

Red River: John Wayne’s sweetheart is slaughtered (along with an entire wagon train) during an Indian Attack at the very beginning of the film. The loss hardens him and looms over the remainder of the film.

Memento: Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film features a man with short-term memory loss trying to find his wife’s killer. The wife is central to the story, and very, very dead.

The Prestige: Another Christopher Nolan film, this one about two rival stage magicians. The lovely Julia is killed during a malfunctioning magic trick, and each magician blames the other for her death – cementing the intense hatred between the two men.

Inception: Christopher Nolan again. Leonardo di Caprio is haunted by the suicide of his beloved wife. She appears in his dreams (it’s a long story) as the manifestation of his guilt.

The Dark Knight: Christopher Nolan really does have “woman” problem. Rachael Dawes is murdered by the Joker, much to the anguish of the two men who loved her. Batman himself must live with the knowledge that he couldn’t save her, while Harvey Dent is twisted by his grief to become a new super-villain. Bonus points to this one because Rachael had appeared in the previous film played by a different actress. Christopher Nolan seems to think that women are interchangeable. 

The man does love to fridge his women; he’s a regular fridge magnet (sorry).

Jurassic World: A minor (female) character whose primary narrative function up to that point has been comic relief is picked up and carried off by an escaped Pterodactyl. She is then grabbed (in mid-air) by a different Pterodactyl (she's not quite dead yet) and dropped into a big lake. Before she has a chance to horribly drown, she is grabbed by a third Pterodactyl, which proceeds to tear her to ribbons, although it doesn't get a chance to put her out of her misery (and ours) before both of them are devoured by an implausibly large Mosasaur (I looked it up). This is quite possibly one of the most coldly sadistic Fridgings I have ever encountered in a mainstream Hollywood film.

Various Bond Films: The James Bond franchise features too many fridgings to list individually. Fridging is part of the “Bond” movie ritual, along with title songs, “Shaken, not stirred,” and “Bond. James Bond.” Notable examples include Goldfinger (two different women get fridged) On Her Majesty's Secret Service (he actually marries the Bond Girl, who is then promptly murdered as they drive away from the wedding) Licence to Kill (his best friend’s wife is murdered on their wedding night – and they manage to squeeze in a reference to the earlier fridging of Bond’s own wife) and Tomorrow Never Dies (the scene is played for comedy, despite the fact that Bond is sitting next to the woman’s dead body the entire time).

(Dis)honourable mentions: The mother in In Time, the girlfriend in Deadpool 2, the wife in Last Embrace, the wife and daughter in Obsession, the entire family in The Searchers… the list just goes on and on.

Catherynne M. Valente has written a very powerful and beautifully written novel in which she deals head on with this narrative trope. I can recommend her book without hesitation. Available from all good bookstores. Also from Amazon.