The Refrigerator Monologues is one part superhero deconstruction, one part empowerment of women, one part emotional catastrophe, and all parts acidly funny. I just want to get that out there now. It’s smart, and funny, and unflinching in its exploration of what it means to be, and what it feels like to be a woman, trapped in a world where men are defaulted to being better, and where superheroes are at the apex of casual privilege. Which may sound a bit overwrought - I can only assure you that it isn’t, that it’s a good time, that it offers up a haunting and sharp perspective on the way we treat one half of our society, but that it also builds up people you care about, tells and shows you their stories, and has a good time doing it.
“Fridging” was coined as a way to describe the way the love interests of overwhelmongly male superheroes would typically be murdered in the first act of their stories, the deaths of wives and girlfriends being used to motivate the hero. They weren’t really seen as a person in themselves - instead they were just an object that we pinned “revenge” or “emotional catharsis” to. Nobody wanted to talk about the women themselves, how they ended up in the fridge, and about the fact they were just as interesting and worthwhile as the superheroes they were connected to.
This book sets out to change that; it’s centred on a small club of the relatively recently deceased, who meet and drink coffee in the afterworld, learning each other’s stories, and supporting each other. It’s surprisingly wholesome, though the members range from the dimensionally challenged, through super-scientists to, well, actual villains. But they’re all here now because their lives were seen as part of someone else's story. And credit to the author, she brings the voices of these people back to the fore. Each has a chapter of their own, laying out the story of their life, their death, how they got there. From the Atlantean Princess to the sometime demigod, and back around to the once-photographer, they’re a diverse bunch. And the stories reflect this, as do the voices they use to tell the, That said, there’s a unifying theme in the confidence each story provides, the way it’s paced to allow it to be spoken aloud, and in the sense that these voices are powerful, and have been marginalised by something flashier but ultimately less interesting.
Honestly, it’s hard to talk about the stories in this book without spoiling them. So I’ll just say this: the moments in these pages did, on occasion, actually make me laugh out loud. They did, on occasion, raise an eyebrow or a smile. Sometimes they carried a real emotional punch, something that made me need to put the book down for a few minutes, and think it through. They were real, fierce, angry, thoughtful, funny, deeply true stories. Stories that speak to the way superhero stories treat women, and also about the way we treat superhero stories, and about the kind of stories we want to tell, the kind of heroes we want to talk about. This is a book that gets all that in but also tells genuine, interesting, emotionally human stories, stories that make sense, or at least try to make sense of the world we’re in and the stories we tell ourselves.
Reading this is a good time, and it was a fast, snappy read, but also a thoughtful, and sometimes an emotional one. I’d say if you enjoy comics, or superhero stories, or women pushing back on their marginalisation, or, you know, all three, then this is a great book for you. It certainly was for me.
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