Women in Refrigerators

Synonyms:	The dead girlfriend of the week syndrome, Fridging
See also:	The Cartwright Syndrome, Mysterious Wife Plague, Babe of the Week
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The term women in refrigerators was coined by comic-book author Gail Simone in 1999 to describe a plot device that she noticed as being particularly common in superhero comics. This plot device uses the victimization of a female character in order to advance the dramatic arc of a male character. The female character may be raped, killed, de-powered or otherwise injured; the male character then takes over the story and uses her tragedy as motivation, usually for broody manpain, violent revenge, or simply to become the best hero he can be.

Some Instruction

A fan, Ima Fool, parodies the trope:

Remember that the sooner "she" is written out of the plot, the sooner the "relationship" between your male heroes will grow. Therefore, plan to kill "her" off no later than page three of your story. This discussion will concern itself, then, with those methods of doing away with "her" permanently, irreparably, and swiftly. Incurable diseases are ALWAYS a good choice in a situation like this. These illnesses allow for fine sterile melodrama in nice white hospital settings. They allow you to render your interfering female character helpless but high-spirited, down but undaunted, seriously ill but with a sense of humor, in agony but accepting of "her" fate, or just plain comatose (my favorite dramatic device when dealing with such a female). Accidental gunshot wounds to the head work well in plotting "her" demise. These allow that perky but paralyzed gal to loll around in a hospital bed for a few paragraphs while one of the male partners holds her hand while the other male partner holds his hand.

The WiR site

Simone created a page on her website (also called Women in Refrigerators) where she listed many female characters she felt had been the victim of "fridging." It displays several panels from the Green Lantern story for which the trope was named (Green Lantern #54 - 1994), in which hero Kyle Rayner comes home to find his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, has been gruesomely murdered and left in the refrigerator by a minor villain.

The site also included pages listing responses from fans and other comics pros, both disagreeing and agreeing with her original premise.

Many fans disagreed with Simone's argument. A popular criticism or counter-argument was that, after all, bad things often happened to male heroes as well. For instance, DrZombie posted: ''I'm also not fond of her "Women in Refrigerators" site. While there may be a willingness for male writers to be crueler to female character's. Her site has made it impossible for anything to negative to happen to a woman in comics without someone shouting that she was "fridged". Never mind how silly I think listing things like "depowered" or that there powers were affecting their health and/sanity as I can name just as many male characters that have done the same.

To counter the arguments that "Bad things happen to men too!", comics fan John Bartol wrote the essay Dead Men Defrosting [1] to point out: In cases where males heroes have been altered or appear to die (i.e., hit that part of the karmic Hero Wheel that says "Fall, then Rise to the Challenge!"), they usually come back even better than before, either power-wise or in terms of character development/relevancy to the reader.

Another fan, Rob Harris, argued similarly: Yes, male characters die, as do female characters - but my classic example is Flash and Supergirl, two beloved characters who were both killed off in the Crisis. But Flash remained "in continuity," remembered and revered for his heroic sacrifice even as Wally West took on his mantle; Supergirl was forgotten, and within several months was wiped from continuity completely - no memorials, no flashbacks, no legacy. [2]

As shorthand

It is common for fans, especially fans on livejournal, dreamwidth, and other such sites to talk about TPTB "fridging" characters, or a character having been "fridged." These terms are generally used to describe the death of a female character which happens in order to provide cheap emotional depth and/or motivation for a male character.

Do not kill off women just to give male characters something to brood about. This is called stuffing the woman in the fridge, and it makes her death all about the man. It takes away her personhood and turns her into a tragic figure for the man to angst over as he wallows in his man-pain. It’s also a tired cliché. And my god, is it sexist. It sends a message to women that even their death revolves around men. Doubly true if the woman is killed by another male character to get back at the first guy. Women are not pawns to be pushed around and thrown away for the emotional development of men. If a woman dies, make her death about her.

When to Kill a Character by Lee Paige OBrien, July 1, 2016

A particularly offensive example is in the film Patch Adams, which was allegedly based on the life and work of physician Hunter Adams. In the film, the fictional Patch develops a romantic connection to a woman named Carin Fisher, who falls in love with him only after admitting she was molested as a child, and is then murdered by an unstable patient. The real Hunter Adams had a male friend who was tragically murdered. So in essence, the man's actual history was altered to create a love story for the film, with the original female character brought in solely to be killed off and give the male lead romantic angst.

Other meanings

This term is also occasionally used for the standard doomed love interest effect that happens on many tv shows that don't have strong story arcs. (See BOTW and 42-Minute Reset.) Some characters suffer from this frequently; see The Cartwright Curse of the Cartwright family on Bonanza, or Samantha Carter from Stargate: SG1, nicknamed the "Black Widow" for her multiple dead love interests.

Fan Response

What I find hardest to grapple with is understanding why writers choose to torture or kill these characters when other storylines could move their characters forward. Also, why is it predominantly women we see this happening to on television? What adds to the uneasy feeling I have when I see this trope used is that the women most times do not feel like full well rounded characters (that in itself is a problem) and are often introduced very shortly before they die

Stuffed Into The Fridge: The Problem With Women - Allison Chandler

Killing off characters can be extremely impactful and great storytelling. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious in our media today when killing off a character is just symptomatic of a lack of creativity and a disregard for female characters.

paradiselostbythedashboardlight

it’s usually bigoted because minorities get fridged far more often than not, to serve the narratives of the ‘real heroes’ of the story

but more than that it’s predictable and boring and it’s LAZY and most of the time the deaths are unearned, they’re just thrown in because the writers can’t think of a more interesting plot twist or way to set up a character beat

80% of the time it doesn’t even happen as a natural consequence of the story, it happens in a contrived manner because the writers were never interested in the death itself, just on the twitter buzz they’ll get later and a hefty dose of cheap pathos

dubiousculturalartifact

The problem isn’t really “women getting killed to motivate a male character”, the problem is “all the expendable characters we can kill to motivate the main character (who we have made male) are women”.

Solve that latter problem and you not only solve the “the woman dies” problem, but a whole bunch of other problems in most fiction with a male protagonist.

kyliafanfiction

So it’s not wrong to kill the hero’s wife within the first five minutes and send him on a mission of fury and revenge. What is wrong is that the hero is always and inevitably a man, which means that most fridging victims are women.

awed-frog

I’m fine with it half the time. I’m completely unbothered by the premise itself; I think the solution to manpain heroes with dead wives is just maybe there should be more womanpain heroes with dead husbands who are dead for her narrative setup. I’m very down for tragic pasts in general and certainly prefer a bitter lone wolf of either gender than having a spouse around.

But I get annoyed when the tragically dead husband/wife/child/whatever doesn’t have a distinct personality at all they are The Nicest Most Supportive Very Normal Very Hot Angel of Support and Love.

Tends to work better if it wasn’t a perfect relationship but an ordinary one, and the dead beloved person wasn’t a saint or a prop that existed to revolve around/be worshipped by protagonist.

Fridging vs. Anyone Can Die or Heroic Sacrifice

Because stuffing women into the fridge is unfortunately still much too common in media, it's become a kneejerk reaction among parts of fandom to see all female character deaths as such. This unfortunately leads to incorrect labeling or even accusations of sexism from the creators and has even led to backlash from fans who see these protests as "removing women from the human experience" in a series where literally anyone can and has died, white men included.

Heroic sacrifices performed by female heroes have also been mistaken for fridging, such as Princess Allura's decision to ascend to a higher plane of existence to repair shattered realities in Voltron: Legendary Defender. Fans of the character who were hurt by the loss declared her "fridged" and accused her sacrifice of being solely to motivate the male team members and sole white female despite Allura having shown many indications of being willing to sacrifice herself for her ideals previously in the series. Additionally, the creators confirmed she can return once her "work" is done.

Characters like Katara and Sokka's mother in Avatar: The Last Airbender are seen as skirting the line. Kya heroically sacrificed her life to protect Katara, who would go on to become one of several who ended the century-long war and save the world alongside the hero. However, she is only seen once during that flashback, and her death is a motivator for Katara's need to help others and her long-standing grudge against the Fire Nation.

Related Links

• Gail Simone's website: Women in Refrigerators
• Additional examples on the TV Tropes Wiki

See also

• Misogyny in Fandom