Black Widow: The Story of Survivors
After what seems like an eternity, fans and audiences finally got to see Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) take center stage after eleven years of being a supporting player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The standalone film, “Black Widow” did the impossible by managing expectations of a long-awaited film as well as setting up a new hero and sending off a beloved character. But the film also respectfully and delicately tells the story of victims of abuse, the specific path they faced of being forced to become perpetrators of violence, and the breaking of that abusive cycle.
The story of Natasha Romanoff, and the Black Widows, has always been rooted in a horrific origin. At a young age, Romanoff ends up at the Red Room where she is trained and molded into an elite spy and assassin. But in that process, she is tortured and psychologically conditioned to behave a certain way. Meaning that at a young and impressionable age, Romanoff and other Red Room students are being subjugated and manipulated to be emotionless weapons of mass destruction. They do not develop a free will nor a personality with desires or wants. They do not have an agency or any right whatsoever. They are property of the Red Room and exist to be killers. It is something that, unfortunately, still happens in today’s world: young girls and women being taken from their homes and conditioned by a higher power. But within “Black Widow,” a superhero film created by the Walt Disney Company, the story revolves around Romanoff and other Widows of different ages ultimately regaining their free will and therefore, their lives.
Within the film, we meet several women who have survived the Red Room and graduated to become Black Widows. In addition to Natasha, we follow Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Melina (Rachel Weisz). Both were part of a previous family mission with Natasha when she was a child. At the time, Melina was already a Black Widow whereas Yelena, who was six at the end of the mission, hadn’t entered the Red Room yet. After the mission ends with a chilling opening credit sequence that painfully depicts the horrors that Melina, Natasha, and Yelena experienced, we find that in between that time and the present day of the film (directly after “Captain America: Civil War”) Yelena has graduated and become a Black Widow as well. Throughout the film — where she is on the run for breaking the Sokovia accords — Natasha finds her way back to her spy family. It is the first time all three have seen each other since.
What is interesting about these three women is that they all have suffered from the same hand. Yet, unknowing to them, they all have directly affected the other’s experience. Within the MCU, Melina is the oldest Black Widow we know of and as opposed to Natasha and Yelena, has been cycled through the Red Room multiple times. It is safe to assume that she was either recruited or volunteered during the Cold War and initially, wanted to serve her country. However, that doesn’t mean she didn’t endure the horrors of the Red Room as well. In fact, when the family mission comes to an abrupt end, Melina’s first response to the news is “I don’t want to go.” After hearing the same news, Natasha looks to Melina for help, knowing she is about to go back to the Red Room and all Melina says to her is “I’m sorry.” Melina is painfully aware of Natasha’s immediate fate but does nothing to stop it. It is a somber moment between a helpless child and a woman, but it also shows the generational trauma that Red Room students endure. It is a never-ending cycle. The audience can see that Melina wants to help, nevertheless, she doesn’t believe she can.
What may have separated Melina from the rest of her class is that she is also a scientist whose work directly affected the trajectory of Natasha’s life. Halfway through the film, Melina states that even though most Red Room students are children who were initially abandoned by their families, Natasha was chosen based on a program that scanned her genetic potential as an infant. By serving her country, which is what Melina thought she was doing, albeit she was also a victim of grooming, she created the device that targeted Natasha. In addition, once Natasha defected to SHIELD, therefore proving that psychological conditioning wasn’t the strongest method of controlling young women, the Red Room implemented biological conditioning for the younger generation, which included Yelena. So instead of not having the skill set and thinking that she wasn’t able to make her own decisions like Natasha and Melina, Yelena was physically incapable of such a task.
These three women show the different levels of torture endured by one organization over decades and all of the reasons are female at their core. Dreykov (Ray Winstone), the head of the Red Room, states that he is simply taking advantage of “the only natural resource the world has too much of: girls.” The Widows were recruited, targeted, and taken because they were seen as assets or potential. Melina, Natasha, and Yelena are seen as objects by Dreykov, not people.
These women are taken as children to be put up against each other and if they were lucky to survive, they were sexualized, dehumanized, brainwashed, and mutilated. And an audience member can see the effect it had on each of them. Yelena, who was freed at the beginning of the film, is excited about the ability to make decisions but is also highly emotional as she processes what has happened to her for the first time in her life. Natasha is resentful towards the people who took her childhood and, according to Johansson in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, feels guilty over the crimes she committed that “she had no active choice in,” whereas Melina, who is still a Black Widow when we reunite with her, is stoic and unemotional with no sense of humor nor trust. Which was also a critique Natasha was given in the early stages of the MCU. A common phrase she encountered from The Avengers was “Is there anything real about you?” or “Stop lying to me,” where her rebuttal was “The truth is a matter of circumstances. It’s not all things to all people all the time, and neither am I.” Just like Melina, Natasha only saw the mission. She was unable to look beyond that.
None of these women had any say in what happened to them in their process to become Black Widows and throughout the film, each other’s presence allows — or forces –them to reflect on their trauma which results in them deciding to take back their own will and agency. By having Melina, Natasha, and Yelena to see that they are not alone in their struggles and pain, it binds into a sisterhood of survivors and allows them to not only forgive each other, but see beyond the mission. They are more than weapons to be used and deserve the right to their own body and choices, and now they want to take that back from their abuser to make sure he doesn’t hurt another girl again.
Which is what makes “Black Widow” so powerful. The film isn’t about women being put up against each other as we’ve seen in countless other action films. Instead, it is about women lifting other women out of their trauma so they cannot only survive, but thrive. Melina, Natasha, and Yelena each represent a different generation of Widows, whose experience was slightly worse than the last. But they were all taken advantage of by the same organization and through their reunion, they decide to destroy the Red Room. It is here where they all make active choices for themselves and fight not only for the Widows’ freedom but also for a woman’s right to choose her destiny.
Throughout her journey in the MCU, Natasha has been trying to make up for the horrible acts of violence she has caused in her career as The Black Widow. She has killed and attacked countless people (as well as Melina and Yelena) which has haunted her since the day she made her first decision: to defect to SHEILD. Within the MCU, Natasha is seen as a hero, although she once saw herself as a villain. But at its core, The Black Widow is a survivor. And by the end of “Black Widow,” Natasha knows this. She is aware that at her core, she never wanted to hurt anyone. Despite the abuse and dehumanization, the Black Widows’ strength comes in her determination to survive and break the chain. This is what makes watching Natasha, Yelena, and Melina; three women who suffered by the same hand, take back their agency from their abuser while destroying the system altogether, the most heroic thing Marvel Studios has ever done.
