In His Arms: Exploring the ‘Women in Refrigerators’ Trope on Screen

by: Megan Stephens , March 25, 2026

‘Women in refrigerators’, or ‘fridging’ as it is sometimes known, is a trope associated with the superhero genre in which female characters are ‘killed, mutilated, or depowered’, often to advance the male hero’s storyline or trigger guilt (Cochran 2007). The trope was named in 1999 by comic-book writer Gail Simone, who put together a list of female characters in superhero comics who had suffered this fate. The term ‘women in refrigerators’ takes its name from a 1994 Green Lantern comics arc which features the murder of Alex Dewitt, the titular hero’s girlfriend, by the villain Major Force. After killing Alex, Major Force leaves her body in the fridge for Green Lantern to discover, providing a particularly egregious example of a woman’s violent death staged for the male hero (Brown 2011: 145). The gendered aspect is essential to the fridging trope, which not only sees women die frequently and violently but in markedly different ways from their male counterparts. Jeffrey A. Brown notes that while death and injury are staples of superhero narratives, male characters tend to encounter these events in the context of heroism and, if they are not ‘magically brought back from the dead’, their deaths are at least commemorated (2011: 145). In contrast, the women of superhero narratives tend to be ‘casually, but irreparably, wounded’ in a manner that is also often ‘overtly sexualised’ (Brown 2011: 145-6).

My discussion of fridging centres around two death scenes from contemporary film and television. The first is Robin Ward’s death in the first episode of The Boys (Amazon, 2019-present), and the second is Gwen Stacy’s in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Sony, 2014). These two texts are popular instances of superhero narratives on screen, in a cultural moment where, as José Alaniz (2014) has noted, the genre is strongly cemented in the popular imagination. Alaniz argues that ‘[w]e may remember the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, in fact, as the Age of the Multimedia Superhero, when [. . .] the genre achieved near-ubiquity among the public, acclaim (or at least acceptance) from critics, and major box-office clout’ (2014: 7). The pervasiveness of these narratives in contemporary popular culture situates them as an important site for exploring how subjectivity is constituted and different identities are (de)valued, especially in regard to the continuance of the gendered issues of fridging from 20^th century comics narratives into acclaimed and ubiquitous 21^st century screen stories.

The comparison between The Boys and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is of particular interest in light of the current state of superhero narratives, as The Boys presents itself as a semi-parodic critique of the genre. An adaptation of the comics series of the same name, the show emphasises the ‘reality’ of the destruction superpowers would cause through its consistently graphic depictions of violence, and it also offers a cynical take on the traditional image of the superhero. The ‘Supes’ of The Boys are public figures, managed by PR teams who obsessively strive to maintain good polling figures for their heroes whilst covering up their corrupt behaviour. The show focuses on the efforts of a group of non-powered individuals to unmask the immorality of the Supes, a fight that the protagonist Hughie enters after witnessing his girlfriend Robin being killed accidentally and remorselessly by the Supe A-Train – therefore placing an instance of fridging at the heart of the narrative, despite the show’s purported desire to criticise classic superhero tropes.

In contrast, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is decidedly a traditional example of the genre, one of the classics that The Boys aims to parody. The film is part of the second major 21st-century adaptation of Marvel’s Spider-Man comics, one of the most popular superheroes within the genre. It follows The Amazing Spider-Man (Sony, 2012), which details how Peter Parker gains his powers and adopts the Spider-Man mantle.^[1] The sequel sees Peter facing classic Spider-Man villains Electro and the Green Goblin, while also resolving his relationship with Gwen Stacy, his love interest in both films, who dies during the climactic fight in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Gwen Stacy’s death in this film is adapted from the same event in the comics, which holds incredible importance both within the world of Spider-Man and for fans. The circumstances around it and Peter’s level of culpability in her death are constantly debated, issues which the film adaptation sidesteps by altering the manner of her death whilst keeping the iconic imagery associated with it.

Both Robin and Gwen, therefore, exemplify the women-in-refrigerators trope in two texts with markedly different relationships to the superhero tradition. Despite this, both deaths strongly confirm the original comics trope, occurring in violent scenarios in the presence of the women’s boyfriends, who are also the text’s protagonists, and providing motivation and/or sources of guilt for these male heroes. However, the two scenes differ in their level of graphic detail and acknowledgement of the body’s physicality during death. This may initially seem an obvious effect of the differing nature of the two texts I have outlined. However, as I shall demonstrate by contextualising Robin’s death alongside that of another female character, Becca Butcher, the tonal distinction cannot fully account for the difference in the physical presentation of the two women’s deaths. Instead, I argue that the degree to which bodily destruction is acknowledged in these scenes results from and confirms the different status of these characters within their narratives.

Robin barely exists in The Boys beyond her death and its impact on Hughie, whereas Gwen plays a leading role in both Amazing Spider-Man films. This distinction in importance and degree of individuation continues during and after their death scenes. Following Isabel Pinedo (1997), Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) and Judith Butler (2020 [2004]), I shall address how bodily integrity and mourning operate as cultural markers of individuality and how the presence and absence of these aspects in the two women’s deaths further their narrative distinction. There is a kind of circular logic in the interaction of the characters’ humanisation through individualisation and their deaths; for example, Robin’s lack of characterisation and individuality allows for a more gruesome death, whilst her bodily destruction further de-individualises and dehumanises her. However, whilst the aesthetic presentation of Gwen’s death and evidence of mourning heighten her sense of individuality and importance, there is a limit to this. As part of the women-in-refrigerators trope, both female deaths are ultimately staged to develop the male hero, and the level of humanisation is also, I shall argue, tied to the performance of traditional femininity. Therefore, whilst Robin and Gwen achieve differing levels of individuality in the texts and through their deaths, this occurs within the limits of social gender roles and narratives that subsume their characters into the male heroes’ arcs.

Cause of Death

The deaths of both Robin and Gwen are key moments in their respective texts, forming extended sequences designed to capture the audience’s attention. The tone and style of these sequences, however, are very different: Robin’s death introduces the graphic violence central to The Boys, whereas Gwen’s is highly aestheticised. Before analysing these sequences, I will briefly address the differences in how the texts treat these two women prior to their deaths. For Gwen, this treatment is relatively extensive, as her character is given (almost) two full films to develop before dying at the climax of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Robin, on the other hand, dies within the first seven minutes of the first episode of The Boys and is on screen for only three of them. This seemingly basic distinction in screen time creates a wide gap in the individualisation of these characters and in the importance accorded to their personhood. In Robin’s brief appearance, only the most basic characterisation is possible, allowing the fact of her death to take precedence over any sense of her unique identity. Indeed, her status as Hughie’s girlfriend is the most important thing for the show to establish, so that her death can be utilised to incite the main plot (although, as I shall explore more later, even their relationship exists mostly as a cypher). Who Robin is does not really matter; what matters is that Hughie will be spurred into action by her loss.

Whilst Gwen is still a love interest, whose story is featured for its interaction with Peter’s, far more time is spent establishing her character and their relationship. Throughout both films, it does not matter who Gwen is as an individual; her desires and actions directly influence the plot and Peter. For example, she ends their relationship early on in the second film and applies for a scholarship at Oxford University while they are apart, leading Peter to later decide to move to the UK with her (this, of course, does not come to pass due to her death). In essence, Gwen is figured as an individual, whereas Robin exists to serve a purpose, and this distinction is both shaped and reinforced by the presentation of their deaths.

In analysing the differences between the death scenes, I will draw on two theoretical concepts: Pinedo’s (1997) wet death/dry death and Bakhtin’s (1984) grotesque/classical body. Writing on body horror on screen, Pinedo defines the wet death as one that ‘transgresses bodily boundaries by devouring, penetrating or spilling the contents of the body through carnage’, in comparison to the dry death, which is ‘shadowed and bloodless’ (1997: 408–9). The wet death acknowledges the physicality of a body that is horrifically injured, and in this way is a more realistic representation of how the body operates, although the injuries suffered in such horror genres may themselves be unlikely. The transgression of bodily boundaries in the wet death echoes Bakhtin’s model of the grotesque body, where ‘[t]he object transgresses its own confines, ceases to be itself’ (1984: 310). In the grotesque, limits are crossed or cease to exist, and entities fuse together. The grotesque body does not exist in isolation, but is intertwined with its surroundings and the world, moving beyond itself. In contrast to the grotesque, Bakhtin identifies a ‘new bodily canon’, sometimes referred to as the classical body, which originates in Europe roughly in the 16^th century and ‘presents an entirely finished, completed, strictly limited body, which is shown from the outside as something individual’ (Bakhtin 1984: 320; Armitt 1996: 80). Here, the limits which are transgressed in the grotesque become solid boundaries, demarcating a body whose individuality is reliant on their disconnection from the wider world.

For Bakhtin, the body’s ‘original meaning’ is found in the grotesque, and the socially constituted bodily canon aims to repress the naturally unruly elements of the body through its focus on boundaries (1984: 321). Fran McInerey also tracks a developing social trend in modernity of ‘a progressive concealment of bodily functions’, including an increasing sense of shame associated with the production of bodily waste or odours and the requirement for such events to take place in private (2007: 392). Pinedo’s dry death can be seen as an example of how these social norms act on representation, as an image of a bounded, bloodless body is preserved even in scenarios which would cause bodily harm. Both Pinedo and Bakhtin set up an opposition between two conceptions of the body: one that is open and constantly transgresses its own limits to create a fusion between the body and the world, and one that is closed, delimited, and individualised according to social structures. In the closed mode, ‘[t]hat which protrudes, bulges, sprouts, or branches off [. . .] is eliminated, hidden, or moderated’ – in the dry death, even blood is removed (Bakhtin 1984: 320). As I shall demonstrate, Robin’s death aligns with the grotesque/wet death model, whilst Gwen’s fits the classical/dry death. The latter’s focus on socially approved models of individuality is thus conferred on Gwen in her death, just as her pre-death narrative deepens her characterisation.

As I have mentioned, Robin’s death is the inciting incident of The Boys and is essential in setting up not only the plot but also the show’s graphically violent tone. Although depictions of gruesome death remain central throughout, it is significant in the context of fridging that the show chooses to introduce this aspect through a detailed depiction of the bodily destruction of the protagonist’s girlfriend: Robin dies when the Supe A-Train runs through her at super speed. As Brown points out, it is not solely the violent nature of women in refrigerator deaths that distinguishes them within superhero narratives, but the casual manner with which this is treated (2011: 145). The audience initially experiences Robin’s death from Hughie’s perspective: as he is halfway through a sentence, Robin flickers and vanishes. The scene then slows down, and we see droplets of blood hit Hughie’s face, before the camera pans to reveal a suspended cloud of blood with fragments of skeleton visible within it. In a snap back to real time, the cloud drops to the ground, splattering over a wide area and revealing A-Train, who is also entirely covered in blood (‘The Name of the Game’, The Boys 2019: 00:05:40–00:06:14). Although this manner of death would be horrific presented in any way, the use of slow motion gives the viewer a privileged graphic view, highlighting and elongating the event in a manner not experienced by Hughie. The transgression of bodily boundaries here is clear, as Robin’s body is reduced to viscera in a strong evocation of Pinedo’s image of the wet death as ‘devouring, penetrating or spilling the contents of the body through carnage’ (1997: 408). The only part of Robin that is left intact is her hands, which Hughie is still holding in his own as he screams her name in increasing distress (‘The Name of the Game’, The Boys 2019: 00:06:26–00:06:39).

In contrast to this gruesome opening, Gwen’s death occurs during the climactic fight between Peter and the Green Goblin, immediately situating it as a more heightened and significant event than Robin’s out-of-the-blue and accidental demise. The fight occurs at the top of a clock tower, and towards its end, Gwen hangs suspended by a piece of Peter’s webbing. Peter defeats the Green Goblin, but as the clock’s cogs shift the webbing snaps, causing Gwen to fall (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:00:22–02:00:49). The scene then shifts into slow motion – the same technique used to portray Robin’s death, but with a very different effect (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:00:53). The centrality of this difference is that the slow motion comes in not at the moment of Gwen’s death, but just before it. Although at this point there is still the potential for Peter to save her, elongating the fall also allows the audience to prepare for the possibility of Gwen’s death, in marked contrast to Robin vanishing halfway through Hughie’s sentence. This opportunity for anticipation is significant in establishing both the death event and the character as important. In Margaret Gibson’s exploration of the ethics of death scenes in film and their ability to move audiences, she identifies not death itself but the ‘process of dying towards death’ as key (2001: 307). Indeed, it is ‘the closely monitored moments before death’ (my emphasis), focusing on the individual’s awareness of their approaching fate, that allow for the most affecting and sensitive representations of death (Gibson 2001: 310). Significantly, Gibson defines the ‘death scene’ as ‘the moment in which an important character . . . faces mortality’ (2001: 306–7, my emphases). Therefore, the elongation of dying towards death achieved through the slow motion not only allows for a more serious representation of the death event itself but also confirms Gwen’s position as an important character worthy of a moving death scene.

In addition to this heightened significance, the suspension of Gwen before her death, instead of during, as with Robin, creates a beautiful image rather than a horrific one. Gwen’s hair and clothes billow gently around her as she falls, surrounded by shimmering glass and cogs from the broken clock tower. Peter leaps after her and reaches out, extending a piece of webbing that glistens and unfolds into a miniature hand, and the whole sequence is accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s gentle, almost ethereal score (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:00:53–02:01:20). As with Robin’s death scene, the film breaks out of slow motion as the body hits the ground—but Gwen’s body remains fully intact. Peter’s webbing catches her just before she reaches the bottom of the tower so that only her head makes contact with the ground, causing her death. Her corpse then hangs suspended, gracefully arcing in a manner reminiscent of the famous Henry Fuseli painting, The Nightmare (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:01:20–02:01:25). Whilst the last-minute intervention of the webbing provides an explanation for most of Gwen’s body remaining unharmed, the injury to her head is not shown, even though her hanging body is captured in long shot . The perfection of Gwen’s physical form in death evokes Bakhtin’s ‘entirely finished, completed, strictly limited’ classical body, and this image is strengthened when Peter later cradles Gwen’s body in his arms and we see her still perfectly-made-up face from above, again with no indication of injury (1984: 320; The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:02:02–02:02:08).

The aestheticisation of this sequence completely distances this performance of death from the physical reality. In her memoir, All That Remains: A Life in Death, forensic anthropologist Sue Black notes that ‘[t]he dead are not as they are depicted in the movies by actors lying perfectly still as if in a deep sleep. [. . .] Dead really is dead, it is not just sleeping or lying motionless’ (2018: 66). Of course, this reality of death is impossible for any actor to ever perform, but nothing about Gwen’s death scene suggests this sense of real death, a loss beyond simply lying still. The complete lack of visible damage to her body, which can be portrayed on screen as we have seen with Robin, emphasises the distance of this performance from death’s reality. Eventually, a single delicate stream of blood seeps from Gwen’s nose, almost heightening her beauty rather than detracting from it (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:02:34–02:02:44). This feels symbolic of bodily harm rather than a true acknowledgement of it, and I would argue that it is so minor as to not detract from the ‘shadowed and bloodless’ nature of Pinedo’s dry death (1997: 409). Whereas Robin’s body is reduced entirely to blood and viscera, Gwen’s suffers only the tiniest of breaches, significantly not even occurring at the point of impact.

Bodily Integrity as a Marker of Individuality

The presentation of Robin’s and Gwen’s deaths, as well as their timing within the wider narratives, works to dismiss Robin’s individual identity and confirm Gwen’s. The integrity (or lack thereof) of their bodies in these moments of violence is key to this distinction of individuation. Bakhtin centres the issue of delimiting personhood in his account of the classical body, stating that, in the new bodily canon, ‘[t]he basis of the image is the individual, strictly limited mass, the impenetrable façade’ (Bakhtin 1984: 320, my emphases). Here, individuality, or unique personhood, is linked to a body whose limits are strictly defined and cannot be transgressed, which maps onto the wet/dry death distinction. Gwen’s body retains its impenetrable façade and thus its humanising individuality through her dry death that allows for only the slightest hint at physical damage. In contrast, Robin’s bodily limits are utterly transgressed, quite literally dehumanising her through the obliteration of intelligible human structures that occurs in her reduction to gore.

Gwen’s humanity and individuality are not only confirmed by the limited portrayal of damage to her body, but also by the use of close-ups to focus on her face. Bakhtin notes that for the classical body, with its focus on delimited identities, ‘the leading role is attributed to the individually characteristic and expressive parts of the body: the head, face, eyes, lips’ (1984: 321). This idea of the face as the centre of closed-off individuality is echoed by Gibson, who notes the significance of ‘a close-up on the face’ to her important death scenes (2001: 307). She argues that ‘the face is the privileged site of unique selfhood and self-expression’ (Gibson 2001: 307). For both Bakhtin and Gibson, the face is strongly linked to the formation of individual character, as it is the site where internal emotions are communicated through expressions. Unique identity is thus confirmed through its ability to be performed and understood according to social expectations. In Gwen’s death scene, her body not only remains perfectly intact, but perfectly legible through the focus on the face – her emotions and unique personhood can be recognised by the audience through their performance on this central part of the classical body. The privileged position Gwen has held throughout both Amazing Spider-Man films is therefore upheld in this moment through the figuration of her bodily identity as immutable.

There is a kind of circular logic in the distinctions between the violent and sanitised deaths. The graphic destruction of Robin’s body removes her from the position of the classical body with its clear structures that provide a stable location for unique identity, thus dehumanising and de-individualising her. In contrast, the sanitised stability of Gwen’s body despite the violent manner of her death, paired with the close-ups on her face, confirms her humanity and importance. However, the distinction between these two characters was also apparent before their deaths, due to the time and effort invested in individualising them across the texts. Therefore, it is not only the case that the wet/dry death denies or confirms humanity, but also that the pre-existing status of the character determines whether the breaching of bodily limits in a violent death (a challenge to their contained individuality) will be graphically displayed.

As I have mentioned throughout, graphic violent death is a central aspect of The Boys, which could be seen to explain away the opposing representations of death in the two scenes. However, there are deaths in The Boys that, within the show’s style, are sanitised. A particularly interesting example for contextualising Robin’s death is Becca Butcher’s death in the finale of season 2, as this is also an instance of fridging. Becca is the wife of Billy Butcher, the leader of the central anti-Supe group, which Hughie joins after witnessing A-Train kill Robin. Unlike Robin, but similarly to Gwen, Becca has been introduced and developed as a character long before her death, which occurs during a climactic battle with a major villain, Stormfront. As Stormfront slowly strangles Becca, Becca’s son Ryan screams and begs for Stormfront to let her go before losing control and activating his superpower of laser vision. At this point, the screen fades to white, and it is unclear exactly what happens next. We see only the aftermath: Stormfront lies on the ground covered in blood and burn marks, with three of her limbs missing, and Becca clutches a hand to her throat, covering a wound which leaks blood onto her shirt (‘What I Know’, The Boys 2020: 00:46:10–00:47:27). Whilst we do see blood, and therefore this cannot be fully understood as a dry death, within the context of The Boys it is drier than most. The wound is never shown, being covered first by Becca’s hand and then by Butcher’s as he runs to cradle her in his arms. Becca’s final moments are shown through a series of shot-reverse shots framed in tight close-up on hers and Butcher’s faces, in a remarkably similar manner to the presentation of Peter and Gwen after her death (‘What I Know’, The Boys 2020: 00:47:37–00:48:23).

This scene demonstrates that, in spite of the centrality of graphic violence to The Boys, certain deaths can be presented in a more sanitised manner that moves away from the detailed representation of bodily harm. On one level, Robin and Becca occupy very similar positions in the narrative, as the love interests of two of the major male characters, but both Becca as a character and her relationship with Butcher are far more developed. In contrast to Hughie and Robin’s surface-level relationship, Butcher’s feelings for Becca form a major part of his plotline and continue to influence him after her death. Therefore, I argue that it is the status of this character as a developed love interest which leads to the downplaying of physical harm in her death scene, paralleling Gwen.

The deliberate nature of this sanitisation is evident in the stark contrast between Becca’s and Stormfront’s wounds, both in nature and presentation, despite both being injured in the same attack. Stormfront’s wounds are numerous, gruesome and linger on by the camera. In contrast, Becca’s single wound is never seen, but is suggested to be a clean cut to the throat. In addition to providing a far more minimal threat to bodily integrity than Stormfront’s injuries, this does not fully make sense within the context of the attack. The scene suggests that Stormfront and Becca are simultaneously injured by Ryan’s lasers, yet one suffers vicious burns all over her body and the other a single cut, delicate in comparison. This side-by-side distinction emphasises the socially constituted aspect of the classical body or dry death, which denies the physical reality of an uncontrollable body. As with Robin and Gwen, the differing acknowledgement of bodily damage is directly linked to the characters’ status (whilst Stormfront is not underdeveloped in the same way as Robin, her villainous nature certainly situates her differently than the two significant love interests who experience drier deaths). Therefore, I propose that whilst the differing styles of the two texts allow for greater extremes of violent or sanitised representation, the location of characters along this continuum is primarily determined by the degree to which their humanity is recognised.

The Value of Mourning

The interrelation between death representations and individuality, and the resulting de/humanisation, extends beyond the death scenes themselves. The (non-)responses of other characters are vital to demonstrating the importance accorded to these two women in their narratives. Grief and mourning in response to a death are an incredibly important way of acknowledging an individual’s significance and valuing their life, as Butler demonstrates in their book Precarious Life (2020 [2004]). Mourning recognises a loss, ‘[a]nd if we have lost, then it follows that we have had’; the person who is gone must have had value when they were here or there could be no sense of something now missing (Butler 2020 [2004]: 20). However, mourning is not universal, and Butler admits that ‘[a] hierarchy of grief could no doubt be enumerated’, leading them to question,

[w]hat are the cultural contours of the human at work here? How do our cultural frames for thinking the human set limits on the kinds of losses we can avow as loss? After all, if someone is lost, and that person is not someone, then what and where is the loss, and how does mourning take place? (2020 [2004]: 32)

As with the connection between impenetrable bodily limits and individuality, mourning is inherently related to how we understand and construct the boundaries of humanity. It is not simply a natural response to any death but an act that establishes the value of a person, situating this death as an unthinkable loss, this person as a unique self who impacts the world. Again, there is a kind of circular logic in Butler’s questions, which simultaneously suggests that a lack of mourning diminishes the humanity of the deceased and that cultural limits of humanity prevent some deaths from being understood as losses.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Robin’s death goes almost entirely unmourned in The Boys. Indeed, Butler’s question of what happens ‘if someone is lost, and that person is not someone’ seems particularly apt here; Robin exists in the show to die, creating a loss that is at once essential to the generation of the plot and yet is no loss at all, because Robin’s fate determines that she will barely be present before she vanishes (2020 [2004]: 32). Any sense of Hughie experiencing grief is quickly subsumed into the action of the show as he joins the fight against the Supes, and once this action has been established even mentions of Robin almost entirely vanish too. Perhaps the most striking example of Hughie’s complete lack of grief is the presence of Starlight, Hughie’s main love interest in the show. Starlight is also introduced in the first episode and is quickly established as the female lead, and her connection with Hughie develops over the first few episodes. The show allows no breathing room for Hughie to experience grief over the horrific loss of his girlfriend before entering into a new relationship, privileging the narrative need for a central love plotline and thus essentially erasing any meaning Robin and her relationship with Hughie could be seen to have.

In contrast, following Gwen’s death scene, there is a montage detailing her funeral and Peter’s ongoing grief. This is unusual in film, as Ned Schultz and Lisa Huet’s (2001) study on the frequency of deaths and character responses to them demonstrates. Schultz and Huet investigated a selection of 65 American films from lists of the highest-grossing films and Best Picture nominees between 1980 and 1994, noting the number of death-related scenes and the character behaviours associated with them (2001: 139). Amongst their selection, ‘the average film contained 13 death-related scenes’, which ‘would translate to a death-related scene every seven to eight minutes’ in a standard      100-minute feature film. However, whilst they identified death as prevalent, grief was rare: ‘[o]nly 14 percent of scenes included sorrow’ and ‘[f]uneral or burial events were observed in only 3 percent of death scenes’ (Schultz and Huet 2001: 141). In line with Butler’s arguments on mourning, depicting Gwen’s funeral onscreen serves to confirm her importance and humanity, and the rarity of such a scene further distinguishes her. The funeral is followed by a series of shots of Peter standing alone at her grave, each clearly located in a different season of the year to suggest the continuance of Peter’s grief across time (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:04:20–02:04:44). Therefore, the film continues the confirmation of Gwen’s personhood established during her death scene by presenting her loss as continually affecting and not easily forgotten, in direct contrast to the treatment of Robin.

In His Arms

Before, during and after their deaths, the texts work to set up Gwen as a humanised individual and dismiss Robin’s potential as the same. However, whilst differences of screentime, bodily integrity and mourning distance the degree of humanisation of the two women, they are united under the women in refrigerators trope which places their deaths at the service of the male protagonists. Even Gwen’s individuality comes into question when considering her death in relation to Peter’s arc. For example, whilst the mourning montage works to confirm Gwen’s significance as an individual, it is important to note that it is arranged around Peter, reframing her loss in the context of their relationship.

Peter’s lengthy grief is presented through a series of long shots which establish him as the sole mourner, isolated within the landscape of the cemetery (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:04:20–02:04:44). Therefore, alongside the confirmation of Gwen’s individuality through the presentation of mourning there is a suggestion of Peter’s exceptionalism in carrying this mourning out all by himself. It also suggests that Gwen’s loss is significant primarily for Peter, rather than for the wider network of friends and family seen at the funeral. Whilst Gwen’s death and the response to it are certainly more humanising than Robin’s, there remains the sense of female death staged for male development that is so evident in The Boys and which forms a key part of the women in refrigerators trope. Whilst Robin’s death initiates the plot, Gwen’s slows it down, prompting not action but reflection in the male hero. Peter’s overwhelming grief is also tied to his guilt for not saving Gwen, a guilt that leads him to stop operating as Spider-Man, the direct opposite of Hughie’s being inspired to join the fight.

The use of female death for male development is reflective of a wider cultural trend, which Elizabeth Bronfen tracks in her work Over Her Dead Body (1992), which interrogates cultural representations of female death from the mid-eighteenth century to the contemporary period. One example she focuses on is a series of sketches the artist Ferdinand Hodler made of his lover Valentine Godé-Darel while she was dying of cancer (Bronfen 1992: 39). When the sketches were first exhibited, they were accompanied by an exhibition catalogue written by Jura Brüschweiler (Bronfen 1992: 47). Bronfen argues that Brüschweiler’s discussion situates ‘this cycle of paintings as an example of the artist’s heroic confrontation with death’ through its focus on the artistic skill with which Godé-Darel’s dying body is portrayed (1992: 49). This prioritisation of artistic merit occludes the subjective female experience of death; although the dying woman is the subject of these artworks, she is not at the centre of them. Instead, it is the man’s talent which is lauded, and the heroism with which he faces the reality of death, using this to inform his creativity and, presumably, wider outlook on life. Female death becomes affecting, but only so far as it prompts reflection in a male audience; the impact on the dying woman herself is unacknowledged.

Although the male heroes do not themselves artistically represent Robin’s and Gwen’s deaths, the texts do make them into moments of spectacle—gruesome and aesthetic, respectively. Both scenes are heightened moments which demonstrate the full potential of the texts’ chosen styles and approaches to action sequences. This approach is reminiscent of Laura Mulvey’s famous analysis of film’s staging of female characters as visual spectacle (1975: 11). The use of slow motion in both sequences is particularly significant in this regard, as the audience is clearly directed to revel in the visual pleasure (or perhaps disgust) and appreciate the artistry. A sense of technical skill, therefore, comes to the fore, in a similar manner to Brüschweiler’s assessment of the sketches, over and above the female character’s subjective experiences of dying. And whilst they are not in control of the spectacular presentation, Hughie and Peter do experience a development of self through their encounters with female death, in the same manner as Hodler is perceived to. Both reconsider and change their actions going forward, prompted by witnessing a woman’s death to reassess their own values and sense of self. And, as with Hodler, this change is not only personal but to a degree ‘professional’, as it directly impacts how they both approach their shared role of vigilantism (admittedly one which they perform in vastly different ways and with different targets).

To explore this utilisation of female death for male development further, Bronfen engages with Jurij Lotman’s and Teresa de Lauretis’ discussions of plot typology. Lotman proposes two opposing character types: a ‘mobile hero’ and an ‘immobile’ lesser character, who operates as a function of the plot space through which the hero moves (Bronfen 1992: 50). De Lauretis develops this model by arguing that the mobile hero is aligned with the masculine and the immobile, functional character with the feminine, which therefore ‘does not have its own meaning but rather produces meaning for another’ (Bronfen 1992: 50). We have already seen the idea of the feminine existing to produce meaning for another in the male artist/hero gaining self-knowledge through witnessing female death. However, the idea of the feminine as an immobile space which the male hero can enter and leave at will, taking the qualities he has gained with him, offers a new way of understanding the fridging death: as a closed-off plot space which entraps the woman but creates opportunities for the man.

This idea of female death as a delimited space is apparent in Hughie’s lack of grief following Robin’s death. Hughie spends an incredibly brief amount of time within the death space, leaving it and Robin behind almost instantly as mention of her fades from the plot. This is possible because Hughie has gained what he needs from entering the immobile space of female death: his motivation to fight the Supes. This can then be taken forward as the driving force of the show’s plot, divorced from its original context. The utility of Robin’s death as a plot event explains the dismissal of her unique personhood before, during, and after her death: there is no need to acknowledge it, as she can fulfil her function of motivating Hughie without it. Gwen’s case is slightly more complex due to the confirmation of her individuality provided by her significance in the narrative, bodily integrity during death and grieved loss. However, due to the focus on the impact on Peter in the aftermath of her death, there is certainly a sense of the male hero entering the space of female death to learn about and reconstitute his sense of self. The difference here is that Peter tarries a little longer in this space, choosing to engage with Gwen’s death beyond its immediate aftermath.

Significantly, however, the film’s ending sees Peter deciding to put aside his grief and return to the Spider-Man role, suggesting that the cemetery montage is simply an extension of the time spent within the space of female death rather than a true example of continuing grief. Peter speaks to his aunt May, who is packing away the belongings of his deceased uncle Ben as a way to spend some final moments with her grief before finding ‘a better place for it’ (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:07:29–02:07:32). Inspired, Peter decides to watch a recording of Gwen’s valedictorian speech, in which she urges hope for the future and asks her listeners to always retain reminders of ‘who we are, and of who we’re meant to be’. As we hear these words, Peter opens his closet, and the camera pans down to his disused Spider-Man suit (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, 2014: 02:09:11–02:09:17). The message is clear: Peter is intended to act heroically as Spider-Man, and remaining overwhelmed by his grief for Gwen would be a disavowal of his purpose in life. Thus, whilst Peter spends longer in the immobilising space of female death than Hughie does, he eventually emerges, carrying a reinvigorated sense of self whilst leaving Gwen behind.

Therefore, whilst Gwen and Robin experience differing levels of humanisation in the texts, their stories and personhoods are ultimately subordinated to those of the male protagonists. With this in mind, I would like to return to the fact that both women’s deaths are witnessed by their boyfriends and that, after death, some part of their bodies remains held by the men. The specifics of this align with the differing tones of the texts and their representations of these relationships: Hughie clutching Robin’s disembodied hands feels like a gruesome parody of the more classically romantic depiction of Peter cradling Gwen’s body in his arms (the same pose taken up by Butcher and Becca during her death). However, despite their differences, both scenes betray this utilisation of the female death, its staging for the male hero’s development, by placing the female corpse quite literally in his hands.

The Value of Femininity

With the ultimate subordination of both Robin and Gwen to the male perspective in mind, I would like to re-interrogate the humanising potential of the classical body in Gwen’s death scene by considering the role that femininity plays in bodily integrity. The presentation of Gwen’s fall and death includes several markers of traditional femininity. As she falls in slow motion, her blonde hair billows gently around her and her powder blue coat flaps open to reveal a floral lining. Her fear is also delicate and restrained: she reacts to the webbing breaking with a breathy gasp rather than a scream and tears form in her eyes but only one breaks free (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014: 02:00:40–02:01:20). These feminine aspects create a sense of beauty and control, which connects back to the social imposition of order over the unruly aspects of the body identified by Bakhtin (1984) and McInerery (2007). The refusal of Gwen’s body to rupture even in death, which has individualising potential through its connection to the classical body, therefore seems inextricable from her femininity. This is most evident in the close-ups of her face after death, which, as I have discussed, privilege this site of identity and self-expression, yet also clearly display the unblemished perfection of her makeup. Neither the physical exertion of her fall or the fight preceding it, nor the violent manner of her death, are able to put a crack in this mask of femininity, just as the only concession to the idea of bodily transgression is the single trail of blood that seeps from her nose.

For Bakhtin, the social restrictions of the classical body are unnatural and rely on actively suppressing the body’s true grotesque nature (1984: 321). A similar point could be made about the socially determined model of restrained femininity, and the connection between the two in Gwen’s case could reframe the humanising potential of the controlled body as oppressive. In this case, the perfection of Gwen’s body transforms from something that humanises and individualises her to a strict requirement that must be met for this humanisation to even be considered. The connection of bodily control to a model of femininity that privileges delicate restraint underlines the oppressive nature of this requirement, and connects back to Butler’s question, ‘[w]hat are the cultural contours of the human at work here?’ (2020 [2004]: 32). What understandings of the human are created when the acknowledgement of unique personhood in death is reliant on adherence to social models of strict control?

If Gwen’s humanisation through bodily order is linked to her performance of femininity, it would follow that Robin, dehumanised by her graphic demise, is also less traditionally feminine. Indeed, in her few short minutes of screentime, Robin counters multiple expectations of femininity. Dressed in dungarees and a hooded jacket, she mocks Hughie for having initially waited for her to ask him out and for now being unable to ask his boss for a raise, and then takes on a dominant role in the relationship by suggesting that the two of them move in together (‘The Name of the Game’, The Boys 2019: 00:04:23–00:05:16). This all locates her outside of a traditional model of submissive femininity, demonstrating none of the restraint seen in Gwen’s actions immediately preceding her death. Robin’s death is similarly unrestrained, furthering the link between the ability to perform traditional femininity and the individualising and humanising potential of the impenetrable structures of the classical body.

For Bakhtin, stable bodily limits are not something to be desired; he argues that the classical body conveys ‘a merely individual meaning of the life of one single, limited body’ (1984: 321, my emphasis     ). However, whilst Bakhtin sees individuality as placing a limit on true human potential, within these superhero narratives, individuality becomes the limit for understanding the human. Here, de-individualisation is not a site for exploring a wider connection between the self and world, but a way of diminishing a character’s personhood. After all, as Butler recognises, a person must be recognised as ‘someone’ for their loss to be avowed through mourning, and for these women in refrigerators that recognition is achieved through the performance of bodily control and femininity (2020 [2004]: 32). Fitting into these models, as Gwen does, allows for some retention of individuality in death, but ultimately this identity is subordinated to that of the male hero, who uses the site of fridging as an opportunity for the exploration of his self.

Conclusion

 Fridging has a long history in superhero comics, and the trope is evidently accompanying the genre’s expansion into 21^st century multimedia franchises. This is perhaps to be expected with adaptations that are closely tied to comics history, as when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 pays homage to the tradition of the Spider-Man comics through its inclusion of Gwen Stacy’s death. However, even when a contemporary show attempts to critique the genre, as with The Boys, a woman’s death is still located at the centre of the male hero’s development and yet overlooked as the show progresses. The treatment of female characters, and indeed any characters who do not fit the “heroic” mould of the able-bodied white cishet male, has traditionally been an area of difficulty for superhero media, and the genre’s shift into a pillar of contemporary multimedia culture has not necessarily improved this. For example, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (not only the largest current superhero franchise but one of the most popular contemporary franchises of any genre) notably took 11 years to give its first female hero, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, her own film, and this only occurred after the character’s death in the main narrative. The Boys attempts to address this gap in the genre by continually engaging with issues of gender, race, and sexuality within its narrative, yet even here, the women-in-refrigerators trope not only appears but also serves as the plot’s inciting incident. This suggests that fridging may be so ingrained in the superhero genre that it is overlooked even when texts actively engage with the genre’s issues of representation.

While the examples of Robin’s and Gwen’s deaths both fall into the category of women in refrigerators, they differ in the degree to which they acknowledge the individuality and thus humanity of the two characters. The complete and graphic destruction of Robin’s body separates her from the closed-off classical body or dry death that aligns with cultural models of delimited individuality. Similarly, the lack of mourning following Robin’s death refuses to acknowledge her as an irreplaceable individual (and as a love interest for Hughie she is eminently replaceable), situating her outside of the ‘cultural contours of the human’ (Butler 2020 [2004]: 32). This lack of individuation in death is in part possible because of Robin’s lack of characterisation in her exceedingly brief pre-death appearance, but the literal dehumanisation of Robin’s complete bodily destruction also confirms this pre-established lack of importance. For Gwen, the opposite is true, but the promise of individuality she gains through her (unrealistic) bodily integrity in death and the extended mourning of her lover is weakened by the way these aspects are subsumed into a traditional femininity employed in the service of the male hero. Her impenetrable bodily boundaries are decidedly feminine, and the mourning sequence confirms Peter’s exceptionality as much as her own. In the end, however, this grief is something Peter must leave behind to continue his story; the space of female death in these superhero texts may be expanded enough to develop some individuality for their women in refrigerators, but ultimately it is not a place to be tarried in.

Notes

[1] I refer to the character as ‘Peter’ rather than ‘Spider-Man’ in my discussion, as I view Peter Parker as the central character, with the Spider-Man mantle being a public persona that he adopts.