Did you know that, until King Triton of The Little Mermaid changed the story because he was threatened by her power, Ursula the Sea Witch was merely using her magic to give a voice and confidence to the merfolk?
According to Peterborough photographer Heather Doughty, that’s just one of the “true” and silenced stories behind some of the most popular female villains. In her latest exhibition Villains, these women finally get to share their stories.
Launching during the First Friday Art Crawl on March 6 at Doughty’s studio at the Commerce Building in downtown Peterborough, Villains explores how media and social media can entirely change a narrative and turn a person into a villain — especially when that person is female.
“These are hard, strong, powerful women which always wind up on the wrong side of stories because men are the ones in power,” says Doughty. “A powerful woman can be a threat to a man.”
After witnessing first-hand how mob mentality can alter the truth, Doughty began thinking about women who are on the wrong side of history — both real and fictional — who perhaps had their own realities warped and manipulated.
“Part of the exhibition is recognizing the power of media, social media, crowd mentality, and gossip, how people in power can exert and change narratives, and the fact it still happens today,” says Doughty. “It’s still happening to women the exact same way that it happened to these women, even if they’re fictional.”
From the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty to Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth to the real-life Irish Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley and Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame, each woman is now given the chance to tell their own story.
“Bonnie Parker would be what today is classified as at-risk youth,” Doughty says. “She came from a broken family. She had no opportunity. She didn’t have access to proper education, and she ran into some trouble and spiralled.”
To tell the women’s stories, Doughty came up with a short list of popular villains and recruited local women to write their true stories.
Those local women include Erica Richmond, Irish Millie, Madison Sheward, Rose Terry, Nicole Lemke, Karen August, Hermoine Rivision, Dena Hemming, Sahira the Djinn, Nicole Truman, Colleen Kimi, and Valerie Yeo.
“This community is full of amazing, incredible women,” says Doughty. “I’m so honoured that I get to work with them and I’m so honoured that they took this project on because they tell the stories that push back against being silenced.”
Doughty’s photographs of each women were done in her studio with a minimalist set design and the support of Selena Wilson of SKW Beauty and Leigh Morris of Beauty by Leigh.
“Originally, I had this really grand idea of recreating their worlds, but then I thought ‘No, when the viewer comes into the exhibit, I want them to look at the Queen of Hearts and strip away that Disney card,'” says Doughty. “I want them to see this is her because she’s human. I decided I wanted to strip away all the residual familiarity and focus on the individual.”
This intimate look at villains as humans, Doughty says, is one of the reasons she believes “everyone loves a villain.” The demand to understand a villain’s origin story is clear through the success of blockbuster movie adaptions like Cruella, Maleficent, and Wicked over the past several years.
“Villains are more relatable and so human,” Doughty says. “Humans are not perfect, but social media makes us strive for this perfect world. Heroes are perfect. Villains are relatable because they have flaws and they’re human — they show humanity’s real side.”
Each of the photos will be exhibited alongside a QR code that links to an audio recording of the villain’s story, done with support from Andrew Witkowicz. There is also a video to go along with the exhibition, made by TE Media & Design.
Though Doughty shot the project last summer, she says the silencing of women’s stories is something that continues to come up in the public and is especially something to think about leading up to International Women’s Day on Sunday, March 8.
“Men have always been in the position of power and telling the story,” Doughty says. “As one of my villains says, the stories are always skewed to show men’s perspectives, men’s power. If what really happened doesn’t show a man in a good light, then it gets changed. If you can convince enough people of that story, there you go, you’ve rewritten history. We see it as it’s happening right before our eyes.”
Though the stories Doughty explores throughout the exhibition are historical or entirely fictional, she says women’s stories continue to be shaped and altered time and time again.
“Our civilization has been taught that if a woman says something, it should be questioned, and if she keeps repeating it and she keeps getting in the way, she’s being difficult,” Doughty says. “That’s where this project is, and that’s why I tell women’s stories.”
Villains will be on display from 6 to 11 p.m. on on Friday, March 6 at Platform D on the second floor of the Commerce Building (129-1/2 Hunter Street West) in downtown Peterborough.
