One Stride Forward,
A Few Steps Back
The Hopscotch of the Role of Leading Ladies
By Riley Neal
Three, two, one . . . Action! Pyrotechnics flare and screams abound. Flash to a shot down the barrel of a canon, locked and loaded ready for—Wait!—Three scantily clad women driving an army truck? Meet Charlie’s Angels. As the scene continues the targeted women scramble for an escape. After all, they are headed to an almost certain death. Suddenly Natalie, wearing a carefully cropped white parka and matching daisy dukes gets a brilliant idea. Only seconds later the truck is hurled off the edge of the dam, releasing the helicopter oh-so-sneakily hidden beneath a tarp in the bed of the truck. One of the women makes it to the driver’s seat as the others do acrobatics through the air, latching on to the wings of the helicopter. The engine starts just in the knick of time and the three girls are on their merry way. After all, it is just another day in the life of the female heroine. Action, adventure, and suspense, all in the comfort of clothing that could only be described as reminiscent of a bathing suit.
What can be said of the new generation of leading ladies invading (both literally and figuratively) the silver screen? The most apparent fact is that these women are worlds away from the stars of classic film. They’re independent, spunky, and find self-worth in what they’re doing. It’s evident that these are women of a new age. But is there more to this picture? Movies like Charlie’s Angels depict a new woman, one that is evident in real life in the form of the strong and empowered women of the new century. The huge strides that the female character has taken are widely accepted and acknowledged in modern day cinema and elsewhere. However, the underlying truth is that evolution of the new and oftentimes violent action heroine has been accompanied by significant strides backwards in the characterization of women.
“So what? . . . At least we’re not at home, baking Superman’s Supper”
The “Great Stride” Forwards
Women have always been a part of the motion picture. There was no interest in the Seven Dwarves or Prince Charming without Snow White. The Beast would’ve been just another depressed recluse without Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. And as sure as there was an early James Bond, there were the infamous Bond girls. Men share the silver screen with women, but, since the beginning of film, women have been relegated to a secondary role. Snow White stayed home, Belle kept house for her adventurer father, and the early girls of the Bond films stayed mainly in the bedroom. Girls were content cooking dinner for their hard-working husbands and bustling families. Susan Isaacs, writer for the Library of Contemporary Thought coins the term of “wimpettes” to describe women of classic film that lack the guts, strength, and spunk to stand up for themselves (Isaacs 5). These women are ever-present in the scenes of movies—women who give up, give in, and give all the power to the men.
This period is evident when one takes a look back at classic (pre 1970’s) characters such as Eliza Doolittle (played by Audrey Hepburn) in the film My Fair Lady (1964). In the cinematic masterpiece, Doolittle is portrayed as a poor and rather whiney woman living helplessly in the street until a professor decides one day to take her on and turn her into a sophisticated lady. He changes her accent, gives her pretty clothes and –voila!—suddenly she has personal worth. The film does try to give her a little bit of spunk and independence. Doolittle leaves the professor for a while, because she feels that she has been taken for granted, like an object rather than a human being. But in that day and age, Doolittle could do little more than stay with Professor Henry Higgins’ mother for a while, hardly a bold statement of one’s self-sufficiency.
However, as events of the Women’s Rights Movement transpired, the scene changed. Ladies marched, and decided that they would rather hold a career than keep house. And meanwhile, female cinema characters made similar moves up the ladder and onto the highest platforms, sharing the stage and the leading roles with their male counterparts. The Women’s Rights Movement, truly came to a point with the ratification of the nineteenth amendment to the United States’ Constitution, granting women suffrage. Accompanying this new and empowered group of real life women was a batch of new and improved female characters, which became steadily more and more independent and adventurous. Yvonne Tasker Senior Lecturer in Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland speaks in her novel, Spectacular Bodies: gender genre and the action cinema, of action cinema’s transformation during and after the 1970’s, focusing on the fact that the powerhouses have sought to provide images of strong and powerful women in the image of those strong and powerful women in real life (Capdevila 220).
In this way, today’s female stars are paving their own way and beating up on the boys like never before, especially in the action genre. As women have ascended to positions of honor such as Supreme Court Justice and Secretary of State, women in film have made that great leap to empowering careers and aspirations outside the home. In an article from the Journal of Gender Studies on the masculine and feminine in Adventure Fiction, and more specifically films, Isabel Santaularia i Capdevila comments on the fact that women, most notably of action-adventure films of the 1980’s displayed intellectual brawn that allowed them to cope with many stressful situations. She also notes the fact that scripts form this time period were peppered with female characters possessing great conviction and authority that were not present in earlier times (221). Women are put in leading roles in movies ranging from Legally Blonde to Catwoman. A recent offering of tough-as nails chicks has women around the nation cheering, throwing off their aprons, and feeling empowered, making one think, “One small step for the female character, one giant leap for womankind!”
With all this talk of empowerment, it’s easy to think, “Phew! We’re finally in the clear!” But the truth of the matter is that women have also steadily been taking regressive steps in their portrayal by Hollywood. While many feminists may be buying up the tickets to the latest Charlie’s Angels blockbuster or Elektra thriller, they are ignoring the fact that women’s one great stride forwards has been hampered by notable steps back.
Few Good Women
Baby Step Back Numero Uno
It is hard to believe that in the day and age of the empowerment of women and equal opportunities for all, action and adventure film would be able to remain as a male domain. And, in a sense, things have changed. Women now stand side by side with the James Bonds and Indiana Jones’ of the film world. In fact, recent Jones-esque films of conquest and adventure have featured female leads of considerable strength, fortitude, and intelligence.
For example, The Mummy is an action adventure film that pits a strong female up against, or, in this case, with the male hero. Evelyn, the film’s heroine, is a bright Egyptologist who matches up with adventurer Rick O’Connell for the ride of their lives as they try to evade an ancient mummy that Evelyn inadvertently brought back from the dead by reading a passage from the Book of the Dead. Although the plotline works hard to develop Evelyn as a strong and interesting female character, the script is lacking in its portrayal of the clumsiness of Evelyn. She is constantly knocking things over (for instance an ancient library is destroyed by the young lady, prompting one man do say he would prefer the plague over her), and is scared at the mere sight of bugs or other creepy crawlers. Although Evelyn is tough mentally, and refuses to turn around, the plot ends with her being saved by the hunky Rick. Score one for the male hero, negative one for poor Evelyn who barely evades becoming the decaying mummy’s new queen.
The scene of weakness of Evelyn is not an uncommon one. Susan Jeffords, Professor in the Department of Film Theory at the University of Washington, notes that space has been made for female heroes, but that women are not allowed to “challenge the centrality of the hero in adventure.” She focuses on the tendency, especially in films of the 1990’s, to rely on a male savior at the end of the film (223). Although many new action flicks have moved to include a new, more forceful and active woman in supporting and lead roles, they cannot seem to help but include the fact that these women are air headed, clumsy, easily scared, and at times dimwitted in contrast to their male heroes. It is almost as if women are children who are told they have independence, but constantly watched over and rescued from their own stupid mistakes. In addition, Yvonne Tasker comments that women are still positioned as “sacrificial lambs” in compromising positions at the whim of villainous creatures, waiting to be saved. This is completely contrary to the message of empowerment that the woman striding forward towards heroism would have in mind (224). All of this simply reinforces the fact that women of the silver screen are incapable, inept, and in reality, no more powerful than the women of early film.
Only Knockouts Welcome
Step Two
It is bad enough that women have been subjugated to an inferior position in the area of capability. But for many, solace comes in the promising fact that for every heroine turned damsel in distress there are at least double that many female leads. A Good thing, right? Names like Lara Croft; Dylan, Natalie, and Alex, a.k.a “The Angels,” Catwoman, and Elektra come to mind. However, when these names are mentioned it is not adventures and lifesaving heroism that come to mind, but instead the short shorts, spandex suits, and, for lack of a better word, “enhancements,” whether digital, surgical, or otherwise for which these women are known. While these leading ladies are no longer condemned to housework and support of their leading men, they have been exploited for their looks as sex symbols, becoming the token females in the male world of action-adventure. Christina Larson, who analyzes the success of super heroines in an article for the Washington Monthly notes that the new batch female action films have been received positive reviews by viewers, something that seems to point to the acceptance of strong female characters. However she has to further qualify her assertion by commenting that “the fact that the heroines were also visually knockouts—and occasionally danced around in their underwear—didn’t hurt” (Larson 1).
“So what?” many might ask, “Is it a crime for a super heroine to be beautiful?” And the answer is no. Other genres may have mastered the beautiful, gutsy, and intellectual female lead, but somehow the women of action just don’t seem to be getting the message. Disney characters, such as Mulan of the movie in her own name and Lilo of Lilo & Stitch are just limited examples of the offerings of talented, and yet fully clad heroines offered by the motion pictures of today. On the other hand, society is presented with women in action films who are supposed to be the toughest, most independent women of film, and yet fall startlingly short of expectations. They are sexually objectified because so many rely on their sex-appeal alone, and lose the value that women in other genres have. The leading ladies in so-called chick flicks, as well as the women of drama can stand up for themselves and still be beautiful, but the problem remains with the action-adventure genre. Studios have come up with what they believe to be a successful formula for the creation of a female hero which, according to Larson, includes “hot bodies in tight costumes” (1).
The fact that these women are some of the most gorgeous walking the planet would not seem like such a big deal if it did not become so much an integral part of the characters that they portray. The action film, Barb Wire, for example, is described as a combination of action and adventure bordering on soft pornography. Pamela Anderson stars as a strong and ruthless bar owner/bounty hunter, who beats up on both men and women alike on a rampage for whomever happens to be paying her bills at the time. Along with her super strength and stellar moves, she spews the feministic mentality of “Don’t call me babe” while simultaneously parading around in a seductively-cut top and mile-high heels (Tasker 70). The image of a gun-toting, hardworking super heroine is hard to reconcile, or even take seriously in relation to the image of Anderson herself. Marlo Edwards, doctoral candidate at McMaster University sums it up when he says, “Barb is utterly inseparable from Pamela Anderson’s famous, ultra-constructed physique” (1). It is virtually impossible to visualize Barb Wire as the symbol of girl power that she should be because of the fact that she is essentially selling herself to the camera. The audience will never see past her breasts to see that she plays a complex character with intriguing motivations and an interesting story behind her. And frankly, emphasis on dynamic character development for Barb was never the focus in the first place.
Barb Wire is not the only female lead to be undermined by her physical characteristics. Laura Mulvey, a British feminist film theorist, in her essay entitled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema describes women in classic Hollywood as “raw material” for an active male gaze, confirming the objectification of the female form (Edwards 39). It is hard to take Charlie’s Angels as serious special agents as they prance across the screen in tiny bikinis, short skirts and shirts with plunging necklines. At a glance they have it all going for them; four incredibly beautiful and talented women, with great lives and great friends, who just so happen to kick butt for a living. However, scripting and some extraneous scenes cause the viewer of their films to instantaneously consider their “assets” instead of what they bring to the table in terms of personality, intelligence, and skill.