Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2006

488 Pages·2007·16.32 MB·English

by  Rikke Schubart

Super Bitches and
Action Babes
The Female Hero in
Popular Cinema,
1970–2006
RIKKE SCHUBART
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Female Heroes in an Age of Ambivalence
PART ONE: THE RISE AGAINST MEN
1. “Godmother” of Them All: The Rise and Fall of Pam Grier
2. A Pure Dominatrix: Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS
3. Enough! Birth of the Rape-Avenger
PART TWO: FROM THE MARGINS
4. Meiko Kaji: Woman with a Vengeance
5. “Beautiful Vase Made of Iron and Steel”: Michelle Yeoh
6. Failed Female Hero? “Queen of Martial Arts” Cynthia Rothrock
PART THREE: INTO THE ACTION
7. Sigourney Weaver: The Alien Series and the Mother Archetype
8. Daddy’s Action Girl: Nikita and the Daughter Archetype
9. The Warrior and the Wardrobe: The Amazon Hero
PART FOUR: AGE OF AMBIVALENCE
10. Disturbing Creature: The Female Soldier in the War Film
11. The Action Star Persona of Milla Jovovich
12. High Trash Heroines: Lara, Beatrix, and Three Angels
Filmography
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index of Terms
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Schubart, Rikke.
Super bitches and action babes : the female hero in popular cinema, 1970–2006
/ Rikke Schubart.
p. cm.
    Filmography: p.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7864-2924-0
1. Women heroes in motion pictures.  I. Title.
  PN1995.9.W6S363 2007
  791.43'652—dc22 2007005283
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2007 Rikke Schubart. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Cover photograph: Pamela Anderson as Barbara Kopetski in Barb Wire, 1996
(PolyGram)
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Acknowledgments
I want to first thank the Danish Research Council for the Humanities for their
one-and-a-half-year grant, which made it possible for me to write this book.
Thanks also to the University of Southern Denmark for funding the illustrations.
I was fortunate to meet my friend and Norwegian colleague Anne Gjelsvik, who
commented on every part of the book in its first, second, and third drafts. My
work has benefited immensely from her keen eye for detail, her patience, and
generous friendship. Another friend is Nicolas Barbano, who has been my guide
in the area of extraordinary (some would say trashy) films. I must credit my film
taste to his influence. Colleagues at the University of Southern Denmark have
read, commented on, and helped me throughout the writing process, among them
Heidi Philipsen, Bo Kampmann Walther, Pia Harritz, and Lotte Nyboe. Another
group of people, whom I cannot name individually since they are so many, are
my wonderful students. They are unaware that I learn as much from them as they
from me. Discussing my female heroes with them has kept me in touch with a
changing reality. Also thanks to René Kimose, Lars Jakobsen, Gunnar Albjerg,
and Martin Gotfredsen, whose technical help made it possible for me to watch
films and access information on my laptop.
Finally, my family has shared the pleasures of meeting super bitches and action
babes and the frustrations of late night writings. Ditte and Rasmus, I cherish
every moment we spent together at the cinema! And to Martin—I know it takes
a man like you to love a woman like me. My debt is growing.
Preface
As I write this preface, I realize with a sting of regret that my journey has come
to an end. Over the last six years I have explored the vast and, to me, unknown
territory of the female hero in popular cinema. As I scaled mountains to discover
hidden highlands, dragged my feet through swamps and fell down unexpected
chasms, my hardships were rewarded with the company of black super bitches
and brave Amazons, Chinese wonder women with thunderbolt kicks, expert
Japanese female samurais, evil dominatrixes, hysterical virgins, bad mammas,
sweet angels, and killer brides. The female hero is all of this and more. I call her
“female hero” and not “heroine” because the figure I set out to find is a woman
who enters a man’s world and plays the hero in “male” genres: action films,
adventure films, martial arts films, war films, science fiction films, all genres
with male heroes, male audiences, and male producers. Well, not anymore. As
gender changes, everything in the plot changes, and I identify five female
archetypes in this book: the dominatrix, the Amazon, the daughter, the mother,
and the rape-avenger. Archetyping the hero both absorbs and adjusts to social
change, allowing her agency as well as limiting her action.
The seed for my journey was planted in 1996 when I discovered American
actresses Pam Grier and Cynthia Rothrock during research for my Ph.D.
dissertation on American action cinema. As Pam castrated bad guys and bottled
their private parts, and Cynthia performed her martial arts in more than thirty
films despite Hollywood’s rejection of her, I wondered why I had not heard of
these women. Where were their sisters? Why didn’t women know their films (as
I discovered many men did)? Why had their history not been written? Apart
from the rare article and Yvonne Tasker’s groundbreaking Spectacular Bodies:
Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (1993), the subject of strong women was
almost uncharted. As I received a one-and-a-half-year grant from the Danish
Research Council for the Humanities in 2000, I set out to write an in-depth study
of the female hero’s evolution across different national cinemas and genres,
exploring her composite nature as both sexualized spectacle and active hero, and
her ambivalent appeal to a female audience.
When I visited the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, the Hong Kong
Film Archive in Hong Kong and the National Film Center in Kyobashi, Tokyo,
looking for films, reviews, press material and earlier research, it became clear
that the female hero was ignored in her low-budget appearances. One reason
might be the element of sexual exploitation: When Grier, dressed in torn clothes
revealing a breast, points her shotgun, and when a busty Dyanne Thorne as Ilsa
tortures naked men and women, this is pure Mulveyan use of woman as
sexualized spectacle and object of a male sadistic gaze. So, of course, is the
“nudge-nudge, wink-wink” costuming of today’s protagonists as erotic dancers
and dominatrixes in mainstream films like Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005).
This clash of abuse and female agency is the central dilemma of the female hero,
who is what I call in-between.1 In-betweenness is the space between two usually
joined poles—male-female, active-passive. The term captures the dual nature of
the female hero composed from stereotypical feminine traits (beauty, a sexy
appearance, empathy) and masculine traits (aggression, stamina, violence).
Rather than unite two genders she is in-between, a position that may only last as
long as the plot but which creates fascination and unease, ambivalent responses
and conflicted interpretations. From a feminist perspective, she is a victim of
patriarchy. From a postfeminist perspective, she represents female agency. “Is
this advertising photo yet another misogynistic image of Woman, or is it a
postmodern construction of a newly powerful female subjectivity?” a researcher
asked in 1985 about a dominatrix photo.2 In postmodern culture we construct
identity as a flexible and adjustable notion according to our needs, abilities, and
beliefs. In this work I use representations as well as interpretations. True, men
construct the female heroes in popular film. But it is up to us how we read and
use them. Sarah Projansky calls this “equality and choice postfeminism” and,
ironically, her glowing feminist critique of postfeminism and popular culture
made me convert from feminist to postfeminist.3 As much as I share feminism’s
cause, I accept living in a world of ambivalence and contradiction where I
compose my self with bits and pieces from the culture I consume. I identify with
Grier shooting a cheating boyfriend in the crotch in Coffy (1973), and with
Geena Davis and Demi Moore, respectively, yelling, “Suck my dick!” in The
Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and G.I. Jane (1997) when they have had enough.
To ignore such pleasure is to negate “politically incorrect” desires and “wrong”
objects of pleasure. Where feminism is utopian, postfeminism is pragmatic: if
we want to influence society’s gender roles, we must get in the ring and join the
fight. It might turn out men are not the enemy, but merely an opponent.
As I prepared for my journey, the territory started to expand. The television
series Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001) was followed by shows like La
Femme Nikita, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Witchblade and Alias. What had been
the occasional mainstream film with a female hero, like Alien (1986) and
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992), in the late nineties became a box office
trend culminating with the Charlie’s Angels and Lara Croft franchises and
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 in 2003 and 2004.
Suddenly, female heroes were everywhere. I cannot claim discovery of any new
land, as others have been here before and several overtook me on the way.
Yvonne Tasker’s Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema
(1998) explores mainstream Hollywood while Bev Zalcock’s Renegade Sisters:
Girl Gangs on Film (1998) deals with exploitation cinema. Jacinda Read’s The
New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle (2000)
introduced me to postfeminism, and the anthologies Athena’s Daughters:
Television’s New Women Warriors (2003), Action and Adventure Cinema (2004)
and my own Femme Fatalities: Representations of Strong Women in the Media
(2004) edited with Anne Gjelsvik directed me to more female heroes.4 I am
indebted to all of these works and many more, but especially to the works of
Tasker and Projansky.
Strong women now exist in a range of media from comics, computer games and
television shows to films, role playing games and action dolls. The time required
to research all these areas made me limit my study to popular film. Hopefully,
my work will contribute a new view of the female hero in a global film history,
tracing her archetypes across exploitation and mainstream cinema. I believe such
a panoramic view—with Pam Grier’s WIP films at one far corner and French
auteur cinema at the other far corner—will reveal new contexts and changes. My
intention has not been to produce a complete history or to provide a feminist
critique—which I leave to better-suited film historians and critics—but to
discover new female heroes, add to a developing postfeminist theory, provide
critical analysis, and engage in pleasure and empowerment whenever possible.
“Gender can be rendered ambiguous without disturbing or reorienting normative
sexuality at all,” Judith Butler points out in her new introduction to Gender
Trouble. “Sometimes gender ambiguity can operate precisely to contain and
deflect non-normative sexual practice and thereby work to keep normative
sexuality intact.”5 I will not claim the female hero is a feminist or that her in-
betweenness subverts our present gender roles. But I do claim that she offers the
possibility for change and empowerment. Sometimes, identifying with a super
bitch or action babe is exactly what a woman needs. As Catwoman puts it in
Catwoman (2004), “Freedom is power! To live a life untamed and unafraid is the
gift that I’ve been given and so my journey begins.”