[GWHH]

The Real Difference Between Male and Female Action Heroes: Sex as a Superpower

By Katy Waldman

| Posted Thursday, June 14, 2012, at 10:29 AM ET

In the not-too-distant past, highlighting a lack of awesome female role models in action movies was, well, heroic. Joss Whedon did it, as did the sociologist Kathryn Gilpatric. Today’s lengthy roster of onscreen action heroines—Katniss, Black Widow, Kristen Stewart’s Snow White—raises a different issue, one tackled last week by Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress: If female action heroes need to be role models, what should they model?

Rosenberg suggests that female heroes don’t have to embody (only) alpha ideals: strength, bravery, protectiveness. They can be brainy or tactful or maternal. In fact, action films might be more interesting if heroines drew on traditionally female traits: There are many ways to kick butt, after all, and presumably viewers would enjoy the variety. Rosenberg doesn’t mark off physical prowess as a “guy thing.” She is only proposing that lady headliners embrace cunning and kickboxing in equal measure—advice that, when you think about it, could apply just as well to male action stars.

Which actually got us wondering: If “female” means having more in your arsenal than the ability to flatten a subway car, have superheroes been trending “female” for a while now? Scrappy world-savers like Spider-Man and Iron Man are lithe and athletic, rather than invincible towers of brawn. They rely on their wits as much as they do on brute force. And the truly massive ones—Hulk, Thor, or Wolverine, for instance—are without fail matched against even bigger adversaries in the final sequence, most likely because viewers love an underdog and want to see their favorites triumph through will, smarts, and character, not just might.

Rosenberg reflects:

I wonder if part of the challenge [in representing female action stars] is that male action heroes are heightened versions of ideals and traits men are already supposed to aspire to—strength, decisiveness, acting as protectors. If you’re going to put women in those roles, you’re both having female characters take on male-affiliated traits, and then heightening them.

But this ignores the fact that male action heroes also demonstrate heightened versions of female-affiliated traits—and perhaps always have. But when Bond uses tact to finagle intel from a counter-agent or Dr. Charles Xavier applies his mutant powers to read minds, no one comments breathlessly on the gender-bending progressiveness.

To me, the most fraught questions surrounding the representation of female action heroes actually have to do with sexuality. The real, enduring difference between depictions of world-saving men and women? Women use sex appeal as a weapon far more than guys do. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’s Jane Carter seduces her way inside Brij Nath’s inner chambers for satellite override codes. The three Charlie’s Angels, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, the Batman saga’s Poison Ivy and Catwoman, Jennifer Garner’s superspy on Alias—all of them inevitably reach a point in their missions where they must feign desire for a powerful male to get what they want. Even Katniss Everdeen realizes that she can improve her odds by playing up a lukewarm romance with fellow District 12 tribute Peeta. So is this empowering or exploitative? If female action heroes excel in marshalling their sexuality, does that take away from their athletic or mental feats?

Maybe it’s just all about balance. There’s nothing wrong with tough women manipulating weak-willed men with their womanly charms. It would just be nice to see, say, Spider-Man have to sweet talk his way past a gun-toting female guard for once.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/14/female_action_heroes_they_re_like_male_action_heroes_but_sexier_.html

[GWHH]

If Female Action Heroes Need To Be Role Models, What Should They Model?

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 8, 2012 at 10:09 am

I’m normally of the belief that in pop culture, equality comes in two stages. First, members of a minority group, or of a group like women that are a majority but are poorly rendered in that space, get to be presented as admirable. Second, when they’ve achieved enough penetration into the culture, every portrayal of members in that group can stop being limited by the need to be admirable, to represent for everyone else. I tend to be impatient to get to the second half of that stage, because it’s often more interesting. The current Avengers continuity’s found ways to make Captain America melancholy and funny, but I’d probably rather spend time with Tony Stark.

Over at Women and Hollywood, Inkoo Kang argues that we still don’t have enough female action heroes to be at that second stage, and points out that at least some observers are still stuck on analyzing action heroines’ bodies rather than looking at their personalities:

It must be granted that many of today’s action heroes are largely immune from the moral scrutiny that accompanies the arrival of most action heroines on the big screen. People love Iron Man for being a self-absorbed grumposaur, but Katniss Everdeen has Manohla Dargis, arguably the country’s most important female critic, wringing her hands about how the actress who plays her might be too curvy. But a playful superhero figure like Iron Man comes after decades and decades of “role model” action heroes like Superman, Spiderman, and Captain America. Iron Man, Hancock, and their snarky ilk are counterreactions to the square, goody-goody “role model” heroes of yesteryear. Hence, contemporary male action heroes are, in a sense, excused from having to be role models, since so many other characters already fit that niche.

I wonder if part of the challenge here is that while male action heroes are heightened version of ideals and traits men are already supposed to aspire to—strength, decisiveness, acting as protectors. If you’re going to put women in those roles, you’re both having female characters take on male-affiliated traits, and then heightening them.

And that raises the question of if action heroines are supposed to be role models, what, overall, are they supposed to model? Should female action heroes just fit into the same sorts of slots represented by men, whether it’s the teenaged glee and snark of Spider-Man, the struggle for self-control of the Hulk, the patriotism and ethics of Captain America? Or should we argue that, just as action choreography for women would be more interesting and creative if it draws on different styles and acknowledges differences in strength between men and women, action heroines should model different behaviors and priorities, too? The Alien franchise got a lot out of portraying the redirected maternal force as a tremendously powerful force of nature. And in The Avengers, Black Widow’s the person to recognize when force is no longer the solution, and to use tact and cleverness to turn off the source of the attack at its spigot—violence is useful in that it helps her get where she needs to go, but it is not actually the solution to the attack. The Avengers don’t beat Loki’s forces: they out-manuver them. It’s terrific to model that strength and protectiveness are qualities that don’t belong solely to boys or men. But more thoughtful movies about what femininity brings to the table in fraught situations would make for more interesting storytelling, and more nuanced role models.

[BadIdeas]

Erik Selvig was actually the one to figure out how to close the portal…

[Author]

Posts