Action Film – Bitch Flicks

Nobody Puts Susan Cooper in the Basement: Melissa McCarthy and Skillful, Competent Violence in Film

As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

This guest post by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

I love violent women. Maybe this is an odd thing to say; maybe it’s not. And I should qualify my statement by specifying that I love violent women in TV and film, not at my local grocery store. But oh, how I love a self-possessed Milla Jovovich stomping her thick-soled boot squarely into some thug’s gut, or a zinger-slinging Sarah Michelle Gellar tossing a spike straight through a vampire’s sternum.

But far too often it seems that filmmakers find violent women more acceptable when those women are either victims retaliating against violence (like in almost every horror movie ever made. ever.), psychopaths (Fatal Attraction; Basic Instinct; To Die For), or extorted to choose violence over death (Nikita). The spotlight rarely shines on women who are required to be violent during the course of their (lawful) day-to-day jobs, and who are not only competent, but who excel at those jobs. Yes, we have officers of the law Marge Gunderson (Fargo) and Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs); but Marge is part of a male-dominated ensemble, and Clarice is an agent-in-training who is used as a pawn and lied to by her male superior, and who relies on the help of a male criminal for clues and, in a way, mentorship.

Clarice can’t seem to shake Hannibal

But what happens when a woman is in a lawful profession, is competent, and is given the tools and information she needs to do her job? Well, this kind of woman hasn’t starred in many films, which is why the Paul Feig vehicle Spy starring Melissa McCarthy is such a…dare I say revolution?

As I considered Spy and the way McCarthy, playing CIA agent Susan Cooper, uses and responds to violence throughout the film, I asked myself if she truly was a new mold of a violent woman in film:

Is she being hunted? No.
Is she avenging a violence (physical, sexual) done against her? Nope.
Is she used for window dressing as men in the film kick ass? Not a chance.
Is she fully possessed of her faculties (i.e. no memory loss, mental illness)? She sure as hell is.

But I didn’t stop after I’d checked all of the boxes. I wanted to know what made Spy different from Feig’s other film featuring female law-enforcement agents, The Heat (2013). It isn’t just that Spy gives us a glamor—in McCarthy’s hair, makeup, and wardrobe (eventually), the decadent settings, and the European luxury. And it isn’t just that Spy takes its female lead very seriously—though it’s a comedy, Susan Cooper is self-aware and always in on the joke, never the joke itself. Spy is, however, different from The Heat—and from most other female-driven films—in how its main character uses violence in a competent, purposeful, and honest way.

Our first glimpse into Susan’s efficiency and…exuberance with violence is when the deputy director (Allison Janney) plays a decade-old video showing Cooper dive-rolling and shooting expertly through a training exercise. Cooper is fast and accurate, and although she seems embarrassed about the video, her supervisor is openly impressed.

Janney is another female actor I’d like to see kick some ass

Once Cooper’s mission starts, she takes step after step into more and more violence, and with each new challenge—a knife fight with a bomber in Paris; a quick-thinking trip-and-push in Rome; an in-flight spar with an armed flight attendant—she demonstrates both a willingness to be violent and a skillfulness to execute what needs to be done.

But Cooper’s best tricks start in Budapest, where she becomes more violent both physically as well as verbally. Cooper must lie to Rayna (Rose Byrne) to cover her identity, and, in the blink of an eye, she transforms into a filthy-mouthed bodyguard (“good gravy” replaced with “limp-dicked unicorn”). After this transition, Cooper’s quick-on-her-feet actions range from assaulting a man with her cell phone to making an impromptu decoy and smashing a fire extinguisher onto the heads of two bodyguards to escape capture.

Feig, as a director of female violence, and McCarthy, as the subject acting out this violence, shine in their respective roles, but they shine brightest during the beautifully choreographed fight between Cooper and a French female baddie in a green jumpsuit. The fight takes place in the kitchen of a nightclub, and Cooper uses dinner rolls, a baguette, frying pans, and finally a kitchen knife to attack and defend. As she dodges swings and blows, her reactions are sharp and athletic. Cooper grabs her opponent by the waist and brings her to ground like she is just a sack of rice; she plunges a knife into her opponent’s palm. And on the other side of the camera, Feig gives McCarthy the same treatment he gave Jude Law at the start of the movie when Law (playing CIA agent Bradley Fine), perfectly coifed and tuxedoed, does slow motion roundhouse kicks at plate-faced bodyguards. As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

One could make an argument that Susan Cooper must adopt a persona in order to explore this violence, and that it does not represent the “true” woman—the woman who bakes, has trouble getting the bartender’s attention, and might wear a “lumpy, pumpkin sack-dress” out to dinner. But I don’t agree with that argument. Cooper’s violence is not just a persona she wears in the field. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who follows the jumpsuit-wearing assassin into the kitchen, seeking out the conflict rather than hiding from it. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who head-butts Bradley Fine when she’s tied up in a dungeon. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who gets a field promotion because she has, in essence, saved the goddamned day.

Too long have men had the privilege of having so much fun (and looking so good) with violence in film. Let’s hope that more female directors pick up this mantle, and that more women are given the opportunity to shine as the centers of films where they can punch, kick, and shoot without the added context of victimhood or psychopathy. Give us more opportunities to be violent. Because, filmmakers, let’s be honest: it’s about time.

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects and follow her on Twitter.

‘Salt’: A Refreshing Genderless Lens

This guest post by Cameron Airen appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Violent films with a female at their center tend to be viewed differently than violent films with a male lead. When a woman is in this role, it’s controversial. When a man is in the same type of role, it’s a part of who he is as a human being. We’ve become numb to the violence that men engage in onscreen. As a result, we don’t criticize it like we do when a woman is engaging in it. Also, female leads in violent films are usually represented differently than male leads in the same type of film. Because we are more accepting of violent films with male leads than with female leads, she needs to be constructed differently. Usually it’s her sex appeal that makes her more tolerable to conduct violence, fetishizing her in order to justify her acts. Or her sexual power is her weapon and she succeeds at getting what she wants with it. Or, she’s guided by a male partner almost the entire way through who seems to somehow “know the way” and it’s often the “right way.” She wouldn’t succeed without him. Somehow, we are unable to see her as an independent, powerful being just by her human self-without a man, without needing to be sexy, without needing to give sex in order to have more power.

The film Salt (2010) takes a different approach.

In many ways, Salt is the action film that feminists have dreamed of. Its female lead character, played by Angelina Jolie, does not depend on her being female. What Salt does well is eliminate gender from its focus. Most action films with a female lead are clearly marked by gender. Instead of her character being motivated by experiences that have happened to her because she’s a woman (like in Thelma and Louise or Kill Bill), she’s driven by non-gendered circumstances. In fact, Salt is never once referred to as being a woman/female in the film. She is only referred to as “Salt” or a spy. Whereas, in other films like Kill Bill, she is known as The Bride and is committed to take revenge based on what happened with her wedding and an unborn child. The Bride’s character, experiences, and revenge is all about gender. Even though the lead in Salt was originally meant for Tom Cruise and the film was slightly changed for a female, Salt isn’t characterized by gender. Salt crosses all kinds of gender lines, including going as a “male” disguise, towards the end of the film, to kill the president of the United States. Since Salt’s character isn’t motivated or marked by gender in a way that fuels the story, any gender could easily play her.

Despite its plot holes, Salt is a solid action film. Evelyn Salt is a CIA officer accused of being a Russian spy. One of the most interesting points of the film is how ambiguous her character is. We don’t know whose side she’s on and whether we should root for her or not. While the plot is confusing, it’s refreshing to have a female action lead whose intentions are ambiguous, as we are starting to see onscreen more today.

Salt has some of the best violent scenes seen in an action film. After Salt has been accused of being a Russian spy, she tries to escape the CIA building. Her colleagues try to trap her but she makes a bomb to blow down the doors and runs away. Have we ever seen a woman make a bomb in a film before? This might be a first for women in film and it’s no surprise that Jolie is the one to instigate it. Not only is Salt’s action unrestricted by a female lead but Jolie performed her own stunts.

After Salt escapes and scales a tall apartment building, she gets cornered by the CIA and jumps off of an overpass onto a moving semi truck driving on the highway. The film’s already frenetic pace ratchets up another notch and actually gets even better when Salt meets up with Orlov, the Russian man who trained her. At a barge, Orlov has her husband killed right in front of her eyes by her Russian comrades. Salt has to hide her tears and emotions so that her comrades don’t suspect her as being a traitor. Later, when alone with Orlov, she makes no hesitation in killing him with a broken liquor bottle, then goes on to wipe out the rest of the men on crew with a machine gun and hand grenades. Salt doesn’t stop there. She lets herself get arrested after appearing to kill the Russian president. Handcuffed in the back of a police car, she knocks out the officers next to her, then tasers the driver and tries to steer the car. At this point, we have no idea why Salt let herself get caught, but the action scenes keep you at the edge of your seat.

One of the best scenes in Salt is after Salt is placed in handcuffs once again, and is being escorted out of the White House up a flight of stairs. Winter, her colleague who betrayed her and orchestrated her husband’s kidnapping, is waiting for her at the top of the stairs with a pair of scissors in hand. When she approaches him, Salt manages to wrap her handcuffs around Winter’s neck as her body jumps over the stair railing and chokes him to death. The way she fearlessly snatches Winter’s neck with her chain and lets her body dangle from the top of a staircase with her face bloody from fighting Winter is a creative and incredible scene that I’ve never seen in a film before.

One of the more interesting parts that the film lacks is a sex scene. We don’t once see Jolie in her underwear or naked. In fact, she is fully clothed the entire time except in the very beginning scene when she’s being tortured in a non-sexual way. As much as I wanted to see a sex scene with Jolie, I was happy that the film didn’t actually have one. When do we ever not see a hot, steamy scene with the beautiful and sexy, Jolie? This film somehow got away with it and it’s a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t her sexuality that saved her. Typically, a woman is identified by her “sex,” but in Salt, she is simply a human being. Sexual or not, we don’t know. But, her “sex/gender” makes no difference and is not a signifying factor of her character or action. We rarely see a woman kick ass without sexualizing her in some way. It’s great when women can be sexual beings and kick ass onscreen, but they tend to be oversexualized in a way that guides their character.

My biggest criticism with Salt is that it lacks diversity. Even though there is a female lead and a main Black male character (who doesn’t get killed), the rest of the main cast is white and male. There are barely any other women in Salt besides Jolie. Sometimes, we think that diversity is achieved simply by having a female lead even if the rest of the cast is male. But, this is false, and it would have been an even better film if there were more women in it. What Salt succeeds in is by having a mostly genderless lens in terms of the main character, and not defining her by sex. Salt is a refreshing action film with a female lead who has some serious violent scenes that will make one hunger for more.

Cameron Airen is a queer feminist with a M.A. in Anthropology and Social Change. When she’s not getting her fix from watching women in violent action films, Cameron is working on creating a (mostly) vegan cookbook. She resides in Berkeley, Calif. You can follow her on Twitter @cameronairen.

‘Terminator Genisys’: Not My Sarah Connor

Sarah Connor teams up with the Terminator

This guest post by Liz LaBrocca appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Terminator Genisys, the fifth installment in the Terminator franchise, reminds you how much you loved Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day while simultaneously destroying everything that made the first two movies exciting, scary, and romantic. In particular, Sarah Connor, damsel in distress turned warrior, has been reduced to a quippy, bland plot device instead of the powerful ready-made warrior she could have been.

The greatness of Sarah Connor’s character (as played by Linda Hamilton) between T1 and T2 was her transition from a frightened young girl to a self-made soldier. Within the first movie alone, we see her transformation from a terrified waitress in need of Kyle Reese’s (Michael Biehn) protection to a woman who is learning that she’s more capable than she ever believed. As their brief love is budding, she bandages one of his wounds. He compliments her field dressing and she, knowing now what her future holds, sadly replies, “Thanks, it’s my first.” By the end of the movie she is trying her best to save his life, commanding him (“Move, Soldier!”) to get up and keep fighting with her. In the end, he sacrifices himself in his best effort to save her and she is left to carry his child, future resistance leader John Connor, and the heavy burden of preparing both of them for the coming nuclear apocalypse.

Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in The Terminator calls the police to come to her rescue. — Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in *The Terminator* calls the police to come to her rescue

In T2, we jump ten years into the future where John Connor is a wayward teenager, living in a foster home while Sarah is institutionalized for paranoid delusions. She has spent the past decade living with various men in order to learn as much as she can about arming and defending herself. We’re introduced to her in the institution as she does chin-ups on her overturned bed frame to keep herself physically primed for the coming war. While John and the reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) are coming to rescue Sarah from the T-1000 in the psych ward, she has already mostly broken out on her own. Hamilton’s T2 Sarah Connor was muscular, sweaty, and terse. She looked like someone who had spent a decade physically and emotionally preparing for a nuclear war. At the same time, it was clear that she deeply cared about her son and was struggling with how to be a mother in a world that only she knows is destined to be destroyed. She reflects that the Terminator, ironically, ends up being the best father figure John has known in the absence of Reese.

Linda Hamilton transformed for Terminator 2: Judgement Day’s warrior Sarah Connor — Linda Hamilton transformed for *Terminator 2: Judgement Day*’s warrior Sarah Connor

We were given so little of Sarah in the preview of Genisys, I was holding onto a little hope that she wouldn’t be totally stripped of her mettle as a result of losing her original character arc. In Terminator Genisys, Sarah (played by Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones) has been raised by the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) since she was 9. He was sent back in time to protect her from a T-1000 that had been sent to kill her and her family. There are plenty of reviews that discuss the convoluted time problems and horrifyingly dull plot in Genisys, so I’ll spare you.

Sarah meets Reese (Jai Courtney) knowing that she will need to have sex with this man, regardless of how she feels, to save the human race. It’s an awkward problem that’s dealt with in Schwarzenegger one-liners about mating and a weak attempt at a narrative theme of free will versus destiny. Her dialogue is full of jokes and one-liners instead of the brusque, efficient speech patterns you’d associate with a woman who spent her formative years with a Terminator who has still, several decades later, not mastered the art of smiling despite his detailed files on human anatomy. What was once a heated, passionate romance in the midst of a life-altering conflict, is boiled down to a silly comedy subplot: how does Sarah tell Reese that he’s the father of his best friend and mentor? This problem is further compounded by the painful lack of chemistry between Clarke and Courtney. The one upside to this forced romance subplot is that Sarah’s need to be impregnated is nullified by the vilification of John Connor. The film ends with her ability to choose to be with Reese instead of needing to be with Reese. But perhaps a more interesting, and more feminist, ending would be her choosing to not be with Reese at all.

Emilia Clarke wearing the iconic leather jacket as Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys — Emilia Clarke wearing the iconic leather jacket as Sarah Connor in *Terminator Genisys*

The problem of Sarah’s character also lies within the casting of Emilia Clarke. While Courtney is a big, hulking man, who looks like he’s been slamming protein shakes in his post-apocalyptic future wasteland home (in T1 children hunt rats for food), Sarah looks as though she’s barely run a mile in preparation for the impending war she’s about to fight. Sure, they arm her with a bunch of guns and she looks really cool. She even looks a bit like Linda Hamilton. But she doesn’t look strong the way Linda Hamilton looked strong in T2. She doesn’t look like she has spent her youth and early adulthood physically training to be a fighter.

What it boils down to is that Courtney was cast in the traditional image of protector, even though the intention of the storyline was to subvert that role and have Sarah be the savior. It didn’t matter that he looks absolutely nothing like Michael Biehn because his perfectly chiseled abs looked great during naked time travel. He can even be hit by a car on the freeway with barely any consequences. In contrast, Biehn’s Reese was cut but lean; he was dirty and on edge. He looked like someone who came from a nuclear wasteland where meals were scarce and the threat of death was constant. He could be injured and killed. Had both actors been cast more appropriately in Genisys, she and Reese could have at least stood side by side as a team of equals ready to fight Cyberdyne via Genisys.

Jai Courtney (left) and Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese respectively

There was potential for this character to be extremely interesting. She could have been a darker, off-beat female heroine. She could have been the result of a human who spent her life training to be a warrior by an emotionless robot. But because the studio chose to play it safe and go for mass appeal and a PG-13 rating, we’re left with a watered-down version of the original character. Sarah Connor’s character was exactly what I was afraid she would end up being: a shallow plot device who is only there to make sure we know what’s happening in the new present and to fret over her impending romance with Reese. She is a shadow of an action hero, saying her lines but never embodying the role.

Liz LaBrocca is a freelance writer and editor living in Northampton, Massachusetts. She’s Co-Editor in Chief of The Soapbox, an online platform for amplifying the voices of female-identifying creators. You can follow her writing, cooking, and very important opinions on Twitter and Instagram.

Call For Writers: Dystopian Landscapes

Our theme week for July 2015 will be Dystopian Landscapes.

The Oxford Dictionary defines dystopia as “An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.” Literature and pop culture are brimming with examples of dystopian landscapes because they serve as a vehicle through which we can follow certain ills in society to their potentially logical and tragic conclusions. Common themes explored include: the stratification of wealth, dwindling resources, race relations, patriarchy, criminalization of youth, environmental concerns, consumerism, and totalitarianism.

Though sci-fi representations of dystopian landscapes are probably the most common with classics like Soylent Green (where the last remaining source of nutrition is humans) or the more recent comic book-based Snowpiercer (where the last of humanity lives aboard a train because the world was destroyed in an attempt to combat climate change), other genres also have a their own excavations of dystopian themes. Horror films are particularly fruitful with their varied examination of the zombie apocalypse. Zombies throughout time have articulated fears of everything from consumer culture (Dawn of the Dead) to the military (28 Days Later) to medical pandemics (World War Z) to class warfare (Land of the Dead).

Then there are action/sci-fi genre hybrids that take on dystopia. 1990’s action-packed Total Recall (loosely based on a short story by legendary sci-fi dystopian writer Philip K. Dick) imagines a future in which capitalism and colonialism run rampant, leading to the privatization of air and water on colonized Mars. The recent Mad Max: Fury Road is an excellent example of an action movie tackling the dystopian landscape, in which all the world is a desert, and the remainder of humanity struggles over natural resources like gasoline and water. The line, “Who killed the world?” encapsulates the film’s accusation that patriarchy and toxic masculinity are the cause of great misery and, perhaps, the end of all life on earth.

There are also more literary dramas like The Road that depict dystopian landscapes in an effort to articulate what becomes of the nature of humanity when all the rules and trappings of society are lost. Another literary drama, The Handmaid’s Tale (based on Margaret Atwood’s eponymous feminist novel), investigates a future in which religious totalitarianism has laid claim to the female body.

What does the end of everything show us about ourselves? What will the end of everything look like? What lessons can we learn to avoid these dire outcomes?

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, July 24 by midnight.

The Road

The Handmaid’s Tale

Snowpiercer

Mad Max

Dawn of the Dead

Day of the Dead

Return of the Living Dead

Terminator

The Giver

Interstellar

Planet of the Apes

Land of the Dead

Reign of Fire

I Am Legend

Dr. Who

28 Days Later

The Last Man on Earth

Mad Max: Fury Road

Battle Royale

The Hunger Games

Children of Men

Road Warrior

Star Wars

Jericho

The Matrix

Soylent Green

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

Firefly

A Clockwork Orange

Total Recall

Escape from New York

Elysium

Blade Runner

The Walking Dead

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Allows Audiences to Both Enjoy and Problematize Hypermasculinity

As the evil dictator of the territory he occupies in a post-apocalyptic world, he demands more and more gasoline (which is in rare supply), while withholding water from his starved and sickly citizens. He also has a collection of women that he imprisons and uses for breeding purposes. In this single character we see some of the worst aspects of rampant hyper-masculinity condensed into one truly horrifying man.

This guest post by Elizabeth King appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

When I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road, I didn’t know anything about the film except that it was supposed to be “really, really good.” After leaving the movie theater, I was completely stunned. The film takes such a unique approach to a very common Hollywood action plot that it would be difficult not to be impressed with the creativity of Fury Road’s director, George Miller. Fury Road is also stunningly self-aware, and that alone makes it stand out in its genre. But the true creative genius is that the film includes all of the problematic, hyper-masculine core elements of action movies, but they are portrayed in such a way that audiences are not merely entertained by those elements, they also cannot help but to recognize them as problematic.

Hallmarks of a typical action movie are scenes and characters that include violence, destruction, bulging muscles, fire, fast cars, and attractive (but mostly irrelevant to the plot) women. Action movies revel in and glorify hyper-masculine imagery, particularly violence, and have little to no self-reflection regarding the destruction, havoc, and exploitation that results from uncritically embracing hyper-masculine values. Titles like Die Hard, The Matrix, and Terminator quickly come to mind as exemplars of this type of entertainment.

In Fury Road, oppressive violence and exploitation are personified in the legion of antagonists: the war boys and their villainous leader, Immortan Joe. Immortan is almost too perfect in this regard. As the evil dictator of the territory he occupies in a post-apocalyptic world, he demands more and more gasoline (which is in rare supply), while withholding water from his starved and sickly citizens. He also has a collection of women that he imprisons and uses for breeding purposes. In this single character we see some of the worst aspects of rampant hyper-masculinity condensed into one truly horrifying man.

What’s more is that Immortan Joe and his warboys all drive huge, emissions spewing, weaponized vehicles, designed to easily rip across their barren desert landscape and kill their enemies in many creative ways. They thrive off of consumption, exploitation of resources, and find glory in killing. They are (of course) all armed with excessively rigged-up guns, and when their war party of cars is assembled, the image is so on the nose that it is almost comical. There are entire scenes that are so overly masculinized that they become absurd.

But this is, in large part, the beauty of the film. Fury Road delivers all the high speed vehicles, bloodthirsty men, car chases, and explosions we want and expect in action movies, but these images are intentionally presented in such an extreme manner, rendering them absurd; the audience can’t help but have their exhilaration filtered through criticism. Fury Road is not escapist like so many other films in the action genre. On the contrary, it uses the spectacle of action tropes as a means of calling attention to the problems with those tropes.

The character of Max also fulfills many stereotypical masculine traits. He is stoic, quiet, a loner, and not afraid to wield a weapon. Much of his dialogue is grunting. While he demonstrates many masculine qualities, these traits are not pushed to the extreme limits like they are with Immortan Joe. In addition to being gruff and stoic, Max is also cooperative, level-headed, and willing to defer to the expertise and skills of women. Max’s masculinity is nuanced. It is the product of the state of the society he lives in, but he does not buy into the oppressive/ destructive narrative.

Max demonstrates that masculinity can embraced without it necessarily being brutish or a force force for destruction. Compared to Immortan and the warboys, Max’s character communicates that masculinity itself is not what creates oppression, but when the core features of traditional masculinity go unchecked and become dominant (a la Immortan Joe), it can only spell disaster.

Elizabeth King is a freelance writer based in Chicago, Ill. She is a feminist, environmentalist, and ice cream enthusiast. You can find her on Twitter @ekingc, and read more of her work on her website: www.elizabethcking.com.

‘Mad Max’: Fury Road Is a Fun Movie. It’s a Solid Action Flick. But Is It Feminist™?

However, I’d argue that ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ contains more critique of patriarchy and entrenched inequality than critics or even some fans have given it credit for.

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in 'Mad Max: Fury Road' — *Mad Max: Fury Road*

This guess post by Rebecca Cohen previously appeared at Rebecca’s Random Crap and is cross-posted with permission.

Many who devote ourselves to the struggle for gender equality want to claim this movie as our own. Others have said feminists need to demand more from our entertainment than Mad Max: Fury Road actually delivers.

To wit:

Feminism doesn’t simply mean women getting to partake in typical badass “guy stuff.” Feminism is about redefining our social value system.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) May 19, 2015

Mad Max‘s villains are caricatures of misogyny which makes overt misogynists angry but does not challenge more prevalent forms of sexism.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) May 19, 2015

A lot of modern feminist readings of media boil down to 1. Is there a lady? 2. Does she do something cool? It’s a weakening of the theory.

— Sarah Argodale (@sarahargodale) May 19, 2015

I really don’t get how anyone could sit through 120 minutes of pure violent spectacle and leave believing they saw a critique of violence.

— Jonathan McIntosh (@radicalbytes) May 19, 2015

They’re right. Our culture glorifies violence, equates strength and power with violence, and attributes that strength and power to men. While violence may sometimes be necessary in self-defense or in rebellion against oppression, the glorification of violence is distinctly patriarchal. We can’t fight patriarchy’s values by adopting them. We can’t simply substitute a woman in the place of a man, giving her strength and power according to patriarchy’s narrow definition, and call it feminist. There’s nothing revolutionary about masculine power fantasies, even with a woman at the center of them.

But. They’re also wrong. They’re wrong about Fury Road and exactly what’s going on in that movie.

I want to say, as a side note, that there’s nothing wrong with fantasies of violent rebellion against violent oppression. When you experience the frustration of being dehumanized and marginalized and discriminated against, you need catharsis. It’s exhilarating. It’s fun. It’s necessary. But, OK – maybe if we want to narrowly define what makes a “feminist film,” we can say it’s not, strictly speaking, feminist.

However, I’d argue that Mad Max: Fury Road contains more critique of patriarchy and entrenched inequality than critics or even some fans have given it credit for.

Yes, the villains are caricatures, or at least, they’re cartoonishly exaggerated – as everything in the movie is. The whole thing is basically a cartoon. But we don’t have to read the movie so literally. To say that a narrative must literally portray the dismantling of realistic social and economic systems is setting the bar too high. A message about social justice, like any message, can be conveyed symbolically or subtextually. Science fiction has always done that. Sometimes a flame-throwing guitar is NOT just a flame-throwing guitar. Well, OK. It’s just a flame-throwing guitar. But some of the other stuff has meaning.

Fury Road depicts a patriarchal society controlled by a small and very powerful elite. It’s not accidental that all the warlords in the movie are older white men. They even have ailments that make them each of them physically deformed and weak – Immortan Joe has visible abscesses all over his back and requires an apparatus to breathe – highlighting that their power doesn’t rely on their own physical strength. Their power is systemic. They control others through religion/ideology (promising the War Boys honor and entry to Valhalla) and hoarding of resources (most obviously water). The 1 percent, if you will, keep the rest of the population in line by forcing them to rely on whatever meager allowance of resources the warlords dole out. Men and boys are exploited for labor and as foot soldiers. Women are exploited for their sexual and reproductive capacities. No, it’s not subtle, but it’s not empty action movie nonsense either.

The narrative is driven (heh) by women exercising their agency. It’s easy to see the central plot as an old, sexist trope: rival characters battling over possession of damsels in distress. But Fury Road turns the trope on its head; it’s the damsels who engineer their own escape. “We are not things” is the memorable line, but their scrawled message, “Our babies will not grow up to be warlords,” is the key to understanding Fury Road’s critique of patriarchal systems. The “wives” want more than just escape from sexual slavery; they want to stop contributing to the oppressive systems around them. The repeated question, “Who killed the world?” implies a larger critique as well – it was a male-dominated society which created this apocalypse and men who are responsible for current conditions.

Another trope that gets turned on its head is the contrast between society and wilderness. Traditionally wilderness is understood as a dangerous place for women, who are too weak and vulnerable to withstand its dangers. They need the protection of society. But in Fury Road, society, i.e. The Citadel, is the dangerous place. The women experience relative safety only when they reach the wilderness. The Vuvalini, Furiosa’s matriarchal tribe, may struggle to survive in a barren wasteland, but they’re still better off than women living under the protection of a warlord, who protects them only from other men. Away from male-dominated society, they’re safe.

The most feminist yet least talked about aspect of the film might be Nux’s story. He starts out happily ready to die in glory on behalf of Immortan Joe, but he learns that there’s another way. When Capable discovers him hiding in the War Rig, she treats him with tenderness instead of vengefulness. Nux discovers something to live for, rather than something to die for. He finds a bit of the redemption Max and Furiosa are also seeking.

Ultimately, Furiosa’s rebellion isn’t just an escape or revenge fantasy; instead we see an exploited people liberated. So the film asserts the need to overturn oppressive systems, and depicts a whole society benefiting from feminism – men and women alike.

Of course, there are problems. Nux’s rejection of warrior ideology might be more powerful if he had been allowed to live. Instead, he simply dies for a better cause, and the movie misses the chance to affirm that death isn’t really glorious. Also the “wives” aren’t the developed characters they could and should be. The narrative revolves around them, yet they barely assert individual identities. It’s hard to accept the claim that they’re “not things,” when they’re beautiful but rather anonymous for most of the movie. The role of the Vuvalini is also a bit disappointing; they appear in the narrative, strong and capable, possessing nearly forgotten knowledge and values… only to die one by one. They might as well have been wearing red Star Trek shirts.

So maybe this isn’t a feminist movie? Fantasy violence probably doesn’t help dismantle patriarchy. It really doesn’t. But then again there is more to Fury Road than that. It offers more than a tough woman killing cartoon misogynist bad guys. There is a narrative about social structures and the nature of power.

OK. In the end, we’re not going to liberate anyone from oppression by driving fast and skeet shooting motorcycles. Action movies are not ever going to be a serious and meaningful way to talk about feminism, in the strictest sense. But perhaps we should differentiate between a feminist movie, and a movie feminists can really enjoy. Fury Road is definitely at least one of those two things.

Rebecca Cohen is the creator of the webcomic The Adventures of Gyno-Star, the world’s first (and possibly only) explicitly feminist superhero comic.

Why You MUST Go See ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

I would extend this – the film actually details how EVERYONE is enslaved by patriarchy – yes, the women are the sex slaves whose bodies are raped as well as forced into producing breast milk to feed male troops, but the male minions are also enslaved to the dystopian war machine and turned into heartless warriors and slave-laborers.

This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Skirt Collective and is cross-posted with permission.

Much has been made of the call by Aaron Clarey in his piece “Why You Should Not Go See Mad Max: Feminist Road.” As many pieces have discussed Clarey’s ridiculous, hyper-macho douchery (as here, here, here, and here), I will instead offer a counter call – instead of “mancotting” the film as Clarey begs “real men and real women” to do, I urge you to GO SEE IT! Go now!

Here is part of Clarey’s original call for a boycott of the film:

“[D]o yourself and all men across the world a favor. Not only REFUSE to see the movie, but spread the word to as many men as possible. Not all of them have the keen eye we do here at ROK. And most will be taken in by fire tornadoes and explosions. Because if they sheepishly attend and Fury Road is a blockbuster, then you, me, and all the other men (and real women) in the world will never be able to see a real action movie ever again that doesn’t contain some damn political lecture or moray about feminism, SJW-ing, and socialism.”

In response, here is my counter feminist call to action:

Do yourself and others a favor – See Mad Max: Fury Road and tell as many humans as you know to see the film, to discuss it on social media, to decry the Men’s Rights Activists aiming to make the world a hyper-patriarchal dystopia where heterosexual macho types horde all the power with their weapons of choice, namely violence, oppression, rape, enslavement, and hatred.

Not all people will recognize the importance of supporting this film, many may go for the special effects and the popcorn, but even if they don’t attend wearing “This is what a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirts, they will still be treated to a great action movie which enacts feminism in both content and form. Those who see the film will help to pave a future where real humans can enjoy movies that reflect the real world, which is made up of women AND men, boys AND girls, where gender is a continuum and, NO, romance and baby-making is not the be all and end all of life.

See Mad Max: Fury Road. See it as soon as possible.

See it because Charlize Theron is amazing, Tom Hardy is a new and improved Max, because the action is breathtaking and achieved with very little CGI, see it to piss-off the nay-saying Men’s Rights Activists and calling for a boycott of “feminist propaganda.”

See it because director George Miller happily proclaims: “I Can’t Help but Be a Feminist” and believes women are capable as actors and directors and are essential to telling imaginative, important stories – something that is all too rare a belief in Hollywood, where in the last several years, women directed fewer than 2 percent of top-grossing movies.

See it because it was edited by a woman, Margaret Sixel.

See it because Eve Ensler led workshops about violence against women with the cast and crew.

See it because, as MRA Clarey readily admits (perhaps his one correct point), Hollywood DOES condition us. As Carolyn Cox of The Mary Sue puts it,

“By admitting they’re threatened by Charlize Theron…Clarey and his commenters are also agreeing that the media we consume and the stories we tell are hugely important.”

See it because while Clarey worries women might be conditioned to want to be like Imperator Furiosa rather than Sophia Loren (I know, WTF???) we can use the conditioning that is part of entertainment to feminist purpose so that, as Melissa Silverstein puts it,

“a little girl can dream of being a hero just as much as a little boy can because she sees multiple examples of heroic women.”

See it because, as Peter Howell says, “Hollywood doesn’t often let females star in its big ‘tent-pole’ films” because “Male-dominated movie studios don’t believe female action movies make money.” See it because we need to remind Hollywood and MRAs this is false (as Hunger Games, Insurgent, Alien, Terminator and so many other films prove).

See it to disprove Neanderthal thinking on the part of Marvel Comics CEO Ike Perlmutter and Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton who in a leaked email correspondence “proved” female superhero films don’t make money by naming three such films while ignoring the many female-driven films that have made money and ignorning just how many male led superhero films have tanked.

See it because Clarey’s assertions are laughable, and contrary to his claim that “feminism has infiltrated and co-opted Hollywood,” we still have a Hollywood machine driven by a privileged male elite who don’t seem to want to give up their own little version of the world, their very own MRA movement – the “Men Rule Art” hold on the entertainment machine.

See it because there is a culture shift happening in media, a wave that includes GamerGate, calls to stop online harassment (#StoptheTrolls), an evergrowing feminist blogosphere, and a growing call to Hollywood to wake up and smell the feminism.

See it because while some see MRAs as a non-threatening fringe, they DO warrant attention because they consistently and vehemently offer sexism as the answer and their websites and organizations garner thousands of followers. (For some truly horrifying evidence about MRAs beliefs, you need look no further than David Futrelle’s piece on We Hunted the Mammoth which documents some truly horrifying comments running the gamet from espousing beating one’s wife to denouncing one’s daughters if they dare to have college aspirations.)

See it because, as noted by Nicole Sperling in her piece on the film for Entertainment Weekly, it is “one glorious, relentless assault” that may make us “never look at action movies quite the same way again.” As Sperling notes, the film “challenges our perceptions about women and freedom, heroism and extremism.” However, while Sperling claims the film focuses on the “slavery endured by all women,” I would extend this – the film actually details how EVERYONE is enslaved by patriarchy – yes, the women are the sex slaves whose bodies are raped as well as forced into producing breast milk to feed male troops, but the male minions are also enslaved to the dystopian war machine and turned into heartless warriors and slave-laborers. And see it because it does not pit “the matriarchy against the patriarchy” as Ty Burr claimed in his Boston Globe review, but rather brims with relevant political undertones about oppressive political regimes, rape culture, access to clean water, the end of oil, and the ways we are bleeding our planet dry.

See it because Furiosa is not a “degendered…eunech warrior” (as claimed in the Sperling review) but rather a gender-queer, disabled, bad-ass feminist hero who proves that heroism has no one gender, no one body type, no one sexuality.

See it because it suggests it will take collective action rather than one lone (male) hero to save the future. In the film, it takes Furiosa, five female “breeders,” a group of badass gun-toting grannies, as well as Mad Max and other males turned to the feminist cause, to bring down the likes of Immorten Joe – the villain at the heart of this iteration whose names speaks to the fact patriarchy is not “immortal” nor is the concept of your average (macho) Joe a thing to espouse.

See it because we are all on this tiny spinning planet together and only together can we find the “Green Place” espoused in the movie where the water will be clean and people will not be oppressed.

See it because if you have ever doubted the acting chops of Charlize Theron, this movie will convince you of her incredible talent. She is absolutely fierce as Furiosa. In a movie with very little dialogue and limited characterization, Theron is able to exude an intensity of will and palpable strength of character that is on par (if not exceeding) other female heroines such as Ripley and Sarah Connor.

See it for the grannies with their mad survival skills, for the fierce “Breeders” who refuse to be sex slaves; see it for its championing of the one-armed sharp shooter Furiousa. See it because how often do we see women portrayed as better survivors, snipers, and drivers than men?

See it because it is the best feminist road movie since Thelma and Louise. See it because Furiosa’s story is so much more powerful than Black Widow’s. See it because we need to prove Hollywood big wigs wrong and make Clarey and his MRA minions STFU..

Finally, see it to piss off MRAs and show them feminists will not be stopped by their testicle-clutching pleas of superiority. See it for their daughters, and sons, and partners, who can hopefully grow into a world free of their “Immorten Joe” mentality.

See it because, yes, movies matter, and if we want more feminist-friendly blockbusters, we have to prove there is an audience willing to support such movies.

Natalie Wilson teaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is the author of Seduced by Twilight and blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.