Like a lot of women I know, superhero movies don’t really thrill me.
It wasn’t always this way. I have a clear memory of parading through the classrooms of my elementary school, when I was in fourth grade, dressed as Batman. I remember clearly that I felt powerful—not just because I was the Caped Crusader, but because my peers couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl.
Fast forward twenty years, when I enjoyed Batman Begins and looked forward to seeing what Maggie Gyllenahall would do for the role Katie Holmes tiptoed through. Turns out that Ms. Holmes wasn’t the problem with Rachel Dawes–Rachel Dawes was.
Although I had She-Ra action figures as a child, He-Man and Batman proved much more influential. While my childhood proclivities may be more revealing of my own personality than evidence of a lack of strong female characters, as an adult looking at representations of super-human power in the media, it’s more of a man’s world than ever.
Alyssa Rosenberg takes on the issue of female superheroes in the age of testosterone-fueled CGI blockbusters in her superb article “The Invisible Woman,” published this past September in The American Prospect. She talks of how comic books have numerous strong female characters—and a strong, growing female readership—but how Hollywood can’t seem to follow suit.
After a summer during which women flexed their box-office muscle, giving Sex and the City the highest-grossing opening for an R-rated comedy in movie history, it’s not inconceivable to think that a superheroine flick could draw on both the “girls’ night out” crowd and the already broad fan base for comic-book movies. That would be a great development, and not just for the studios that would experience a revenue bump of the kind provided by the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises. Superheroine movies could instantly provide badly needed quality roles for talented female actresses of varying ages and ethnicities, helping to address a gender imbalance in summer movies that’s caused critics like The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis (herself a minority in a world of mostly male reviewers) some serious heartburn.
Here’s hoping 2009 might bring some super-heroines whose shoes and sexuality aren’t her defining features.
The homeless female veteran is a relatively new phenomenon because only recently have so many women — more than 190,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan alone — been serving in the military, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Waynesburg University who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.
The number of homeless female veterans have gone up — from 3 percent of all homeless veterans a decade ago to 5 percent, the VA says.
“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Last March, Salon.com published an article titled “The Private War of Women Soldiers” about widespread sexual assault in the military, which has currently serving women refusing to leave their cots at night for fear of being raped on their way to the latrines. Columbia professor Helen Benedict also writes of the intensity of dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) from combat and sexual assault.
Not everyone realizes how different the Iraq war is for women than any other American war in history. More than 160,500 American female soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East since the war began in 2003, which means one in seven soldiers is a woman. Women now make up 15 percent of active duty forces, four times more than in the 1991 Gulf War. At least 450 women have been wounded in Iraq, and 71 have died — more female casualties and deaths than in the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf Wars combined. And women are fighting in combat.
Officially, the Pentagon prohibits women from serving in ground combat units such as the infantry, citing their lack of upper-body strength and a reluctance to put girls and mothers in harm’s way. But mention this ban to any female soldier in Iraq and she will scoff.
“Of course we were in combat!” said Laura Naylor, 25, who served with the Army Combat Military Police in Baghdad from 2003-04. “We were interchangeable with the infantry. They came to our police stations and helped pull security, and we helped them search houses and search people. That’s how it is in Iraq.”
Women are fighting in ground combat because there is no choice. This is a war with no front lines or safe zones, no hiding from in-flying mortars, car and roadside bombs, and not enough soldiers. As a result, women are coming home with missing limbs, mutilating wounds and severe trauma, just like the men.
With the surge of women serving in the military, there doesn’t seem to be a correlative rise in female soldiers depicted in film. Here are a few movies featuring female soldiers. All plot summaries are from IMDb.
Courage Under Fire (1996)
The pilot of a rescue copter, Captain Karen Walden, died shortly before her helicopter crew was rescued after it crashed in Desert Storm. It first appears that she made a spectacular rescue of a downed helicopter crew, then held her own crew together to fight off the Iraqis after her copter crashed. LT Colonel Serling, who is struggling with his own demons from Desert Storm is assigned to investigate and award her the Medal of Honor. But some conflicting accounts from her crew and soldiers in the area, cause him to be question whether she deserves it. Written by Brian W Martz {B.Martz@Genie.com}
In this dramatic courtroom thriller, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom, defends two stubborn Marines who have been accused of murdering a colleague. Kaffee is known as being lazy and had arranged for a plea bargain. Downey’s Aunt Ginny appoints Cmdr. Galloway to represent him. Also on the legal staff is Lt. Sam Weinberg. The team rounds up many facts and Kaffee is discovering that he is really cut out for trial work. The defense is originally based upon the fact that PFC Santiago, the victim, was given a “CODE RED”. Santiago was basically a screw-up. At Gitmo, screw-ups aren’t tolerated. Especially by Col. Nathan Jessup. In Cuba, Jessup and two senior officers try to give all the help they can, but Kaffee knows something’s fishy. In the conclusion of the film, the fireworks are set off by a confrontation between Jessup and Kaffee. Written by Matt Curtolo {curt@epix.net}
When a crusading chairperson of the military budget committee pressures the would be Navy secretary to begin full gender integration of the service, he offers the chance for a test case for a female trainee in the elite Navy SEALS commando force. Lt. Jordan O’Niel is given the assignment, but no one expects her to succeed in an inhumanly punishing regime that has a standard 60% dropout rate for men. However, O’Niel is determined to prove everyone wrong. Written by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com}
The day after they get the word they’ll go home in two weeks, a group of soldiers from Spokane are ambushed in an Iraqi city. Back stateside we follow four of them – a surgeon who saw too much, a teacher who’s a single mom and who lost a hand in the ambush, an infantry man whose best friend died that day, and a soldier who keeps reliving the moment he killed a civilian woman. Each of the four has come home changed, each feels dislocation. Group therapy, V.A. services, halting gestures from family and colleagues, and regular flashbacks keep the war front and center in their minds. They’re angry, touchy, and explosive: can a warrior find peace back home? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}
Lioness presents the untold story of the first group of women soldiers in US history to be sent into direct ground combat, in violation of official policy. Told through intimate accounts, journal excerpts, archive footage, as well as interviews with military commanders, the film follows five women who served together for a year in Iraq. With captivating detail, this probing documentary reveals the unexpected course of events that began with using US women soldiers to defuse tensions with local civilians, but resulted in the women’s fighting in some of the bloodiest counter-insurgency battles of the war. Together the women’s candid narratives and scenes from their lives back home form a portrait of the emotional and psychological effects of war from a female point of view. Lioness is the first film to bridge the gap between perception and reality of the role women in the military are playing in Iraq, capturing an historical turning point for American society.
Readan interview with filmmakers Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers.
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Have we missed some good ones? Compared with the problems female vets face, most of these movies feel like token representations. Demi Moore actually won a Razzie for Worst Actress in G.I. Jane. I’ve left out the many depictions of female soldiers in science fiction films and TV shows (Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica immediately comes to mind), perhaps unfairly. Tell us movies we’ve left out in the comments section.
The number two movie at the box office this past weekend was Kevin Smith’s comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Classically-trained actress, Elizabeth Banks, calls the role the best she’s ever played, and enthuses that director Kevin Smith “actually put a woman’s name in the title of a movie.”
Yeah, but he also put the word “porno” as the title’s direct object.
About Banks, Smith says “She’s got that ‘guy’s girl’ thing going for her, so she can roll with dudes and be funny, but scrape that away and you realize this chick is way better than an R-rated comedy.”
I’ve heard the movie is funny and sweet, but I can’t help but to be skeptical of a celebration of this role, particularly with the bizarre and sexist statements that pop up in the very positive article.
Banks, like many actors in Hollywood, struggles with her desire to be taken seriously and do important work, but to be successful, too.
“You can go be in a female-driven indie and make two cents and maybe get an Independent Spirit Award, but then you can’t pay your car lease,” she says. “So Vince Vaughn makes movies, he needs a girl to be in it with him, it might be me.”
Just to put it out there, I love Tina Fey. Who doesn’t right now, with her Emmy-winning TV series 30 Rock returning soon, and her riotously funny return to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin? If you haven’t yet seen Baby Mama, starring (but not written by) Fey and Amy Poehler, rent it. It’s funny, it’s smart, and–as a bonus–it’s one of the few movies that passes the Bechdel Test.
Baby Mama opens with a monologue from Kate (Tina Fey) that states a central problem for women who value both work and family, and it’s worth quoting here at length:
I did everything that I was supposed to do. I didn’t cry in meetings, I didn’t wear short skirts, I put up with the weird upper-management guys that kiss you on the mouth at Christmas. Is it fair that to be the youngest VP in my company I will be the oldest mom at preschool? Not really, but that’s part of the deal. I made a choice. Some women got pregnant; I got promotions. And I still aspire to meet someone, and fall in love, and get married, but that is a very high risk scenario. And I want a baby now. I’m 37.
Everything that Kate was supposed to do is a negation—she actually did nothing she wasn’t supposed to do: she didn’t get emotional, she didn’t inappropriately use her sexuality, she didn’t reprimand her superiors for inappropriate behavior. In other words, she put up with sexism and accepted the lies about women in the workplace, like “choice,” and “fairness.” She didn’t argue and she didn’t speak up for herself. She was a Yes Woman.
The beginning of the movie sets a high standard—and high hopes—for what follows. The initial joke here is that her monologue doesn’t address us—the audience—but a date. A first date. At the same time as give us our first laugh, she establishes her character as smart and ambitious, and still a woman who wants a child.
The plot of the movie is rather traditional, with a few twists, but it isn’t the plot that makes the movie so good. It’s the inherent critiques of male-dominated institutions that are subtle enough to avoid sounding topical or preachy, but strong and effective enough to reach the film’s smart viewers.
Real Life and Business
First is a critique—that runs throughout the movie—of the corporate business model. Kate’s sister, Caroline (Maura Tierney) first introduces the divide between “business” and “real life” when she chides Kate that “having a baby isn’t like opening one of your stores.” Caroline, who represents the perfect “mommy” in the movie, thinks that Kate’s approach to having a baby is too business-like.
Further, Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), who runs the surrogacy institute, refers to surrogacy as “outsourcing” and a “growth market,” and takes serious note of Kate’s joke about women in third-world countries carrying babies for wealthy women. Bicknell equates a nanny with a surrogate; a nanny takes care of your baby after it’s born, a surrogate takes care of your baby before it’s born. The ironic twist is that Bicknell is fertile to the point of absurdity, and didn’t start the business out of empathy, but simply for capitalist reasons.
This divide between “real life” and “business” is affirmed further by a conversation between Angie (Poehler) and her common law husband, Carl (Dax Shepard). In a scene where Carl refers to Kate as “Katie,” Angie defends her relationship with Kate (a plot twist, which I won’t reveal here, initiates the conversation). Carl tells Angie “You think you guys would be friends in real life? She’s a business lady. It’s just business.”
So what does this all add up to? Kate is, in fact, an unapologetic business lady. When love interest Rob (Greg Kinnear) warns her against “the man,” Kate thinks he means the cops when, in fact, he’s talking about rival smoothie makers Jamba Juice. “Jamba Juice is the man?” she asks. Kate, VP of operations for a corporate organic grocery, is also “the man.” It’s not clear, however, whether she’s aware of this fact, or how important the fact really is—to Kate and to the movie. The movie certainly critiques (and parodies) her corporate culture, but it still celebrates her success within it.
Hip Hop Culture
Critique of the hip hop industry comes from two subtle moments in the movie. In the first, we meet Kate’s doorman, Oscar (Romany Malco), singing along with his iPod to a song objectifying women. Oscar, for me, is probably the most troubling issue with the movie. Not only is he perpetually popping up in scenes, but his characterization reeks of stereotype and is a little cringe-worthy at times. He delivers some smart, funny lines, but doesn’t become a fully-realized character. Yet, viewers recognize a silly divide between the man he is and the music he consumes.
Not long after, Carl rummages through Kate’s media drawer and, dissatisfied, asks “Don’t you get down with rap?” Kate replies “Boy, somewhere in there I have an old Salt-N-Pepa CD.” While Kate name-checks some 90s hip hop that’s certainly more female-friendly than most of today’s fare, the implication is that she wouldn’t listen to music that she could, in no way, relate to. Or, it may simply show how out-of-touch she is with popular culture. The latter could certainly be the case, as an evening out with Angie shows how rarely Kate lets loose for a good time.
Men and Women, Talking
The movie’s men are all boyfriends, bosses, sidekicks—the standard roles for women in mainstream movies. While Kate’s boss, new-ager Barry, Carl, and Oscar are stereotypes, her love interest is a bit more round, even addressing gender during their first date. After Kate places a very specific Philly steak order, she says “I’m sorry. I’m a little overly thorough. Some people would say that I am bossy and controlling.” Rob replies “No, that’s just prejudice. They call you bossy and controlling ‘cause you’re a woman. But if you were a man doing the same stuff, you’d just be a dick.” The joke here is that he doesn’t say she’d be called “assertive” or the like; he actually insults her. While some enjoy this method of flirtation more than others, the recognition of a gender power dynamic is a cue for sympathetic viewers that he’s a smart match for Kate.
The real story of the movie isn’t the baby, of course, but the women. I love that about the movie. Kate and Angie fight, and are allowed real conflicts—in their own lives and with each other. There’s a nasty exchange of words between the two, where Kate reveals her classism, which had previously just shown up in comedic moments. A real friendship develops between them, and the movie is no less funny for it.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times film critic, writes about the lack of women in this summer’s blockbuster fare, and the way new Hollywood has become a post-female Hollywood.
All you have to do is look at the movies themselves — at the decorative blondes and brunettes smiling and simpering at the edge of the frame — to see just how irrelevant we have become.
Read the full article, titled “Come Summer, Is There a Real Woman in This Multiplex?” here.
