Women Kicking Ass
We had this conversation once before, wherein I claimed that the trope of the woman who can fight and straight up beat a male opponent is a kind of sexual fantasy. I was just reading this short article from Cracked.com about prejudices that still show up in films, and came across a bit about how the tough ass-kicking woman in a movie (they cite Michelle Rodriguez) has to die, while the tough-ass kicking woman who wins at the end is prettier and more traditionally feminine. While not precisely the same thing perhaps, I think it tends to support my argument. I offer this, not necessarily to re-open the debate, but for your amusement and consideration.
An excerpt and the link:
For a woman, it means she has to die -- over and over and over again,
each time making way for the petite model to take down the villain with
her Waif-Fu
instead. That's the phrase TV Tropes coined to describe the martial art
that allows a woman to thrash trained soldiers twice her size while
having no musculature on her frame at all. It's considered empowering
when Joss Whedon includes ass-kicking females in everything he writes,
but when he needs a badass kung fu killing machine, he casts the pretty,
wispy Summer Glau.
Read more: 5 Old-Timey Prejudices That Still Show Up in Every Movie | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19549_5-old-timey-prejudices-that-still-show-up-in-every-movie.html#ixzz1dtLfX3be
Of course, one could make the argument that for the hero(ine) to triumph (s)he needs to overcome great odds, and using the more feminine actress for that role accomplishes this. I think its a valid and true argument. One could also argue (as I do) that there is an underlying masochism for men to seeing a woman open the proverbial can of whup-ass on a big strong male. One can see it easily if one has read much pornography.
Comments
But indeed, contradictory things can both be true, especially in the arts.
I like the term, jelly wrestling.
Michelle Rodiguez, of course, is a very good example. Again, eye of the beholder, but she does come across as less feminine than, usually, most anybody in a movie, including several of the males. Also, she always dies early-on.
On the other end of the spectrum, I used to suspend my disbelief whenever I watched NIKITA. Maggie Q just seemed way too thin for those kind of skills. Until recently she had a scene in underwear and, where I expected to see, dunno, ribs sticking out like you usually see with thin Hollywood women, she displayed quite distinct muscles. Guess she's taller than I thought. So looks may be deceiving, as far as ass-kicking skills are concerned.
And Max, its your perceptions of Nikita that count, not the reality of Maggie Q's body. It is fiction.
OK, so just to test our memories of the characters, I grabbed a movie still of Weaver from early on in the movie, before her trials, and a publicity still of Cartwright, where she's looking her best. One could certainly make an argument about who was the more attractive woman... personally, I find Cartwright's strong nose to be more interesting than Weaver's upturned button, but that's neither here nor there.
Note though, that Weaver is given long curly hair, a kind of dark halo about her head, while Cartwright's cut is shorter, tossed and dare I say it, slightly more butch than Weaver's. I think it was intended that Weaver be he more feminine of the two, whether or not that works for any of us personally. I would add that she appears to be younger, whether or not that's the reality of the two actresses.
Of course, in later movies, they toughen her up, including the shaved head.
http://www.jenniferdeguzman.com/2011/11/17/unpacking-empowerment/
I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that qualities like determination and courage are somehow just "guy things", but I do take her point about Twilight being a pretty good approximation of how adolescent girls act and feel.
Her "passivity" sounds a bit like Hamlet's.
First, speaking to the waif vs butch arguement, I have a real life example. My best friend and I are both 5'4" and we can both comfortably leg press 300. My friend is a larger woman and so it doesn't really come as a surprise that she is able to do this. However I am not a large woman by contrast and people don't believe my claim, until they actually watch me do it. I know that this strays a bit from strong females as part of a sexual fantasy but I did want to point out that while it may be implausible it certainly isn't impossible for a small woman to be wiry an capable of some pretty amazing feats of strength.
I think it is accurate that many adolescent girls identify with Bella which explains why Twilight is such a success.
I personally think it's sad that such a large portion of our young girls feel that way but there are also a bunch of young girls who used Buffy as a role model. Not necessarily identifying with her entirely but being shown that a girl can be both strong and feminine which a lot of girls have difficulty coming to terms with.
Do they need to use whisper thin girls to make this point? No they shouldn't have to. But extremes are easier for the media to portray than reality.
Interesting to me is the revenge fight that Zoe Saldana has with the brute who killed her parents in Columbiana. She was(portraying) a trained assassin, but it wasn't like ScarJo as Black Widow taking out security guards while barely working up a glow. The Saldana fight was rough, nasty, and very much in doubt until the end. She could easily have lost if she wasn't the protagonist.
Where it gets dodgy is when it's a trained woman against a trained man. That is going to favor the man. That's not even a matter of sex - most men are a good chunk bigger than most women, and stronger, and when skill levels are similar, that matters a lot. Manny Pacquiano is awesome, but a heavyweight who was never even close to being champion would put him in the hospital. Those kind of gaps are really difficult to overcome.
Anecdotally, I routine beat people sparing that wanted to 'fight' some big even though they were objectively more skilled than me. They just weren't skilled enough to outfight mass, strength and reach.