{"id":136525,"date":"2015-09-15T04:13:05","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T04:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/09\/15\/furiosa-vs-tropes-for-women-in-action\/"},"modified":"2015-09-15T04:13:05","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T04:13:05","slug":"furiosa-vs-tropes-for-women-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/09\/15\/furiosa-vs-tropes-for-women-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"furiosa vs. tropes for women in action"},"content":{"rendered":"

fuckyeahisawthat<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

This is the second in a series of posts about Mad Max: Fury Road. All contain spoilers.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read Part 1, a general review of the movie, here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read part 3, about Max, here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Mad Max: Fury Road<\/a><\/i> has already inspired some of the most intense fandom I\u2019ve seen, and been part of, in years. I think it\u2019s partially due to the sheer intensity of the sensory and emotional experience the movie delivers. But let\u2019s be honest. A lot of it is due to Furiosa.<\/p>\n

The character has already inspired an outpouring of fan art<\/a> and cosplay<\/a>. Even among movie fans who aren\u2019t part of those scenes, people who love her REALLY love her. (And I wholeheartedly include myself in this category.) I can\u2019t remember the last time that multiple, grown-ass adults on my Facebook feed had profile pictures referencing a movie character. Several of them\u2013men and women\u2013have this one:<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Art by Hugo Dourado<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

Why has Furiosa inspired so much passion? I think a lot of it has to do with the way she blows a giant flaming hole in the standard images for women in action films.<\/p>\n

While recent years have given us some fantastic action heroines, they tend to be confined within a few set tropes, with remarkably little variation.<\/p>\n

Of course, by far the most common trope for women in action is still to be the person being rescued\u2013to be the prize the protagonist, usually a man, gets at the end of the journey. There are whole franchises<\/a> built around this concept. I think we can all agree that\u2019s boring and not worthy of a blog post.<\/p>\n

But even among women characters who have agency in action movies\u2013as protagonists or as villains\u2013there are still some basic patterns that recur again and again. In particular, there are three basic templates that a large majority of female action characters fall into. The point is not that these tropes, in and of themselves, are wrong. It\u2019s that they\u2019re often all there is.<\/p>\n

1. The Girl Hero<\/b><\/p>\n

This is the default trope for YA. Katniss in The Hunger Games<\/i>, Tris in Divergent<\/i>\u2026you\u2019ve seen it many times.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games<\/i><\/p>\n

The Girl Hero is virginal (often unusually non-sexual for a teenager). She\u2019s usually small or skinny, sometimes for a logical reason (Katniss grew up starving), sometimes not so much. She seems like an underdog, but proves to be surprisingly good at violence and\/or have some unique skill, and through her bravery and grit takes on foes much bigger than she is.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Tris, Divergent<\/i><\/p>\n

It should be said that plenty of male YA characters share these characteristics\u2013Harry Potter is also small and skinny, a novice in the world of magic, but unusually skilled at a few things. He doesn\u2019t win his battles through physical strength, but through cleverness and bravery. And there\u2019s an understandable appeal in having a scrawny underdog, of any gender, turn out to be a hero, especially in a book or movie geared toward young people. But with a few exceptions (see: Tamora Pierce) the Girl Hero with these qualities is THE template for young women in action\/fantasy\/sci-fi\/speculative fiction.<\/p>\n

2. The Sexpot<\/b><\/p>\n

When the Girl Hero grows up, she can be properly objectified as a different trope, the Sexpot.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Lara Croft: poster girl for this trope<\/i><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve all seen this trope in the many, many superhero and comic book movies that are currently squirting out of the studio pipeline. She\u2019s that one token woman on the team with four guys.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Yeah, that one.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Sexpot gets to fight\u2013and sometimes even gets artfully bloody and dirty\u2013but she has to do it in a latex suit and while appearing cool and sleek and having a good hair day. (She has long hair, so she can flip it, and so we\u2019re extra sure she\u2019s a girl.)\u00a0Her fight style is extra bendy and flippy and maybe when we break out the slow motion. She may use her sexiness as a weapon (a la Black Widow) or it may be just a bonus quality. She can be powerful, but only if we can look at her conventionally attractive body move around in tight clothing while it\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

3. The Ice Queen<\/b><\/p>\n

The Ice Queen is almost always the trope for female villains. She sits at the top of some kind of power structure\u2013a state or a criminal enterprise\u2013issuing commands to her minions but rarely doing the violence herself. She\u2019s probably got a sharp suit or a uniform and a severe haircut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Delacourt, the villain of Elysium.<\/i><\/p>\n

She\u2019s allowed to be older than 35.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

President Coin, Mockingjay<\/i><\/p>\n

The Ice Queen has institutional power but rarely fights; physicality is the low pursuit of men in her world. She may be smart, crafty and manipulative, but she will not punch you in the face. She\u2019ll snap her fingers and get someone else to do it, although she may sit on the edge of her desk to watch.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Jeanine, the villain of Divergent<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Maya, Zero Dark Thirty\u2013an Ice Queen protagonist, sort of<\/i><\/p>\n

The point here is not that there\u2019s no variation on these themes. And there have been iconic female action characters who stood totally outside them before. Alien<\/i>\u2019s Ellen Ripley and Linda Hamilton as the original Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, <\/i>doing pull-ups\u00a0on her mental hospital bed frame, come to mind as the most obvious.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s striking how often the women that do exist in the thriller, action, sci-fi and speculative fiction film universe fall into one of these three boxes. Which is why any character who doesn\u2019t map onto one of these templates is so exciting.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Furiosa.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

She fights a hell of a lot. She does not flip her hair.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

She\u2019s intensely physical, but you never get the sense that her fights are choreographed to perform her sexuality for you. They\u2019re choreographed for her to fucking win.<\/p>\n

When Max shows up, they have a knock-down, drag-out fight with each other. Max doesn\u2019t pull any punches.\u00a0Why? Because he makes no assumptions that she\u2019d be less lethal to him than a man. They beat the shit out of each other in a big, messy, grunty, scrabbly fight.<\/p>\n

For significant portions of the movie, Furiosa is driving a truck, which means Charlize Theron is essentially acting from the biceps up. You literally cannot look at her boobs. You have to look at her face.<\/p>\n

She gets to be dirty. Really really dirty. This picture alone highlights how weird it is that all the other women above are so clean.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

She gets to be ugly and make weird faces in the middle of fighting.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

She gets to yell and be angry the way one might be in the middle of a nonstop road battle when you\u2019re full of adrenaline because you\u2019re fighting for your life.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

In short, she gets to look like an actual person who is actually fighting, instead of a statue that can do a back walkover with the help of a wire rig.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s hardly surprising that she\u2019s racked up a lot of fans. She takes all the images of clean, pretty, carefully sexualized women we\u2019re used to seeing, even in action, rips them to shreds, sets them on fire and then drives over them with an 18-wheeler.<\/p>\n

This is all even more remarkable given that Furiosa is played by an actress who is very feminine-presenting in her everyday life. Charlize Theron is one of the very few actresses who\u2019s been allowed to pick roles where she radically changes her gender presentation.<\/p>\n

Here she is in Aeon Flux<\/i>, playing about the most Sexpot-y character imaginable:<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Here she is in Monster<\/i>:<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

I think there are a lot more actresses out there who could take on these kinds of transformations, radically altering the way they look, move, and perform their gender, the way male stars do all the time. But the equivalent depth and diversity of roles for women just doesn\u2019t exist in Hollywood right now.<\/p>\n

Furiosa\u2019s\u00a0popularity shows how starved we are for images of women who are actually powerful and physical<\/i> in the same ways that men get to be in blockbuster after blockbuster after blockbuster. It\u2019s not that all<\/i> the images of women in action have to look like this\u2013it\u2019s just that we hardly ever see a female fighter who looks this way. Furiosa reminds us that there is so much more out there than we\u2019re getting in terms of what women can do and look like on screen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

fuckyeahisawthat: This is the second in a series of posts about Mad Max: Fury Road. All contain spoilers. Read Part 1, a general review of the movie, here. Read part 3, about Max, here. Mad Max: Fury Road has already inspired some of the most intense fandom I\u2019ve seen, and been part of, in years. … <\/p>\n

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