In honour of the much awaited Black Widow film which is finally coming out in July of this year, it seems like a good time to take a look at how female action heroes have been portrayed heretofore, and more specifically, how they have been limited and undermined in the world’s most popular genre today: the action and superhero film. So here's a “guide” on the most effective ways to undermine the female hero, as exemplified by the experts at Hollywood. Of course, the last few years have finally seen change come to Hollywood on the wings of #MeToo, and we are seeing this change in the form of titles like Birds of Prey (2020) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). The future may look bright for female heroes, but complacency is not something that female representation in Hollywood can afford (or that of any underrepresented groups for that matter). Studios such as Disney and Warner Bros. may be leaning towards feminism (or commercialising it) by giving us exciting films to look forward to, but it is still important to know what the state of female representation is right now, and what it has been all these years.
Despite the heartening progress that female representation has made in the genre recently, it is equally disheartening to see how little some things have changed at a time when we all (read: studios) should know better. Much of this disheartening slowness in change comes from the fact that female heroes are always being undermined in some way or other: when they are not objectified they are subjected to abuse (eg. the women of Game of Thrones), when they are not abused they are ‘othered’ into non-human status (eg Wonder Woman), and even when they are none of those things, they are undermined by having to carry the weight of being the sole representative of their sex (eg the women of Star Wars). Here are the six main ways in which female action heroes have been — and continue to be — undermined.
1. Objectification
Arguably the most recognised method of limiting female characters across all media, objectification has been the primary method used to undermine female action heroes for decades. Objectification is when a woman is filmed exclusively through the male gaze, resulting in behaviour, movement and wardrobe that is strategically designed for maximum sexual appeal so that her character value is essentially defined by this sexual appeal. Scholar Jeffrey A. Brown attempts to explain this phenomenon by explaining that female action heroes have to compensate for "assuming traditionally masculine roles." They compensate for their masculine traits through "their sexualised hyperfeminine depiction," or through only the most basic symbols of "womanliness." What this means is that when women are hypersexualised and hyperfeminised it is to firmly remind viewers of the strict boundaries between genders, which weakens female heroes by turning their hypersexualised femininity into a symbol of inherent inferiority to masculine traits. Carolyn Cocca further explains this by pointing out that with the empowerment of female superheroes following the Third Wave of Feminism (the feminism of the 90’s and 00’s), reactionary gender politics could not conceive of blurred gender boundaries and insisted on boxing in certain traits as either strictly feminine or strictly masculine, as opposed to simply human. Thus, we have female heroes who are tough and intelligent like males, but whose hypersexualised femininity is explicitly emphasised to avoid threatening the fragile masculinity of male heroes (or more accurately, of male audiences).
In many cases, this conservative binary view of gender has been used to subjugate strong and independent female action heroes that were not otherwise objectified. For example, in the original Star Wars trilogy, Princess Leia, one of the most groundbreaking female characters in Western cinematic history, is a no-nonsense character who is an active participant in the film’s action. She is competent and smart, and the audience is made to know it by the way she takes charge of her own rescue. She is also not dressed provocatively, and while her soft music theme and the soft fabrics used to dress her do draw attention to her femininity, her character is otherwise little gendered in terms of characterisation. That is, until we see her in Return of the Jedi (1983), when she has been captured by Jabba the Hutt and transformed into “Slave Leia.” Perhaps it was too much to ask that a woman be written as a capable character and leave it at that, especially at the time of the film’s release, but it seems it’s impossible for Hollywood to give female heroes so-called “masculine” traits (such as general competence, apparently) without caving in to the urge to objectify her in order to remind us that she is a woman! With a sexy feminine body! Just in case anyone forgot that she is not, in fact, the hero of this story (because heroes don’t get sexually humiliated, aka objectified). The argument could be made that Leia is the hero of her own story because she fights back against those who objectified her, even killing Jabba with her own chains in hard-to-miss symbolism, but that would be an acceptable argument only if the objectification and sexual subjugation of women were not a decades-old pattern, and if it weren't an argument male writers tend to make to justify continuously putting women in such situations.
The same can be said for many, if not most of the female action heroes that followed. For example, Justice League (2017) undid all of the work that Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman (2017) had put in to highlighting the character traits that give Diana value — as opposed to her physical traits — by filming Diana exclusively through the male gaze. Wonder Woman’s costume does not change, yet somehow director Joss Whedon managed to disrespect the integrity her character represents by constantly drawing attention to her body through low-angle shots that focus on her butt and through center shots that focus on her breasts rather than on her face. (Similarly, let’s never forget that the shot that first revealed Natasha Romanoff as Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (2010) was a shot of her ass). Additionally, everything Diana wears in Justice League is low-cut and skin-tight, whereas Patty Jenkins dressed her in a way that highlights Diana's elegance, confidence, grace and power — without hypersexualising her body. This is evidenced by the fact that none of her outfits (aside from her armour) are at all revealing in Wonder Woman, whereas all of her Justice League ones are. Even the Amazons went from wearing full-body armour in Wonder Woman to “bikini armour” in Justice League. The film's objectification of women was taken further by classic Whedon “bro-humour” that ultimately served no other purpose (because it was not even funny) than to remind both characters and audiences that Diana exists to be ogled because she is a sexy lady surrounded by men: having the Flash trip over his own feet and land with his face between Diana's breasts was such a shamelessly ridiculous moment that one wonders how Whedon even thought to use it again after the backlash that this exact same joke received in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) when Bruce Banner faceplants on Natasha’s chest. Fortunately, the Snyder Cut did away with much of the theatrical version’s use of objectification, and, by some strange coincidence, the plot was also immeasurably better. Who would have thought?
By R. Jordan Ortiz
Wait for Part Two next week! We’ll be discussing how Padme Amidala, Jean Grey and others are the new incarnation of the classic “Damsels in Distress” trope. See you next week!