| Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2006
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With actress Pam Grier's breakthrough in Coffy and Foxy Brown, women entered action, science fiction, war, westerns and martial arts films--genres that had previously been considered the domain of male protagonists. This ground-breaking cinema, however, was--and still is--viewed with ambivalence.
While women were cast in new and exciting roles, they did not always arrive with their femininity intact, often functioning both as a sexualized spectacle and as a new female hero rather than female character. This volume contains an in-depth critical analysis and study of the female hero in popular film from 1970 to 2005. It examines five female archetypes: the dominatrix, the Amazon, the daughter, the mother and the rape-avenger. The entrance of the female hero into films written by, produced by and made for men is viewed through the lens of feminism and post-feminism arguments. Analyzed works include films with actors Michelle Yeoh and Meiko Kaji, the Alien films, the Lara Croft franchise, Charlie's Angels, and television productions such as Xena: Warrior Princess and Alias.
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By Brian Taves (Washington, DC United States)
All too seldom, in reading about film, I have the experience of picking up a book that proves to be a revelation. Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2007 is precisely that-a groundbreaking work that not only sheds new light on a trend in films but also provides a fresh theoretical framework in which to situate its argument.
Typical previous examinations of women in action roles had seen them as masquerading in male guise in a manner that ultimately is subsumed within white patriarchy. Only female stars of 1910s serials had been generally regarded as succeeding in transgressing male dominance, largely the result of a formative era in film where the audience was large female. However, in Super Bitches and Action Babes, author Rikke Schubart peels away old standbys, especially Laura Mulvey's essay on woman as created by the object of the male gaze in cinema.
Instead, Schubart outlines a far more convincing case, which she describes as postfeminism. Here, filmmakers, audiences, and stars are able to construct a variety of possible readings of screen texts. "Feminine" and "masculine" traits are not cast in stone for each gender, but fluid. The result moves beyond traditional definitions of feminism to what Schubart describes as postfeminism, which allows for this polysemy. Postfeminism permits a greater fluidity and playfulness (as indicated by the title of the book itself) in gender roles, a willingness to mock expectations and use excess as well as the more pretentious modes more valorized by film critics. In this way, the "High Trash Heroines" (as Schubart labels them) of the LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER (2001, 2003) and CHARLIE'S ANGELS (2000, 2003) duos are recouped from a limited reading, as simply adolescent fantasies, to also recognize their element of female dominance. Here is a vastly more convincing framework that acknowledges the multiplicity of contradictory readings and their viability.
Schubart combines history and theory, analyzing in various chapters certain star personas, fictional characters, and groups of similar films. Wisely, although few scholars actually practice this approach, she recognizes the interdependence of both movies and television, not just in the obvious sense of examples like LA FEMME NIKITA (movie,1990; TV, 1997-2001), but in that trends in the one medium cannot be fully addressed without the other. Indeed, it is the richness of the author's perspectives, the elegant writing, and the willingness to challenge orthodoxy that make this such a rewarding book.
Super Bitches and Action Babes finds the development of a new female hero beginning in the 1970s with the blaxploitation films of Pam Grier. Schubart traces the trend beyond Hollywood, particularly in the Japanese films of Meiko Kaji, and the Hong Kong, and later international, vehicles of Michelle Yeoh. The book finds five distinct types of female action hero: the Amazon, the rape avenger, the daughter, the mother, and the dominatrix. This proves a useful typology, and Schubart convincingly reveals how films have utilized these archetypes, tracing their historical and cultural pre-cinema background. In this way, Schubart also demonstrates how such films as Kaji's 1970s Scorpion series to Pamela Anderson in BARB WIRE (1990), with both emanating from "comic books," go beyond victimization or kitsch to reveal new layers of potential meaning. The final chapter, largely on KILL BILL (2003), reveals how Quenntin Tarantino successfully combines these five forms, providing fresh light on even such a widely discussed film.
Her analysis of individual films and programs are so well conceived as to be clear even the reader is not personally familiar with them. Schubart not only explicates narratives and character, but is equally adept at more purely visual aspects. For example, she expertly dissects the costume of the Amazon, whether for XENA-WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995-2001) or BARB WIRE, showing how its fetishization of leather and corset fuel not only physical display but also the role reversal and female dominance of the dominatrix. The abundant illustrations are carefully chosen and offer visual proof of the author's points. Each chapter is provided with a subject and/or performer filmography. Only in Schubart's section on XENA was I disappointed (perhaps because there is already such an impressive body of work about it), and I was mystified by her overlooking RELIC HUNTER (1999-2002).
Super Bitches and Action Babes is a vital, important contribution to film studies. I have been interested myself in the topic since penning my own volume on historical adventure films, published back in 1993, and finding two divergent possibilities for heroines, the princess and the woman who actively makes her own destiny. While I was writing the latter tendency was becoming increasingly frequent to the point of becoming the dominant type (with the most recent example being that of Aishwarya Rai's fighter in THE LAST LEGION, 2007). Schubart demonstrates how this thread cuts across genre boundaries; for instance, Jennifer Lopez's abused but ultimately avenging wife in ENOUGH (2002) emerges from a more typical melodramatic mode.
I picked up this volume along with a half-dozen others through a subject search at the Library of Congress, not familiar with the authors of any of them, and this one was simply head-and-shoulders above the others, all university press publications, for its scope and the viability of its theoretical perspectives. Indeed, it may be Schubart's avoidance of jargon, her challenging of theoretical tropes (rather than obediently citing hegemonic theorists in the manner typical of graduate students), and her refusal to lean on weary cliches, that has placed this book outside of the prestigious academic publisher it would be expected to have earned.
However, if boldly tackling orthodoxy sometimes has a penalty, it also has a reward. Schubart's wide-ranging research into texts representing both high and low culture, from an international outlook, convincingly makes her case. I expect this book will have a wider audience, and more permanent place in film studies, than many a more touted volume. Super Bitches and Action Babes is a sophisticated tool for understanding new trends in the depiction of women on the screen. I cannot recommend it too highly.
By Linn (Norway)
I must say I quite enjoyed this book about the female hero in film. It is both academic and well-written but it only goes back to 1970, so sadly leaves out such favorites as the big-busted super bitches in Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Also, the author focuses on film, not television, so Buffy is not covered and there are only sections on Xena and Alias. Instead, there are well-researched chapters on the most important female heroes in newer Hollywood film history.
The author takes us from the female hero in the seventies' exploitation to today's blockbusters, from American action to Asian martial arts. She identifies five female archetypes - they are the dominatrix, the Amazon, the mother, the daughter, and the rape-avenger - and examines genres such as the action film, science fiction film (this is the Alien-series), WIP films, rape-revenge films, and the war film.
The book fascinates in two ways. First, as a straight forward history, covering well-known ground such as Charlie's Angels and Lara Croft and Kill Bill from new angles, while also introducing uson to lesser known cult figures like Japanese actress Meiko Kaji, who apparently was the original avenger with samurai sword in the Japanese femme-samurai-revenge film Lady Snowblood from 1973. After reading the chapter on Kaji I had to go and buy her early WIP-films which are out on dvd now. Also in the book is a chapter devoted to Pam Grier, whose action movies made her Hollywood's first black female superstar in the seventies. Grier was clearly not a "nice" girl: her characters hid razorblades in their afros and shot crooks in the crotch! Another chapter reveals that the most active female hero is the unknown Cynthia Rothrock who is an undefeated karate world champion and has made more than 45 action films!
The second way the book fascinated me was as a critical discussion of feminism and postfeminism. Is the female hero a role model for a new generation or what? To this question Schubart in her introduction discusses the concept of in-betweenness, which is about ambivalence and `both-and' - the female hero is both a sexy pinup and a postfeminist role model, she is both traditionally female (read: beautiful) yet also strong, independent and intelligent. I found the introduction extremely useful in its discussion of feminist versus postfeminist readings of the female hero, using theorists like Yvonne Tasker, Sara Projansky, Barbara Creed and Germaine Greer. The book discusses a number of both familiar and lesser-know films, providing excellent examples of postfeminist films and their interpretation.
I missed a chapters on female super heroes and also on European female heroes. Are there no European films with female heroes? What about the English female detectives and police investigators? Also, the author completely ignores the significant number of female heroes in recent animated films such as Mulan and Shreck. So it seems to me there is a blind spot here.
The author seems to be a postfeminist. She says we cannot all be wonder women but quotes from Catwoman (2004) where the title character, played by Halle Berry, says: "Freedom is power. To live a life untamed and unafraid is the gift that I've been given and so my journey begins." I don't know if Super Bitches and Action Babes is empowering for women, but it is in itself a powerful discussion of female strength and also a welcome history of female heroes.
By Robin Orlowski (United States)
This book had so much promise, but ultimately missed it's mark.
Examining Baywatch, both Buffy and Charmed--would ironically fit her babe-superhero paradox construct, were then somehow given less discussion time in the text. I found this particularly ironic given that she was interested in Pam Grier films for the juxtaposition of female agency and sexualization. Buffy and Charmed would today seem to be the closer 'cousins'.
Plus, Buffy series creator Joss Whedon received academic training in gender studies while he was studying film at Wesleyan University. Certainly this, his conceptualization of Buffy as an 'alternative feminist icon' including apparent character contradictions with the movement/stereotypes and his off camera promotion of events such as Equality Now would have provided more substantive discussion.
And yes, I'm empathetic to the constraints perpetually placed on harried graduate students. I myself couldn't research everything which came across my desk. I also saw the many more demands getting placed on PhD students. So the publication of this book is certainly something to be proud of.
But a second edition really needs adequate research to kick outdated images of women and action.
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