Uniwersytet Łódzki Wydział Filologiczny Instytut Anglistyki Nina Czarnecka-Pałka Looking for the Feminine Heroic: Western “Action Chicks” versus Female Heroes in Native American Tradition. Rozprawa doktorska napisana w Zakładzie Literatury Ameryka ńskiej pod kierunkiem prof. nadzw. dr hab. Jadwigi Maszewskiej Łód ź 2015 1 - TABLE OF CONTENTS - Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………… 2 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… . 4 Chapter One ………………………………………………………………………… 12 Traditional Notions of (Male) Heroism 1.1. The Epic Hero: Classical Roots of Contemporary Heroism …………………….. 13 1.2. The Heroic Ideal in the New World ……………………………………………... 18 1.3. The American Hero and the Dream Factory …………………………………….. 28 Chapter Two ………………………………………………………………………… 38 The Feminine Heroic in Contemporary American Action Cinema 2.1. Role Models, Heroes, Heroines and Sheroes: Is There a Name for Heroic Women? …………………………………………………………………………………….. 41 2.2. Heroic Women and the Problem of Underrepresentation ……………………….. 50 2.3. Western “Action Chicks”: Positive or Negative? ……………………………….. 64 2.3.1. Action Chicks as Sex Bombs ……………………………………………. 67 2.3.2. “Girlish tough ain’t enough.” ……………………………………………. 78 2.3.3. Action Chicks as Men in Drag …………………………………………. 101 2.3.4. Action Chicks in the Realm of Fantasy ………………………………… 108 2.3.5. “The Bitch is Dead.” ……………………………………………………. 112 2.4. Xena: Warrior Princess : A Broken Promise of Positive Female Heroism …….. 115 Chapter Three ……………………………………………………………………… 126 Alternative Archetypal Patterns of Feminine Heroic Action: Female Heroes in the Native American Tradition 3.1. Native American Creation Stories and Myths: Tales of Female Power ………... 137 2 3.2. Native American Women Warriors …………………………………………….. 163 3.3. Native American Word and Image Warriors …………………………………… 169 Conclusions …………………………………………………………………………..189 Polish Summary ……………………………………………………………………..193 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………196 3 - INTRODUCTION - The last two decades have witnessed a significant rise in the number of female action heroines appearing in popular media. To put it in Sherrie Inness’ words, “Popular culture cannot seem to get enough of tough females” ( Action Chicks , 2). With the gender status quo being subverted through the efforts of generations of feminists, women began to make inroads into areas so far reserved for men. Female soldiers, police officers and FBI agents have been entering the male world of violence and toughness in increasing numbers. These new real-life roles were bound to find their reflection in the images of women offered by contemporary television and film. However, as I shall demonstrate, multiple studies on female violence and girl power suggest that despite the obvious fascination with the tough, aggressive woman, pretty often such characters cannot be seen as truly subversive or empowering. Their freedom and power seem to a large extent limited by the traditional Western plots which see female violence as something threatening, anti-social or even pathological, something that needs to be punished or at least somehow contained. Looking at the long list of objections raised against the action heroines within the body of feminist criticism, one might wonder whether something is inherently contradictory and wrong with the action heroine, or whether she is perhaps being judged using the wrong criteria. Can images of positive female heroism be found in contemporary Western narratives or is a positive female hero an impossible figure? For that matter, what are the main characteristics of positive feminine heroic action? Can the violent women of contemporary action films be seen as truly heroic and empowered? If not, why is this the case and where can alternative archetypal patterns of feminine 4 heroic action be found? “Fictions . provide audiences with materials for creating wish-fulfillment fantasies . but also anxiety-fantasies . Moreover, fictions afford audiences opportunities for having their attitudes, beliefs and values reinforced (most popular culture), expanded (some popular culture) or challenged (little popular culture)” Roger R. Rollin argues in his text about the hero as popular culture (30). It is the ambition of this dissertation to seek such fictions and analyze such mechanisms that will help expand and challenge the popular understandings of heroism and evaluate its masculine, individualistic ethos, so that it becomes a more inclusive concept allowing for a positive construction and reading of a female hero. “Heroes do not represent definable human figures, but rather mythological ideals to be achieved,” Dorothy Norman claims in The Hero: Myth/Image/Symbol (3). Although the main focus of this dissertation is positive female heroism, the critical examination of female action heroes requires at least a brief investigation into how male heroes have traditionally been presented and constructed as the ideals to which the female heroes are expected to aspire. Traditional notions of heroism that have their roots in Antiquity are precisely the criteria against which the worth of female heroes is usually measured. Hence, the first chapter of my dissertation is devoted to a general overview of the traits that can typically be found in most male heroic figures. In order to distill this heroic essence, the chapter traces the transformation that the male hero has undergone on his way from the battlefield of Troy, through the woods and prairies of the new world to the dream factory. “Hero-figures by their very nature are larger-than- life, and rare is the static depiction, no matter how artful, that can communicate the hero’s power and glory more effectively than the movie screen” (Rollin 36). The genre that seems to be best suited for displaying the heroic potential is action cinema, which traditionally has been dominated by men both at the level of production (male stars and 5 directors) and reception (aimed at male audiences). Therefore, the detailed discussion of the feminine heroic in contemporary American action cinema offered in the second chapter is preceded by an attempt to identify the most characteristic tropes governing the genre as the space which the female action hero will have to either fit into or transform. Chapter Two starts by acknowledging the fact that female heroism is problematic, even at the level of terminology. That a male heroic figure should be called a hero seems self-evident. But how do we call female heroic figures? Role models ? Heroines ? Sheroes ? Female heroes ? Is heroine inferior to hero ? If so, then why? Is coining the term shero a successful attempt to reclaim heroism for women or does it unnecessarily reinforce the disparity between male and female action figures? These and other questions will offer an opportunity to explain and justify my choice of the rather denigratory term action chicks to describe Western female action figures, and the term female heroes to refer to heroic women from the Native American tradition in the title of this dissertation. Female heroism has certainly been seriously underrepresented both in literature and in contemporary movies and mass media. Even when female characters do find their way into the male world of heroic deeds, very often their construction seems somehow flawed. In the discussion that follows, I have decided not to focus on only a few representative films or TV series, but rather organize my analysis around the key accusations leveled at female action characters within feminist film criticism, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, illustrating my argument with multiple examples of characters coming both from the big and the small screen. The only exception to this rule is the character of Xena, who will be discussed in greater depth in a separate section, since she is a particularly enlightening example of a broken promise of positive female heroism. Just as in the case of terminology, there has 6 been little agreement in the feminist critical community as to what constitutes a progressive, empowering image of female heroism. Various critics have read the same figures in diametrically different ways and while I agree that the majority of Western female action characters deserve at least some of the criticism they receive, I also believe that the theoretical models employed as the basis for this criticism are permeated by patriarchal understandings of heroism, gender roles and status, effectively precluding a positive reading of some images. Locked in the male/female, masculine/feminine dichotomies, these theories fall into the trap of interpreting toughness, strength and assertiveness as superior masculine traits while being compassionate, nurturing, flexible and cooperative are seen as feminine traits detracting from the hero’s power. Within this framework, a positive female hero is indeed an impossible figure – in comparison to the male hero she will either be found wanting and inferior or sporting a tag of masculinization if she somehow manages to fulfill the criteria established by the Western patriarchal ethos of masculine, individualistic heroism. In order to break the stalemate, I believe it is useful to try and look for alternative images and a different analytic lens outside the Western patriarchal tradition. In her article “Archetypal Violence and the Feminine Heroic in Multicultural American Women’s Writing,” a text that has inspired me to undertake this search, Professor Roberta Rosenberg advocates seeking images of strong assertive females in the works of “American multicultural