Femme Fatalities From sadistic torturess Ilsa in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS to synthespians and consumerist teen witches. From Hollywood mainstream to avant-garde and exploitation. From feminist critical theory to postfeminist provocative aesthetics. This anthology brings together twelve essays on the representation of strong women in film, television and computer games. During the nineties strong women moved to the fore in media fictions. In cinema, television series and computer games we find heroines in leading roles Rikke Schubart & Anne Gjelsvik that used to be occupied by men. Female doctors run their own medical drama series, women star in action and suspense computer games, they kick ass, fight vampires and become elite soldiers in Hollywood movies. The success of strong women is beyond discussion; we find them everywhere from Xena: Warrior Princess to Baise-Moi and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. However, the representation of strong women raises complex questions related to gender and genre, identity and identification, pleasure and violence. Do these heroines appeal to women at all? If so, what pleasures do they offer? Are they consumerist products in a patriarchal culture? Are they action heroines submitting to the traditional aesthetics of the pin-up and the narrative subplots of rape, prostitution and domestication through romance? Or is it possible to kidnap a male fantasy and turn it into a feminist icon for a new postfeminist generation? The articles in this anthology do not provide simple answers. Instead, they find new meanings arising out of the gaps between consumer culture and gender politics, between silicone breasts and subversive audience reactions. ( e d s . ) Femme NORDICOM Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research Göteborg University Fatalities Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden Telephone +46 31 773 10 00 • Fax +46 31 773 46 55 Representations of Strong Women in the Media E-mail: [email protected] www.nordicom.gu.se Rikke Schubart & Anne Gjelsvik (eds.) ISBN 91-89471-25-3 NORDICOM is an institution within the GÖTEBORG Nordic Council of Ministers UNIVERSITY NORDICOM Femme Fatalities Femme Fatalities Representations of Strong Women in the Media Rikke Schubart & Anne Gjelsvik (eds.) NORDICOM Femme Fatalities Representations of Strong Women in the Media Editors: Rikke Schubart & Anne Gjelsvik © Editorial matters and selections, the editors; articles, individual contributors (with one exception, see page 91) ISBN 91-89471-25-3 Published by: Nordicom Göteborg University Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Cover by: Roger Palmqvist Printed by: Grafikerna Livréna i Kungälv AB, Sweden, 2004 Contents Foreword 7 Acknowledgments 8 Rikke Schubart & Anne Gjelsvik Inroduction Babes, Bitches, Dominatrixes and Teen Witches 9 I. New Media and Postfeminist Aesthetics Wencke Mühleisen Baise-moi and Feminism’s Filmic Intercourse with the Aesthetics of Pornography 21 Ingrid Lindell Over and over again The Representation of Women in Contemporary Cinema 39 Maja Mikula Lara Croft, Between a Feminist Icon and Male Fantasy 57 Kim Walden Run, Lara, Run! The Impact of Computer Games on Cinema’s Action Heroine 71 II. Genre Fictions Yvonne Tasker Soldiers’ Stories Women and Military Masculinities in Courage Under Fire 91 Deneka C. MacDonald Iconic Eye Candy Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Designer Peer Pressure for Teens 111 Karma Waltonen Dark Comedies and Dark Ladies The New Femme Fatale 127 5 Anne Gjelsvik A Woman’s Gotta Do What a Woman’s Gotta Do 145 Mervi Pantti “Must-see Medicine Women” Breaking Borders of Genre and Gender in ER 163 III. From the Margins Rikke Schubart Hold It! Use It! Abuse It! Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS and Male Castration 185 Walter Alesci Xena: Warrior Princess Out of the Closet? A Melodramatic Reading of the Show by Latin American and Spanish Lesbian and Gay Fans 203 Sharon Lin Tay Sustaining the Definitive Bitch from Hell The Politics of Dolores Claiborne within a Feminist Genealogy 219 The Authors 231 6 Foreword The origin of this book lies in the two sessions ‘Representations of Strong Women in the Media I and II’ chaired by Rikke Schubart at Crossroads Conference in Tampere the summer of 2002. The interest at the Conference convinced us that the topic of strong women in the media was a research field in growth, but in want of literature and research. In the last decade women in popular media emerged as an expanding field of research. After the groundbreaking studies by Carol Clover (Men, Women and Chainsaws, 1993) and Yvonne Tasker (Spectacular Bodies, 1993, Working Girls, 1998) new as- pects are rapidly developing. Together with articles based on papers from the conference we have collected new articles focusing on this up-to-date theme. Courses on the representation of women in media are taught widely at universities and we hope this anthology represents new insights for researcher and students to discuss. The anthology is aimed at undergraduate and post- graduate students as well as teachers within the field of gender studies, film and media studies, cultural studies and anyone working with gender and media aspects. Finally we would like to thank The Research Council of Norway and The Danish Humanistic Research Council for financial support and Nordicom and Ulla Carlsson for publishing the anthology and thereby making this book possible. Odense and Trondheim in October 2004 Rikke Schubart Anne Gjelsvik 7 Acknowledgments We would like to thank Taylor & Francis for permission to reproduce Yvonne Tasker’s “Soldier’s Stories: Women and Military Masculinities in Courage Un- der Fire” which first appeared in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 19, 2002. We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Sandrew Metronome/Warner for Addicted to Love and Practical Magic, Angel Films Lola Rennt, for Le Studio Canal/ Pan Européenne Pro- duction for Baise-Moi, Paramount Home Video for Tomb Raider, and Dinamo Story for Salige er de som tørster. Thanks also to The Danish Film Institute/The Danish Film Museum for help in finding the illustrations. Introduction Babes, Bitches, Dominatrixes and Teen Witches Rikke Schubart & Anne Gjelsvik During the nineties strong women have moved to the fore in media fictions. In the cinema, in television series and in computer games we find heroines in leading roles that used to be occupied by men. Female doctors now run their own medical drama series, women star in action and suspense compu- ter games, and women even write and direct feminist avant-garde movies employing elements from ‘male’ genres such as the road-movie and the pornographic movie. The success of strong women is beyond discussion; we find them everywhere from popular television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess to blockbuster movies such as Charlie’s Angels and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. It is, however, not entirely clear how we should regard such heroines. Are they positive role models for a female audience? Or are they merely new versions of the old pin-up, refashioned in new outfits, new flesh and new roles to cater to a new taste in a postmodern media age? The representation of strong women raises complex questions related to issues of gender and genre, identity and identification, pleasure and violence. First, do these heroines appeal to women at all? If so, what kind of pleas- ures do they offer us? And if intended for a male audience, is it possible to kidnap a male fantasy and turn this figure into a feminist icon, thus turning an object of sexual pleasure into an active subject? The relation between the new strong women and gender politics, media products, consumerism and heterosexual cultural politics is not a simple one, as research in this new field has shown. In the last decade, film and media researchers have been divided in their evaluation of strong women. Carol Clover in her groundbreaking study Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992) made it clear that the Final Girl of the slasher movie (who kills the monster and saves herself) should not be read as a feminist development: “To applaud the Final Girl as a feminist development, as some reviews of Aliens have done with Ripley, is (..) a particularly gro- tesque expression of wishful thinking” (p. 53). Other researchers, however, have taken another view on strong women in media fictions. Yvonne Tasker 9 RIKKE SCHUBART & ANNE GJELSVIK in her Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (1998) is open to the ambivalences inherent in images of beautiful women playing cowgirls, action heroines or detectives, entering ‘male’ territory, yet submitting to the traditional aesthetics of the pin-up and the narrative subplots of rape, pros- titution and domestication through romance. Recent research suffers from the very same ambivalence that Tasker iden- tifies in the media products. Sarah Projansky in her Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (2001) is thus dismissive of the new wave of rape-revenge heroines, whereas Jacinda Read in her The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle (2000) views the very same cultural products as progressive and postfeminist. The editors of Reel Knock- outs: Violent Women in the Movies (2001), Martha McCaughey and Neal King, even suggest that images of strong women in fiction may prevent women from becoming victims of male violence in the real world: “We like the threat that women’s movie violence presents to the all-important divide between women and men. We wonder what effect such images would have on men who assault women partly because they’re so confident that they’ll win the fights” (p. 6). So, is Lara Croft merely a “sergeant-major with balloons stuffed up his shirt”, as Germaine Greer has called her? Or is she an image of a woman, who can and will fight back? Is Ilsa from the infamous Ilsa, She- Wolf of the SS “the first true feminist” as actress Dyanne Thorne coined her? Or is she a sexual display of perverse male desire? Such questions of representation and interpretation are complex, and answers cannot be simple.