“Feminists for the NRA: Sci Fi Chicks with Guns”

Action Sci-Fi films featuring strong women protagonists typically do not become block buster hits. Partly this is because women, who should be the primary audience for such “grrl power” films as Night of the Comet, Cherry 2000, and Tank Girl typically don’t see these films in the numbers they see “chick flicks,” and the market, driven of course by money, doesn’t promote the films as “for women” but as action adventure films. As a result, many feminists who would otherwise promote women’s breakthroughs into typically male-held areas (the role of action/adventure hero certainly is a last boys’ club) are surprised when they watch some sci-fi films and find a strong message of women’s authority, power, and chosen sexuality. These movies’ protagonists either challenge commonly-held images of female beauty or problematize them with a third-wave vengeance. My films show feminist protagonists as heroic, and thus provide identity alternatives or options for women, subverting the more traditional passive female roles we see in many “chick flicks” and male-centered action films. As popular culture feminist Joanne Hollows argues, one of the functions of popular entertainment is “produc[ing] and negotiat[ing] different constructions of feminine identity, [and thus] offering a ‘repertoire’ of femininities” (58).

Chicks With Guns

Most of the time, the attitude I get about guns is that feminists should not even admit they exist except as an evil to be destroyed. I am opposed to violence– but prepared to defend myself, with a gun, if ever a need arose. As a result of my own training with guns, I am quite interested in the way guns in relation to women get portrayed in popular culture because of what that portrayal reveals. If feminists don’t explore the idea of women action heroes with guns is it our own idea to not do so, or are we just accepting the essentialist “tradition” that women ought to be against guns? How are women characters who can use guns portrayed, and why isn’t the forceful seizure of power (through possibly any means) considered feminist? If guns are only shown as used against women in violence, and never by women to stop or control violence, what is being “normed” about women’s relation to the power guns represent?

I did an informal survey of women who mostly call themselves feminist. I suspected that very few of them would have seen these films, and I also suspected that most of them would say they did not watch sci fi. I was actually surprised at the number of women who said they liked sci fi (67%), but not surprised that most of the women hadn’t seen my three films. But at the same time, a majority had seen Bladerunner– arguably one of my favorite yet misogynistic sci fi films. So what kind of sci fi are the women who say they like it watching, then? Who is there to tell them that Bladerunner and Star Wars aren’t the only sci fi out there, and that there are feminist sci fi options? Where do the women who “find sci fi violent” or “boring” get their ideas about sci fi as a whole huge genre? And how are my chosen films different, anyway? What is so feminist about a chick with a gun?

Night of the Comet: It’s Armageddon and the Malls are Open!

This 1984 “B” movie is fairly obscure. What happens is that a comet, which last appeared near Earth when the dinosaurs disappeared, returns. The world is ready for a grand party– but instead the comet turns everyone not protected by steel into icky red calcium dust. Our heroes are two teen girls from Los Angeles who spend the night in various steel buildings, but it turns out that those who were only partially protected from the comet degenerate into zombies who want to eat the other survivors. (I did say it’s a “B” movie). So the girls have to figure out what’s going on, survive zombies, find other survivors, and then escape bad-guys who want to use their blood as a serum to stop the zombie condition. It’s a lot of fun, there are some great little jokes of the “repeat it at parties to other fans” variety, but how is this film feminist? The girls are quite stunningly empowered, in their own high school, valley-girl way. In their interest in fashion, combined with their knowledge of “traditionally male” skills like guns and martial arts we find very “third wave” feminists.

Their father is a Green Beret who taught the girls how to fight, shoot guns, and be self-sufficient enough that when he is away, they can take care of themselves. Regina, the oldest, is competitive, athletic, smart, and in an early scene, fights off a much-bigger-than-her zombie who has eaten her unwary boyfriend and then (unlike female characters in most action films) she actually rides a motorcycle away as fast as she can, rather than wait around for the zombie to recover. She is bossy and opinionated –especially about guns– and these things are seen as positive traits that help her survive. She figures out what has happened surprisingly fast– and takes immediate action to find survivors and protect herself and her sister. All of these are character traits that I, as a teenage girl watching the film for the first time, found quite appealing, and were the kinds of traits that led me to be the feminist I am today. So is Regina a feminist role model? An alternative feminine possibility?

Early on she obsessively removes her competition from the “top scores” of what she considers her video game. While she is wiping out the initials of her competitor, her boyfriend gets eaten and the locked theater door swings shut, keeping out the zombies. When Reg goes to investigate, she is immediately suspicious of the empty LA streets and is on guard when the zombie attacks. The empowering lesson? Be a competitive “overachieving” girl and you will survive even the end of the world as we know it. When you hear suspicious “zombie eating your boyfriend in a back alley” noises, don’t just panic but be prepared and fight him off with karate-type moves and a big 2 by 4 to the groin.

There’s a wonderful moment when, in practicing with some guns Regina has rounded up for self-defense, Sam’s machine gun jams. Sam (the younger blonde cheerleader sister) is sort of dingy and gets a bad case of the hives because of her nerves (with the world destroyed she can’t help chugging sodas). She assertively shoots a “target” car into submission. When the gun repeatedly jams, she looks at her sister, rolls her eyes and says “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.” That she knows the difference, not all automatic weapons are created equal, is the surprise; what else does she know? Further, her dingy-ness doesn’t make her stupid– in a fight scene at the mall with some zombies, she, like Regina, strategizes, fights against unequal odds with surprising ingenuity and, in one moment, flirts shamelessly to put a zombie off guard, then disables him and escapes.

Actually their valley-girl youth and appearance is part of what makes others underestimate them, and the girls use this to their advantage repeatedly rather than let it be a handicap. To escape, Reg whacks a bad-guy scientist over the head with a computer keyboard–and he is set up for the sucker-punch because he thinks she has merely thrown a petulant teen-aged girly fit. Then, in the finale where the girls round up survivors and escape from the scientists’ underground Labyrinth, they comment on each others’ cute outfits. Just because a girl knows a Mac10 from an Uzi doesn’t mean she won’t want to coordinate her commando gear with a little style.

So, the film’s subversive message is that women who “fight back” and who learn what is traditionally considered “male” knowledge can and will survive. It also shows that needing to go to the mall to put on make up and dance around to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is not an altogether bad thing. These girls are a juxtaposition of valley girl and commando feminist– and the film offers this alternative as a norm, rather than an exception to the rule.

Cherry 2000

1987’s Cherry 2000 describes a futuristic Mad-Max world where robots are programmed as “the perfect companion.” Cherry 2000 is a gorgeous curvaceous blonde robot with wide eyes who has a drink ready at the door when Sam, our hero, comes home. You can almost see the manual for Cherry’s programming including that 1950’s home economics text that people like to pass around as an example of how far gender roles have come. But her perfection is shown immediately to be problematic when Sam asks her a follow up question to “something she learned” and her face, in close up, shows anger and confusion and a sort of glazed “does not compute” moment– apparently intelligent, meaningful conversation is not that important to the designers. When a “complete internal meltdown” caused by dishwater shorts her irreparably out, Sam seeks a replacement body to the computer chip that holds her rather vapid personality. (It begs to be observed that the perfect 50’s style housewife is literally killed by housework.) To find the replacement, Sam enlists a tracker named “E. Johnson,” who is from the start a contrast to Cherry. Played by Melanie Griffith, with shockingly red, unruly hair, E drives a red Mustang “power car” with authority, saying “no one else drives my car,” is quick to draw a machine gun or rocket launcher when necessary, is constantly the “active” hero rescuing or protecting Sam, and isn’t afraid to get a little dirty. She can fix a car and an airplane and risks her life in “the zone”– an odd dystopia where “the rule of law” ends, the bad guys dance the hokey-pokey, and trackers are killed on sight.

Ultimately, Cherry 2000 is a love story– will Sam choose the mindless Cherry or E, the “real woman” with flaws and messy imperfections? (Of course he will). Really, this is a classic “chick flick” idea. But there are interesting gender ideas going on in the film which make it important to look at as a feminist. Relationships are shown as so complicated that one needs a lawyer to negotiate a one-night stand and “real women” (other than, of course, E) are unnatural and artificial while the robots are perfect stereotypes of femininity. This dysfunctional dating world says something about how men & women relate to each other in an unbalanced power dynamic. Ultimately the movie suggests that in an absence of real equality, when women are an artificial “ideal,” literally “programmed” to be perfect & subservient, there can be no real relationships but only legalistic maneuvering– quite a subversive idea there.

An interesting note is that the original film poster focused much more intently on the “perfection” of the Cherry– while the DVD version shows an authoritative Melanie Griffith wearing black leather and holding a gun, with the tag line “Need a bounty hunter? She’s your man.” Partly, the new cover is because Griffith is now a big star, but what else does this new focus on the empowered “chick with a gun” reveal about the society to which the film is being sold? Have the time’s a-changed so much since 1988 that the demographic for the female action hero has shifted the movie’s marketing from being about a futuristic “sex toy”to being more about the empowered woman who is the alternative to the perfect stereotype?

Tank Girl

According to this 1995 movie’s tag line, “in 2033, justice rides a tank and wears lip gloss.” This is the only of these three films directed by a woman, Rachel Taladay and the movie is an adaptation of a comic book Some of the complaints about the movie have to do with its status as a former comic– either the comic fans think the movie wasn’t good enough for their beloved comic or movie watchers don’t get the comic references and “attitude” and so think the movie is weird. It is kind of corny/campy– but that is part of its charm. The comic has a sort of “punk” post-feminist feeling which the movie tries for too by adding interspersed sections of comic art to the live action. The plot is that a comet hits the Earth, destroying much of it and pushing all water underground, to be controlled by the evil corporate quasi military group Water and Power. Tank Girl (Rebecca) lives with a large commune-type group of friends “off the grid,” stealing water. When caught, the bad guys kill most of her friends and kidnap Sam, a little girl and Rebecca’s friend. After escaping from Water & Power, Tank Girl must save her young friend from a life of servitude in a brothel, survive her meeting with a group of genetically engineered super warriors called the Rippers, and eventually kill the biggest of the bad guys, played by Malcolm McDowell.

There’s really no doubt when you watch the film that Tank Girl, played by Lori Petty, is feminist– she’s so empowered it’s actually difficult to list the things that make her seem strong. Her clothes and hair are punk-chic– pretty with an attitude (it’s good to know a girl can still get fishnet stockings after the world ends). But what is really interesting about the movie is that it ultimately shows alternatives of feminine beauty, women supporting each other, and sexuality and power being emphatically womanly.

In one revealing scene, Rebecca sneaks into Liquid Silver, a brothel owned by Water and Power and run by a madame that looks like a cross between Cruella DeVille and a penguin, to rescue the little girl, Sam. She enters the dancers’ dressing room where a hologram instructs her how to achieve the liquid silver “look”– which is generic “futuristic” hooker– white hair, silver clothes and way too much literal “whitewashing” of individuality. Even ethnicity fades away into generic silver Barbie-dollness. The hologram, in a seductive voice, instructs how to remove “all inappropriate hair,” what skirt and bracelets to wear, etc. While the hologram is speaking, Rebecca runs around the room jerkily, trying on several “stereotypical” female sex-fantasy outfits and ultimately rejecting them all for her own look– which is both punk, feminine, and somehow almost forties glamour. She combines combat boots and feather boas, making them seem the logical combination. The hologram says “if you have followed instructions correctly, you should appear thus” and hard core punk-y music shows us Rebecca stalking out with her “I can blend in too” outfit; clearly, she doesn’t follow directions well. She is the opposite of what the Liquid Silver dancers, and the image of white perfection the hologram, represent and yet she proclaims herself beautiful in cockily saying “Lock up your sons!” In so doing, she calls into question those standards of beauty the hologram represents.

In addition to her third wave fashion bending, throughout the movie there are significant references to Tank Girl’s obsession with her tank’s gun. From the moment she first sees it and plans her escape, there are obvious phallic jokes about the “size of her gun” and in shot after shot we see her perched with the tank’s large gun between her legs– she quips “feeling a little inadequate?” in one fight sequence. She’s got the “penis envy” thing going here with a vengeance. But just after her ultimate fight scene where, with the tank’s aid, she kills the bad guy hologram (represented quite intriguingly as the witch from Wizard of Oz in a long cartoon pan sequence) the mood of Tank Girl’s fetish with “big guns” shifts. Instead of big tanks and phallic guns protruding, showing her as male-centered and quite Freudian, we see her decked out in huge missile bras. The film’s final sequence, in which the Rippers, Tank Girl and Jet Girl somehow free all the water that the evil company has been charging for and the rains come again, is entirely depicted as cartoon sequences with Tank Girl’s missile breasts declaring her powerfully female. Woman power! We have a juxtaposition of the breasts with the gun– and so a declaration of Tank Girl’s raw female authority.

But the final “feminist” lesson in the film is Jet Girl– the true transformation of the film. In an early scene, Rebecca asks Jet why she always covers her mouth when she laughs– to which Jet nervously covers her mouth, lowers her head, and giggles. Shown in the start of the movie as weak, pasty faced, sexually harassed, and meek, she becomes aggressive, proud of her abilities with the jet’s repair, maintenance, and piloting. In one climactic scene she bellows at the control tower (as our heroes are trying to sneak in for their surprise attack) at the top of her lungs, throwing in butch curses and forcing them to let her in through the sheer will of her drill-sergeant esque voice. Then, in a final showdown with the scum bag who has sexually harassed Jet from the beginning, she triumphantly shoots him, blows the smoke from the gun and pops off a crack action hero one liner that would make Arnold proud. In the scene where she gets her vengeance on the bad guy, the camera angle is flattering, she is wearing make up and smiling, and her hair is done, and the emphasis is less on the gun and more on how fulfilled and happy she looks. It isn’t so much that she has been given a gun and an attitude but more that she lives now in a world where her intellectual and mechanical abilities are her power– not her status as subservient sex slave– and she is supported by a network of people who aren’t trying to make her doubt herself.

Again, is this supposed to be “feminist role model” behavior? Perhaps. I want to offer the option that these and other action sci fi films can and often do offer alternative images for women to consider. It’s not that all women ought to rush out and take gun lessons– but that true empowerment comes when ALL choices are available. One tagline from a computer game I have played recently that has women as its main character says “power is never given; it must be taken.” These women protagonist take control of their own destinies, party through their knowledge of “forbidden” male skills such as gun fighting, mechanics, piloting and sheer aggression. While that may not always inspire “good citizen” type of behavior, it does inspire confidence and the feeling that you can and should do whatever you want to– even if and perhaps even because you’re a girl.