On the subject of female heroes in movies and television I wanted to link to a couple of thought-provoking posts & sites.
The first is by Cindy Cooper of Blog Spot "The Bad Genious" who passionately writes about the need for women and girls to see positive heroic representations of their sex/gender to be able to grow up believing in themselves. In fact, she relates a story about spinning with her sister until dizzy and nauseated, hoping upon hope to burst into Amazonian Princesses, that echoes one I tell in my book introduction almost word for word. She also asks, and answers, the question,"So why didn’t those little girls watching superheroes grow to be a generation of women reading about superheroes?" and notes the frustrating fact that movies featuring superwomen just aren't given the same respect as those with supermen--which forces young girls to identify with either the love interest or the contemporary male heroic ideal.
Supervillainess over at "Female Comic Book Superheroes" asks female audiences an important question with What's Your Dream Superheroine Movie? (My desires include: A Modesty Blaise movie worthy of her character, a Promethea movie, a good Buffy movie, Wonder Woman, natch, and Birds of Prey.)
And Heroine Content always has thoughtful critiques of race and gender in movies and television.
"I was surprised when Rose brought me a script of Red Sonja that she liked,” adding, "I found it very entertaining. Sonja was strong, smart, cunning — just about everything she'd have to be to survive."
Rodriguez wants to cast the slight McGowan as the red-haired warrior, saying
"Rose is a pistol. She's whip-smart, has attitude to burn, is sexy, extremely strong, yet has a vulnerable side that would surprise her closest friends. That description also fits Red Sonja."*
This isn't going to be an adaptation of any particular comic book story arc, nor will it be a remake of 1985's awesomely awful Dino De Laurentiis produced Red Sonja which starred a young and svelte Brigitte Nielsen in the title role.
Red Sonja became the final installment in a trilogy that included the fabulous Conan the Barbarian which was followed by the atrocious Conan the Destroyer, which unlike Sonja can't even be described as "good bad." And it's so good bad that I had to go buy a copy. See what I mean - -
The characters of these movies were loosely based on the 1930s pulp writings of Robert E. Howard. Red Sonya had appeared in only one of his stories, “The Shadow of the Vulture,” as a pistol wielding Russian in the 16th century. In the 1970s, the character was adapted by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel comics as a supporting character in their Conan title. The spelling of her name was changed from Sonya to Sonja, and her origins were moved from Russia to Conan’s fictional prehistoric “Hyborian Age.” Her deftness with a pistol was changed to mastery of the sword.
Sonja proved popular enough to support an eponymous title. In the original edition of The Superhero Women, Stan Lee refers to her as “the ultimate female warrior” and suggested that because Sonja is depicted as holding her own against any combatant—regardless of gender—“perhaps through the medium of the contemporary comicbook [sic], society may inch itself a bit closer to the time when we judge an individual on his or her own merit, rather than the accident of sex.”
I'm not sure whether the comic book Sonja accomplishes this (and I invite thoughtful comments on the subject) but the movie, though it has Sonja spouting pseudo-feminist rhetoric such as “No man may have me, unless he's beaten me in a fair fight.” and “I don’t need any man’s help.” actually ends up putting Sonja in her rightfully gendered place by the end of the movie. (I go into detail about this in the book, and so only mention it here. Regardless of Lee et al's intentions with the comic, the 1980s film focuses more on Sonja’s gender than on what should be her impressive sword skills.)
Still, it's a Great God-Awful film, well worth watching. Although it's a bummer to see Sandahl Bergman go from her portrayal as the glorious Valeria in Conan the Barbarian to playing the campy Queen Gedren in Sonja--a role for which she "won" a Razzie award.
Finally, I'd originally found the news of Rodriguez's new venture over at Superhero Hype where the comments are filled with disturbing, if unsurprising, misogyny—most of it in this instance directed at McGowan.
A brief rundown includes such sexist gems as:
“She’s witch” who’s “plum bewitched Rodriguez.”
She’s called a “dumb Ho” and “Marilyn Manson’s leftovers” who is only getting roles because “she's banging robert rodriguez so he got her another movie.”
She’s not only blasted as unattractive, but as a both a home-wrecker and career poison.
One poster “Wishes Rodriguez was back with his wife cause they have a ton of kids and I know that's hard.” –an over-simplification of the situation—and another claims “She's doing to Rodriguez what Nielsen did to Stallone. (Wrecked the first marriage, leading him into dopey career moves).”
One poster even goes so far as to praise the scene in Death Proof in which McGowan’s character gets “all broken and bloody.”
Regardless of what one thinks of Rodriguez as a director, or even as an adulterer, and regardless of what one thinks of McGowan as a Beauty or an actress, the vitriol with which her attributes are addressed is alarming. These are not critiques of her capacity to fit the role, or take on this particular acting challenge, this is venomous rhetoric against women.
I don't know whether McGowan can be a phenomenal Sonja, I do think she will be perfect in the couple's remake of Barbarella and she was super kick-ass as Cherry Darling--a go-go dancer cum leader of her people in Planet Terror.
*This is all good, but I hate when strong women are praised for being "vulnerable" --as if it's a necessary qualifier. You never hear the same adjective used to praise the strengths of a male warrior.
I thought this column by sex educator and writer Violet Blue for the San Francisco Chronicle was worth posting here, considering how many blog postings I've read where women, particularly self-proclaimed feminists, describe instances in which they have been the victims of sexist and/or misogynistic trollers who either bait writers on said writer's site (which should be a safe space for free expression) OR take quotes from a post to a message board (or blog) elsewhere to talk about how "ugly," "fat," and "repressed" these "horrible feminists" must assuredly be. (As if appearance had any sort of relevance.)
I have to admit, even knowing the statistics on violence against women, it continues to shock me how aggressive and cruel trollers are, and how much they get off on their antagonism. (Through googling my own blog, I've found terrible things said about me, and refused to play into the bait. Particularly since their commentary has nothing to do with me personally, but with their feelings about women in general.)
Violet writes:
Like I, or any woman worth her weight in vagina, should give a toss what "viking116," "toadytenderloins" or "bigdaddyhouston54" say about what we look like, our sexiness, or its relation to what we're saying. No, that's why we have friends (and editors, and in my case, agents and publishers). Everyone knows comments like that are from trolls who make any publication they're associated with look bad, and they should be bitch-slapped from here to ... at least the Tenderloin and back. They're off-topic and thus easy to discount nonetheless, but would political sex and culture commentary from someone who looks like Pamela Anderson actually be taken seriously? Maybe by the editors at Maxim, but honestly, what girl wants the adoration of psychotic anonymous trolls? I just write and talk about sex. But every woman on the Internet gets called slutty and ugly and fat (to put it lightly) no matter what; all we have to be is female.
