Exploring the role of the female warrior in film
Reception By Female Viewers
Now that we’ve thought about the potential for feminist messages arising from the female perpetrated violence in The Arena, let’s consider the reception of this violence by viewers. In an excellent article entitled "Action Heroines and Female Viewers,"3 Tiina Vares had several focus groups watch Thelma and Louise in order to gauge the types of responses that women had to cinematic violence which was carried out by other women. Vares’ article was prompted by the apparent contradiction between many feminists’ embrace of nonviolence and pacifism and their simultaneous pleasure and satisfaction with representations of women as physically violent. In particular, how do they respond to female acts of revenge against violent male characters, a pattern into which the actions of Mamawi and Bodicia certainly fit. Long story short, the majority of the women in the focus groups expressed at most a highly critiqued and hesitant enjoyment of the adventures of Thelma and Louise. Before acknowledging any appeal whatsoever to the women’s violence, the women in the study went to great lengths to frame the violence as a justified response to male antagonism. They expressed many reservations about the unnatural, masculinizing effect that the violent actions of the characters had on their understanding of them. So it does seem that the warrior slaves of The Arena are voicing a sentiment that still has many adherents: it’s natural for men to fight and just weird when women do.
Another interesting point which was dealt with by Vares was the complex and shifting understanding of what it is that constitutes violence. Not only were certain behaviors such as smoking and swearing regarded as violent by some viewers, but a distinction was also drawn between violence committed by men vs. women. One viewer said "I think the difference between male and female violence is that few women would mindlessly use an act of violence. They do it as a last resort to an intolerable situation that they can’t deal with in any other way."4 So although Vares’ study certainly didn’t include enough women to lay claim to any universal findings, her subjects, not surprisingly, did make statements consistent with typical cultural definitions of gender roles. The idea that girls don’t fight runs deep for most of us and watching women perform acts of violence requires that we provide an elaborate framework of justification before we can relax and enjoy the show. Even when we do, however, there is only a limited potential for pleasure for many female audience members.
It makes me kind of sad to believe that we are so set in our thinking that understanding women as violent protagonists requires so much justification while seeing men engaged in on-screen carnage is no problem. As Christine Holmlund states in her piece in the anthology Moving Targets, it’s not that I want to argue that "we will be closer to equality when Hollywood portrays both women and men as brutal murderers,"5 but isn’t it time that we moved beyond both of these stereotypes? Another troubling aspect of many films is the eroticizing, in a narrow, Hollywood understanding of the erotic, of female violence. Apparently, women who kill, in the conception of Hollywood, are generally beautiful babes whose homicidal tendencies just make us want to screw them all the more. They are cute and edgy. Yum. But maybe I’m missing the point here: the enjoyment of film is all about the fantasy identifications that it allows us to make. Although I certainly don’t approve of actual homicide, even when perpetrated by a serious hottie who has been, really, really provoked, why should I deny myself the pleasure of witnessing it enacted on screen in total safety for all involved? So I guess I take it back and I’m not really that troubled by audiences finding killer babes sexy, as long as it all stays in the realm of fantasy.
3 Tiina Vares, "Action Heroines and Female Viewers: What Women Have to Say." Ibid., pp. 219-243.
4 Ibid., p. 231.
5 Christine Holmlund, "A Decade of Deadly Dolls: Hollywood and the Woman Killer," in Moving Targets: Women, Murder and Representation." Helen Birch, ed. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994, p. 129.
