“When women fight, the typical understanding of them as supportive, cooperative and nurturing is stripped away, leaving a battleground which is unfamiliar to both combatants and spectators.“ — Catherine Colegrove

I’m Straight. Really!

In this regard, the female, when she appears, seems to be hovering in the background not only to remind us of the film’s romantic subplot and sexual aspects, but to reassure us of it and the hero’s heterosexual aspect. It would be easy, if we wanted to apply a Freudian reading to these images, to speak of the symbolic significance of spears, swords, knives and so on.
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The Arena (2001): A still image from the 2001 remake of The Arena