Female Solidarity

Back to reason. As I began to say before, Suzanna Walters’ article on the women-in-prison genre has a number of good points which can help us look at that type of film in general and The Arena in specific with greater understanding. Of most interest to me were her observations about the genre’s ability, as something which is itself so marginal, to deal with issues which are too threatening for mainstream Hollywood to handle or at least to handle well, female violence in particular, and her discussion about the nature of heroism in these movies, which is tied into an unusual presentation of female solidarity.

Women-in-prison films, firmly situated as they are in the realm of B movies, in some ways find themselves less constrained than typical Hollywood products to deal with their subjects in traditional ways. There is a certain freedom granted by their marginality. The relationships which they portray between women are not the ones found in most movies or in day-to-day life. The shifting hierarchies that exist among the prisoners themselves and the more static ones between the prisoners and the guards or wardens are power relationships that we can all relate to from experience, but are taken here to the nth degree. The women in these movies join together and fight back against the largely male systems of domination, often winning in their fight and, by subverting the typical Hollywood endings, they give us a glimpse of a different kind of female empowerment.