Sexism Still Prevails In Action Movies

A woman’s place is in the chains.

That thought struck me the other day as I sat enduring “Mortal Kombat” in a multiplex full of boys - two of them mine. One of the combatants in the action movie is a woman who, we are led to believe, is as tough as any of the guys. Yet, when the script calls for a character to be kidnapped and held hostage, guess who gets the nod?

It’s a woman thing, friends.

From “Beverly Hills Cop” to “True Lies,” the woman in peril is as pervasive an action cliche as the gun that never runs out of bullets.

I tried to explain to my boys why this is sexist. They didn’t get it.

I wouldn’t have understood when I was their age either. As a boy, I absorbed the same message, largely from the pages of Marvel Comics:

A woman’s place is in the chains - or behind the force field, as the case may be. Held hostage.

Take Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl. Dr. Doom often did. The Sub-Mariner, too.

Her primary contribution to the Fantastic Four plot lines was to be captured by would-be rulers of the world. Thus motivated, her doting male partners would rush to the rescue. On those limited occasions when she actually had to fight, the strain inevitably would be too much, and she would collapse into her husband’s arms.

The woman was so useless that fans once mounted a “Dump Sue” letter-writing campaign.

Of course, uselessness is as distinctly feminine as eye shadow in the world of action and adventure - a “truth” we learn early and at a fundamental level.

But you know what? Most of the women I met in the comics 30 years ago have become tougher, smarter, more sure of themselves - mirroring two decades of painful debates (about the glass ceiling, abortion, child care, sexual harassment) which have forced us to re-evaluate our basic assumptions about the role and rights of women. Our attitudes and expectations have changed.

But go see any action film, in which everyone knows from the first frame that the female lead will be the designated hostage - and it still seems as natural as tax cheats in the spring.

I recently asked Miami Herald movie critic Rene Rodriguez if he could name any action-adventure film in which no woman is taken hostage. He was stumped and promised to get back to me. I’m still waiting.

We like our damsels in distress, not out of sweet chivalry so much as out of habit, a crusty holdover from less politically correct times. And if political correctness were the only thing being tweaked here, it would be a matter of little concern.

But even a hater of political correctness ought to be troubled at what is being perpetuated here:

Women are helpless without men.

And those who seem capable really aren’t.

The distressed damsel is one of fiction’s oldest conventions - the plot device that allows the hero to prove his mettle and reinforce his masculinity.

But flip the script. Try to envision Halle Barry rushing to save a terrorized Bruce Willis or picture Sarah Jessica Parker fighting to rescue a fearful Sylvester Stallone.

You can’t imagine it - because we have been socialized to accept the essential helplessness of women and the inherent capability of men.

Do that many of us - men and women - still want it this way? Are we that resistant to change?

I can say only this: Last time I saw Sue Storm, she was kicking backside and taking names, having been transformed by writers - “male” writers, by the way - into a capable, driven woman who rescues as often as she is rescued.

In that, she is part of a growing movement of able, tough-minded women in the comics. If there has been a corresponding loss of interest among male readers who dominate the comics audience, I haven’t seen it.

There’s a message in this, one I wish the makers of action-adventure movies understood. Even within the confines of that macho medium, it ill serves us all to relegate women to the role of de facto hostage.

At the very least, this is lame, predictable storytelling. At worst, it reinforces an image of women that is 20 years out-of-date. Surely, we should be able to agree today that decisiveness, strength and courage are not, by definition, male.

Take Sue Storm. I dare you.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Leonard Pitts Jr. Knight-Ridder