Violent Femmes - cinema

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2001 by Stephanie Mencimer

On the big screen today, action babes are on top. Here's why men love it.

THIS SPRING, WHILE Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was breaking box-office records and feminists were arguing over the merits of the female action hero, no one noticed the dogs playing in theaters elsewhere. Exit Wounds, the latest Steven Seagal flick, opened with a paltry $19 million--his best in years, but a poor showing for an action film. While he's mercifully cut off the ponytail, Seagal is showing all of his 50 years, wearing a pastiche of orange pancake makeup and sporting heft not attributable to muscle mass.

In Exit Wounds, the martial-arts afficionado and star of macho classics Hard to Kill and Out for Justice employed Hong Kong kung-fu-movie wire tricks made famous in The Matrix and now standard fare in action-chick flicks. But where the wires only added to the grace and agility of lithesome Zhang Zi Yi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, they seemed to strain just to get Seagal off the ground.

Meanwhile, Driven, the latest by Sylvester Stallone, the quintessential beefcake action hero, was dying from neglect. The car-racing movie went almost straight to video, and so far has grossed only $32 million, a far cry from the $47 million Tomb Raider made in its very first weekend. Driven's returns were actually an improvement over Stallone's last disaster, Get Carter, which in 2000 earned all of $15 million, barely what his 1981 classic, Nighthawks, grossed back when ticket-prices were a lot cheaper.

And then there's poor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Last fall, his cloning film, The Sixth Day, disappeared with similar returns--this from a guy behind one of the all-time box-office blowouts, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Schwarzenegger had better luck last year playing the voice of a bug in the animated film, Antz, which pulled in $90 million.

This year, the muscle-bound stars of action-film blockbusters of the '80s and '90s have found themselves ungraciously drop-kicked out of the genre by, of all things, a bunch of girls. Girl-power flicks like Charlie's Angels, Crouching Tiger, and Tomb Raider are topping the $100 million mark once dominated by men like Schwarzenegger. Charlie's Angels has brought in $125 million; Crouching Tiger is up to $179 million; and Tomb Raider, only open since mid-June, stands at $126 million. Even last year's cheerleading movie, Bring It On, trumped the traditional male stars, grossing $68 million.

Action chicks are taking over prime time television as well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess and La Femme Nikita--all WB or UPN fodder--are about to be joined on a major network by Alias, a show about Sydney Bristow, a kung-fu-chopping female agent for a top-secret division of the CIA.

The enormous popularity of women as film enforcers has stirred much debate over what these films say about women, feminism, Hollywood, and violence, and whether it's progress or exploitation. But no one has answered a more interesting question: What does this say about men? After all, none of the big female hits. could have achieved its staggering popularity without nabbing a significant male audience, those same guys who were once the primary consumers of Die Hard, First Blood, and Commando. If men once lived vicariously through the escapades of John Rambo and Col. Matrix--in movies where women were mainly crime victims or in need of rescue--what does it mean when they love washing Lara Croft kick some bad-boy ass? It's a pretty sharp turn from misogyny to masochism.

The cynics say men will watch hot babes do just about anything, whether it's Jell-O wrestling or kickboxing men, and that the dominatrix has always been part of the male fantasy. Certainly, that must be part of it. But while simple sex appeal might explain why men like Lara Croft, it doesn't explain why they no longer love Schwarzenegger, to whom they'd been so loyal, suffering through everything from Predator to Junior. Nor does the hot-babe theory explain why no obvious successors have stepped in to replace Jean Claude Van Damme and the other aging beef boys.

More to the point, though, the pat male-fantasy explanation doesn't answer the question: Why now? Women have been playing action heroes for more than a decade, but they have never achieved Tomb Raiders level of success until just last year. In fact, earlier films where women played the lead roles as strong (and sexy) action heroines dropped like bombs.

Neither Demi Moore's 1997 G.I. Jane nor The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1996, starring Geena Davis as a highly trained government assassin, spawned any TV spin-offs or plans for sequels. And neither, came anywhere near the $100 million box- office benchmark of Charlie's Angels or Crouching Tiger. The Long Kiss grossed only $33 million; G.I. Jane, despite Moore's star- power and new breasts, garnered only $48 million.

Part of the appeal of the new action genre, of course, is that the old beefcake films were getting tired and repetitive, and their stars Reagan-era relics. It's not just that their stars are getting old--most are in their 50s now--but for men on the silver screen these days, being buff just isn't what it used to be.