Joss Whedon

Action movies, which have long been the provenance of hyper masculinity, have only recently allowed women a place at the armory. The journey from Sigourney Weaver’s desexualized Ripley in Alien to Angelina Jolie’s sexually charged Lara Croft in Tomb Raider has marked something of a sea change in popular conceptions of gender.

Tough women characters were once stripped of their sexuality when handed a machine gun, but now tough women characters are expected to possess an aggressive sexuality that can easily spill into lesbian subtext. Although few action movies contain openly lesbian characters (the campy flick D.E.B.S. being a notable exception), they play a significant role in challenging gender norms, which is key to making room at the box office for lesbian lead characters.

Scholars of women in action movies have argued that women’s action roles are both transgressive and maintain traditional heterosexual, gendered boundaries. Many of these heroines are based in stereotypical roles such as the dominatrix, which has long been a transgressive female identity—she both sexually dominates men and exists to satisfy them.

Similarly, the female action hero transgresses gender boundaries by occupying traditionally masculine spaces—that of the battlefield, particularly—yet maintains an appearance of hyper-femininity to draw in male viewers and underscore her identity as female.

Though this can be likened to a one-step-forward, two-steps-back situation, female action heroes do destabilize gender norms enough to provide an entry point for lesbian subtext that has increasingly spilled over into overt, campy representations of lesbian sexuality. For example, Jennifer Garner’s title role in Elektra includes Elektra engaging in a same-sex kiss that, despite its undeniable part in the lesbianism-equals-death trope, is performed with something of a wink.

This marks a change from the 1990s, when female action heroes were either stripped of their feminine sexuality in order to masculinize them enough to carry a weapon, or hyper-sexualized to drive home their masculinity. For example, the character of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), was buff to the extreme, but focused only on the safety of her child.

In G.I. Jane (1997), Demi Moore’s character stripped down to the physical basics until she was nearly indistinguishable, physically, from a man—except for a lack of sexual desire. In The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Geena Davis’ character transformed from stereotypically feminine to stereotypically masculine, complete with a macho sex drive.

But with the box office successes of Charlie’s Angels (2000) and Tomb Raider (2001), female action heroes began to experience a feminine sexuality charged with masculinity that has rarely before appeared on screen. In these two films, as well as subsequent ones such as Elektra, Catwoman and Aeon Flux (which are all chasing the Tomb Raider box office mirage), the sexuality of the female leads takes on an aggressive and queer edge: These women come out on top, with the result that their male sexual partners are forced to take on passive roles that can easily be read as feminine.

Two films, produced 10 years apart and both written by lesbian screenwriters, provide interesting counterpoints to the mainstream action movies mentioned above. In 1996, Ilene Chaiken, now known as the creator of The L Word, wrote the screenplay for Barb Wire, a B-movie extravaganza starring Pamela Anderson Lee as leather-and-vinyl-clad mercenary Barb Wire. And in 2006, L Word and Go Fish scribe Guinevere Turner wrote the screenplay for BloodRayne, a vampire movie starring openly bisexual Kristanna Loken (who previously played the terminator in T3) and Michelle Rodriguez (Lost).

Though neither Barb Wire nor BloodRayne were box office successes, the fact that they were written by well-known lesbian screenwriters—both of whom worked on The L Word— is of an intriguing connection that begs the question of whether lesbian authorship makes a difference in this aggressively (or possibly defensively) heterosexual genre.

Barb Wire, which is essentially based on Casablanca, does not contain any lesbian subtext in the storyline, but the film is clearly queer. Barb runs what looks a lot like a gay leather bar (named the Hammer Head), complete with what appears to be lesbian patrons who fondle each other lovingly. In addition, it turns out that Barb’s goal is to help a woman doctor escape to Canada (America at this point has turned into something of a police state) with the cure for AIDS.

It’s true that the film is a vehicle for Pamela Anderson’s well-marketed sexuality, but despite an incredibly long strip club sequence in which she is sprayed with water, the character of Barb Wire is one of the most feminist heroines ever seen in action movies. Despite the fact that all men want her, none of them get to have her, and Barb does not allow any men to take advantage of her. She declares that she’ll work with anyone for cash, but in the movie her jobs all result in aiding oppressed women.

BloodRayne, though it too was written by a lesbian, does not share the same unexpected feminist ideals of Barb Wire. It does, however, package together a number of trends that have characterized female-led action movies. It begins with a militantly feminist storyline: The character of Rayne (Kristanna Loken) sets out to kill her father, the vampire leader Kagan (played, surprisingly, by Ben Kingsley), who both raped and murdered her mother. Rayne is thus half-human, half-vampire, straddling a middle space between human and animal; this enables her character to be less-than-pure.

The movie also employs the time-worn theme of vampire lesbianism, but this time with a twist. Rayne is drawn to women and to blood, but she only kills vampires—in one scene, in a homosexually suggestive way. Michelle Rodriguez plays another vampire hunter, Katarin, who has unclear motivations except for one: She is obviously presented as a foil for Rayne. The two women eventually meet in combat, bringing out a homoerotic charge that is stereotypical of woman-on-woman fights, and also parallels the homoeroticism between men in action movies. When Rayne finally does engage in heterosexual sex with a man, Sebastian (Matthew Davis), it’s an aggressive scene in which it is clear that she is the one in control.

BloodRayne is by no means a brilliant movie (and suffers from director Uwe Boll’s disturbing glee with unrealistically spurting blood), but it neatly brings together a number of tropes that extend through many female-led action movies.

It’s clear that Hollywood has been chasing the next Lara Croft ever since Tomb Raider raked in $252 million worldwide, but none have come close to that success, not even Tomb Raider 2, which was a relative failure in comparison. As these films continue to be released, however, the possibilities for women in these lead roles has continue to broaden, and the possibilities for lesbian content in them also continues to increase.

The next step, of course, would be to have a female action lead engage in an overtly lesbian encounter without anyone—good or evil—dying. It will be interesting to see whether Joss Whedon’s long-awaited adaptation of Wonder Woman, which is still in development, will take that next step.