FIGHTING ANGELS-final

FIGHTING ANGELS
-How women are represented in martial movies
By Chu Qian

As feminism becomes one of the hottest topics people have discussed today, it is widely represented in mass media, namely, the film industry. More and more movies now shift to display women in a more active position, especially in martial fighting movies, where this once being considered as weak and submissive group, turns to bravery and domination.

There are several movies whose heroin figures are extremely impressive and noteworthy: Kill Bill series and Resident Evil series. These two movies had been one of the Year’s bestsellers; using filming as the medium, they drew in millions of people worldwide to go to the theatre where they started to perceived the idea that women could also be the KILLING MACHINE, a term which had been so popularly used before to solely describe masculine male figures such as Rambo in First Blood. In some senses, women have replaced men in the pop culture of martial movies.

This Kill Bill Volume1 poster tells us something about the cultural background of using female martial artists. In the poster, Uma Therman is wearing the notorious yellow suits. If you can recall that it is the symbolic clothing of Bruce Lee, the Hollywood Chinese kungfu actor of 1960s, it will not be hard for you to get the idea that in fact Kill Bill wants to pay tribute to the male legendary actor Bruce Lee. Lee is a monument that is hard to surpass by any other man in martial art industry. Here I say “man” I mean real Man, in a gender perspective. All the centuries we have seen male figure playing around on stage and none could be as talent as him and in fact, many of us viewers get bored, so how can you modify the movie so that it pertains its attractiveness? The answer is, by using women as main characters in them. Also, if using an actor in this yellow suit, viewers will inevitably compare him with lengendary Lee when watching the movie, which was not what the directors expected us to do- they want us to enjoy the movies they make, rather than to question or criticize them against the original one. As a result the best way to solve the problem is to make it female. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen comments like “Uma stinks! She can’t rival Bruce Lee in every sense!” after the release of the movie, mostly are “Uma did so well, I like her playing what Bruce Lee had been playing!” It’s the power of opposite sex, the tendency to discorver the good traits in a different sex. So here stands a woman, with an undefeatable look on her face, with the clothes so perfectly fit to her body, with the curve of her thighs charmingly formed good angles with her samurai sword, and a long splash of blood all the way behind her. This makes perfect sense with the plotline: In the story, Uma played a role of Bride, an assassin who was savagely shot in the temple by her lover, and also her boss Bill, but she waked up in a few years to start a bloody revenge against Bill and his other assassins who had also taken part in the murder of the Bride and her husband’s family. As you can see, when pushed, women kill as easy as if they were baby-caring.

Movie posters also tell us a lot about the attitude of heroines in those movies. Let’s now shift to the poster of Resident Evil. Noticeably, Milla Jovovich is not wearing a bra! This is a really interesting detail because from this we can formulate an atitude this female character has. The function of brassiere basically is to hold breasts in a place that is pleasurable to look at, but who to look at? Of course, it’s man. “Male gaze” is the spotlight man concentrated on woman’s dressing, wording and behaving; male gaze is everywhere around a woman, restricted her from being a both physically and mentally free woman when she herself has felt being looked at. As a result, Milla’s no-bra seems to be a retreat women take to be away from this cage of male gaze . She seems to be saying, “ I don’t care if you like my breasts or not; all I wanna do is to get zombies down, not you down”.

To summarize, if a man just come to the theatre to see beautiful women, then martial movies are probably not the best for them: women in these movies very frequently get sweating, get bruised and get bleeding during fighting, which is going to impair their stereotypic impressions of submissive beauties. Besides, explaining from both the cultural background and feministic attitude shows that, using women in martial art movies has become both inevitable and popular. It is happy to see that women are no longer vases anymore in these movies- their confidence and independence have made everything that a man can do possible for them as well.

Resources:
1. Alexandra’s blog, “Horror Movie Coolie: Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil (2002)” Thursday, February 17, 2011 http://scare-tactic.blogspot.com/2011/02/horror-movie-coolie-milla-jovovich-in.html

2. Darryl Knickrehm (aka Dariru) “Kill Bill: Vol 2 (2004)” Friday, May 20, 2011 http://knickrehm.blogspot.com/2011/05/kill-bill-vol-2-2004.html

3. Dreamstime website, “KungFu Bruce Lee” wall paper, 2000-2001 http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-kungfu-bruce-lee-image6979337