Babes In Boyland
Sexism and stupidity -- that's what this year's sci-fi and horror heroines are made of.
      by Sarah Kendzior

A couple of weeks ago, I viewed one of the most inspiring movies in recent memory. This film, a parable of honor, strength, and selfless sacrifice for the greater good, held me absolutely entranced for every one of its ninety-eight minutes. Its heroines, professionally trained operatives of a vastly intellectual nature, displayed mental and physical abilities any woman would hold in awe. They knew karate. They spoke Japanese. They hacked into computer bases, preventing terrorists from wreaking mass destruction. This dangerous trio -- cleverly disguised by a cognomen of an innocuous, celestial nature -- reaffirmed my faith in womankind. The millennial era is indeed conducive to feminism. Girls still kick ass. And it's okay to drop a few hundred on a leather jacket, because oh my God, these chicks had the coolest clothes, and, wow, I should totally get my hair done like Dylan's, and Sam Rockwell is turning into such a babe, and...

That's what we call kicking ass: Charlie's Angels, the genre exception.

Oh, Charlie's Angels, I love you so.

Needless to say, this realization surprised me as much as it would anyone. Granted, my taste doesn't always run to the highbrow, but how could the movie whose characters I could relate to most appear in a cheesy revival of an Aaron Spelling series about bra-less, big-haired detectives? After all, I'm no fool. I'm a woman of the modern world. I'm a child of the progressive era. Perhaps I prefer Buffy Summers to Christina Hoff, but hey, when's the last time you saw a feminist academic kicking vampire ass? Still, it's baffling. Charlie's Angels. The movie Roger Ebert called "eye candy for the blind." The movie I watched with a bunch of slack-jawed fanboys whose discussion thereafter was limited to the merits of Cameron Diaz's ass. How could this film, whose funniest scenes involved storylines like LL Cool J morphing into Drew Barrymore, be the greatest female-led genre movie of the year?

Easy. Because it is, essentially, the only one.

About a year ago, 11th Hour managing editor Linda Najera wrote a long article detailing exactly why the sci-fi genre is so great for women. Included in her analysis were the women of Buffy (before the title character went the way of the wuss), the heroines of James Cameron (before that whole Jessica Alba thing), and Agent Scully (after she went the way of the wuss -- but we're sentimental at 11th Hour). Admittedly, there are a few problems here, but Linda's general argument -- that science fiction was one of the few genres where women could be smart, strong, and wear really cool outfits -- was well proven by these examples, and Post-Fourth Season Scully, for example, hardly seemed indicative of a mounting trend in female wussification. Genre fans, after all, are used to anomalies and disappointments, fostered as they are in the inevitable cancellation of their favorite series or crappy sequel to their favorite film.

Cool chick Kathryn Erbe gets a load of that shirtless digging guy in last year's female-friendly Stir of Echoes.

Plus, these were great cinematic times for women. 1999 was the year of The Matrix's Trinity, a sci-fi heroine so cool she more than compensated for, say, Queen Amidala being the only girl in George Lucas's galaxy. Horror films were equally female-friendly -- Toni Collete was so good as Haley Joel Osment's tough but seriously freaked out mom in The Sixth Sense that she merited an Oscar nomination. The Blair Witch Project's Heather was annoying as all hell -- but her bitchiness came from being too tough, too strong, too arrogant, not from being dim-witted and frail. Stir of Echoes' Kathryn Erbe gave one of the best female performances of the year in any genre, and her character was refreshingly down-to-earth for someone who got to see Kevin Bacon digging shirtless on a regular basis. Even the bad movies embraced strong female leads -- the insipid Carrie II was redeemed by a smart, well-rounded performance from Emily Bergl; Stigmata, correspondingly, by Patricia Arquette.

Granted, great filmmaking tends to bring about great female roles, irrespective of genre (the fact that Julia Roberts practically won the Erin Brockovich Oscar in March points to a certain weakness in this year's lot), but the year 2000 has been particularly bad for us girls. 1998 was no stellar year either, but it had nice female supporting roles in good movies like The Truman Show and Dark City and strong female leads in crappy films like Halloween H20, The X-Files, Urban Legend, and even Gus van Sant's abysmal Psycho remake. (Forgot about that one, didn't you?) 1998 may have been the year of that paen to fanboy sexism, John Carpenter's Vampires, but it was also the year that put the bride in Bride of Chucky. Quite sad that one of the most interesting female characters of that time arrived as a small, homicidal, plastic doll, but hey. Bride. I'll take it.

What separates our present problem from that of 1998 is the fact that now, unlike then, we have watched the same movie over and over again. Because of this, female genre protagonists have appeared as similar, specific character types -- and, in many cases, really, really weird character types. Allow me to demonstrate...

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