Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors

Many feminists consider the 1980s to be a backlash period in politics and popular culture, a topic Susan Faludi explored at length in her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. She describes this backlash as “an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement [of the previous decade] did manage to win for women” and observes that the political and mass media response of the 1980s insinuates “that the very steps that have elevated women's position have actually led to their downfall.”² Yet she also notes that while fear of feminism “is a sort of perpetual viral condition in our culture,” it is not always in an active stage. As Faludi puts it, “symptoms subside and resurface periodically.”³ Take for example the propaganda machine that was put into motion during the Second World War to inspire women's participation in industry and the subsequent backlash media of the post-war era described in Chapter 1.

The “symptoms” Faludi refers to had already begun to resurface toward the end of the 1970s. The trend of superwomen in popular culture, inspired by the progressive political movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, began to lose momentum in tandem with road blocks faced by participants in the Women's Liberation Movement—namely, an increasingly conservative US government. In a major letdown, the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution, which would have guaranteed equal rights under the law regardless of sex, fell three states short of ratification. Mass media played its role too, inflating ideological disputes between prominent feminist leaders as well as trivializing feminist concerns. For example, TIME magazine referred to a disagreement between Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem as “a bit of sisterly hair-pulling”⁴—a comment that simultaneously evokes the “catfight” and the age-old trope of the older woman in competition with the young beautiful maiden. Media also introduced a different myth of the superwoman, the insidious image of the “woman who does it all,” career, sex goddessdom, motherhood, and homemaker extraordinaire, and then tried to convince us that striving to be this unattainable and fallacious idol was what real women wanted and that any complaints other women had about it were the fault of feminism.

The slowing momentum of the feminist movement was mirrored in popular culture. While superwomen in the 1970s had at the very least represented a restrained progressiveness, most of their followers in the 1980s (with the exception of a notable few) further exaggerated perceived contradictions between femininity and feminism. Films in the 1980s focused heavily on hyper-masculinity, and superwomen who did manage to grace the popular landscape were for the most part peripheral.

One of the most recognized of these was, in fact, a little sister. She was Princess Leia Organa of Star Wars (1977) and one of the last mythic women to appear on screen in the 1970s. She was initially presented as a character with feminist potential, but the possibilities were wasted with each subsequent picture of the original trilogy.

Writer and director George Lucas was famously influenced by Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces—a study that detailed the archetypal stages involved in the journey, or quest, of the mythic hero. But this quest is generally considered a metaphor for the discovery of male identity, and women's involvement in the hero's journey has limited them to the roles of the goddess who aids, the mother, the temptress, or the lover/prize.

The initial movie focuses on how a disenchanted Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is introduced to his destiny as a heroic figure called a Jedi. His journey begins with the discovery of a secret holographic message from a beautiful princess requesting assistance. When he finally meets Leia (Carrie Fisher) and attempts to rescue her, it's immediately clear that she's a leader who is used to calling the shots. Rather than swooning over her rag-tag team of “saviors,” she tells them, “I don't know who you are or where you've come from, but from now on you'll do as I say, okay?” Her delivery makes it clear this is a statement, not a question.

She's also resilient; by the time Luke finds her, she's withstood torture without betraying the location of her rebel base. Here Leia is a senator, a spy, and one of the leaders of a political rebellion. She's snappy and savvy, and about business first. Though she has just witnessed the destruction of her home planet, Alderaan, her first concern is not herself, but to review the contents of a valuable secret document that will aid the rebels in their mission. Her response to a concerned colleague is brave: “We have no time for sorrows, Commander. You must use the information in this R-2 unit to help plan the attack—it's our only hope.”

In the second film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), when it's believed that our hero Luke may be sacrificing the good of the many for the good of a few with his decision to leave training before it's completed, his mentor Obi Wan Kenobi says, “That boy is our last hope.” Yoda, Luke's other mentor with whom he has been recently studying, replies, “No. There is another.” It's a reference to Leia, who in Return of the Jedi (1983) is revealed to be Luke's twin sister (the children had been separated at birth and raised in secret—an attempt to ensure their safety from their murderous father). The possibility of Leia as a mythic warrior hero is brought up only once again in the Star Wars movies, in Return of the Jedi:

Luke: If I don't make it back, you're the only hope for the Alliance.

Leia: Luke, don't talk that way. You have a power I don't understand and could never have.

Luke: You're wrong, Leia. You have that power too. In time you'll learn to use it as I have. The Force runs strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And … my sister has it. Yes. It's you, Leia.

Leia: I know. Somehow, I've always known.⁵

To be fair, the theme of Leia as Jedi (in this mythos, the ultimate in respected, and spiritual, heroism) is picked up in the subsequent authorized novels. But as the films progress from the 1970s to the 1980s, Leia morphs from a smart-mouthed, passionate, cinnamon-bunned political rebel to a love interest, slave, and sister—the latter recalling the sidekick trope in comics where the hero has a kid sister or cousin. (While the authorized novels are considered canonical, the mainstream familiarity with the films makes such a special-interest tie-in trivial in relation to a discussion regarding mass cultural attitudes about gender.)

While the paramount image of Luke is of him holding his Samuraiesque lightsaber, and young boys across the globe have reenacted lightsaber battles for over 30 years now, the most striking image of Leia is of her in a metal bikini. The “Slave Leia” outfit—as it has come to be known—ensures her status not as an icon of female empowerment and political influence (as she was in the first, and arguably second, film installments) but as an object of heterosexual male fantasy. The pervasive, and perverse, popularity of the outfit is seen throughout popular culture—from parades of “Slave Leias” at Comic Con International to Ross Gellar of the television series Friends admitting it's one of his sexual fantasies. Admittedly, Leia's bikini is memorable precisely because it ignited a generation of young boys' first “funny feelings” and thus serves as nostalgia for sexual awakening. But it's also troublesome that an outfit a powerful woman was forced to wear in a tactic meant to demean and objectify her, and in which she may have been sexually assaulted (her captor, Jabba, does feel her up with his suggestive tail), has become one of the dominant images of Leia.

Pumping Steel: The Valkyrie Thief and the Swordswoman

Superwomen in the 1980s often took the form of the Action Babe—a hard-bodied, modern Amazon following in the vein of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.⁶ Her body may have been as emphasized as Leia's was, but unlike Princess Organa, her physical skills were as emphasized as her physical appearance. One of the first action babes appeared in Conan the Barbarian (1982) as the love interest, partner, and inspiration of the title character. Valeria, played by dancer Sandahl Bergman, was a thief and lone warrior woman until she came across Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his traveling companion Subotai (Gerry Lopez). Together, they burgle one of the temples belonging to the villainous Thulsa Doom. And after, Valeria and Conan fall in love.

John Milius, who co-wrote the film with Oliver Stone and also directed the picture, says he loves the character Valeria, “because it's not the usual girl in one of these movies, you know that she could kill any one of them. She's the real thing.”⁷ Milius had seen Bergman in All That Jazz and notes, “When I saw Sandahl, I fell in love. I mean Sandahl was a Valkyrie. She's a Valkyrie.”⁸

Tall and lithe, Valeria is physically spectacular, and Bergman's training as a dancer lends her movement, power, and grace.⁹ In a film where the plot revolves around the “Riddle of Steel”—a question of what is more powerful, weapons or the spirit of the flesh—it's clear that even though Valeria ultimately dies, the strength of her body, and in fact strength of spirit, rivals that of Conan.¹⁰

Valeria even has life after death. She is reborn as a Valkyrie—one of those great warrior women of Norse mythology. In Conan's most difficult battle, her spirit appears to fight alongside him at a crucial moment, keeping an earlier promise: “If I were dead and you were still fighting for life, I'd come back from the darkness. Back from the pit of hell to fight at your side.” A vision in her shining silver armor, Valeria galvanizes a fallen Conan with her mantra, “Do you want to live forever?”¹¹

While Valeria is a notable action babe, ultimately she is not at the center of the story. It's Conan's quest and his revenge.

Conan the Destroyer (1984) followed Conan the Barbarian, and in 1985, the film Red Sonja became the final installment in an increasingly disappointing trilogy, the characters of which had been loosely based on the 1930s pulp writings of Robert E. Howard. Red Sonya had appeared in only one of his stories, “The Shadow of the Vulture,” as a pistol-wielding Russian in the sixteenth century. In the 1970s, the character was adapted by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith of Marvel comics for their Conan title. The spelling of her name was changed from Sonya to Sonja, and her origins were moved from Russia to Conan's fictional prehistoric “Hyborian Age.” Her deftness with a pistol was changed to mastery of the sword.

Though she began as a supporting character, Sonja proved popular enough to support an eponymous title. Stan Lee referred to her as “the ultimate female warrior” and suggested that because Sonja is depicted as holding her own against any combatant—regardless of gender—“perhaps through the medium of the contemporary comicbook [sic], society may inch itself a bit closer to the time when we judge an individual on his or her own merit, rather than the accident of sex.”¹² As will be clear, the 1980s film focuses more on Sonja's gender than on her skills.

Red Sonja, the movie, borrows elements from the comic, although it's not a verbatim retelling of anything from that medium but rather an attempt to capitalize on the sword and sorcery trend of the early 1980s.¹³ This fierce warrior with flaming red hair lived in a savage world, and her quest begins with an act of violence against her. After Sonja has refused her sexual advances, the evil Queen Gedren orders that Sonja's family be murdered and her home burned to the ground, and has her guards rape the defiant young woman. That night, Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) is visited by a goddess apparition who takes pity on the girl and becomes her benefactor.

Sonja is given a sword arm with unequaled strength so that she may seek justice and exact vengeance against Gedren (Sandahl Bergman¹⁴). She trains with a Chinese swordmaster and becomes a master herself. Though the grandmaster praises his finest student, and even provides her with a sword, he fears for Sonja's well-being. In a bit of backlash rhetoric, he tells her, “Sonja—you must learn to like men a little better. We are not all evil.” And adds, “In life all is not swordplay. Hatred of men, in a lovely young woman, it could be your downfall.”

It is then that Lord Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a not-quite-Conan role) arrives on a mission to tell Sonja that her sister Varna, a priestess, is dying. The priestesses Varna resides with were about to destroy an object of great power called the Talisman, an undertaking that Kalidor was sent to observe, though only women may safely touch this green and glowing sacred orb. Before the task could be completed, Gedren and her minions arrived, sacked the temple, and stole the Talisman. Gedren is hell bent on world domination, at any cost, even if, as Sonja learns from Varna, that cost is the very destruction of the world Gedren seeks to possess. It seems the Talisman is unstable and must be destroyed within 13 days or the world will end.

Perhaps it is a stretch to read much into a script as frivolous as that of Red Sonja. Alas, one could argue that the destruction of a strictly female power, that is, the Talisman, signals a shift from pagan worship to the monotheistic, male focused, Judeo-Christian religions. (Additionally, the number 13 is associated with sacred femininity.)

Relinquishment of independence and power is echoed in Sonja's personal journey; Yvonne Tasker notes that “An analysis of the ideological terms at work in a film like Red Sonja is not difficult—the film follows Sonja's journey to a ‘normal' sexual identity.”¹⁵

Sonja appears to be a vision of female independence, but her autonomy will be revealed as mere illusion throughout the course of the narrative. Here, a “normal” sexual identity will include nurturing a child, learning that not all men are evil through a romance with the gentle and respectful Kalidor, and the destruction of female threat.

Initially, when Kalidor attempts to accompany Sonja on her mission to destroy Gedren, she refuses his assistance, telling him, “I don't need any man's help,” and ventures forth on her own. Kalidor, amused by the feisty warrior's stubbornness, follows and aids Sonja on her journey—whether she wants him to or not. Later he tells her, “You didn't seem to want a man's help—but you needed it.” The few men in Sonja's life assume they know what's best for her and that she is incapable of taking care of herself—the movie will ultimately prove them right, giving preference to male wisdom over female action.

Additionally, as will be addressed in Chapter 8, there are common, even overused, narrative impetuses for acceptable female violence, including the experience of sexual abuse and the protection of children. While still seemingly on a solitary journey, Sonja comes upon a kingdom destroyed by Gedren. The only inhabitants that remain are Prince Tarn—a 10-year-old boy—and his servant, Falkon. Thus begins Sonja's return to a normative gendered identity; after an initial irritation with the bratty prince, she begins to train, and eventually nurture, the child. Many feminist critics, though certainly not all, have pointed out that the actual or spiritual role of “Mother” is used as a way of justifying a women's capacity for violence. It is also argued that linking a powerful woman with a traditionally gendered role or attribute limits her potential transgressiveness, as well as decreases the possibility of being perceived as threatening (read: “sexually unavailable”) to a male audience.

Because of the assault on her, Sonja has adopted the position of a virgin swordswoman in order to protect her own chastity. In ancient Greek mythology, the virgin goddesses, Athena, Aphrodite, and Artemis, did not refrain from having sexual identities, or engaging in sexual pleasure—rather they chose whom to share their bodies with and when. Therefore, “Virgin” did not mean abstinent, but reflected a conscious control over one's body. Of the virgin goddess archetype, psychoanalyst Jean Shinoda Bolen wrote that it represents “the independent, self-sufficient quality in women.” Women who identify with this archetype are driven by what is important to them, are focused and autonomous, actively seek their goals, and are both competent and self-sufficient.¹⁶ Clearly, though this description applies to Sonja at the start of the narrative, toward the end her autonomy is questionable. She ultimately does give herself to Kalidor willingly, but it's difficult to say whether or not she will retain her solid identity after the credits roll.

Sonja sets her ground rules. Although they appear muddled, they stress her mastery of the sword, and by extension, the protection of her body—a body that has been abused and that she must reclaim ownership of.¹⁷ A scene between her and Kalidor at their camp illustrates Sonja's position:

Sonja: No man may have me, unless he's beaten me in a fair fight.

Kalidor: So, the only man that can have you, is one who's trying to kill you. That's logic.

(Sonja goes and lies down. Kalidor picks up his sword and holds it to her throat.)

Kalidor: If you yield only to a conqueror, then prepare to be conquered.

Sonja: Don't be a fool, I don't want to kill you.

Kalidor: Try it.

It is guaranteed that no man can beat Sonja, and thus she is assured safety from further assault. But she is also taken with Kalidor, impressed by his tenacity, his physical beauty, and his relative tenderness. The unsubtle anti-feminist message is that strong, independent women may say they don't need or want men, but what they really want is to be conquered. When Sonja and Kalidor do draw swords, playfully, even the child prince notes, “Why does she fight so hard? She doesn't want to win.”

Sonja's tenderness toward this child, and her eventual submission to Kalidor, will restore her to her rightful place as Woman. Red Sonja has the potential to be a transgressive character; she's skilled with a sword, has a beneficent goddess, and is independent. But as the narrative in this film is constructed to lead her back to a normative femininity, Sonja is not subversive, simply confused.¹⁸

Killing Monsters

Superwomen in the early 1980s, such as Valeria and Red Sonja, lacked the cultural impact of their mid-to-late-1970s sisters, but two characters emerged in the later half of the decade that became landmarks. One was Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986), played by Sigourney Weaver in a reprisal of her role from 1979's Alien. The other was Sarah Connor, the damsel-in-distress who evolved into a warrior in the Terminator franchise. These two phenomenal characters are linked by the creative intention of writer and director James Cameron.

Ridley Scott's Alien was a horror film that focused on an ensemble cast, in which the characters were written as gender neutral so that they could be played by either a woman or a man. Aliens the sequel was a combat movie that really brought Ripley to the fore. In a genre dominated by male characters, it was her strength and possibility as a female character that interested Cameron. As Weaver herself noted in an interview for TIME magazine, “Usually women in films have had to carry the burden of sympathy, only coming to life when a man enters. Doesn't everyone know that women are incredibly strong?”¹⁹ Cameron recognized that indeed they are.

Aliens takes place 57 years after the events of the first movie. After defeating the alien and bedding down for hypersleep, Ripley's ship drifted off course until it was eventually discovered by a deep salvage team. Remarkably, Ripley is alive and healthy, but the world she has returned to is unfamiliar. Her daughter, who was ten years old when Ripley left, has died of old age, and “The Company” for which she worked puts her on trial for destroying their costly property (the starship Nostromo), though it was decades ago and for a damn good reason. They don't believe Ripley encountered a hostile alien life form; there is no evidence of the original encounter, her crew is dead, and since her previous visit to the planet LV-426, a colony of terraformers has been long established.

Subsequently, Ripley's flight license is suspended and she is forced to take up a manual labor position at a loading dock to support herself financially. That is, until company man Burke (Paul Reiser) informs her that his organization has recently lost contact with the inhabitants of the LV-426 colony, and they suspect Ripley's aliens are to blame. They want her to accompany a group of marines out to the planet as a consultant, and although she at first declines, she's plagued by nightmares she needs to purge, and ultimately agrees.

Upon arrival at LV-426, it's discovered that there is only one survivor out of a population of 158—a feral little girl named Rebecca Jorden has managed to survive by hiding in the air ducts. Ripley, who is the only other person alive to have experienced the aliens, attempts to connect with the terrified child:

Much has been made about the bond between Ripley and Newt (played with great bravery by a winsome Carrie Henn). Some critics have observed that the child serves to re-emotionalize the distant Ripley. Others have noted that Newt serves as a surrogate for the daughter Ripley lost. And many have suggested that introducing a maternal relationship emphasizes her femininity, again providing a socially acceptable “excuse” for female violence. While all of these observations have merit, most fail to recognize that Newt herself is a subversive figure. If it's rare to see a woman at the center of an action movie, surely it's rarer to see a girl child. Sherrie A. Inness notes that Newt and the tough Latina marine, Private First Class Jenette Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), offer alternative versions of female toughness in a film that is itself “a meditation on toughness and the nature of being heroic.”²¹

Roz Kaveney, in her case study of the Alien franchise, makes an astute interpretation when she notes that

critics have overstated the extent to which Ripley is the Mother and the extent to which her protection of Newt is solely and wholly a matter of paying her debt to the daughter whom she inadvertently abandoned—Newt is also another self who has experiences more like Ripley's than anyone else's and has to be protected for that reason.²²

More often than not, Ripley treats Newt not as a child, but with the honesty and respect one would give an equal. When the formerly confident marines begin to waver, Ripley goes so far as to hold Newt up as an example of bravery by reminding them that a little girl managed to survive for weeks without weapons or training. Ripley's also aware that Newt knows the score, and therefore never lies to her. A mother would be tempted to comfort the child by saying that everything would be alright, but Ripley doesn't insult Newt's experience or resolve.

Ripley is one of the first recognizable female action heroes of American mainstream cinema—an impressive feat in an era where John McClane of the Die Hard films and Sylvester Stallone's character Rambo were the norm. Aliens proved that with the right creative team, a female lead could carry an action film to positive audience reception. As producer Gale Ann Hurd noted, “I really appreciate the way audiences respond [to Aliens]. They buy it. We don't get people, even rednecks, leaving the theatre saying ‘That was stupid. No woman would do that.' You don't have to be a liberal ERA supporter to root for Ripley.”²³

Cameron told TIME that Aliens is about “finding personal resources: will, courage, whatever.”²⁴ Weaver, who structured herself “to play Ripley like Henry V and like the women warriors of classic Chinese literature,”²⁵ has said, “real strength and unpredictability comes from not having an obvious weapon.”²⁶ Perhaps this is why she and Newt prevail.

James Cameron's next warrior woman, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), is an unexpected hero, and in Terminator (1984) she evolves from an unassuming diner waitress to a damsel-in-distress, to an archetypal Final Girl,²⁷ and ultimately, in the last scene, the epitome of determination. It is not until Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) that she becomes a true action hero.

Terminator is a successful mixture of genres; it's a love story, a work of science fiction, and a horror film. In brief, two individuals have been sent back in time from the year 2029 to 1984 in order to find a Los Angeles resident named Sarah Connor. One is an assassin—a cybernetic organism called a “Terminator” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that was sent back to murder Sarah before she can give birth to the child who will become the leader of a resistance movement against an army of sentient machines. The other is a human named Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn)—a soldier for the resistance sent on a mission by Sarah's future son to protect her (and unbeknownst to Reese, actually father the child).

Reese informs Sarah of the danger she's in and the terrible events to come. In the future, machines made by a company called Cyberdyne Systems will become self-aware and decide that humans are a threat to their existence. The machines will subsequently launch a nuclear war and attempt to either destroy or enslave humanity. A war between humans and cyborgs ensues. At first, Sarah doesn't believe Reese, despite the fact that every woman named Sarah Connor in the area is being systematically killed. But when it becomes clear that he is the only person who can possibly protect her from the Terminator, she goes into hiding with him. In a bit of mind-bending irony, Reese teaches Sarah some of the basics of soldiering that she in turn will one day teach the resistance. But she still can't quite believe that the actions of a waitress in her 20s will be so crucial to the fate of humanity.

Sarah: Are you sure you have the right person?

Reese: I'm sure.

Sarah: Come on. Do I look like the mother of the future? I mean, am I tough? Organized? I can't even balance my checkbook.

Sarah and Reese fall in love, and in a rare case, the male love interest dies to further the heroine's story. Alone with the Terminator, Sarah discovers resolve she never knew she had. She stops the machine herself and with a new fierceness says, “You're terminated, fucker.” (It's a rather Pam Grier sentiment.) As Inness points out in Tough Girls, “the woman who says these words is very different from the one who claimed that she could not balance her checkbook.”²⁸ In the film's final scene, we see Sarah planning for the future, for hers, for her son John's, and for that of all humanity.

In Terminator 2, we see a very different Sarah, one whose every move is informed by a consuming resolve. Her singular focus is to protect John, and if possible, prevent Judgment Day (the day the machines launch a nuclear attack) from ever happening so that he may not have to face such a tragic destiny, and perhaps, so that she may one day relax her oppressive vigilance.

While Terminator is most remembered for its original and intriguing story, Terminator 2 is most remembered for its special effects—and for Hamilton's astounding physique. It's important to note that Terminator 2 has become so familiar—so ingrained in American popular culture—that it's difficult to remember just how radical Sarah Connor was in this 1991 release, as well as how unexpected Hamilton's embodiment was, having transformed from the soft, romantic lead of television's Beauty and the Beast to a hard-bodied warrior woman.

As with Ripley, feminist critics have debated the symbolic meaning of Hamilton's physical metamorphosis. Just as important as academic theory, though, is audience reception and internalization. An anecdote from anti-violence activist, Martha McCaughey, proves valuable. In Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, she writes that she generally had a negative response to violent scenes in films—and therefore avoided films with violence. She shares her reaction to the experience of viewing Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 and the potentiality of tough female icons:

My usual anger at the violence changed dramatically when I watched Terminator 2 in 1991. Sarah Connor's competence with weapons and hand-to-hand combat exhilarated me. I remember driving my car home differently from the theater that day, flexing my arms as I clutched the steering wheel. That's when I realized that men must feel this way after seeing movies—all the time. My anger changed to envy; I could understand the power of seeing one's sex made heroic on-screen and wanted to feel that way more often. I realized that my own lectures on sexual assault failed to give women any feelings of strength and that this new strategy promised much for teachers and activists.²⁹

Some critics have praised these hard-bodied women with guns and attitude as offering a symbolically transgressive iconography—others questioned whether or not the characters could truly provide alternative visions of womanhood if only their bodies, and not their spirits, changed. Was “musculinity,” as Yvonne Tasker called “the masculinization of the female body,” truly radical?³⁰ Debates continue about whether or not Action Babes of the 1980s were “men-in-drag” or women made masculine by their guns and muscles, but kept feminine by their adopted or actual children. Perhaps they were revolutionary characters in and of themselves, simply because they presented images of women that had rarely been seen before in American cinema, outside of B-movies.

“Change has to be envisioned before it can begin,” wrote Gloria Steinem,³¹ and though the images of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor provide many contradictions to be addressed, they also, as McCaughey notes, provide inspiration for envisioning changes in how gender is perceived and how women choose to walk heroically in the world.