Blog 7

Female Representation in Action Films

When going to see a movie we can always be expected to be treated to some interesting and hopefully endearing characters. Movies are a special aspect of media as they can truly bring a world to life and tell a story that would be impossible to tell anywhere else. However, throughout the history of film certain trends have begun to become more and more noticeable. The film industry has been conformed to adhere to a certain standard in recent years. Let me ask you, the reader, what comes to your mind when you think of a main character in an action film? If you are like me, then your mind probably went to the typical male action hero.

If it didn’t then you must have pretty good movie exposure, but if you did then you aren’t alone. In traditional action films the main character is almost always a male with a large variety of characters mixed in. Where things get split however are the characterizations of these roles, most women who are in films often fill the role of the attractive, passive spectacle in the story that offers visual pleasure. This isn’t to say that every female character is written this way, quite the contrary. There have been a lot of successful female main characters; one example is Jordan O’Neill from Terminator 2.

 In an article written by Sotirios, they take this further by dissecting who the Jordan O’Neill character turned into. In this article, it presents multiple interviews with Linda Hamilton, the actress behind Jordan O’Neill, who retells stories of her undergoing a series of alterations to her personal character before getting into the role. The alterations Linda underwent could be seen as a process of masculinization on this female character. To alter the character and make her more of a socially acceptable action hero it was decided that her head would be shaven and her dialoged was altered to match the other men in the film to be a “suitable” action hero.

For the sake of simplicity of this article I’m only identifying the previous example but believe me that there a lot of female heroes altered to fit better with our social hierarchies. Even the dominant and impressive Ellen Ripley from the Alien series had a handful of Defeminizations put upon her character.

The fact that these depictions on what a certain type of character should be can just be pushed onto the big screen is disturbing. All this does is encourage a dominant social hierarchy and establish behavioral norms that in the end prevent us from expanding what we think a character can be. In the end the why most female characters are met with some sort of alteration is because people are so used to simply having females on screen for visual pleasure and to satisfy the male gaze.   

It’s unfortunate that an interesting and unique character is often met with several revisions if the actor is a female. I believe that any strong character should be written as such, but then also just happen for them to be either gender. We need to break past the molds of our dominant social hierarchy where it’s the males that are the hero and a female can’t be a hero unless she is man-like. Anyone can be a hero, and they don’t need to be any more or any less than they are.