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by Douglas Eby Before she started her "nasty goddess" role of Catherine "Cat" Grant on the series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman", actor Tracy Scoggins played tough cop Judith Gray in the film "Demonic Toys", a part she enjoyed: "Judith comes across as very vicious and vengeful, but I think her anger is justified. The love of her life was killed. It was fun for me because, for three years on "The Colbys" and "Dynasty", I played such a nice person that it was fun to go around shooting people for a change" (Femme Fatale Magazine, Winter, 1994). A number of actors have found some of their juiciest and most pleasurable roles in playing the bad guy or tough guy, or someone willing to use a weapon to protect or avenge. In more and more films and TV projects those actors are women: Anjelica Huston ("The Grifters"); Emma Thompson ("Dead Again"); Kim Basinger ("The Getaway"); Meryl Streep ("The River Wild"); Sharon Stone ("The Quick and The Dead"); Sally Field ("Eye for an Eye"); Vanessa Williams ("Eraser"); Julia Roberts ("I Love Trouble"), Lucy Lawless ("Xena: Warrior Princess") and Ashley Judd ("Kiss the Girls"). In one of the key scenes of "Thelma and Louise", Susan Sarandon's character, Louise, finds her friend, Thelma, played by Geena Davis, threatened with rape. This triggers an immediate anger and a violent response: Louise shoots the would-be rapist. The scene brought appreciative cheers from audiences. But women may have complex reactions to female characters using guns or otherwise responding violently. And the women actors playing these violent roles have their own perspectives on using guns on-screen. In the U.S. a handgun is manufactured every 20 seconds and a person is shot every two minutes. Gunshots are the leading cause of death by injury among people age 25 to 34. Battering is the leading cause of injury to U.S. women between ages 15 and 44, and more than a million women every year seek treatment for bodily harm inflicted by spouses and boyfriends. But this discussion is mainly not about the reality of .38 slugs, but rather the fantasy of film. As movie director Godard supposedly said about the strong violence in one of his films, "There is no blood. There is only the color red." Much of the criticism of "Thelma and Louise" centered around the idea that it was against men in general, rather than some male behavior. Alison Armitage, who acted in the TV series "Acapulco H.E.A.T." as a gun-using member of a highly trained quasi-military government agency, says "I don't understand how some men can call the movie 'male-bashing'. How can you blame a woman for being that angry? You're violating the most personal thing you possibly could; you couldn't do anything worse to a woman." Ginger Lynn Allen ("NYPD Blue"; "Bound and Gagged -- A Love Story") feels that it is important to look at real life when talking about screen characters acting violently: "I don't believe women will ever have the violent tendencies that men do. Women are different, by nature, more nurturing and caring, and we react to things by trying to make them better, Whereas I find in general, and I don't mean to generalize men, but the male psyche is different; men were raised to believe you took care of women, and that you were strong and powerful." Allen doesn't want to believe that "women will ever come to the point where we feel the need to be violent. If you react to violence with violence, we're going to become barbarians. I hate to see society go that way. On the other hand, we can't just sit back and go 'Oh poor me, I'm a woman, I can't do anything about it.' I think learning to protect yourself is important. But I hope I never see a day when society comes to the point where women lose the soft, feminine nurturing side of them. I hope we can find a balance where men become a little more feminine and women become a little more dominant." Armitage, however, points out that some women "have violent tendencies, just like men. Mass murderers are women, too. Women beat on their kids just like men do. The numbers are not nearly as great, but there are women out there who are just as violent. Some women are put in a position where they feel they don't have any other choice except to use violence, and they will." Many women are taking self-defense classes and learning to shoot firearms as a way to grow beyond feeling so overwhelmingly victimized in a society and at a time in history when there is so much threat. Paxton Quigley, who runs a personal protection course, has pointed out that women fear guns, and that it's a cultural thing to do so, but that when a woman learns to shoot a gun and to control such a lethal force, it changes her psychologically. Famke Janssen confirms that it helped her as an actor for her role of Xenia Onatopp in the latest James Bond adventure "GoldenEye" to be trained in weapons: "I took a fake AK-47 home with me, and practiced loading it and all that kind of stuff, so I was really familiar with it." But as to real life, Janssen says, "I don't like guns. I think they're extremely dangerous. I don't think they should be around, because something can go wrong so easily. I wonder sometimes, if you get too familiar with them, if that's not even more dangerous." Actor Melanie Shatner says she is not comfortable with the idea of shooting ranges, or of women using guns in real life, but likes self defense training: "I know there is value in learning how to defend yourself. My sister has been going to a defense class called Impact and it's amazing. She says it changes your life. After finishing the class, she got into a confrontation with a neighbor, and handled it far more aggressively, knowing this man couldn't hurt her, though he was very angry. A month ago she would have backed down. I think it's great. A film role can also help in that way; it helps maintain that women don't have to be afraid to assert themselves and say that something isn't right, or fear that someone may not like them, or think they're manly. It's not 'manly' to say 'No', it's human." One of the keys for an actor to portray using a gun in a believable way is to get at least some training. Armitage says "I own two handguns and I go shoot them. I'm not about to play a part like in "Acapulco H.E.A.T." if I know nothing about weapons. If I hadn't learned already to use guns, I would have learned. The same doing a martial arts film; if I got a part, don't think I wouldn't run out and try and learn as much about it as possible so I could depict it in the most real sense." She points out that many films and videos showing women using a gun are based on male fantasies and don't picture it in a realistic sense: "The girl is wearing the sexy dress, low-cut, long fingernails -- I mean, please. Personally, I look deeper into a character and choose not to do those particular kinds of roles. They are not right or wrong, good or bad. There's a market for it or they wouldn't make them, but I'm not in the market to only take care of the male fantasy. I have fantasies, too, and they may include carrying a handgun. You never know." Jennifer MacDonald played a cyborg in "Terminal Force" and notes "I was the only woman in the movie, and very proficient in a number of weapons, and basically killed everyone in sight." She agrees there are many low budget productions "with a woman fighting back, but still in high heels and sexy lingerie: "If they're firing a gun they have to be in see-through chiffon, something from Victoria's Secret -- which I just find so funny and silly." MacDonald liked "Terminator" partly because star Linda Hamilton "was not running around in high heels", and thinks a number of films do a "very good, soulful job of portraying a woman who has decided not to take any abuse, any discrimination." But she also feels strongly that "some films do a really lousy job. Those are the ones where the woman is shaking like a leaf when she takes up a gun, and she happens to be wearing high heels and a corset or a garter belt. That's just a form of men getting their rocks off by watching a woman shoot a gun." "A lot of women don't know how to use weapons, and no one teaches them on the set, so it ends up looking really stupid." MacDonald points out that some of the strongest roles were in films of an earlier era, for women such as Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis: "She was really evil in some of her films, but didn't have to take out a dagger and slice somebody's head off." Referring to the video of her erotic thriller "Undercover Cop", actor Athena Massey points out she has more than a casual familiarity with handguns: "The .38 Special you see me holding on the box cover is my personal gun. I target practice and I have a certificate from a gun safety course. I've shot .22, 9 mm, .357 magnum, .38 Special, .45 and even a Desert Eagle, the Israeli Military weapon you have to hold with both hands; fire comes out the end, and it sounds like a cannon. It's the largest handgun, and I wanted to shoot it just for the experience. I definitely agree that knowledge about guns is very important." Massey points out there are "so many times when there's a
billboard, or
advertising for a movie or even box art on a video cover, and I see
this
person, usually a woman, has not been taught how to hold a gun right,
and
I think why wasn't she taught on the set? "For example in the flyer for one of my films "Undercover" there's a shot of me holding a gun, and you see my finger is not on the trigger. Never put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to pull it, that's safety number one that you're taught. After the photo session, they realized they needed a shot of me in a police uniform, so they just dressed another girl up in it, and superimposed my face on her body. But she's holding the gun wrong, and her finger is on the trigger. I was upset with this, because it was portraying me as a typical woman who doesn't even know how to hold a gun." Lea Anne Beaman, another actress whose film characters have
used guns, says
she gained her experience with weapons early: "As a kid I played with
BB
guns with my brothers, shooting old 45 records in the forest,
pretending
we were hunting. They used to shoot me quite often with their BB guns,
so
I had them teach me how to aim and shoot so I could shoot them back.
Now
I can look real with a gun." She agrees there is some real value for women in films that show women fighting back: "I think it's great, whether it's taking charge using a weapon or using your body as a weapon, any way you cut it I think that's a real good thing, it changes the way people view women. And something that gives a woman a greater sense of power, like going to a shooting range, will leak over into the way they walk and carry themselves; it will make them less victim-like, and maybe exude a different kind of energy that could cause them to maybe not be hit on." Shatner thinks that roles for women that explore attitudes and behavior that may not be socially acceptable, or are otherwise difficult, are valuable to her work: "Getting in touch with the darker, shadow sides of my personality is amazing and exactly where I want to go with my acting. I think it's the most fun and the most gratifying to do. The hardest and most gratifying. You can find the most creative parts of yourself when you're willing to work with the stuff that terrifies you." Lucy Lawless has gained wide acclaim for her title role in
"Xena: Warrior
Princess", a character she has described as "a woman as strong as any
man
or woman has ever been, who lives by her wits, but is also a fighter." Like others, she has found some inspiration from her own life for playing a woman who at times uses violence: "By being a working mother and going through a divorce. You feel you're losing your kid and you can't defend yourself. You can't speak ill of the father. You can be persecuted, but you can't persecute. Your kid thinks that you don't care. There have been moments when I've had to fight every natural urge to strike back. Xena does the same thing, fights urges." (from "Lucy Lawless, The Woman Behind the Warrior", by David Rensin, TV Guide May 3 - 9, 1997). In a 1996 America Online chat, Lawless summed up what a number of these dynamic actresses feel about using weapons as part of their acting roles: "I personally do not derive any great joy from violence inflicted upon other human beings. But the show sure is fun, isn't it?" ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ books: Sherrie A. Inness Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture Autumn Stephens Drama Queens: Wild Women of the Silver Screen ~ ~ ~ |
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