Action Girl

I love a good action series. Sometimes I love a bad action series.

Even the most gentle among us wants to see a good ass-kicking now and then. Part of the draw, I think, is getting to see people like us--people that we can relate to--doing crazy, amazing things and taking charge. It's part of why characters like John McClane and Batman and Hercules are so lasting in pop culture as a whole and American pop culture, specifically.

There's no shortage of male action heroes. They're plentiful and varied--though, admittedly, over time many of them start looking the same (compare video game heroes--the same scarred, angry, bald white guy shows up over and over, but that's a post for another day). The female version of this character type, The Action Girl, while it's being seen more and more in various media, does not saturate the market in the same way.

There are a lot of reasons for this--maybe you remember Warner Brothers making waves in 2007 by saying they would no longer produce films with female leads? -- and this year, editor Frank Parlato, Jr. of the Niagara Falls Reporter made it pretty clear what he thinks of female-led movies when he was approached by a writer who had reviewed Snow White and the Huntsman and, in spite of the eyebrow-raising content of his response to the reviewer, it's depressingly not hard to image that there are plenty who share his views.

Then there's the perception that action films that star women can't succeed; people tend to back this up by citing films like Catwoman and Suckerpunch (which, if we're being honest here, are indeed lousy films, and both, incidentally, are great examples of Male Gaze in effect), and that's sort of like judging every Sean Connery film by League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--which is to say that it's unfair and only provides a narrow view of the subject,only looking at one not-so-great example, and it doesn't take into account things like the marketing the movies get, the writing, the star-power behind the film, and other factors in what makes a movie sell.

But sometimes, action movies that star women as the hero and not the victim in need of rescuing do get made. And they do sell.


Consider two of the twenty highest-grossing female-led action films: 1979's Alien starring Sigourney Weaver as Ripley and 2010's Salt starring Angelina Jolie as the title character. Ripley and Evelyn Salt are two very different and interesting characters that share an unusual trait: neither character was written for a woman.

When Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett wrote the early drafts of the script for Alien, the characters that comprised the crew were to be "unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women. Ripley's gender wasn't decided until Sigourney Weaver was cast in the role.

Gender is not a factor in Ripley's actions at all--even in scenes in which she's clad only in underwear and a t-shirt, Ripley's not played for sexuality. Issues of femininity never come up. The actions demanded by the situation are the beginning and end of Ripley's motivation.

And then there's Evelyn Salt.

As the story goes, Tom Cruise was approached to play the title role in Salt--Edwin W. Salt. Cruise, not wanting to play a role so similar to the one he played in the Mission: Impossible films, declined the part, and Edwin became Evelyn, a vehicle for Angeline Jolie, who had already seen some success with the Tomb Raider franchise. Rather than trying to rewrite the script with a female in mind, the minds behind the film changed the character's name and left almost everything else untouched. In fact, the only major change was removing the children that Edwin was written to have (which does give the message that a woman can be an action woman or a mom, but not both, and that's kind of crappy any way you look at it).

But a female action hero doesn't have to be portrayed with masculinity or without gender at all to be successful.

The top-earning female-led action film came out earlier this year, and set sales records for movies with a spring release.

The Hunger Games, the first movie in a trilogy based on the books by Suzanne Collins, was wildly successful. The second film in the series, Catching Fire, is already in production and looking towards a November 2013 release. Judging from the buzz about the movie online and the success of the book series, the second film will be just as popular. And this is with a female character that was written to be female. Katniss's gender, while never a focal point in the story, is not ignored. She dresses up (though, granted, it's not because she wants to), she thinks about boys--at least, when she's not focused on surviving, which isn't often, but her understanding of her more romantic emotions does play a part in her character development--she's a girl. She just happens to be a girl who can fight.

There are plenty of examples from other media--Buffy, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, the Abhorsen trilogy, Charmed, Warehouse 13, Lost Girl, and tons of female-led anime.

One of the most shining examples of strong, action women on television has been Avatar: The Last Airbender and it's follow-up/sister series, The Legend of Korra. Both of these series are among the most popular animated shows of all time, with fans of all ages and all genders. And these two shows have some of the greatest female characters on television.

 Okay, Pema may not actually fight much, but she's definitely a tough lady.

(And these are just the good guys.)

So, what's the secret, then? How can we get more characters like these?

It's in the writing, really, when all is said and done. In his essay "Why I Write 'Strong Female Characters,'" novelist and comic book writer Greg Rucka, says this about writing strong women:

Writers don't write Men or Women or Dogs or Salmon. Writers write characters, and at our best, if we do it well and with care and with thought, we invest in those characters a spark of life, a realism and nuance that makes them believable and relatable. We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy, characters our audience will care for, and as a result, will care about what happens to them, and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey. No character - no well-created character, at least - is defined by only one trait, by one aspect.

 That's why characters like Ripley, Katniss, Salt, Katara, Buffy, and so many others are so popular--it's the same reason why so many male characters are popular.

They're characters. They have flaws, passions, motives, and interests that make viewers and readers care about them.

So, how do you write a great female action character? It's like Greg Rucka says.

"The Quick Answer goes like this:
Q: How do you write such strong/well-realized/positively portrayed women?
A: I don't. I write characters. Some of those characters are women."

It's Cool if You Have A Beginner Skill Tree, Just Don't Call it "Girlfriend Mode"

   Video games aren't often my first choice when it comes to recreational activity. I play sometimes, passingly, but I'm not a gamer. If I'm playing a video game, it's because I want to play that game specifically.

  Which explains why I'm not that great at video games in general. I love easy mode, and I appreciate it when a game gives some options for the less-skilled player to figure out the workings of the game so that it's easier for people like me to ease their way into the more difficult settings.

  But I'm a rarity among my female friends. For a lot of them, video games are how they relax. They follow games series; they go to midnight releases. They play to the end (multiple times, in many cases--alternate endings, and all), do all the side quests, and rack up achievement after achievement.

  They're good at them, is what I'm saying.

  Maybe it's because of this that I was so shocked to see comments from John Hemingway regarding a beginners' skill tree Borderlands 2 called "Best Friends Forever."

If you missed it, here's part of the story (linked above) from Eurogamer.

The skill tree is called Best Friends Forever, what lead designer John Hemingway dubbed the "girlfriend mode".

"The design team was looking at the concept art and thought, you know what, this is actually the cutest character we've ever had. I want to make, for the lack of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree. This is, I love Borderlands and I want to share it with someone, but they suck at first-person shooters. Can we make a skill tree that actually allows them to understand the game and to play the game? That's what our attempt with the Best Friends Forever skill tree is."

One of the first skills available in the BFF tree is called Close Enough. This means your bullets that hit walls or other objects, that is, miss their target, have a chance to ricochet off towards the enemy.

Let's get this out of the way: there are plenty of "better terms" that Hemingway could have used. Beginner Mode. Newbie Mode. First-Timers mode. This was not a case of "that was the clearest way to make his point."

Let's also get this out of the way: Hemingway, for all we know, could be a really nice guy who generally likes and respects ladies.

Basically, Hemingway may not be a sexist. But his statement here definitely is.

Having an easy mode on a game for beginning players is totally great. It's a fantastic stepping stone for people who are new to that game in particular or to video games on the whole.

Calling the easy mode "girlfriend mode," though, is bad.

From a female perspective, this title implies that women a) have no interest in video games beyond pleasing their male significant other or b) are way too bad at video games to play for no other reason than because they're girls (I don't know, because boobs make it hard to use a controller or something ), and they will be unable to play the harder modes of the game. To be fair, there are some women for whom this is true. But a quick search of the numbers will show you that female gamers make up from nearly half to the majority of the gaming community. You'll find articles about how female gamers are "more hardcore" or log more hours of playtime than their male counterparts.

Also, it's worth noting that the character that this skill tree is for is a female character, described mainly as "cute" (a patronizing term that, I, personally, hate with a flaming passion), again perpetuating the idea that easy modes are "for girls"and more challenging modes are "for boys." It's no wonder that female gamers aren't taking kindly to this.

But what about the guys? No one's really talked about it, but this whole "girlfriend mode" thing isn't good for them, either. It makes a very clear and potentially damaging statement to guys: if you're bad at video games, you might as well be a girl. And, as all boys in our heteronormative society know, it's bad for boys to be like girls.

While this whole debacle is an offensive mess, it's not terribly surprising-- video games have always seemed like something of a boys' club. Though, if  you ask me, the two main sources of this problem are pretty simple.

Back in 1975, Laura Mulvey developed a theory called "Male Gaze." This is that thing that happens in movies, television, and video games when the viewer see the events unfolding from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Generally, this is thought to happen because most creators in these media are male, so their vision is from a male perspective. Guys make most video games, so guys decide what stories get told and how. Which explains why the women in video games look and act the way they do (and that's a post for another day). The easy mode's designed for girls because that's who these guys believe will need and want to play it.

In addition to Male Gaze, there's another problem: men, in general, don't notice sexism in the same way that women do. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, men don't share women's view of sexism because men don't experience sexism in the same way. Perpetuating a stereotype by calling the easy skill tree "girlfriend mode" might not strike a guy as being sexist, because he's not on the receiving end of a lot of the negative implications. This doesn't make sexism okay, but it is something that needs to be kept in mind before vilifying a guy for accepting terms like this without a fuss.

Hemingway's comments weren't the first instance of sexism in the gaming community, and they certainly won't be the last. There will always be some people that think that video games are for guys. Women are gaining a voice in the industry, but they're a long way from being on equal footing as far as representation and respect goes.  Until women reach the same level in the larger video game community, there's an easy way to avoid raising the ire of the girl gamers around you: stop and think. By trying to put oneself in the shoes of a female gamer (or, really, anyone to whom one is talking), controversies like this can be avoided. A little perspective can fix a lot of these problems.

In the meantime, just don't call it "girlfriend mode."