Something I've been wondering a while now is that how women are still treated in action flicks. We are being thoroughly brainwashed by the portrayal of the women in those films. The idea for this entry came about a week ago, when I started watching the Resident Evil films. I had noticed this before, but watching new ones always reminds me of this.
It is still the more feminine one that will survive to the end of most films. You can almost always spot the woman who will die already at the beginning of the story; she'll have more sensible shoes, better weapons and/or more practical clothes for the situation. Her role in the film seems to be to emphasise the femininity of the main woman - the Love Interest/Damsel in Distress or whatever you want to call her.
These "butch" women are portrayed as capable, clever and, in a word, badass. Sadly, those are also the reasons movie makers think they are expendable; no man will want to see a woman who is "better than them", they have no sex appeal to the average man, apparently.
In Resident Evil - the 1st film - the main woman, played by the gorgeous Milla Jovovich, jumps around in a red mini dress and has no weapons in the beginning, she is depicted as helpless, before she regains her memory. The other woman in the film, Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez), is part of the special team sent to check the Hive. She is badass and a good fighter, guns or bare handed. Guess, who dies...
As a interesting note: Michelle Rodriguez always plays the tough woman, and she has noticed that her characters always die.
"... people can call it typecast, but I pigeonholed myself ... Saying no to the girlfriend, saying no to the girl that gets captured, and eventually I just got left with the strong chick who's always being killed."
— Michelle Rodriguez
I actually haven't seen one film where she would've survived to the end...
I wish I'll have an opportunity to write about this in more depth at some point, because this touches not only my major (English language and culture) but also one of my minor subjects in University, gender studies.
