Monday, September 28, 2009
Don't Mess With Her
This clip from Miss Congeniality is the transforming moment when agent Hart goes from a rough female to a groomed lady. Though she does not exactly embrace her femininity by any stretch of the imagination, she does use her body to get behind the scenes of a beauty pageant. Hart describes that despite the hairspray and wax, she is still armed and dangerous. No amount of beauty products will cover up her tough side. Throughout the movie, this FBI agents shows time and again that beauty is not what makes a woman. Her smarts and kick butt attitude saves the day at the Miss United States Pageant.
David Gauntlett describes the role of beautiful, aggressive women in his chapter Representations of Gender Today. He draws on the Charlies Angels movies and how they combine beauty and action in the three main female characters. Current movies make a big deal about women using their bodies for kick-butt action and sexy lore. Why is this so monumental in the film world? Haven't men been portrayed as sexual beings with some serious action? Let us take Harrison Ford for example. Even in the most action packed scenes he is able to loose his shirt. He saves the day and displays his well toned body to the public. Is it so shocking that women are portrayed in a similar manner?
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That said, there do seem to be some differences between the movie you've referenced here and some of the male heroes of the past--and even some of the female heroes of the present.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned Harrison Ford, for instance. One of the interesting things about him is that, only in rare instances is his sexiness explicitly evident to the characters in the film--it's mostly on display for audiences watching the movie. But in Miss Congeniality, and I suspect in some other movies starring a sexy action heroine, characters ogle the tough female, perpetuating the kind of double male gaze that Mulvey talks about in her film criticism. Moreover, the humor of a movie like Miss Congeniality seems to rest on (unquestioned? unchallenged?) assumptions about what a "real" woman should look like, contrasted with the Bullock character's appearance and mannerisms. It's as if the entire movie is a curriculum in how a tough woman should act so that her strength is socially acceptable.