Oh, ick. I did not like The General’s Daughter at ALL.

Somehow I thought that was your feeling about it! Wasn’t that the only feeling about it that anyone had? At least anyone would admit to?

Love, C.

otoh, I am all for more athletic and warrior women, of whatever kind, hot or not

Hear! Hear!

Maybe I’m out of synch with most people in this situation, as I don’t fantasize about warriors, hot or not, of any gender or species.

I do think about soldiers and warbands and raiders and rievers and bandits and other people who live and their living by violence upon others though. I think about them a lot. Sometimes this is a life forced upon one, as with the child soldiers in Africa, for instance, or guerrillas. fighting for their homes (the word came into being in Spain, during the Napoleonic era). But most often its a choice, the best choice for getting one’s way.

Love, C.

otoh, I am all for more athletic and warrior women, of whatever kind, hot or not

You know, I think I have conflated G.I. Jane with The General’s Daughter, which latter seemed to be truly porn of violence on women. But I only saw bits of it — without meaning to or wanting to — when it was being broadcast on a television network, while channel surfing in a hotel room. I was just so appalled by the bits I saw I felt sick.

And, in fact, as you’d be first to point out, these two movies have little in common.

Still, I love that Auden poem, when considering writers like Leigh Brackett and Space Opera:

“. . . . and that you
Must, therefore, be ready to
Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys,
At least appearing to love
Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.”

Love, C.

Not that there’s anything seriously wrong with that. It’s fantasy, like the rippled hunks and long-tressed temptresses on the romance covers and for that matter most of the books in the other genres as well.

Men want warrior women, but if they’re going to fantasize about it, they’d like to see the really hot warrior women, thank you, the same as women who fantasize about soldier boys fantasize about the really hot ones with ripped bodies and whatnot.

You want female soldiers? I just walked by the checkstand and the latest cover of Newsweek or Time had a photo of a female soldier who’s also a double amputee, this a few months after Esquire had a cover with a male soldier who’s a triple amputee. Apart from their injuries, both soldiers are attractive individuals who could do modeling, and I’d say “despite” except for the fact that there really aren’t any modeling jobs for amputees. But both soldiers are there, with their battle scars for all to see.

But back to the fantasy. What the Pussycat Dolls are selling/being sold as, is women who could do all these things but probably aren’t going to, thus giving all the benefits of the fantasy without the ugly realities of missing limbs and PTSD.

To me that film feels like a punishment of a woman for being strong, put up on the screen for masculine delectation.

The intention of the male characters may be to punish her, but I don’t think that means the film says that. Does Jordan go through hell? Yes, certainly. But to me, that’s an accurate and understandable depiction of the training: you put the candidates through hell, then more hell, then more hell, breaking as many of them as you can, because you don’t want them breaking when it matters (i.e. in the field). You can destroy anybody with that if you try hard enough; the trick to that method is stop just short of it, so that you’re left with the toughest of the bunch.

Toughest. Not necessarily the best people. In fact, you could argue the reverse. But the aim is to end up with the toughest, and this is how they do it. The regular training would be like that whether she was a woman or not; you see it happening to the guys, too.

Now, the S.E.R.E. training scene is punishment — but to my mind, the film doesn’t try to pretend it’s anything but, and also doesn’t try to pretend that it’s okay. The Master Chief steps over the line, and the men turn their backs on him as a result. They recognize that what he does there is wrong.

But I think you and I have very different views of both violence and suffering. You say of Buffy that “she suffers (i.e. is punished) like the rest of us” — but to me, suffering =/= punishment. I don’t think bad stuff happens to her because she’s a strong woman; I think bad stuff happens to her because she’s at the center of events with stakes most of us will never face in our lives, and if they all went peachy-keen, it would be ludicrous.

“There are only three kinds of female the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke,” said Montoya, the soldier who carried a knife for protection. “This guy out there, he told me he thinks the military sends women over to give the guys eye candy to keep them sane. He said in Vietnam they had prostitutes to keep them from going crazy, but they don’t have those in Iraq. So they have women soldiers instead.”

Pickett heard the same attitude from her fellow soldiers. “My engineering company was in the first Gulf War, and back then it had only two females,” she said. “One was labeled a whore because she had a boyfriend, and the other one was a bitch because she wouldn’t sleep around. And that’s how they were still referred to all these years later.”

Love, C.

Women who possess other power(s) then — such as physical strength, intelligence, creativity, mathematical ability, skill with animals — as well as the keys to the men’s sexual gratification, are terrifying monsters — so out of the id comes Grendel’s mother, Medusa, witches, succubi, and a host of other figures. The dark side of the Great Mother, one could say. And women can identify with all of those figures for they too are born of mothers and raised by them (if we are lucky and have mothers who do raise us, anyway).

If they possess such powers, they must either be monsters (sociopaths) or be punished. Which may explain why I cannot watch G.I. Jane. To me that film feels like a punishment of a woman for being strong, put up on the screen for masculine delectation. I’m not about to declare that is correct, or even the only perspective on that. For one thing, Marie does have a different take on it. However, I did think of that movie, when this story about the murder of Private LaVena
Johnson and its coverup in Iraq broke (hardly at all, in fact).

Which may also apply to our love for Buffy: she’s cute, at first, but she’s also resourceful and powerful, but she suffers (i.e. is punished) like the rest of us, keeping her on a human level, and the sort of men referred to above can always take satsifaction in her beatings and pains and sufferings.

But the thing about Buffy, is that she matures as the seasons progress: she strengthens her weaknesses — she learns the value of research and becomes a researcher herself, for example. She learns that pure physical power and martial skill is not ever going to be enough, certainly not to save the world. But through it all the masculine gaze can be gratified by seeing her beat on and beat down, over and over and over?

I mean — that’s one way of looking at it. Not necessarily the right way, and certainly not the only way.

Another way is that perserverance and resiliance matters as much as physical strength. Another way is that women are beat down over and over again, so this reflects reality. Another way is that in the end, Buffy destroys the baddies.

But most interestingly, allmost all the baddies are male. Then there’s Faith, who is another road that a Buffy might walk — i.e. the feral sociopath with predator sexual appetite and behavior, the ‘bad’ girl, who is finally reconciled with the ‘good’ girl Buffy. There’s Glorificus, who was male as well a female, and finally it wasn’t Buffy who killed him/her — it was Giles. Instead, Glorificus is the motive for Buffy’s Great Sacrifice.

Love, C.