Fey, Hanna and Action Flicks: The Male-Skewing Myth

A few weeks ago, when flying from LA to NY, I was trapped with my daughter in the airport for six hours. We wandered aimlessly through stores, in a comatose state, until something grabbed our attention. There, on the cover of her new book, "Bossypants," was a photo of Tina Fey. Or was it? It was certainly Tina Fey's head and torso. But, connected to these recognizable body parts were a pair of hairy, burly, male arms that might easily belong to a lumberjack. Suddenly, I was wide awake.

As an avid viewer of Ms. Fey's unfailingly funny, politically astute, topnotch TV show, "Thirty Rock," I am very familiar with her character, Liz Lemon -- the TV producer/head writer at NBC whose personal life is a disaster. Loosely based on Ms. Fey's experiences as a female producer/head writer in the predominantly male world of comedy, she struggles in ways that a man in her position wouldn't. That, in a nutshell, is what the show is about.

The striking image on the book cover of a Tina Fey who is part female, part male seems to embody what Liz Lemon often feels on the show. Is she really a woman? Is she more masculine than the majority of other women out there?

Lemon dresses in what used to be called 'androgynous' clothes -- unisex jeans, flat shoes, button-down shirts, glasses, no make-up or "feminine" accessories. At the beginning of the series, her boss and mentor, played by Alec Baldwin, assumes that she is a lesbian and tries to set her up with a woman. (Clearly, Baldwin's character has never watched "The L Word" or wandered the Sapphic watering holes of LA, where there are more high heels and feminine accessories than you can shake a stick at). But, after giving her same-sex date the old college try, Liz Lemon reaffirms what she already knew about herself, that she, like her creator, is solidly heterosexual despite her gender difference.

So what is she exactly? An unusual woman? An exception to the rule? A female man? A male woman? A third sex? I ask these questions, not as an abstract exercise in intellectualization, but because, I, too, sometimes feel like a third sex -- especially when I read movie reviews in the Hollywood trade papers surmising, in advance of a movie's opening, who will go to see them, to whom they will be most appealing, how they are expected by studios (and reviewers) to skew.

Here's an example. When "Hannah" opened on Friday, April 8th, "Variety" informed its readers that it was "expected to play best to male audiences." Why? Because it is an action flick? A fast-paced thriller with fighting and violence?

I found this pronouncement decidedly at odds with my own feelings. Ever since I'd seen a trailer for the film, I'd been bursting at the seams with impatience for it to open. Everyone at my house -- all female, felt the same. Here's what I remember from the preview: a 14-year-old girl, dressed head-to-toe in animal skins, kills an enormous antlered caribou. Out of the blue, a man attacks her. Immediately, she springs to action, overpowers him and tackles him to the ground. She walks off with the beast slung over her shoulders. Later, she is interrogated by a woman in a government facility. The girl, pretending to hug the agent, breaks her neck, fights off a slew of armed men and escapes, while Cate Blanchett's character observes in steely silence. Bring it on.
I am hooked. What woman wouldn't be?

The world is saturated with male action heroes whose passive female love interests can't throw a punch in their own defense. How often do we see a father training his teenage daughter to be an assassin? I wouldn't have been nearly as intrigued to watch "Hannah," if it had been "Harry." Why shouldn't other women and girls be just as excited as I was to see a film with not just one, but two female characters trained to be physically tough as nails? Not so very long ago, rumor had it that women could identify (mostly out of necessity) with male characters (in every genre), but men could only identify with other men on the screen. Is it a form of progress to wager that a movie called "Hannah," with two female assassin leads -- not in tight-fitting bodices -- will be mostly seen by men? Perhaps.

On the other hand, why do studio execs and movie reviewers persist in believing that, when it comes to selecting movies, girls don't venture an opinion, but are dragged silently to the movies of choice of their male dates? (They surely don't know my teenage daughter and her friends, or my adult female friends either, for that matter). And if the girls and women could choose, prevailing wisdom dictates that they will almost always select romantic comedies (despite the fact that these are often the most gender-conforming of all the genres out there).

Maybe the girls are dragging their dates to see "Hannah." Or maybe the girls and the boys, the men and the women all want to go. Willingly. During its six season run, viewers of "Xena Warrior Princess" skewed fairly evenly male and female, young and old. Everyone wanted to see Xena fight hordes of warlords, armies and gods alongside her trusty sidekick, friend, lover, Gabrielle. Ditto for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Studios and marketers are convinced that girls can only relate to stories about feelings and romance. They forget that teenage girls also live in a world where 75% of them get bullied, generally in the form of sexual harassment. When a teenage boy grabs Buffy's butt in the hallways of her high school, she immediately knocks him flat on his butt. Cheering by female teenage viewers was deafening. Hence the continued popularity of the series for seven, solid seasons.

Disney is abandoning its princess story-telling. Something will have to fill the void. Perhaps more girls and women than ever will flock to the action-thrillers. Especially, if they are filled to the brim with female characters thrilling us with their action.

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by LAURA WEINSTOCK of WEINSTOCK SCRIPTS
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