The Face of Femininity in Film: Will it save the world?

What is femininity? Is it an image, a force? Is it gentility and generosity, or passion and power? Does it promise some great hope for the world? And is showbiz promoting that potential or squelching it? Is femininity on the rise in filmdom or is it illegitimately and superficially used simply to sell tickets?

Its soft side is obvious: nurturing, tenderness, self-sacrifice - the opposite of the me-first attitude that fuels the so-called alpha-male persona standing behind today's political decision-making, war, business ethics - and gratification-centered entertainment. Yet, in a modern world of female soldiers and politicians, are women displaying a hard edge that heretofore went unnoticed?

But perhaps it's not just a question about women. Is femininity a force that reaches beyond gender? If so, how do men exhibit femininity? In an age of men trying to - or trying not to - get in touch with their feminine side, actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp are showing dimensions of personality hitherto not part of the conventionally defined masculine persona.

What follows are three related viewpoints on how femininity is portrayed onscreen, how it influences today's moviemaking and how these movies then influence and inspire audiences. Melora Koepke examines Hilary Swank's latest role as a boxer in the Clint Eastwood-directed Million Dollar Baby to determine whether contemporary actresses are expanding on Hollywood's established treatment of women in film. Stephen Hunt's approach is to look at the question of femininity in film from the combined perspective of art and commerce. Is there a growing trend for films to reflect a more feminine outlook? If so, is it considered bankable by the studios? Finally, Henry Turner explores whether femininity has been a determining factor in the history of movie-making all along and could, potentially, be an important aspect of bringing a change of consciousness to audiences the world over.  

Hilary Swank: Going the Distance in Million Dollar Baby
By Melora Koepke

There are as many ways to express femininity in the world, and in the movies, as there are people expressing it. It may seem like an odd choice for an issue on femininity to feature pics of Hilary Swank in boxing gloves. But the story of Million Dollar Baby is as good a place as any to start to talk about femininity and how, maybe, just maybe, it has the power to rejuvenate the movies and see a new kind of collaboration in the making.

Swank is the 30-year-old actress who, at 24, won an Oscar for playing a girl playing a boy in Kimberly Pierce's ultra-indie Boys Don't Cry. This time she is playing for Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry himself, a paternalism of old-school Hollywood masculinity, hardly someone who is known for devoting much thought to furthering or refuting female stereotypes one way or the other. But here's the thing: Eastwood and Swank together have made Million Dollar Baby, nominated for five Golden Globes, into one of the most beautiful and pure movies ever made about collaboration between a man and a woman, which is ultimately not really a movie about men and women at all. It's a story about two people, with fears and hopes and needs all their own that are neither masculine nor feminine, but individual.

"I've never really gone in for parts that required me to be the girlfriend or the wife or, you know, arm candy," says Hilary Swank of her new opus. "Parts that don't give me anything to do just don't interest me as much...and I really like a challenge. I like the idea of taking my [characters] to another level."

And that's exactly what she did with Eastwood and an amazing script as her catalyst. Kimberly Pierce, a female first-time director helming a tragic true story of what happens when gender roles are pushed too far in a culture that's intolerant, drove Swank to an unforgettable performance that put her on the map forever in Boys Don't Cry. But Eastwood brought out something even more in her; he brought out her strength without attaching it to her gender. Perhaps most interestingly, she rejuvenated and inspired something in him: Million Dollar Baby is the most emotive and emoting Eastwood film since Unforgiven.

This is an old-school Hollywood master collaborating with a 30-year-old actress who is famous for one movie. And they bring out the best in each other; they bring out each other's femininity. There is no sense of the younger actress struggling to keep up with the old veteran, or of the latter patronizing her.

Million Dollar Baby is based on Rope Burns, a collection of stories about the boxing world by the writer F.X. Toole. Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, a onetime great boxing trainer who runs the Hit Pit, a skanky, old-style boxing gym in Los Angeles. Dunn is a broken old man, whose estrangement from his daughter weighs heavily on his conscience. Years of training champions have been eclipsed now by his credo, "Always protect yourself."

When Maggie Fitzgerald, a 31-year-old waitress from the Ozarks, enters his gym looking to him to be her trainer, he refuses. She is much too old to become a fighter, he tells her. And besides - he doesn't train girls. But Maggie is someone who knows what she wants and isn't willing to live her life except to chase the dream she has always had. Frankie's only friend, the Hit Pit custodian and former fighter Scrap-Metal Dupris (Morgan Freeman) shows him he may have something to teach Maggie - and more importantly, that this determined waitress has the drive and passion it takes to become a champion. So, against his better judgment, he takes her on. At his behest, Maggie promises to do as he tells her and work very hard, and not to come crying to him if she gets hurt. Thus begins one of the most remarkable movies to ever be made about the mentoring relationship, which, between Frankie and Maggie, is a dynamic built on respect and, eventually, love: two people who thought they were out of chances bringing out the best in each other.

Watching Million Dollar Baby, one realizes how incredibly rare a character like Maggie Fitzgerald really is: a woman for whom a dream is everything, who doesn't have a personal life, a romance or children outside of it. Similarly, Eastwood's character of a lonely man who becomes attached to a woman in order to teach and be taught by her, without complicated social-sexual dynamics, is almost unheard of. The mentoring relationship is, of course, not the only legitimate tie between two characters of opposing genders any more than a tough, single woman boxer is the only kind of legitimate female character.

But the rarity of a story such as this one shows us how the theme of femininity in the movies can be developed beyond gender and through gender simultaneously.

Eastwood, as a director, does not use body doubles or cut-shots, which he believes are ineffective in films where audiences are asked to invest their emotions to a profound degree. So all the fighting in the film (of which there is a lot) was performed by Swank, who had never boxed or depended so heavily upon her physical being for a role before.

"Before I started the shoot, I didn't know anything about boxing, and I didn't understand it," says Swank. "I had no idea why anyone would want to go into a ring and hit and get hit.

But soon Swank learned how to find the soul of a boxer within the frame of the feminine. "There are a lot of parallels between my life and Maggie's," reveals Swank. "Like her, I grew up in a trailer park [in Bellingham, Washington] and I knew since the age of 9 that I wanted to act. The boxers I met had the same commitment and love of their sport."

Swank's commitment to telling Maggie's story also required tremendous physical endurance well beyond that of any other role she had ever taken on. How film portrays a woman's body is key to the public notion of a feminine ideal. It is, of course, much easier to gain a few pounds to play Bridget Jones or even Aileen Wuornos than to build the body of a prize fighter. Swank strengthened, streamlined and bettered herself, adding 19 pounds of pure muscle onto her 110-pound form, training was 4 1/2 hours a day of boxing and weight training. "I had to eat exactly 210 grams of protein a day. I know because I had to eat every hour and a half in order to get enough...I had to wake up in the middle of the night to eat more. I was drinking egg whites and flax seed oil and raw shakes. I lost a breast size - my trainer was like, ‘Ooh yeah, I forgot to tell you about that.'"

Swank's performance demonstrates her determination to take on roles emphasizing drive, will, physical power - aspects of femininity usually buried under stereotypes.

It's through such roles that audiences will be led to examine aspects of femininity usually ignored by Hollywood, but this movie is also a reminder that such roles are rare and scripts like this one few.

Confirms Swank: "I remember doing my junket for Boys Don't Cry, and having people say, ‘Wow, to have a role like that when you are 24, where do you go from here?' And I remember thinking that was weird, because I thought, wow, I have tons of things left to do. I have come to realize that those roles really are few and far between, especially for women."

Hollywood & Femininity
By Stephen Hunt

"Movies are arguably the most influential, important medium in the world. Because women are now making movies, then women's ideas, philosophy, and point of view will seep into that culture. We can't even see the impact of that yet." - Laura Ziskin, Producer, Spider-Man, As Good As It Gets, Pretty Woman.

How does Hollywood - home of the most influential, important medium in the world, according to producer Laura Ziskin - deal with femininity? The answer is: usually very ineptly. The motion picture industry's presentation of women for the most part offers a superficial and cartoonish adolescent boys' image of women.

Only two women (Lina Wertmuller and Jane Campion) have ever been nominated for Best Director, in the eight decades since they started handing out Academy Awards.

But on the other hand, what about Charlie Kaufman, Alexander Payne, and Kathryn Bigelow, whose films all feature well-written, three dimensional, complex female characters? What about the rise of the woman-driven action movie, such as Blue Steel; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Charlie's Angels 1 & 2; Kill Bill, Vols. 1&2 and this year's House of Flying Daggers? Does one take solace in the fact that some of those female action heroes - who frankly act a lot like guys disguised as gorgeous women - such as Charlie's Angels, are produced by women (Drew Barrymore), which gives them the clout to do other, more difficult and complex roles (Riding in Cars With Boys) and hire other women (Penny Marshall) to direct, two things that were probably inconceivable in Hollywood until very, very recently? And lest we forget, what about the fact that among the Hollywood suits who determine whether films get green-lit are several women who have risen through the ranks of the ultimate boys club and emerged as the ones in charge?

Now that's a question - or six - worth asking.

A common complaint among actresses is that the brunt of female roles are woefully underwritten, there to serve the demands of the plot - which are overwhelmingly populated by male protagonists overcoming impossible odds to achieve their goals. Yet it is possible for actresses to find wonderful parts. It's just not easy. Kirsten Dunst - who is among a handful of actresses whose name can secure financing for a film - says she leapt at the opportunity to do Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, even though she wasn't old enough to play the lead role of Clementine. "I just thought [the script] had the smartest roles written for women in a long time," she said at a press gathering for the film held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills in March, 2004. "It's just like human beings, instead of Hollywood versions of women or whatever...I just loved the way it was written. It's just very hard to find a very good female role."

Quentin Tarantino, who is one of the world's most bankable directors, wrote and directed Kill Bill, a four-hour, $90 million action/revenge film centered on a female protagonist's violent quest for payback - a notion that was unthinkable until the 21^st century. Women have been getting revenge for five thousand years, but Hollywood has long considered action films featuring female protagonists a no-fly zone - until now. "To have someone as cool as Uma (to write a lead role for)...it's iconic," Tarantino said at the Kill Bill Vol. 2 press junket last March. Tarantino acknowledged the mesmerizing power of his leading lady, rather than diminishing it or trying to control it. "You can design the role for her...the way von Sternberg might do it for Dietrich, or Leone for Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef, using that image, building around it." But isn't Tarantino's enthusiasm the exception that proves the rule?

Thurman, a mother of two who says she normally doesn't watch violent films, found herself in the odd position of being the star of one. However, she found redemption in the fact that doing that sort of role was empowering for women. "I didn't grow up watching a woman be so tough and so strong and so brave," says Thurman. "I didn't grow up seeing images of that - but if there was one thing I got back out of all the work and pain that went into doing [Kill Bill], it was that, like it or not, there's an example of that [kind of female character] - and that's not common."

Increasingly, Hollywood is discovering its feminine side through the advancement of large numbers of women up through the corps of the gatekeepers who discover, develop, cast, produce and finance films. Women such as Sherry Lansing, who ran Paramount from 1990 until recently, and Dawn Steel, who ran Columbia in the 1980s, have paved the way for the next generation of female studio heads - those such as Universal's Stacey Snider, or HBO's Carolyn Strauss, who has been in charge of Original Programming at the network more responsible for original programming on television than any other in the last 15 years. Other women such as Boys Don't Cry producer Christine Vachon, Tom Cruise's producing partner Paula Wagner, publicity titans Pat Kingsley and Leslee Dart, former ABC programming honcho Susan Lyne and hundreds of others have reached the ranks of the gatekeepers at levels unimaginable in the 1970s. Then Hollywood was a boys' club and woe unto to the woman who tried to make her way through the ranks - unless she was some kind of hot, steaming babe. (Sherry Lansing started out as the actress getting her body painted on Laugh-In).

Nowadays, Hollywood has turned that archetypal babe into a 35-year-old, single, somewhat neurotic British Everygirl named Bridget Jones, who has become a beloved global icon. At the press conference for The Edge of Reason, Renée Zellweger sat patiently as a 24-year-old female reporter quizzed her about playing a character that expects her boyfriend to propose after only six weeks of ‘serial shagging.' "Don't you worry that Bridget is just not a very good role model for women?" the reporter asked. Zellweger thought for a moment, then said, "I did have some concern that Bridget might come across as needy and neurotic," she confessed. She paused for a moment, as if to chew over the irony of it all - being scolded by a 24-year-old for examining what it's like to be 35, female, with biological clock ticking and single. "She's not needy or desperate," Zellweger continued. "It's that her actions are completely contrary to that [needy desperation]. No matter what she's going through, what hardship or rejection she's faced with, she never fails to trudge forward...and she succeeds."

Sort of like femininity in Hollywood - no matter what setbacks ‘it' encounters, it continues, in fits and starts, to trudge forward - true, more in small films than big, but small films sometimes go out into the world in a big way, bigger than all the billion dollar Bruckheimer epics combined.

Film, Femininity, and the Future of the Free World
By Henry Turner

Tallulah Bankhead made the famous remark, "I'm pure as the freshly driven slush." The suspense built over whether Britney Spears is really sleazy, or just pretending, and goes to church with a stack of Bibles thumping her nubile bosom, is a proven method of magazine sales. The great editor and newspaperman H.L. Mencken was once asked for his ideas concerning the perfect popular magazine. He said it would have no articles, no reviews - no writing at all, in fact. It would be all pictures, and titled, "Pretty Girls."

And pretty girls have always been the gimmick of the movies. Starting with the Biograph Girl, Florence Lawrence, it was the popularity of certain actresses among nickelodeon audiences that kick-started the star system. To the surprise of the filmmakers, letters flooded in, wondering who that sunny-faced girl was who lit up the flickers. It was the face of a woman that brought in the cash.

But is there a new face - a new meaning - to humanity that lies within femininity that can help the world to a greater understanding of our purpose on this planet? Is there a new higher social consciousness that femininity promises? And is that deeper meaning obscured by the crass commercialism of women in the movies?

All that being considered, the very act of a man, myself, critiquing how a woman can be used most nobly for the betterment of society is so entrenched in objectifying, that none of us even have a chance of understanding any deep universal truths about the whole matter anyway.

So let's get beyond all that and establish that what we are talking about here isn't just women. The concept of femininity is transcendental. Words can't describe it. We must suffice with images - with attempts at definition through example. But we love seeing the examples.

Movies often claim that a new type of woman is about to be presented, it's like saying she'll have new options, new features. But femininity is an inherent quality - it cannot have a new face, only new representations. And the new representations are rehashes of the old.

Actresses: Are we seeing something new? No. New types are not being presented now, but are culled from the pre-existing spectrum of types, and some types are more favored over others.

The fast development of various female types representing innocence and evil, vulnerability and strength: Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford (a studio head herself), Mae Marsh, vamps like Theda Bara and Louise Brooks, independent women such as Gloria Swanson or Joan Crawford. Later phases of broadening and experimentation with feminine portrayal: businesslike Rosalind Russell, sexy Marilyn Monroe, pneumatic Jayne Mansfield, tough Lauren Bacall, the incredible plastic apparition of Doris Day, the sexy virgin Julie Andrews, Diane Keaton and Faye Dunaway with their semi-hippie vibes. Hepburn & Hepburn, Kate mannish, Audrey boyish - both of them well aware of the attraction of androgyny - a trend that continues today. Look at Hilary Swank. A seemingly new addition are the few actresses like Kidman and Theron who have played down their beauty, something an actress of Rita Hayworth's era would never have risked - except Jane Wyman, in Johnny Belinda, who won the Oscar for her troubles.

All these prior types are mirrored by contemporary actresses who variously represent themselves as vamp or good girl, or any combination thereof, with Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow as dark and light opposites of feminine virtue.

What are our current star archetypes? What does Julia Roberts represent? Good girl, bad girl, "It" girl? Lara Croft is the current avatar of - what? A masculine woman? A robot woman? James Cameron's woman warriors of the ‘80s and early ‘90s - Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton - what were they fighting for? Ostensibly for children, but also for a place in a male-run pecking order?

Vamps, vixens, wives, mothers, drabs, nags, woman of the world or girl next door - the types are well-nigh endless. But what determines the presentation, the portrayal? Who determines its meaning and worth?

Men, by and large, still predominantly run the movie business. But there are thousands of woman studio executives, writers, technicians, publicists and agents. Perhaps not enough - but thousands. If women gain greater control of production, will their films reflect more life-affirming values? Do Gale Anne Hurd's or Sherry Lansing's? Not particularly. That is like asking whether, if a woman runs a car factory, will the cars be more life-affirming, or if she drives a tractor, will her driving or the ditch she burrows be more meaningful. These are jobs. They have the push and pull of commerce; they are done to reflect what the market will bear. The goddess Demand rules all.

Subsequently, Hollywood's usual treatment of femininity is through women and sex, through bombshell beauty that perpetuates both love and disaster. Still, femininity is a force in and of itself, an outlook and approach to life that crosses gender. It is an aspect of the human perspective in general, whether we choose to accept it or not, and it manifests itself to a greater or lesser degree in all human behavior.

Femininity is not the sole property of women. Today's actors such as Jude Law, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp certainly exhibit feminine aspects of the male - and not in the weak and indecisive way that the Governator calls "girlymen" but as men who access their emotions and feelings as well as their strength and courage to face problems. Still, everything a woman does expresses femininity, and film history is loaded with hundreds of films that depict lesbians, female warriors, heroes, killers, etc.

Is there a way to understand femininity outside of women? How do men express their feminine side? Hollywood has always had its "women's directors," that is, male directors like George Cukor who specialized in helping actresses shape their performances. But even without an inherent sympathy, men must ultimately deal with femininity as a creative, active element of life. In Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood directs himself as a man who must shift his perspective on not only what women are capable of but what is expected and accepted of men as well, especially in regards to his own secret regrets. Hilary Swank's dedication to boxing forces him to accept that within each of us is the yin and yang of masculine and feminine traits - that dreams are not segregated by gender. This exposes the deeper idea of the individual human identity, popping its head up through the surface of the consuming flow of life to express a brief and precious moment of individuality.

In the Coen Brothers' Fargo, Frances McDormand plays a woman who exhibits all the characteristics of a hero while never for an instant shirking her duties as a corn-belt wife. Even more than the crime she investigates, the suspense of the film is built on whether these two traits will ever become contradictory, which they don't. Meanwhile her stay-at-home artist husband portrays an atypical form of male strength that she depends on in a very untraditional way. Ridley Scott's career is studded with various types of strong women who don't fit the current mold of brainless, video-game action heroines. One can watch the heroines of Alien and Thelma and Louise as Scott's explorations of femininity in conventionally male scenarios, perhaps even as the feminine alter egos of himself. Or, then again, maybe this attempt at femininity in film is still masculinity in disguise, reminding us that even once you get past the profiteers, there is the egotism of gender identification that persists in obscuring the true power and potential of femininity.

That's something known all too well by John Daly. The producer of Terminator, Platoon and Last Emperor traditionally either didn't include women in key roles in his films or presented them as secondary characters used by men. But when Terminator 2, which he didn't produce, turned the Sarah Connor character into a gun-toting terminator-ette, he disapproved.

"Hollywood doesn't do a very good job of presenting women and their strength at all," says Daly. "But that's because it's all about the almighty dollar. And the powers that be believe that stereotypical images of violence and sex are what sell. Subtle characterizations don't. That will have to change in order for the portrayal of women to change."

Daly, in his own films, is trying to do his part. In his most recent film, The Aryan Couple, premiering at Sundance, the man once known for producing brutal, tough, paternalistic films is now making his mark by writing, directing and producing a war movie in which male and female characters both equally portray strength and sensitivity. The thematically and visually stirring WWII drama about a German/Jewish industrialist who makes a secret pact with the Nazis to ensure his family's safe passage out of Germany is not controlled by either the male or female characters. Both genders offer complex characterizations that contribute equally to the propagation of the plot.

Daly hopes that having more films that portray the strengths, vulnerability and vision of femininity as well as masculinity will lead to more social consciousness instead of social chaos.

"War, violence and abuse are rampant in our society," says Daly. "That's because we are not reaching down deep within ourselves as a society to figure out how to get along with each other. Our films don't teach us how to do that. Instead they simply teach us how to dominate each other. We see constant portrayal of women who are either dominated or who dominate. No wonder we are such a violent and manipulative society."

Men learn from women. By accepting a woman as more than her gender and capable of characteristics beyond what's conventionally expected of her, men can accept their own characteristics that go beyond gender stereotypes. And that is the potential power of femininity in the movies.

Could it be that within the feminine there is a greater understanding of our ability to interact with each other as holistic beings, simultaneously using our physical, spiritual and emotional essence not to destroy or dismiss but to accept and interact with in a new way? As cliché as it may be to say that this can lead to men being less violent, it's nonetheless probably true.

Clarification for that comes from a rather unexpected place - the theological significance of Jesus' mother Mary in the Bible as well as the film The Passion of the Christ. In both, Mary as well as Mary Magdalene act as commentators. Through their eyes we can see and understand reality in a grander and more meaningful context, according to the Rev. William J. Fulco, S.J., who provided the Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew translations for Mel Gibson's divinely inspired epic.

"The women in the New Testament are the ones that proclaim reality to the men," says Fulco. "That biblical view of women was derived in part from the Near-Eastern view of the cosmic masculine and cosmic feminine. The male embodies a reality such as warfare. The female is seen as making this relational to the rest of the world."

Fulco explains that women are the ones who most clearly understand and relate to Jesus and his new vision of civilization.

"If you look in the NT, the first person that Jesus meets is Mary Magdalene," says Fulco. "And as was expressed in the film, the true power of the passion of Christ was seen through Jesus' mother Mary's eyes. Mary extends Jesus' work to reality. The unique contribution that women can make is not about women becoming men. The feminine force in the world today can interpret reality and tell us its true meaning in a way that men may not."

In his book The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle states that the energy frequency of Mind - which fights, resists, attacks, manipulates - is essentially male, while Being, which encompasses surrender, non-judgment and the openness that allows life its freedom, are feminine qualities. Hence he says that women are potentially closer to enlightenment than men.

By accessing our feminine side, by touting the feminine essence of Being, a new world of information could be revealed - the world of our moment, not our hopes and fears. But what sort of films would we have if Hollywood completely embraced that feminine? Stories of people struggling to be reasonable and present in their lives? Where would the drama be in that?

There is that brute reality to consider. As the great director Howard Hawks once pointed out, movies are about tits and horses. It would be a mistake to think, hope or expect the Hollywood studios to ever adopt a genuine social consciousness - what would be the point? Hollywood is about the dollar, period, end of report. The studios and high budget indies try to mine the popular consciousness for what will sell. They comb our habits, like the fashion scouts who hang out in Manhattan clubs to get design inspiration from the club kids. Studio films are not about any given artist expressing himself, but are about what a carefully ranked committee could discover about the likes and dislikes of a given audience demographic. We go to the blockbusters to see a reflection of our aggregate thinking - of what Hollywood thinks we think, and hopes we'll pay to see, based on market research. What we see on the screen is a reflection of our gut desires rather than our noble aspirations.

So ultimately, femininity may never be completely found within the movies made about or even by women; but maybe we can keep getting a little better glimpse of it, leading us to the grand power derived from another perspective. By portraying women without the clutter of stereotypes this may become easier to see.

But that means not muddying the water with any stereotypes at all, such as making women into men. In Million Dollar Baby, though Swank plays a boxer, she plays it as a person, not a man or a woman. But she still retains a certain sensitivity that is uncharacteristic for a male boxer. She is a person trying simultaneously to compete and to cooperate with the world around her. And therein may lie the route to understanding the force of the feminine in movies and in the world in which we live. -MPM