John Scalzi - Ellen Ripley Paved the Way for Strong Female Leads
This week is a busy one for me, because my most recent novel Zoe's Tale hit the stores on Tuesday; I'll be promoting it by making appearances, doing interviews and generally blathering about the main character, a 16-year-old girl who is called upon to save the day, whether she wants the responsibility or not. It was in the course doing these interviews that I've had cause to think about women's characters in science fiction, and the single most important female character in the history of science fiction film: Ellen Ripley, of the Alien series. What makes her important? Because she's a pivot point in the history of science fiction film, and how women inhabited the genre. In a nutshell -- Before Ripley: Barbarella. After Ripley: Sarah Connor.
Becoming Ripley
Ironically, Ripley didn't become this pivotal, iconic character in her first film appearance, 1979's Alien. In Alien, Ripley's character, third in command on the space freighter Nostromo, is initially pretty unsympathetic and unlikeable, the sort of character the other characters dislike for being rule-bound -- she refuses to break quarantine even when one of her crewmates gets a surprise alien embryo to the face. In Alien, Ripley doesn't take charge so much as have responsibility devolve onto her; the final confrontation ends up being between her and the alien, but to a very real extent, that showdown had as much to do with the then twenty-something Sigourney Weaver looking tasty as she stripped down to her underwear to slip into a spacesuit, as it did with the character surviving simply by dint of her own intelligence and will to live.
It took the 1986 sequel, Aliens, for Ripley to become the canonical character she is. In that film, screenwriter-director James Cameron remodeled Ripley, making her something new to science fiction: An action heroine who was neither a female caricature of a macho man nor a Barbarella-like sex bunny. There's nothing particularly sexy about Ripley in Aliens at all, in fact, which is something that both makes sense in the context of the film (when you're trying to help a Marine detail fight acid-spewing aliens, there's not much time for the sexy) and which came as something of a revelation to film audiences. Ripley was tough, competent and -- here was a surprise -- maternal. That side of her character becomes activated by the presence the little girl, Newt, and expresses itself savagely in the film's final showdown between the Queen alien and Ripley in a human-shaped power lifter.
If you were to suggest to teenage boys just before the release of Aliens that the most awesome action scene they'd see in a science fiction film that year would be between two women fighting over the safety of a little girl, they'd probably look at you with blank incomprehension. But there it was: Ripley was an action star not in spite of being a woman, but because she was one. The combination of Cameron's writing and Weaver's Oscar-nominated acting -- a rare accolade for anyone acting in a science fiction role, much less in a lead actress slot -- did what was previously impossible: Made a female character a bona fide science fiction franchise star.
Carrying on the tradition
Cameron and Weaver's
success opened the door to other tough, smart science fiction leading
women, the most obvious being another Cameron creation: Sarah Connor.
Connor is a fine example of how Ripley changed things for science
fiction film women: In the first Terminator
film, released in 1984, Connor spends nearly all of her time being
chased and defended, except for the scene where she gets naked and
impregnated (this scene is actually reasonably tastefully done, despite
the fact it was in essentially a B-movie); in 1991's Terminator 2,
however, she's take charge, dangerous and (literally) crazy competent
-- and like Ripley working from a maternal place: Feminine without the
ogle factor for the boys in the audience. It's possible that Cameron
always intended her to be this way in a sequel, but it's also a pretty
good bet that without Ripley having blazed that trail (and making a lot
of money while she did it), Cameron would have gotten a lot more
pushback on making Sarah Connor the way she was.
This model has been so successful, in fact, that it's essentially become a standard template for science fiction heroines -- around long enough, and successful enough, to be shoddily replicated in bad films. Check out Milla Jovovich's character in 2006's Ultraviolet, and you'll note the film doing very poorly what was done so well in Aliens: Establishing a female character independent of sexual relationship either with another character or with the males in the audience (note well that one reason Ultraviolet does a poor job of this relates to Jovovich's wardrobe of midriff-less shirts and hot leather pants). Yes, it's a little perverse to note that success of a character template by pointing out examples of other filmmakers doing it badly. But on the other hand, it's also nice to know that at this point in time, science fiction audiences not only don't have a problem with strong, problem-solving lead female characters, they've come to expect them to be that way -- and they know when such a character is being done badly.
I'm not going to make the argument that science fiction films don't indulge in catering to the baser instincts of the teenage boy crowd on a more than occasional basis (please refer once more to Milla Jovovich's hot pants). But thanks to Ellen Ripley, and the actress and writers who created her, that's not all we're stuck with. That's worth noting, and with thanks.
Your thoughts?
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies as well as the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale, which was released this week. His column appears every Thursday.
Ripley was definitely awesome in Aliens.
Still, she was pretty awesome in her underwear in Alien, too.
;)
Thinking about women in SciFi, you wouldn't happen to know if any of Octavia Butler's books are going to be made into films any time soon? One of the few (only?) prominent black women in the genre, her books are full of strong female characters. It's a shame she died relatively young.
I was lucky enough to be a teenager in the 70s (with a bunch of similarly geeky sf friends), and I'll still never forget seeing Aliens at the drive-in with a carful of guys. We were all amazed at Ripley's character- for so long there had been strong female characters in SF books, but it was the first time that we had seen one on-screen, as I recall. I've read a lot of interviews over the years with mainstream female actors who think that Ripley was one of the best roles for a female, ever (excluding the underwear scene).
I'd love to know how much input Sigourney Weaver had in developing the character.
A significant different between Ripley (and Sarah Connor) and most other recent genre heroines is that Ripley has no superpowers, special abilities or martial-arts training whatsoever, just heroic determination and courage.
John, what are your thoughts on the other prevalent modern sci-fi heroine, the Hot Girl Who Knows Kung Fu? Buffy Summers is obviously the definitive HGWKKF, but it's a pretty common type these days. I wonder sometimes if it's less progressive and feminist than it gets credit for, given its insistence on making the female hero a sexually inviting character.
Of course, you could also argue that male action stars tend to be pretty hot, too. Ricky Gervais won't be playing James Bond any time soon. I dunno. Thoughts?
I like Ellen Ripley a heck of a lot, but strictly speaking, I think she was wrong to go back for Newt. (more here)
Also, I think you are being too hard on Sarah Connor in Terminator. She doesn't start out as an action hero, but when Reese gives her a gun, she takes it up dispite misgivings. Also, by the end she is able to fight back effectively against the Terminator, and she is the one who kills it. That's several steps toward becoming the figher we see in T2.
EarBucket:
The HGWKKF is an offshoot of the Ripley model, and it exemplifies the Hollywood desire to have one's cake and eat it too, in the sense of having a woman character with positive feminist qualities but at the same time give the young male demo something to drool over -- this is precisely what's going on in Ultraviolet, noted in the column itself. I think the HGWKKF is better than the alternative, and speaking as a het guy is certainly fun to watch, but I too have my doubts that in the final analysis she is really much of an advance from a feminist point of view. Naturally, I welcome other perspectives on this.
I think Ricky Gervais as 007 would be a fascinating sort of train wreck.
Alex Bledsoe:
Indeed.
Johan Larson:
I think you're right that the seed was planted (which is why I say I expect Cameron possibly intended her to go in that direction), but I do think with Aliens, strictly as a practical matter of dealing with studios, Cameron wouldn't have been able to take Sarah Connor as far as he was able to.
Great article.
Slightly earlier than Ripley and maybe put her foot in the door for a slinky underwear clad Sigourney to slip though, is Erin Grey in Buck Rogers the TV series. Maybe she needed to get rescued once in a while by Buck, but not many women were portrayed to be a colonel, pilot a fighter, shoot a blaster and be sexy in that white suit.
There are probably a small handful more references pre-Ripley in Aliens, but true, Ripley is the one that'll be most familliar when looked back on.
I think Gale Anne Hurd deserves a nod for her role in producing movies that attempt to have strong female characters (even if some of them suck) - Aliens, The Abyss, Aeon Flux, and several others that feature women in power. She hasn't always succeeded, and possibly she road the James Cameron coat tails to power, but I have to hope that women in powerful positions in Hollywood can have a positive influence on the portrayal of women in scifi movies.
Earbucket and John:
I actually blame Joss Whedon for the HGWKKF. Specifically, I blame him for taking the model of action heroine that came from Aliens and Terminator and hit TV as Xena and replacing her with waifs with superpowers. (There's only one non-waif action heroine in any of Joss Whedon's TV shows, and she was played by Gina Torres, a Xena alumna.) I don't mind waifs with superpowers, but it would be nice if there were more than one model of action heroine showing up out there
I always feel like the Ripley character is doing interesting things with mythic archetypes. In some ways she's on a classic sort of hero's journey, going from directionless youth to a tremendous sense of self and purpose. (I'm leaving the 4th movie out of this reckoning, though the one good interesting thing about it was seeing Ripley, having literally embraced the alien at the end of #3, evolve into something new.)
And at the same time, they're playing with classic mythic female roles: in the first movie she's the young and sexual maiden. Second movie, matured into a full adult with her own purpose, she takes on the role of mother to the little girl (and at the end, though we don't know it, gets impregnated offscreen by the alien). By the third movie, bald and bitterly knowing, she's become the wise crone, a queen pitted against the alien queen.
I think we feel these mythic structures at work behind the story, and they give it depth and power, because there is something universal about them that speaks to us even when we're not consciously aware of them. And I really love that they're all wrapped up in such a completely strong, badass package.
There was another knock-on effect for me. The Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds, for example, had a young girl about the same age as Newt was in Aliens. Therefore, her constantly whinging, screaming, and generally acting like a normal little girl probably would simply didn't measure up. I found myself eagerly awaiting her vapourization.
Perhaps I simply lack empathy.
It occurs to me that Dana Scully fits the Ripley mold in certain ways. Yes, the show had her playing damsel every so often, particularly in the early seasons. But she's also a strong, competent, professional woman, and the maternal side is definitely there. At the beginning, it was more implicit, with Scully playing the rational adult to Mulder's child-like open-mindedness, but as the show went on it became explicit, with Scully actually having a baby.
As mentioned above, Zoe from Firefly owes a lot to Ripley, and I think she's Whedon's most progressive character.
2 bits of trivia I heard this weekend (courtesy of The Role That Changed My Life)
1) The reason she got cast for Aliens was that one of the people involved (director) had a mad crush on Weaver.
2) The original screenplay for Alien had an all-male cast. When they added women to it, they didn't go back and change the script. So you wound up with a man's dialog but with an actress' interpretation. She (Weaver) said that was part of why she came off as such a bad-ass.
Oh, here's one. How about Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2? She's perhaps more of a HGWKKF, but I don't think she's used in a sexually exploitative way, and she's definitely every bit as tough and competent as Ellen Ripley. And compared to the usual standard for female video game characters, she's dressed positively puritanically.
How about Zoe in Firefly (I am sure Scalzi likes that name!) Very strong and competent, has sexual relationship not with the main hero character but a supporting character over whom she can be seen to be dominant.
Coyote:
Zoe gets into the discussion by a sidedoor, because she's originally a TV character, not a film character, but yeah, I see her very much in the "Daughter of Ripley" mold. EarBucket: Re, Alyx Vance: Not a movie character (yet, anyway), but I do think she's an important character in videogame characterizations of women.
I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned Princess Leia yet. (I prefer not to think about what happened to her character in Return of the Jedi, and I'm not referring to the metal bikini.)
I wasn't allowed to see Alien when it first came out (I was 5), but that moment in Star Wars where Leia goes from damsel-in-distress to taking charge in about half a second remains iconic for me, whatever sins Lucas committed afterward.
I'd also like to mention Mace in Strange Days--which Cameron didn't direct, but he did write and produce.
I see someone already mentioned her, but I'd add in Mace from Strange Days. As one of those weirdos in the corner with chrome stars in their eyes, I think Mace is probably the best example of a cyberpunk heroine brought to the silver screen.
But besides the cyberpunk angle, Mace isn't sexualized (except in her relationship to Lenny, which is done very romantically, I think) or made "girly" or "mannish." Mace is a woman, a mother and a friend, who also has the oomph to kick much patootie when necessary.
I recently saw the movie Pig Hunt at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.
http://blogs.amctv.com/monsterfest/2008/02/pig-hunt-marks.php
It was a crazy flick, but the lead actress, Tina Huang, was a lot like Ripley in Alien. At first a bit unlikable, but forced into heroine mode when the sh*t hits the fan.
I love Ripley, but I feel pretty bad that I haven't seen more heroines that she's paved the way for. This all goes back to the people who make the movies making the kinds of movies they want to see, so I'm not surprised - I'm actually pretty surprised that Aliens got made with the solid heart that it has.
Princess Leia was my hero as a kid, but looking at the Star Wars movies as an adult and a filmmaker, I feel pretty bad about her, too. She's right there with Han Solo in terms of one-liners and such, but she rarely does anything in the series aside from serving as a goal/conflict for Han and Luke (and getting in some really great lines).
Selena in 28 Days Later is the only strong woman lead besides Ripley and Sarah Connor I can think of in scifi.
If you've got more I'd love to hear them... but I feel like Ellen Ripley Paved a Road that Nobody Drives On Really.
I think that you miss an important part of Cameron's work: both characters develop during the films, not simply from one to the other. It is easier to see the difference in Sarah Connor, but it is there in Ripley as well. The woman in the jeep at the end of Terminator is not the same silly girl as at the beginning.
What female character in current scifi novels would like to see a film made of? My choice would be Honor Harrington.
On the subject of Princess Leia, I haven't checked this in all the films so I don't know if it's true, but I once read that in a series full of laser-gunfights, Leia and Amidala are the only people who never miss.