Feminist fatales: young women become our movie heroes

by Elizabeth Kosturik | Mar 31, 2015

In March 2012, The Hunger Games, starring then-22 year-old Jennifer Lawrence, opened with $152.5 million domestic gross, delivering what was then the third-biggest opening weekend of all time. The plot: a girl in a dystopian future must fight oppression in order to save those she loves.

It didn’t take long before other movies with similar premises started popping up: Divergent, The Host, Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, and How I Live Now. Not to mention the next films in The Hunger Games franchise: Catching Fire and Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2.

Many of these films are based on best-selling books. But what may seem like Hollywood studios just seeking a piece of Hunger Games success actually carries heavier connotations. More than ever now, there is a market for female heroes onscreen, instead of traditional “damsels in distress” stereotypes.

The Katniss effect

Lawrence’s character, Katniss Everdeen, has become a feminist role model—even being named one of Time magazine’s Most Influential Fictional Characters in both 2013 and 2014.

“What The Hunger Games did was put at the centre of this universe a very strong female character,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak, a media tracking company. “These movies have been able to combine a hybrid situation where they may have a movie that will appeal to females, yet also has elements of action, edginess, and not necessarily the most optimistic view of the future, which a lot of movies that are aimed at young people generally tend to do.”

Movie critic Richard Crouse agrees. “They’re putting young, good looking adults in perilous situations that are all kind of similar,” he says. “And there’s the underlying subtext about strength, loyalty, and family. It’s really basic stuff that is primal and appeals to people, and involves concepts that everyone can easily grab.”

Back to the future

These “perilous situations” often involve  futuristic, post-apocalyptic settings wherein the young heroines are thrown into conflict with an oppressive force: either a dictatorship, invading aliens, or a World War Three scenario.

“It’s escapist, which is maybe part of the draw,” says Kerrie Bible, a box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations. “Parts of fantasy, part of the illusion.”

But perhaps it is more than just a setting for moviemakers to distort reality and create unrealistic situations. Perhaps the dystopian setting of these films is commentary on our world today. 

Laura Horak, an assistant film studies professor at Carleton University, sees The Hunger Games as a class critique of the “one percent.”  

“It’s looking at consumption from the point of the view of the workers—like the miners and the loggers—and the people in the Capitol [the government] are sort of the ones who are using all the resources,” she says. “It reminds me of a critique of the way North America is using resources and providing them.”

Young women working together is more common on screens than ever before.

The concern about the future of our civilization extends globally. “I think that this concern about the dystopian future and the concern about class inequality is going to stay with us as we have all of these environmental challenges and class inequalities around the world and within every country,” Horak says.

Girl power

It’s hard to ignore such movies’ message of female solidarity. Katniss during the Games finds her ally in Rue, a younger girl. In How I Live Now, Saoirse Ronan’s character, Daisy, takes guardianship of her young cousin, Piper, to try and unite their family. Young women working together without needing men to help them is more common on screens than ever before.

“It’s part of the new ‘girl power’ thing where it’s great to be spunky and independent, as long as you’re very young,” says Horak. “Those qualities might not be as interesting or as attractive in an older woman.”

And it’s not just the fictional characters whom audiences can relate to. The actresses who play them are just as quirky. Whether it’s tripping on the red carpet (Lawrence) or being a self-proclaimed environmentalist (Divergent star Shailene Woodley) or skateboarding (Chloe Grace Moretz, star of the upcoming The Fifth Wave), these actresses present themselves in ways that relate to female audiences.

“If you were a teenage girl and look at someone like Jennifer Lopez, you can’t really say, ‘Okay, she’s going to understand my life, and I’m going to relate to her,’” says Bible. “But look at someone like Jennifer Lawrence. She comes across, whether it’s manufactured or not, as more human and more relatable.”

Typically these onscreen characters are just coming into their own in a world that (much like reality) seems unforgiving for girls trying to grow up. While in the films there are romantic interests and hints of young love, Horak points out that viewers don’t normally get to see how the characters progress as adults.

“Because they’re young, it plays on the tradition of the tomboy, that it’s okay and it can even be great and interesting for a young woman to be not that girly and be very independent,” she says. “But we don’t see what happens to them when they grow up. What happens when they enter a relationship or if they get old enough to have a career? That picture we see less often.” 

While moviegoers may not see any weddings or babies, these films arguably are breaking down doors for all female characters onscreen.

“Every time a Hunger Games does well where at the centre there is a strong female character, it changes people’s perceptions and they’re more open to accepting a character like Angelina Jolie in Maleficient,”says Dergarabedian.

Women haven’t completely won yet. But they’re getting there.

[Front page photo courtesy of Lionsgate. Photo © Murray Close]