The difference between female and male action heroes when it comes to violence and how people take it.
If moviemakers happen to go too far when representing female aggression then the movie could fail. An example of this is the movie “The Long Kiss Goodnight.” Here, the main character played by Geena Davis, Charly, takes revenge on the man who tried to kill her and then kidnap her daughter. In doing so, she behaves too aggressively and, as a result, there is a lot of blood in the movie, which is something we do not usually see in female action heroes' movies since women are usually not portrayed in a very violent manner because that is considered to be too masculine a characteristic. A woman in the hero's role does not kill just everybody who is in her way, she tries to use other methods to stop her enemies, like we can see, for example, in the season finale for the third season of “Alias,” when Sidney is after a woman she wants to kill. Instead of killing all the security guards to get to that woman, she uses a tranquilizing weapon. We do not get to see that in say “Rambo.” In the research article “Young Adults' Perceptions [...]” the authors explain that even though heroes must be aggressive and daring when facing danger, “aggression remains a personality characteristic that has remained off bounds for women, [which] places limits on women's access to portray and to see other women act as heroes.” However, this is changing as we can judge from what is happening in many movies today, although, as has been mentioned, those movies where a female hero is too aggressive, maybe as aggressive as Rambo or a similar male character, that movie does not yet receive the audience's acceptance.
Therefore, when there is an episode of violence caused by a female action hero it is not the same as what we see when there is an episode of the same kind originated by a male one. Like it was implied before, in the latter type there is usually more gore, more blood, more brutality, whereas in the former there is usually not so much of any of that. Gina Arnold explains it very nicely in her article “Bad Ass Girls on Film - Is it a Good Thing When Women Beat the Crap Out of Men at the Movies,” by saying that the violence that we find in a female action hero movie “lacks the viciousness we tend to associate with fighting [and it is] stripped of danger and cruelty and the ugly and mean competitiveness that taints the violent actions of the male world.” What is more, male action heroes happen to get hurt more often and more seriously than female ones: Bruce Willis' character in “Die Hard” lacerates his feet severely after having to walk barefooted over broken glass; Mel Gibson's one is tortured in “Lethal Weapon”; Brendan Fraser's one in “The Mummy” is sentenced to death by hanging and just as he is being hanged they revoke the sentence so they cut the rope and he lives, but he still went through the torture. We practically never see any of these severe wounds or acts of brutal aggression happening to female action heroes, but we do see it happening often to vulnerable or fragile female victims in many movies. However, when we do see things like these happening to female action heroes, the movies which includes them do not seem to receive the acceptance of the audience. Such was the case of the movie previously mentioned “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” in which Geena Davis' character, Charly, is tortured and also receives one too many punches which covered her in bruises and blood. We must wonder what the reason for this lack of acceptance is. Perhaps it is that we are still not ready to see a woman who appears to be so strong and fearless in such a vulnerable position, since this is exactly what we have seen for years in movies where women were the victims. The audience wants something new, and that is why they like female action heroes.
What we can conclude from this is that there is a noteworthy importance placed on the hero's body. Susan Jeffords claims in her book Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era that “what determines a hero is the possession of a hard body. Though other characters may be quick-witted, charming, experienced, or clever, without the hard body to go with, they cannot be heroes.” Notwithstanding, this may be true for male action heroes, but it is certainly not the case for female ones, as has been already analyzed and explained. Female action heroes are all of what Jeffords mentions, plus they have the hard body. Moreover, they have the beauty and sex appeal that women naturally possess and they make it work to their advantage. And this beauty and their well shaped bodies are probably the equivalent to the focus on the body that we see occurring in male action heroes: the latter get hurt, and the former look pretty.
