NEW YORK - The essence of women has often been reduced, to put it somewhat crudely, to a deeply etched dichotomy: madonna or whore. Marry one; have sex with the other. It is a view of women that has survived shifts in social attitudes and periodic bouts of feminism.
But in recent decades - marked by a more radical advance of women and some appreciation for that shift- variations on the theme have emerged in society and pop culture. In films, books, music and television and on the social media networks, we have rethought gender roles, and the old virgin versus slut metaphor rings false, if it ever were true.
Now, in keeping with what some call (hopefully) the age of female empowerment, women are more likely to be cast or depicted as sex objects or action heroes - or both in one. These are romanticized images . But these women are not ornamental. They are not emotionally soft , and they are not long-suffering women standing by their men. They tend to be sexy or brainy, flirty or witchy, but the roles are more fluid now, flowing one in the other, sometimes fusing.
It is in books and movies where we catch the kaleidoscope of new female images. Reviewing the new crop of action heroes and sex objects, there is a fistful of fictional and flesh-and-blood women screaming for attention. In books, there’s Cleopatra and Lisbeth Salander.
The Salander character, a Swedish bisexual computer genius, set bestseller lists on fire with Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and its sequels, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Salander is not blond, gorgeous or athletic and buffed. She’s a sprite, barely 41 kilograms, with a cold sneer and a face that is all edges and angles. She has nerves of steel and will outfight thugs triple her size. She outwits anyone who gets in her way: assassins, police officers, spies, lawyers, rapists and psychos.
Salander is the proto-21st-century action hero. Cleopatra, who defeated armies and seduced mighty men, remains a symbol of the ultimate woman, a meld of action hero and sex object. Interest in the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt was revived by a new biography,
“Cleopatra: A Life,” by Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.
“A goddess as a child, a queen at eighteen, a celebrity soon thereafter, she was an object of speculation and veneration, gossip and legend,” Ms. Schiff writes . Cleopatra was a charismatic leader , a fierce lover and consummate seducer.
In movies, there’s Angelina Jolie as the revenge-driven C.I.A. undercover agent Evelyn Salt . In “Salt,” Ms. Jolie goes off the grid, playing a solo revenge machine, flaunting her knockout looks and killer instincts. It is no surprise that Ms. Jolie will play Cleopatra in the Hollywood adaptation of Ms. Schiff’s biography.
A darker view of woman drives the new psycho-sexual thriller “Black Swan.” The film tells the story of a young ballerina, played by Natalie Portman, who achieves her dream when chosen to perform the dual role of virtuous white swan and evil black twin in “Swan Lake.”
Under the strain of playing both roles, and forced to dig deep into her psyche, she cracks up and her sexuality explodes . In the end, this tormented Nina triumphs onstage, embodying the roles of white and the black swan - virgin and whore - perhaps too perfectly.
Many of those images meld female and male traits, creating mixed personas that defy labels.
But who among them unifies these opposites into a complete whole?
“Cleopatra is kind of the perfect modern American woman even though she is not modern and she is not American,” said Bob Thompson, an expert on popular culture at Syracuse University in New York.
“In a way, Cleopatra embodies where we are today in regards to how we think about women, how we present women, how we package them ,” Mr. Thompson went on. “She’s such a modern figure because she was completely liberated .”
It is an interesting image to contemplate in 2011: ancient Egyptian empress as modern Western woman.
LUISITA LOPEZ TORREGROSA
ESSAY
