I watched Titanic on TNT this weekend. I hadn’t seen the film since its release when I believe I saw it something like 4 or 5 times in the theater. What can I say? I was 14 and Leonardo DiCaprio was, like, so hot. I was looking forward to watching Titanic again with some distance from all of the hoopla surrounding its release. With anything that receives as much attention and public affection like Titanic, inevitably a reciprocal wave of disdain and criticism will follow. The shiny gloss of Leo’s pretty face has worn off a little and time and experience have made Titanic’s flaws more pronounced, but ultimately I come away from the film thinking that James Cameron crafted a good film.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are immensely appealing as Rose and Jack, the star-crossed lovers whose romance forms the backbone of the film. Despite some of the preposterous dialogue that Cameron gives them, both Winslet and DiCaprio manage to create very human, engaging characters, whom the audience never stops caring about. They have a playful, affectionate rapport that's delightful to watch. But as much as I adore Kate Winslet, I still don't understand why she received an Oscar nod for this performance. She is excellent here, as she is excellent in all her films, but Rose DeWitt-Bukater doesn't stand out like Clementine Kruczynski, Marianne Dashwood, or even Juliet Hulme do.

Visually, of course, Titanic is stunning. Cameron did not stretch too far beyond his means in creating these special effects: these are good effects that hold up over a decade later. And of course the costumes, set and prop design are impeccable. The script…well. The script could use some help. The dialogue is…not impressive and descends into schmaltz several times. There is a lot of repetition and calling of characters’ names, which suggests that Cameron couldn’t think of anything more interesting for them to say. Cameron does an excellent job of giving the audience characters to latch onto and care about, but the romance between Rose and Jack is anything but unique. Theirs is a typical slightly unbelievable movie romance, but I’m inclined to be forgiving of Cameron’s use of a hackneyed vehicle. Everyone who sees this film knows the rather depressing ending -- the romance manages to serve as a little bit of fantasy and escape. Also, given that the audience has a “foreknowledge” of the film’s outcome, Cameron does a phenomenal job of creating dramatic tension.

Titanic represents a rather unique entry on James Cameron's resume. It's more of a romance with a heavy splash of adventure than a true action flick like True Lies, and no science fiction devices, like robots or aliens, pursue our heroes as they do in the Terminator movies, The Abyss, and Aliens. However, consider this speech Kyle Reese gives in The Terminator:

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop...

That description of the T-1000 is easily applicable to the titular antagonists in Aliens, the strange, aquatic creature in The Abyss, and the rising, arctic water in this film. Cameron obviously loves a good ruthless villain, and here he expertly turns water into a sinister entity through the effective use of lighting in particular.

Cameron has helped create some strong female leads in the past, such as Ripley in Aliens and Sarah Conner in Terminator 2, but his last couple of leading women have been more “spunky” than empowered. Rose does survive Titanic while Jack dies, but he dies "acting like a man" and the audience is left with the distinct impression that Rose would not have survived if Jack had not been present. Well, that's probably not true. Had she never met Jack, Rose probably would have been on the lifeboat with her mother, but that would have made for a dull movie. Of course, given their backgrounds it's realistic that Jack would know more about dealing with a boat sinking into freezing water, but I don't have to like how often Rose imploringly and almost, dare I say, helplessly calls out Jack's name as the boat sinks. Rose does get her chance to save Jack when she frees him from being handcuffed to the ship, but Rose saving Jack becomes a humorous situation and it's luck that she doesn't seriously wound him instead. I'm probably being a heartless cynic, but Rose taking Jack's name to hide from Hockley after the ship sinks just bugs me. Rose rejects Hockley because he subjugated her, but by taking Jack’s name she effectively subsumes her identity under his, so I don't know if that situation is much better. Even though he's dead, Rose is only able to achieve any sense of empowerment by latching onto a man.

Originally posted 11/27/2006; updated 6/15/2009

In 1994’s True Lies, Arnold Swarzenegger is Harry Tasker, a James-Bond-like spy for the United States who plays the part of a boring computer salesman for his wife, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), and daughter, Dana, since both have remained clueless to his true profession over the years. From the beginning of the movie, Cameron establishes the fissure in the Tasker family and the distance between Harry and his wife and daughter. When switching from a fake identity to his real one, Harry forgets his wedding ring and Dana promptly throws away a present from her father calling it “lame.” The film portrays two different worlds: Harry’s fantasy spy world and the real world with his wife and daughter. In his fantasy world, Harry glides easily through large, crowded ballrooms of strangers, making conversation in multiple languages, and accomplishes incredible things, escaping pursuers in an explosion-filled shootout. But in his home environment, Harry looks cramped, “the darkly-lit rooms seem too small for his physique” (Tasker 75), and he struggles to get a part of the bedcovers from his wife. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that to repair the family Dana and Helen must cross over from the real world into Harry’s fantasyland.

The process of this crossover begins when Harry discovers that Helen might have a lover. He decides to use his resources to tap her phone at work and to put a tracking device and bug in her purse in order to track down the man she has been seeing. Harry soon learns that Helen’s lover is a slimy used car salesman named Simon who tells women that he is a spy in order to seduce them. When Simon contacts Helen for a late night rendezvous Harry uses his oblivious co-workers to raid Simon’s trailer and kidnap him and Helen. This kidnapping leads to a pivotal scene in the movie in which Harry, separated from his wife by a one-way mirror and technology that distorts his voice, interrogates Helen about her affair, which actually never progressed into anything intimate, with Simon. This scene “articulates and underscores [Harry’s] failure to communicate and [Helen’s] frustration and isolation” (Tasker 76) as Helen expresses the desires, the need to “feel alive” and “do something outrageous,” that lead her to associate with Simon. The scene also acts as the culmination of Helen’s independent attempt to cross over into Harry’s world. Trying to break free of the domestic sphere, symbolized by her interrogation room, Helen pursues her relationship with Simon, represented by her pounding on the one-way mirror with a stool, but only manages to crack the glass, not break it.

To become free of the real world, Harry must break the glass for her, giving her a fake assignment as a spy, which involves her pretending to be a prostitute. She receives instructions to “dress sexy” for her assignment and arrives for her mission wearing a dress with long sleeves and a high-necked ruffled collar. When confronted with her identity as a prostitute, Helen decides that she must change her appearance. As Sandra Lee Bartky describes, a “generalized male witness [has come] to structure a woman’s consciousness of herself as a bodily being” (38) and in this scene Helen submits to her internalized male gaze. She rips the sleeves, collar, and all excess fabric from her clothing, leaving her in a short, tight, black dress with Jamie Lee Curtis’ ample bosom nearly spilling out of the top. After she sheds her dowdy, though not tomboyish, attire, Helen is placed under Harry’s scrutinizing gaze as he poses as the john she is supposed to contact. Harry instructs Helen to remove her dress for him and then perform an alluring dance in only her underwear. This striptease acts as an agent by which Harry regains control over his wife. By pursuing her relationship with Simon, Helen challenged Harry’s domination over her body and through this ruse of Helen’s kidnapping and assignment Harry regains his power. By subjecting her to his “spectator’s look,” Harry “emerges as the representative of power” (Mulvey 20) over Helen as “woman as spectacle” (20). During the striptease, the main plot of the film involving Arabic terrorists intersects with this subplot as they kidnap both Harry and Helen—only after Helen strips to reveal her body as a sexualized object can she join her husband in the fantasyland of his career. The remaining minutes of the film show Harry fighting against the terrorists with Helen ineptly and accidentally helping him. At the climax of the film, Harry rescues his daughter, who had been kidnapped by the terrorists and, therefore, dragged into the spy world like Helen.

The conclusion of the film shows the Taskers, now a happy, well-adjusted family, laughing at the dinner table before Helen and Harry receive a call about a joint assignment. Helen has shed her dowdy clothing for tighter-fitting, sexier attire and Dana has discarded her androgynous flannel shirts and layered clothes for a sundress. Helen and Harry have become partners in the fantasy world, but the final scene expresses their inequality. When they encounter Simon on assignment, Helen and Harry torment him by feigning anger and pressing a “gun” to his throat. Once Simon humiliates himself and runs away, Helen uncaps her “gun” to reveal that it is a tube of lipstick. This moment reveals that the only power Helen has gained by crossing into this world is the power of her sexuality. The film ends with Harry and Helen tangoing, a dance that involves the man moving very little but the woman drapes herself over her partner’s arm and allows him to drag her across the dance floor.

Works Cited:
Bartky, Sandra Lee. “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance and Behavior. Ed. Rose Weitz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp 25-45.

Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1998.

True Lies. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Arnold Swarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Art Malik, Tia Carrere. 20th Century Fox, 1994.

In Terminator 2: Judgement Day, made in 1991, Linda Hamilton plays the heroine, Sara Conner, a woman just as capable as Aliens' Ripley, who finds herself in a similar situation. Surrounded by doubting men and women, Sara has been labeled insane and placed in a mental hospital. Again, the audience, having presumably seen the first film, recognizes the doctors’ stupidity in not believing Sara, who tries to warn them of the rise of the machines. The scenes in the hospital create sympathy for Sara as she struggles against the male-dominated power structure of the institution, lead by the mocking Dr. Silverman. Her time at the mental ward has changed her into an animal of sorts, exemplified well in the scene that introduces Sara. The camera pans over her sweaty arms and shoulders as she does chin-ups before capturing her face in a shot in which her wild hair frames her face, nearly obstructing her eyes. As the doctors and visitors peer into her cell to observe her, she shifts, fidgets, and snorts like an animal at the zoo. Trapped in the hospital, Sara’s plight could suggest the presence of medicalization in society. Society uses “medical language to [mystify] human problems, and thus removes them from public debate” (Riessman 46). Sara’s doctors would rather not accept the possibility of Sara’s warnings of intelligent machines overthrowing the human race, so she has been labeled as sick, which discredits her claims. While most people would understandably doubt her assertions of future knowledge, placing her in a mental institution and discrediting her as insane prevents people from considering the implications of her claims, namely the possible ramifications of research into artificial intelligence.

While not as androgynous as Vasquez, Cameron pays similar attention to Sara as he did to Jenette Goldstein’s character in Aliens. The clothes Sara wears throughout the movie accentuate the more masculine shape—broad shoulders tapering down to slim hips—of Hamilton’s body and Cameron tends to compose his frames to feature her rather impressive biceps. But unlike Vasquez, Sara eventually accepts her role as mother, which Cameron demonstrates as crucial to the survival of both Sara and her son.

Knowing that her son John will become the leader of the resistance against the machines, Sara has raised him constantly in military training, concerned with preparing her son for battle rather than nurturing him. When John rescues her from the mental ward in a flurry of bullets, Sara throws her arms around him, which John interprets as a hug, to check him for wounds rather than to express pleasure at seeing him. Sara does not seem to become aware of her lack of maternal bond with her son until she observes the Terminator (Arnold Swarzenegger) interacting with John. In the first film, Swarzenegger plays an evil machine sent back from the future to kill Sara before she conceives her son. In the sequel, he reprises the same role, but this time Swarzenegger’s Terminator has been sent back to protect Sara and John from another Terminator, the T-1000. With his mother absent, John soon bonds with the Terminator as the father he never knew, teaching him how to talk more like a human and less like a machine and how to exchange high fives. Sara notes that “The Terminator would never stop, it would never leave [John]…And it would never hurt him…or say it couldn’t spend time with him because it was too busy.”

When Sara decides to take the future into her own hands and kill the man who would invent the technology that would make the highly intelligent machines of the future possible, she reaches a crisis point in her relationship with her son. As the man’s son tries to shield his father from Sara, she crumbles and lowers her gun, teary-eyed, confronted by the strength of the bond between parent and child. In this moment, she finally confesses to John that she loves him. Cameron expresses Sara’s blindness to see her son as her son rather than a future political leader through visual cues. In the beginning of the film, before her acceptance of motherhood, Linda Hamilton’s eyes always seem covered in some way: her bangs, which extend below her brow, or sunglasses or a hat obscure her vision. During the scene in which Sara tearfully expresses her love to John, her hair is completely pushed back from her face and John removes her hat as she embraces her mother role to her son. For the rest of the film, her eyes remain un-obscured; even though her bangs still hang past her brow, they are parted in a way that leaves her eyes visible. As with Ripley in Aliens, musculinity and motherhood combine to form a “warrior mom” figure; however, unlike Ripley Sara cannot protect her child alone. Ultimately the Terminator must save both Sara and John from T-1000 and then destroy himself to protect the future.

Works Cited:
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance and Behavior. Ed. Rose Weitz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp 25-45.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Arnold Swarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick. 20th Century Fox, 1991.

When one picks up a copy of Cameron’s 1986 movie Aliens, one becomes aware that this film does not strive to be a typical action movie. The cover image depicts Sigourney Weaver, dripping with sweat, holding a small child on one hip and a large gun on the other with images of a battle-torn spaceship in the background. Ellen Ripley, the role Weaver reprised for this sequel to 1979’s Alien, probably represents Cameron’s most successful challenge to gender norms. At the beginning of the movie, Ripley is found floating in outer space, the only survivor of the attack in the first film, and is rescued. Despite her hesitations, Ripley soon finds herself returning to LV-426, the planet where she nearly died, possibly to face the same creatures from which she managed barely to escape. The scenes that precede her departure to LV-426 attempt to create previously unmentioned backstory for Ripley, specifically that she had a daughter who died during Ripley’s 57-year hypersleep in space. This establishment of Ripley as a mother, especially a mother with an absent child, becomes critical in determining her character.

Because the audience has the advantage of knowing the events of the first film, Cameron’s choice to surround Ripley with people who doubt her claims of these monstrous aliens immediately establishes her as the most effectual member of the crew of Marines sent to explore LV-426. However, Ripley does not assume that position until they discover a young girl named Newt on the planet with whom only Ripley can communicate at first. As well as setting up a parent-child relationship to foster between her and Newt, this encounter seems to empower Ripley further to assert her competency amongst the crew. Soon after, the crew encounters the aliens, who capture or kill a majority of the Marines, and during the attack Ripley seizes control of the crew’s vehicle to rush to save the surviving three members of the crew.

With the senior Marine officer incapacitated, perhaps as punishment from Cameron for doubting Ripley, she comfortably assumes leadership of the remaining group to organize their plans to escape from the encroaching aliens. During this section of the film, Cameron alternates slower, character-building scenes in which Ripley and Newt bond as mother and daughter with faster-paced exposition-filled scenes in which Ripley coordinates crew members’ assignments, striding forcefully around the control room, surrounded by phallic weapons that occupy every frame, carelessly flicking a cigarette in an almost masculine way. Scenes such as the one in which Ripley exerts her authority over Burke, shoving him against a wall and telling him that she is “glad to disappoint [him],” contrast sharply with images like Ripley crawling under a bed to cuddle with a sleeping Newt, but Ripley seems comfortable and confident in both types of situations. “Masculine” attributes, such as aggressiveness and rationality, and “feminine” attributes, like nurturing, meld in Ripley to create the ultimate weapon against the aliens: the warrior mother figure. In Ripley, “The maternal recurs as motivating factor with [the female hero] acting to protect [her] children” (Tasker 69). With six people as her allies, Ripley spends most of the film avoiding conflict with the aliens, and understandably so, but once they capture Newt, she returns to face all of the aliens by herself to rescue her child and manages to destroy all of the creatures.

Because Aliens falls under a horror/sci-fi genre, “body count, as well as who compose and why they compose that count” (Green 61) becomes important. Offering an opposing image of femininity from Ripley, Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) represents a more “masculine” woman. As Yvonne Tasker describes in her work Working Girls, Vasquez exhibits a “musculinity,” “an enactment of a muscular masculinity involving a display of power and strength over the body of the female performer” (Tasker 70). She remains androgynous in appearance throughout the film, prompting the comment from a male Marine, “Hey, Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?” while she does pull-ups. She replies, “No, have you?” sharing the joke with a fellow Marine. In his book Cracks in the Pedestal, Philip Green suggests that Cameron intends this exchange as a joke, which audiences will find funny only if they equate masculinity with physique and physical prowess. He further extrapolates that this scene demonstrates a valuation of “natural” musculature in men over “unnatural” musculature in women and indicates that while an “unmanned” man will die before Vasquez, she must ultimately die for violating these laws of naturalness (Green 62).

While Vasquez does die in the movie, Green overlooks an important aspect of the film. Three soldiers survive the first major attack from the aliens and remain throughout most of the film: Hicks, Hudson and Vasquez. While Hicks represents Cameron’s preferred version of masculinity in this movie, Hudson provides the best example of an “unmanned man” in the film, yet he survives longer than the more “manly” members of the crew. Besides being emasculated by Vasquez’s comment, “No, have you?” Hudson loses credibility as Green’s version of a “manly” man in a scene in which Bishop demonstrates a talent by jamming a knife into a table in the spaces between each of Hudson’s fingers. While he asked Bishop to show off, Hudson squirms uncomfortably when another soldier encourages Bishop to use Hudson’s hand rather than his own to demonstrate his skill, screaming louder and louder as Bishop moves the knife faster and faster between his fingers. With his fellow Marine buddies laughing at his discomfort, Hudson complains that the trick “wasn’t funny.” After barely escaping from the aliens’ first attack, Hudson, and only Hudson, exhibits a rather un-"masculine” tendency toward hysteria, proclaiming, “That’s it, man. Game over, man. Game over. What the fuck are we gonna do now?” Burke, who is not a military man and therefore not trained for combat like Hudson, and Newt, who is only about seven-years-old, do not even panic while Hudson rants wildly.

Because the unmanly man and the unwomanly woman survive for comparable amounts of time, far longer than most of the men who represent more stereotypical versions of masculinity, Cameron must have another criterion for survival in this movie. Because, in the very end, only Hicks, Bishop, Ripley and Newt manage to escape, nurturing seems to function as the salvific force of the film. When comparing the two main female characters—Ripley, who lives, and Vasquez, who dies—their relationships with Newt provide the clearest distinction between the two women. Both women are competent, assertive and ruthless, but unlike Ripley, who becomes Newt’s surrogate mother, Vasquez does not direct a single comment toward the child. Throughout the film she remains focused upon what she enjoys most, namely firing big guns and killing things, just as Hudson remains focused on bemoaning the situation and trying to protect himself.

Hicks is the only Marine who nurtures Newt as Ripley does—their parental roles toward her become established early in the film—and, consequently, Hicks survives the film unlike his colleagues. He first notices Newt and prevents a soldier, mistaking her for an alien, from shooting her. As well as Ripley, Hicks tries to shield Newt’s body with his own from dangerous flying debris and he watches Newt around the weaponry to ensure that she does not injure herself. He notices her curiosity to see blue prints, which the group studies during a summit meeting, and lifts her so that she can see. Indeed, Hicks functions as the nurturing member of the entire crew, checking his fellow soldiers for injuries after altercations and bandaging their wounds. He becomes a nurturer to Ripley as well, asking after her well being when he notices her hesitation at entering into the main structure on LV-426 and gently urging her to sleep. Hicks, however, does not escape unscathed, obtaining wounds when an alien’s acidic blood sprays on him. His wounds might act as a punishment for not fulfilling the nurturing role as completely as Ripley. When Newt becomes separated from Ripley and Hicks, he immediately suggests trying to rescue her. However, when they do not find her in time and an alien captures Newt, he urges Ripley to escape to the waiting ship, unwilling to risk his and Ripley’s lives even though Ripley protests that the aliens will not kill Newt immediately. Only after he makes this decision to abandon Newt, Hicks becomes injured.

The other survivor, Bishop, does not quite meet the nurturing standards set by Hicks and Ripley, but perhaps due to his being a synthetic person rather than a real one Cameron holds Bishop to different standards. Bishop does show concern for his fellow crew members though, most notably when he volunteers for a dangerous mission, for which no one else would volunteer, and the successful outcome of his mission results in the remaining survivors escaping the alien-filled planet. Since only Ripley achieves Cameron’s ideal in this movie, Bishop must also receive wounds of some kind, which he does when an alien rips him in half. Bishop manages to help save Newt, even though his torso is laying several feet away from his legs, which perhaps secures his place on the survival list.

Works Cited:
Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henrikson. 20th Century Fox, 1989.

Green, Philip. Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1998.

I found an old sociology paper that I wrote when I was, I think, a sophomore in college for a Sex and Gender class. Within the paper I discuss James Cameron's portrayal of gender in three of his films (Aliens, Terminator 2, and True Lies). Here's my introductory paragraph:

Filmmaker James Cameron, creator of the Terminator trilogy, has spent his career making action films, usually in the science fiction genre. As well as penning the famous catch phrase “I’ll be back,” Cameron directed the second movie of the successful Alien film series and one of the highest-grossing films of all times, Titanic, which swept the 1998 Oscars and won almost every award for which it was nominated. Though the historical romance differs greatly from the slime-filled Aliens, both films, as well as most of the films in Cameron’s filmography, reveal their director’s interest in toying with notions of masculinity and femininity within the action movie genre. Instead of always relying on the stereotypical image of a limp woman clinging to the muscled hero who rescues her countless times, Cameron includes multiple portrayals of masculinity and femininity within his films. While Cameron does try to explore gender roles in his projects, he ultimately conforms to society’s norms, limited perhaps by the type of films he has chosen to make, specifically mainstream action movies.

I talk about all three films pretty separately from each other, so I thought that they lent themselves well to being posted here, but I decided to separate them because a blog is not a place to plop down a ten-page academic paper. Now, remember I was, like 19 or 20 when I wrote these. My writing...needed some help.