kick-ass women characters I’ve wanted to be (or at least be more like)

I’m decidely not feeling kick-ass today. I have a nasty cold, and have stayed home from work to try to get some sleep. Unfortunately, sleep eludes me. And my mind keeps wandering back to the Action Heroine Blog-a-thon.

I’ve spent a lot of time putting together lists of shows and movies with kick-ass women. But so far, I’ve largely avoided committing to any sort of ranking. Sure, the first list of movies and the first list of shows had more of my favorites than the later lists in those series. But I generally have listed things by order of release date. So here I climb out on my limb, to make some sort of ranking.

Mind you, these are not necessarily my all-time favorite movies and shows, though many of those provide the source of the characters. It seems my list is a bit heavy on TV vs. movies, but let’s face it, TV shows give more opportunity for character development. And this list is about the characters themselves.

These are kick-ass women I’ve most admired for all their talents, skills, wit and strength. The kick-ass women I’ve most wanted to be like.

7 kick-ass women I’ve wanted to be (or at least wanted to be more like)

  1. Emma Peel
    The Avengers (1965-1967)
    For me, it all started with Emma. I stumbled across the Avengers when I was in high school, watching late night TV on a local channel. The show, with its British tongue-in-cheek humor and its 60s style, had me charmed right from the start. But the kicker was Emma Peel. I had never met a character like her before. She was in charge. Martial artist, sharpshooter, fencer, scientist, spy. And she had such intelligence, such a keen wit, and style to boot. (And yes, she had stylish boots.)
  2. Charly Baltimore
    The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
    It’s just possible that this is my favorite kick-ass woman movie. Sure, it’s not the best movie ever made. Sure, some of it was over-the-top. But hell, it’s an action movie. We’re not asking for real life. It had what we like to see in an action movie: action. Suspense, chases, fight scenes, unlikely escapes, plot twists, rescues, explosions and quirky characters. Samuel Jackson was great in this movie. So was Brian Cox. But the movie was about the kick-ass character played by Geena Davis. I’ll have a lot more to say on this topic at some point, but not one, but two, cool websites just independently wrote up reviews about this movie that are worth checking out: Heroine Content and The Hathor Legacy.
  3. Zoe
    Firefly (2002-2003), Serenity (2005)
    The show Firefly and the movie Serenity, featuring the same cast of characters, have quite a few strong women. There’s the gifted mechanic, the independent diplomat/courtesan, and the multi-talented and brilliant, if largely insane, teenager. But the woman that I fell for, that I most wanted to be, was the warrior woman, Zoe. I love her attitude and her dry wit. The sense that she was dangerous. A force to be reckoned with. And I love her relationship with her laid-back and playful husband, Wash. This is a woman with serious strength, but serious depth.
  4. Starbuck/Kara Thrace
    Battlestar Galactica (2003, 2004-????)
    When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a pilot. I’ve always loved flying, and couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more. Starbuck is the pilot. An all out kick-ass, ace pilot. Plus she’s got some serious attitude. There is a character who is not afraid to speak her mind, who doesn’t shy away from a bit of confrontation. Qualities I could use a bit more of, myself.
  5. Chief Inspector Yang
    Supercop (1992).
    Okay, so in part I’ve wanted to be Michelle Yeoh, probably more so than this particular character. I don’t know a thing about her as a private individual. But I do know that she’s played some seriously kick-ass roles in a bunch of great action movies: Crouching Tiger, Tomorrow Never Dies, Wing Chun, to name a few. And you just gotta love that. Her role in Supercop was a particularly kick-ass woman: she was daring, competent, calm and man-oh-man, could she kick ass. Plus she had a prestigious job, and was well-respected in her position. If you want to read more about why I liked her character in this movie, I have a lot more to say on the subject.
  6. Samantha Carter
    Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007)
    Explorer. Adventurer. Scientist. Does she have the ultimate glam job, or what? Maybe most of what she talks about on the show is just pseudo-science, but I sure do love to see a strong, smart woman do her job. This is another case where the character’s gender is not really an issue. I can recall very few episodes where the plot was moved forward due to her being, gasp, a woman. For the most part, she’s just part of the team. And a particularly smart and kick-ass one, at that.
  7. Buffy
    Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
    It may shock some of you that Buffy is showing up kind of late on this list. After all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. I’ve watched the whole series a number of times. (These are the DVDs that we put on when we go down to our basement to work out.) I love the cast of characters, the dialog, the bizarre scenarios. And the action. Buffy, as I’m sure you all know, kicks ass. However, this list is about women I’ve wanted to be, or at least be like. And well, while I’d love to the have the super strength and skills, be able to jump, flip, spin and kick like she does in so many of those fight scenes, there’s nothing in this world that would make me want to be a teenager again. And there’s the whole weight of the world business. That would be a bit much.

Michelle Yeoh: kicking ass in “Supercop”

Supercop (1992) Jing cha gu shi III: Chao ji jing cha, or Police Story III: Supercop¹

Starring Michelle Yeoh.
Directed by Stanley Tong.
(Oh, yeah. It also stars Jackie Chan)

Supercop is a seriously fun Hong Kong action movie: it’s got oodles of martial arts, chase scenes galore, big fireball explosions, crazy stunts, really bad bad guys, really good good guys, and the streak of comedy that Hong Kong cinema does so well. But what this movie really has going for it is Michelle Yeoh.

Michelle Yeoh kicks some serious ass in this movie. On so many levels.

Jackie Chan plays a Hong Kong cop sent to help an investigation in mainland China. Michelle Yeoh plays a higher up in a Chinese security agency. The two go undercover together in pursuit of a big bad guy.

The contrasting characters are set up right from the start, starting with this introduction:

This is Chief of Security Yang. She can teach you a great deal.

Jackie Chan is smiley and charming, casual and friendly. Michelle Yeoh is serious and formal in her military uniform. Jackie Chan shows that he’s a bit slack in some areas, Michelle Yeoh shows him up. Michelle Yeoh plays the competent foil to Jackie Chan’s amiable buffoonery.

This movie is in many ways another buddy cop story: two characters with different backgrounds and personalities are partnered up for a short time to fight some crime. Like Lethal Weapon or Beverly Hills Cop. Or like another one of Jackie Chan’s movies, Rush Hour, about which Roger Ebert coined the term wunza:

“Rush Hour” is our reliable friend, the Wunza Movie, pairing two opposites: Wunza legendary detective from Hong Kong, and wunza Los Angeles cop. And wunza Chinese guy, and wunza black guy. And wunza martial arts expert and wunza wisecracking showboat. Neither wunza original casting idea, but together, they make an entertaining team.

In this case, one’s a loveable clown, and one’s all business. One’s from Hong Kong, one’s from Communist China. And one’s a man, one’s a woman.

In spite of the man-woman partnering business, this is a woman-man partnership that is not gooped up by sexual tension and romance.

It’s not that Michelle Yeoh is asexual, she’s feminine even. Neither of them is asexual. It’s just that their partnership isn’t about sex. Yeoh’s gender comes up a few times in the movie, such as when Chan worries that she’ll get in the way of his policework because he’ll be worried about her. “I can’t look after you,” he tells her. She retorts that she was supposed to “look after” him. It’s totally believable that she should be the one looking after him.

I love it that even the undercover character, the little sister “Hana” to Jackie Chan’s undercover role, is still a strong woman. She stands up for, and to, her “brother” in the interactions they have for the benefit of the bad guys. When Chan slaps her as a ruse to keep their cover from being broken, he explains to the bad guy onlooker: “She gave me some of her female backtalk, so I thought I’d teach her a lesson.” Hana/Yang/Yeoh’s response? She slaps him right back, saying:

You think you’re superior, huh? Mao Tse Tung said that women are the real power of society.

She’s a partner to Jackie Chan, not a sidekick. If anything, he seems a bit like her sidekick. She’s an agent, not just a pawn. She doesn’t need to be rescued. She comes to the rescue.

In fact my absolute favorite scene, and I don’t think I can possibly do it justice, is when Yang (Yeoh’s character) comes to the rescue in a country restaurant. She and Chan have gone undercover with a group of minor thugs in order to go after a big bad, and the group goes out to dinner in a restaurant. Some local police recognize some of the bad guys, and move in for an arrest. While Yang is out of the room, Chan and the bad guys have a fight with the police, and are rounded up. Enter Yang. She jumps in, and I mean literally jumps in, to the rescue. Taking down two guys at once with a single double kick. What follows is a brief but well-choreographed fight scene where Michelle Yeoh gets to show off her skill and grace, fighting off at least two at a time.

In this scene, she’s wearing her hair in braided pigtails with ribbons, and dressed in a bright red cardigan with a white-collared shirt. She looks a bit like a little girl, with her braids flying. At the same time, she’s kicking some serious ass. I love it.

The movie’s not ideal as far as being all about women kicking ass. There is a woman in distress, in the form of Chan’s girlfriend, played by Maggie Cheung. Her role is in part as the woman who moves the plot forward by means of her cluelessness, and who ultimately finds herself bound up, gagged, and in need of rescue. In spite of that, she shows some spine and wit of her own. Overall, the women characters are strong, intelligent, and more than just pretty faces.

Michelle Yeoh’s character is not flawless, either, mind you. She makes a few mistakes here and there. After all, the plot does need to move forward, and it is Jackie Chan’s movie, primarily, so he can’t be expected to make all the mistakes. At the same time her businesslike competence is never “softened up” and shown to be a flaw, as is all too often the formula. Her strength and strength of character remain assets through the end of the movie.

Michelle Yeoh’s character has everything I like to see in an action movie lead: she’s smart, competent, clever. She thinks on her feet (or sometimes up in the air with feet kicking), and doesn’t back down easily. She shows moral character. She’s calm, intelligent, resourceful. Witty and tough.

And since we’re talking action, let’s not forget all the action. Michelle Yeoh totally kicks ass in the action department. Can I just point out that, in this movie, Michelle Yeoh performed her own stunts? Yeoh not only gets her share of kick-ass fight scenes, she also gets some cool chase scenes. Can anyone top the chase scene where she perfoms a motorcycle jump to land on a moving train?

I rest my case.

This post is part of the Action Heroine Blog-a-thon.

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¹ I’ve only seen the dubbed version. As dubbing goes, it’s better than most. One thing is that Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh dub their own lines. I can’t compare the dubbed English script to the original Cantonese dialog. I’ll refer to this movie by the title on this dubbed release, since that’s the one I know. 


loose ends

Here I sit on my couch. Watching one of my favorite kick-ass women movies, laptop on my lap so I can jot down notes about a fight scene and look up the term “pigtails,” and eating a bowl of raw turnips.

Isn’t that what most people do on a Sunday night?

I’m hoping to have a post together for the blog event I mentioned yesterday. I’m also hoping to get some sleep. It’s been a rough week. Phoebe was sick most of the week, and not sleeping so well. She had to stay home from daycare on Tuesday, and some of Wednesday and Thursday. Also have a bit of a cold myself. Overall, I’m behind in both my work and my sleep. Which of course explains why I’m sitting here watching a movie and blogging at roughly eleven at night.

Tomorrow I go pick up my second load of veggies from the farm. As might be expected, I have not quite finished the first load. However, I have not done too terribly.

Here’s what I’ve made (prepared/cooked/eaten/served) of last monday’s crop:

  • a bunch of radishes and accompanying greens, sautéed with garlic and chives (first time eating cooked radishes. They were tasty.)
  • a head of bok choi, sautéed with sunflower seeds
  • a bunch of turnip greens, sautéed (the ones plucked off the turnips I’m now snacking on)
  • a bunch of dinosaur kale (again, sautéed)
  • a small bunch of something called Tat Soi, a dark green leafy vegetable that tasted a bit like arugula, and seems to be a relative of broccoli.
  • a salad of baby lettuce (which I did not sautée. Ha! See how creative I am?)

    • Here’s what I have left:

  • lots of flowering chives (which I’ll freeze for later)
  • a bunch of Red Russian Kale. Which is actually not red. But perhaps it is communist.
  • sitting here next to me in the bowl, two small turnips.
  • 2 and a half heads of lettuce. (I even gave one away)

    • Here are some recipes I’m considering for this week’s remaining lettuce:

  • curried lettuce stew
  • grilled marinated lettuce
  • lettuce kabobs
  • Cajun blackened lettuce
  • deep fried lettuce
  • lettuce popsicles
  • lettuce cake with whipped lettuce frosting
  • compost

    • on kick-ass women characters

    Joss Whedon kicks ass.

    I’m sure many of you already knew this.

    I’ve been a fan of Buffy and Firefly/Serenity for a bit, and therefore had some awareness that Joss Whedon could produce, direct and write some cool stuff in the kick-ass woman department. However, I developed a whole new level of appreciation for his own kick-assedness when I saw this video of him talking about answering the big question: “Why do you write such strong women characters?” (Thanks to bs and orangerful for bringing my attention to this clip.)

    I had been very excited to see that he was lined up to write a new feature-length film version of Wonder Woman. Cool, huh? However, I’m sad to say that I’ve recently learned that he is off the job. Damn.

    In other kick-ass-woman-related news, there’s an upcoming blog event that should be worth checking out: The Action Heroine Blogathon. (hat-tip to Lazy Eye Theater, and thanks to jenny for making sure I knew about it.) I’m hoping to participate, with some sort of new post in the kick-ass women series. I’m even hoping that YTSL will have a new post of her own along the same lines. (Any chance?) Anyone else out there have some movies or shows with action heroines they want to write about?

    I yam what I yam

    It’s time for another helping of Themed Things Thursdays. It being vegetable week here, in honor of my first pick-up of my CSA veggies, this Thursday Theme for Things is vegetables. Okay, the list is a bit heavy on the onion bits (with apologies to those who don’t like onions), but you can pick them out.

    some vegetables

  • beans
    Jack and the beanstalk, a fairy tale featuring magic beans that grow a towering beanstalk.
  • corn
    Children of the Corn (1984) A movie based on a Stephen King story. Horror in the corn fields.

  • spinach
    The cartoon character Popeye (The Sailor Man) gets super-duper strong when he eats a can of spinach. Even has a little song he sings when he gets all juiced up: I’m strong to the finish, ’cause I eats me spinach…
  • broccoli
    Powerpuff Girls episode 17 “Beat Your Greens“. Alien broccoli attacks.
  • cabbage
    The Kids in the Hall offers Cabbage Head, a man with cabbage for hair. (There are also the Cabbage Patch Kids, scrunched-up looking dolls that were all the rage in the 80’s, and that now have their own urban legend.)
  • pumpkin
    Peter Peter pumkin eater. A nursery rhyme. Also a song you can play on the piano using only the black keys.

    Peter Peter pumpkin eater
    Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
    He put her in a pumpkin shell
    And there he kept her very well

  • peppers
    Peter Piper A nursery rhyme and tongue twister: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”
  • carrots
    Bugs Bunny is known for his trademark carrot-munching. But did you know that his carrot-munching was a Clark Gable immitation?

    bugs

    Bugs Bunny’s nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing, giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence.

  • potato
    Everybody’s favorite spud has got to be the ever-dignified, interchangeably featured Mr. Potatohead (Apparently, there are many new Potatohead varieties that have sprouted, including the venerable Star Wars Darth Tater
  • sweet potato
    “Sweet Potato,” by Cracker. (Off the album “Kerosene Hat”) A rockin’ romp of a song. Be my sweet potato, I’ll be your honey lamb

  • yams
    Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Yams play a central role in the Nigerian community depicted in this novel. (See? I can get all literary, too.) (By the way, these yams aren’t the same as sweet potatoes, which are often called yams in the US)
  • turnip
    You can’t get blood from a turnip, or “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip” (You can also find more garden-variety cliches) An expression meaning that it’s not possible to extract something from a source that doesn’t contain that thing.
  • onion
    1. The Onion (“America’s finest news source”) My own favorite Onion article? This eerily prescient one from January, 2001.
    2. Shrek (2001) An animated movie featuring an ogre who likens himself to an onion:

      Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: They both smell?
      Shrek: NO! They have LAYERS. There’s more to us underneath. So, ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: Yeah, but nobody LIKES onions!

    3. The End: Book the Thirteenth, the final installation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket begins with the following layery, teary-eyed, oniony sentence:

      If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

  • bok choi
    Bok Choi Boy, the story of a young lad raised by vegetables to become a legendary leafy-green fighter for truth, justice and better nutrition. (Okay, I made this one up.)
  • a whole bunch o’ different oversized veggies
    June 29, 1999 written and illustrated by Caldecott award-winnder David Wiesner. A picturebook featuring gigantic vegetables raining down from the skies. A beatifully illustrated, beautifully absurd book:

    Cucumbers circle Kalamazoo. Lima beans loom over Levittown. Artichokes advance on Anchorage.

    Check out some of the illustrations on the publisher’s webpage for the book.

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    putting my money where my mouse is

    About a month ago, I wrote a bit about mouse-based activism, suggesting that even clicking on links can be a way to make a small difference: authors who write about issues or causes that concern them feel heartened by getting traffic, and motivated to write, and do, more.

    Of course, there are more direct ways to make a difference. Volunteering. Getting involved in local politics. Or going to Africa to help children orphaned and villages devasted by the AIDS crisis. Not all of these options are equal, nor do they seem equally possible for all of us. However, one more way we can make a difference is to give. If not our time and energy, then the other stuff. You know the stuff I mean.

    Here’s the story. Jen of one plus two and Mad of Under the Mad Hat are about to celebrate the 6 month mark of their online marriage. For their wedding, they asked attendees to give a gift of a post about an issue of social justice. And so the Just Posts were born. (Hey, does that mean it was a shotgun wedding?) On the 10th of each month since then, they have rounded up a collection of posts relating to social justice and all kinds of activism.

    This time, they are requesting not just words as gifts, but something a little more substantial. They’ve set up a gift registry of sorts. Jen has identified a small non-profit that is doing amazing work in a village in Africa. Mad has written up information about another organization that also is dedicated to supporting grassroots projects in response to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Both women have written eloquently about the crisis, and the need for action. (Did you know that 13 million children have been orphaned due to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and that this number is steadily rising?)

    This endeavor is also a kind of experiment. Marketers have already figured out that blogs are good real estate for ads. Spammers have figured out that they can try to hawk their cheap crap and porn through unwitting bloggers. But what about the power of bloggers themselves to make a difference about things that matter to them?

    I’m planning to make a donation. If you’d like to also, you can follow the links from jen or Mad, or go right to the sources. (Open Arms or the Stephen Lewis Foundation. To help track, put “Just Post” in the “company” line of the donation form.)

    Finally, at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to be a comment whore, ah, what the hell. I’m a comment whore. But I’m going to up the ante and increase my donation by $5.00 for each comment I get on this post (before Sunday, June 10th) that contains the word…pants.

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    vegetable medley

    greens_album.jpg I went to collect my first CSA vegetables this evening: an impressive selection of greens, greens, greens and more greens. Fresh, fresh off the farm.

    To celebrate, I thought I’d put together a musical tribute. We all know that green-friendly classic “give peas a chance,” but do you know some of these other vegetable hits?

    A Medley of Vegetable Songs

    1. we got the beets
    2. it ain’t easy being greens
    3. smells like teen spinach
    4. rutabagas keep falling on my head
    5. give my regards to broccoli
    6. are you lonesome tomato
    7. can’t take my eyes off arugula
    8. I never loved a man the way that I love yams
    9. saving all my leeks for you
    10. when a man loves a radish
    11. first time ever I saw your kale
    12. the dawning of the age of aspargus

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    putting my money where my mouth is

    Yick. That sounds gross. I will not actually be eating money, or putting any in my mouth. But I will be eating lots and lots of other green stuff.

    I’ve taken the produce plunge and signed up for a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) share. This means that I’ve paid a subscription¹ price to get regular assortments of freshly harvested vegetables from a local farm. In doing so, we’re not only going to be getting lots of really good, seriously fresh vegetables, we’re supporting a local organic farmer in her efforts to farm sustainably.

    I’d been planning to try to buy more local produce this year, and was thinking of making trips to some local farmstands rather than forking over my usual baskets of money to Whole Foods. However, when I came across a post at Can we kick the bar here? about CSAs a few weeks ago, I realized that this could be something for me. I followed the link to look for CSA opportunities near me.²

    I’d heard of CSAs before (though hadn’t retained the name of them) from my sister, who knows a thing or two about vegetables (especially about cooking them). A friend of hers had signed on to a CSA a few years ago, and started a blog to chronicle her vegetable adventures: Vegetablog. But somehow, it didn’t sink in as something I wanted do until I read that other post.

    So, tomorrow, we start. We’ll head out to the farm and collect our veggies. Then will come the trickier part.

    I realize that I’m in for a big challenge. For me, for the past few years, cooking has usually involved throwing some brown rice in the rice cooker. That’s when I’m getting more complicated than a bowl of cereal. I’ve gotten a bit better with making food for Phoebe, and have regularly steamed up vegetables for her. But this endeavor will be big. Big. I do have a plan, though. I’m hoping to have friends over for dinner at least every couple of weeks to help us eat our vegetables. And what we can’t finish off, I’ll hopefully be able to pawn off on my guests. Every dinner guest can take home a head of lettuce or a parsnip as a parting gift.³

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    ¹ Oops, almost typed prescription. “I’m sorry, those vegetable are not sold over the counter.”

    ² I’d also like to share that I came across that post by way of reading the last round up of Just Posts. So I’d like to offer this up as evidence that writing about issues that matter to you can make a difference.

    ³ So, if you are a local friend, you’ll be hearing from me soon about getting over here to get your veggies on. If you are a long-distance friend, and planning on travelling to New England in the next few months, you also get an invitation.

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