Are Battle Babes also Girls with Guns?

At MovieFanCollectibles, when we contemplate the phenomenon of "Girls with Guns" in cinema, we wonder if a rose by any other name smells as sweet?  There seems to be a number of sub-sets to the action heroine, or anti-heroine, genre so we are confused about the similarities and differences between tropes that sound as if they are related to Girls with Guns, such as "Battle Babes," "Warrior Women," "Soldier Girls," or "Lady Cops."  

G.I. Jane (Demi Moore)

In this very important inquiry the latter two categories, thankfully, are straight forward.  These days, having a gun is pretty much definitional to being in the military or law enforcement.  So Lady Po-Pos and G.I. Janes are most definitely welcome to the Girls with a Gun party.  Others are going to take a little more time to pin down.  For now, let's consider "Battle Babes."

Battle Babes seem like they would be naturally synonymous with Girls with Guns.  But as is often the case with fan culture, things are more complicated than one might think.  It looks as though Battle Babes are mostly about visual representation outside of cinema.  These girls figure most prominently in the fantasy fiction of comics and graphic novels.  

In the west, Battle babes are sexy science fiction cyborgs or sword toting princesses who look like they wouldn't be at all surprised if a unicorn casually strolled into the frame.  Cyborg Battle Babes are most famously rendered by the artists Tariq Raheem or H.R. Giger.  Fighting princesses of never-was are the handiwork of artists like Robert Kraus.  Live action characters like Star Trek's Seven of Nine or Lord of the Rings' Arwen Evenstar are far from original.  They are there to tap into a pre-existing fan base.

Battle Babes are also very prominent in Japanese artwork of manga comic books and anime cartoons.  Where the western Battle Babes are campy scantily-clad fulsome fodder for male fan titillation, the Japanese versions are just a little too barely-legal looking, with a creepy emphasis on the little girls' flashing their tighty-whitey under panties.

Speaking of representation that is tipping over a little far into fetish and kink, another prominent version of Battle Babes are the porn star women who battle each other.  Here we have either girl-on-girl action, or they are side-by-side to see who is the biggest, fastest, whatever, at performing or completing some sort of sex act.  Closely related to the Battle Babe porn, but not as explicit, is the very popular Bikini Karate Babes video games, in which you and a friend make the hot cartoon avatars kick the stuffing out of each other.

Our inquiring minds wanted to know what was up with Battle Babes.  After checking it out, we feel a little sorry we went there.  But for you, we did it anyway.

Are Girls with Guns also Femme Fatales?

Are Girls with Guns also Femme Fatales? We were recently wondering here at MovieFanCollectibles if the two perennial female screen favorites are the same thing? After all, we need to keep our archetypes as straight as our stocking seams, don't we? Our first impulse was to answer, "Yes, of course they are the same." We were surprised to find the answer is more like sometimes they are, but really not so much. Turns out there are a couple of significant differences between our beloved Girls with Guns and her cinematic aunties.

A very important difference between the two is that Girls with Guns do their own dirty work. They pick up the weapons and take care of business themselves. Alternatively, Femme Fatales use the promise of possible sexual rewards, along with a toolbox of other feminine wiles, to get masculine dupes to commit mayhem for them. A cheap cousin of the femme fatale is the vamp, who actually does put out, quid pro quo, by swapping sex for murder. Historic stereotypes for the Femme Fatale are the classic Jezebel figure and Cleopatra.

Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct"

Probably the most important distinction between Girls with Guns and Femmes Fatales is that femmes are always bad girls. And they are bad girls who must have their come-uppances by the end of the reel. Girls with guns, on the other hand, are often a force for good, and/or an anti-heroine, with many opportunities to come back and fight another day. Femme Fatales must be punished so that the accepted social status quo they have challenged can be put back to rights.

Of course, once we understood that Femmes Fatales were different, we became very curious about where the trope came from. Our hats are off to Barbara Hales and her article "Woman as Sexual Criminal" for tracing down the DNA of these cinematic sirens.

Although sexy bad girls have been on the scene basically forever, the film noire version germinated from a hokey strain of European medical and social science research at the end of the 19th century. This would be the same mad scientist crew who brought us winning ideas like Phrenology. These "experts" busied themselves with the study of women who were moving away from bourgeois norms of home and motherhood in the political and economic upheavals of the late industrial revolution. "What do women want?" the professors asked. Well, they obviously want guns, silly!

Louise Brooks in "Pandora's Box"

Fast forward a little bit further to interwar Germany where these criminalized sexy bad girls are now depicted in the tabloid press as embodiments of social unease about uppity modern women who won't stay down on the farm. As Germany put on its brown shirts and prepared to Nazi-up, we see the celluloid personification of criminal women or Femme Fatales in the German street film genre. Shortly thereafter, what was for many the best Femme Fatale ever, American transplant Louise Brooks, appears in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's 1929 classic "Pandora's Box."

So, we have our answer. A Girl with a Gun is sufficient but not necessary to the definition of Femme Fatale. We get a huge kick out of both of 'em. Although there are some divergent opinions about what other names would top the "best of" lists, here in no particular order are the names of a few American beauties who most agree did a great job playing Hollywood-style Femme Fatales:    

Jane Greer in "Out of the Past"

Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat"

Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity"

Lana Turner in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"

Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct"