Gender Representations in the Thriller Genre - Females

Due to the ability to divert from true to life characters and plots lines, one would expect film to be a great medium to produce and portray diverse gender identities, however quite the opposite occurs and generally gender ideologies of the present time are conveyed in film.


Female Representation
Since its beginnings, American cinema has been torn between portraying the idea of a "New Woman" and the Victorian ideology of "True Womanhood" which appointed women with four virtues; purity, piety, domesticity and submission. Some have felt that this list has dwindled down and that women in films are either "virgins, mothers or whores", however over the years women have represented a variety of roles in thriller films.


Conspiracy thriller "In the Line of fire" contains one prominent female character, Lilly Raines, whose role is merely a "love interest" and her feature in the film is not central to the narrative. In the psychological thriller "The Machinist" the lead female role is that of Stevie, who is a prostitute and has genuine affection for main character and chronic insomniac Trevor Reznik, who finds peace in her company, however he does not reciprocate her feelings and her presence is only to emphasize his isolation. These films, amongst others, convey females as not only sexual objects, but carers too, as they care for the welfare of the male in their life and seek to comfort them, however they are very much extraneous to the central plot and typically used to stretch the story emotionally.

Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Machinist

Marilyn Monroe in Niagara

 The 1953 thriller-film noir "Niagara" introduced Marilyn Monroe as a "trashy femme fatale", who is cheating on her husband whilst on her honeymoon and plots to have him murdered. In the 1992 passionate-thriller "Basic Instinct", Catherine Trammel is the leading character, she is a charming psycho-killer who is openly bisexual and engages in short-lived affairs with people, killing them when she is finished with them. This type of female role conveys women who desire sex, willing to commit adultery and murder, with seductive mannerisms to get what they want.Aside from their immediate association with wanting to kill, they are not looked at as positive models in society due to their explicit sexual desires.

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct

There is also the leading female protagonist such as the character of Clarice Starling in the 1991 film "The Silence of the Lambs", she is a training FBI agent asked to interview an incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer to help find another killer who is not yet in custody. 2010 bought with it the action thriller "Salt", about Evelyn Salt who is accused of being a Russian sleeper agent and so goes on the run to clear her name. Unlike previous stereotypical female roles, she is not objectified and has the ability to fight and defend herself. However female characters who are uninterested in domesticity, motherhood or tending to a dominant male character are depicted as lacking something or paying a price for their success in the public sector.

Angelina Jolie in Salt

The male gaze
Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' is one of the most influential texts on the role of women in film history, she introduced the concept of the 'male gaze', whereby the audience assumes the role of a heterosexual man and imposes his objectifying gaze upon women. Mulvey asserts; "In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-look-at-ness." Mulvey's theory, inspired by Freud's psychoanalytic theory, is applicable to the classical Hollywood films of that time, as the gender identity ideologies are mirrored in film, she argues "unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order." Budd Boetticha summarizes the male gaze; "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance."

A film of particular interest whilst studying gender representation in film would be the female characters in "Kill Bill vol 1". Although the story is prominently set around the narrative of "killing bill", this film focuses heavily on a female protagonist and the female antagonists, something highly unusual for an action-thriller or films in general. The protagonist of the film is 'The Bride' and is assumed by actress Uma Thurman.


The protagonist is seeking revenge on a group of assassins that she was once part of for attempting to kill her and killing her unborn child on her wedding day. She is naturally attractive, owning a athletic and healthy figure which is seen throughout the film in tight clothing, however it should be noted that her character does not wear makeup and her hair is never styled, showing the characters refusal of the male gaze, in no way purposely attempting to appeal to the male characters in the film or the male audience. Despite this, it can be argued that her role in the film is conforming to a feminine mother role, grieving the loss of her child. 

In Kill Bill there are no characters which fall under 'femme fatale' title, instead the female characters regardless of age or ethnicity are dominant and do not desire association with men. There is one scene in the film in which a female character seduces a man, however this is merely to kill him. Go Go Yubari is a teenage girl who seeks male gaze in order to have sadistic revenge men who are flirtatious with her. This portrays her as a no nonsense female who refuses the 'gaze' and those who sexually proposition her.

The leading antagonist is the role of O-Ren Ishii, which is assumed by Lucy Liu, she is female assassin fueled by the anger from witnessing her parents brutal murder under the order of Tokyo Yakuza boss at the tender age of 9, killing him 2 years later. She then herself become the head of the Japanese mafia, dominating all the other males. There is a scene in which she does not take kindly to being referred to as a "bitch" by another member of the Yakuza, and consequently he is beheaded in front of the rest of the mafia. This conveys how the character does not accept her gender as being a weakness or lessening her status or demand for respect.