by NOAH BERLATSKY
Female-led movies are repeating the same stale images of power.
The big cat-attack action/slasher film Rogue, which was released in the United States in August, is a rote B-movie genre exercise with a large helping of girl-power lion-roaring thrown in. It’s not a subtle or particularly thoughtful narrative, but for just that reason it’s unusually frank about how Hollywood sees feminist empowerment. The actress Megan Fox plays a mercenary badass, who is presented to viewers as a strong female character because she goes overseas and shoots a bunch of Black and brown people, just like a man would. Feminism and colonialism in the action movie are ideologically intertwined. To be the woman protagonist of an action narrative is to be a white savior, a Tarzan-like mighty whitey, or, ideally, both.
Fox is cast as Sam, the leader of a group of mercenaries tasked with rescuing Asilia (Jessica Sutton). Asilia has been kidnapped by a group of human traffickers who hope to use her to exert leverage on her father, who is the governor of the territory. After the plan goes awry in part because Sam decides to rescue two other trafficked girls, the team takes refuge in an abandoned lion farm. Sam has to battle the terrorist traffickers and a rogue female lioness, fending off challenges to her authority all while establishing that “females are the true killers.”
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