Go Ahead and Kill Her, as Long as We Don’t Care About Her, Part Two

Time to get sad (OK, just me, you’re fine as you are) over a couple of fictional characters dying, as I prove my own theory about killing women onscreen being OK as long as we don’t get to know them. 

I (and the rest of the audience) briefly get to know Sarah, the ill-fated girlfriend of Sylvester Stallone’s buddy in the 1993 adventure Cliffhanger, in the three minutes or so she’s onscreen: she’s pretty, just had sex with the best buddy that morning and is no good at climbing, but she goes along because the boyfriend wants her to.   Mountain arm candy. 

Then her dumb son of a bitch boyfriend gets her into an untenable position on a mountaintop, from which Sly tries to rescue her.  

And in an unbearably taut sequence, her harness breaks apart (the scene is suspenseful all right, but not pleasurably so, because of the audience’s dread of what’s about to happen), and, despite Sly’s muscled grip and her heart-rending cries of “I don’t want to die, please help me, please help me”—whoops!   She falls to her death, screaming all the way down.

Am I a pussy for feeling bad about a movie character’s death?  Yes.  Do I realize that the scene was there just to give Sly some psychological underpinnings?   Sure.   But I cannot escape the fact that I would NOT have given a damn if the male best friend had been the one to fall.  But if the girl falls screaming, I’m affected by it.  We in the audience expect the box-office talent to keep a frightened girl safe, it’s that simple.

Some members of the audience were upset also; at the screening I saw, some were talking afterwards about the “cruel , heartless” edge of the scene.  Most of the complainers were women.  We had 100 minutes of derring-do and thrilling adventure after Sarah’s death, and that opening scene still made the movie a downer. 

It didn’t help much that a mountain-climbing expert pointed out to me, about a week later, that no harness would ever give way as Sarah’s did.  A real life death like that was well nigh impossible, he said.  Sorry, Sarah, you died just ‘cause you had to. 

The other woman whose cinematic death I keep remembering is that of Melanie, a press secretary in President Harrison Ford’s entourage in 1997’s Air Force One.  The bad Russian terrorist (Gary Oldman, that acting god among villains) has a gun to her head, and is calling to the president to come out of hiding or he’ll shoot her.  He’ll count to ten.   Remember, this is a woman he’s threatening to kill. 

When, in all the history of movies, has a bad guy ever pulled the trigger on a woman?  We in the audience knew he wouldn’t.  We knew Harrison Ford wouldn’t stand for it.  He is also Han Solo, he is also Indiana Jones.  So we knew it would work out for Melanie. 

The president would surrender (and find some other way to defeat evil) or he’d come up with a snazzy way to distract the gunman.  Besides, Melanie was sweet and pretty and we had gotten to like her.   If it was a guy being threatened, like the idiot negotiating with Alan Rickman in Die Hard, we would have worried.   It’s a girl, no sweat. 

The president doesn’t come out.  He doesn’t come up with a snazzy distraction.  The baddie reaches ten and, unbelievably, pulls the trigger.   We were stunned into silence.  

Cliffhanger and Air Force One were box office hits. 

These two filmed deaths were done by actresses who, of course, did not die.  They wrapped up the shoot and are still out there acting (Melanie—Donna Bullock—is on One Life to Live, Sarah—Michelle Joyner—appeared recently on Bones). 

And yet, their onscreen deaths affected me as if they were real. 

I’m absolutely convinced it was because both scenes depicted the deaths of helpless women. 

I have one more murder to discuss (no, I’m not Hercule Poirot, it’s just one more film), and my theory as to why these scenes are what they are, and what they’ve led to—that movies are so new they’ve gone back to really old ideas. 

 

Tell you about it next time.