Cowboys and Aliens – where men are men, aliens are men and the women a mystery
Sarah Cheverton
WVoN co-editor
Cowboys and Aliens is not a film I would usually see at the cinema. Or, indeed anywhere. At any time. But I was out with my Dad and my sister and there was nothing else on.
“It’s got to be good,” my Dad told me, with pleading eyes, “Daniel Craig’s in it.”
After a split second of remembering James Bond, I yanked my fingernails out of my palm and said, “Ok. Let’s do this.”
The film is precisely as ludicrous as you think it’s going to be, possibly even more; with the descent of little – or in this case, huge – green men on the Wild West, how could it be anything else?
But, and this is a big but – bigger than, say, Eric Pickles (a rotund British politician) – it is entertaining.
I wouldn’t exactly recommend it, but I wouldn’t tell you to avoid it either.
Because one thing I did find this film to be was interesting: particularly in its representation of men.
We’re in the Wild West, so the men are men, they’re men’s men. In fact if these men were any more laden with testosterone, they’d be in danger of de-evolving back into apes. Angry, steroid-loaded apes. On acid. With guns.
These men are brooding, emotionally retarded, and seemingly convinced that violence is the answer to everything. To support this notion, the cast is led by Indiana Jones and James Bond, who both have this particular brand of masculinity down to an art (if the art is finger-painting).
In fact, good old-fashioned masculinity is so embedded in this film that even the aliens are infected by it.
Despite their superior technology and the ability to travel through time and space, the aliens are basic, brutish, aggressive and after our gold.
In fact, the aliens are, pretty much, cowboys.
That doesn’t matter so much here because the only thing we need to know is that the aliens are bad and they should be killed, violently and en masse.
So what about the women?
There are only three women in this film who aren’t extras: the barman’s wife, the dead lover of James Bond, and Ella – our enigmatic hero.
Ella is played excellently by Olivia Wilde, despite being given no real back story and absolutely nothing to work with, not even a good script. I assumed, as I was meant to, that Ella was simply another prostitute until she knocked out James Bond with the butt of a rifle.
Having always wanted to do the same thing myself, from thereon in she became more intriguing – though less and less female.
But to understand what I mean by that, you need to see the movie (no spoilers here, sweetie).
In Cowboys and Aliens, Hollywood has found a new way to express an old plot, complete with old faithful reproductions of gender – up to a point, because Ella is a real departure from gender norms in this genre.
Ella is the hero of this film – I defy anyone to say otherwise.
There is no resolution to the story without her. There is no way for the ‘good guys’ – and I use the term, well, inaccurately – to win without her. In fact, the whole plot actually depends on her.
For me, she is also the only interesting thing in the film – apart from a few moments where men inflicting mindless, idiotic violence on each other’s person made me chuckle.
But, and we’re back to Eric Pickles here, disappointingly, Ella feels like an accident.
Although the plot hangs on her, she feels incidental and hugely under-developed – the token woman written into a film aimed at men’s men.
And that was disappointing because it felt like a missed opportunity.
That said, in a cinematic landscape where ‘Cowboy and Aliens’ really was the best thing on offer, maybe that’s not too much for us to worry about.
Good piece Sarah. I still won’t be going to see it though. 🙂
Can’t blame you for that, Jane. Not everyone is as fascinated with the lows of popular culture as I am….
More to do with the choice of low popular culture – if it has strong female characters in it I am all over it, for example Hellboy was wicked!