What is so Sexy about cat fight anyway?

A typical Seinfeld episode was playing with this cat fight spectacle the other day, where Elain was beaten up by "built-up" Raquel Welch..When she asked what's so attractive about catfights, that everytime the word came out it follows with a "wauuw" from men..Jerry explains; "if they fight...they can somehow...kiss...maybe.."

There's a frustration for sure in the intensity of the female fighting closure..But the attraction of punching, kicking, sweating female bodies is something related with another gender question. The myth of female sexual agression put the body in the market, met by a demanding audience.The female body representation in cinema constructs its narration from a masculin extention where in most cases, no matter how "tough" the girl is the male action hero saves the day..But what if the girls left all alone?.Still the masculin extention stays for good.. Think of the "woman in prison" movies..The jezebel, the femme fatale and the good girl sharing the same "cage"..No one can argue that they'll manage to get along...Check out the frantic titles: "Ten violent women(1980), "Hell behind the bars(1983), "Chained Heat(1983), "Caged Fury(1989)", "the Big doll house(1971)"...loads of more cheesy examples can be listed along..The trapped body phenomena triggers the "active gaze" consumption of Laura Mulvey. The "scopophillia", as she puts it through, regains a more masculin natured pleasure..The potential bomb like sexuality is between the bars and they can only eat up themselves and the men can sit back and watch the scratchy catfight..

Cinema is determined to present, struggled,suffocated, trapped in life kind of women as potential dangers.Whenever a woman is disturbed she would tear off the shirt and go out to fight.In that sense prison movies are the fascination of watching teased tigers fighting for a piece of meat behind the bars..This attraction also bears the masoistic fear of "what if they set loose?"..Alike, Mulvey's approach on "scopophilia" bears the voyeuristic elements which its pleasure lies on the anxiety of being caught..

Hollywood's archetypal stylistics on "dangerous women" so much related with the social placements in the U.S..The "jezebel" image represents the anxiety felt against the threat of black resistance and anger..The macho woman images, the amazon-like black woman with machine guns are the objectualized pictures of the gaze to the suburban black society which is left untouched and awaits as a critical threat to naive, white America..To be the context of the topic it is no suprise that "woman in prison" movies love to place a "jezebel" in the cell who is a killer kind and will fight the newcomer to her domination.

In short, the catfight issue is the peak extention of female body representation where not only the physical sexuality but also the female power domination finds its metaphors on the arena.

"Don't touch my eggs!": A question of motherhood

There was this unforgettable scene in the "Aliens" where Ripley fought the pissed of Queen alien because she killed her eggs.The similarities between the mother alien and Ripley are remarkable since she watches the alien laying eggs with little Newt in her arms after rescuing her.. There is this famous saying "never come between a mother bear and her cubs"..It proves to be true.The female action hero is always defeated by her mother instincts.The problem with the strength of female figures is that they can never escape the sensitivity of their feminine souls.Remember the muscular Sarah Connor of termiantor2, the only reason she didn't kill the computer expert, who will be the reason of a nuclear disaster, was because she just couldn't do it in front of the man's little daughter who was playing with her toys in peace..After all the things she has acomplished, above all the muscles and guns she is still a mother.

Cinema's dangerous women are the "fallic mothers".Deriving from Freud's approach Laura Mulvey takes the "phallus" phenomena to another extent.She argues that "can not be castrated" situation, on its own, is far more fearfull than being castrated. The mother has no phallus you can't even castrate her and take the power from her hands, but she can..

This hysteria gives a totally diffrent look to the female bodies in cinema.Film critic George Brown argues that in the past while the object of terror was the chase of an innocent girl by a "bad man", now it is replaced with the daunting of harmless men by frantic women..The films taken after the 80s are full of women equipped with offensive weapons attached to their underwear or under skirt.The female body gained a musculin look mostly to defend herself..Apart from the offensive weapons she owns, the attitude is defensive from the start. The transformation of the body is a reaction to the patriarchal system which hurted "the mother" and pressed her flaw.Film history is full of pissed of mothers who have "dressed to kill"..Most convenient example would be "the long kiss goodnight" where Geena Davis replaces the roles with the "tough guy" Samuel Jackson.Cutting the hair short, dressing up all in blacks, and obtaining a pistol for the begining is most likely a blow up repression of how suffocated she was in her former life.The transformation of school teacher Sam to a brand new character Charly is bridged when her daughter is kidnapped and "mother warrior" rushes to save her.

In these 3 women's situation(Ripley,Sarah Connor,Sam a.k.a Charly) they are both the savior and the weak..They somehow empowered by their weaknesses.The sensual mother vain feeds their strong urge for revenge.Back to Laura Mulvey's approach the "fallic woman" fullfills the desire of female audience's "to-be-looked-at-ness", at the same time the voyeuristic fascination of male audience's "active gaze"..

Face the consequences: "Smoky" women

The whole world knows now what the fuss is all about, as the popular psychoanalitic thinking offers, it is all about the "penis". Female child realised that she was "penisless", so there she was..standing helpless and weak in front of the mirror..She was "inferior". I wouldn't like to translate Ms.Mulvey's words, she explains the situation properly in a single paragraph of "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema":

"The female child, he contended, recognizes herself as anatomically 'inferior' and comes to despise herself and all those like her (penisless), most especially her mother, who now becomes identified as a rival for her father's affection ... the female may gain self-esteem. only through a form of narcissistic vanity"

Mulvey's approach, as being constructed on semiotic basis, takes the female body as the "signifier" of male desire and male desire is the key that makes the money roll in show bussiness..Cinema creates the "evolved" women of its own.. Begining from the noirs, we might say, the spectator sensed the "danger" of spectation..Considering the after 80s cinema our innocent girls grew out to be the killer medusas..Little blond Drew barrymore of the heart warming classic E.T went nude for playboy..Madonna begging "papa"s permission to marry her lover, revealed the secrets of her "bed time stories" in a teasing documentary, CK undressed underage Kate Moss and placed the word "obsession" on it, fashion industry went mad with products and collections named "poison", "vamp", "fatal" with their extreme sparkling glamour..Women were all over men..Already scared of the uncanny creatures, in any case, men readily accepted the charm of that single voyeuristic gaze on the big screen, while women feel the pleasure of a boosting ego in front of hungry eyes..They would never felt inferior anymore..

The problem is that, patriarchy remains..so as the uncanny fear of castration..Due to Mulvey's theory male spectator deals with the fear either by fetishizing the body or by "voyeuristic scopophillia" where the gaze gains sadistic ways. Think of the fallen women of noirs..After causing so many pain to the male protagonist she is left alone with all her weakness and the true love..Think of Gilda striping the long black gloves while singing, as if it's her last battle against Johnny, like an exhausted effort to make him madly jealous once again, to prove herself worthy; but after all she is left on the stage just as a piece of flesh for the pleasures of the drunken men..Johnny once become a wreck because of her, now punishes her to the revenge.

Men deal with their castaration anxiety by dominating supposedly dominated female.At the same time female audience is reinforced time to time by experiencing narcisstic representation.

Being a much more vulnerable creation as opposed male body, female body is so much open to conflicts.Think of the skinny girls with pointy boots, short skirts and pistols. They connate more dangerous thoughts than muscular Rambo with his deadly machine gun. Think of Mallory Knox of Natural Born Killers seducing the poor pumper boy at the gas station, we all know she has a gun and she is pissed of..For that particular time no one can think that she is "penisless"! Think of Nikita killing in her sexy short black dress, even think of Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire, kicking men with high heels..

All those fetihistic forms dominates the film industry..and continues to be..We all prefer reading Playboy, be it man or woman, we wouldn't find Playgirl as "charming" as that..We are all fascinated by Victoria's Secret collections and catwalks..Women dream to-be-look-ed-at in that golden lace g-tring and sexy leather top. The body is on the market and smoky as hell..