S I G H T S

Maddening Max
Unlike Buffy, Xena or Scully, the genetically-engineered heroine of Fox’s Dark Angel is more about sex than superpower

by Alicia Thompson

Grrl Power. Girls rule. It’s the rallying cry of Third Wave feminism. The early 90s saw a surge in political activism by younger women, represented in large part by the Riot Grrl movement in music led by bands such as Bikini Kill. Mainstream culture reinvented this fiercely independent subculture as the Spice Girls and tried to call it the same thing. Watered down and played out, slapped on the front of a baby doll T-shirt — this has been the fate of Girl Power.

Fox

Television has been marginally better than the how-much-navel-can-you-show pop-saturated landscape of the music scene (which, incidentally, is all about dancing and only occasionally about singing). Buffy, Xena, Agent Scully — they make having basic cable worthwhile. Except Xena’s off the air, and Scully seems to be in the middle of a multi-season apology arc for having ever been tough and interesting in the first place. 

Amidst this downward spiral, Max, resident Dark Angel, waltzes onto the stage, nails the coffin shut, and does a striptease on Girl Power’s grave.

Max, the hero of Fox’s new sci-fi hit that is wrapping up its first season, lives in a future where an electromagnetic pulse has turned America into a Third World country. Bike courier by day, occasional hero by night, Max was a human genetic experiment, raised by the government to be the ultimate soldier. But she managed to escape as a child, and now she searches for the others like her and for answers and whatnot.

What’s so bad about Max? She fights bad guys, right? Oh sure. In that sassy, wisecrackin” style late-90s girl heroes are known for. But look closer. Max mouths Girl Power platitudes (”Girls kick ass. It says so on a T-shirt.”), but her actions don’t back them up. She is seen trading on her sexuality as often as she uses her superpowers. In the episode “C.R.E.A.M,” Max and her friend Original Cindy pose as strippers so that Max can use her transgenic superhuman powers to cheat at poker. The stripper disguise brings enough T&A jiggle on the screen to make Baywatch proud.

The writers don’t seem to know what to do with the supposedly strong female character they created, and the Valley Girl dialogue doesn’t help. (”America really thought they had it dialed in. Money hangin’ out the butt. But it was all just a buncha ones and zeroes in a computer someplace. So when that bomb went kabloo-ey, and the electromagnetic pulse turned all those ones into plain old zeroes? Everyone’s like, NO WAY!") Neither does Jessica Alba’s inability to do anything with the limited material she has been given. She seems to have a few stock modes: Puzzled Max, Pouty Max, Mildly Angry Max, and Max Dresses Like A Ho.

James Cameron ought to be doing better than this. This is the man that gave Sarah Connor to the world. Sarah circa Terminator 2 would beat Max into the ground. Cameron women have undergone a watering down that echoes what is happening elsewhere in the culture. Sarah and her predecessor Ellen Ripley (the feminist heroine of Ridley Scott’s Alien series) are the Girl Power ideal — strong, independent, powerful, and in charge. Rose from Titanic wasn’t bad. She broke free from her repressive life, but she needed a man to show her the way. And now we get Max, the indifferent anti-hero, manipulating men with sexy clothes, and tossing off such gender wisdom as “Guys can’t help it.”

For all the much vaunted scariness of Manticore — the genetics lab in the Wyoming mountains where Max was created — these guys can’t seem to get it together. Max has a dubious grasp on tactics at best. Zack, the kid who masterminded the escape from Manticore (who she found after only a handful of episodes — seems like that ought to have taken longer) has to come to her rescue more than once. He has his bar code sanded off his neck, even though it comes back. Since the soldier Lydecker (the name is a nice and subtle touch) is so set on finding Max, maybe she ought to do the same. Or at least wear turtlenecks.

There would be no Dark Angel without Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Max is the Anti-Buffy, dressed up to look like Faith  (Buffy’s fellow slayer, who succumbed to the Dark Side) while being neither. There is a distinct difference in the presentation of female power between these two shows: Buffy’s power is defined as exclusively female and is presented as independent of her sexuality; Dark Angel takes pains to link Max’s power and her libido.

In the episode “Heat,” the viewer is subjected to an extended interior monologue regarding her transplanted feline DNA and how this occasionally makes her sexually insatiable. Transparent much? This is about the most obvious ploy for the “horny teenage male” audience as I have ever seen. The writers and producers of Dark Angel reinforce a common misconception about the science fiction audience when they do this — i.e., that it is exclusively male and hormonal. In doing so, they undercut a potentially decent female hero for the sake of a leather catsuit.

On Buffy, sex is treated very differently. In the episode “When She Was Bad,” Buffy uses her good looks in much the same way Max does, to taunt and tease. Only in this case, we are shown the negative fallout caused by using attraction as a cudgel. People she cares about are hurt and almost killed. When Faith follows the same path in Season Three, she receives the full weight of the moral disapproval of the show (and a coma to boot).

This is in contrast to the attitude on Dark Angel where men exist to be manipulated. Max explains in the episode “Pilot” that men are really prisoners of their genes. They’re all dogs that just can’t help it. Besides being simplistic, this point of view doesn’t exactly do much for gender relations.

Alba herself confirms this point of view in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: “Guys are visually stimulated. They’re easy to manipulate. All you have to do is dress up in a sexy outfit . . . Guys are sort of stupid that way.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, Plato.

I know we can do better than this. Max has the trappings of a grrl power hero, without the substance. Don’t be fooled by the kung-fu stunt double. I expect more out of my chicks, and when I get it I respond with loyal viewership. And then I don’t have to write snarky articles.