Reconstruction 8.2 (2008)
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"Thank Goodness He-Man Showed Up": Hypermasculine Cultural Posturing and the Token Women of 80s Animated Action Teams / Matthew Diebler
<1> As VH-1, American Apparel, and the return of the Mohawk have shown us, the 80s were a special time in America's cultural consciousness, and our recent aesthetic of nostalgia has brought a number of 80s cultural icons full circle (most immediately visible through the popular revival of such 80s franchises as Die Hard and Transformers). Caught in this wave of 80s nostalgic bliss, I found myself reminiscing about how much I loved Cheetara from the ThunderCats when I was a boy. I remember running with my hands open as though the mimicking of her running style would grant me a fraction of her supersonic speed. It never did. But during this nostalgic conversation, I became convinced that my love of Cheetara had granted me one thing: a feminist bent. I postulated to my friend that the token females of these early 80s animated action teams offered my impressionable young mind models of empowered women, models that eventually led to a true appreciation of strong-willed, powerful, and capable women. I was adamant that these cartoons and their bastions of female power advanced feminist thought and agendas for an entire generation. My friend told me I was full of it. In my ever-present quest to prove myself right, I began to research the subject and came to some interesting conclusions: by examining the token female characters of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ThunderCats, and G.I. Joe (perhaps the three most popular animated mixed gender dramatic action series of the era), we can see the beginning of a trend in American popular culture toward the creation of women with militaristic power, but one wrought with tension and backpedaling in the hypermasculine cultural climate of the post-Vietnam sense of symbolic emasculation.
<2> The 80s, as anyone who has seen Bloodsport or remembers the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger knows, was a time of masculine posturing in American popular culture. We liked our men manly and our muscles bulging. Tom Clancy and Rambo were the cultural powerhouses of the time, reflecting a very particular cultural concern: militaristic masculinity. James William Gibson's article "Warrior Dreams" discusses this trend in the American collective consciousness in the early to mid 80s. Gibson argues that the reason American popular culture began to focus on a shirtless Sylvester Stallone invading and single handedly decimating a small Asian country is because of an overarching sense of national symbolic emasculation caused by our failure in the Vietnam War. We are a country whose history and global self-image is based on a sense of superior rugged masculinity; the world thinks we're all cowboys because we promote that John Wayne/James Dean perception. And tied to this highly significant sense of national masculine superiority is the symbol of the successful masculine aggressor. Culturally, we associate violence with men, and violent success with the most masculine and thus most capable of men. Therefore, a military loss (especially to Asian people, people stereotyped in the West as "feminine") functioned to devastate the cultural sense-of-self based so heavily on masculine superiority. So as Gibson points to and as we can see through the Rambo films, Commando, Bloodsport, the valuation of heavily-muscled male bodies, and the importance placed on masculine domination, our culture spent much effort of the early and mid 80s attempting to symbolically deal with and reinvigorate this sense of militaristic masculine superiority.
<3> This cultural context creates an interesting space for examining the animated children's television of the time. As a feminist scholar and a cartoon addict, I find myself fascinated by the gender roles our culture imposes upon our children. By placing gendered behaviors in the context of moralizing hero tales, the cultural powers-that-be align specific desirable gender traits with the "good" people, the ones you're meant to strive to emulate, and undesirable gender traits with the "bad" people, the ones established in the show as being reprehensible and thus a model of what not to become. Or, in the case of the shows discussed above, shows aimed specifically at young boys, it teaches the audience what constitutes appropriate, acceptable, and desirable models of female empowerment.
<4> Before discussing the characters themselves, it will prove useful to give a brief rundown of the premise of each series for those in the audience not raised in the early 80s. He-Man, which began in 1983, tells the story of Prince Adam, a young monarch in a land called Eternia. Prince Adam (at some point prior to the first episode of the show) receives a magic sword that can transform him into the scantily clad and heavily muscled He-Man, a sword which also turns his meek talking pet tiger Cringer into a ferocious mount named Battle Cat. He-Man leads a team of friends (Man-at-Arms, an inventor in some way vaguely employed by the palace; Orko, a small flying comic-relief wizard; Teela, the female captain of the royal guards and adopted daughter of Man-At-Arms; and the Sorceress, a powerful spellcaster bound to Castle Greyskull, the mystical hidden castle from which He-Man's power comes) as they battle against the evil Skeletor, a megalomaniac with a skeletal face. The series is completely episodic with the events of one episode rarely (if ever) affecting the events of another. I, for the purpose of this article, will be focusing on Teela and the Sorceress.
<5> ThunderCats (which began airing in 1985) tells the story of a band of feline humanoid aliens that crash land on the planet "Third Earth" after their own planet, Thundera, has been destroyed. Lion-O, the leader and ruler of the ThunderCats, commands the band of survivors (Tygra, Panthro, Cheetara, WilyKit, WilyKat, and Snarf) as they brave their new home, battle the ancient and evil Mumm-ra, and fight off the mutants from Thundera's rival planet Plundarr. ThunderCats has a slightly serialized nature, having occasional two part episodes and references to events in previous episodes. However, the vast majority of the series is episodic and self-contained, giving a "one-shot" aesthetic similar to He-Man's. Here, I will focus on Cheetara (although WilyKat is female, she serves the representative function of "child" rather than "woman," so with such limited space, I'll ignore her).
<6> G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (based on the series of military toys that began in 1964) premiered in 1985, the same year as ThunderCats. Perhaps because of the pre-existing mythology, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero contains far too many characters to list here. Each episode features between 4 and 12 characters, often introducing new soldiers to the ranks. The G.I. Joe revolving door of characters, while numerous, only contains three females: Lady Jaye, Scarlett, and CoverGirl. These three ladies and their bevy of male counterparts work for a governmental Special Forces unit called the G.I. Joes that battles an evil terrorist organization called C.O.B.R.A. (led by the bumbling Cobra Commander). The show chronicles this ongoing battle. I will focus on Lady Jaye and Scarlett, only mentioning CoverGirl occasionally as her appearances are extremely rare.
<7> When speaking of women in action genres, historically there has been a pattern of reinscribing these women with stereotypically feminine features in an attempt to rein back the masculine power granted to them by their inclusion in such an aggressive, militaristic, masculine landscape. While in the 90s and 00s, this reinscription has often taken the shape of fetishized sexualization, focusing on such feminine signifiers as long hair and large breasts (think Pam Anderson in Barb Wire), this objectifying tactic is problematized in the 80s by the aesthetic mentioned above: the valorization of masculine hyper-muscularity. The cultural need to symbolically reinforce our national sense of masculine pride created a trend of male objectification new to America's cultural landscape. The on-display bodies of these muscular men don't represent a disempowering sexual objectification (as Laura Mulvey points out in her seminal article "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema," visual sexual objectification inherently grants the gazer dominating power over the sexualized object) but instead represent an object of symbolic power and domination. The men are almost naked so the audience can bear witness to the overflowing masculine power of their bulging pecs.
<8> With mostly-nude bodies on display representing the cultural norm, that avenue of reinscribing feminine signifiers becomes problematic and muddled. Therefore, rather than take that avenue and risk conflating physical display of power with physical display of sexual objectification, the 80s token females represented some of the least objectified token female bodies in the history of the American animated action/adventure team based genre. Instead, other physical feminine signifiers were used. For example, Cheetara has massive amounts of ubiquitous blue eye-shadow. Teela, despite the fact that she is not royalty, always wears a tiara; both Sorceress and Teela wear high-heeled knee-high boots; and Sorceress has brightly painted red nails. The women of G.I. Joe, however, have very few physical accoutrements to reinscribe femininity, breaking from this pattern of senseless feminine accessories.
<9> Less direct aspects of presentation function to set power dynamics as well. For example, the Sorceress is often depicted as a nothing more than a disembodied floating head. Her power as a character is so minimal that her body is unnecessary; she's only useful as a voice that progresses the story by telling the actual adventuring characters what they need to know and therefore, her whole animated self is unimportant.
<10> One of the most interesting locations for gender and power discussions in the genre of action heroes comes in terms of the powers or abilities the heroes display. As Scott Bukatman points out in his article "X-Bodies: The Torment of the Mutant Superhero," women in the genre (specifically in comics) have traditionally been confined to passive abilities such as telepathy or invisibility (65), powers that through their non-aggressive manner don't threaten to encroach upon symbolically masculine territory. Cheetara possesses super-speed, and on the rare occasion she utilizes her "intuition," a sixth sense that allows her to communicate telepathically, see the past or future, or do whatever else the script seems to call for that week (of course the effectiveness of this sixth sense is undermined by the fact that using it could kill her [episode 11 "The Ghost Warrior"]). Obviously, these powers are still of the passive variety Bukatman describes as being traditional within the gendered separation of power. However, Tygra (a male character) has the power of invisibility, a passive ability Bukatman recognizes as traditionally female (65). So while the producers of ThunderCats maintain the traditional passivity of female powers, they do not confine this passivity to female characters alone.
<11> He-Man's Sorceress also has passive powers. The show indicates to the audience that the Sorceress has a variety of mystical abilities. In fact, in episode 25 "Evilseed," the Sorceress claims to be one of the three greatest powers on Eternia (along with He-Man and Skeletor); the strength of her magical abilities is touted numerous times throughout the run of the series. However, despite the characters' claims of great power, Sorceress never actually does anything noticeably powerful: she answers questions that He-man poses, she morphs into a bird, and she telepathically projects an image of her head to He-Man whenever she's in trouble or overwhelmed (which tends to be quite often). On one of the rare cases where she actually attempts to use her powers to fight against the evil onslaught (episode 3 "The Shaping Staff"), she is easily overcome and turned into a tree (in her defense, Skeletor tricked her into stepping 10 feet away from the castle, and her power is greatly weakened when she leaves her house, reminding us all that a woman's power truly resides in the home). For all the mystical and devastating power she's said to possess, the Sorceress seems to be confined to the passive abilities of answering mystical questions and telepathically calling for help, relegating her to the traditionally female roles of guiding moral compass and damsel in distress.
<12> But the Sorceress is juxtaposed with Teela whose abilities are purely physical. Teela, being the captain of the royal guard, is trained at both hand-to-hand combat skills and ranged weapons (such as laser blasters). She is shown a number of times either training with Prince Adam or mentioning that she is supposed to be training with Prince Adam. She uses sword and shield combat in her training lessons but sticks mainly to blasters when in the field. Obviously, unlike her Sorceress counterpart, Teela is not simply confined to the realm of passivity. Of course, the masculine power of her fighting skills is curbed by the fact that she usually ceases to fight the minute He-Man, the more effective and proper fighting body, arrives on the scene. And her masculine power is undercut by the revelation that she will be called by destiny to be the next Sorceress, eventually bound to the passive abilities stated above and trapped within the castle for the rest of her life. But regardless of those undermining problems, the fact that she's a trained swordsman and gunner gives her a masculine push denied to other female characters.
<13> G.I. Joe, attempting to be a show based in a realistic world, doesn't grant its women actual "powers." Instead, each Joe has a skill or special training that causes him (or her) to stand out from the others. These skills are quite often made explicit through the nickname attributed to the Joe in question: Shipwreck is a sailor, Roadblock is the large heavily muscled guy, Bazooka uses large munitions, Quick Kick is the martial arts expert, Blowtorch uses flame weapons, Ripcord is usually seen jumping out of planes, Airborne is a pilot, and the list goes on. The women, however, seem to lack these immediately defined skills. The only "skills" that differentiate them from the unnamed (all male) Joe plebeians are their weapons of choice: Lady Jaye, rather than using the blasters used by most of the other Joes, uses a quiver full of javelins she keeps on her back, and Scarlett has a tiny crossbow affixed to her arm. The fact that the men are often named for their function brings the names of the women into an interesting light: Lady Jaye is not referred to as "Javelin," she's "Lady Jaye," indicating that her main function or defining factor is not her fighting skill but her femaleness. Scarlett, whose crossbow is only used on very rare occasions, is given a nickname to match her hair. The only female who actually receives an appropriate nickname is CoverGirl. In one of her very rare appearances, CoverGirl is defined as being a make-up expert, but her skills in this highly feminized department are never displayed or highlighted (episode 19 "Lights! Camera! Cobra!"). Thus while the women of G.I. Joe (particularly Lady Jaye and Scarlett) are capable fighters, their masculine power is somewhat usurped by their lack of useful specialized skills and the insinuations made by their nicknames.
<14> The team dynamics follow suit with the macho posturing of the time: the focus on hypermasculinity as a response to the cultural emasculation of the Vietnam War of course produced a heavy focus on hypermasculine main characters. In ThunderCats, the show is about Lion-O; everyone else, while playing the part of a fairly egalitarian team, functions as secondary characters. The same can be said for He-Man; the show is about the paragon of hypermasculinity himself—everyone else is just there to set up the pins for him to knock down. Therefore, obviously, these two shows each have an extremely explicit half naked overly muscled manly leader figure to rule over them all and prove his militaristic dominance.
<15> The women of G.I. Joe have to face the most complex team dynamic. In some ways, the team dynamic is empowering: the women aren't saddled with the hypermasculine idealized main character of the other two shows, so they're given more opportunity to be in charge. In fact, Lady Jaye almost always takes a commanding role when Flint (her superior/love interest) or Duke (her superior/Scarlett's love interest) isn't around to outrank her. The other men of the team seem to respect and listen to her, allowing her to take charge. Scarlett, however, usually only appears on episodes in which Duke is also featured, putting her in a subservient position to her commanding officer/love interest. Scarlett doesn't give a lot of orders, but the other, similarly ranked men don't balk when she does (nor do they refrain from ordering her around as well).
<16> This juxtaposition brings up the issue of team dynamics and the ways in which they function to create space for strong female characters. As I've pointed out, the shows reflect two different conceptions of a "team" and the dynamic created within such a unit. He-Man and ThunderCats establish teams with a strong leading figure where the other characters function as supporting characters, while G.I. Joe creates a team without this dominating leading character. The first style of dynamic functions to reinforce the 80s valuation of dominant military masculinity. Here it's particularly important to note that ThunderCats is marketed as a team. He-Man, by having "He-Man" in the title, establishes a bit of a power differential from the outset: the show is about He-Man, immediately making him the focus of the show and making the others deferential to him. ThunderCats, however, establishes itself as a team-based show, illustrating the way in which the 80s cultural values and apprehensions affects such a culturally malleable concept such as a "team." Because the cultural climate of the time called out for and valorized dominating men, this translated into the dynamic that defines "team" in a show based on that conception, thus defining a "team" as a group that works together, but functions under the leadership of a single, strong, militarily powerful man, thereby reinforcing this masculine cultural ideal while also incorporating inclusive politics of race and gender.
<17> The "team" offered by G.I. Joe reflects a different, more egalitarian sense of the word than the other two series. The men and women work with more fluid boundaries of hierarchy. However, while the power differential isn't as obvious as it is in the other two shows (and isn't the focus of the series), it actually functions within a more rigidly defined hierarchy: the Joes are the only team with a military-style official ranking system in place. This pre-established hierarchy and the fact that the leaders of the Joes are both men already establishes a valuation of dominating masculinity, allowing for a freer sense of the word "team" without threatening this cultural value. Thus the show doesn't have to pound into viewer's mind the dominance of the male character: it's already evident in the use of titles and salutes. The two series based in a fantastical realm lack this "real world" and predefined hierarchical system and are forced to laud military masculine leadership through the creation of and focus on a single masculine character where the series that functions within a predefined space of masculine domination doesn't necessitate such a heavy-handed focus. So in allowing for this freedom of "team" within a predefined hierarchy, the team dynamic created by G.I. Joe still reinforces masculine dominance (by having Flint or Ace lead the team in some capacity in almost every episode) but through it's lack of focus upon that one character allows space for the other characters (and thus the women) to exert themselves as capable as well.
<18> But while this team dynamic opens space for female empowerment, the women of G.I. Joe also face some highly problematic team dynamics as well, particularly ones with strange sexualized overtones. Lady Jaye and Scarlett have a number of bizarre, out of context flirtation scenes with their male commanding officers. At the conclusion of episode 5 ("Knotting Cobra's Coils"), the show ends with Flint asking Lady Jaye on a date to the Joe's food hall. At the end of episode 9 ("Cobra Stops the World"), Duke (Scarlett's commanding officer) says "May as well get back to base," to which Scarlett replies "May as well. Or you could take me to dinner and a movie." At the end of episode 12 ("The Funhouse"), Lady Jaye approaches the group of male soldiers she's been fighting alongside platonically for the entire episode (Flint is among them) and asks "So, does someone here want to take me for a stroll on a moonlit beach?"
<19> These moments are interesting for a number of reasons. While there are a few vague flirtatious moments with Teela and Cheetara to their respective masculine paragons, these sexualized moments are more obvious and prevalent in the G.I. Joe series because they work to dispel fears that the female characters will be read as too masculine and thus as lesbian, a stereotype associated with females in our military already (and at the same time, reinforcing the heterosexuality of the man in a largely male saturated domain like the military). It should also be noted that both women are only romantically involved with the men that function as their commanding officers. Duke is eventually defined as the leader of the Joe force and Flint as second in command; these men both outrank the females. The women only show interest in the men that, throughout the entire series, are constantly ordering them around, again reinforcing the traditional valuation of dominant masculinity (through this sexual desirability) as well as the valuation of female submission. These flirtatious moments are often used to express a weird intermingling of power and sexual interest. In "The Funhouse" when Lady Jaye asks the large group of men who wants to "take [her] out for a stroll on a moonlit beach," Alpine's positive response of "I'll take you" is met with a "You do and you'll be scrubbing toilets for a week" from Flint. Lady Jaye responds with "You sure know how to keep a girl single." In both episode 8 "Satellite Down" and episode 15 "Haul Down the Heavens," Flint denies that he is romantically involved with Lady Jaye but at the same time stakes a romantic claim on her to other soldiers. Lady Jaye's pursuit of Flint (oddly, in most cases, the women are the aggressors) and his combination of desire and denial creates a strange and unbalanced power dynamic.
<20> The most disturbing aspect of the sexualized team dynamic of the Joes plays out in a scene in episode 16 "The Synthoid Conspiracy Part 1" in which Shipwreck (the sailor) blatantly harasses Scarlett, and she just laughs it off. "C'mon dollface. I know a little café in port where the spaghetti is great and the lights are dim." At this point, Shipwreck grabs her by the waist and pulls her toward him, saying, "Let's you and I get together and…" but he's cut off when she pushes him away, giving him a light slap, and saying "Let's not and say we did." About 2 minutes later, however, they're working together as though nothing happened. Shipwreck, in a non-playful way, sexually harassed Scarlett both physically and verbally, yet the show makes absolutely no acknowledgment of this. This moment in which the sexual harassment of a female officer is ignored and accepted creates a very disturbing overtone to the sexualized team dynamic of the Joes.
<21> General effectiveness as a useful team member also necessitates a reminder of the cultural climate of the time; because the focus is so heavily placed upon the success of the hypermasculine main characters, the other characters, male and female alike, often take secondary positions, getting themselves into situations they can't get themselves out of to highlight the skills and courage of the masculine main character. This proves to be a disempowering factor for a number of the characters in both ThunderCats and He-Man. Therefore, because of the general cultural value of the time placing emphasis on this singular Rambo-esque super character, the women of the 80s already begin with a disadvantage.
<22> Cheetara, of course, is subjugated as a character to Lion-O. But beyond that, she proves herself to be a fairly capable fighter: she can fire mounted laser cannons, use her bo staff to vault over mutants and kick them from behind, and use her speed powers to distract electronic defense grids or tie up the baddies. While she proves fairly successful at all of these tasks when she's called upon to do them (which isn't especially often), her effectiveness is undermined by a number of other factors. For one, she has a strange tendency to pass out, a problem none of the other ThunderCats seems to suffer from and one that is never really addressed within the confines of the show's narrative. In episode 5 "Pumm-Ra," Cheetara, while being spied upon by the other ThunderCats during her morning jog, inexplicably passes out, leading to her capture by the mutants. The show offers no explanation for why Cheetara passes out. In episode 11 "The Ghost Warrior," when it is revealed that Cheetara first uses her sixth sense, it drains her so much that she again passes out. And in episode 26 "The Sixth Sense," her psychic powers are hijacked by a spaceship and she passes out twice. None of the other ThunderCats suffer from this fainting problem, a problem which places Cheetara in a position of "damsel in distress" on a number of occasions, undercutting her effective power.
<23> Cheetara is very rarely focused upon for an entire episode. However, one episode offers her the chance to be the hero; in episode 12 "The Doomgaze," a hyperfeminine hypersexualized evil princess is freed from her interdimensional prison by Mumm-Ra. After Lion-O is enslaved by the evil princess's hypnotic "gaze" that allows her seductive control over all men, it is up to Cheetara to single-handedly defeat all the mutants and fight back the princess. The princess attempts to bring Cheetara under the hypnotic spell of the doomgaze, but upon failing, Cheetara announces, "Your mystical powers have no effect on me. You may mesmerize men with your evil beauty, but I am a woman! You hold no mystery for me!" Cheetara's crowning moment of the show involves her defeating an evil seductress, winning solely because of her femaleness and understanding of the "mysteries" of women's seductive powers. Her chief effective moment comes at a time when the show is promoting an ideology that instates female sexuality as an evil and dangerous force, and Cheetara, the domesticated team female, as the positive alternative.
<24> Teela, while proving to be adept at both swordplay and gunplay, is also disempowered by the masculine empowerment of He-Man. In almost every battle she's involved in, she does not actually defeat the enemy she is facing; instead, she holds off the enemy until He-Man arrives, cheers him along ("Thank goodness He-Man showed up" [episode 3 "The Shaping Staff"]) and tries to get in a shot or two when the time is right.
<25> There are a few moments, however, where Teela is shown to be both horribly incompetent and idiotic. For example, in episode 32 "Search for the VHO," the team spends the entire episode trying to deliver a device to some stranded scientists that will calm the wild animals in the area. At first, the episode seems as though it will empower Teela: the invention seems to be hers, and she plans to take it to the scientists all by herself. However, her father destroys this potential for empowerment by telling He-Man to follow her: "Why don't you go along? You never know when Teela might need the help of He-Man." Her father's anticipation of her incompetence proves accurate as she is captured by one of Skeletor's minions in an attempt to steal her invention. He-Man, of course, saves her and returns the invention to her. As they are both floating in the water, Teela praises He-Man and makes an announcement, "That takes care of Merman. But I dropped the VHO!" After never engaging in the battle, Teela just drops the invention into the water for no reason. So, of course, He-Man must dive in and retrieve it for her so they can deliver it to the scientists. The idiocy of her character in this instance completely undermines the potential of an empowering storyline.
<26> A final note on Teela's effectiveness comes in regard to her station. Teela has a very empowering political position: captain of the royal guard. However, she never actually uses this. In a few very rare episodes, she mentions that she is going to warn the guards or gather them to help out in some impending battle; it is even rarer to see her actually doing any leading. For one with such a powerful position, she almost invariably ignores her station altogether and waits for He-Man to show up and save the day.
<27> The Sorceress, as I've already established in discussions of her powers, is horribly ineffective. Her only role is to disclose complicated plot details. Whenever she even attempts to actively use her powers, she fails; in episode 30 "The Taking of Greyskull," He-Man saves the captured Sorceress from Skeletor, allowing her to use her powers to bind the evil menace. However, the very moment he leaves the castle (3 or 4 seconds later), she telepathically tells him that her power is failing and that she needs his help. In episode 23 "Orko's Favorite Uncle," the Sorceress tries a number of times to stop a dragon creature approaching her castle and fails every time, forcing her to call He-Man for help. The Sorceress is grossly incompetent at everything she tries, always immediately failing and necessitating the help of her big, strong, hypermasculine He-Man.
<28> It should come as no surprise by this point that the most empowered and effective women are the ladies of G.I. Joe (that is, of course, if we ignore CoverGirl, the Joe with the girly name, the girly job, and the tendency to wander around aimlessly). In terms of effectiveness, the women of G.I. Joe are by far the best portrayals. Lady Jaye in particular leads troops, enters battles, fights with guns and javelins, and proves to be an overall successful soldier. Scarlett, while being slightly less commanding, still keeps herself out of the "damsel in distress" role most of the time. When the women are trapped, they're usually trapped with other team members, making it an ungendered sense of distress rather than one based in traditional forms of female disempowerment. Of course, this effectiveness for the women is largely a result of the shift away from the hypermasculine heroic character that absolutely must be seen saving the day in both ThunderCats and He-Man.
<29> The early 80s had a difficult time reconciling the inclusive politics of the 60s and 70s feminist movement with the need for symbolic cultural masculinization. As a result of this tension, the children's heroes of the era are hypermasculine paragons like Lion-O and He-Man who work in conjunction with mixed gendered teams but still function to dominate and prove their effectiveness, allowing for gender inclusion but symbolically soothing this sense of cultural emasculation. Cheetara, Teela, and the Sorceress give us female characters who can hold very powerful positions and can, at times, be effective and save the day. Of course, because of the push for masculine reinvigoration in our cultural scene, these "powerful" women are reinscribed with feminine characteristics and made less effective, less powerful, and subservient to their masculine paragons. The women of G.I. Joe, however, are able to escape this direct subservience, being allowed to enact military power and demand compliance from male officers. But their status as objects of male romantic interest is established through sexual flirtation with commanding officers and institutionally accepted sexual harassment. The world of the Joes was obviously a masculine one, but the women (despite various undermining aspects) have proven to be fairly empowered in their fighting and leadership abilities, offering up more empowered models then the other three. Of course, it should be noted that none of the women actually hold leadership positions (except for Teela, whose leadership position is peripheral, rarely depicted, and does not give her power over any of the main male characters). So overall, we see the beginning of strong action women, women able to take charge of situations and exert masculine, militaristic competence, but at the same time, in an attempt to reinforce and reconstitute this sense of masculine power; the women of this era must be usurped and outdone by their hypermasculine counterparts, creating serious flaws but also serious strides in positive representation of powerful female models for young boys to incorporate into their cultural landscape.
Works Cited
Bukatman, Scott. "X-Bodies: The Torment of the Mutant Superhero." 1994. Matters of Gravity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. 48-78.
"Cobra Stops the World." G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Steve Gerber. Sunbow. 1985.
"The Doomgaze." Thundercats. Writ. Stephen Perry. Rankin-Bass/Lorimar Telepictures. 1985.
"Evilseed." He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Writ. Barney Cohen. Dir. Bob Arkwright. Filmation. 1983.
"The Funhouse." G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Steve Mitchell V and Barbara Petty. Sunbow. 1985.
"The Ghost Warrior." Thundercats. Writ. Leonard Starr. Rankin-Bass/Lorimar Telepictures. 1985.
Gibson, James William. "Warrior Dreams." Signs of Life. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006. 504-512.
"Haul Down the Heavens." G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Buzz Dixon. Sunbow. 1985.
"Knotting Cobra's Coils." G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Ron Friedman. Sunbow. 1985.
"Lights! Camera! Cobra!" G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Buzz Dixon. Sunbow. 1985.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." 1975. The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. London: Routledge, 1992. 22-33.
"Orko's Favorite Uncle." He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Writ. Douglas Booth. Dir. Steve Clark. Filmation. 1983.
"Pumm Ra." Thundercats. Writ. Julian P. Gardner. Rankin-Bass/Lorimar Telepictures. 1985.
"Satellite Down." G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Ted Pederson. Sunbow. 1985.
"Search for the VHO." He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Writ. Jeffry O'Hare and Arthur Brown Jr. Dir. Gwen Wetzler. Filmation. 1983.
"The Shaping Staff." He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Writ. Paul Dini. Dir. Lou Kachivas. Filmation. 1983.
"The Sixth Sense." Thundercats. Writ. Peter Lawrence. Rankin-Bass/Lorimar Telepictures. 1985.
"The Synthoid Conspiracy Part 1." G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Writ. Christy Marx. Sunbow. 1985.
"The Taking of Greyskull." He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Writ. Janis Diamond. Dir. Ed Friedman. Filmation. 1983.
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