Reams have been written about whether Tank Girl is a legitimate feminist icon or not. My position is something along the lines of OMIGODILOVEHER which comes partly from a feminist place and partly from a place of profound 12 year old outsiderdom and rage.

Just to be clear I’m talking about what I think of as Tank Girl – the comics not the film (oh God not the film) and basically the first two volumes of the collected comic by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. After that the stories go to an even weirder place, and I think the artwork goes downhill too (I’m fussy about artwork – reading Alan Moore’s superb Swamp Thing series despite the garish colour was a labour of love). But anyway: there’s a little chunk of my soul which belongs to early Tank Girl.

Where to start? She looks awesome. Yes, she’s often in a bra, and yes, she has a slightly implausible figure, but she’s a million miles away from traditional balloon breasted comic book heroines. She is rather androgynous, masculine without being butch, has actual facial expressions and a great philosophy about clothes. She is sexy, and sexual, but in a way which entirely rejects the idea of a performed sex appeal.

Then there’s her attitude. Irreverent and subversive to the very core of her being, she is linked in some of the stories with a demonic force, a sort of soul of chaos. There’s a great story where an aboriginal community summons a kind of mystical proto-Tank Girl (called Tanicha) to wreak bloody vengeance on the white men who are trying to steal their land and assault the women.¹ Tanicha slaughters them gleefully, and in interestingly gendery ways. Tank Girl laughs at danger, power, pomp and duty in a thrilling and vicariously liberating way.

Tank Girl, Sub Girl and Jet Girl

But then there are a few moments in which she is breathtakingly, shockingly human, even vulnerable. In one story, she dreams that her friends and her lover have had their minds destroyed in a psychiatric institution, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest -stylee. She wakes up shaken and goes to sit outside her beloved tank to think. As the sun comes up, her lover brings her a mug of tea. He’s a mutant kangaroo called Booga, for anyone who doesn’t know, but that doesn’t make the moment any less touching.

Although many of the characters that accompany her on her adventures are men, her female relationships are surprisingly significant. Her two childhood friends Jet Girl and Sub Girl are introduced in a story about her birthday party (spoiled through a lack of decent beer) and one issue consists of a letter from Tank Girl to her mum. She also goes to England at one point to visit her sick grandmother.

And some of the best stories are where she gets one over on a series of macho tough guys, from a kangaroo gang leader to a bounty hunter who underestimates her special gift for total destruction. In one of my favourites her former sergeant becomes obsessed with her lack of respect and her lack of discipline, and sets out to annihilate her. In his dream he prepares to blow her apart with a rocket but she just laughs at him.

Sergeant: “Look at me when I’m going to kill you!”

Tank: “The male ego rides again… Should I faint or scream? Ha ha ha ha!”

Then her breasts transform into missiles. Which makes the point quite nicely, I feel.

Tank Girl is not a positive role model. She’s not a ‘strong female character’. Unlike, say, the similarly badass Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica reboot, she’s not particularly troubled, and she doesn’t experience remorse.

But when I was a geeky 12-year-old at school, powerless and furious, she was a lifeline. I’m sure my TG-inspired dreams of destruction saved me from turning my rage on someone in real life, when I finally gave up the fight to be quiet and pretty and clever and kind. When my peers were throwing sandwiches at me on the bus I’d just think, “What would Tank Girl do?” And I’d lean my head against the window and enjoy the carnage.

1. This is a bit dodgy I guess as Hewlett and Martin patch in a bit of faux aboriginal culture as it suits them, but one of the main characters (Stevie) is an indigenous Australian and there’s nothing particularly mystical about him at least.

Alright then, Friday Night Lights (the film, not the TV series). It’s the true-ish (true in as much as any Hollywood adaptation of real events is ever true) story of the 1988 Permian Panthers, a highschool American football team based out of Odessa, Texas. Based on the book of the same name by H.G. Bassinger, it’s really quite an amazing depiction of the levels of pressure placed on young players in a town that has nothing else going for it. Odessa is the sort of town where you get into college with a football scholarship, or you stay there and live out the same life your parents did.

It might be a somewhat unusual choice for this site, given that it’s focused entirely on the macho-tastic world of American football, and features less than a handful of female characters – all defined by their relationship to one of the males (the coach’s wife, the quarterback’s mother) – who get maybe 10 lines in total. But stick with me here, because the film does raise a few issues worth discussing.

First up, let’s just cover why this film counts as a favourite. American football, more than perhaps any other sport, is self-mythologising. It builds up a grand narrative, spins out legends, and casts itself as something more than just a bunch of millionaires in armour running into each other. Go watch a highlight video, or an episode of America’s Game, which shows the story of each year’s Superbowl winner. Everything about them, the way the footage is cut, the music, is all part of narrativising the events, making myths. And Friday Night Lights captures that perfectly.

Part of the reason the film captures that feeling so well, and part of what makes it a good film (other than some excellent cinematography and casting) is the soundtrack. The film is almost entirely accompanied by the work of Explosions in the Sky, a sweeping instrumental act native to Texas, where the events take place. Take a listen to this and tell me it doesn’t make you want to go do something grand.

But enough of the fanboying. Let’s look at the issues this film brings up.

The first interesting thing the film handles is issues of race. Texas, particularly the smaller towns, is not well known for its progressive attitude towards racial equality. So when the championship game turns out to be against the state’s first all-black team, Dallas Carter, this is a big thing. And you know what? It’s handled pretty damn well. It can probably best be summed up with one particular quote. The coaches and assorted hangers-on of both teams have met to discuss where the game will take place, and how it will be adjudicated to ensure fairness. Asked about referees, the Panthers’ coach suggests hiring a team of officials. Asked whether these zebras¹ will be black or white the coach replies “I believe a zebra’s got about the same amount of black stripes as he does white ones.”

It’s not just the coaches. The players on the Panthers are a pretty varied mix of black, white and Latino. It’s hard to say how much of this is credit to the film makers, and how much is merely a reflection on the make up of the real life team the events are based on. What is definitely to their credit though is the way these characters are handled. The film makers resist the temptation to give us Male White Lead #27b and make the entire film about the quarterback. Instead we get equal screen time devoted to several of the characters (with the arguable show-stealer being Derek Luke as star running back James “Boobie” Miles). It’s nice to see.

The second issue we get in the film, which I’d argue is relevant to basically everyone, is the pressure placed on young people and the struggles of forming an identity. In the context of the film this identity is mostly about defining yourself as a person beyond what your town expects of you as a player. But the basic principle applies to any youthful deviation from accepted norms, which is probably something a fair few readers here have experienced. Telling the world you identify as a feminist might not immediately seem the same as telling your dad you don’t care that much about football, but I think the film does a nice job of showing the universal pressures of youth that tie both experiences together.

Being the champions is basically all the town cares about. On game day, everything shuts down as people leave their workplaces to go watch the game. It’s made clear to the coach that if they don’t win the state championship he should probably think about finding a different down to live in. Win and you’re a local god, lose and you’re a pariah. The alcoholic former-champion father of one character captures this particularly well, kind and caring when the team’s winning, drunk and abusive when his son makes a mistake. How does someone grow and learn to be themselves faced with that?

It’s a good film, it raises some interesting points, and it gives a fascinating look into the life of small town Texas. And for all that it shows the darker side of football, it’s still the film that made me go out and start playing, so it has to get some credit for that.

1. Zebras being a nickname for referees, due to their black and white striped tops.

Calamity Jane (played by Doris Day) starts off the 1953 musical film of the same name as a tomboy, gets humiliated and learns to be a girl, then gets married. In a dress and everything.

Despite this, it’s one of my very favourite films.

Proud and tomboyish ‘Calam’ is a popular and respected figure in the town of Deadwood. Not just one of the boys, but determined to outshoot, outdrink, outswagger them all. But she’s met her match in Wild Bill Hickok whom she admires and who grudgingly admires her, although they get into one of those “ooh I hate you and don’t fancy you at all, nope” oneupmanship songs. Calam and Bill are comrades, but Calam’s in love with the local Lieutenant Danny, and saves his life, but he’s not interested in her. Because he’s a dick, basically.

Doris Day as Calamity and Howard Keel as Bill Hickock

Anyway, a Proper Lady (Katie) comes to town and becomes friends with Calam, helping her discover her feminine side (I know, I know, just bear with me) and Bill falls unconvincingly in love with her. But when Danny and Katie are discovered KISSING, Calam loses it and threatens to run Katie out of town. She makes a right fool of herself, and Danny is mean about her, but Bill Hickok defends her and goes to console/talk some sense into a bereft Calam. On a still summer night, in a wood, under a silvery moon, etc… they kiss, and conveniently enough it turns out they’ve been in love all along! Everyone makes friends again, Calam marries Bill and Katie marries Danny, even though he’s a knob.

Okay. So there are some tough bits, most notably the repeated references to “female thinking”, and the godawful A Woman’s Touch song. I get through this by donning slash goggles, through which it all becomes rather charming and ironic.

There’s even a symbolic castration of Calam at the end when she and Bill get married – they’re just getting on the stagecoach and he finds she has her gun tucked into her wedding dress. They all laugh and he hands it to some random in the crowd. Then they ride off singing etc.

BUT. There is a lot that is loveable about this film, and it’s not as bad as the details above might suggest.

Firstly, Doris Day’s Calam is a wonderful character. Brave, kind, funny and bursting with energy, she leaps about all over the place, and has a habit of firing at the ceiling to get people’s attention. She’s a tomboy but she’s no freak – everyone in the town is fond of her, respects her and humours her habit of exaggerating her own exploits. She’s accepted, not just tolerated. Her flaw is her pride, and the real point of the story is that it’s her pride which is ‘corrected’ and not her masculine habits.

Secondly, although she is engirlied, she doesn’t become a 50s fembot. She wears a few dresses, but mostly she’s out of her buckskins yet still in trousers. There’s no sign at all she’s going to give up riding the stage (or violently oppressing the indigenous population). I think my favourite bit in the whole film is near the end when she’s racing after Katie’s coach to bring her back to Deadwood, and she passes Bill and his mate on her horse. She thunders past, then stops, turns, rides back, kisses him, and rides off again without a word.

His friend says “I don’t know what kind of life you’ll have living with that catamount… but it ain’t gonna be dull.”

Bill replies: “That’s for dang sure.” He looks delighted.

Thirdly, although it arrives at a supremely convenient time in that way that musicals have, the relationship between Calam and Bill is a convincing one. Throughout the film there are references to their friendship and campaigns together, and they are clearly fond of each other. He sticks up for her when Danny is being disparaging, and tells her early on he thinks she’d be pretty (if she was a Proper Lady, natch). So when Calamity ‘takes off her glasses’ at the Ball (in fact she’s been covered up in a coat she claims was given to her by General Custer) it isn’t as if he’s only just noticed her. And crucially, rather than trying to put her down or get her to act in a more feminine way, his efforts are about bringing her down to earth from her flights of fancy and towering pride.

It’s not a feminist film. It’s not even close. But Calamity is wonderful, and I think better a film with her in it than not at all.

PS. The title is a reference to the most famous song in the film, Secret Love, which has become a bit of a gay anthem. My favourite is The Black Hills Of Dakota, although it has a lot less subtext.

PPS. Don’t come to this film looking for historical accuracy. Here’s some info on the actual Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok.