I'm watching the 3rd season of Millenium. The episode is called "Collateral Damage." Peter Watts, Frank's connection to the Millenium group, has his daughter kidnapped. James Marsters is dressed up like a surgeon and he is about to do very bad things to the daughter. When the Marsters' character tries to grab the daughter, she puts up a pretty good fight until she gets tasered, but that didn't seem that strange to me. The strange bit came at the end. Marsters is a disgruntled Gulf War vet that believes the troops were infected with bio-weapons during the war. He wants the Millenium group to spill its secrets. He kidnaps the daughter of Watts to get cooperation. He infects her with a bio-weapon and watches her get sick. She is getting nasty bloody spots all over and ugly purple lumps on her face. I guess they would be lesions. You can imagine just how messed up someone like that would feel. I'm guessing at least like a bad flu. Frank and Watts find Marsters at about the same time. When they are talking on the phone outside the Marsters' bio lab, someone takes a shot at Marsters. He ducks and turns to see the daughter is no longer strapped in her chair. He goes to check on where she is. Here is the moment of high strangeness. Watts' daughter walks up behind Marsters and snaps his neck like a chickens. She did pretty good for Rambo. She is a killing machine. I've never broken anybody's neck before, but I'm sure it isn't an easy novice thing. She did it like an expert. I just thought that seemed really unrealistic. One more interesting thing about the episode is that Art Bell appears on the show and talks to Frank while Marsters calls into the show.
Wow, a woman in an American television show demonstrating unnatural, unrealistic fighting skills. That's never happened before.
Usually they are a cop or soldier or martial arts master. This was just some college girl or maybe even a teenager that was just out bowling. I never liked it in Star Trek, mainly Deep Space 9, when one of the women that couldn't weigh more than 125 pounds would hit a Klingon built like a line backer and send him flying off his feet like he was hit in the chest by a howitzer.
It's an extreme example, but still indicative of the ridiculously unrealistic abilities bestowed upon female characters in American television and film. The best example is Dollhouse - just giving tiny girls like Eliza Dushku and Diechen Lachman the memory of having martial arts skills somehow prevents them from breaking every bone in both hands when fighting male opponents. Oh, and the best part - despite having numerous tall, strong, male Actives at their disposal, they always use female Actives for combat jobs.
Even big beefy guys can break bones in their hand during a fist fight. I think women just love to see another woman kicking ass. It makes them feel powerful. Then there are the horny guys that just love to see a woman kicking ass in a little tiny outfit(The outfit is nice, just stop beating up the linebackers). I know my girlfriend loves seeing women kick ass.
There's also the matter of being able to take a punch from one of those guys. Once someone like Tahmoh Penikett had finished punching her in the face, I doubt many customers would want to hire Echo for any more romantic engagements. The fact that it makes them feel powerful is a little bit disturbing, if I'm honest. As a man, I don't feel particularly powerful when I see a man beating up a woman.
As a man, you must have been taught not to hit a woman, at least in most Western countries. I don't think that has gone away too much.
I was taught not to hit women sure, and then I learned that it's not okay to hit anyone. Quite frankly, women who enjoy seeing other women beat up men, who feel powerful because of it, need to learn that lesson for themselves. There's something wrong with feeling empowered by seeing someone else getting beaten up.
I think it is just an emotion they feel. They can't really help themselves. Just hope they don't watch too many movies like "The Burning Bed" on the Lifetime channel.
^Well, that's an entirely different but equally dangerous category of movie - TV movies made for channels like Lifetime in which men are all evil violent oppressors who take the heroic woman's - usually played by women who used to be in shows that were popular - kids away to be destroyed.