The action heroine is always motivated, and her actions justified, by maternal instincts. Do you agree? I DOUBT IT!

Within the traditionally male action genre there have always existed the subgenre of the "action heroine" . Some suggest that the action heroine s really just a "man in women’s clothing not a gender-bender , but a cross dresser" ( Clover, Carol.1993 :27). The films The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin,1996), Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino,2003-4) , Mr and Mrs Smith (Simon Kinberg,2005) Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) and The Terminator (James Cameron,1989) all argue that the maternal instincts and motherly nature of the these female characters are only present in the narratives to these films to legitimize their extreme use of violence. These action heroines are certainly provided with maternal motives so that their goal and objective in their aggressiveness is framed as mothering. Even the names of these heroines in the action genre are challenging, Lady Lara croft, Charlie Angle, Beatrix kiddo. The names here function symbolically to weaken them and to demonstrate their subordinate place within the conventional system . Yet by juxtaposing their feminine names with their aggression they subvert against notion of patriarchy. In this way the action heroine is shackled to conventional ideals of femininity such as maternal instincts, despite the fact that she takes on the guise of the traditional male warrior, with the use of guns and swords.

The heroine in the film The Long Kiss Goodnight continuously battles with her maternal instincts. Its also important to look at the transformation of heroine to mother and mother to heroine. To explain how Samantha became Charley the subject of the daughter is used. As her alter ego Samantha, she devotes herself to daughter Caitlin but as Charley she at first ignores the Childs well being and even states that "Samantha had a kid, not I". By the end of the film Charley is driven by her maternal instincts and rescues the her daughter. The closing credits compliment this point further. The credits accompany a song that personifies her maternal instincts to save her child. The song that plays is called Woman (Neneh Cherry,1997). However it is the lyrics of "to save my child I’d rather go hungry"(Neneh Cherry,1997) that strike importance. When the song is juxtaposed with the film itself, the lyrics of this song clearly suggest that maternal devotion can overcome the resistance of even a tough female and therefore the action heroine in this film is motivated by her maternal instincts. Furthermore The Long Kiss Goodnight also draws on the images of castration and family. Guns are used in the film to masquerade the females maternal instincts. Charley even contemplates "Who am I?" whilst stroking her gun, "Am I a woman or am I a man?" This scene can be juxtaposed with when Charley looks at her family through a gun. These two conflicting scenes suggest that as a action heroine she is divided between killing and caring and even the soft music in these two scene signal the return of maternal feelings.

Many films show the heroines in motherly situations in Kill Bill and The Terminator.These motherly situations remind viewers that powerful women and despite being in a traditionally male genre they are still women. However is could be argued that the action heroine will always be motivated by her maternal instincts but she will always channel this through identification with the "male" action hero and his masculine characteristics. This is supported further by psychoanalysis. Freud pointed out that the female "borrows her masculine attributes and characteristics from the man" (Strachey, James,1978 :179) because his motivations are hidden within her maternal instincts and therefore her motivations. The character of Vasquez in the film Aliens is deliberately compared to her male marines and scenes consist of her physical strength and authority. As she performs a series of chin-ups, the vulgar Hicks yells ,"Hey, Vasquez! You ever been mistaken for a man?", "No," she retorts, "have you?". This scene perfectly illustrates that the film self-consciously rejects gender difference. Lieutenant Vasquez character subvert against the notion that the action heroine is motivated by maternal instincts. She clearly is not.

As a result it is the female stock characters that are not motivated by maternal instincts but the female protagonists are maternalized: The Bride (Kill Bill) and Sarah Connor (Terminator) both fight antagonistically because of their children. Even the Alien franchise’s iconic Ripley, though childless, is maternalized throughout the films be it through emotional adoption of Newt or unplanned pregnancy where she herself is harbouring a alien inside her. Therefore the character of Ripley is motivated by maternal instincts but only because the film turns Ripley into a good mother by confronting her with a bad mother, the deadly alien queen. The Terminator and character of Sarah Connor also shows the binary opposites of bad/good mother. However unlike Ripley, Sarah Connor in the second film emotionally abandons her son in preparation for the war against the terminators. However it could be argued that Ripley also abandons her biological daughter although not intentionally as she wakes up from space coma. Therefore I would argue that action heroines are motivated by maternal instincts but only by exposing the binaries of the good/bad mother. The action heroines transform from bad mothers to good and they channel this maternal journey to motivate them to kill and fight the "bad guys".

Therefore maternity is a theme that runs through many of the action female heroine. Effectively the entire Alien film is about two mothers battling each other in order to protect their children. Ripley’s daughter has grown-up and died whilst she’s been lost in the escape pod, she projects her maternal instincts onto Newt. Newt even calls Ripley "mommy" at one stage when she is terrified about the impending threat of death. Ripley behaves like a mother does, protecting Newt and against all odds rescuing her from certain death on more than one occasion. When the marines are initially captured by the aliens for cocooning, Ripley opposes the remaining marines from launching a rescue mission because they "can’t save them", however later when Newt is captured for cocooning Ripley hypocritically risks the male characters of Bishop and Hick’s lives to save her. Therefore the rational side of Ripley is overwhelmed by the maternal instinct.

The action heroine can also be present in The Queen Mother in the film Alien. The Queen effectively gives birth to every alien on the colony. She shows protective impulses at the end when Ripley threatens her eggs with a flame thrower and she is enraged into attack when Ripley decides to kill all of her young ones. Thus even the antagonists in the film Alien are motivated by maternal instincts. Although the alien Queen is a good mother, for her own offspring she uses her maternal power to impregnate and kill another race, in other words , humans.

As is well known, in Alien Ripley was originally written to be a man and the transition to female was as simple as changing "he" to "she" and "his" to "her" in the shooting script, even Ripley’s first name is not revealed until the sequel. Now as a mother as well as a hero we can truly see her as a female action hero.

The character of Beatrix in the film Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 draws attention to the problematics surrounding the action heroine and her motives. Her character blends temper toughness with maternal motivation. The female heroes in these films are kept isolated from other women because their loyalty resided ultimately with children’s well being. However there is a scene whereby Beatrix kills Vernita then her four-year-old daughter arrives. This scene shows highlights Beatrix’s killer instincts. It also appears that here the action heroine embodies both the maternal and fighter instincts and these two are fused together and therefore become inseparable.

When Beatrix finally finds Bill, he questions her actions and stresses that her instincts as a fighter somehow overrule whatever maternal instincts she may possess. When Bill questions Beatrix’s decision to leave him and settle down to raise their daughter, she says that she made her decision for the safety of her child, "I had to choose… I chose her" However ,Bill states that Beatrix is a cold killer at heart and it is deep-seated in her. Beatrix supports this notion and admits that killing all of those people to get to Bill felt "damn good", which somewhat supports Bill’s notion that she is motivated by her killer instincts than her maternal ones. However, once again we are being drawn back to whether Beatrix was driven by her maternal instincts, she even declares, "It was the right decision and I made it for my daughter". Bill replies, "I think you would have been a wonderful mother, but you are a killer". Here the character Bill juxtaposes both the words ‘mother’ and ‘killer’ clearly highlighting that the action heroine’s killer instincts are stronger than her maternal instincts yet Beatrix’s cold and brutal violence is balanced by her love and affection toward her daughter, which suggests that it is possible for a woman to embody both killer and maternal instincts and therefore an action heroine is not just singularly motivated by maternal instincts but rather by both killer and motherly instincts.

Another interesting film to note it Mr and Mrs Smith , more importantly Angelina Jollies’ character. The film is void of children and maternity yet it still shows how women are not necessarily motivated by maternal instincts. The scene whereby Jane and her female entourage rummage through her house destroying her belongings is significant. The employees come across a DVD of John and Jane’s marriage. Jane’s character rejects the images she sees on screen and rather battles with her feminine instincts as after a whiles thought she switches the video off abruptly. The act of her turning the T.V off suggests that as a action heroine she makes a conscious decision to marry her job rather than to commit herself to a full time job of marriage. Therefore Mrs Jane as a female heroine refuses to be motivated by maternal instincts and even goes on to imply that Marriage is not a prerequisite for having children.

In conclusion it is clear that films such as Kill Bill, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Terminator , Mr and Mrs Smith and Aliens all include female characters in the same roles as men. As a action heroine the characters as themselves all unite two genders, they may be in the same genre as the male hero, but they are each not given the same narrative in which to play out their heroine quests. However when a women becomes the action heroine, her story is told in two stories at the same time. The first story is what motivates her to kill and act "masculine" and the other is the "feminine" world that she is surrounded in therefore flooded us with the fact that very

"few action heroines can wholly escape maternal imagery". Thus the films of Alien, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Terminator and Kill Bill all seem at a loss to deal with female perpetrated acts of maternity without labelling them maternal. All these films embody motherhood themes to motivate and justify the unfeminine aggression that all these females seem to possess. To conclude not all action heroines are motivated by maternal instincts but rather it is more close to the fact that the "cultural environment that we live in today has become more receptive to female characters on screen, demanding power within their narrative worlds"(Yvonne Tasker,1993:38). For that reason these action heroines all have a set of motivations and aspirations beyond those of motherhood.