The “babe scientist” phenomenon: the illusion of inclusion in 1990s American action films

John Rambo, the Terminator, Indiana Jones, Martin Riggs, John McClane: tough, resourceful, authoritative males stoically making the world safe from futuristic terrorists, drug lords, Teutonic mercenaries, Nazis, smallminded rednecks and small-town sheriffs. As this litany of protagonists and antagonists from action-adventure films of the 1980s suggests, the American action film has long been the province of the burly, musclebound hero, as well as one of the most commercially successful genres in American cinema. What, then, does this historically male-dominated genre have to do with chick flicks? A spate of action-adventure films dating from the early 1990s has sought to co-opt female viewers by including a “partner” for the muscular male protagonist: the female scientist or, in Internet Movie Database parlance, the “babe scientist.”