Moore seeks equality in 'G.I. Jane'

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): "Failure is no option", screams G.I. Jane's tag line. Yet, failure is definitely an option for Lt. Jordan O'Neil (Demi Moore). Nobody believes that she will make it as the first female Navy SEAL. The selection program has been heralded as the most intensive military training known to man, and a woman has to practically turn into a man to scrape through.

Of course we all know better. We know O'Neil won't just scrape through, she'll beat the hell out of her competition, and then some.

After all it's Demi Moore we're talking about here. In a career turn that is sure to eclipse her husband's Die Hard antics, she gets beaten up, shot at, dragged through mud, sexually abused, all in the name of equality. She heatedly tells her boyfriend that she refuses to be made "the poster girl for women's rights". Yet she happily lets the camera savor her skimpily clad, newly buffed-up physique as she does her one- handed push-ups.

So, when she tells her commanding officer, "I'm not here to make some sort of a statement", Moore could very well have been talking about herself.

The tag line, of course, is better suited to Moore's colorful career than her character in the movie. She was once the number one female box office star, grossing US$660.2 million in total box office receipts between 1986 and 1997. She was also the highest paid female star, raking in $12.5 million for Striptease alone. But after three of her latest projects bombed out (The Scarlet Letter, The Juror and Striptease), failure doesn't seem much of an option this time.

In G.I. Jane, Moore's character is a bright and ambitious naval intelligence officer. She is elated when she is chosen by U.S. Senator Lillian deHaven (Anne Bancroft) as the first woman to train with the Navy SEALs. She also trusts deHaven: a feisty, splendidly bedecked iron lady whose whiplash wit oozes feminism from every pore.

As it turns out, O'Neil is merely a pawn in a delicate political game. The high-profile "test case" is devised only to confirm women's ineptness in combat positions so that politicians can pronounce women generally unfit for the military.

So when O'Neil shows signs that she might actually make it, all hell breaks loose and she's being dealt out once more in return for political survival.

But this wouldn't be a Ridley Scott film if there wasn't a real crisis brewing on Libyan shores, the perfect payoff time for our heroine.

However, the Ridley Scott we're talking about is not the Ridley Scott of yesteryear, a director much associated with groundbreaking imagination (Bladerunner and Alien), a sense of style (Someone to Watch Over Me), and poignant storytelling (Thelma and Louise). His recent White Squall, and now G.I. Jane, betray more than a change of heart. He is essentially morphing into his brother Tony, whose Top Gun formula gives precedent to tales of bright heroes empowered by a military (or pseudo- military) rite of passage and proving their real worth in a real crisis situation.

But this has nothing to do with feminism, of course. G.I. Jane, with Moore's much-publicized Kojak look and all, is more a female update on a formula so predictable you can almost peel off its cliches. Jostling to carve a niche in the very den of machismo, among the very upholders of chauvinism, is hardly what feminism is all about. It is simply the consequences a woman has to face if she elects to join a male-dominated elite military force. Sure, some women have proven themselves as physically tough as some men, and they have the right to make that choice. But as we see O'Neil sexually abused by her drill instructor, hands tied up, face beaten to a pulp, we wonder whether this is what equality means.

Does respect take precedence over honor? Does acceptance win over a woman's right to protect her sexuality, which, to O'Neil, doesn't seem to be worth a penny in the first place? So much that she becomes glassy-eyed when her abusive instructor leaves her a D.H. Lawrence poem to ponder at the end of the movie? And when O'Neil screams at him, "Suck my **** (male organ)," does it mean that deliverance is finally at hand? That the manliest of women has conceded that being a man is the greatest achievement of all?

Yet the blaring applause of her comrades hints that this is precisely the message. If Thelma and Louise is a triumph of women seeking equality on their own terms, G.I. Jane seeks affirmation in all the wrong places. Sure, the former's battle is not without its share of retributive violence, but it alerts men to the fact that women too can inflict much pain on men. What G.I. Jane does is merely to conform to a man's world, venturing to the outer limits of physical endurance exactly the way men do. If that's the case, then there would be need for a male and female toilet.

Through O'Neil's unblinking denunciation of her truest, most valuable asset, G.I. Jane helps give chauvinism its ringing endorsement.

Beyond the alarming degree and quality of violence, the movie boasts some strengths, notably its good use of music and detailed cinematography. Except for Bancroft, who overstretches her Southern grande dame persona to the point of hilarity, the acting fares reasonably well. Moore cuts a striking figure: steely, focused, and fully deserving of the role. Viggo Mortensen's Chief Master John Urgayle is a dead ringer for Jeff Bridges' character in White Squall: cool, enigmatic, intractable.

If there is one more quibble, it has to do with Ridley Scott's current tendency toward monotony. The film is way too long at two hours eight minutes, and the protracted training footage quickly wear you down. Like White Squall, it rambles aimlessly and overplays its points until they become flat and dispiriting. Even O'Neil's vague relationship with her poorly defined comrades leaves a lot to be desired.