Page 30 - ARUBA TODAY

A30 PEOPLE & ARTS
Thursday 29 June 2017
TV, films turning to young girls for their new action stars

By SANDY COHEN vampires all through high
AP Entertainment Writer school in the late 1990s,
LOS ANGELES (AP) — From young girls are rarely shown
the murderous Laura in as heroes in programs
“Logan” to the mysterious aimed at general audi-
Eleven in “Stranger Things” ences, said Mary Celeste
to the audacious determi- Kearney, director of gen-
nation of Mija in “Okja,” der studies and a professor
opening Wednesday, pow- of film, television and the-
erful young girls are starring ater at University of Notre
in mainstream action fare Dame.
like never before. “Girls have seen these fig-
Though Nancy Drew was ures... but when they’ve
solving mysteries in the looked to mainstream stuff
1930s and Buffy slayed and what their brothers

This image released by Twentieth Century Fox shows Dafne Keen, right, and Hugh Jackman in a
scene from “Logan.”
Associated Press
and their dads and boys mieres Oct. 31. screen superheroes.
are watching, those girls Writer-director Bong Joon He chose to make Laura a
are never there,” Kearney Ho intentionally made his child rather than the teen-
said. “And now they are, central human character ager she is in the comics be-
and that’s huge.” a girl in “Okja,” an inter- cause of the bond it would
It means girls don’t have national adventure film allow with Hugh Jackman’s
to look to grown up he- named for the genetically character and the shock
roes like Katniss Everdeen engineered six-ton “super it might elicit when Laura
in “The Hunger Games” or pig” at its heart. draws her claws.
Rey in “Star Wars: The Force “In cartoons or movies, Like Hit-Girl in 2010’s “Kick-
Awakens.” Like 10-year-old young girls are often por- Ass,” Laura is a charac-
Elliot on the flying bicycle trayed as characters that ter created in her father’s
in “E.T. the Extraterrestrial,” need to be protected or image. She’s Wolverine’s
now girls are having awe- rescued. I wanted to do daughter and has just as
some genre adventures as the opposite,” the film- much flesh-shredding pow-
powerful young kids on- maker said in an email. “I er as her dad.
screen. liked that a young female “I did think the shocking na-
The Duffer Brothers said character was the unstop- ture of Laura’s ability to kill
gender was never a ques- pable guardian of a crea- savagely would be all the
tion when it came to cre- ture, and that she had to more shocking, in a really
ating the super-powered charge and break through wonderful way, that it was
star character in their Net- all obstacles that stood in a girl and not a boy, that
flix series “Stranger Things.” her way. I liked this feeling.” that lethalness would be
Eleven, played by 13-year- Played by 13-year-old An exhibited by this little girl,”
old Millie Bobby Brown, Seo Hyun, Mija has grown Mangold said. “I wondered
can move things with her up with Okja, and risks ev- whether we could pull it
mind and is the fascinat- erything to protect the off, whether the audience
ing secret friend of a group massive creature when the would truly believe this lev-
of pre-teen boys in the fic- corporation that sponsored el of violence and intensity
tional town of Hawkins, In- the super-pig program trapped inside an 11-year-
diana. “Eleven was always comes to claim its product. old body. To me that made
a girl. I don’t even remem- One thing that’s missing it even more exciting to put
ber when or why we made from “Okja” and the other it on the screen.”
that decision except that projects is a stereotypical Mangold said he took
was always the case,” Matt little girl who needs saving. care with Laura’s charac-
Duffer said in a recent inter- “Logan” writer-director ter, who’s mute for the first
view. “Eleven was the cen- James Mangold can’t half of the film and speaks
terpiece of the show for take credit for creating only Spanish in the second,
us always and was always the young female mutant to “undermine the kind of
going to be this girl who es- Laura — he mined the cute factor of what this
caped the lab... I think we character from “X-Men” young woman would be
liked the idea because it history. But Mangold cast and allow her to exist as her
wasn’t something we had an exceptional actress, own unique character.”
seen before.” 11-year-old Dafne Keen, It’s notable, too, that these
A second little girl is join- and successfully brought a young heroines are not
ing the cast for the show’s killer female character to all embodied by white
second season, which pre- the ultra-male world of big- actresses.q