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Popular Culture Review
rookies joining the group, while Jericho Butler (Jason Statham) is the veteran
male whose primary interest during the mission lies in his desire to get into
Ballard’s leather pants, despite the fact she outranks him. Thus, the three women
are shown to be more than equal to the two men in the group as Braddock and
Ballard both outrank the other team members. In addition, all three are quickly
established as highly proficient with their weapons as well as able to hold their
own during hand-to-hand combat. In Carpenter’s universe, however, this equality
simply means that the women in this film are not superior to their male
counterparts, but merely as ineffective and corrupt as men have been for a long
time-particularly in Carpenter’s films.
While Carpenter is willing to show us an intriguing version of the
Hawksian team in Ghosts o f Mars, he does not appear willing to set aside some of
his long-held narrative traditions. One that is particularly apparent here dates
back to Carpenter’s treatment of the sexually active teens in Halloween who are
singled out for death by Michael Myers while Laurie Strode survives. In Ghosts,
Carpenter is similarly inclined toward Helena Braddock, the lesbian in charge of
the escort team. After establishing Braddock’s sexual inclinations as she attempts
to discern Ballard’s preferences during the train trip to Shining Canyon, Carpenter
has Braddock become the first team member to die. Not only that, but Braddock
is beheaded and her head is impaled upon a stake on a hillside littered with similar
victims of the ghosts’ wrath. Since Braddock is the only cast member the
audience is made familiar with whose body is so abused, one gets the feeling
Carpenter may be telling us he is not yet comfortable with homosexuality as a
lifestyle.
At the same time, however, Braddock’s gruesome death and
dismemberment help establish the film’s concept that women can be just as
ineffective and stupid as their male counterparts, for Braddock’s fatal mistake is
leaving the protection of the team to scout the fleeing ghost figure she spies while
reconnoitering Shining Canyon. Indeed, she chooses to leave her partner, Jericho
Butler, when prudence would suggest they investigate the fleeing specter
together.
The appearance of the film’s ghosts is also attributable to one of the
cast’s females. Dr. Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy) is working with an archeological
team exploring the planet when they come upon what turns out to be a doorway
buried in the side of a mountain. It is Whitlock who reaches out to touch the
door, which surprisingly turns to dust and sets loose the spirits of the Martian
warriors who see the colonists as invaders to be repelled. Whitlock then makes
her way to Shining Canyon and locks herself in the jail in an attempt to escape the
ghosts and in recognition of her failure. In a sense, Whitlock serves as the tainted
Hawksian team member who must overcome a character weakness to help the
team-much as Dean Martin’s Deputy Dude in Rio Bravo. And Whitlock does
eventually come clean, explaining how the spirits were let loose and acquitting
herself well whenever the team is attacked during the film’s action pieces. She