Why Zero Dark Thirty is Important for Women

For over a year, Jessica Chastain kept her role in Zero Dark Thirty a secret. Chastain plays Maya, a CIA operative who spends years of her life hunting down Osama Bin Laden.

“There was speculation I was playing a Navy SEAL's wife, which just drove me nuts. I wanted to shout from the rooftops 'No, I'm playing a woman who was at the center of the greatest manhunt in history!'” Chastain said at the Zero Dark Thirty premiere in Los Angeles.

And she had good reason to want to shout it from the rooftops. Not only does Chastain carry the movie, but Maya is a strong, independent woman, who while surrounded by male colleagues, does not allow herself to be defined by them.

Zero Dark Thirty is a lot to take in upon first viewing, but more than anything else, by the time I left the theater, I was blown away by Chastain's performance. There's something haunting about her performance (Bigelow's direction may deserve credit here), but we spend a lot of time on Maya's face, as she puts together the pieces, hits walls, and starts over again. We see the exhaustion on her face, the grief and disbelief when civilians and colleagues are lost to the effort, and maybe most importantly, the self assurance that her work is not in vain.

Maya is not afraid to confront her superiors—there is a memorable scene where Maya confronts her boss, Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler)--and pushes them towards action when it comes to capturing Osama Bin Laden.

“Historically, in movies, lead female characters are defined by men. A love interest or they're the victim of the villain of the piece. Maya is not that. She's intelligent, she's capable, she's strong, she stands on her own. In my opinion, she's the perfect representation of this generation of women,” Chastain said.

Yet despite Chastain earning several accolades for her role, Jennifer Lawrence is rumored to be the Oscar favorite for Silver Linings Playbook. Critics and audience members claim that Lawrence's performance is more emotional than Chastain's.

Ironically, women being emotional is the same argument used against women when it comes to being elected to positions of power. Oh, women are too emotional to run the country or a corporation. But we want them to be emotional on our movie screens? 

In Playbook, Lawrence's Tiffany is not the main character of the film. She is introduced as a foil/friend to Pat (Bradley Cooper), and her entire storyline revolves around him. We don't see any scenes with her alone, except one where she's waiting for Pat to show up for a dance lesson.

As easy as it would be to claim the controversy around Zero Dark Thirty may be having a negative effect on its awards season performance, there's also a much simpler solution. The L.A. Times has reported 77 percent of Academy voters are male and 94 percent are white. What if 50 percent of the Academy voters were women?

Many articles have mentioned how you could turn Zero Dark Thirty into an allegory about how its director, Kathryn Bigelow, (who got snubbed by the white male Academy by not receiving a Best Director nod) feels in Hollywood, but Bigelow has stated she would have made the film whether it featured a male or female protagonist. And we have no reason not to believe her, since her last film, The Hurt Locker, featured three male leads.

And like Bigelow, I will leave readers to make their own conclusions about this Oscar race. Despite the number of accolades it may or may not receive, Zero Dark Thirty will remain important, not just for political reasons, but for how women are represented in film.  

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Of similar interest: Uppity Women: How Maya and Kathryn Bigelow Continue to Threaten the Status Quo