Carpenter Trio
One Piece of the Formula:
The Hawksian Women in the Films of John Carpenter
When a young John Carpenter first saw Angie Dickinson in Howard
Hawks’s seminal 1959 western, Rio Bravo, her performance as one of Hawks’s
prototypical tough women made a lasting impression on the youthful fllmgoer.
As Carpenter’s directorial career has progressed, his adoption of the “Hawksian
woman” as a character in his screenplays has been repeatedly noted by his
biographers, Robert Cumbow and John Kenneth Muir, in the many critical
analyses of the Carpenter filmography, and as a forthright admission by the
director himself.
John Carpenter may be the closest thing we have to a true auteur in the
film industry today, as he not only directs his titles but also usually scores the
music and either writes or co-authors most of his films’ plot lines. Throughout
his theatrical features, from Assault on Precinct IS to Ghosts o f Mars, Carpenter
has often included at least one tough Hawksian female in the cast. In his two
most recent productions, however, Carpenter has veered somewhat from the
formula by depicting Katrina in Vampires as little more than a victim of various
characters’ abuse. In his last film, Ghosts o f Mars, Carpenter seemingly returns
to the template by setting his narrative in a matriarchal society where women not
only rule but also head the planet’s various social institutions such as law
enforcement and scientific exploration.
In their book-length studies of John Carpenter’s career, both Muir and
Cumbow discuss the contribution Howard Hawks’s films made to Carpenter’s
storytelling sense. Muir has defined the Hawksian woman, as epitomized by
Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo, as “. . . a female \*ho gives as good as she gets
and is both tough and feminine at the same time” (11). Cumbow supplements
these defining traits when he notes that Carpenter’s work shows him as a director
who “ . . . remains less interested in sexual attraction than in the ability of women
to prove themselves to be at least as tough and resourceful as the men around
them” (229). Finally, in his study of Hawks’s work, Robin Wood says
Dickinson’s character “. . .gives us the perfect embodiment of the Hawksian
woman, intelligent, resilient and responsive. There is a continual sense of a
woman who really grasps what is important to her. . . .It is not so much a matter
of characterization as the communication of a life quality” (42).
We see a parade of these female characters throughout Carpenter’s
works. In most instances, the women are unattached and not in need of a man to
provide them with such fundamental needs as food and shelter. The “life quality”