Popular Culture Review Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer 2007 | Page 89

Perpetuating “The Big Lie” 85 opposite, one cannot help but conclude that person is either consciously or subconsciously helping perpetuate an age-old problem in the majority of Western cinema. With all of this in mind, what are we to make of how Sommers crafts his major female characters? On one hand we might excuse him, for, after all, he has decided to work within genre material whose conventions originated long before cinema technology was even envisioned. On the other hand, Sommers may be faulted for authoring scripts that fail to contribute anything new to established generic norms by taking the easy way out. Rather than challenging his audience or cast members with female characters who are tRily original, strong, and independent, Sommers has chosen to take the path of least resistance. As this discussion suggests, the writer-director’s most recent works give little for his audience’s female cohort to identify with, and much to suggest that men perpetuate the “big lie” by viewing women as little more than companions to be undermined whenever possible. Central Michigan University John R. Craig Works Cited Bywater, Tim and Thomas Sobchack. Introduction to Film Criticism: Major Critical Approaches to Narrative Film. New York: Longman, 1989. Cadigan, Pat. Resurrecting The Mummy: The Making o f the Movie. London: Ebury Press, 1999. Fry, Carrol L. “Primal Screams: Evolutionary Imperatives in the Horror Genre.” Paper presented at the 2 T ‘ International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 22-26, 2000, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Haskell, Molly. From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment o f Women in the Movies. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. The Mummy. Stephen Sommers, director, 1999. The Mummy Returns. Stephen Sommers, director, 2001. Sunshine, Linda (Ed.) Van Helsing: The Making o f the Legend. New York: Newmarket Press, 2004. Van Helsing. Stephen Sommers, director, 2004.