The Surprisingly Kickass Women of UNCLE (1/2)
I have a lot of complicated thoughts on feminism in The Man from UNCLE, but maybe my favourite underappreciated little detail is just how willing they were to let a woman take on a man in a fair fight – and win.
Maybe she’s an agent working for UNCLE or THRUSH, maybe she’s an ‘innocent’ who happens to have a few extra skills – or maybe she’s just an ordinary innocent with the wits to spot a good opening. Good or evil, pro or amateur, major guest star or minor walk-on role
–
examples pop up all over the spectrum. More often than not, it wasn’t even treated like a big deal.
No-one had to stop and exclaim their wonder at this improbable marvel of
a woman throwing herself into the fray. No-one had to make sure to tell us that Ms. Guest Star knew kung fu – because if it mattered, we’d be seeing it
in action. We saw so much of it over the series that I’m going to need a second post just to cover my shortlist of examples I wanted gif.
Considering the miserable record for the faux action girl problem on film and TV to this day, I can’t even tell you how refreshing it was to run into a show (let alone a show from this decade and genre) so willing to let the innocent of the week rescue our heroes once in a while. And yet moments like these remained a semi-regular occurrence through multiple seasons*, multiple changes of showrunner, and what are now legendary changes to tone and quality (and say what you like about S3, but I still got to feel like it had my back in one of those places where it counted). For all that changed, baked into the ethos of UNCLE was a remarkably steadfast belief that a woman who knew what she’s doing could absolutely overpower a man – especially if he didn’t see her
coming.
(Frequently, that man is Napoleon, and if he isn’t, then there are good odds she’s rescuing him from someone else. You know he’s into it.)
Not everything about the show has aged as well – even UNCLE
has its tells of 60′s sexism bleeding in around the edges of many scripts – but I think details like this probably have a lot to do
with why the show still resonates with younger fans today. UNCLE gave the world a welcomingly escapist fantasy for everyone, not just for men.
Some attributions, so you know what came from where:
Gif 1:The Karate Killers/The Five Daughters Affair (S3), Julie Ann Johnson as an UNCLE agent from the Rome office, tasked with protecting the innocent from a THRUSH pursuit. A professional stuntwoman who was still doing pro stunt work well into her 60′s (seriously – look her up!), though Johnson only gets a couple of scenes here, it’s obvious why they wanted her for the role. Even most of the actual ‘karate killers’ of the title didn’t manage to look this convincing in action.
Gif 2:
The Deadly Decoy Affair (S1),
Joanna Moore
as Fran Parsons. A total nobody who got caught up in the case by pure bad luck, she hesitates not at all to tackle (what she thinks is) a THRUSH commander, keeping him busy long enough for Napoleon to overpower his own opponent.
Gifs 3-4:
The Cherry Blossom Affair (S2),
A THRUSH agent, played by Grace Lee, who judo-flips Napoleon and proceeds to knock him out with his own favourite move, in a scene I may have enjoyed far too much. He’s later rescued by the episode’s innocent. (Grace Lee was also one of the S1′s Wandas, for some bonus trivia.)
Gifs 5-6:
The Odd Man Affair (S1)
Bryn Watson, played by Barbara Shelley. An ‘innocent’ accountant and widowed mother of two – though also a onetime expert courier in the French resistance. Bryn also throws herself into the fray later to help Illya start a bar fight when their cover needed salvaging, and for all that her technique largely seems to consist of hitting people with her handbag, you have to admit it gets the job done.
Gifs 7-8:
The Galatea Affair (S3),
Joan Collins as Rosy Shlagenheimer – a performer from a sleezy Hamburg bar, whose mother just so happened to be a professional wrestler. Though the ‘real’ Rosy spends much of the episode unconscious thanks to a clever THRUSH counter-plot, her family legacy ensures she still makes a real impression once she’s freed.
* In the interests of strict accuracy, I am forced to admit I could not find any good examples in S4, while The Girl from UNCLE (despite having a regular female lead) was sadly reputed to have let the side down badly in this regard. Even so, you just watch The Odd Man Affair and The My Friend The Gorilla Affair back-to-back sometime, see if you can come up with a solid similarity other than “both feature a scene where Napoleon is rescued from very probable death by a woman with a mean right hook,” and tell me that isn’t some kind of achievement.
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