Department of English, University of Louisville Phone: (502)852-6770 or (502)852-6801. Fax: (502)852-4182. Among strong women in mainstrean Hollywood cinema: Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the ALIEN series; Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in TERMINATOR 2; Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. What's most interesting/troubling to me about all of these is the ways in which patriarchy recuperates them: in Starling's case by making her determinedly a daughter (w/ not just one but THREE very clear father figures); in Sarah Connor's case by showing her to be both a bad mother and an inadequate protector who, tough as she is, simply can't do it w/o an even tougher, more pumped up man--see the scenes in the scientist's home (and Susan Jeffords' remarks about her in HARDBODIES--Rutgers University Press) for the abjection of this strong woman); in the case of Alien by the infamous undressing scene, which I've looked at in "Kissing Becky: Masculine Fears and Misogynist Moments in Science Fiction Films," ARIZONA QUARTERLY 45.3 (autumn 1989): 77-95. Generally, Hollywood does not allow strong women w/o undercutting them in some specific way that allows them not to be too disturbing to men--though increasingly conscious of this sort of critique, H'wood increasingly tries to have it both ways. One more comment--one of the most amazing things about all this for me was the recent flap about vengeful violence by women in THELMA and LOUISE. Suddenly violence that's routine in buddy movies became disturbing, because women were doing it (rather than having it done to them). To me this isprecisely the converse to the tendency of the "new man" movies of the last fifteen years--starting w/ KRAMER VS KRAMER--to make domestic work and childrearing heroic NOW THAT A MAN IS DOING THEM. Of course there are bazillions of good books and articles about all of this--to my mind one of the best recent things is Tania Modleski's 1991 FEMINISM WITHOUT WOMEN (Routledge). What do others recommend? bitnet tbbyer01@ulkyvm; internet [log in to unmask] Thomas B. Byers Department of English/University of Louisville Louisville KY 40292