By Richard Corliss From China to California, in TV and films, pop culture is embracing a new image of the action heroine who is both feminist and feminine. I t used to be the heroine's job to get in trouble and the hero's job to get her out of it. You've come a long way, baby. Max, the bionic babe on Fox's Dark Angel , occasionally lets a mere man help her save the world, after which she suavely extracts herself from his adoration. Fact is, TV has long been a woman's medium.
Movies are guy space.
So consider the release next month of Josie and the Pussycats , a live-action version of the comic book and the '70s TV cartoon series, and this sommer's Tomb Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Raider , with Angelina Jolie as supervixen Laura Croft. In all the great epics, from the Iliad on, the protagonists have been masculine, their destinies a masculine destiny. The stars giggle, wear swank togs toss their coiffures in luxurious slo-mo. Diaz shakes her booty a lot. And skeptics may laugh their booty off when told that the Angels are Icons of Empowerment.