DATE: Monday, August 18, 1997               TAG: 9708160008

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B13  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: Suzanne Fields

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                       LENGTH:   74 lines

HOLLYWOOD: ALL WET

Demi Moore is a beautiful woman. Anyone who has ever seen her movies will tell you that. But there's a moment in her latest flick, ``G.I. Jane,'' in which she looks like a man.

She's shaved off her hair (on camera) to fit military style regulation - it's cropped to one-eighth of an inch. She's been badly beaten up, her face is bloody, her nose has been whacked in a tortuous military exercise and the obscenities she uses refer only to the male anatomy which she seems to imagine is just like her own.

When the camera moves in for a closeup of her kissing her boyfriend, there's more than a suggestion that two men are kissing. This is not unintentional.

``G.I. Jane'' is about mixing up traditional sexual roles. Now you see her, now you don't. The movie has received bad advance publicity and the ``gossipmeisters'' are blaming the star, who gets $10 million dollars a movie, plus $2.5. million if she appears nude. Disney executives, whose excursions into sleaze have forfeited the public trust that was once the Disney franchise, fear financial disaster with ``G.I. Jane.'' They ought to call this movie a sequel to ``Fantasia.'' They could bring on elephants in tutus. It's all fantasy.

``G.I. Jane'' reduces one of the toughest assignments in the U.S. Navy, that of a SEAL, to the soap-opera sensibility of political correctness in praise of a gender-neutral military. The Navy refused to cooperate with the production because they said it ``didn't reflect today's military.'' That's a relief.

For starters, sailors are never called ``G.I.s.'' But Swabbie Jane just doesn't spin with authenticity in Hollywood, where the only uniform anyone has ever worn is from a second-hand surplus store fashioned to mock the military.

As a SEAL, Demi Moore sleeps in the barracks with the men, talks to a commanding officer from a shower without a curtain, and fights dirty in a dirty fight to show that she has the right equipment to dish it out like a man. (The men are supposed to ignore that she's sexy when she sweats.)

``It will inspire women inside and out of the military to be fearless, forgiving and committed to the limitless nature of their possibilities,'' says screenwriter Danielle Alexandra. (If you liked John Wayne as a Green Beret, you're supposed to love Demi Moore as a SEAL.)

This could be funny if training women for combat was merely a fantasy of those who'd like to fight against us. But it's not. Alas, the real-life scenario of Air Wing 11 on the carrier Abraham Lincoln is actually more frightening - and farcical - than this movie.

Air Wing 11 deserves the Catch-22 Award for women in combat. According to a recent report released by the Navy, female pilots on the carrier, who, like male pilots, must be debriefed after each landing, sometimes cry in response to strong negative evaluations from the Landing Signal Officers (LSOs): ``The LSOs were used to seeing men curse, throw objects, and kick things when they performed poorly. But they didn't know how to deal with crying.''

Someone suggested that the debriefers give the women soothing private briefings in a less threatening place. But with harassment charges flying in the co-ed Navy, no LSO worth his salt (water) is going into a debriefing room alone with a female.

That's only the half of it. Men on the carrier resent the more comfortable and private berthing and shower arrangements provided for the women. (Where is Demi Moore now that they really want her?)

When women of Air Wing 11 were asked to take mandatory pregnancy tests and they refused, the captain rescinded the order. His men were enraged. How did such tests differ from mandatory drug tests required from them, all for the benefit of the ship?

This was the carrier's first gender integrated cruise and the Navy report discovered (hark!) that men and women speak different languages.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a military readiness watchdog organization, sees this correctly as Military Theater of the Absurd: ``If men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, then the U.S. Navy had better devise a plan for interplanetary communication.''

Over to Demi and out.

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