No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Fighting for Subjectivity: Articulations of Physicality in Girlfight
Abstract
The analysis of Girlfight (Karyn Kusama, 2000) in this paper is framed by critical discourses surrounding physically active female characters in the action genre, the conventions of the boxing film 'genre', the relationship between bodily spectacle and narrative structure, as well as the more general significance of the female boxer's challenge to normative and binary notions of bodily existence and subjectivity. With a particular focus on the interrelationship between narrative structure and boxing sequences ('numbers'), this paper explores notions of the (gendered) subjectivity constructed around the film's female boxing character, Diana (Michelle Rodriguez). I will argue that the boxing 'numbers' largely function as a (bodily) articulation of Diana's struggle for a unified sense of identity and the embodiment of subjectivity. However, the emphasis on the materiality of the body in earlier 'numbers' is replaced in the final boxing sequence by a sense of abstraction and generic integration. The significance of the physicality of the body in relation to the embodiment of subjectivity is therefore strangely disavowed and the (bodily) agency of Diana's character undermined.
... Firstly, whatever the bodies of female fighters are shown to be capable of here is not necessarily representative of 'reality'; as writers in the emergent field of martial arts studies have argued, questions over the 'realness' of martial arts in general have recently been reinvigorated by the growth of MMA, and other hybrid, 'realist' fighting styles such as the Keysi fighting method (e.g., Bowman, 2014a;Farrer and Whalen-Bridge, 2011;van Bottenburg and Heilbron, 2006). In such a context, the suspension of disbelief required of viewers of dramatized, fantasized action cinema or 'sports entertainment' is thrown into sharp relief, troubling the implication that women's scripted, dis/embodied performances necessarily constitute a transformative alternative to discourses of naturalised female weakness (Lindner, 2009). ...
... Nevertheless, the creative freedoms of this genre simultaneously allow producers to explicitly problematize or parody such orthodox gender formations, constructing narratives surrounding sex, gender and sexuality wherein women's fighting skills can explicitly feature as a device for critiquing specific aspects of patriarchal constructions of femininity (e.g., Caudwell, 2008;Gomes, 2004;Lindner, 2009;McCaughey and King, 2001). Of course, such productions may also construct narratives which blatantly or subtly reassert traditional gender formations (cf. ...
Our initial motivation for producing Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World began several years ago when, as PhD candidates studying together at Loughborough University, UK, we developed a shared interest in combat sports through our separate but related research projects. Christopher’s work, involving an ethnographic study of a working class, predominantly male boxing club, and Alex’s, which explored the phenomenon of mixed-sex training in a range of martial arts schools, fuelled many discussions between us on the sociological richness of these activities. Topics such as the contentious definition of ‘violence’, the emotional landscape of training to fight, the social class characteristics of participants in different clubs and schools and the complex relationship between ethnicity and authenticity in the martial arts occupied many of our debates. However, the most salient issue for both of us, and that which we returned to with the greatest regularity, was the manner in which gender was constructed, portrayed and lived out within these activities. Indeed, both our doctoral theses and subsequent publications were eventually based on analyses of the gendered behaviour of practitioners within such settings, and these marked the beginning of our academic careers as scholars in this particular field (e.g. Channon, 2012a, 2012b, 2013a; Matthews, 2012, 2014).
... , Porto Alegre, v. 19, n. 03, p. 79-101, jul/set de 2013. WOOD, 2002;PEARSON;CURTIS;HANEY;ZHANG, 2003;BEYERBACH, 2005;MCCULLICK;BELCHER;HARDIN;HARDIN, 2003;POULTON;RODERICK;GALAK, 2009;LINDNER, 2009;BARBERO, 2011;RODRÍGUEZ, 2010RODRÍGUEZ, , 2012. Along these lines, this essay has been conceived as a pedagogical proposal about the use of sports movies to introduce some sociological imagination in the context of Physical Education/ Sports studies with little sociological inputs. ...
Cinema is a powerful device of public pedagogy whose potential is to a great extent neglec ted by the educational system. In this context, this paper illustrates how sport-related films (Rollerball) may be used pedagogically to stimulate the exercise of the sociological imagination within PE/Sports studies. To do so, we focus on a few concept/ images with generative power to encourage a dialogical approach to a bunch of significant topics related to culture, ideology, pedagogy and sport. Our underlying premise is that nontraditional texts constitute a useful tool for teaching social theory to an 'audience' much more prone to physical activity than theoretical practice.
... Viewers may also perceive HFALs as less convincing because of their position of power vis-à-vis the audience. Any action film character, male or female, gains subjectivity and social value by executing masculine physicality, violence, and other behaviors (Linder, 2009;Young, 1980). In other words, they must occupy and maintain an agentic position of power. ...
This article employs a content analysis to investigate whether and how the violent woman archetype in action film changed from 1960 to 2014. We find a trend toward hypersexualized female action leads (FALs), starting in the 2000s. This trend is in line with the broader social trends of hypersexualization during this period, evidenced in a variety of other media sources. We then combine these findings with existing research to discuss the likely affects on viewers’ attitudes and beliefs. We suggest that the trend toward hypersexualizing FALs has harmful public health affects and is part of a broader cultural backlash against gender equity. Public Health Significance Statement: This study finds a trend toward hypersexualization of female protagonists in action cinema that contributes to the cultural normalization of female objectification. This normalization has been linked to clinical depression, habitual body monitoring, diet restriction, symptoms of anorexia and bulimia, social physique anxiety, shame about bodily functions, inhibited cognitive functioning, diminished motor skills, diminished sexual pleasure, lower self-esteem, diminished personal efficacy, and lower overall well-being for women.
This article engages with questions of corporeality in the boxing film. Within the context of debates that understand the genre as a space in which the tensions and contradictions around masculinity can be worked out (Baker; Woodward; Grindon), it explores the troubling, and potentially queer, implications of the female boxer in two contemporary boxing films: Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004) and Die Boxerin (About a Girl, Catharina Deus, 2004). It does so with a particular emphasis on the significance of the corporeality of the boxing body and boxing performance, as well as the embodied spectatorial engagements made possible by the films’ incorporation of the female boxer’s queer orientations.
Aim: To analyze the (re)presentation of PE teachers in the movies. Taking into account McCullick, Belcher, Hardin & Hardin’s work (2003), based on 18 films produced in the USA between 1990-2000, the sample is broadened (contexts, countries, movie’s features) and conclusions are compared. Method: Content analysis reproducing to a great extent the process followed by the mentioned study. Conclusions: One big agreement and many discrepancies with the reference article. The agreement refers to the confusing contexts, idiosyncrasies and identities of PE teachers and coaches so the differences between those figures are indecipherable. Discrepancies revolve around: i) PE teachers’ lack of pedagogical ability in comparison with others; ii) the idea that PE teachers, by action or omission, humiliate and bully their pupils: although such characterization is sometimes evident, that’s not always the case and, furthermore, PE teachers seem to be as incompetent and insensitive in dealing with bullying as those of other subjects; and iii) about the general characterization of female PE teachers as “butch lesbians”, and their male counterparts as “hormone-raging heterosexuals” and ill-educated “buffoons”. © 2017, Universidad Catolica San Antonio Murcia. All rights reserved.
Popular culture–particularly as it relates to health, sports and fitness–often venerates the discipline of the body, using images that evoke mastery as a means through which the subject realizes an authentic identity. On the other contemporary, theorists often trouble the division between mind and body implied by the image of mastery, and developing a concept of embodiment as a source of subjectivity. Focusing on the films Million Dollar Baby and Sugar, this paper considers the contradictions of embodiment and the subject as they emerge in films about sports. The protagonist in Million Dollar Baby masters her body through discipline. In so doing, she transcends the socially constructed identity that seems to be dictated by her origins and realizes a pre-social “authentic” identity as a champion boxer. The protagonist in Sugar, on the other hand, finds that the body does not always respond to disciplinary practices as expected. As a result, he must respond to the vicissitudes of embodiment by improvising–constructing an identity from fragments of his past and present environment. Each of these characters is simultaneously freer and more constrained than the other.
The term, “to-be-looked-at-ness” (116), coined by Laura Mulvey1 in her seminal article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, and assigned to women as sexual objects in Hollywood visual culture, has assumed a new egalitarianism in contemporary cinema. While the premise of Mulvey’s essay entailed an objectification of the female body by an assumed male spectator, film now diverges from these norms of female representation. In Mulvey’s model, the classic Hollywood film typically positioned its female as a passive object within the narrative, merely functioning in relation to an active male who prompted the story to unfold. Related studies of masculinity by film scholar Steve Neale2 claimed that the male in film could not be subject to an erotic look because of Hollywood’s underlying fear of homosexuality. However, recent filmmakers adopt increasingly diverse ways of representing and looking at both sexes. For example, Girlfight3
presents its female protagonist in a gender-neutral mode. The framing of Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) does not distinguish her from her male counter- parts, and lingering shots of her body focus solely on her strength and stamina. Likewise, the cinematography of Black Swan4
accentuates the female lead’s musculature and agility, while both women protagonists propel their respective narratives.
Cinema is a powerful device of public pedagogy whose potential is to a great extent neglected by the educational system. In this context, this paper illustrates how sport-related films (Rollerball) may be used pedagogically to stimulate the exercise of the sociological imagination within PE/Sports studies. To do so, we focus on a few concept/ images with generative power to encourage a dialogical approach to a bunch of significant topics related to culture, ideology, pedagogy and sport. Our underlying premise is that nontraditional texts constitute a useful tool for teaching social theory to an 'audience' much more prone to physical activity than theoretical practice.
Situated in relation to critical feminist concerns about sport and cinema, this article presents a survey of depictions of female athleticism in contemporary film. With particular focus on the potentially “troubling” figure of the female athlete within the hetero-normative context of cinematic representation, it explores the ways in which gendered identities are reconstituted within and through depictions of female athleticism. The overview is based on a comparative content analysis of male and female sports films that accounts for patterns with regard to genre, type of athletic activity pursued, and athletic context, as well as race, class, age, and sexuality of athletic protagonists. The outcomes of this study suggest that while normative notions of gender (as well as race, class, and sexuality) are generally reinforced, cinematic depictions of female athleticism open up possibilities for articulations of bodily and narrative agency and present a challenge to common-sense understandings of the gendered body, what it looks like, and what it is capable of.
The author considers two recent prize-winning films by women directors (one British and one American) with similar, if not identical themes. Placing them in the category first defined by David Considine as “the cinema of adolescence” the author considers the filmic traditions from which they arise. In both of the films under consideration—Fish Tank and Girlfight—the young female protagonists attempt to resist or subvert socially imposed restrictions. The author considers the way the entrapment of the working-class teenage girls at the centre of these films is represented by non-professional “actresses” selected because they come from the same milieu of run-down sections of cities as their on-screen characters. She explores the way in which these two writer-directors use their actresses to embody on screen issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and culture, and the near-impossible routes out of poverty. To do so, the author utilises theories from sociology, feminist theories of the body, as well as theories derived from film studies to examine these politically driven films.
Sport films depict sociocultural issues in American society and serve as a purveyor of values, mores, and customs. This study examines and analyzes American sport films over time (1930-1995). Emphases were placed on various trends, including sports depicted in films and their shifts over time, film content and theme, social and cultural relevance, and technological impacts. Archival research and content analysis were employed for 590 films. The major findings were (a) major shifts in the number of sport films and the proportion of particular sports among all sport forms during the 66-year period; (b) numerous shifts in the content, especially with respect to physical contact in contrast with non–physical contact sports; (c) the fewest number of sport films for the 1960s contrasted with any decade; and (d) a shift in the frequencies of sport films by their associations with socioeconomic sports.
Genre films are based upon a shared formula, conventions that are subconsciously recognized by audiences and filmmakers. Repetitive genre patterns are often understood to be contrary to the originality, complexity, and intensity characteristic of high art. Indeed, the European “art” cinema has often been distinguished from Hollywood productions because it turns from genre conventions and presents films with a greater emphasis on social realism, the psychological development of characters, self-conscious style, and a cultivated ambiguity. Paradoxically, many of the most celebrated cinematic achievements of Hollywood filmmaking are vividly realized genre films. Many classics of the studio era, such as Trouble in Paradise (1932), The Big Sleep (1946), and Vertigo (1958), were recognized as little more than generic entertainments at the time of their release. Even films from the “Hollywood Renaissance” influenced by the European art cinema, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Godfather (1972), and Chinatown (1974), found their base in genre films. Noël Carroll, among others, has written of the two-tiered address of such classics – the obvious level of incident, character, and sensation engaging a mass audience, while the more subtle development of implicit themes and stylistic patterns is understood by the attentive film enthusiast. Raging Bull arises from this Hollywood tradition of using genre to construct a work that realizes ambitious aesthetic goals. By contrast with Raging Bull, Fat City (1972) is a Hollywood boxing film that avoids genre conventions and builds its artistic sensibility upon its literary source.
This essay focuses on the master plots, characterizations, settings, and genre history of boxing in Hollywood fiction films since 1930.
This essay indicates the general shape of the made-for-TV movie that emerges from a consideration of the economic conditions of its production, and examines a recent example of the form, "Getting Physical," a film which ostensibly promotes a sub-cultural figure that would seem to threaten dominant, patriarchal values: the female competitive bodybuilder.
Más Mácha: The New Latina Action Hero'. Action and Adventure Cinema
- R Altman
Altman, R. The American Film Musical. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Beltrán, M. 'Más Mácha: The New Latina Action Hero'. Action and Adventure
Cinema. Ed. Y. Tasker. London: Routledge, 2004. 186-200.
Music and Ethnicity in Chariots of Fire. Paper given at Centre for Screen Studies Seminar Series
- M Brownrigg
Brownrigg, M. Music and Ethnicity in Chariots of Fire. Paper given at Centre for Screen
Studies Seminar Series. University of Glasgow, May 2007.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Desmond, J. C. Introduction. Meaning in Motion
- A Hollywood Davison
- Non-Hollywood Theory
- Practice
Davison, A. Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
Desmond, J. C. Introduction. Meaning in Motion. Ed. J. C. Desmond. London: Duke
University Press, 1997. 1-25.
Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader
- R Dyer
Dyer, R. 'Entertainment and Utopia' (1992). Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader. Ed.
S. Cohan. New York: Routledge. 2002. 19-30.
Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
- C Gorbman
Gorbman, C. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press and BFI, 1987.
Sport and the First Films'. Cinema: The Beginnings and the Future
- L Mckernan
McKernan, L. 'Sport and the First Films'. Cinema: The Beginnings and the Future. Ed.
C. Williams. London: University of Westminster Press, 1996. 107-16.
- M Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. New York:
Humanities Press, 1962.
London: HarperCollins
- J C Oates
- Boxing
Oates, J. C. On Boxing (1985). London: HarperCollins, 2002.
Beauty in Motion: Gender, Spectacle and Action Babe Cinema'. Action and Adventure Cinema
- M O'day
O'Day, M. 'Beauty in Motion: Gender, Spectacle and Action Babe Cinema'. Action and
Adventure Cinema. Ed. Y. Tasker. London: Routledge, 2004. 201-18.
He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast, and he's gotta be larger than life": Investigating the Engendered Superhero Body
- Y Tasker
Tasker, Y. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London:
Routledge, 1993.
---. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. London Routledge, 1998.
Taylor, A. '"He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast, and he's gotta be larger than
life": Investigating the Engendered Superhero Body'. The Journal of Popular
Culture 40 (2007): 344-60.