Unbelievable bodies: audience readings of action heroines as a post-feminist visual metaphor

Abstract

This article employs a feminist approach to audience research and examines the interviews of women who regularly watch and enjoy action heroine films. I argue that participants in this study draw from ambivalent post-feminist discourses to negotiate the contradictions they find embedded in the representation of powerful women in action. The women interviewed are reluctant to believe that the female bodies onscreen are physically capable of the action they perform when compared with action heroes. Instead of viewing the action of the feminine body as literal, they interpret action heroines as visual metaphors for career and academic success and take pleasure in seeing women succeed despite adversity. Consequently, this study reveals that post-feminist sensibilities promote action heroines as successful in intellectual arenas, yet, simultaneously discipline action heroine bodies to render them unbelievable as physically powerful women. By analyzing participant interpretations of action heroines as visual metaphors, I articulate how post-feminist sensibilities make the powerful feminine body suspect.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. I recruited 11 participants through my existing networks at a university in the Pacific Northwest of the USA because there was an accessible population of women in their early twenties. Five participants identified as ethnically Asian or Korean, five others indicated they were of European descent, and one participant indicated that she was of Asian and European descent. The majority of the women identified as heterosexual and their median age was 22 years.

^2. I began the interviews by asking participants to brainstorm a list of action heroines. Participants listed the following heroines: Catwoman (Dark Knight Rises), Katniss (The Hunger Games), Selene (the Underworld films), Trinity (the Matrix films), The Bride/Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill 1, Kill Bill 2), Rose (Silent Hill), Hermione (the Harry Potter films), Cataleya (Colombiana), Hit Girl (Kick Ass), Laura Croft (the Tomb Raider films), Storm (the X-Men films), Mallory Kane (Haywire), and Natalie, Dylan, and Alex (the Charlie's Angels films).

^3. Each participant was assigned a pseudonym.

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Notes on contributors

Jennifer McClearen

Jennifer McClearen is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication at the University of Washington. Her research leverages cultural studies, feminist media studies, and sports studies to investigate mediated discourses of the body, physical agency, and difference. Her work can be found in New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, and Politics and in the edited collection Feminist Erasures: Challenging Backlash Culture.