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Abstract
Karyn Kusama's film Girlfight (2000), staring Michelle Rodriguez, won the Director's Award and the Grand Jury Prize at 2000 Sundance Film Festival, and the Award of Youth at Cannes Film Festival 2000. The low budget, independent film is Kusama's debut production and Rodriguez's debut performance. The film is about how a young woman – Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) – from the New York City projects enters a local boxing gym. The narrative centres on her training and eventual entry to competitive boxing. However, this boxing story is surrounded by tensions in Guzman's school life, family life and love life. The film is not about a boxer per se, but about boxing and gender. In this essay gender is understood as implicating sexuality.
The essay highlights the ways femininity and masculinity are materialized so that the protagonist is read as woman boxer and not as a boxer. Feminist film theory is deployed to explore how sexual difference is produced and reproduced. In addition, the essay considers the ways the materialization of gender is disrupted, for example via the protagonist's hetero-sexual subjectivity, and how dislocations of gender norms are often framed as individual acts requiring exceptional personal will.
Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank my work colleagues at the University of Brighton: Dr Dan Burdsey, Dr Tom Carter and Dr Belinda Wheaton for reading this essay and providing useful comments. I'd also like to thank Dr Emma Poulton for her support and advice.
Notes
1 For an academic review of the film see CitationCasper, ‘Knockout Women’, 104–10.
2 CitationBoyle, Millington and Vertinsky, ‘Representing the Female Pugilist’.
3 CitationHeywood and Dworkin, Built to Win, 117–23.
4 Boyle, Millington and Vertinsky, ‘Representing the Female Pugilist’.
5 Citationhooks, ‘Doing it for Daddy’, 98–106.
6 Boyle, Millington and Vertinsky, ‘Representing the Female Pugilist’, 102.
7 CitationWoodward, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity, 138.
8 Boyle, Millington and Vertinsky, ‘Representing the Female Pugilist’.
9 For work that documents the lived experienced of women boxers see CitationHalbert, ‘Tough Enough and Woman Enough’, and CitationMennesson, ‘Hard Women and Soft Women’.
10 Heywood and Dworkin, Built to Win, 123.
11 Woodward, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity, 133.
12 Heywood and Dworkin, Built to Win, 118.
13 Woodward, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity, 124.
14 CitationMulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’.
15 CitationGammon and Marshment, The Female Gaze, 6.
16 CitationNash, American Sweethearts, 29.
17 CitationJackson, ‘“Street Girl”’.
18 CitationGiroux, Breaking in to the Movies.
19 CitationCaudwell, ‘Tipping the Velvet’.
20 Heywood and Dworkin, Built to Win, 117.
21 Heywood and Dworkin, Built to Win, 117
22 CitationScott, Girlfight.
23 CitationMackie, Girlfight.
24 Scott, Girlfight.
25 CitationWazir, ‘There's a Brown Girl in the Ring’
26 CitationMorris, ‘Everyone's Talking About…’.
27 CitationBradshaw, Girlfight.
28 Morris, ‘Everyone's Talking About…’.
29 CitationFrench, Girlfight.
30 CitationChaudhuri, Feminist Film Theorists.
31 CitationKaplan, Women and Film.
32 CitationKaplan, Women and Film, 5.
33 Chaudhui, Feminist Film Theorists.
34 Kaplan, Women and Film, 5.
35 Chauduri, Feminist Film Theorists.
36 CitationMiller, Sportsex.
37 CitationPronger, The Arena of Masculinity.
38 CitationDouglas, Purity and Danger, 14.
39 CitationWhitson, ‘Sport in the Social Construction of Masculinity’.
40 CitationButler, Bodies that Matter.
41 Chauduri, Feminist Film Theorists.
42 Kaplan, Women and Film, 2.
43 Heywood and Dworkin, Built to Win, 121.
44 CitationTasker, ‘Soldiers’ Stories’.
45 CitationTasker, ‘Soldiers’ Stories’, 209.
46 Kaplan, Women and Film; Citationhooks, Yearning; hooks, ‘Doing it for Daddy’; hooks, Reel to Real.
47 Citationhooks, Reel to Real, 89.
48 Citationhooks, Reel to Real, 84.
49 hooks, Yearning, 90.
50 Nash, American Sweethearts, 226–7.
51 Nash, American Sweethearts, 109.
52 CitationDworkin and Wachs, The Morality/Manhood Paradox, 61.
53 Tasker, ‘Soldiers Stories’, 211.
55 Nash, American Sweethearts.
56 Casper, ‘Knockout Women’, 107.
57 Cited in Nash, Americam Sweethearts, 16.
58 Cited in Nash, Americam Sweethearts, 37.
59 Kaplan, Women and Film.
60 Giroux, Breaking in to the Movies.
61 Bhabha, cited in ibid., 269.
62 CitationGammon, ‘Watching the Detectives’, 11.