What does power look like? Women heroes in digital action cinema

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Purse, L. (2024) What does power look like? Women heroes in digital action cinema. In: Holmlund, C., Purse, L. and Tasker, Y. (eds.) Action Cinema Since 2000. The British Film Institute / Bloomsbury Publishing, London, pp. 221-236. ISBN 9781839022784 doi: 10.5040/9781839022814.ch-012

Abstract/Summary

This chapter examines the commonalities between DC's and Marvel's first two solo female superhero movies. The chapter argues that Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel offer highly militarized visions of the solo female action hero, recuperating conventional notions of military power through their visual emphasis on ballistic weapons and jet flight, even as they signal their progressive anti-war and feminist credentials. Digital action cinema's ability to visualise its heroines in innovative ways is here constrained by the longstanding cultural ambivalence about women in possession of great power, and both films reach for conventionally masculinist tropes of military might, and of the fantasy of endless propulsion on which our patriarchal petro-culture has historically been founded. These films also locate whiteness as the seat of unimaginably extensive powers. At the same time, these films' narrativising of the challenges of retaining access to power and energy at least encourages a more critical stance on such issues. The chapter thus demonstrates the ongoing importance of being attentive to the ways in which fantasies of empowerment in cinema are designed and staged, and what this might tell us about wider sociopolitical and cultural contexts.

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Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/120606
Identification Number/DOI	10.5040/9781839022814.ch-012
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Film, Theatre & Television
Uncontrolled Keywords	female action hero, militarism, superhero franchise
Publisher	The British Film Institute / Bloomsbury Publishing
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Date Deposited:	04 Feb 2025 14:36	Date item deposited into CentAUR
Last Modified:	09 Feb 2025 01:01	Date item last modified

References

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