paradoxofpower
Paradox of Power
an investigation of the contemporary action film heroine
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Coulthard - Allen - Abstract
Millennial examples of female led action ensembles continue to address the vulnerable position of women in male dominated spaces, and indicate there is a trend in the depiction of violent female solidarity, that engages with patriarchal conventions of public and private participation. Similar negotiations of patriarchal structures, as identified by Lisa Couthard, occur in representations of the violent, apolitical, individualistic action heroine. Coulthard argues the feature and function of violence, in female led action narratives, as superficially transgressive in its ‘relation to feminism and female solidarity, collectivity or political action’ (2007, p. 173).
How do contemporary representations of violent, heroic action negotiate patriarchal structures, as well as resist cinematic conventions of narrative closure that confines feminist agency to the private domain?
With the growing trend in female led action narratives, that foreground collectivity as the means for narrative resolution, what are the cinematic conventions around violence as a mode of collective feminist agency?
According to Allen's reconceptualization of feminist power (2018), collective feminism is viewed as inclusive of male participation and offers perspectives for interrogating female led action narratives and the role of male allyship in future collective feminisms.
A stunning example of this trend towards collective feminism can be seen in the 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road, directed by George Miller. In this highly anticipated instalment of the Mad Max series, the struggle to survive the dystopian post-apocalypse is told through the culmination of multiple narratives. In order to overcome the abuses of power that define their post-apocalyptic realities, the heroes and heroines of the film, must come together to achieve narrative resolution. As with most action narratives this means the bad guy must die. What is unique however to this particular action film, is the representation of an action ensemble that challenges cinematic conventions of heroism as, male, singular and reliant on violence as form of narrative agency.
TBC...
This thesis offers the preliminary findings of continuing research on representations of collective feminist agency, the conditions of male allyship, and the transformative role of violence, as illustrated through the narrative and character constructs in Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, G., 2015), Terminator: Dark Fate (Miller, T., 2019) and Birds of Prey (Yan, 2020).
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Thesis - Abstract
Since the inception of the persona, the action film heroine has been the focus of interest in both public and academic discourses alike; an agent of ambiguity that has come to represent complex and often contradictory expressions of female power.
Based on the academic review of how filmic representations of the action heroine have been interpreted, this thesis seeks to provide a framework, with which to assess future representations of female power within the postmodern construct of the action film.
An overview of the action heroine from the 1960s to present, illustrates the ways in which female power has been constructed through transformations taking place in the conventions of the action film genre.
Generic innovations in the gendered power dynamics of the action text, are often discussed in relation to changes taking place within the cultural conventions of gender, power, and violence in which these representations are produced.
Through an ideological reading of the action text, contemporary cinematic conventions of gender, power and violence are discussed as operating within the context of cultural neoliberalism. This research provides an assessment of selected works from Quentin Tarantino, George Miller’s Mad Max series, and the more recent, Everything Everywhere All at Once, directed by the Daniels, as representative of postmodern action auteurism that spans the last several decades of cultural neoliberalism.
Transformations taking place in the cinematic conventions of these films continue to negotiate the patriarchal conventions of the action genre and are discussed in relation to the cultural tensions that have surrounded the topics of gender and power within a neoliberal context.
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