Читать книгу Dangerous Dames - Heather Hundley - Страница 18

The book contains six content chapters, this introduction, and a conclusion. They proceed from intersectional analyses of ideological production, spectacular power, and gender and race performativity in a set of films to posthuman analyses of cyborgs and the cognisphere in science fiction television and video games. Our analyses focus on female-bodied protagonists and characters who exhibit signs of strength and power.⁶ Throughout, we attend to the complexities of these representations of women’s empowerment in postfeminist media.

Chapter 1, “Superficial Postfeminist and Postmodern Portrayals: Hegemonic and Hypermasculine Ideologies in Kill Bill, Volumes 1 & 2,” analyzes identities among the female-bodied characters in Tarantino’s 2003 and 2004 films. We attend to the lead, Beatrix Kiddo, as well as the ensemble of dangerous dames depicted in the films, in order to unpack how they are constructed rhetorically ←15 | 16→as professionally successful and strong, as women to be feared and revered. Although these messages are potentially empowering, the films’ postfeminist messages and postmodern aesthetics mask the hypermasculine and patriarchal messages imbedded within the films’ narrative.

Chapter 2, “Appropriating Feminism: The Naturalization of Patriarchal Power Structures in The Hunger Games,” continues the ideological analysis begun in Chapter 1. The films depict the protagonist Katniss Everdeen as a postfeminist hero connected with the natural environment. The antagonist is a totalitarian government associated with hypercivilization. By juxtaposing the two, with nature prevailing over hypercivilization, patriarchal narratives, including the reaffirmation of traditional gender roles, the espousal of heteronormativity, and promotion of biological determinism, are naturalized. In doing so, the films appropriate feminism, granting credence to these traditional and limiting ideologies.

Building upon the first part of the book, Chapter 3, “Ass-Kicking Women and the Fight for Justice: Constructing a (White) Feminine/ist Icon in Wonder Woman,” analyzes how Wonder Woman’s 2017 big-screen iteration draws from her storied comic-book past and illuminates contradictions inherent in her representation as a feminist icon. Although the movie at times resists the male gaze and offers feminist critiques, Wonder Woman’s portrayal repeats many of the elisions that have characterized liberal (white) feminism, including the embrace of Republican Motherhood, heteronormative structures, and gendered rhetorics of heroism that uphold racist, nationalist, and imperialist endeavors.

Chapter 4, “Visualizing Violent Femininity: Race, Sex and Femmes Fatales in Atomic Blonde and Proud Mary,” turns to the sexualization and fetishization of women’s strong bodies in the representation of two 21st century fighting femme protagonists. These female heroes embody many “masculine” characteristics in their on-screen enactments of violence, but both are configured within the tradition of the femme fatale popularized by mid-20th century film noir. By interrogating intersections of gender, race, and sexuality in the media construction of dangerous dames, this chapter illustrates how performative scripts combine to construct, and delimit, pop culture portrayals of women’s strength.

In the final part of the book, we turn our attention to contemporary science fiction television and video games. Chapter 5, “Hybridizing and Networking Beyond Boundaries: Cyborgs and Cognispheres in the Bionic Woman and Dark Matter,” considers dangerous dames who have had mechanical manipulations ←16 | 17→imposed upon them without their consent, turning them into cyborgs and intertwining them with the cognisphere. Employing a posthuman approach, the chapter explores how two Enlightenment binaries (mind/body and human/machine) are revivified and revised by the strong women in these two science fiction television series.

Chapter 6, “Transcending Boundaries: Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Caprica and Deus Ex,” continues our examination of cyborgs and women connected with the cognisphere. Women who have chosen transhuman augmentation in the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica and the Deus Ex franchise of video games complicate several Enlightenment binaries: mind/body, self/other, us/them, and human/machine. Altogether, the dangerous dames challenge false dichotomies in ways that reveal the promise of the embodied cyborg and the distributed cognisphere for feminisms in posthuman contexts.

The conclusion, “Envisioning Feminist Futures,” serves as an epilogue to our exploration. It features a succinct summary, connects themes across chapters, discusses the ramifications and implications of our analysis, and delineates our visions for the future. Throughout, we endeavor to illuminate the complex environments these dangerous dames navigate and the important rhetorical functions they perform across media. We identify equipment for living they provide, and we document the constraints they face. By doing so, we hope to advance the ongoing conversation about postfeminist media and perform some of the ongoing feminist work needed to actualize a more just and equitable future.

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