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Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture
Beyond Bombshells analyzes the cultural importance of strong women in a variety of current media forms. Action heroines are now more popular in movies, comic books, television, and literature than they have ever been. Their spectacular presence represents shifting ideas about female agency, power, and sexuality. Beyond Bombshells explores how action heroines reveal and reconfigure perceptions about "how" and "why" women are capable of physically dominating roles in modern fiction, indicating the various strategies used to contain and/or exploit female violence.
Focusing on a range of successful and controversial recent heroines in the mass media, including Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games books and movies, Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novels and films, and Hit-Girl from the Kick-Ass movies and comic books, Brown argues that the role of action heroine reveals evolving beliefs about femininity. While women in action roles are still heavily sexualized and objectified, they also challenge preconceived myths about normal or culturally appropriate gender behavior. The ascribed sexuality of modern heroines remains Brown's consistent theme, particularly how objectification intersects with issues of racial stereotyping, romantic fantasies, images of violent adolescent and preadolescent girls, and neoliberal feminist revolutionary parables.
Individual chapters study the gendered dynamics of torture in action films, the role of women in partnerships with male colleagues, young women as well as revolutionary leaders in dystopic societies, adolescent sexuality and romance in action narratives, the historical import of non-white heroines, and how modern African American, Asian, and Latina heroines both challenge and are restricted by longstanding racial stereotypes.
Focusing on a range of successful and controversial recent heroines in the mass media, including Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games books and movies, Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novels and films, and Hit-Girl from the Kick-Ass movies and comic books, Brown argues that the role of action heroine reveals evolving beliefs about femininity. While women in action roles are still heavily sexualized and objectified, they also challenge preconceived myths about normal or culturally appropriate gender behavior. The ascribed sexuality of modern heroines remains Brown's consistent theme, particularly how objectification intersects with issues of racial stereotyping, romantic fantasies, images of violent adolescent and preadolescent girls, and neoliberal feminist revolutionary parables.
Individual chapters study the gendered dynamics of torture in action films, the role of women in partnerships with male colleagues, young women as well as revolutionary leaders in dystopic societies, adolescent sexuality and romance in action narratives, the historical import of non-white heroines, and how modern African American, Asian, and Latina heroines both challenge and are restricted by longstanding racial stereotypes.
- GenresNonfictionFeminism
280 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2015
20 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey A. Brown
11 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Jeffrey A. Brown is a professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, USA. He is the author of Black Superheroes: Milestone Comics and Their Fans, Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture, and Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture.
Jeffrey A. Brown is a professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, USA. He is the author of Black Superheroes: Milestone Comics and Their Fans, Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture, and Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 3, 2024
This non-fiction book looks at the way society addresses the appearance of women on film and it digs deep into its subject. There are comparisons made about how Hollywood presents strong-hewed men versus gorgeous ladies, why some filmed stories about superheroines fail while others succeed and the ever-present commodification of the young girl and how we’re made to perceive her. A foul-mouthed boy wielding a gun is fine. A jeune fille using coarse language? Not so much.
The language in the book is fairly easy to comprehend, although some sesquipedalian words may require reaching for a lexicon. But the author makes it clear that, while lengthy strides have been made in seeing that a woman can be made to look like she’s kicking butt without being sexualized, American cinema still has a ways to go to making the footing equal between the men and women on screen who are shown as being lethal, ruthless and gifted at either weaponry or hand-to-hand combat.
(However, I don’t think that women are the only ones objectified on screen. I still remember seeing Chris Evans emerge as the super soldier who would become Captain America. He was coming out of a phallic-shaped object, half naked and covered in a dewy mist. It’s not only women who can be eye candy.)
This book was written before the first Wonder Woman film was shown in movie theaters although it addresses the fact that studios kept turning down the opportunity to present her story on the big screen. But it does mention that Gal Gadot signed a three-movie deal to play the Amazonian warrior princess. Now that there are two films have been shown about Wonder Woman, I wonder what addendum Mr. Brown would make about DC’s most famous female icon if he were to re-write this book.
The language in the book is fairly easy to comprehend, although some sesquipedalian words may require reaching for a lexicon. But the author makes it clear that, while lengthy strides have been made in seeing that a woman can be made to look like she’s kicking butt without being sexualized, American cinema still has a ways to go to making the footing equal between the men and women on screen who are shown as being lethal, ruthless and gifted at either weaponry or hand-to-hand combat.
(However, I don’t think that women are the only ones objectified on screen. I still remember seeing Chris Evans emerge as the super soldier who would become Captain America. He was coming out of a phallic-shaped object, half naked and covered in a dewy mist. It’s not only women who can be eye candy.)
This book was written before the first Wonder Woman film was shown in movie theaters although it addresses the fact that studios kept turning down the opportunity to present her story on the big screen. But it does mention that Gal Gadot signed a three-movie deal to play the Amazonian warrior princess. Now that there are two films have been shown about Wonder Woman, I wonder what addendum Mr. Brown would make about DC’s most famous female icon if he were to re-write this book.
May 14, 2017
I skipped only a few of the articles, mostly because they focused on movies I had not seen (Sucker Punch, Hitgirl). Thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews