Unbelievable bodies: audience readings of action heroines as a post-feminist visual metaphor

Abstract

This article employs a feminist approach to audience research and examines the interviews of women who regularly watch and enjoy action heroine films. I argue that participants in this study draw from ambivalent post-feminist discourses to negotiate the contradictions they find embedded in the representation of powerful women in action. The women interviewed are reluctant to believe that the female bodies onscreen are physically capable of the action they perform when compared with action heroes. Instead of viewing the action of the feminine body as literal, they interpret action heroines as visual metaphors for career and academic success and take pleasure in seeing women succeed despite adversity. Consequently, this study reveals that post-feminist sensibilities promote action heroines as successful in intellectual arenas, yet, simultaneously discipline action heroine bodies to render them unbelievable as physically powerful women. By analyzing participant interpretations of action heroines as visual metaphors, I articulate how post-feminist sensibilities make the powerful feminine body suspect.

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