Search results

This chapter examines how the breakthrough of Zhang Ziyi's depiction of a female kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013) transforms the figure of the heroine in Chinese action films. Zhang is well known for her acting in action films conducted by renowned directors, such as Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai. After winning 12 different Best Actress awards for her portrayal of Gong Ruomei in The Grandmaster, Zhang announced that she would no longer perform in any action films to show her highest respect for the superlative character Gong. Tracing Zhang's transformational portrait of a heroine in The Grandmaster alongside her other action roles, this analysis demonstrates how her performance projects the directors' distinctive gender viewpoints. I argue that Zhang's characterisation of Gong remodels heroine-hood in Chinese action films. Inheriting the typical plot of a daughter's use of martial arts for revenge for her father's death, Gong breaks from conventional Chinese action films that highlight romantic love during a woman's adventure and the decisive final battle scene. Beyond the propensity for sensory stimulation, Gong's characterisation enables Zhang to determine that women can really act in action films – demonstrating their inner power and ability to create multi-layered characters – not merely relying upon physical action. This chapter offers a relational perspective of how women transform the action film genre not merely as gender spectacles but as embodied figures that represent emerging female subjectivity.

After World War II, many types of organizations were established in rural areas and that enabled women farmers to form networks. Most of these organizations, however, were clearly divided into those for women and those for men: a situation that still currently persists. Since the 1980s, the networking of women farmers for the development of personal networks increased and some nationwide network organizations were established. Through an analysis of the case of the “Rural Heroines Exciting Network” – one of the first networks of Japanese women farmers – the chapter points out the significance of networking. Networking is relevant because (1) it allows women to connect among themselves and as individuals with the outside world. In this way, women gain confidence. (2) Through the network, members get expressive support and information. (3) The common values at the network level play a balancing role in regard to the norms dominant at the local community. Those characteristics have some similarities with those of the “women in agriculture” movement that gained popularity in 1990s worldwide.

David Punter and Glennis Byron note how the Gothic novel has been divided into two categories: the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Gothic. Where the former emphasizes violence and ghosts, the latter focuses on female representation and the disavowal of the supernatural. The Hollywood Gothic films of the 1940s can be said to translate this aspect of the Female Gothic onto the cinema screen: Rebecca (1940), Gaslight (1944) and Secret Beyond the Door (1947) all feature narratives stressing the haunting nature of domestic spaces but there are no actual ghosts present. Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath (2000) breaks this convention. The film clearly draws on the Female Gothic lineage, situating Claire as a Gothic heroine, and yet there is an important difference: the supernatural is now an integral – and acknowledged – part of the story. This chapter explores this twenty-first century change, arguing that whilst the inclusion of the supernatural can be said to break with previous definitions of the Female Gothic, What Lies Beneath’s depiction of a ghost actually re-imagines and re-emphasizes the concerns at the centre of this tradition: the dramatization of marital and domestic experiences; an interrogation of feminine perception; and the reality of male violence against women.

This chapter explores factors presented in romance novels that reify gendered assumptions of masculinity and femininity to present readers with narratives that serve as powerful agents of socialization.

We conducted directed content analyses of over 180 mass-market romance novels published by Harlequin and Silhouette over an approximate 30-year period to ascertain common themes regarding gender polarization and gender schematicity in the maintenance of family and work.

Our review of this literature illuminates the assumption of “naturalized” gender roles for men and women in the construction and maintenance of marriage and the family, calling attention to the ways in which we remain constrained to polarized gender roles in the depiction of romantic encounters.

This study is limited to romance novels published prior to 2006, although we see replications of gender schematic narrative in current romance narratives featuring paranormal encounters (Twilight) and erotica (Fifty Shades of Grey).

In almost 100 years of Colombian cinema, very few productions have had action-oriented narratives at the core of the film, as this cinema has chiefly developed around mainstream genres of melodrama and popular comedy. Rather than a cinematic end, ‘action’ has worked more as a specific means, mainly through thrillers, for directors to represent, question, and denounce the Colombian armed conflict – a central national issue for over 70 years. Whilst such films have tended to showcase male heroes, some recent productions subvert this tradition, and echo aspects of contemporary action cinema in Hollywood, where female representations problematise the perpetuated male image of the action hero.

This chapter examines contemporary Colombian films that offer hybrid images of female warriors who are (anti)heroic or disruptive, within the conventions of the action genre and within the dominant patriarchal discourse of Colombian narrative cinema, concentrating on Rosario Tijeras (Maillé, 2005) and La Sargento Matacho (González, 2017). Following research on Colombian cinema, context and conflict, this chapter highlights how female characters subsist in the public sphere, taking an active part in illegal armed organisations. It also questions how these representations may promote typologies of female emancipations (victimisers, anti-heroines, hybrid tomboys and war fighters), articulating key notions of emancipation. Ultimately, this chapter reiterates how postmodern representations of the female body subvert classic features of the Hollywood action cinema, by offering inaugural images of tough women within the Colombian/Hispanic popular culture and contexts, by examining particular sequences through Creed's multiple views on the female multi-faceted representations in cinema and Tasker's ample theory on action women and bodies.

The association between motorcycles and sex, and motorcycles and action, is highly gendered and very few action films star women on motorcycles. This chapter examines little-known Australian film, Shame (1988) and the American made-for-television remake Shame (1992) as rare examples of films starring heroic women on motorcycles. The protagonist of both films is a motorbike-riding lawyer (Cadell) who rides into a country town blighted by an endemic rape culture. The film(s) have been largely overlooked in critical discussions about gender and action films. This chapter utilises scholarship about gender and action films, and about the rape revenge genre to explore how Cadell is cast as feminist avenger and agent of change. Rather than being a bombshell or a babe, in the tradition of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, Cadell is a tough action chick who embodies (female) heroism. She, as Sara Ahmed (2017) would describe it, snaps, and that snap prompts viewers to examine misogyny, rape, revenge and shame.

This chapter traces the life and leadership journey of the Honorable Marie Rex Sukers. Born in the Western Cape, South Africa, the unconventional trajectory of Marie’s life is evident right from her conception. Throughout her life, Marie grasped opportunities to rise above her personal circumstances which were exacerbated by the all-pervading and deep-seated discrimination in her country. Her courage and resilience culminated in Marie being appointed to the esteemed position of Member of the South African Parliament in 2019. Working in a hostile democratic environment unleashed continuous rounds of personal and institutional challenges, each begging for transformational power and fresh courage.

This chapter uses two theoretical models, Van Doorn’s Double Helix Leadership theory and Kinnear’s Leadership Power Tensions Model to describe how Marie’s life and career illustrates how all women, when they find themselves at the pinnacle of accomplishment, wade through cycles of disillusionment or disappointment to land just where they are meant to be. Rich learning insights emerge from Marie, a heroine on a profound journey upcycling leadership into personal courage and deeper, authentic power. Our chapter provides guidelines and the “know-how” to transform your leadership power for a better world, both personally and globally.

Our legal system has a well-established set of laws and procedures for injured people to seek redress for their injuries. Over the years universalised legal injury narratives have developed. In other words, repeated applications of the law have generated standard, abstract, generalised versions of individual injury narratives. Accordingly, from any particular injury narrative, there can be distilled an “essential or abstract” legal injury narrative which is the same universal narrative that can be distilled from other like cases (Klinck, 1992). It seems likely that there are different versions of the legal injury narrative that have developed due to an accumulation of a large number of similar cases. For example, there is likely to be a version of the legal injury narrative for injuries arising out of each of motor vehicle accidents, workplace incidents, occupier’s liability, medical malpractice or defective products. However, this paper will demonstrate that underlying all of these versions is the generic legal injury narrative with particular and common characteristics. This paper develops the idea of the universal “legal injury narrative” – that is, a legally idealised narrative about injury, based on a number of implicit rules about the way injuries occur and their consequences. The legal injury narrative is the framework by which other injury narratives are judged.