Bodies in Action: Female Athleticism on the Cinema Screen

Abstract

Situated in relation to critical feminist concerns about sport and cinema, this article presents a survey of depictions of female athleticism in contemporary film. With particular focus on the potentially “troubling†figure of the female athlete within the hetero-normative context of cinematic representation, it explores the ways in which gendered identities are reconstituted within and through depictions of female athleticism. The overview is based on a comparative content analysis of male and female sports films that accounts for patterns with regard to genre, type of athletic activity pursued, and athletic context, as well as race, class, age, and sexuality of athletic protagonists. The outcomes of this study suggest that while normative notions of gender (as well as race, class, and sexuality) are generally reinforced, cinematic depictions of female athleticism open up possibilities for articulations of bodily and narrative agency and present a challenge to common-sense understandings of the gendered body, what it looks like, and what it is capable of.