ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
Dangerous Dames
“Dangerous Dames is a thoughtful and richly descriptive continuation of the critical conversation begun in Bad Girls. As definitions and understandings of feminism continue to evolve, we remain tasked with attending to the interaction between media representations and both new and older generations of cultural audiences. The book identifies the material conditions which necessitate critique, explains the significance of popular representations of women’s lives, and offers a clearly articulated justification for selection of the films and other media examined in the book. Dangerous Dames demonstrates that cultural ambivalence is still in play with representations of women; the female characters can resist— but not dismantle—the structural inequalities in contemporary American culture. The authors’ selection of films demonstrates the hunger that exists for narrative empowerment of women in popular culture while carefully walking with the reader through the possibilities for change arising from those depictions. The book convincingly argues that while popular imagination has evolved progressively since Bad Girls was published, it still does not fully encompass the burden of inequality on the lives of women and girls.”
—A. Susan Owen (University of Puget Sound) and Sarah Stein (North Carolina State University), co-authors of Bad Girls: Cultural Politics and Media Representations of Transgressive Women
“Dangerous Dames skillfully coordinates critical encounters with contemporary media texts. Through sustained analysis of texts like Hunger Games, Wonder Woman, Proud Mary, Caprica, and Deus Ex, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones astutely demonstrate the cultural and political stakes of representing powerful, female-bodied characters. Across their case studies, they investigate the politics of aesthetics, arguing that particular aesthetics shape (but do not determine) political efficacies and asserting a tempered but hopeful relationship between media representations and structural change. Throughout, the authors imply the question—What does feminism want?—to which they respond: To be understood as plural, variegated, contestatory, and dynamic. Compellingly, they mark their own analytic starting point as intersectional, and they model, for beginners and experts alike, how to select and employ specific conceptual resources like performativity, necropolitics, and posthumanism to best unpack and illuminate the case under investigation. Media fans themselves, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones invite us to struggle with our fandom and to be accountable for the joy or pleasure we take from media consumption as they demonstrate how recent pop culture texts are riddled with cultural and political ambivalence. Dangerous Dames helps us to find the words to explain our complicated relationships with media texts that feel—that are, we hope—feminist and progressive.”
—Daniel C. Brouwer (Arizona State University)
Cultural Media Studies
Leandra H. Hernández and Amanda R. Martinez
Series Editors
Vol. 1
The Cultural Media Studies series is part
of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.
Heather L. Hundley, Roberta Chevrette,
and Hillary A. Jones
Dangerous Dames
Representing Female-Bodied
Empowerment in Postfeminist Media
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hundley, Heather L., author. | Chevrette, Roberta, author. |
Jones, Hillary A., author.
Title: Dangerous dames: representing female empowerment in postfeminist
media / Heather L. Hundley, Roberta Chevrette, & Hillary A. Jones.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2020.
Series: Cultural media studies; vol. 1
ISSN 2641-1415 (print) | ISSN 2577-6231 (online)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055998 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6301-2 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6302-9 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6303-6 (ebook pdf)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6304-3 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6305-0 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Women heroes in mass media.
Classification: LCC P94.5.W65 H86 2019 | DDC 302.23082—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055998 DOI 10.3726/b14812
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.
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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
About the author
HEATHER L. HUNDLEY (PhD, University of Utah) is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She received the College Outstanding Research Award from her former institution. She has co-authored two books, coedited two books, and published in journals including New Media & Society, Communication Quarterly, and Communication Reports.
ROBERTA CHEVRETTE (PhD, Arizona State University) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She has published in journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Theory, Feminist Formations, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies.
HILLARY A. JONES (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University) is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, Fresno. She has co-edited a book and has published in journals including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Southern Communication Journal, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Communication, Culture, and Critique.
About the book
This book illuminates the rhetorical work performed by contemporary representations of a specific type of postfeminist hero who has garnered a lot of cultural capital: women who are smart, capable, physically agile and fit, and proficient with weaponry and technology. Employing critical/cultural and feminist approaches, Heather Hundley, Roberta Chevrette, and Hillary Jones engage with a range of theories including intersectionality, critical race theory, postmodernism, and posthumanism to examine a range of contemporary texts, including Kill Bill, Volumes I and II; The Hunger Games films; Wonder Woman; Atomic Blonde; Proud Mary; The Bionic Woman; Deus Ex; Dark Matter; and Caprica. Contributing to a robust existing conversation about postfeminist media as well as tracing how representation has changed in recent years, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones contend that portrayals of dangerous dames offer limitations and opportunities for audiences. Specifically, should audiences read