GENDER AND THE ACTION FILM: QUESTIONS OF FEMALE HEROISM (ANALYSIS OF FEMALE MASCULINITY OF THE FEMALE HEROIC CHARACTER)

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Abstract: Action has established itself as one of the leading genres which has been present in the film industry for a long time. Although the action movie is primarily identified with Hollywood, the state-of-the-art of the action movie, the Bond movie, however, is first and foremost a British product.  Action  genre  has  been  characterised  as  male-oriented  (Tasker  2004:  8)  whilst  Laura Mulvey’s  essay  of  “Visual  Pleasure  and  Narrative  Cinema”  (1975)  serves  to  remind  us  of  the significant  part  played  by  the  issue  of  gender  and  the  feminist  film  criticism,  in  the  analysis  of action cinema. This paper examines the development of action cinema alongside the construction of  female  heroic  characters,  which  suggests  the  idea  of  female  ‘masculinity’,  a  term  coined  by Tasker  (1993).  The  reinforcement  of  gender  binary  codes  was  examined  on  action  films  that leads to the argument on identification of female empowerment or exploitation in selected action filmic texts of 2010 and 2011.  Based on Laura Mulvey’s theory on male gaze, the analysis of the screening  of  the  body  in  action  films  revolves  around  the  aspects  of  narrative,  and cinematography of the selected films: Salt (Phillip Noyce, 2010).
Key Word: Action films, Female Heroism, Gender
Author: Siti Hajariah & Rizki Briandana
Journal Code: jpkomunikasigg130003

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