The antagonist is a totalitarian government associated with hypercivilization. By juxtaposing the two, with nature prevailing over hypercivilization, patriarchal narratives, including the reaffirmation of traditional gender roles, the espousal of heteronormativity, and promotion of biological determinism, are naturalized. In doing so, the films appropriate feminism, granting credence to these traditional and limiting ideologies.
Building upon the first part of the book, Chapter 3, “Ass-Kicking Women and the Fight for Justice: Constructing a (White) Feminine/ist Icon in Wonder Woman,” analyzes how Wonder Woman’s 2017 big-screen iteration draws from her storied comic-book past and illuminates contradictions inherent in her representation as a feminist icon. Although the movie at times resists the male gaze and offers feminist critiques, Wonder Woman’s portrayal repeats many of the elisions that have characterized liberal (white) feminism, including the embrace of Republican Motherhood, heteronormative structures, and gendered rhetorics of heroism that uphold racist, nationalist, and imperialist endeavors.
Chapter 4, “Visualizing Violent Femininity: Race, Sex and Femmes Fatales in Atomic Blonde and Proud Mary,” turns to the sexualization and fetishization of women’s strong bodies in the representation of two 21st century fighting femme protagonists. These female heroes embody many “masculine” characteristics in their on-screen enactments of violence, but both are configured within the tradition of the femme fatale popularized by mid-20th century film noir. By interrogating intersections of gender, race, and sexuality in the media construction of dangerous dames, this chapter illustrates how performative scripts combine to construct, and delimit, pop culture portrayals of women’s strength.
In the final part of the book, we turn our attention to contemporary science fiction television and video games. Chapter 5, “Hybridizing and Networking Beyond Boundaries: Cyborgs and Cognispheres in the Bionic Woman and Dark Matter,” considers dangerous dames who have had mechanical manipulations ←16 | 17→imposed upon them without their consent, turning them into cyborgs and intertwining them with the cognisphere. Employing a posthuman approach, the chapter explores how two Enlightenment binaries (mind/body and human/machine) are revivified and revised by the strong women in these two science fiction television series.
Chapter 6, “Transcending Boundaries: Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Caprica and Deus Ex,” continues our examination of cyborgs and women connected with the cognisphere. Women who have chosen transhuman augmentation in the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica and the Deus Ex franchise of video games complicate several Enlightenment binaries: mind/body, self/other, us/them, and human/machine. Altogether, the dangerous dames challenge false dichotomies in ways that reveal the promise of the embodied cyborg and the distributed cognisphere for feminisms in posthuman contexts.
The conclusion, “Envisioning Feminist Futures,” serves as an epilogue to our exploration. It features a succinct summary, connects themes across chapters, discusses the ramifications and implications of our analysis, and delineates our visions for the future. Throughout, we endeavor to illuminate the complex environments these dangerous dames navigate and the important rhetorical functions they perform across media. We identify equipment for living they provide, and we document the constraints they face. By doing so, we hope to advance the ongoing conversation about postfeminist media and perform some of the ongoing feminist work needed to actualize a more just and equitable future.
←17 | 18→
Notes
1. This change affected primarily white women; most women of color and low-income women had been working outside the home long before this time.
2. We utilize the wave framework here due to its recognizability while acknowledging critiques of the wave framework leveled by many feminist scholars. Nicholson (2010) argues that the wave framework is reductive, U.S.-centric, and elides the multiplicity and enduring work of feminist activisms not recognized by this framework. Those interested in learning more about some of the feminist activism led by women of color during the 1970s would do well to consult Roth (2004).
3. This is not intended to impose judgment on or assess the value of research conducted at research or teaching institutions. We are merely pointing out that this research is not motivated by external factors relating to our employment positions.
4. The Washington Post obtained and released the tape on October 7, 2016, a month prior to the presidential election.
5. The Women’s March recurred January 20, 2018, with millions of people participating around the globe.
6. Throughout, we refer to characters by first names because several of the texts include numerous characters with the same last name (e.g., the Everdeens), and others have no last name (e.g., the title character from Proud Mary). To avoid differential treatment among the characters, therefore, we refer to all of them by their first names.
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