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This interdisciplinary study examines the relationship between
violence, empowerment, and the teenage super/heroine in comics and
young adult fantasy novels. The author analyzes stories of teenage
super/heroines who have experienced trauma, abduction, assault, and
sexual violence that has led to a loss of agency, and then tracks
the way that their use of violence empowers them to reclaim agency
over their lives and bodies. The author identifies these characters
as vigilante feminist teenage super/heroines because they become
vigilantes in order to protect other girls and young women from
violence and create safer communities. The teenage super/heroines
examined in this book are characters who have the ability-through
super power, or supernatural and magical ability-to fight back
against those who seek to cause them harm. They are a product of
and a response to both the pervasive culture of violence against
girls and women and a system that fails to protect girls and women
from harm. While this book is part of a robust intellectual
conversation about the role of girls and women in popular
literature and culture and about feminist analyses of comics and YA
literature, it is unique in its reading of violence as empowerment
and in its careful tracing-and naming-of the teenage vigilante
super/heroine, a characterization that is hugely popular and
deserves this close reading.
This interdisciplinary study examines the relationship between
violence, empowerment, and the teenage super/heroine in comics and
young adult fantasy novels. The author analyzes stories of teenage
super/heroines who have experienced trauma, abduction, assault, and
sexual violence that has led to a loss of agency, and then tracks
the way that their use of violence empowers them to reclaim agency
over their lives and bodies. The author identifies these characters
as vigilante feminist teenage super/heroines because they become
vigilantes in order to protect other girls and young women from
violence and create safer communities. The teenage super/heroines
examined in this book are characters who have the ability-through
super power, or supernatural and magical ability-to fight back
against those who seek to cause them harm. They are a product of
and a response to both the pervasive culture of violence against
girls and women and a system that fails to protect girls and women
from harm. While this book is part of a robust intellectual
conversation about the role of girls and women in popular
literature and culture and about feminist analyses of comics and YA
literature, it is unique in its reading of violence as empowerment
and in its careful tracing-and naming-of the teenage vigilante
super/heroine, a characterization that is hugely popular and
deserves this close reading.
While women have long been featured in leading roles in film and
television, the intellectual depictions of female characters in
these mediums are out of line with reality. Women continue to be
marginalized for their choices, overshadowed by men, and judged by
their bodies. In fact, the intelligence of women is rarely the
focus of television or film narratives, and on the rare occasion
when smart women are showcased, their portrayals are undermined by
socially awkward behavior or their intimate relationships are
doomed to perpetual failure. While Hollywood claims to offer a
different, more evolved look at women, these movies and shows often
just repackage old character types that still downplay the
intelligence and savvy of women. In Smart Chicks on Screen:
Representing Women's Intellect in Film and Television, Laura
Mattoon D'Amore brings together an impressive array of scholarship
that interrogates the portrayal of females on television and in
movies. Among the questions that the volume seeks to answer are: In
what ways are women in film and television limited, or ostracized,
by their intelligence? How do female roles reinforce standards of
beauty, submissiveness, and silence over intellect, problem
solving, and leadership? Are there women in film and television who
are intelligent without also being objectified? The thirteen essays
by international, interdisciplinary scholars offer a wide range of
perspectives, examining the connections-and disconnections-between
beauty and brains in film and television. Smart Chicks on Screen
will be of interest to scholars not only of film and television but
of women's studies, reception studies, and cultural history, as
well.
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