Women Willing to Fight
A one-day workshop on fighting women in film

Recent cinematic representations of female action heroines and other ‘fighting’ women, portray them as violent, aggressive and powerful individuals, often militantly engaged in physical fights with male, female and superhuman opponents. Earlier cinematic representations allowed women to voice their fury and frustration, however today’s mediated female fighters not only ‘speak up’ but ‘muscle up’. Bodily aggression, well-handled weaponry, mind games and gendered posing are some of the ways by which female fighters are characterised as acquiring power and on-screen strength.
 
With a focus on cinematic representations and a strong appreciation of the mixed messages inherent in images of fighting women, Women Willing to Fight (WWF) seeks to draw attention to the embodied forms - physical, intellectual and emotional - through which female fighters are represented as well as further discussion on images of the women warrior conveyed in the figure of the (hyper-) feminine and (hyper) physical action heroine.
 
In contrast to the supernatural powers of many warrior/action heroine film characters, WWF sets its sights on those characters for whom the skills, abilities and desires to fight are developed or achieved by mortal women. To this end WWF will inevitably explore the complex and cross-cultural notions of ‘extra-ordinary’ power. By examining the embodied arsenal that these characters possess and develop - through training, conditioning, and life experience - we consider the presentation of motivation and metamorphoses into ‘the fighting woman’: how a woman fights holds implicit meaning and association to what she is fighting for.  Moreover, what should we make of the critique that there is nothing ‘female’ about the female action hero, woman warrior or female fighter – since we are merely looking at cases of transvestitism obscuring the female presence and body and are therefore only images of an action hero per se – yet one that is defiantly kicking arse and often does so wearing a tank top, high heels and a breast plate or push-up bra!

Speakers include: Barbara Creed, Catherine Driscoll, Carolyn Strange, Catherine Summerhayes.