Katharina Lindner

Women's Boxing at the 2012 Olympics: Gender trouble?

Deep down I think women shouldnt fight. Thats my opinion … When you get hit its very painful. Women can get knocked out. (Amir Khan, British boxer 2009) At the 2012 Olympics in London, boxing wi...

Bodies in Action: Female athleticism on the cinema screen

Situated in relation to critical feminist concerns about sport and cinema, this article presents a survey of depictions of female athleticism in contemporary film. With particular focus on the potentially “troubling” figure of the female athlete within the hetero-normative context of cinematic representation, it explores the ways in which gendered identities are reconstituted within and through depictions of female athleticism. The overview is based on a comparative content analysis of male and female sports films that accounts for patterns with regard to genre, type of athletic activity pursued, and athletic context, as well as race, class, age, and sexuality of athletic protagonists. The outcomes of this study suggest that while normative notions of gender (as well as race, class, and sexuality) are generally reinforced, cinematic depictions of female athleticism open up possibilities for articulations of bodily and narrative agency and present a challenge to common-sense understandings of the gendered body, what it looks like, and what it is capable of.

'There is a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one of them without a fella . .. ': The 'lesbian potential' of Bend it Like Beckham

Drawing on debates around lesbian (in)visibility, representability and appropriation in cinema, this paper explores the ways in which Bend it Like Beckham (Chadha, 2002) opens up possibilities for lesbian spectatorial engagements. Situating the film within the larger generic context of the (female) sports film, I argue that Bend it Like Beckham uses the lesbian recognisability and representability provided by the contemporary sports context for an articulation of non-heteronormative identities and desires, blurring the boundaries between lesbian visibility and invisibility. Questioning traditional and binary understandings of gendered spectatorship, and with a particular focus on moments of athletic performance, I suggest that the athletic (bodily, emotional and looking) relations between the central female characters allow for appropriative viewing pleasures to be taken in this superficially ‘straight’ text.

Questions of Embodied Difference: Film and Queer Phenomenology

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Review of Queer Film Culture: Queer Cinema & Queer Film Festivals International Conference

This piece reviews the Queer Film Culture: Queer Cinema & Queer Film Festivals International Conference that took place alongside the Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg|International Queer Film Festival in October 2014. It explores the usefulness of bringing together queer film academics, filmmakers as well as festival directors and programmers to explore the contemporary state of queer cinema and queer film culture, while also highlighting contemporary developments in queer film criticism.

Blood, Sweat and Tears: Women, Sport and Hollywood

The sports film genre is one in which girls and women are notoriously underrepresented. However, there has been a notable increase in female sports films over the last 20 years,1 coinciding with the increased visibility of female athletes in the media landscape more generally2 and with the emergence of postfeminist discourses, both within the media and within the context of academic debate. Within the contradictory context of, on the one hand, the transgressive and empowering potential of female athleticism, and, on the other, the sexualization and objectification of the athletic female body within the larger media context, this chapter explores the ways in which these films might challenge and/or reinforce heteronormative understanding of femininity and female sexuality. The discussion is also situated in relation to debates surrounding the increasing commodification of the sport/fitness context and around the contradictory significance of girls and women as consumers of sport- and fitness-related products that are posited as an integral part of an ‘empowering’ ‘lifestyle’. As such, this chapter attempts to map the ways in which the intertwining of neo-liberal and postfeminist discourses3 is variously inscribed on and embodied by the figure of the female athlete. It therefore draws on an understanding of postfeminism as a ‘sensibility’4 where notions of female empowerment are increasingly asserted through an emphasis on individualism, choice, consumption and (bodily) self-discipline.

Understanding the Olympics

Understanding the Olympics, Horne, J. and Whannel, G., London/New York,nRoutledge, 2012, 239 p., ISBN: 978-0-415-55836-5

The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience

The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience. By Jennifer Barker. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009, 196 pp. ISBN-10: 0520258428; ISBN-13: 978-0520258426