The Modern Amazons: Warrior Women on Screen
From the Publisher’s description:
From Barbarella to Barb Wire, The Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On-Screen, by Dominique Mainon and James Ursini, the author of more than twenty books on film history, traces the public’s seemingly insatiable fascination with the warrior-woman archetype in film and on television. Through more than 400 photos, entertaining and lively writings, and sidebars about trends, style, and trivia, the warrior-woman image throughout the past five decades is vividly explored, from the “fur bikinis and jungle love” of the iconic Raquel Welch in the prehistoric adventure fantasy One Million Years BC, to Pam Grier, the first African-American woman to play a warrior woman within the action movie genre (Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby).
Complete with an extensive filmography of more than 150 titles, it encompasses the warrior women of fantasy including Grace Jones as Zula in Conan the Destroyer, classic Amazons such as Xena Warrior Princess, superheroes including Wonder Woman and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, sci-fi warrior Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien, supersleuths and spies such as Charlie’s Angels, gothic warriors including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the “girl power” of comics, cartoons, and video games such as the Powerpuff Girls. In addition, the book highlights Hong Kong warriors such as Angela Mao (Enter the Dragon) and Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and sexploitation films including the Ilsa trilogy.
The Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On-Screen also relates a brief background on warrior women in history, myth, and literature, chronicling the effects of male fantasy and societal values on their portrayal in film and on television, and their overall portrayal in Hollywood. Revenge and loss of father, Oedipal conflicts, sisterhood?just a few of the themes that underlie warrior-women movies?are also discussed. Special features include topics such as the “Weapons of Warrior Women,” “Final Notes: Occupational Hazards of Superheroines,” and the representation of women as felines (”The Feline Woman”) and as snakes in myths and history (”Woman and the Serpent”).
Tuesday 21 Mar 2006 | Paul | Books
