Lecture notes
Representation of women in the media
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This article was downloaded by: [Edge Hill University]On: 07 January 2013, At: 05:25
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Journal of Gender Studies
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A sheep in wolf's clothing? The
problematic representation of women
and the female body in 1980s sword
and sorcery cinema
a
Andrea Wright
a
Department of English and History, Edge Hill University,
Ormskirk, Lancashire, UK
Version of record first published: 16 May 2012.
To cite this article: Andrea Wright (2012): A sheep in wolf's clothing? The problematic
representation of women and the female body in 1980s sword and sorcery cinema, Journal of
Gender Studies, 21:4, 401-411
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2012.681183
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, Journal of Gender Studies
Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2012, 401–411
RESEARCH ARTICLE
A sheep in wolf’s clothing? The problematic representation of women
and the female body in 1980s sword and sorcery cinema
Andrea Wright*
Department of English and History, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, UK
(Received 20 September 2010; final version received 27 January 2012)
Downloaded by [Edge Hill University] at 05:25 07 January 2013
The muscled, independent woman found in action-orientated cinema is a problematic
figure that confronts customary perceptions of masculine and feminine representation
and gender roles. The regularly applied active/passive dichotomy is challenged by the
agency and skill of these women, but, simultaneously, their position is undermined
by an emphasis on the body, relationships with male characters, and the demands of
patriarchy. Indeed, Jeffrey A. Brown (1996) argues that a female in an action role is
simply a ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’. This paper will explore Brown’s claim by focusing
on the 1980s sword and sorcery cycle, in particular the often critically overlooked
Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985). In these narratives, women are
seemingly elevated from subsidiary roles to become action heroines or formidable
villains. Moreover, the films facilitate discussions of the women as warriors, women as
powerful malevolent forces, but also engage with broader issues surrounding the
representation of gender, sexuality, race, and the female body.
Keywords: gender; femininity; representation; muscles; sexuality; sword and sorcery
cinema
The muscled female present in the sword and sorcery films of the first half of the 1980s is,
like her male counterpart, a problematic figure. Discussions of the built body by scholars
such as Richard Dyer (1992, 1997) and Steve Neale (1993) in films of this era have
revealed that overt exhibition of the male form is troubling to customary perceptions of
masculine representation. While masculinity is reinforced by muscularity, the body on
display serves to interrogate the traditional notion that the body as spectacle is equated
with passivity and the feminine. The muscled heroine in action cinema invites similar
scrutiny and contains equivalent contradictions. Chris Holmlund describes the built female
body as ‘disconcerting’ and ‘threatening’ because it upsets precisely the conventional
balance of male/active, female/passive that is called into question by the exhibition of the
male body in movies of the same period (2002, p. 19). These muscular women, Holmlund
explains, are unsettling because ‘[t]hey disrupt the equation of men with strength and
women with weakness that underpins gender roles and power relations, that has by now
come to seem familiar and comforting (though perhaps in differing ways) to both women
and men’ (2002, p. 19).
*Email: wrighta@edgehill.ac.uk
ISSN 0958-9236 print/ISSN 1465-3869 online
q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2012.681183
http://www.tandfonline.com
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