Corporeality and Embodiment in the Female Boxing Film

Citation

Lindner K (2014) Corporeality and Embodiment in the Female Boxing Film. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, Summer (7), p. 18, Art. No.: 01. http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue7/HTML/ArticleLindner.html

Abstract
This article engages with questions of corporeality in the boxing film. Within the context of debates that understand the genre as a space in which the tensions and contradictions around masculinity can be worked out (Baker; Woodward; Grindon), it explores the troubling, and potentially queer, implications of the female boxer in two contemporary boxing films: Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004) and Die Boxerin (About a Girl, Catharina Deus, 2004). It does so with a particular emphasis on the significance of the corporeality of the boxing body and boxing performance, as well as the embodied spectatorial engagements made possible by the films’ incorporation of the female boxer’s queer orientations.

Keywords
film; cinema; gender; boxing; boxing film; female boxer; masculinity; genre; violence; sexuality; embodiment; corporeality; physicality; athleticism; sport; phenomenology; Million Dollar Baby; Girlfight; Die Boxerin; Clint Eastwood; Hillary Swank; spectatorship; queer theory

Journal
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media: Volume Summer, Issue 7