Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture (review)

The action heroine is a complicated figure in that she can be viewed as a regressive symbol of male fantasy and fetishism or as a powerful individual who controls the narrative and assumes the traditionally male active role. In his book Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture, Jeffrey A. Brown works through these various interpretations of action heroines in order to argue for their potential “to function as progressive role models, despite the cultural-and genre-derived fetishization” (13). Brown predominantly explores female action roles in film and television but also draws examples from comic book formats, video games, and fan fiction, providing a wide range of examples of action heroines. Dangerous Curves is divided into nine chapters, each of which discusses a different variant of action heroine.

Brown begins by looking at hardbodied female action heroes, typified by Ripley in the Alien series (1979–97) and Terminator 2’s (1991) Sarah Connor. He also provides a close reading of the film Point of No Return (1993) to demonstrate the ways in which traditionally feminine and masculine roles are performed by the leading female character. Referencing previous scholarship by Carol Clover, Richard Dyer, Judith Butler, and others, Brown concludes that by performing masculinity and femininity, the action heroine calls attention to both as social constructions that are therefore not biologically determined. This argumentation continues as Brown moves into a discussion of “the bad girls of action films and comic books,” who draw more heavily on their status as sex symbols and the codes of the dominatrix.

Brown focuses the third chapter on the TV show Alias (2001–06), paying particular attention to the fetishized undercover costuming of leading lady Sydney Bristow and Alias’s exemplification of the tendency for action heroines to be male creations. Usually this takes the form of a father figure who mentors and develops the woman’s skills. Within this typical generic structure, the figure of the father is often linked with patriarchal authority (in the form of, for example, the CIA), and the action heroine works to uphold this system. What on the surface appears to be a progressive portrayal of women is undermined by this element of Pygmalion creation and patriarchal authority. These aspects are taken further in the next chapter, which explores completely man-made female cyborg characters and videogames, such as Tomb Raider (1996–2012), that allow people to directly control the actions of a strong, active female character.

After a chapter discussing the potentially empowering act of striptease with relation to the stripper revenge plot, Brown moves on to examine the postfeminist action heroine. These heroines, who are often young girls, “operate in a world where earlier feminist concerns are seen as outdated” (142). Beginning in the 1990s, these female action heroines (in works such as The Powerpuff Girls [1998–2004], Kim Possible [2002–07], Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1997–2003], and D.E.B.S. [2004]) became part of the “girl power” craze and are notably different from previous iterations of heroines. They balance girlie pursuits, such as shopping, with saving the world, and their youth allows them to “depict challenging images of powerful girls without challenging the cultural expectations of women” (167).

In chapter 7, Brown moves his analysis into the realm of comic book characters, specifically nonwhite comic book heroines. He explores the way ethnicity and gender work as a double fetish, seeming almost redundant. These comic book heroines spark discussions of deviant sexuality, which Brown continues to discuss in the next chapter with relation to vampires and sadomasochistic sexuality stemming from the mixture of violence and eroticism. Under particular consideration in this chapter are Buffy and the Underworld series (2003–12). Brown shifts focus toward the end of the chapter to look at the ways that action heroines, using Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001) as the key example, are open to queer readings and have developed lesbian fan bases...