Return of the 'Angry Woman': authenticating female physical action in contemporary cinema

In 1999, Elizabeth Hills pointed up the challenges that physically active women on film still posed, in cultural terms, and in relation to certain branches of feminist theory . Since then, a remarkable number of emphatically active female heroes have appeared on screen, from 'Charlie’s Angels' to 'Resident Evil', 'Aeon Flux', and the 'Matrix' and 'X-Men' trilogies. Nevertheless, in a contemporary Western culture frequently characterised as postfeminist, these seem to be the ‘acceptable face’ – and body – of female empowerment: predominantly white, heterosexual, often scantily clad, with the traditional hero’s toughness and resolve re-imagined in terms of gender-biased notions of decorum: grace and dignity alongside perfect hair and make-up, and a body that does not display unsightly markers of physical exertion. The homogeneity of these representations is worth investigating in relation to critical claims that valorise such air-brushed, high-kicking 'action babes' for their combination of sexiness and strength, and the feminist and postfeminist discourses that are refracted through such readings. Indeed, this arguably ‘safe’ set of depictions, dovetailing so neatly with certain postfeminist notions of ‘having it all’, suppresses particular kinds of spectacles in relation to the active female body: images of physical stress and extension, biological consequences of violence and dangerous motivations are all absent. I argue that the untidy female exertions refused in popular “action babe” representations are now erupting into view in a number of other contemporaneous movies – 'Kill Bill' Vols 1 & 2, 'Monster', and 'Hard Candy' – that mark the return of that which is repressed in the mainstream vision of female power – that is, a more viscerally realistic physicality, rage and aggression. As such, these films engage directly with the issue of how to represent violent female agency. This chapter explores what is at stake at a representational level and in terms of spectatorial processes of identification in the return of this particularly visceral rendering of the female avenger.

Female chromosomes in cockerel ejaculates

We describe a polymerase chain reaction which amplifies part of the Eco RI repeat unit of the fowl W chromosome. The resulting 447 bp fragment enables DNA from female birds to be identified. The composition of this DNA is confirmed by a nested polymerase chain reaction which specifically amplifies a known internal 263 bp region in this fragment. Using this technique it is possible to follow the fate of female cells in male germline chimaeras. The polymerase chain reaction fragment can be traced in cells of the embryonic and hatchling gonad and in adult sperm implying that cells containing the W chromosome are capable of being processed through the avian testis.

Measuring the discrepancy between fecundity and lifetime reproductive success in a pollinating fig wasp

Lifetime reproductive success in female insects is often egg- or time-limited. For instance in pro-ovigenic species, when oviposition sites are abundant, females may quickly become devoid of eggs. Conversely, in the absence of suitable oviposition sites, females may die before laying all of their eggs. In pollinating fig wasps (Hymenoptera: Agaonidae), each species has an obligate mutualism with its host fig tree species [Ficus spp. (Moraceae)]. These pro-ovigenic wasps oviposit in individual ovaries within the inflorescences of monoecious Ficus (syconia, or ‘figs’), which contain many flowers. Each female flower can thus become a seed or be converted into a wasp gall. The mystery is that the wasps never oviposit in all fig ovaries, even when a fig contains enough wasp females with enough eggs to do so. The failure of all wasps to translate all of their eggs into offspring clearly contributes to mutualism persistence, but the underlying causal mechanisms are unclear. We found in an undescribed Brazilian Pegoscapus wasp population that the lifetime reproductive success of lone foundresses was relatively unaffected by constraints on oviposition. The number of offspring produced by lone foundresses experimentally introduced into receptive figs was generally lower than the numbers of eggs carried, despite the fact that the wasps were able to lay all or most of their eggs. Because we excluded any effects of intraspecific competitors and parasitic non-pollinating wasps, our data suggest that some pollinators produce few offspring because some of their eggs or larvae are unviable or are victims of plant defences.

On the troublesome relationship of feminism and terrorism: representing the female terrorist in contemporary art

This paper analyses tendencies in debates about cultural representations of terrorism to assume that artists make critical interventions, while the mass media circulates stereotypes. Some recent feminist analyses of female terrorist acts have re-instituted essentialist arguments in which violence and terrorism is described as inherently masculine, while women are by nature pacifist, so that femininity is the antithesis of militarism. More progressive analyses mostly tend to expose the circulation of stereotypes and their gender bias, in order to protest the misrepresentation of women in violence. These analyses do not construct alternative accounts. Through an analysis of two works by artists Hito Steyerl and Sharon Hayes, the paper argues that some of the moves to re-image the question of women, violence and agency have already been made in contemporary art practices. Through analysing legacies of terrorism and feminism, it becomes possible to rethink the question of agency, militancy and the nature of political art. The paper appears in an edited interdiscplinary collection arising from a conference at Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich. It relates to wider projects involving collaborations with Birkbeck and Edinburgh on representations of terrorism and on violence and contemporary art.