Girlfight: Boxing women

Authors: Caudwell, J.

Journal: Sport in Society

Volume: 11

Issue: 2-3

Pages: 227-239

eISSN: 1743-0445

ISSN: 1743-0437

DOI: 10.1080/17430430701823455

Abstract:

Karyn Kusama's film Girlfight (2000), staring Michelle Rodriguez, won the Director's Award and the Grand Jury Prize at 2000 Sundance Film Festival, and the Award of Youth at Cannes Film Festival 2000. The low budget, independent film is Kusama's debut production and Rodriguez's debut performance. The film is about how a young woman - Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) - from the New York City projects enters a local boxing gym. The narrative centres on her training and eventual entry to competitive boxing. However, this boxing story is surrounded by tensions in Guzman's school life, family life and love life. The film is not about a boxer per se, but about boxing and gender. In this essay gender is understood as implicating sexuality. The essay highlights the ways femininity and masculinity are materialized so that the protagonist is read as woman boxer and not as a boxer. Feminist film theory is deployed to explore how sexual difference is produced and reproduced. In addition, the essay considers the ways the materialization of gender is disrupted, for example via the protagonist's hetero-sexual subjectivity, and how dislocations of gender norms are often framed as individual acts requiring exceptional personal will.

Source: Scopus