Taking a beating: historicising the US action heroine as “punchbag”

Purse, L. (2026) Taking a beating: historicising the US action heroine as “punchbag”. In: Berridge, S. and Boyle, K. (eds.) Routledge Companion to Gender, Violence & Popular Culture:. Routledge Companion to Gender book series. Routledge, London. (In Press)

Abstract/Summary

The increasing prevalence of big screen action heroines in the last 25 years has renewed debates about female representation as well as accusations of tokenism, objectification and limited credibility. The terms under which women are depicted in action cinema as perpetrators of violence, and the kind of violence they must correspondingly withstand, can clarify these films’ relationship to an increasingly polarised contemporary context in which gender-based violence is both persistently present, campaigned against, and legally and socio-politically under-addressed. Yet cultural and academic debates about the action heroine and her real world significance often lack an attentiveness to the substance of the action sequences themselves, which can reveal insights into these depictions of violence, and violent women. This chapter addresses this gap by exploring and historicising the depiction of the violent action woman in US action films from the 2000s onwards, through a close examination of the recent trend for the female action hero to undergo a sustained onscreen beating in the process of attaining her goals. I will show how these fictional "punching bag" scenes channel shifts in real world public discourse around gender-based violence, while revealing continuing cultural discomfort with women as holders of power.