Boundary Battles: Heroic Narrative, The Feminine,

 and MTV’S Aeon Flux

Recently, a wide range of film and television programming has broken with traditional media representations of women as passive objects of the male gaze by featuring women as action heroes. Sherrie Inness’s Tough Girls (1999) focuses on the contradictory nature of many of these representations, but finally argues that “tough” media heroines like Xena of Xena: Warrior Princess and Dana Scully of The X-Files are no longer mere sexual objects. In Cracks in the Pedestal (1998), Philip Green argues that such texts allow their female heroes to be seen—like male heroes before them—as “the individual,” who functions as the source of the point of view, viewer identification, and narrative agency (188). He understands the appearance of heroines like Ripley and Xena as a sign that feminist ideals have at least begun to be incorporated by mainstream culture.

Yet as noted by both Green and Inness, the appearance of female heroes is far from unproblematic. This is especially so when one considers the nature of the medium as a hegemonic instrument that frequently co-opts resistant points of view in order to benefit the ruling corporate class. Just as the women’s fitness movement, while in some ways oppositional to a culture that denied female activity, was eventually co-opted by big business and advertisers to become yet another demand on women for physical perfection, “female heroes” may be less progressive than their position in the narrative implies.¹

Indeed, since the ’Sixties, female heroes have been used to address two, often separate, audiences. For example, Charlie’s Angels spoke to a 1970s audience hungry for images of powerful women, while at the same time the “jiggle” phenomenon made sure that these heroes satisfied the prurient interests of male viewers.² The female hero is likewise frequently depicted as a “dominatrix” whose physical power and aggression is excused because she provides sexual titillation to the viewer. Similarly, Yvonne Tasker has argued that the recent spate of female “musculinity” in media reflects an overall adoption of “hardness” as an ideal—an ethos continuing to promote masculinity and masculine values.

Thus, it is not enough to say that women are being placed at the narrative center of action films. We must also ask how they are represented once they are there. For example, to group Barb Wire, a film marketed to adolescent males, into the same category as a television series like Xena: Warrior Princess, beloved by feminists and lesbians ignores, qualitative issues at the very heart of feminist film criticism. In-depth, semiotic analyses of female heroes remain necessary to provide this kind of crucial qualitative information. While much recent work has rightfully focused on audience interpretation of texts, following Bonnie Dow, I believe that close textual studies still have much to tell us about the rhetoric of visual images. It is highly problematic to read the mere presence of female heroes as a sign of their equality with male heroes, while ignoring such crucial elements of presentation as whether or not women fight alone, why they fight, or how they fight. In addition, factors such as scenery, dialogue, framing, whether the text is film or television, all work to tell the viewer how to interpret the meaning of the action heroine.

Semiotic investigations help uncover the visual syntax that cues viewers into ways of understanding and interpreting texts. Therefore, before deciding whether or not female heroes express a pro-feminist ideological shift in mainstream culture, it is necessary to examine exactly how certain media texts represent women, female power, and the proper use and behavior of the female body. MTV’s Aeon Flux offers an opportunity to examine how representations of the female hero and the female body mediate cultural concerns over active female bodies and female power.

Aeon Flux may be thought of as “the mother” of the recent trend of television female action heroes. Aeon Flux first aired as a series of short films on MTV’s Liquid Television in 1991. The show was adapted into a half-hour series in 1995, prior to the appearance of Xena: Warrior Princess, and two years ahead of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Aeon Flux’s presence on MTV guaranteed Aeon a unique position in the emerging pantheon of female heroes. MTV has had a pronounced effect on contemporary visual culture, influencing both the style and content of much recent media. The network’s trend-setting reputation and appeal to youthful audiences garners its shows both critical and popular attention. Created by Korean-born, American-raised artist Peter Chung, Aeon Flux is a cult classic, with widespread recognition among comic book and animation fans. The series has not only spawned a video game and a 1995 book, The Herodotus File, but has also won critical acclaim. ³

Since its inception, as Sut Jhally has shown, MTV has been considered a bastion of male-dominance, a breeding ground for hegemonic and sexist imagery. At first glance, Aeon Flux fits into the visual system of the network. Scantily clad in leather thongs, thigh-high boots and a chastity belt, Aeon is a dominatrix designed to titillate MTV’s youthful, male audience. The sexual nature of her presentation suggests that, like other sexualized images of “powerful” women, the series is paying lip service to feminism while conveying deeply masculinist attitudes in drag. However, in spite of her obvious sexual appeal, Aeon is never pure spectacle. Something about her character and function in the narrative remains firmly outside the “gaze” or indeed, any narrative resolution.

Typical action texts present a vision of the world that is highly ordered. The hero is depicted as a unique individual, who, encountering an unstable situation (whether in the form of injustice, rampant crime, Indians, or evil bureaucrats), establishes order, taming and containing all that is uncontrollable or Other. Linked through filmic techniques to the hero’s gaze, viewers look out at a world that has been rendered predictable, safe and known. Although there are many ideological implications of this structure, action texts work to shore up the boundaries between self and other, life and death, and the known and the unknown, most often, as Jane Tompkins argues, through the control of the mind over the body and the punishment and containment of the feminine. In contrast, Aeon Flux’s female hero, through her “feminine” association with destruction, anarchy, irrationality and liminality, is used to dissolve the traditional masculinist model of heroism based on the containment of the Other.

In both the short films and the half-hour series, Aeon’s identity is unclear. She may be a double agent working for (or against) her nemesis and sometimes lover, Trevor Goodchild. Goodchild, is the head of Bregna, a country with a “structured” society. Like East and West Berlin, Bregna is separated from Aeon’s native country, Monica, by a wall. Monica is a “free state” which supports anarchy. The two countries seem to be at war. The ideology of the two countries is never fully articulated, though the ambiguity of Aeon’s character and actions suggests that she supports the anarchist views of a Monican. However, there are also indicators that she is actually working for Trevor, whose own goals seem clear: he wants a well-ordered society with highly evolved, independent and rational humans (under his control, of course). Trevor is a visionary who seems to believe that his plans will benefit the greater good. However, his methods of achieving his goals are highly suspect.

Superficially, at least, the series articulates the tensions between the differing philosophies of control versus anarchy, as represented by Bregna and Monica, and, in turn, Aeon, the anarchist, and the structured Trevor. Aeon believes that independence and “free will” evolve naturally. Trevor believes that freedom comes from harnessing nature. Similarly, the two characters represent the dualist split of mind versus body and of construction versus destruction. Trevor espouses a desire for rationality and escaping the limits of the mundane flesh. Aeon, on the other hand, represents the “feminine” power of destruction and nature and constantly works to thwart Trevor’s plans. Aeon’s name suggests her association with natural processes, evoking endless ebb and flow as well as the cycle of life and death. Likewise, the character of Aeon frequently dies, only to reappear in the next episode.

Trevor and Aeon’s debate over control is reflected in the dialogue and visuals of the half-hour series’ title sequence. This sequence is worth examining is some detail because it contains themes and concepts that are repeated throughout the shorts and series. The dialogue is as follows:

Trevor: The dream to awaken our world

Aeon: You’re out of control

Trevor: I take control. Whose side are you on?

Aeon: I take no side

Trevor: You’re skating the edge

Aeon: I am the edge

Trevor: What you truly want, only I can give.

In this exchange, Trevor presents himself as a visionary, a revolutionary, who sees his actions as a form of taking control. Aeon’s own character as “the edge” suggests her to be a dangerous, liminal figure with all that liminality implies: transcendence, corruption, danger, progression, transformation, and change. Moreover, whatever it is that Trevor offers her is nothing that he can control or possess: Aeon is after something intangible, some ephemeral thing that Trevor’s rational mind cannot understand.

The first image in the title is typical of how Aeon Flux as a whole underscores the relativity of perspective. The first shot is of an eyeball with flies buzzing around it, embedded in some sort of machine. The animation pulls back to reveal that in fact the “eye-ball” is a large statue by which soldiers are marching. The next shot is of Trevor watching the parade from a platform above. The platform pulls backward as the camera abruptly changes angles, dislocating the viewer’s sense of perspective.

The following scenes play with images of power and surveillance, setting up an environment of deadly spaces: Trevor walks down a corridor lined from floor to ceiling with monitors filled with images of Aeon. The camera zooms in to an extreme close-up of Trevor’s eyeball, in which Aeon is reflected. The reflection turns into the fighting figure of Aeon, who leaps to the edge of a tall building. As Aeon runs, she must thread an obstacle course as barriers suddenly appear before her, finally leaping into empty space. Trevor watches as she falls through a series of net-like wires that lash out as if to trap her. As she is about to hit the ground, the wires become a net that supports her. She places a small, eyeball-like object onto the floor, paralleling the larger eyeball statue in the first shot. The eyeball pops open. It is, in fact, a bomb that explodes. The next frame is a close-up of a pool of red fluid with two scorpion-like animals threatening each other. Aeon’s shadow is reflected in the fluid that splashes onto the tip of Trevor’s shoes. The next image pulls back to reveal Trevor watching Aeon’s silhouette in a doorway as the door slams. The final shot connotes images of corruption and disease. It is an extreme close up of Aeon’s eye with the iris rolled back and a fly buzzing around it. The eyelashes suddenly reach out and trap the fly and the iris roles forward. The pupil dilates as the title flashes across the screen and Aeon’s theme music plays. The images in the title sequence are typical of the series as a whole. They reflect the main motifs of the series: the use of dangerous, liminal spaces; and themes of bodily corruption and contamination; relativism, and power and surveillance. The following sections will examine the reiteration of these themes in the series and shorts.

Dangerous Spaces

The confusing, changing, and deadly physical environments created in the title sequence are typical of the series as a whole. For example, in the episode titled “Ether Drift Theory,” Aeon breaks into a “habitat” that Trevor has created. The habitat is a “perfectly balanced ecosystem” filled with Trevor’s menagerie of strange creatures and mutants, surrounded by an ocean of paralytic fluid that traps habitat escapees. The habitat itself is riddled with traps and deadly creatures and is eventually destroyed when Aeon accidentally releases an acidic fluid that rots away the metal. It crumbles around her, leaving Aeon trapped in the paralytic fluid. Likewise, in the short “Gravity,” much of the action occurs as Aeon is falling from a plane to her death. Often, landscapes disintegrate, as in “Ether Drift Theory,” or change into something else entirely. The series’ environment is full of trap doors, secret tunnels, and moving ramps, creating an overriding sense of an environment designed to trap, not only physically, but visually.

The animation continually creates the illusion of camera movements. “The camera” is highly unstable, constantly moving, replicating the effect of zooms and pullbacks, which abruptly change the viewer’s spatial relation to objects on screen. This creates “trick” perspectives, such as those in the title sequence, in which what first appears to be an eyeball turns out to be a huge statue, for example. In fact, part of the sense of instability the viewer feels is created by the visual tricks that catch the viewer out in her own expectations.

The uncertainty of sight is worth particular attention since visual metaphors are so much in evidence. For example, the title sequence highlights the importance of sight through such images as Aeon’s reflection in Trevor’s eyes, shadows and silhouettes, the monitor-lined hallway, Trevor’s observation of his troops, and Aeon’s eyes. Aeon Flux continually plays with the contradictory ideas of surveillance and spying as a means to power, at the same time indicating that appearances are untrustworthy. In the title sequence, for example, we see that an eyeball may in fact be a statue, a dead eye is alive, and a reflection becomes the real thing; nothing is as it seems to be on the surface.

In contrast, for example, to the narrative films examined by Laura Mulvey that feature a clear position of enunciation and an obvious filmic subject, it is unclear who the subject of the gaze is in these scenes and in many of the episodes. Changes in perspectives, which flip between Aeon and Trevor, for example, work to physically dislocate the viewer. For example, in the title sequence, both Aeon’s and Trevor’s voice-overs are laid over a series of images in which they are not seen. In his first scene, Trevor is surveying his troops and then watching Aeon, but his status of “watcher” is quickly reversed. Throughout the introduction, Aeon’s image becomes less visible while Trevor finds himself being watched rather than watching. Aeon’s image becomes more and more shadowy: she appears first as a reflection in Trevor’s eye, then as a shadow, then as a silhouette. Finally, Aeon slams a door as Trevor watches, shutting off his vision. Similarly, the series’ bumper featuring an eyeball with the rolled back iris suggests that she was waiting to ensnare the fly. Though the eye appears to be dead and sightless, it is still waiting and watching covertly. Even though Aeon’s physical body disappears, her power of sight is used to remind the viewer of her now invisible presence and suggest that perhaps she is watching the viewer. The play of power associated with sight is iterated in all the episodes, and characters are obsessed with spying on one another.

However, although sight is a means to power and knowledge, it is not reliable. As Trevor says, “Clean gloves hide dirty hands.” The episodes and shorts show that eyes are often betrayed. In one short, for example, Aeon breaks into a house. Although she constantly checks a monitor showing the entrance to the house, she doesn’t notice that the monitor has a time delay. Unseen by Aeon, Trevor enters the house and kills her as the monitor belatedly reveals his entrance into the house. Although Aeon is at times fooled by sight, Trevor’s sight is perhaps less reliable. Trevor often has his habits of surveillance turned against him by Aeon. In “Utopia in Deuteronopia,” for example, Aeon forces Trevor to watch her receiving foot fellatio from another man. Importantly, Aeon repeatedly maintains her power and mystery by disappearing from Trevor’s sight just when he thinks he has captured her.

Contaminated/Contaminating Bodies

Just as the physical environment is dangerous and untrustworthy, so is the body. The show juxtaposes images of Aeon and Trevor’s extreme physical strength and agility with images of bodily corruption and contamination. Not least among the presentation of bodies is Aeon’s own noticeable physique. Although she at first appears to be a very erotic dominatrix, an image reinforced by her sexual activities, the visual effect of her body in motion is quite jarring, and actually works to counteract the overt sexualization of her character. Aeon moves in a jagged, insect-like way. Her body, with its black armor and spindly long appendages, has the physical quality of a spider. The animation jerks in such a way that she moves like an insect and appears to skitter over the landscape. Her body is drawn in a way that emphasizes the contradictions in her movement, with, for example, her head turning in one direction as her legs go in another. In addition, her body is often killed, crumbling into grotesque angles as it lies crushed and bleeding.

While some viewers undoubtedly find Aeon’s body and partial nudity titillating, there is a certain quality of grotesqueness about it. Indeed, her anatomy is not only revealed, it is overemphasized: we can, for example, see into the joints of her crotch. Thus the animation works against an essential element of the erotic—mystery. Like the opening shot of “Gravity,” which features a mouth’s point of view of a tongue entering it, her appearance is a bit too intimate, too detailed to be erotic. By displaying her body and its parts so obviously, some of the power of the image is removed. Her partial nudity becomes interesting only because it signals the vulnerability of her flesh: a flesh that dies, in contrast to her sheer physicality and physical power.

This contrast between physical strength and vulnerability reappears in the motif of bodily contamination. Bodies are often contaminated by technology. Many characters are cyborgs, with wires and weapons grafted onto their bodies. For example, Scafandra, another female spy, has hands in place of her missing feet. Her tongue has a hidden slot from which darts and wires spring forth. Grappling hooks and wires also spring from compartments in her heels and hands. Clavius has his stomach turned into a tunnel in “Utopia or Deuteronopia.” His belly is held together with series of metallic locks; he is kept alive by being plugged into an outlet in the wall. In “Purge” an artificial “consciousness” made of metal is inserted into various characters through their navels.

The body is also subject to contamination from natural means. The body as a source of decay is depicted in the title sequence’s very first shot of flies buzzing around the eyeballs. Infectious viruses are a reoccurring motif. Bargeld in “Ether Drift Theory” is infected and finally killed by a virus he himself has created, which also infects his girlfriend, Lindsa. Throughout the episode, scenes are intercut with shots of the microscopic view of the virus as it grows. In “Isthmus Crypticus” a winged alien is killed by a single bite from an insect that rots her skin. In “End Sinister,” Trevor plans on releasing a virus into the environment. The virus causes wounds to instantaneously spread over the bodies of the aliens and later appears to have taken on a life of its own, hovering in the air. Viruses spread instantaneously and inexorably. Like perspective, bodily strength is relative.

The threat of bodily contamination is often linked to sex, thus tying sex to horror, pain, and victimization. In “Purge” victims arch their backs and howl as the “consciousness” thrusts itself into their navels. When characters are bitten by bugs, cut, and so forth, their howls of pain sound orgasmic. In addition, technologically altered bodies, while grotesque, are often sexualized. For example, Trevor brings Sybil, a girl whose back is held together by a metal hinge, to orgasm by fiddling around with a surgical instrument in the open hole in her back. The hinge leaks fluids. Similarly, the aliens in “End Sinister” have sex by exchanging eyeballs with each other and Trevor, suggesting a permeability and mutability of the body. The aliens carry spare eyes with them in a sack. Aeon, investigating the alien space ship pokes her finger into the eye sack, and pulls it out dripping with fluid.

The body is also subject to contamination from natural means. Depictions of bodily functions like eating, sex and death reveal a horrified fascination with the permeability of the body. For example, the short “Gravity” opens with a mouth’s point of view shot as a tongue snakily enters it. When characters kiss, the sight is usually accompanied by a slurping sound. Characters’ tongues flick in and out of their mouths like long wet snakes. Often tongues are inserted into ears and pumped in and out like pistons. The visual effect is one of repulsion towards bodily processes. Importantly, the body, depicted as permeable, leaking, and wet, evokes the female. In this framework, bodies are under constant threat of contamination, and to resist contamination is to maintain one’s control and individuality.

Not only is the female body grotesque, it is also dangerous. Aeon, of course, is physically dangerous to her foe, but her sexuality is even more dangerous. The novel The Herodotus File, for example, features a sequence that plays upon the male horror of female sexuality. Trevor has decided to assassinate Aeon through the means of bombs, inserted into his sperm, which he plans to ejaculate into her. After Aeon and Trevor have sex, the next sequence of frames show an interior shot of Aeon’s vagina as the explosive-laden sperm travel towards her uterus. Lying in wait for the bomb, however, is a multi-fanged robotic device, which eats the sperm while Aeon laughs at Trevor The castrating threat of the vagina dentata is evoked along with the threat of female laughter and sexual ridicule. In addition, such sequences play with the idea of bodies being infused with materials from the external world, contaminants that threaten bodily destruction.

As this example shows, contamination and destruction are linked to Aeon herself. Aeon’s very presence can be disruptive—she often inadvertently causes the death of other characters. Aeon is depicted as both the disease and the cure, as in, for example, the final shot of the title sequence, in which her eyeball captures the fly. This shot is used as a bumper throughout the series and has an iconic function, signifying Aeon. Initially, it seems like the fly is preying upon a corpse, but it ironically becomes a corpse; Aeon has been preying upon the fly. Is she the virus or the vaccine? As these scenes make clear, the series presents truth as hidden, or at the very least, dependent upon one’s viewpoint. Everything is relative.

Another way in which the series plays with the concept of relativism is by denying the power of action. In the majority of episodes, individuals are constantly hoist on their own petards or destroyed by the unseen. For example, in “End Sinister” Aeon tries to stop Trevor from releasing a virus which will kill off the human race by stealing the detonator. In a complex series of events, Aeon finds herself in the future, with the earth seemingly overrun by aliens. She releases the virus to kill the aliens only to learn that the “aliens” were, in fact, evolved humans. In the short “Aeon Flux,” Aeon’s adventures are abruptly cut short when she steps on a tack and falls to her death. The series ultimately suggests that any action that one makes may have unforeseen, far-reaching consequences. Thus, any action, even non-action, creates effects. The series repeatedly shows the chaotic nature of simply being.

Life in Death

There are some interesting comparisons to make between traditional action narratives and Aeon Flux. Much of Jane Tompkins’ discussion of themes and meanings in Westerns may be applied to action texts as a whole. Tompkins points out that the tension between community and individuality is expressed through the hero’s control of his body. The hero seeks to escape into the wilderness away from towns and society that are equated with the feminine. By sealing himself against human interaction, as with silence, the hero’s body is impervious to penetration and the feminine. Likewise, the suffering his body endures demonstrates his masculinity as well as the strength of his mind and his moral superiority.

The hero’s body replicates what Mikhail Bakhtin has called the “classical body,” a body that shores up the boundaries between itself and the outside world. In contrast, the “grotesque” body breaks down these boundaries. It is important to note that just as the control of the body, the control of relations to others, is a defense against the feminine; it is also a repression of death. The grotesque body, on the other hand, articulates a contrasting view towards the nature of death and the feminine. Kathleen Rowe describes the connection between bodily control and conceptions of mortality in her discussion of carnival and the grotesque. “The grotesque exaggerates incompleteness, process, and change, maintaining a kind of moral neutrality of ambivalence toward time and death. When life is understood from a collective rather than individual perspective, time becomes the necessary link in the process of communal growth and renewal, and death the ‘other side’ of birth rather than a source of terror” (33).

The landscape and animation in Aeon Flux reflect this process. Both are constantly changing and unstable. The landscape contains pitfalls and traps, such as laser towers. It crumbles and disintegrates, it is constantly shifting, a model of change, the processes of decay as well as growth and life. Like the western hero, landscape in Aeon Flux is used not only to set up an opposition or a problem for Aeon but also to define her. Just as the landscape represents the notion of boundaries or liminality, Aeon is also a liminal figure.

Aeon achieves what the Western hero aspires to be: she is unselfconsciously, unreflectively one with her surroundings. Yet Aeon is also endangered in this world; she dies, often from a result of the landscape, for example, falling to her death from a high rise. And though she too is reborn, it is the vision of the landscape that remains to outline her broken body within the individual episode. Yet, as is seen by her name, the series emphasizes continuance. Aeon literally change states. She passes freely back and forth through the border between Bregna and Monica. She dies but is reborn. She may be an individual woman, or merely representative of Everywoman. Life will continue, despite the death of the individual Aeon.

For example, the short “War” follows a progression of characters through a battle, the point of which is unclear. Aeon kills hundreds of Breen soldiers only to be killed in the first few seconds of the short by an early incarnation of Trevor. We follow a series of characters one by one as they encounter one another during the course of the battle. The action sequences are interspersed with shots of oil dripping from a pipe to puddle on the floor. As the drops continue to flow, the puddle spreads. This is a rather obvious visual metaphor for war, connoting spreading pools of blood, as well as the vast numbers of individuals, whose individual stories progress or end, even as they connect to the unknown stories of others. Individuality ends, but life continues in this collective view.

Although Trevor constantly wants unity, while Aeon stands alone, their actions reflect the opposite. Trevor’s actions work to underscore his individuality and separation. Aeon’s reveal the interconnection of all things. The natural (Aeon/Chaos) continually triumphs over the abstract (Trevor/ intentions). Death is ever present, reflected by visceral, disturbing images of dead, mutilated and penetrated bodies. The “democratic materiality” of life is shown in the way that the tiniest of viruses can kill armies. The imagery reveals a fascination with boundaries and borderlands and repeatedly plays on themes of “death-in-life and life-in-death,” as for example, in its use of infections, and its relativistic view towards life and death.

Conclusion

Philip Green argues that despite placing women in the center of the narrative and allowing them to be seen as “individuals,” the ideological project of most female-centered action texts is hardly new, but merely replicates hegemonic notions of dominance, capitalism and the unique individual. He concludes that while there are “cracks” in the ideological pedestal, the pedestal remains. I will not argue that Aeon Flux does away with the pedestal. The series provides ample opportunity for audiences to ogle its scantily clad heroine. Many images in Aeon Flux may be read as misogynistic, particularly the series’ repugnance and horror of the reproductive female body. Moreover, Aeon Flux offers a vision of female power mediated through a familiar, culturally approved lens. Aeon’s “power” comes through her status as the “eternal femme”; she is chaotic, destructive, irrational, liminal, and associated with the body.

However, Aeon Flux offers a unique ideological departure from mainstream action texts. Heroic narratives usually feature the notion of a unique, transcendent individuality, possessing the power to control environments and dominate others. Viewers are urged to identify with this powerful presence. In contrast, the structure and content of Aeon Flux denies viewer interpellation into any particular subject position. The “triple gaze” postulated by Mulvey is thus dismantled, creating a more open text that may encourage resistant readings. In addition, Aeon’s femaleness not only reveals but celebrates the gaps between self and other, life and death, the known and the unknown, gaps that male-centered action texts usually attempt to repress or collapse. In Aeon Flux the feminine Other is not conquered, but triumphant. Through the ascendancy of the feminine, Aeon Flux destabilizes the notion that (male) order can be, or should be, brought to an unstable natural world. While not necessarily a feminist text, Aeon Flux derails the masculinist project of domination central to most action texts. Aeon represents the here and now. Like her name, she goes with the flow; finally seeming wiser than the rational Trevor, who seeks to control what can’t be controlled.

Dawn Heinecken

Women’s Studies

301 Patterson Hall

University of Louisville

Louisville, KY 40292

1 See Susan Bordo, ^{Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (1993); Susan Willis, A Primer for Daily Life (1991)..}

2 See Julie D’Acci, ^{Defining Women: The Case of Cagney and Lacey (1994); Sherrie A. Inness, Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women In Popular Culture (1999).}

    3 Sony Playstation, December 1996; PC Version available from Cryo/Viacom New Media, January 1997; Colson Whitehead, “That Girl,” ^{The Village Voice, 22 August 1995, 43; Michael Atkinson, “Inside Aeon,” Film Comment, 1 January 1996, 20; Notebook, Time Magazine, 22 July 1996, 19.}

Works Cited

Asher, Japhet, and Peter Gaffney. The Herodotus File. New York: Pocket Books, 1995.

Atkinson, Michael. “Inside Aeon.” Film Comment 1 Jan. 1996: 20.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. P, 1968.

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.

D’Acci, Julie. Defining Women: The Case of Cagney and Lacey. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1994.

Dow, Bonnie. Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1996.

Green, Philip. Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1998.

Inness, Sherrie A. Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.

Jhally, Sut. Dreamworlds II: Desire, Sex, Power in Music Videos. Northampton, MA: Media Educational Foundation, 1995.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Contemporary Film Theory. Ed. Anthony Easthope. New York: Longman, 1993.

Notebook. Time Magazine 22 July 1996: 19.

Rowe, Kathleen. The Unruly Woman: Gender and Genres of Laughter. Austin: U of Texas P, 1995.

Sony Playstation. Dec. 1996. PC Version available from Cyro/Viacom New Media. Jan. 1997.

Tasker, Yvone. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Action Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York: Oxford U P, 1992.

Whitehead, Colson. “That Girl.” The Village Voice 22 Aug. 1995: 43.

Willis, Susan. A Primer for Daily Life. New York: Routledge, 1991.