Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi (Jan 2017)
Female Action Hero vs Male Dominance: The Female Representation in Mad Max: Fury Road
Abstract
In recent years, female action heroes seem to have conquered the world of cinema, partially satisfying the demand for strong female characters that would elude the voyeurism of what Laura Mulvey famously described as “the male gaze.” However, among feminist theorists there has been a great debate on whether these films actually challenge the patriarchal structures, or just reproduce the same old stereotypes in a more polished and misleading manner. The latest entry of such a female character is Furiosa in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). My objective is to examine the female representation in the aforementioned film and question whether the film actually achieves to successfully challenge the well established male dominance or falls in the trap of repetition and reconfirmation. I will show that, although there has been an undeniable progress in action movies regarding gender stereotypes, unfortunately there is still a long way to walk.
