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Transnational Horror Cinema pp 133–158Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

An Eyepatch of Courage: Battle-Scarred Amazon Warriors in the Movies of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino

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Abstract

Fink explores representations of women warriors with disabilities in the neo-exploitation films of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Analyzing characters that are designed as good-looking yet bare-knuckle female fighters marked by a visible disability (Elle Driver from Tarantino’s two-part Kill Bill, Shé from Rodriguez’s Machete films, and Cherry Darling from Rodriguez’s Planet Terror), Fink shows how the two filmmakers have tapped into the image of the maimed Amazon, a motif of representation that transcends national attributions as well as complicates notions of feminine autonomy and patriarchal hegemony. He draws on theories from feminist film studies and Disability Studies to reveal both the potentials as well as pitfalls of signifying female empowerment through representations of disability in film aesthetics typically associated with male authority.

Many thanks to Christof Decker, Benedikt Feiten, Sophia Siddique, and Nils Osowski for offering helpful comments on various drafts of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Moritz Fink

Authors
  1. Moritz Fink
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Film, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA

    Sophia Siddique

  2. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu, USA

    Raphael Raphael

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Fink, M. (2016). An Eyepatch of Courage: Battle-Scarred Amazon Warriors in the Movies of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. In: Siddique, S., Raphael, R. (eds) Transnational Horror Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58417-5_7

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