Marissa Filippo

Mainstreaming the Margins: Kathryn Bigelow's Vision in the 1990s Marissa Filippo

Is it possible for a progressively feminist text to exist within the confines of mainstream Hollywood? Does action entertainment have to support conservative American politics? Must a feminist filmmaker reject all the established aesthetic conventions of film to ensure her own feminism? Kathryn Bigelow's films of the 1990s challenge the values and judgments of dominant culture via established Hollywood--in its own language, on its own terms. Bigelow's films exist within the mass-consumed action genre but present, through their ambiguity and representation of difference, a progressive alternative to Hollywood's typical messages.