Flouting the law. Underbelly: Razor's (de)construction of normative femininity
نویسندگان
چکیده
Australian TV series Underbelly: Razor represents gangsters Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine as women equipped to compete on an equal footing with their male counterparts. These women's 'toughness' is simultaneously tempered and reinforced by gestures toward stereotypes of 'female weakness', which they employ to fulfil their criminal agendas. This paper will analyse how the TV series frames these women's femininity through interactions between the male and female characters and how the series invites a modern-day audience to interpret these representations of femininity. By foregrounding idea(l)s associated with normative femininity, the paper will explore themes of vulnerability and sexuality as creative approaches to criminal strategy. It will evaluate the relative success of such gendered acts via theories of performativity, masquerade, mimicry and camp so as to analyse how each of these influence the acceptance of Underbelly's construction of and the characters' (ab)use of 'femininity'. As such, this paper suggests that Underbelly: Razor, in representing Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine's gendered acts as shifting between performativity and performance, does not simply reinscribe notions of normative femininity on the bodies of these women, but also questions and queers them.
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تاریخ انتشار 2014