Bombshells on Film: Women, Military Films, and Hegemonic Gender Ideologies

Abstract

This research explores the gendered representation of women in mainstream military films produced in the United States over a 70-year period when the official capacity of women in armed service underwent significant transformation. Utilizing contextualized visual semiotics, findings reveal that these films present women's standing as uncertain at best by reinforcing their exclusion from many nontraditional feminine roles or by setting them up for reintegration into proper gender roles. Such depictions reaffirm the two and only two gender category dichotomy, which discourages popular discourse from considering full integration of women into traditionally masculine roles in highly masculine gendered institutions.