SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

Good Will and Gracie (2007): A Critique of 21st Century Feminist Sports Cinema

Room 222, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)

In this paper, I posit that women’s sports cinema and filmmakers rarely adopt intersectional approaches to invoke change and increase visibility and opportunity for all women. While there is no one size fits all sports film that focuses on the plight of women athletes, the Hollywood studio formula still commonly suggests that the female athlete is white, heterosexual, and middle class. The women’s sports film, Gracie (2007) is an example of a film that in many ways was produced outside of mainstream studio systems. Thus, it might be expected that this film would challenge multiple subjective spaces within women’s sports and sports cinema. However, through a textual analysis and an analysis of the political economy of filmmaking, it is clear that this film falls short of a women’s sports film that considers intersectional approaches to cultural production. Instead it becomes, like most of women’s sport films, one-dimensional celluloid space that filmmakers treat as a catch all for the sports feminist movement. Scholars and filmmakers alike should push for more inclusive, integrated, intersectional approaches within American women’s sports cinema and scholarship. This paper continues these discourses and calls for a reexamination of the objectives of this genre of filmmaking.